The Haskalah Movement in Russia Part 7

Pirogov took the initiative in reorganizing the Jewish schools. It required little observation to understand that they had proved a failure. Instead of attracting the Jewish ma.s.ses to secular education, they only repelled them. The remedy was not far to seek. "The abolition of these schools" said Count Kotzebu, "would drive the Jews back to their fanaticism and isolation. It is necessary to make the Jews useful citizens, and I see no other means of achieving this than by their education." Pirogov's first move was to order that Jewish instead of Christian princ.i.p.als be put at their head, and he set an example by appointing Rosenzweig to that office. The curriculum was changed, making the lower schools correspond with our grammar schools, and adapting their studies to the needs of those who must discontinue schooling at a comparatively early age. The higher schools were arranged so as to prepare the pupils for the gymnasium. The salaries of the teachers were raised, and books and necessaries were provided for pupils too poor to afford them.

The Government's attention having been directed by General Zelenoy to the Jewish agricultural colonies in southern Russia, Marcus Gurovich was appointed to work out a plan to provide them with graded schools. He proposed that secular and sacred subjects alike be taught by Jewish teachers, and these were to be cautioned to be careful not to offend the religious sensibilities of the parents. The plan appealed to the colonists, and they looked forward anxiously to its fulfilment. Having waited in vain till 1868, they offered to defray the expenses of the schools involved, if the Government would advance the money at the first. Accordingly, ten schools for boys and two for girls were opened in that year.

Such disinterested efforts on their behalf would have evoked the grat.i.tude of Jews at any time and in every country, how much more in Russia, and following close upon the darkest period in their history!

The struggle for liberty all over Europe in 1848--the spring of nations--had confirmed Nicholas in his policy of exclusion. The last five years of his reign had surpa.s.sed the preceding in cruelty and tyranny. The "Don Quixote of Politics," finding that his attempts to quarantine Russia against European influences had proved futile, that the nationalities const.i.tuting the empire remained as distinct as ever, and the desired h.o.m.ogeneity was still far from becoming a reality, finally had lost patience and had determined to execute his conversionist policy at all hazards. He had increased the conscription duties, already unbearable (January 8, 1852; August 16, 1852), restricted the study of Hebrew and Hebrew subjects still further in the Government schools, and, as if to embitter the lives of the Jew by all means available, insisted on the use of the Mitnaggedic ritual even in communities exclusively or largely Hasidic.[4] Even the blood accusation had been revived, and the statements in the pamphlet ent.i.tled _Information about the Killing of Christians by Jews for the Purpose of Obtaining Their Blood_, which Skripitzyn, "the manager of Jewish affairs in Russia," published in 1844, found many believers in Government circles, and caused the Saratoff affair which, though suppressed, ruined numerous Jewish families, and made the breach between Jew and Gentile wider than ever.[5]

Now all this was changed. Christians championed the cause of Jews. The Government, too, appeared to be sincerely anxious for the welfare of its Jewish subjects. It not only promised, but frequently also performed.

The Jews were allowed to follow their religious predilections unhindered. The schools were reorganized with rabbinical graduates as their teachers and princ.i.p.als. The Rabbinical a.s.sembly, which, though established by Nicholas (May 26, 1848), had rarely been called together, was summoned to St. Petersburg, and there spent six months in 1857 and five in 1861 in deliberating on means of improving the intellectual and material standing of the Jews. The "learned Jew" (uchony Yevrey) Moses Berlin was invited to become an adviser in the Department of Public Worship (1856), to be consulted concerning the Jewish religion whenever occasion required. Permission was granted to publish Jewish periodicals in Russian, Polish, Hebrew, and Yiddish (1860), and on April 26, 1862, the restriction was removed that limited Jewish publishing houses and printing-presses to Vilna and Zhitomir. The Russia Montefiore saw on his visit in 1872, how different from the Russia he had left in 1846!

These auspicious signs renewed the hope of the Maskilim and intensified their zeal. They were convinced of the n.o.ble intentions of the Liberator Czar; they were confident that the emperor who emanc.i.p.ated the muzhiks, and expunged many a _kromye Yevreyev_ ("except the Jews") which his father was wont to add to the few privileges he granted his Christian subjects, would ultimately remove the civil disabilities of the Jews altogether. In a very popular song, written by Eliak.u.m Zunser (Vilna, 1836-New York, 1913), then a rising and beloved Badhan (bard) writing in Yiddish and Hebrew, Alexander II was likened to an angel of G.o.d who finds the flower of Judah soiled by dirt and trampled in the dust. He rescues it, and revives it with living water, and plants it in his garden, where it flourishes once more.[6] The poets hailed him as the savior and redeemer of Israel. All that the Jews needed was to make themselves deserving of his kindness, and worthy of the citizenship they saw in store for them. In Russian, in Hebrew, and in Yiddish, in prose and in poetry, the one theme uppermost in the mind of all was enlightenment, or rather Russification. From all quarters the reveille was sounded. Abraham Bar Gottlober (1811-1899) exclaimed:

Awake, Israel, and, Judah, arise!

Shake off the dust, open wide thine eyes!

Justice sprouteth, righteousness is here, Thy sin is forgot, thou hast naught to fear.[7]

More impressively still Judah Lob Gordon (1831-1892) called:

Arise, my people, 'tis time for waking!

Lo, the night is o'er, the day is breaking!

Arise and see where'er thou turn'st thy face, How changed are both our time and place.[8]

And in Yiddish, too, an anonymous poet echoed the strain:

Arise, my people, awake from thy dreaming, In foolishness be not immersed!

Clear is the sky, brightly the sun is beaming; The clouds are now utterly dispersed!

Rapid growth is sometimes the cause of disease, and sudden changes the cause of disappointment. This was true of the swift progress of Haskalah during the reign of Alexander II. To comprehend fully the tragedies that took place frequently at that time, the disillusionments that embittered the lives of many of the Maskilim, the breaking up of homes and bruising of hearts, one should read _Youthful Sins_ (_Plattot Neurim_, 1876) by Moses Lob Lilienblum. The author lays bare a heart ulcerated and mangled by an obsolete education, a meaningless existence, and a forlorn hope.

The hero of this little work, masterly less by reason of its artistic finish than the earnestness that pervades it from beginning to end, is "one of the slain of the Babylonian Talmud, whose spiritual life is artificially maintained by a literature itself dead." His diary and letters grant a glimpse into his innermost being; his childhood wasted in a methodless acquisition of futile learning; his boyhood blighted by a union with a wife chosen for him by his parents; his manhood mortified by the realization that in a world thrilling with life and activity he led the existence of an Egyptian mummy. Impatient to save the few years allotted to him on earth, and undeterred by the entreaties and the threats of his wife, he leaves for Odessa, the Mecca of the Maskilim, and begins to prepare himself for admission into the gymnasium. "While there is a drop of blood in my veins," he writes to his forsaken wife, "I shall try to finish my course of studies. Though the physicians declare that consumption and death must be the inevitable consequence of such application, I will not desist. I will rather die like a man than live like a dog." And on and on he plods over his Latin, his French, his history, geography, and grammar. Two more years and the university will be opened to him, and he will read law, and defend the honor of his people. But in the midst of his ceaseless toil the spectre of his simple wife and his former innocent life appears before him and "will not down." Is Haskalah worth the sacrifices he and his like are daily bringing on its altar? Is not the materialism of the emanc.i.p.ated Maskilim often greater than the medievalism of the fanatical Hasidim? In his native town, gloomy as it was, there was at least the glow of sincerity. Haskalah had to be s.n.a.t.c.hed by stealth, but it was sweeter because thus s.n.a.t.c.hed. In Odessa, where the fruit of the tree of knowledge could be obtained for the asking, it turned into the apples of Sodom. The "lishmah" ideal, the love of culture for its own sake, yielded to the greed which changes everything into a commodity to profit by. Yet, since life demands it, what a pity that his early training had incapacitated him from following the beaten path! He concludes his self-indictment thus, "I have taken an inventory of the business of my life, and I am heartbroken, because I find that in striking the balance there remains on the credit side only a cipher!"

But the tide of Haskalah was not to be stemmed. The "blessed heritage of n.o.ble pa.s.sion," the burning desire for enlightenment and improvement a.s.serted itself at all hazards. The note of despair was lost in the call for action. Odessa continued to be in the forefront. There technical inst.i.tutes for boys and girls were established in addition to the previously existing public schools. A society by the name of Trud (Labor) was organized (October 11, 1864), for the purpose of teaching useful trades. Its school has ever since been the crown of the inst.i.tutions of the sort. It was provided with the most modern improvements, a workshop for mechanics and an iron foundry, and it offered a post-graduate course. A similar trade school (remeslenoye uchilishche) had been in existence since May 1, 1862, in Zhitomir, where, besides geometry, mechanics, chemistry, physics, etc., instruction was given in carpentry, turning, tin, copper, and blacksmith work.[9] Through the efforts of Rabbi Solomon Zalkind Minor a Sabbath School and a Night School for artisans were opened in Minsk (1861), and a reference and circulating library for the general public (1863), and similar educational inst.i.tutions were soon called into existence in many other cities.

Those were the days of organizing and consolidating among Jews and Gentiles alike. At the time when Abraham Lincoln was proclaiming his famous "United we stand, divided we fall," Julius Slovacki in Poland pleaded the cause of the peasantry of his country, and the Alliance Israelite Universelle issued a call to the entire house of Israel "to defend the honor of the Jewish name wherever it is attacked; to encourage, by all means at our disposal, the pursuit of useful handicrafts; to combat, where necessary, the ignorance and vice engendered by oppression; to work, by the power of persuasion and by all the moral influences at our command, for the emanc.i.p.ation of our brethren who still suffer under the burden of exceptional legislation; to hasten and solidify complete enfranchis.e.m.e.nt by the intellectual and moral regeneration of our brethren." A powerful movement for the upliftment of the ma.s.ses was also taking hold of the educated cla.s.ses among the Russians. Professor Kostomarov started a systematic campaign for the education of the common people. A species of philanthropic intoxication seized upon the more enlightened Russian youth. A society of Narodniki, or Common People, so-called, was organized. Young men and women renounced high rank, and students came out of their seclusion and joined the people, dressed in their garb, spoke their dialect, led their life, and, having won their confidence, gradually opened their minds to value the blessings of education, and their hearts to desire them. These examples from within and without resulted in a similar attempt among the Russian Jews. An organization was perfected (December, 1863) which exercised a great civilizing influence for almost half a century, the Society for the Promotion of Haskalah among the Jews of Russia.

To the credit of the Jewish financiers be it said that they were always the banner bearers of enlightenment. It had been so with German Aufklarung, when Ben-David, Itzig, Friedlander, and Jacobson, laid the corner-stone of the intellectual rebirth of their people. It was more especially so in Russia during the "sixties." Odessa was the most enlightened, because it was the wealthiest, of Jewish communities, as the benumbing poverty of the Pale was largely to blame for the unfriendly att.i.tude towards whatever did not bear the stamp of Jewishness on its surface. The Society for the Promotion of Haskalah, too, owes its existence to some of the most prominent Russo-Jewish merchants. Its original officers were Joseph Yosel Gunzburg, President; his son Horace Gunzburg, First Vice-president; Rabbi A. Neuman, Second Vice-president; the Brodskys, and, the most active of them all, its Secretary, Leon Rosenthal (1817-1887). Busy as he was with his financial affairs, Rosenthal devoted considerable time to the propagation of enlightenment among his coreligionists. Many a youthful Maskil was indebted to him for material as well as moral support, and it was due to him that Osip Rabinovich finally succeeded in publishing the Razsvyet (Dawn, 1860), the first journal in Russian devoted to Jewish interests.

The Society for the Promotion of Enlightenment was not unlike the Alliance Israelite Universelle, only on a smaller scale. Its object was "to spread the knowledge of the Russian language among the Jews, to publish and a.s.sist others in publishing, in Russian as well as in Hebrew, useful works and journals, to aid in carrying out the purposes of the Society, and, further, to a.s.sist the young in devoting themselves to the pursuit of science and knowledge." For several years, owing to the indifference of the public, it had a hard struggle to live up to its ideal. But continuously, if slowly, it gained in membership, so that in 1884 it had an affiliation of 545. During the first twenty years of its existence its income amounted to 338,685 rubles, its expenditures to 309,998 rubles. In 1880 it endowed an agricultural college for Jewish boys. When, in the same year, medical schools for women were opened, and Jewish girls in large numbers took up the study of medicine, the Society set aside the sum of 18,900 rubles for the support of the needy among them. Many a young man was aided in the pursuit of his chosen career by the Society. It directed its activities princ.i.p.ally to the younger generation, yet it did not neglect the older. With its a.s.sistance Sabbath Schools and Evening Schools were opened in Berdichev, Zhitomir, Poltava, and other cities; libraries were founded; interesting Hebrew books on scientific subjects were published. Thus it had a two-fold object: in those who were drifting away it aimed to reawaken knowledge or love of Judaism by translating some of the most important Jewish books into Russian (the Haggadah, in 1871, the prayer book, Pentateuch, and Psalms, in 1872) as well as text-books and catechisms; and it popularized science among those who would not or could not read on such topics in Russian or other living tongues. In both directions it was a power for good among the Jews of Russia.[10]

These united efforts of the Government, the Maskilim, and the Jewish financiers produced an effect the like of which had perhaps been witnessed only during the h.e.l.lenistic craze, in the period of the second commonwealth of Judea. Russian Jewry began to "progress" as never before. In almost all the large cities, particularly in Odessa, St.

Petersburg, and Moscow, the Jews were fast becoming Russified.

Heretofore cooped up, choking each other in the Pale as in a Black Hole, they were now wild with an excessive desire for Russification. What Maimon said of a few, could now be applied to hundreds and thousands, they were "like starving persons suddenly treated to a delicious meal."

They flocked to the inst.i.tutions of learning in numbers far exceeding their due proportion. They were among the reporters, contributors, and editorial writers of some of the most influential Russian journals. They entered the professions, and distinguished themselves in art.[11]

The ambition of the wealthy was no longer to have a son-in-law who was well-versed in the Torah, but a graduate from a university, the possessor of a diploma, the wearer of a uniform. The bahur lost his l.u.s.tre in the presence of the "gymnasiast." This ambition pervaded more or less all cla.s.ses of Russo-Jewish society. A decade or two before, especially in the "forties," orthodoxy had been as uncompromising as it was unenlightened. "To carry a handkerchief on the Sabbath," as Zunser says, "to read a pamphlet of the 'new Haskalah,' or commit some other transgression of the sort, was sufficient to stamp one an apikoros (heretic)."[12] Reb Israel Salanter, when he learned that his son had gone to Berlin to study medicine, removed his shoes, and sat down on the ground to observe shivah (seven days of mourning). When Mattes der Sheinker (saloon-keeper) discovered that his boy Motke (later famous as Mark Antokolsky) had been playing truant from the heder, and had hidden himself in the garret to carve figures, he beat him unmercifully, because he had broken the second commandment. This was greatly altered in the latter part of the "seventies." Jacob Prelooker has a different story to tell.

A remarkable change--he says[13]--had taken place in the minds of my parents since I had overcome all difficulties and become a student of a royal college. Not only were they reconciled to me, but they were distinctly proud of me. Old Rabbi Abraham now delighted in conversation and discussion with his grandson, who seemed to him almost like an inhabitant of another world, of the _terra incognita_ of modern knowledge and science. In the town inhabited chiefly by Jews the very appearance of the rabbi's grandson in the uniform of a royal college created an immense sensation, and I became naturally the hero of the day. The older generation lamented that now an end would be put to the very existence of Israel and the sacred synagogue, while the younger people envied me and were inspired to follow my example.

Such scenes occurred not only in Pinsk, but, not infrequently, in other towns of the Pale as well.

The striving for intellectual enlightenment manifested itself in the refining of religious customs. Though Russian Jewry "has never experienced any of the ritualistic struggles that Germany has witnessed,"[14] yet reform and Haskalah always went hand in hand. The attacks on tradition by the Maskilim of the "forties" and the early "fifties" were mild and guarded compared with the a.s.saults by the generation that followed. With the appearance of the periodicals the combat was intensified. Ha-Meliz, and, later, Ha-Shahar in Hebrew, and Kol Meba.s.ser in Yiddish were the organs of those who were dissatisfied with the old, and sought to introduce the new. It was in the latter that _Dos Polische Yingel_ (_The Polish Boy_), by Linetzky, first appeared, and it proved so popular that the editor published it in book form long before it was finished in the periodical. In an article on _The Ways of the Talmud_, by Moses Lob Lilienblum, the prevailing Jewish religious observances were vehemently attacked. This was followed by another article from the pen of Gordon, _Wisdom for Those Who Wander in Spirit_, with suggestions for adapting religion to the needs of the times, and a still more powerful one, _The Chaotic World_, by Smolenskin. The muse ceased to content herself with "flame-songs that burn their pathway" to the heart. She preferred to appeal to the head. She no longer tried

In strains as sweet As angels use ... to whisper peace.

In cutting criticisms and biting satires she exposed time-honored but time-worn beliefs and practices. Gordon was a militant reformer in his younger days, and so were Menahem Mendel Dolitzky and the lesser poets of the period. Needless to say, the Jewish-Russian press was an enemy of ultra-orthodoxy. Osip Rabinovich, the leading Russo-Jewish journalist, made his debut with an article in which he denounced the superst.i.tious customs of his people in unmeasured terms.[15] The motto chosen for the Razsvyet (1860) was "Let there be light," and the platform it adopted was to elevate the ma.s.ses by teaching them to lead the life of all nations, partic.i.p.ate in their civilization and progress, and preserve, increase, and improve the national heritage of Israel.[16]

Yet journalists and poets were outdone by scholars and novelists in the battle for reform. Lebensohn's didactic drama _Emet we-Emunah_ (_Truth and Faith_, Vilna, 1867, 1870), in which he attempts to reconcile true religion with the teachings of science, was mild compared with _Dos Polische Yingel_ or Shatzkes' radical interpretations of the stories of the rabbis in his _Ha-Mafteah_ (_The Key_, Warsaw, 1866-1869), and both were surpa.s.sed by Raphael Kohn's clever little work _Hut ha-Meshullash_ (_The Triple Cord_, Odessa, 1874), in which many prohibited things are ingeniously proved permissible according to the Talmud. But the most outspoken advocate of reform was Abraham Mapu (1808-1867), author of the first realistic novel, or novel of any kind, in Hebrew literature, the _'Ayit Zabua'_ (_The Painted Vulture_). His Rabbi Zadok, the miracle-worker, who exploits superst.i.tion for his own aggrandizement; Rabbi Gaddiel, the honest but mistaken henchman of Rabbi Zadok; Ga'al, the parvenu, who seeks to obliterate an unsavory past by fawning upon both; the Shadkan, or marriage-broker, who pretends to be the amba.s.sador of Heaven, to unite men and women on earth,--in these and similar types drawn from life and depicted vividly, Mapu held up to the execration of the world the hypocrites who "do the deeds of Zimri and claim the reward of Phinehas," whose outward piety is often a cloak for inner impurity, and whose ceremonialism is their skin-deep religion. These characters served for many years as weapons in the hands of the combatants enlisted in the army arrayed for "the struggle between light and darkness."

The waves of the Renaissance and the Reformation sweeping over Russian Jewry reached even the sacred precincts of the synagogues, the batte midrashim, and the yeshibot. The Tree of Life College in Volozhin became a foster-home of Haskalah. The rendezvous of the brightest Russo-Jewish youths, it was the centre in which grew science and culture, and whence they were disseminated far and wide over the Pale. Hebrew, German, and Russian were surrept.i.tiously studied and taught. Buckle and Spencer, Turgenief and Tolstoi were secretly pa.s.sed from hand to hand, and read and studied with avidity. Some students advocated openly the transformation of the yeshibah into a rabbinical seminary on the order of the Berlin Hochschule. The new learning found an ardent supporter in Zebi Hirsh Dainov, "the s.l.u.tsker Maggid" (1832-1877), who preached Russification and Reformation from the pulpits of the synagogues, and whom the Society for the Promotion of Haskalah employed as its mouthpiece among the less advanced.[17] In the existing reform synagogues, in Riga, Odessa, Warsaw, and Vilna, and even in more conservative communities, sermons began to be preached in Russian.

Solomon Zalkind Minor, who lectured in German, acquired a reputation as a preacher in Russian since his election to the rabbinate of Minsk (1860). He was called "the Jellinek of Russia" by the Maskilim.[18]

Aaron Elijah Pumpyansky began to preach in Russian at Ponevezh, in Kovno (1861). Germanization at last gave way to Russification. Even in Odessa, where German culture predominated during the reign of Nicholas I, it was found necessary, for the sake of the younger generation, to elect, as a.s.sociate to the German Doctor Schwabacher, Doctor Solomon Mandelkern to preach in Russian. Similar changes were made in other communities. In the Polish provinces the Reformation was making even greater strides.

There the Jews, whether reform, like Doctor Marcus Jastrow, or orthodox like Rabbi Berish Meisels, identified themselves with the Poles, and partic.i.p.ated in their cultural and political aspirations, which were frequently antagonistic to Russification. A society which called itself Poles of the Mosaic Persuasion was organized in Warsaw, an organ of extreme liberalism was founded in the weekly Israelita, and, with the election of Isaac Kramsztyk to the rabbinate, German was replaced (1852) by the native Polish as the language of the pulpit.

Some champions of reform did not rest satisfied with mere innovations and improvements. They went so far as to discard Judaism altogether and improvise religions of their own. Moses Rosensohn of Vilna was the first, in his works _Advice and Help_ (_'Ezrah we-Tushiah_, Vilna, 1870) and _The Peace of Brothers_ (_Shelom Ahim_, ibid.), to suggest a way to cosmopolitanism and universalism through Judaism.[19] In 1879, Jacob Gordin founded in Yelisavetgrad a sort of ethical culture society called Bibleitsy (also Dukhovnoye Bibleyskoye Bratstvo, Spiritual Bible Brotherhood), which obtained a considerable following among the workmen of the section. It advocated the abolition of ritual observances, even prayer, and the hastening of the era of the brotherhood of man. It preached, in the words of one of its leaders, that "our morality is our religion. G.o.d, the acme of highest reason, of surest truth, and of the most sublime justice, does not demand useless external forms and ceremonies."[20] Following the organization of the Bibleitsy, and based on almost the same principles, branches of a Jewish sect, which called itself New Israel (Novy Izrail), were started almost simultaneously in Odessa and Kishinev. In the former city, the organization was headed by Jacob Prelooker, in the latter, by Joseph Rabinowitz. Prelooker, who after graduating from the seminary at Zhitomir became a school-master at Odessa, sought to bring about a consolidation between his own people and Russian Dissenters (Raskolniki: the Molocans, Stundists, and Dukhobortzi). The theme of his book, _New Israel_, is a "reformed synagogue, a mitigation of the cleavage between Jew and Christian, and recognition of a common brotherhood in religion." Rabinowitz went still further, and preached on actual conversion to one of the more liberal forms of Christianity.[21]

These sects, which sprang up in church and synagogue during the latter part of the "seventies," were the outcome of political and social as well as religious unrest. Alexander II fulfilled the expectation which the first years of his reign aroused in Jewish hearts no more than Catherine II and Alexander I. Those who had hoped for equal rights were doomed to disappointment. Most of the reforms of the Liberator Czar proved a failure owing to the antipathy and machinations of his untrustworthy officials. Russia was split between two diametrically opposed parties, the extreme radicals and the extreme reactionaries, waging an internecine war with each other. The former originated with the young Russians that had served in the European campaigns during the Napoleonic invasion, and who, in imitation of the secret organizations which had so greatly contributed to the liberation of Germany, united to throw off the yoke of autocracy in Russia. These secret orders, the Southern, the Northern, the United Slavonian, and the Polish, Alexander I had endeavored in vain to suppress, and the drastic measures taken by Nicholas I against the Dekabrists (1825) proved of no avail. Nor did the reforms of Alexander II help to heal the breach. On the contrary, seeing that the const.i.tution they expected from the Liberator Czar was not forthcoming, and the democracy they hoped for was far from being realized, they became desperate, and determined to demand their rights by force. The peasants, too, sobering up from the intoxication, the figurative as well as the literal, caused by the vodka drunk in honor of their newly-acquired volyushka (sweet liberty), discovered that the emanc.i.p.ation ukase of the czar had been craftily intercepted by the bureaucrats, and their dream of owning the land they had hitherto cultivated as serfs would never come true. Russia was rife with discontent, and disaffection a.s.sumed a national range. The cry was raised for a "new freedom." A certain Anton Petrov impersonated the czar, and gathered around him ten thousand Russians. Pamphlets ent.i.tled _Land and Liberty_ (_Zemlya i Volya_) were spread broadcast among the ma.s.ses, the mind of the populace was inflamed, and attempts on the life of the czar ensued.

The extreme reactionaries, consisting mostly of n.o.bles who had become impoverished by the emanc.i.p.ation of the serfs, grasped the opportunity to point out to the bewildered czar the evil of his liberal policy.

Slavophilism was rampant. Men like Turgenief, Dostoyevsky, and Tolstoi, were condemned as "Westernists," or German sympathizers, the enemies of Russia. At the recommendation of Princess Helena Petrovna, the czar engaged as the teacher of his children a comparatively unknown professor of history, Pobyedonostsev, who later became the soul of Russian despotism. This man, meek as a dove and cunning as a serpent, easily ingratiated himself with the czar, and soon there began "a war upon ideas, a crusade of ignorance." "Karakazov's pistol-shot," as Turgenief says, "drove back into the shade the phantom of liberty, the appearance of which all Russia had hailed with acclamations. From that moment to the end of his life, the emperor devoted himself to the undoing of all he had accomplished. If he could have cancelled with one stroke the glorious ukase that had proclaimed the emanc.i.p.ation of the serfs, he would have been only too glad to disgrace himself."[22]

And again, as it had been during the reign of Alexander I after his acquaintance with Baroness Krudener, so it was with the reign of Alexander II after his acquaintance with Pobyedonostsev. The status of the Jews const.i.tuted the first indication of the ill-boding change. How little the officials had been in sympathy with the reformatory efforts of their czar, even when the atmosphere had been filled with peace and good-will to all including the Jews, is shown by the fact that when, in 1863, through the efforts of Doctor Schwabacher, the Jewish community of Odessa applied for a charter to build a Home for Aged Hebrews, the charter, though granted by the higher authorities, was withheld for over twenty years! The reaction flaunted its power once again, and sat enthroned in Tsarskoye Syelo. The few rights the Jews had enjoyed were rescinded one by one. Not satisfied with this, the Slavophils tried, under every pretext, to stop the progress of the Jewish people. Every now and then the Society for the Promotion of Haskalah would send some of the brighter seminary students to complete their education in Breslau or Berlin, but at the command of the Government this was soon discontinued. It was the intention of the same organization, from its very incipiency, to have the Bible translated under its auspices into Russian, but it took ten long years before this praiseworthy undertaking could be begun, because of the obstacles the Government placed in the way of its execution. Fortunately, the indomitable courage of the Maskilim could not be subdued. Young men went, or were sent, to Germany to prepare themselves for the rabbinate as before; the Bible and the Book of Common Prayer, too, were translated secretly by Wohl, Gordon, Steinberg, and Leon Mandelstamm, and published in Germany, whence they were smuggled into Russia.[23]

More direct and equally inexplicable, save on the ground of animosity to whatever was not Slavonic, was the ukase to close the Sabbath Schools and the Evening Schools, the only means of educating the laboring men (1870). In 1871, the first of a series of ma.s.sacres (pogromy) took place in the centre of Jewish culture, Odessa. In 1872, permission was denied to the ladies of that city to organize a society for the purpose of maintaining trade schools, to teach poor Jewish girls handicrafts. The two rabbinical seminaries, of Vilna and Zhitomir, were closed in 1873, and replaced by inst.i.tutes for teachers, which were managed in the spirit that had prevailed under Nicholas I. And in 1878 the absurd blood accusation, against which four popes, Innocent IV, Paul III, Gregory X, and Clement XIV, issued their bulls, declaring it a baseless and wicked superst.i.tion, and which not only the Polish kings Boreslav V, Casimir III, Casimir IV, and Stephen Bathry, but also Alexander I (March 18, 1817), branded as a diabolic invention--that dreadful accusation which even the commission of Nicholas, despite Durnovo's efforts, had denounced as a disgrace and an abomination, was revived by the newspaper Grazhdanin. The ghost of medievalism began to stalk abroad once more in erstwhile enlightened Russia and under the aegis of the Liberator Czar.

As often before in Jewish history, the Jews helped not a little to aggravate the untoward conditions. At the instigation of a number of students of the Yeshibah Tree of Life, the doors of that n.o.ble inst.i.tution were closed (1879), to open again after two years of untiring efforts on the part of its self-sacrificing dean, the renowned Naphtali Zebi Judah Berlin. But at the worst this was the result of mistaken zeal for the cause of Haskalah. What was more detrimental was the disgrace brought upon the Jewish name by several converts to Christianity. A certain Jacob Brafmann, having proved a failure in all he undertook, tried at the last the business of Christianity, and succeeded therein. He was appointed professor of Hebrew in the seminary of Minsk, and the Holy Synod charged him with the duty of devising means to promulgate Christianity among the Jews. Finding the times auspicious, he devoted himself to writing libellous articles about his former coreligionists, and wound up with a _Book on the Kahal_ (_Kniga Kahala_, Vilna, 1869), in which he quoted forged "transactions," to the effect that Judaism tolerates and even recommends illegality and immorality among its adherents. In a conference of Jews and Gentiles convoked by Governor-General Kaufman (1871), Barit proved the falsity and forgery of Brafmann's doc.u.ments. But, as usual, the defence was forgotten, the charges remained.[24] A certain Lutostansky poisoned the public mind by caricaturing the Jews, and aroused an anti-Semitic agitation among his countrymen. The consequence was that even the liberals began to be suspicious, and the prospect of better days was blighted by the hatred which broke out in fiendish fury, in lightnings and thunders which astounded the world under Alexander III.

It was but natural that the Jews that had become completely Russified should enlist in the ranks of the extreme liberals. They found themselves in every way as progressive and patriotic as the Christian Russians. The language of Russia became their language, its manners and aspirations their manners and aspirations. They contributed more than any other nationality to Russifying Odessa, which, owing to its great foreign population, was known as the un-Russian city of Russia.

Proportionately to their numbers, they promoted the trade and industry, the science and literature of their country more than the Russians themselves. Yet the coveted equality was denied them, and the emanc.i.p.ation granted to the degraded muzhiks was withheld from them, because of a religion they hardly professed. They were like Faust when he found himself tempted but not satisfied by the pleasures of life, when food hovered before his eager lips while he begged for nourishment in vain. The liberals, on the other hand, preached and practiced the doctrine of equal rights to all. Socialism, or nihilism, also appealed to the Jews from its idealistic side, for never did the Jews cease to be democrats and dreamers. In the schools and universities, which they were now permitted to attend, they heard the new teachings and imbibed the novel ideas.

Those, therefore, who disdained conversion allied themselves with the secret organizations. "The torrent which had been dammed up in one channel rushed violently into another." A Hebrew monthly, Ha-Emet (Truth, Vienna, 1877), devoted to the cause of communism, was started by Aaron Liebermann ("Arthur Freeman"), in which, in the language of the oldest and greatest socialists, the doctrines of Karl Marx were inculcated among the Hebrew-reading public. The more completely Russified element took a leading part in the activities of the Narodnaya Volya (Rights of the People), propagating socialism among the Russian ma.s.ses, either by word of mouth or as editors and coworkers in the "underground" publications. Not a few went to Berlin, where, though opulent, they sought employment in factories, the better to disseminate socialism among the working cla.s.ses. Others, like Aaronson, Achselrod, Deutsch, Horowitz, Vilenkin, and Zukerman, fled to Switzerland, whence, under the a.s.sumed names of Marx, La.s.salle, Jacoby, etc., or united in a League for the Emanc.i.p.ation of Labor, they directed the socialistic movement in Russia.[25] Chernichevsky's _What to Do_, Gogol's _Dead Souls_, Turgenief's _Virgin Soil_ and _Fathers and Sons_, the doctrines of Pisarev and Bielinsky, and of the other writers who then had their greatest vogue, were eagerly read and frequently copied by Jewish young gymnasiasts and pa.s.sed on to their Christian schoolmates. The revolutionary spirit seized on men and women alike. Women left their husbands, girls their devoted parents, and threw themselves into the swirl of nihilism with a vigor and self-sacrifice almost incredible.

When a squad of police came to disperse the crowd clamoring for "land and liberty" in front of the Kazanskaya Church in St. Petersburg, a Jewish maiden of sixteen, taking the place of the leader, inspired her comrades with such enthusiasm that the efforts of the police were ineffectual.[26] By 1878, Russia became honeycombed with secret societies. It fell into spasms of nihilism. One general after another was a.s.sa.s.sinated. Attempts were made to wreck the train on which the czar was travelling (1879) and blow up the palace in which he resided (1880). Finally, on March 13, 1881, after many hairbreadth escapes, the carefully laid plans of the revolutionists succeeded, and the Liberator Czar was no more.

Thus was the deep-rooted yearning for enlightenment finally let loose, and the gyves of tradition were at last removed. The Maskilim of the "forties" and "fifties" were antiquated in the "sixties" and "seventies." They began to see that the fears of the orthodox and their denunciations of Haskalah were not altogether unfounded. A young generation had grown up who had never experienced the strife and struggles of the fathers, and who lacked the submissive temper that had characterized their ancestors. Faster and farther they rushed on their headlong way to destruction, while the parents sat and wept. When, in 1872, in Vilna, the police arrested forty Jewish young men suspected of nihilistic tendencies, Governor-General Patapov "invited" the representatives of the community to a conference. As soon as they arrived, Patapov turned on them in this wise, "In addition to all other good qualities which you Jews possess, about the only thing you need is to become nihilists, too!" Amazed and panic-stricken, the trembling Jews denied the allegation and protested their innocence, to which the Governor-General replied, "Your children are, at any rate; they have become so through the bad education you have given them." "Pardon me, General," was the answer of "Yankele Kovner" (Jacob Barit), who was one of the representatives, "This is not quite right. As long as _we_ educated our children there were no nihilists among us; but as soon as you took the education of our children into your hands, behold the result." The foundations of religion were undermined. Parental authority was disregarded. Youths and maidens were lured by the enchanting voice of the siren of a.s.similation. The nave words which Turgenief put into the mouth of Samuel Abraham, the Lithuanian Jew, might have been, indeed, were, spoken by many others in actual life. "Our children," he complains, "have no longer our beliefs; they do not say our prayers, nor have they your beliefs; no more do they say your prayers; they do not pray at all, and they believe in nothing."[27] The struggle between Hasidim and Mitnaggedim ended with the conversionist policy of Nicholas I, which united them against the Maskilim. The struggle between these anti-Maskilim and the Maskilim had ceased in the golden days of Alexander II. But the clouds were gathering and overspreading the camp of Haskalah. The days in which the seekers after light united in one common aim were gone. Russification, a.s.similation, universalism, and nihilism rent asunder the ties that held them together. Judah Lob Gordon, the same poet who, fifteen years before, had rejoiced with exceeding joy "when Haskalah broke forth like water," now laments over the effect thereof in the following strain:

And our children, the coming generation, From childhood, alas, are strangers to our nation-- Ah, how my heart for them doth bleed!

Farther and faster they are ever drifting, Who knows how far they will be shifting?

Maybe till whence they can ne'er recede!

Amidst the disaffection, discord, and dejection that mark the latter part of the reign of Alexander II, one Maskil stands out pre-eminently in interest and importance,--one whom a.s.similation did not attract nor reformation mislead, who under all the mighty changes remained loyal to the ideals ascribed to the Gaon and advocated by Levinsohn,--Perez ben Mosheh Smolenskin (Mohilev, February 25, 1842-Meran, Austria, February 1, 1885).[28]

Smolenskin was endowed with the ability and courage that characterize the born leader. He possessed an iron will and unflinching determination, before which obstacles had to yield, and persecution found itself powerless. His talent to grasp and appreciate the true and the beautiful rendered him the oracle of the thousands who, to this day, are proud to call themselves his disciples. To him Haskalah was not merely acquaintance with general culture, or even its acquisition. It was the realization of one's individuality as a Jew and a man. Gordon's advice, to be a Jew at home and a man abroad, found little favor in his estimation; for Haskalah meant the evolution of a Jewish man _sui generis_. He equally abhorred the fanaticism of the benighted orthodox and the Laodicean lukewarmness of the advanced Maskilim. To fight and, if possible, eradicate both, he undertook the publication of The Dawn (Ha-Shahar, Vienna, 1869), a magazine in which he declared "war against the darkness of the Middle Ages and war against the indifference of to-day!"

Not like the former days are these days, he says in his foreword to Ha-Shahar. Thirty or twenty years ago we had to fight the enemy within. Sanctimonious fanatics with their power of darkness sought to persecute us, lest their folly or knavery be exposed to the light of day.... Now that they, who hitherto have walked in darkness, are beginning to discern the error of their ways, lo and behold, those who have seen the light are closing their eyes against it.... Therefore let them know beforehand that, as I have stretched out my hand against those who, under the cloak of holiness, endeavor to exclude enlightenment from the house of Jacob, even so will I lift up my hand against the other hypocrites who, under the pretext of tolerance, strive to alienate the children of Israel from the heritage of their fathers!

That the salvation of the Jews lies in their distinctiveness, and that renationalization will prove the only solution of the Jewish problem, is the central thought of Smolenskin's journalistic efforts. Jews are disliked, he maintains, not because of their religious persuasion, nor for their reputed wealth, but because they are weak and defenceless.

What they need is strength and courage, but these they will never regain save in a land of their own. Twelve years before the tornado of persecution broke out in Russia he had predicted it, and even welcomed it as a means of arousing the Jews to their duties as a people and their place as a nation, and that his conclusion was correct, the awakening which followed proved unmistakably.

For Smolenskin Jews never ceased to be a nation, and to him the Jew who sought refuge in a.s.similation was nothing less than a traitor. He was thus the forerunner of Pinsker, and of Herzl a decade later. Indeed, in the resurrection of the national hope he was the first to remove the shroud. According to him, "the eternal people" have every characteristic that goes to make a nation. Their common country is still Palestine, loved by them with all the fervor of patriotism; their common language had never ceased to be Hebrew; their common religion consists in the basic principles of Judaism, in which they all agree.

You wish--thus he addresses himself to the a.s.similationists--you wish to be like the other people? So do I. Be, I pray you, be like them. Search and find knowledge, avoid and forsake superst.i.tion, above all be not ashamed of the rock whence you were hewn. Yes, be like the other peoples, proud of your literature, jealous of your self-respect, hopeful, even as all persecuted peoples are hopeful, of the speedy arrival of the day when we, too, shall reinhabit the land which once was, and still is, our own.