RUSSIFICATION, REFORMATION, AND ASSIMILATION
1856-1881
The year 1856 will always be remembered as the _annus mirabilis_ in the
history of Russia. It marked at once the cessation of the Crimean war
and the accession of the most liberal and benevolent monarch Russia ever
had. On January 16, the heir apparent signified his consent to accept
Austrian intervention, which resulted in the Treaty of Paris (March 30),
granting the Powers involved "peace with honor"; and in August, in the
Cathedral of the Assumption at Moscow, amidst unprecedented rejoicing,
the czarevich placed the imperial crown upon his head. From that time
reform followed reform. The condition of the soldiers, who had virtually
been slaves under Nicholas I, was greatly improved, and a proclamation
was issued for the emancipation of the peasants, slaves not for a
limited time only, but for life and from generation to generation. It
cost the United States five years of fratricidal agony, a billion of
dollars, and about half a million of lives, to liberate five or six
millions of negroes; Russia, in one memorable day (February 19, 1861),
liberated nearly twenty-two millions of muzhiks (peasants), and gave
them full freedom, by a mere stroke of the pen of the "tsar
osvobodityel," the Liberator Czar, Alexander II (1856-1881).
Other innovations, of less magnitude but nevertheless of far-reaching
importance, were introduced later. Capital punishment, which still
disgraces human justice in more enlightened states, was unconditionally
abolished; the number of offences amenable to corporal punishment was
gradually reduced, until, on April 29, 1863, all the horrors of the
gauntlet, the spur, the lash, the cat, and the brand, were consigned to
eternal oblivion. The barbarous system of the judiciary was replaced by
one that could render justice "speedy, righteous, merciful, and
equitable." Railway communication, postal and telegraph service, police
protection, the improvement of the existing universities, the opening of
many new primary schools, and the introduction of compulsory school
attendance, told speedily on the intellectual development of the people.
In the words of Shumakr, Russia experienced "a complete inward revival."
Old customs seemed to disappear, all things were become new. New life,
new hope, new aspirations throbbed in the hearts of the subjects of the
gigantic empire, and better times were knocking at their doors. _Joli
tout le monde, le diable est mort!_
This era of great reforms and the resuscitation of all that is good and
noble in the Slavonic soul brought about also a moral regeneration. The
colossus who, according to Turgenief, preferred to sleep an endless
sleep, with a jug of vodka in his clutched fingers, proved that he, too,
was human, with a feeling, human heart beating in his bosom. With the
restoration of peace and the abolition of serfhood, there began a
removal of prejudice even against Jews. Hitherto the foremost
litterateurs in Russia, imitating the writers of other lands, had
painted the Jew as a monstrosity. Pushkin's prisoner, Gogol's traitor,
Lermontoff's spy, and Turgenief's Zhid (Jew) were caricatures and
libels, equal in acrimony, and not inferior in art, to Shakespeare's
Shylock and Dickens's Fagin. But now the best and ablest men of letters
signed a protest against such unjust and impossible characters.
Two thousand years of cruel suffering and affliction--said the
historian and humanitarian Professor Granovsky, of the
University of Moscow--have at last erased the bloody boundary
line separating the Jews from humanity. The honor of this
reconciliation, which is becoming firmer from day to day,
belongs to our age. The civic status of the Jews is now
established in most European countries, and even in the places
that are still backward their condition is improved, if not by
law, then by enlightenment.
And law and enlightenment radiated their sunshine also upon the Jews of
rejuvenated Russia. The Cantonist system was abolished for good; the
high schools and universities were opened to Jews without
discrimination; and the Governments lying outside the Pale were made
accessible to Jewish scholars, professional men, manufacturers,
wholesale merchants, and skilled laborers (March 16, 1859; November 27,
1861).[1] Through the efforts of Wolf Kaplan, one of Günzburg's noted
pupils, the persecution of Jews by Germans in Riga was stopped, and the
eminent publicist Katkoff undertook to defend them in the newspaper
Russkiya Vyedomosti. Nazimov, the Governor-General of Vilna, Mukhlinsky,
who inspected the Jewish schools in western Russia, Artzimovich, of
southern Russia, and many other prominent personages arose as champions
of the Jews.[2]
The physician and pedagogue Nikolai Ivanovich Pirogov (1810-1881), the
superintendent of the Odessa and Kiev school districts, is especially
deserving of honorable mention in the history of Haskalah. Of all the
Russians of the period who gloried in their liberal convictions, he was
the most liberal. In him the last vestige of prejudice and race
distinction disappeared, and he conscientiously devoted himself to the
study, not only of the present, but also of the past of the Jews, to be
in a better position to lend them his assistance. To the Jews he
appealed to unite and spread enlightenment among the masses by peaceful
means. To the Gentiles, again, he did not hesitate to point out the good
qualities of the Jews, and in an article on the Odessa Talmud Torah he
held up the institution as a model for the public elementary schools. He
admired especially the enthusiasm with which Jewish youths devoted
themselves to the acquisition of knowledge. "Where are religion,
morality, enlightenment, and the modern spirit," asked he, "when these
Jews, who, with courage and self-sacrifice, engage in the struggle
against prejudices centuries old, meet no one here to sympathize with
them and extend a helping hand to them?" His liberality carried him so
far that he established a fund for the support of indigent Jewish
students at the University of Kiev, and he advocated strenuously the
award of prizes and scholarships to deserving Jewish students. Such as
he were rare in any land, but nowhere so rare as in Russia.[3]
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 masses 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 principals 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
gratitude 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 surpassed 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 constituting the empire remained as distinct as ever,
and the desired homogeneity 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 entitled
_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 principals. The Rabbinical Assembly, 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 noble intentions of the Liberator
Czar; they were confident that the emperor who emancipated 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 Eliakum 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 God 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 Bär 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 Löb 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 Löb 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 emancipated
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 snatched by stealth, but it was sweeter
because thus snatched. 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
noble passion," the burning desire for enlightenment and improvement
asserted itself at all hazards. The note of despair was lost in the call
for action. Odessa continued to be in the forefront. There technical
institutes 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
institutions 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 institutions 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
Israélite 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 emancipation of our
brethren who still suffer under the burden of exceptional legislation;
to hasten and solidify complete enfranchisement by the intellectual and
moral regeneration of our brethren." A powerful movement for the
upliftment of the masses was also taking hold of the educated classes
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
Aufklärung, when Ben-David, Itzig, Friedländer, 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 attitude 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 Günzburg, President;
his son Horace Günzburg, 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 Israélite Universelle, only on a smaller scale. Its object was
"to spread the knowledge of the Russian language among the Jews, to
publish and assist 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 assist 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 principally to the younger
generation, yet it did not neglect the older. With its assistance
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 Hellenistic 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 institutions 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
lustre in the presence of the "gymnasiast." This ambition pervaded more
or less all classes 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 assaults 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 Mebasser 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 Löb 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 superstitious
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 masses by teaching them to lead the life of all
nations, participate 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 surpassed 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 superstition 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 ambassador
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 surreptitiously studied and taught. Buckle and Spencer,
Turgenief and Tolstoi were secretly passed 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 Slutsker 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
associate 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
participated 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. God, 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 constitution 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
emancipation 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 assumed 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 entitled
_Land and Liberty_ (_Zemlya i Volya_) were spread broadcast among the
masses, the mind of the populace was inflamed, and attempts on the life
of the czar ensued.
The extreme reactionaries, consisting mostly of nobles who had become
impoverished by the emancipation 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 emancipation 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 Krüdener, so it was with the reign of
Alexander II after his acquaintance with Pobyedonostsev. The status of
the Jews constituted 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 massacres (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 institutes 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
superstition, and which not only the Polish kings Boreslav V, Casimir
III, Casimir IV, and Stephen Bathòry, 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 noble
institution 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 documents. 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
emancipation 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
masses, 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 classes. Others, like Aaronson, Achselrod,
Deutsch, Horowitz, Vilenkin, and Zukerman, fled to Switzerland, whence,
under the assumed names of Marx, Lassalle, Jacoby, etc., or united in a
League for the Emancipation 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 passed 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 assassinated. 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 assimilation. The naïve 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, assimilation, universalism, and
nihilism rent asunder the ties that held them together. Judah Löb
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 assimilation 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 assimilation 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 assimilationists--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
superstition, 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.
But as the soil of Palestine, however regarded, is at present
inaccessible to Jews as a national entity, the language once spoken in
Palestine is so much the more to be cherished and cultivated by the
exiled people.
You ask me--he calls out again--what good a dead language can do
us? I will tell you. It confers honor on us, girds us with
strength, unites us into one. All nations seek to perpetuate
their names. All conquered peoples dream of a day when they will
regain their independence.... We have neither monuments nor a
country at present. Only one relic still remains from the ruins
of our ancient glory--the Hebrew language. Those, therefore, who
discard the Hebrew tongue betray the Hebrew nation, and are
traitors both to their race and their religion.
No less trenchant and outspoken was he against the serried array of
self-styled "reformers" of Judaism. He could not forgive the German
rabbis and Russian Maskilim for presuming to "dictate" to their
coreligionists what to select and what to reject in matters religious.
The whole movement he condemned as a mere imitation of Protestant
Christianity. To renovate Judaism! What a stigma on a religion that had
endured through the ages, and is rich in all that makes for holiness and
right living! The old garment needs no new patches. It still fits and
will fit "the eternal people" till time is no more. Since the reform
movement in Germany went back to the time of Mendelssohn, Smolenskin
hurled the missiles of his criticism against the Berlin sage, forgetting
that for more than half a century his example and encouragement had
served to awaken a love of knowledge in the hearts of his countrymen.
But he saw that in the home of Haskalah, the _Biur_, and the Meassefim,
apostasy increased, Hebrew was almost forgotten, and Judaism was
declining, and he blamed the pellucid water at the source of the stream
for the muddy pool at its mouth. Mendelssohn, however, lacked no
defenders among his Russo-Jewish coreligionists, and their sentiments
were voiced by Abraham Bär Gottlober in an opposition periodical, The
Light of Day (Ha-Boker Or, Lublin, 1876). "Why," exclaimed the editor,
"were it not for him and his reforms ... were it not for that grand and
noble personality ... neither you nor I should have been what we are!"
It was only the sad sincerity of Smolenskin that mitigated the errors he
had committed in regard to the history of his people and the theology of
its religion.
But the militant editor of Ha-Shahan, who wielded his pen like a
halberd, to deal out blows to those of whose views he disapproved,
became as tender as a father when he set out to write about the people.
His love for the masses whom he knew so well was almost boundless.
Underlying their superstitions, crudities, and absurdities is the
"prophetic consciousness," of which they have never been entirely
divested. The heder is indeed far from what a school should be, and the
yeshibah is hardly to be tolerated in a civilized community; yet what
spiritual feasts, what noble endeavors, and what unselfish devotion are
witnessed within their dingy walls! Jewish observances are sometimes
cumbersome and sometimes incompatible with modern life, but what beauty
of holiness, what irresistible influences emanate and radiate from most
of them! Under an uninviting exterior and beneath the accumulated drift
of countless generations he discerned the precious jewel of
self-sacrifice for an ideal. It was this sympathy and broad-mindedness,
expressed in his _Ha-Toëh_, his _Simhat Hanef_, _Keburat Hamor_, _Gemul
Yesharim_, and _Ha-Yerushah_ that will ever endear him to the Hebrew
reader.
Such, in brief, was the life of the man who bore the chief part in
framing and moulding the Haskalah of the "eighties," which was devoted
to the development of Hebrew literature and the rejuvenation of the
Hebrew people. Loving the Hebrew tongue with a passion surpassing
everything else, he censured the German Jewish savants for writing their
learned works in the vernacular, and was on the alert to discover and
bring out new talent and win over the indifferent and estranged.
Dreaming of the redemption of his people, he paved the way for the
Zionistic movement, which spread with tremendous rapidity after his
death. And his sincerity and ability were repaid in the only coin the
poor possess--in love and admiration. Pilgrimages were made, sometimes
on foot, to behold the editor of Ha-Shahar and the author of _Ha-Toëh_.
The greatest journalists in St. Petersburg united in honoring him when
he visited the Russian capital in 1881. And when he was snatched away in
the midst of his usefulness, a victim of unremitting devotion to his
people, not only Maskilim, but Mitnaggedim and Hasidim felt that "a
prince and a mighty one had fallen in Israel!"
(Notes, pp. 322-327.)