The Haskalah Movement in Russia Part 5

CHAPTER IV

CONFLICTS AND CONQUESTS

1840-1855

The charges brought against the Jews of Russia by henchmen of the czar were grave, indeed, only they did not contain a particle of truth. In Russia itself, not only Jews and non-Russians but even many Christians testified to the innocence of the Jews, and protested against their oppressors. Bibikov, the Governor-General of Podolia and Volhynia; Diakov, the Governor-General of Smolensk; and Surovyetsky, the noted statesman, all write in terms of such praise of their unfortunate countrymen of the Jewish faith that their statements would sound exaggerated, were it not that many other unprejudiced Russians confirm their views.[1] The fact that Nicholas thought the Jews reliable as soldiers speaks against the imputation that they were mercenary and unpatriotic. Neither was the conventional accusation, that they were a people of petty traders, applicable to the Jews in Russia. Laborers of all kinds were very common among them. It was they, in fact, who rendered all manner of service to their Gentile neighbors, from a cobbler's and blacksmith's to producing the most exquisite _objets d'art_ and gold and silver engraving. They were equally well represented among the clerks and bookkeepers, and the bricklayers and stone-cutters.

They took up with the most laborious employments, if only they furnished them with an honest even though scanty livelihood.[2]

But most unfounded of all was the allegation that Jews were opposed to education. The _Memoirs_ of Madame Pauline Wengeroff indicate that even among the very strict Jews of her time children were not denied instruction in the German, Polish, and Russian literatures. We have seen how they availed themselves of the permission, granted to them by Alexander I, to attend the schools and universities of the empire. Nor did they fail to open schools of their own. No sooner was the Franco-Russian war over than Joseph Perl of Galicia founded a school in Tarnopol (1813), then under the Russian Government, and two years later he drew upon his own resources to build a school-house large enough to accommodate the great, steadily growing number of students. In 1822 we hear of a school that had been in existence for some time in Uman (the Ukraine). It had been established by Mer Horn, Moses Landau, and Hirsh Hurwitz, all of whom were indefatigable laborers in the cause of Haskalah in the Ukraine. Perl's school was the pattern and model for a mult.i.tude of other schools, among them the one founded by Zittenfeld (1826) in Odessa, in the faculty of which were Simhah Pinsker, Elijah Finkel, the grandson of Elijah Gaon, and Abraham Abele, the eminent Talmudist. In 1836 a girls' department was added to it, and when Lilienthal visited Odessa (ab. 1843) it had an attendance of from four to five hundred pupils of both s.e.xes, the annual expense being twenty-eight thousand rubles. A similar school was opened in Kishinev by Stern, and in the early "forties" there was hardly a Jewish community of note without one or more of such Jewish public inst.i.tutions. Several well-to-do Maskilim not only founded but, like Perl, also maintained such schools, and gave instruction in some or all of the subjects taught in them.[3]

The "forties" began auspiciously for Haskalah in Russia. On January 15, 1840, the Riga community, amid pomp and rejoicing, opened the first Jewish school affiliated with a university. The teaching staff consisted of three Jews and one Christian, with Doctor Max Lilienthal (1815-1882), the young, highly recommended, and recently chosen local rabbi, as its princ.i.p.al. In the same year, the indefatigable Basilius Stern succeeded in forming a committee, of which Hayyim Efrusi and Moses Lichtenstadt were members, to deliberate on founding rabbinical seminaries in Russia.

In 1841, forty-five delegates, representing the six chief committees of the Lovers of Enlightenment, a.s.sembled in Vilna, and thence issued an appeal in which they adopted as their platform the elevation of the moral standards of adults by urging them to follow useful trades and discouraging the Jewish proclivity to business as much as possible; a reform of the prevailing system of the education of the young; the combating, if possible the eradication, of Hasidism, the fountainhead, as they thought, of ignorance and superst.i.tion; the establishment of rabbinical seminaries, after the model of those in Padua and Amsterdam, to supply congregations with educated rabbis. It was further agreed that a Consistory be created, to supervise Jewish affairs and establish schools and technical inst.i.tutes wherever necessary. To these main points were added several others of minor importance. The Maskilim of Besascz insisted that steps be taken to stop the prevailing custom of premature marriages. Those of Brest proposed that Government aid be invoked to compel Jews to dress in the German style, to use authorized text-books in the hadarim, and interdict the study of the Talmud except by those preparing themselves for the rabbinate.[4]

Even in Vilna and Minsk, towns which later put themselves on record as opposed to Government schools, the Jews yielded gladly to the innovations of such Maskilim as S. Perl, G. Klaczke, I. Bompi, and the distinguished philanthropist David Luria, who took the initiative in transforming the educational system of these cities. Under the superintendence of Luria, the Minsk Talmud Torah became a model inst.i.tution; the training conferred there on the poor and orphaned surpa.s.sed that given to the children of the rich in their private schools. This aroused jealousy in the parents of the latter, and at their request Luria organized a merchants' school, for the wealthier cla.s.s. He then established what he called Midrash Ezrahim, or Citizens'

Inst.i.tute, in which he met with such success that he attracted the attention of the authorities, and received a special acknowledgment from the czar.[5]

Russian Jewry was astir with new life. In many places secular education was divorced for the first time from rabbinical speculation. Knowledge became an end in itself, and learning increased greatly. An investigation by Nicholas I convinced all who were interested that though the Talmud remained the chief subject of study, the number of educated Jews was far greater than commonly supposed. The upliftment of the ma.s.ses was the beau-ideal of every Maskil, and Hebrew and even the much-despised Yiddish were employed to effect it. Ignorance was regarded as the bane of life, and enlightenment as the panacea for all the ills to which their downtrodden brethren were heirs. As their pious coreligionists deemed it the universal duty to be well-versed in the Talmud, so the Maskilim thought it inc.u.mbent upon everybody to be highly cultured. No obstacle was great enough to discourage them. They were willing martyrs to the G.o.ddess of Wisdom, at whose shrine they worshipped, and whose cult they spread in the most adverse circ.u.mstances.

Had the Government not interfered with the efforts of the Maskilim, or had it chosen a commission from among the Russian Jews themselves, among whom, as soon became evident to Nicholas himself, there were more than enough to do justice to an educational inquiry, the Haskalah movement would have continued to spread, notwithstanding the obstacles put in its way. But Nicholas was determined to reduce the number of Jews also by "re-educating" them in accordance with his own ideas. Every attempt made by the Jews to educate themselves was, therefore, checked. Even the n.o.ble efforts of Luria were stopped, his schools were closed, and his only rewards were "a gold medal from the czar and a short poem by Gottlober."

In Germany, since the time of Mendelssohn, the study of the Talmud had been on the wane. The great yeshibot formerly existing in Metz, Frankfort, Hamburg, Prague, Fiirth, Halberstadt, etc., disappeared, and the reforms introduced in the synagogue and the numerous converts to Christianity impressed the outside world with the idea that Judaism among German Jews was writhing in the agony of death. If the same disintegrating elements were introduced among the Russian Jews, the Government believed that they would ultimately come over to the Greek Catholic Church of their own accord. Hence it was anxious to learn the secret of this power and beamed graciously on several learned Jews of Germany.

David Friedlander (1750-1834) was then considered the legitimate successor of Mendelssohn, whose friend he had been for more than twenty years. He resembled his master in many respects, though he lacked both his genius and his sympathy. Mendelssohn translated the Pentateuch and the Psalms into German, Friedlander translated the Haftarot (selections from the Prophets) and the prayer book. Mendelssohn encouraged the publication of the Mea.s.sef; he did likewise, and contributed several articles to the journal. But, unlike his master, or, as he claimed, like his master in secret, he held exceedingly lat.i.tudinarian views on Judaism. In his later years he advocated abolishing the study of Hebrew in the schools and discarding it from the prayer book. He even rejoiced that by attending the services in Protestant churches many Jewish families were becoming acquainted with the religion he himself would have accepted on certain conditions.[6]

It was to Friedlander that Bishop Malchevsky, actuated, as he maintained, by a desire to render the Jews worthy of the enjoyment of civil rights, applied for suggestions, in 1816, when the missionary zeal of Alexander I was first aroused. He responded in a pamphlet, _On the Improvement of the Israelites in the Kingdom of Poland_,[7] in which he declared that the quickest way of "civilizing" the Jews would be to deprive their rabbis of power and influence, to force them to dress in the German fashion, and use the Polish language, to admit them to the public schools and other educational inst.i.tutions, and, above all, to abrogate the laws discriminating between them and their Gentile countrymen.

Friedlander's advice regarding the removal of civil disabilities was never executed, but his other suggestions were followed out with more vigor than was necessary or good. To do away with the rabbis, and consequently with the Talmud, was just what was desired. It was partly with this end in view that Alexander I permitted, that is, commanded, the establishment of the rabbinical seminary in Warsaw. But when it was found that, although the seminary students were provided with all necessaries, and notwithstanding the decree that six years from the date of its opening none but seminary graduates would be eligible to the rabbinical office, few students availed themselves of the opportunity afforded, and none obtained positions, the whole plan fell into disfavor.[8] The Government, nevertheless, remained as stubbornly determined as ever, and unable to turn all the children into Cantonists, it decided to have those who remained at home gradually converted by means of a method worked out by the Minister of Education, Uvarov. They were forced to attend what became known as Government schools, though maintained exclusively with Jewish funds. In order to win the confidence of the Jews for the project, Doctor Lilienthal, whose speech at the dedication of the Riga School secured him a diamond ring as a token of the czar's approval, was sent from St. Petersburg on a mission of investigation, more especially of persuasion.

For more than three years Lilienthal was one of the most popular personages in Europe. The eyes of all who had the amelioration of the lot of the Russian Jew at heart, it may be said the eyes of the civilized world, were fixed upon him as an epoch-maker in the history of the Jews. Nature had formed him, physically and mentally, to be a leader among his people, and his training and temperament made it easy for him to ingratiate himself into the favor of the great. It seemed that he was just the man to be the successful executor of the czar's plan.

The Maskilim, above all, hailed him as the champion of the cause of Haskalah. He was their Moses or Ezra, the G.o.d-sent redeemer of their benighted brethren out of the quagmire of fanaticism. From various cities numerous urgent appeals came to him to hasten the execution of his great plan. Wherever he went, he was enthusiastically received, a truly royal welcome was extended to him. The Vilna community appropriated five thousand rubles for the school fund, and pledged itself to raise more if it were found necessary; and he was invited also to Minsk by the kahal of the city.

Unfortunately, Lilienthal's tactics exposed him to suspicion, and the seed of discord was soon sown between him and his former admirers. He tried to serve two masters, the czar and the Jews, and he alienated both. The pious regarded him as a mere tool in the hands of the Government, for, they maintained, _education without emanc.i.p.ation leads to conversion_. The enlightened element also lost confidence in one who, instead of boldly attacking superst.i.tion, preferred, while in Minsk, to identify himself not only with the Mitnaggedim, but even with the Hasidim. He was also too headstrong and too vain of his achievements.

Benjamin Mandelstamm, who, as he tell us in his letters, considered Lilienthal "as wise as Solomon and as enterprising as Moses," complains a little later of his arrogance, and at the last speaks of him with contempt. His a.s.sumed superiority grieved the Maskilim, and their former enthusiasm was rapidly replaced by hatred and persecution. He found it necessary to put himself under the protection of the police while in Minsk, and when he returned to Vilna his reception was far less hearty than it had been before.

In order to regain the confidence of the Russian Jews, Lilienthal obtained a permit from the Minister of Education to call an a.s.sembly of prominent Jews at St. Petersburg, to decide for themselves how to better the condition of the existing schools and to consider the practicability of establishing rabbinical seminaries. For he, too, like the Maskilim, considered the rabbis the chief menace to Haskalah. Rabbinical authority was supreme, and if the rabbis could be won over, all would be gained.

The bell-wethers once secured, the flocks were sure to follow. It took a long time for Lilienthal, and still longer for the Maskilim, to find out that what they regarded as the cause was in reality the consequence.

Eight years later Lilienthal himself admitted the sad truth, that the rabbinical seminaries in Russia could not effect the coveted end. "It must not be lost sight of," says he in his _Sketches of Jewish Life in Russia_[9] "that the Russian Jews live strictly in accordance with our received laws, and they are sufficiently learned in them to know that the many cases of conscience which are of constant occurrence cannot be decided understandingly by any one who has but a superficial knowledge of the Talmud and of the decisions of the later doctors of the Law, but that it requires the study of an entire lifetime to become thoroughly acquainted with those stupendous monuments of learning and deep research in the great concerns of life."

[Ill.u.s.tration: ALEXANDER ZEDERBAUM, 1816-1893]

After several busy months at St. Petersburg and frequent consultations with Count Uvarov, Lilienthal returned to Vilna, and two weeks later he published his circular letter, _Maggid Yeshiiah_ (_The Announcer of Good Tidings_)[10] The "good tidings" were that an imperial ukase (June 22, 1842) would convene a council of distinguished Jews at St. Petersburg, to deliberate how to "re-educate" the Jews. Accordingly, in the early part of April, 1843, the notables, from different places and with diametrically opposed views, a.s.sembled in the Russian capital.

Representing the Jews, there were Rabbi Isaac Volozhin, the dean of the Tree of Life Yeshibah, perhaps the strongest man present; Rabbi Menahem Mendel Shneersohn of Lubavich, leader of the Hasidic reform sect; Joseph Heilprin, the financier and banker of Berdichev, and Bezalel (Basilius) Stern, princ.i.p.al of the Jewish public schools of Odessa. Representing the Government were Count Uvarov, Chevalier Dukstaduchinsky, and others, with de Vrochenko, Minister of State, as chairman and Lilienthal as secretary. Montefiore of England, Cremieux of France, and Rabbi Philippson of Germany had been invited, but they failed to come. The council decided to open Jewish public schools in every city where Jews reside, and also two rabbinical seminaries, the one in Vilna, the other in Zhitomir, the former being considered the Jewish metropolis of the northwestern part, the latter, of the southwestern part, of Russia. They also proposed to do away with the Judeo-Polish garb, and suggested certain alterations in the prayer book.

The delegates met, deliberated, and disbanded, but the tidings announced in Lilienthal's epistle did not prove to be good. In one of the fables of Kryloff, the Russian aesop, we are told that once a swan, a pike, and a crab, decided to make a trip together. No sooner had they started than, in accordance with their nature, the swan began to fly, the pike to shuffle along, the crab to crawl backward. It was so with the delegation of 1843. Rabbi Isaac, the rabid Mitnagged, could find but little to admire in the proposals of Rabbi Menahem Mendel, the ardent Hasid, and both were bitterly opposed to the view preached by Doctor Lilienthal, that the salvation of the Jews and Judaism would be brought about by a system of education adopted in accordance with an ukase by Nicholas. Stern, too, had little use for Lilienthal, whom he declared to be ignorant of the condition of Russian Jews and incapable of working in their behalf. From such discord nothing good could come. The fact is, that the few resolutions mentioned had been drawn up beforehand by the Government officials, and the time and trouble and expense which the council involved were, _a la Russe_, for appearance sake. Finding his efforts an utter failure, Lilienthal went to Odessa with letters of recommendation from Uvarov to Vorontzov, the patron of Stern, and was elected rabbi of that enlightened and wealthy community. But, for some inexplicable reason, he suddenly left the city on the plea of visiting friends in Germany, and went to the United States, where he remained to the end of his life, and became one of the leading rabbis and communal workers among his coreligionists whose lines had fallen in pleasanter places than the fortunes of those he had left behind in Russia.[11]

For Lilienthal's disillusionment came apace, and he finally recognized the error of his ways. In his book, _My Travels in Russia_, published both in English and in German, he admits that the opponents of the schools he advocated were after all in the right. Education without emanc.i.p.ation was indeed the straightest road to conversion. Witness the thirty thousand Jewish apostates in St. Petersburg and Moscow alone, most of whom hailed from the Baltic provinces, where the Jews were more cultured, but not less oppressed, than their brethren.

Those men--says he--who have acquired from study an idea of the rights of man, and that the Jew ought to enjoy the same privileges as every other citizen; those men who tried, by the knowledge they had obtained, to open for themselves better prospects in life, and now saw every hope frustrated by laws inimical to them only as Jews, ran, from mere despair, into the bosom of the Greek Church. The hara.s.sing care for a living, the terrible difficulties in surmounting them forced them, in an hour of distress, to deny their faith. I always compared them with the a.n.u.sim [forced converts] of Spain. Among them there is no religious indifference, as is the case in Western Europe and Germany; and I have met with many converted Jews there, who, with tears in their eyes, complained of heart-burnings and pangs of conscience; and they look upon themselves as eternally lost.

Those tears will show a heavy balance against Czar Nicholas, when, bereft of his earthly power, he stands before the eternal tribunal.

The other charge--he says again after refuting several accusations of the kind stated above--the other charge, that the Jews are averse to secular studies, rests upon an equally erroneous foundation. For even in Germany Jewish parents have at length found out that it is absolute folly to let their sons devote themselves to the study of science, since they never can hope for obtaining the least office; and since many a one, after the best years of his youth are pa.s.sed, tired of waiting, and fearful of not having in his old age any means of support, finds in the baptismal font the last anchor of his shattered hopes.

How much more must this consideration have weight in Russia?

Nicholas, instead of encouraging the Jews to study, ordered, on the contrary, that all such of them as held offices and insignia of distinction under Alexander should either resign or become apostates. I know myself several collegiate councillors and men attached to the court, who went to the synagogue on the Day of Atonement with the insignia of the order of St. Anna around their neck, and prayed there with devotion and fervor, who still were forced into apostasy. Such instances are not calculated to encourage Jewish parents to let their children study; and it is but too true that many whose inclination led them to study were carried thereby into the bosom of the Christian Church.[12]

After almost half a decade of indefatigable labor, Lilienthal finally came to understand the Russian State policy, "to a.s.sign a plausible reason for every act done by the Government, in order to stand justified in the estimation of Europe, whilst they, by throwing dust in the eyes of the public, conceal their true purpose." The laws which seemed favorable to the Jews, and apparently aimed at promoting culture among them, went hand in hand with laws of the most rigorous character. It is true that the Jews were not the only unfortunates whom the fanatic autocrat wished to Russify, that is, compel to see the pure light of Greek Orthodoxy. But they, of course, suffered the most. The slightest laws were enforced by the chinovniks (officials) with the knout and the leaden lash. When the Judeo-Polish gaberdine, the long side-curls (peot), and the wig or turban (knup) fell into disfavor with the Government, the miserable offender caught by an officer seldom saved himself with the mere sacrifice of knup, coat, peot, and beard. And when the time arrived for the execution of the more important laws, such as the Exportation Act of April 20, 1843, no fiendish ingenuity could surpa.s.s the cruelty of the Cossacks. This ukase more than any other, it is claimed, embittered Lilienthal against Russia, and caused him to flee to where he could say as one awakening from a nightmare: "The horrible hatred against the Jews in Russia is nothing more to me than a hazy remembrance. My soul is no longer oppressed by frightful pictures of tyranny and persecution."[13] He was in the land of the free!

The Lilienthal tragedy thus came to a premature close. The hero disappeared at the beginning of the play. He had the potency, but he lacked the conditions, for producing great results. His German birth and training, the very qualities which recommended him to the Government, operated against him when he came to deal with Russian Jews. Yet he succeeded in giving a strong impetus to the Haskalah movement, and builded better than he knew. The statement in his address at the dedication of the Riga school,[14] "This hour we may call the hour of the renaissance of the mental education of Israel," which reads like an oratorical plat.i.tude, was not entirely visionary. The real history of Haskalah in Russia commences with Lilienthal.

Time helped greatly to restore, even to deepen, the affection of the Maskilim for Lilienthal. A modern critic speaking of "life and literature" in Hebrew, pictures him in glowing colors, and finishes his description thus:

I have presented to you, reader, a man of deep culture, known and respected in the highest circles, and yet inseparably connected with his race and religion, and ready to offer his life for their welfare; a man who worked with might and main for others at the sacrifice of his own comfort and advancement; an orator whose exalted phrases shattered the pillars and foundations of ignorance and superst.i.tion; a hero who in time of peril was proof against the arrows and missiles of the enemy, and who did not relax his hand from the flag. But what was the fruit he reaped? Mostly ingrat.i.tude and persecution, a heart lacerated with despair, a soul writhing under the pangs of frustrated hopes. Such a personality with its fine shades, and with the poetry of the artist superimposed, would afford splendid material for the hero of a novel--a hero to captivate the eye and heart of the reader by his n.o.bility and grandeur.[15]

For a long time Russian officialdom discussed the question, whether the establishment of exclusively Jewish schools would prove beneficial, but n.o.body doubted the efficacy of rabbinical seminaries. Yet it was these latter inst.i.tutions that evoked the strongest protests from the Jews.

The advocates of Haskalah gradually came to recognize the truth, which Lilienthal admitted afterwards, that for a Russian rabbi a thorough knowledge of the Talmud was absolutely indispensable. But it was with the object of discouraging such knowledge that the seminaries had been suggested by Uvarov, and it was this study that was almost entirely ignored in them. What congregation, many of whose members were profound Talmudists, would accept a rabbi to whom unvocalized Hebrew was a snare and a stumbling-block? Moreover, the whole atmosphere of the seminaries was Christian, nay, military. Not a few members of their faculties or boards of governors were discharged police officers or superannuated soldiers, and at the head of the seminary in Vilna, the metropolis of Russian Jewry, stood an apostate Jew! They became, as it were, infirmaries of the bureaucracy, where, at the expense of the Jews, it could stow away anyone who had proved a failure or was no longer useful.

The Government also undertook to provide the graduates with positions, patronage which rendered the students insolently independent of their coreligionists, and encouraged some of them to indulge in a _modus vivendi_ distasteful to their future flocks. The graduates, therefore, proved failures as rabbis, and the Government was forced to provide for them by appointing them as teachers.[16]

If this was the case with the rabbinical seminaries, we can easily imagine the state of the subordinate schools. The Christian princ.i.p.als were coa.r.s.e and uneducated as a rule, and did their best to prejudice the children against their religion. Scattered all over the Pale were to be found Jews competent to fill positions not only as teachers in inferior grades but as professors in the universities. Yet Lilienthal was advised (1841) to advertise for three hundred teachers in Germany.

Finally the Government decided to employ Jews as teachers of Hebrew only, the least important subject in the curriculum; for instruction in the secular branches none but Christians were eligible. No Jews were allowed to become rectors in their own schools, and their salaries were so small that they could not support themselves without teaching an additional cla.s.s, which was prohibited. A Jew might, indeed, become an "honorable overseer" (pochotny blyust.i.tyel), to mediate between pupils and parents, but the t.i.tle was the only pay attached to the office.

Respectable parents, therefore, kept their children at home, or rather in the heder, and many a child's name was on the roll of attendance who was not even aware of the existence of the school. "Every year in the autumn," relates a writer a quarter of a century later, "there was a kind of compulsory recruiting of Jewish children for the Government school, accompanied sometimes by struggles between the victims and their enemies,--scenes without a parallel, in some respects, in the civilized world. I remember how poor mothers and sisters wept with despair when some boy of the family was carried off or enlisted by the officers to be a pupil of a Government school." Like the poimaniki, the poor and the orphaned were compelled, or induced, to fill the cla.s.s-rooms shunned by the rich and respectable, and though the Government not only condemned the ancient Hebrew inst.i.tutions, but declared the twenty thousand teachers who imparted instruction in them to be outlaws and criminals, the melammedim pursued their vocation as ever, and the hadarim, Talmud Torahs, yeshibot, and batte midrashim swarmed with students of the prohibited learning.[17]

Nicholas was paid measure for measure, and the cunning of his ministers was made of no avail by the shrewdness of his Jewish subjects. The report of the Minister of Education, at the end of 1845, shows incredible progress. It states that since the ukase of November 13, 1844, i.e. in the course of a single year, more than two thousand schools of different grades were established in various cities of the Pale, with more than one hundred and eighty thousand pupils, not including the technical schools in Odessa, Riga, Kishinev, Vilna, and Uman, with their hundreds of students! The truth was that, instead of the reported Russification, there had set in a vigorous reaction, which rendered the position more critical. Both sides had become desperate.[18] Some Maskilim, emboldened by the interest the Government evinced in their efforts, had resorted to all manner of means to accomplish their object, and frequently allied themselves with the oppressors. The Slavuta publishing house, it is claimed, was closed, and the Schapiras met with their tragic end, because "as printers they scrupulously abstained from publishing Haskalah literature." Maskilim were employed by the authorities as tax collectors, and these, as is ever the case with rapacious farmers of taxes, besides executing the harsh laws of the tyrant, looked also to their own aggrandizement, and hara.s.sed their pious coreligionists in all ways conceivable. Many of them even hindered the colonization movement, because, if allowed to mature, it would deprive them of their income.[19] In addition to this, the Jews were now burdened, through the instrumentality of the Maskilim, with a tax on the candles lighted on Sabbath eve, yielding annually over one million rubles, the greater part of which went into the coffers of greedy officials. Another tax, also for the maintenance of the newly-organized Government schools, was levied--one kopeck and a half per page!--on text-books, whether imported from abroad or published in Vilna or Zhitomir, and the text-books were published with unnecessarily large type and wide margins to increase the number of pages. The abridgment and translation of Maimuni's _Mishneh Torah_ (St. Petersburg, 1851), superintended by Leon Mandelstamm, cost the Russian Jews tens of thousands of rubles, notwithstanding the expenditure of two or three millions on their own educational inst.i.tutions, and at a time when every kopeck was needed for the support of the host of victims of fire, famine, and cholera, which ravaged many a city. Hence the reaction became more and more formidable. The cry grew louder and louder, _Znaty nye znayem, shkolles nye zhelayem!_ ("We want no schools!"). The opposition, which began in the latter years of Alexander I, reached its culmination in the last decade of the reign of Nicholas I. "Israel,"

laments Mandelstamm, "seems to be even worse than formerly; he is like a sick person who has convalesced only to relapse, and the physicians are beginning to despair." It was a struggle not unlike that all over Europe at the beginning of the Renaissance, a struggle between liberty and authority, between this world and other-worldliness, between the spirit of the nineteenth century and that of the millenniums which preceded it.

Here is a description, by Morgulis, of the struggles and conquests of the new, small, but zealous, group of Maskilim in Russia at about that time:[20]

Those upon whom the sun of civilization and freedom happened to cast a ray of light, showing them the path leading to a new life, were compelled to study the European literatures and sciences in garrets, in cellars, in any nook where they felt themselves secure from interference. Neither unaffiliated Jews nor the outer world knew anything about them. Like rebels they kept their secrets unto themselves, stealthily a.s.sembling from time to time, to consider how they might realize their ideal, and disclose to their brethren the fountainhead of the living waters out of which they drank and drew new youth and life.

Whatever was novel was accepted with delight. They looked with envy upon the great intellectual progress of their western brethren. Fain would they have had their Jewish countrymen recognize the times and their requirements, but they could not give free utterance to their thoughts. On the contrary, they found it expedient to a.s.sume the mask of religion in order to escape the suspicion of alert zealots, and gain, if possible, new recruits. In many places societies were founded under the name of Lovers of the New Haskalah, the members of which observed such secrecy that even their kinsmen and those among whom they dwelt were unaware of their existence. If through the discovery of some forbidden book any of them happened to be detected, he never betrayed his friends. Such a one was usually compelled to marry, so that, being burdened with family cares, he might desist from his unpopular pursuits.

From which it would appear that though the opposition to Haskalah in Russia was by no means as violent as had been the opposition to enlightenment in France, for instance, or even among the Jews of Germany and Austria,[21] it was a bitter and stubborn conflict between parents and children in the adjustment of old ideals to a new environment.

Aside from the hindrances which Haskalah encountered because of Nicholas's conversionist policy, it was greatly hampered by the geographical distribution of the Jews. Here again the czar defeated his own end by segregating the three or four million of his Jewish subjects in certain districts, technically called the Pale, the greatest ghetto the world has ever known. It was a Judea in itself. The Jews there seldom came in contact with outside civilization. The languages they used were Hebrew as the literary tongue, Yiddish among themselves, and the local Slavonic dialect with their non-Jewish neighbors. Russian was strange, not only to the great majority of Jews, but to the Russians themselves. It was merely the State language, and even the Government officials fell back on their mother tongue whenever they were at liberty to do so. It was this that made it very difficult for the Jews to be Russified.

But even if Russification had been a much easier process, Russian civilization was hardly worth the having.[22] To become Russified would have meant not only religious but also intellectual suicide. Whatever was good in the Russia of that day was an importation. The language was scarcely beyond the barbarous state. Its literature possessed neither original nor adopted writings, no profound philosophical systems, no Rousseau or Goethe, no Franklin or Kant, not even any practical information with which to reward the student. The best writers were Kryloff, Pushkin, Zhukovsky, and Dyerzhavin. The prices of books were so high as to make them unattainable. Karamzin's _History of the Russian Empire_ sold at fifty-five rubles per copy. The royal library, which had been founded by the Jewish court physician Sanchez, contained only eight Russian books during the reign of Alexander I, and not many more were added by his successor. The dramatic art developed by the Jewish playwright Nebakhovich remained for a long time in the same state as when he ceased his work.[23] If Russia was the most powerful, it continued to be the most fanatical and uncivilized country in Europe.

All who had occasion to visit and study it during the first half of the nineteenth century testify to its deplorable intellectual status.

According to a very ingenious and observing writer, quoted by Buckle in his _History of Civilization_, it consisted of but two ranks, the highest and the lowest, or the n.o.bility and the serfs: _Les marchands, qui formaient une cla.s.se moyenne, sont en si pet.i.t nombre qu'il ne peuvent marquer dans l'etat; d'ailleurs presque tous sont etrangers_.

The higher cla.s.ses were distinguished for "a total absence of all rational tastes on literary topics."

Here [in Russia]--the same writer continues--it is absolutely _mauvais genre_ to discuss a rational subject--pure _pedanterie_ to be caught upon any topics beyond dressing, dancing, and a _jolie tournure_. Military prowess is ranked far above scholarly attainment, and a man in a uniform, no matter how depraved, takes precedence of one in plain clothes, whatever his achievements. All the energies of the nation are turned towards the army. Commerce, the law, and the civil employments are held in no esteem; all young men of any consideration betake themselves to the profession of arms. Nothing astonished them more than to see the estimation in which the civil professions, and especially the bar, are held in Great Britain.[24]

How different was the position of the Jews in other countries, especially in Germany! Culture streamed upon them from all sides. As their numbers were small, and as they lived, in most cases, in the larger cities of the empire, their contact with the Christian world was immediate and continuous. And then the irresistible fascination of German literature, and the easy, almost imperceptible transition from the Judeo-German to the Teutonic-German! All this and many minor allurements were potent enough to draw even the heretofore callous German Jews out of their isolation, and their Germanization by the middle of the nineteenth century was an established fact. No wonder, then, that, unlike Russian Jewry, the German Jews experienced an unprecedented revolution; that the difference between the Mendelssohnian generation and the next following was almost as great as that between the modern American Jew and his brother in the Orient. No wonder, also, that when Haskalah finally took root in Russia, it was purely German for fifty years and more; that Nicholas's vigorous attempts, instead of making the Slavonic Jews better Russians, merely helped to make those he "re-educated" greater admirers of Germany. The most puissant autocrat of Russia unwittingly contributed to the downfall of Russian autocracy, and Gregori Peretz, the Dekabrist, son of the financier who became converted under Alexander I, was the first of those who were to endeavor, with book and bomb, to break the backbone of tyranny under Nicholas II.[25]

Till about the "sixties," then, the Russo-Jewish Maskilim were the recipients, and the German Jews were the donors. The German Jews wrote, the Russian Jews read. Germany was to the Jewish world, during the early Haskalah movement, what France, according to Guizot, was to Europe during the Renaissance: both received an impetus from the outside in the form of raw ideas, and modified them to suit their environment. Berlin was still, as it had been during the days of Mendelssohn and Wessely, the sanctuary of learning, the citadel of culture. In the highly cultivated German literature they found treasures of wisdom and science.

The poetical gems of Goethe, Schiller, Lessing, and Herder captivated their fancy; the philosophy of Kant and Fichte, Sch.e.l.ling and Hegel nourished their intellect. Kant continued to be the favorite guide of Maimon's countrymen, and in their love for him they interpreted the initials of his name to mean "For my soul panteth after thee."[26]

But more efficacious than all other agencies was Mendelssohn's German translation of the Bible, and the _Biur_ commentary published therewith.

Renaissance and Reformation, those mighty, revolutionary forces, have entered every country by side-doors, so to say. The Jewish Pale was no exception to the rule. What Wycliffe's translation did for England, and Luther's for Germany, Mendelssohn's did for Russian Jewry. Like the Septuagint, it marked a new epoch in the history of Jewish advancement.