THE INNER LIFE OF RUSSIAN JEWRY DURING
THE REIGN OF ALEXANDER II.
1. THE RUSSIFICATION OF THE JEWISH INTELLIGENZIA
In the inner, cultural life of Russian Jewry a radical break took place
during this period. True, the change did not affect the rank and file of
Russian Jewry, being rather confined to its upper layers, to Jewish
"society," or the so-called _intelligenzia._ But as far as the latter
circles are concerned, the rapidity and intensity of their spiritual
transformation may well be compared with the stormy eve of Jewish
emancipation in Germany. This wild rush for spiritual regeneration was
out of all proportion to the snail-like tardiness and piecemeal
character of civil emancipation in Russia. However, the modern history
of Western Europe has shown more than once that such pre-emancipation
periods, including those that evidently prove abortive, offer the most
favorable conditions for all kinds of mental and cultural revolutions.
Liberty as a hope invariably arouses greater enthusiasm for
self-rejuvenation, than liberty as a fact, when the romanticism of the
unknown has vanished.
Hurled into the abyss of despair by the last events of Nicholas' régime,
the Russian Jews suddenly received what may be called an earnest of
civil emancipation. The Jewish "Pale" knew but vaguely what was taking
place in the recesses of the St. Petersburg chancelleries during the
decade of reforms, but that a striking change in the attitude of the
Government had taken place was seen and felt by all. Freedom had been
granted to the victims of the military inquisition, the cantonists. The
gates of the Russian interior had been opened to Jews possessing certain
qualifications with regard to property, education, or labor. The
educated Jews, in particular, were smiled upon benevolently "from
above": they were regarded by the Government as a factor making for
assimilation and as a connecting link with the lower Jewish classes. The
vernal sun of Russian liberty, which flooded with its rays the social
life of the whole country, just then emerging from serfdom, shone also
for the hapless Jewish people, and filled their hearts with cheer and
hope. The blasts of the reveille which had been sounded in the best
circles of Russian society by such humanitarians as Pirogov, [1] and
such champions of liberty as Hertzen, [2] Chernyshevski, [3] and
Dobrolubov, [4] were carried through the air into the huge Jewish ghetto
of Russia. True, the Jewish question received, during the decade of
reforms, but scanty attention in the Russian press, but the little that
was said about it was permeated by a friendly spirit. The former habit
of making sport of the Zhyd was energetically repudiated.
[Footnote 1: Nicholas Pirogov (1810-1881), famous as pedagogue and
administrator. He was a staunch friend of the Jews, and was
deeply interested in their cultural aspirations.]
[Footnote 2: See above, p. 24, n. 1.]
[Footnote 3: Famous publicist and author, died 1889.]
[Footnote 4: A famous literary critic, died 1861.]
This change of attitude may well be illustrated by the following
incident. In 1858 the magazine _Illustratzia_ ("Illustration") of St.
Petersburg published an anti-Semitic article on "the Zhyds of the
Russian West." The article was answered by two cultured Jews, Chatzkin
and Horvitz, in the influential periodicals _Russki Vyestnik_ ("The
Russian Herald") and _Atyeney_ ("Athenaeum"). In reply to this
refutation, the _Illustratzia_ showered a torrent of abuse upon the two
authors who were contemptuously styled "Reb Chatzkin" and "Reb Horvitz,"
and whose pro-Jewish attitude was explained by motives of avarice. The
action of the anti-Semitic journal aroused a storm of indignation in the
literary circles of both capitals. The conduct of the _Illustratzia_ was
condemned in a public protest which bore the signatures of 140 writers,
including some of the most illustrious names in the Russian literary
world. The protest declared that "in the persons of Horvitz and Chatzkin
an insult has been offered to the entire (Russian) people, to all
Russian literature," which has no right to let "naked slander" pass
under the disguise of polemics.
Though the protesting writers were wholly actuated by the
desire to protect the moral purity of Russian literature and
did not at all touch upon the Jewish question, the Jewish
public workers were nevertheless enchanted by this declaration
of literary Russia, and were deeply gratified by the implied
assumption that the Jews of Russia formed part of the Russian people.
Several sympathetic articles in influential periodicals, advocating the
necessity of Jewish emancipation, seemed to complete the happiness of
the progressive section of Russian Jewry. Even the Slavophile publicist
Ivan Aksakov, who subsequently joined the ranks of Jew-baiters,
recognized at that time, in 1862, the need of a certain measure of
emancipation for the Jews. The only thing that worried him was the
danger that the admission of the Jews to the Russian civil service "in
all departments," might result "in filling with Jews" the Senate and
Council of State, not excluding the possibility of a Jew occupying the
post of Procurator-General of the Holy Synod. Unshakable in his
friendship for the Jews was the physician and humanitarian N.
Pirogov, [1] who, in his capacity of superintendent of the Odessa School
District, was largely instrumental in encouraging the Jewish youth in
their pursuit of general culture and in creating a Russian Jewish press.
[Footnote 1: See above, p. 207, n. 1.]
The most efficient factor of cultural regeneration was the secular
school, both the general Russian and the Jewish Crown school. A flood of
young men, lured by the rosy prospects of a free human existence in the
midst of a free Russian people, rushed from the farthermost nooks and
corners of the Pale into the _gymnazia_ and universities whose doors
were kept wide open for the Jews. Many children of the ghetto rapidly
enlisted under the banner of the Russian youth, and became intoxicated
with the luxuriant growth of Russian literature which carried to them
the intellectual gifts of the contemporary European writers. The masters
of thought in that generation, Chernyshevski, Dobrolubov, Pisaryev,
Buckle, Darwin, Spencer, became also the idols of the Jewish youth. The
heads which had but recently been bending over the Talmud folios in the
stuffy atmosphere of the heders and yeshibahs were now crammed with the
ideas of positivism, evolution, and socialism. Sharp and sudden was the
transition from rabbinic scholasticism and soporific hasidic mysticism
to this new world of ideas, flooded with the light of science, to these
new revelations announcing the glad tidings of the freedom of thought,
of the demolition of all traditional fetters, of the annihilation of all
religious and national barriers, of the brotherhood of all mankind. The
Jewish youth began to shatter the old idols, disregarding the outcry of
the masses that had bowed down before them. A tragic war ensued between
"fathers and children," [1] a war of annihilation, for the belligerent
parties were extreme obscurantism and fanaticism, on the one hand, and
the negation of all historic forms of Judaism, both religious and
national, on the other.
[Footnote 1: The title of a famous novel by Turgenieff, written in 1862,
depicting the break between the old and the new generation.]
In the middle between these two extremes stood the men of the
transitional period, the adepts of Haskalah, those "lovers of
enlightenment" who had in younger years suffered for their convictions
at the hands of fanatics and now came forward to make peace between
religion and culture. Encouraged by the success of the new ideas, the
Maskilim became more aggressive in their struggle with obscurantism.
They ventured to expose the Tzaddiks who scattered the seeds of
superstition, to ridicule the ignorance and credulity of the masses, and
occasionally went so far as to complain of the burdensome ceremonial
discipline, hinting at the need of moderate religious reforms. Their
principal task, however, was the cultivation of the Neo-Hebraic literary
style and the rejuvenation of the content of that literature. They were
willing to pursue the road of the emancipated Jewry of Western Europe,
but only to a certain limit, refusing to cut themselves adrift from the
national language or the religious and national ideals.
On the other hand, that section of the young generation which had passed
through a Russian school refused to recognize any such barriers, and
rushed with elemental force on the road of self-annihilation.
_Russification_ became the war cry of these Jewish circles, as it had
long been the watchword of the Government. The one side was anxious to
Russify, the other was equally anxious to be Russified, and the natural
result was an _entente cordiale_ between the new Jewish _intelligenzia_
and the Government.
The ideal of Russification was marked by different stages, beginning
with the harmless acquisition of the Russian language, and culminating
in a complete identification with Russian culture and Russian national
ideals, involving the renunciation of the religious and national
traditions of Judaism. The advocates of moderate Russification did not
foresee that the latter was bound, by the force of circumstances, to
assume a radical form, while the champions of extreme Russification saw
no harm for Jewry in following the example of complete assimilation set
by Western Europe. To the former all that Russification implied was the
removal of the obnoxious excrescences of Judaism but not the demolition
of the national organism itself. Progressive Jewry was rightly incensed
against the obsolete forms of Jewish life which obstructed all healthy
development; against the fierce superstition of the hasidic environment,
against the charlatanism of degenerating Tzaddikism, against the
impenetrable religious fanaticism which was throttling the noblest
strivings of the Jewish mind. But this struggle for freedom of thought
should have been fought out within the confines of Judaism, by means of
a thorough-going cultural self-improvement, and not on the soil of
assimilation, nor in alliance with the powers that be, which were aiming
not at the rejuvenation but at the obliteration of Judaism, in accordance
with the official program of "fusion."
At any rate, the league between the new Jewish _intelligenzia_ and the
Government was an undeniable fact. The "Crown rabbis" [1] and school
teachers from among the graduates of the rabbinical schools of Vilna and
Zhitomir played the rôle of Government agents who were apt to resort to
police force in their fight against orthodoxy. Feeling secure beneath
the protecting wings of the Russian authorities, they often went out of
their way to hurt the susceptibilities of the masses by their
ostentatious disregard of the Jewish religious ceremonies. When the
communities refused to appoint rabbis of this class, the latter obtained
their posts either by direct appointment from the Government or by
bringing the pressure of the provincial administration to bear upon the
electors.
[Footnote 1: See above, p. 176, n. 1.]
Needless to say, the "enlightenment" propagated by these Government
underlings did not win the confidence of the orthodox masses who
remembered vividly how official enlightenment was disseminated by the
Government of Nicholas I. during the era of juvenile conscription.
The new Jewish _intelligenzia_ showed utter indifference to the
sentiments of the Jewish masses, and did not hesitate to induce the
Government to interfere in the affairs of inner Jewish life. Thus by a
regulation issued in 1864 all hasidic books were subjected to a most
rigorous censorship, and Jewish printing-presses were placed under a
more vigilant supervision than theretofore. The Tzaddiks were barred
from visiting their parishes for the purpose of "working miracles" and
"collecting tribute," a measure which only served to surround the
hasidic chieftains with a halo of martyrdom and resulted in the
pilgrimage of vast numbers of Hasidim to the "holy places," the
"capitals" of the Tzaddiks. All this only went to intensify the distrust
of the masses toward the college-bred, officially hall-marked Jewish
intellectuals and to lower their moral prestige, to the detriment of the
cause of enlightenment of which they professed to be the missionaries.
A peculiar variety of assimilationist tendencies sprang up among the
upper class of Jews in the Kingdom of Poland, more especially in Warsaw.
It was a most repellent variety of assimilation, exhibiting more
flunkeyism than pursuit of culture. The "Poles of the Mosaic
Persuasion," as these assimilationists styled themselves, had long been
begging for admission into Polish society, though rudely repulsed by it.
During the insurrection of 1861-1863, when they were graciously received
as useful allies, they were indefatigable in parading their Polish
patriotism. In the Polish Jewish weekly, _Jutrzenka_, [1] "The Dawn," the
organ of these assimilationists, the trite West-European theory, which
looks upon Judaism as a religious sect and not as a national community,
was repeated _ad nauseam_. One of the most prominent contributors to
that journal, Ludwig Gumplovich, the author of a monograph on the
history of the Jews in Poland, who subsequently made a name for himself
as a sociologist, and, after his conversion to Christianity, received a
professorship at an Austrian university, opened his series of articles
on Polish-Jewish history with the following observation: "The fact that
the Jews had a history was their misfortune in Europe.... For their
history inevitably presupposes an isolated life severed from that of the
other nations. It is just this which constitutes the misfortune alluded
to."
[Footnote 1: Pronounce _Yutzhenka_.]
After the insurrection, the Polonization of the Jewish population
assumed menacing proportions. The upper layer of Polish Jewry consisted
exclusively of "Poles of the Mosaic Persuasion" who rejected all
elements of Jewish culture, while the broad masses, following blindly
the mandates of their Tzaddiks, rejected fanatically even the most
indispensable elements of European civilization. Riven between such
monstrous extremes, Polish Jewry was unable to attain even to a
semblance of normal development.
2. THE SOCIETY FOR THE DIFFUSION OF ENLIGHTENMENT
Though intensely engaged in this cultural movement, Russian Jewry did
not yet command sufficient resources for carrying on a well-ordered and
well-systematized activity. The only modern Jewish organization of that
period was the "Society for the Diffusion of Enlightenment amongst the
Jews," which had been founded in 1867 by a small coterie of Jewish
financiers and intellectuals of St. Petersburg. It would seem that the
Jewish colony of the Russian metropolis, consisting of big merchants and
university graduates, who, by virtue of the laws of 1859 and 1861,
enjoyed the right of residence outside the Pale, did not yet contain a
sufficient number of competent public workers. For during the first
decade of the Society its Executive Committee included, apart from its
Jewish founders--Baron Günzburg, Leon Rosenthal, Rabbi Neuman--, two
apostates, Professor Daniel Chwolson and the court physician, I.
Berthenson.
The purpose of the Society was explained by one of the
founders, Leon Rosenthal, in the following unsophisticated manner:
We constantly hear men in high positions, with whom we come in
contact, complain about the separatism and fanaticism of the Jews
and about their aloofness from everything Russian, and we have
received assurances on all hands that, with, the removal of these
peculiarities, the condition of our brethren in Russia will be
improved, and we shall all become full-fledged citizens of this
country. Actuated by this motive, we have organized a league of
educated men for the purpose of eradicating our above-mentioned
shortcomings by disseminating among the Jews the knowledge of the
Russian language and other useful subjects.
What the Society evidently aimed at was to place itself at the head of
the Russian-Jewish _intelligenzia_, which had undertaken to act as
negotiators between the Government and the Jews in the cause of
Russification. In reality, the mission of the Society was carried out
within exceedingly narrow limits. "Education for the sake of
Emancipation" became the watchword of the Society. It promoted higher
education by granting monetary assistance to Jewish students, but it did
nothing either for the upbuilding of a normal Jewish school or for the
improvement of the heders and yeshibahs. The dissemination of the
knowledge of "useful subjects" reduced itself to the grant of a few
subsidies to Jewish writers for translating a few books on history and
natural science into Hebrew.
Even more circumscribed and utilitarian was the point of view adopted by
the Odessa branch of the Society. This branch, founded in 1867, adopted
as its slogan "the enlightenment of the Jews through the Russian
language and _in the Russian spirit_." The Russification of the Jews was
to be promoted by translating the Bible and the prayer-book into the
Russian language, "which must become the national tongue of the Jews."
However, the headlong rush for assimilation was soon halted by the
sinister spectacle of the Odessa pogrom of 1871. The moving spirits of
the local branch could not help, to use the language of its president,
"losing heart and becoming rather doubtful as to whether the goal
pursued by them is in reality a good one, seeing that all the endeavors
of our brethren to draw nearer to the Russians are of no avail so long
as the Russian masses remain in their present unenlightened condition
and harbor hostile sentiments towards the Jews." The pogrom put a
temporary stop to the activity of the Odessa branch.
As for the central Committee in St. Petersburg, its experience was not
less disappointing. For, despite all the endeavors of the Society to
adapt itself to the official point of view, it was regarded with
suspicion by the powers that be, having been included by the informer
Brafman among the constituent organizations of the dreadful and
mysterious "Jewish Kahal." The Russian assimilators, now branded as
separatists, found themselves in a tragic conflict. Moreover, the work
of the Society in promoting general culture among the Jews was gradually
losing its _raison d'être_, since, without any effort on its part, the
Jews began to flock to the _gymnazia_ and universities. The former
practical stimulus to general culture--the acquisition of a diploma for
the sake of equal rights--was intensified by the promulgation of the
military statute of 1874 which conferred a number of privileges in the
discharge of military duty on those possessing a higher education. These
privileges induced many parents, particularly among the merchant class
which was then drafted into the army for the first time, to send their
children to the middle and higher educational institutions. As a result,
the role of the Society in the dissemination of enlightenment reduced
itself to a mere dispensation of charity, and the great crisis of the
eighties found this organization standing irresolute at the cross-roads.
3. THE JEWISH PRESS
In the absence of a comprehensive net-work of social agencies, the
driving force in this cultural upheaval came from the periodical Jewish
press. The creation of several press organs in Hebrew and Russian in the
beginning of the sixties was a sign of the times. Though different in
their linguistic medium, the two groups of publications were equally
engaged in the task of the regeneration of Judaism, each adapting itself
to its particular circle of readers. The Hebrew periodicals, and partly
also those in Yiddish which addressed themselves to the masses, preached
_Haskalah_ in the narrower sense. They advocated the necessity of a
Russian elementary education and of secular culture in general; they
emphasized the uselessness of the traditional Jewish school training,
and exposed superstition and obscurantism. The Russian publications,
again, which were intended for the Jewish and the Russian
_intelligenzia_, pursued in the main a political goal, the fight for
equal rights and the defence of Judaism against its numerous detractors.
In both groups one can discern the gradual ripening of the social Jewish
consciousness, the advance from elementary and often naive notions to
more complex ideas. The two Hebrew weeklies founded in 1860,
_ha-Karmel_, "The Carmel," in Vilna, and _ha-Melitz_, "The Interpreter,"
in Odessa, the former edited by Fünn and the latter by Zederbaum, [1]
were at first adapted to the mental level of grown-up children,
expatiating upon the benefits of secular education and the "favors" of
the Government consequent upon it. _Ha-Karmel_ expired in 1870, while
yet in its infancy, though it continued to appear at irregular intervals
in the form of booklets dealing with scientific and literary subjects.
_Ha-Melitz_ was more successful. It soon grew to be a live and
courageous organ which hurled its shafts at Hasidism and Tzaddikism, and
occasionally even ventured to raise its hand against rabbinical Judaism.
The Yiddish weekly _Kol Mebasser_, [2] which was published during
1862-1871 as a supplement to _ha-Melitz_ and spoke directly to the
masses in their own language, attacked the dark sides of the old order
of things in publicistic essays and humoristic stories.
[Footnote 1: Before that time, the only weekly in Hebrew was
_ha-Maggid_, "The Herald," a paper of no particular literary
distinction, published since 1856 in the Prussian border-town Lyck,
though addressing itself primarily to the Jews of Russia.]
[Footnote 2: "A voice Announcing Good Tidings."]
Another step forward was the publication of the Hebrew monthly
_ha-Shahar_, "The Dawn," which was founded by Perez Smolenskin in 1869.
This periodical, which appeared in Vienna but was read principally in
Russia, pursued a two-fold aim: to fight against the fanaticism of the
benighted masses, on the one hand, and combat the indifference to
Judaism of the intellectuals, on the other. _Ha-Shahar_ exerted a
tremendous influence upon the mental development of the young generation
which had been trained in the heders and yeshibahs. Here they found a
response to the thoughts that agitated them; here they learned to think
logically and critically and to distinguish between the essential
elements in Judaism and its mere accretions. _Ha-Shahar_ was the staff
of life for the generation of that period of transition, which stood on
the border-line dividing the old Judaism from the new.
The various stages in the Russification of the Jewish _intelligenzia_
are marked by the changing tendencies of the Jewish periodical press in
the Russian language. In point of literary form, it approached the
European models more closely than the contemporary Hebrew press. The
contributors to the three Russian-Jewish weeklies, all of them issued in
Odessa, [1] had the advantage of having before them patterns of Western
Europe. Jewish publicists of the type of Riesser and Philippson [2]
served as living examples. They had blazed the way for Jewish
journalism, and had shown it how to fight for civil emancipation, to
ward off anti-Semitic attacks, and strive at the same time for the
advancement of inner Jewish life.
[Footnote 1: _Razswyet_, "The Dawn," 1860, _Sion_, "Zion," 1861, _Dyen_,
"The Day," 1869-1871.]
[Footnote 2: Gabriel Riesser (died 1863), the famous champion of Jewish
emancipation in Germany, established the periodical _Der Jude_ in 1832.
Ludwig Philippson (died 1889) founded in 1837 _Die Allgemeine Zeitung
des Judentums_, which still appears in Berlin.]
However, as soon as the Russian Riessers applied themselves to their
task, they met with insurmountable difficulties. When the _Razswyet_,
which was edited by Osip (Joseph) Rabinovich, attempted to lay bare the
inner wounds of Jewish life, it encountered the concerted opposition of
all prominent Jews, who were of the opinion that an organ employing the
language of the country should not, on tactical grounds, busy itself
with self-revelations, but should rather limit itself to the fight for
equal rights. The latter function again was hampered by the "other
side," the Russian censorship. Despite the moderate tone adopted by the
_Razswyet_ in its articles on Jewish emancipation, the Russian
censorship found them incompatible with the interests of the State. One
circular sent out by the Government went even so far as to prohibit "to
to discuss the question of granting the Jews equal rights with those of
the other (Russian) subjects." On one occasion the editor of the
_Razswyet_, _, in appealing to the authorities of St. Petersburg against
the prohibition of a certain article by the Odessa censor, had to
resort to the sham argument that the incriminated article referred
merely to the necessity of granting the Jews equality in the right
of residence but not in other rights. But even this stratagem failed
of its object. After a year of bitter struggle against the interference
of the censor and against financial difficulties--the number of Russian
readers among Jews was still very small at that time--the _Razswyet_
passed out of existence.
Its successor _Sion_ ("Zion"), edited by Solovaychik and Leon Pinsker,
who subsequently bec me the exponent of pre-Herzlian Zionism,[1]
attempted a different policy: to prove the case of the Jews by
arraigning the anti-Semites and acquainting the Russian public with the
history of Judaism. _Sion_, too, like its predecessors, had to give up
the fight in less than a year.
[Footnote 1: See later, p. 330 et seq.]
After an interval of seven years a new attempt was made in the same
city. The _Dyen_ ("The Day") [1] was able to muster a larger number of
contributors from among the increased ranks of the "titled"
_intelligenzia_ than its predecessors. The new periodical was bolder in
unfurling the banner of emancipation, but it also went much further than
its predecessors in its championship of Russification and assimilation.
The motto of the _Dyen_ was "complete fusion of the interests of the
Jewish population with those of the other citizens." The editors looked
upon the Jewish problem "not as a national but as a social and economic"
issue, which in their opinion could be solved simply by bestowing upon
this "section of the Russian people" the same rights which were enjoyed
by the rest. The Odessa pogrom of 1871 might have taught the writers of
the _Dyen_ to judge more soberly the prospects of "a fusion of
interests," had not a meddlesome censorship forced this periodical to
discontinue its publication after a short time.
[Footnote 1: The name was meant to symbolize the approaching day of
freedom. It was a weekly publication.]
The next few years were a period of silence in the Russian-Jewish
press. [1] The rank and file of the Russian Jewish intellectuals, who
formed the backbone of the reading public of this press, became
indifferent to it. Living up conscientiously to the principle of a
"fusion of interests," they failed to recognize the special interests of
their own people, whose only duty they thought was to be Russified,
i.e., obliterated and put out of existence. The better elements among
the _intelligenzia_, however, looked with consternation upon this
growing indifference to everything Jewish among the college-bred Jewish
youth. As a result, a new attempt was made toward the very end of this
period to restore the Russian-Jewish press. Three weeklies, the _Russki
Yevrey_ ("The Russian Jew"), the _Razswyet_ ("The Dawn"), and later on
the _Voskhod_ ("The Sunrise"), were started in St. Petersburg, all
endeavoring to gain the hearts of the Russian Jewish _intelligenzia_. In
the midst of this work they were overwhelmed by the terrific cataclysm
of 1881, which decided the further destinies of Jewish journalism in
Russia.
[Footnote 1: We disregard the colorless _Vyestnik Russkikh "Yevreyev"_
("The Herald of Russian Jews"), published by Zederbaum in the beginning
of the seventies in St. Petersburg, and the volumes of the _Yevreyskaya
Bibliotyeka_ ("The Jewish Library"), issued at irregular intervals by
Adolph Landau.]
4. THE JEWS AND THE REVOLUTIONARY MOVEMENT
The Russian school and literature pushed the Jewish college youth head
over heels into the intellectual currents of progressive Russian
society. Naturally enough a portion of the Jewish youth was also drawn
into the revolutionary movement of the seventies, a movement which, in
spite of the theoretic "materialism" of its adepts, was of an
essentially idealistic tendency. In joining the ranks of the
revolutionaries, the young Jews were less actuated by resentment against
the continued, though somewhat mitigated, rightlessness of their own
people than by discontent with the general political reaction in Russia,
that discontent which found expression in the movement of "Populism," [1]
of "Going to the People," [2] and similar currents then in vogue. Jewish
students, attending the rabbinical and teachers' institutes of the
Government, or autodidacts from among former heder and yeshibah pupils,
also began to "go to the people"--the Russian people, to be sure, not
the Jewish. They carried on a revolutionary propaganda, both by direct
and indirect means, among the Russian peasants and workingmen, known to
them only from books. It was taken for granted at that time that the
realization of the ideals of Russian democracy would carry with it the
solution of the Jewish as well as of all other sectional problems of
Russian life, so that these problems might for the moment be safely set
aside.
[Footnote 1: In Russian, _narodnichestvo_, from _narod_, "People," a
democratic movement In favor of the down-trodden masses, particularly
the Russian peasantry.]
[Footnote 2: Under the influence of the democratic movement many
Russians of higher birth and culture settled among the peasantry, to
which they dedicated their lives. The name of Leo Tolstoi readily
suggests itself in this connection.]
As far as the Jewish youth was concerned, the whole movement was doubly
academic, for the only points of contact of that youth with younger
Russia was not living reality but the book, problems of the intellect,
the search for new ways, the attempt to work out a _Weltanschauung_. The
fundamental article of faith of the Jewish socialists was
cosmopolitanism, and they failed to discern in Russian "Populism" the
underlying elements of a Russian national movement. Jewry was not
believed to be a nation, and as a religious entity it was looked upon as
a relic of the past, which was doomed to disappearance.
One attempt of coupling socialism with Judaism ought not to be passed
over in silence. In the beginning of the seventies there existed in
Vilna a Jewish revolutionary circle made up principally of the pupils of
the rabbinical school and of the teachers' institute of the same city.
In 1875, the police tracked the members of the circle. Some were
arrested, others escaped. One of the refugees, A. Lieberman, managed to
reach London where he associated with the circle of Lavrov and the
editors of the revolutionary journal _Vperyod_ ("Forwards").
In the following year, Lieberman founded in London the "League of Jewish
Socialists" for the purpose of carrying on a propaganda among the Jewish
masses. It was a small society of students and workingmen which busied
itself with arranging lectures and debates, and penning Hebrew appeals
on the need of organizing the proletariat. The society was soon
dissolved, and Lieberman emigrated to Vienna, where, under the name of
Freeman, he started in 1877 a socialistic magazine in Hebrew under the
name _ha-Emet_ ("The Truth"). The first two issues of _ha-Emet_ were
admitted into Russia, but the third was confiscated by the censor. The
magazine had to be discontinued. It yielded its place to a paper called
_Asefat Hakamim_ ("The Assembly of Wise Men"), published in Koenigsberg
in 1878 by M. Winchevski as a supplement to the paper _ha-Kol_ ("The
Voice"), which was issued there by Rodkinson. Soon this whole species of
socialistic literature was put out of existence. In 1879, Lieberman in
Vienna and his comrades in Berlin and Koenigsberg were arrested and
expelled from the borders of Austria and Prussia. They emigrated to
England and America, and lost touch with Russia.
In Russia itself the Jewish revolutionaries were heart and soul devoted
to the cause. The children of the ghetto displayed considerable heroism
and self-sacrifice in the revolutionary upheaval of the seventies. Jews
figured in all important political trials and public manifestations;
they languished in the gaols, and suffered as exiles in Siberia. But
this idealistic fight for general freedom lacked a Jewish note, the
endeavor to free their own nation which lived in greater thraldom than
any other. And no one at that time ever dreamt that after all these
sacrifices the Jews of Russia would be visited by still greater
misfortunes, by pogroms and increased disabilities.
5. THE NEO-HEBRAIC RENAISSANCE
With all deflections from the course of normal development, such as are
unavoidable in times of violent mental disturbances, the main line of
the whole cultural movement, the resultant of the various forces within
it, was headed towards the healthy progress of Judaism. The most
substantial product of this movement was the Neo-Hebraic literary
renaissance which had already appeared in faint outlines on the sombre
background of external oppression and internal obscurantism during the
preceding period. The Haskalah, formerly anathematized, was now able to
unfold all its creative powers. What in the time of Isaac Baer Levinsohn
had been accomplished stealthily by a few isolated conspirators of
enlightenment in some petty society in Vilna or in some out-of-the-way
town like Kamenetz-Podolsk was now done in the full light of the day.
Instead of a few stray writers, the harbingers of the new literature,
there now appeared this literature itself, new both in form and content.
The restoration of the Hebrew language to its biblical purity and the
removal of the linguistic excrescences of the later rabbinic idiom
became for some writers an end in itself, for others a weapon in the
fight for enlightenment. _Melitzah_, a conventionalized style, which,
moving strictly within the confines of the biblical diction, endeavored
to adapt the form of an ancient language to the content of a modern
life, became the fashion of the day.
In point of content rejuvenated Hebrew literature was of necessity
elementary. Mental restlessness and naiveness of thought were not
conducive to the development of that "science of Judaism" which had
attained to such luxurious growth in Germany. The Hebrew writers of
Russia during that period had no means of propagating their ideas,
except through the medium of poetry, fiction, or journalism. The results
of historic research were squeezed into the mould of a poem or novel, or
it furnished the material for a press article, in which the Jewish past
was considered from the point of view of the present. Objective
scientific investigation could find no place, and the little that was
accomplished in that direction did not bear the character of a living
account of the past, but was rather in the nature of crude
archaeological material. At the same time, as the crest of the social
progress was rising, the border-line between poetry and fiction, on the
one hand, and topical journalism, on the other, was gradually
obliterated. The poet or novelist was often turned into a fighter, who
attacked the old order of things and defended the new.
Even before the first blush of dawn, when every one in Russia was yet
groaning under the strokes of an autocratic tyranny, which the
presentiment of its speedy end had driven into madness, the bewitching
strains of the new Hebrew lyre resounded through Lithuania. They came
from Micah Joseph Lebensohn, the son of "Adam" Lebensohn, author of
high-flown Hebrew odes [1]--a contemplative Jewish youth, suffering from
tuberculosis and _Weltschmerz_. He began his poetic career in 1840 by a
Hebrew adaptation of the second book of Virgil's _Aeneid_ [2] but soon
turned to Jewish _motifs_. In the musical rhymes of the "Songs of the
Daughter of Zion" (_Shire bat Zion_, Vilna, 1851), the author poured
forth the anguish of his suffering soul, which was torn between faith
and science, weighed down by the oppression from without and stirred to
its depth by the tragedy of his homeless nation. [3] A cruel disease cut
short the poet's life in 1852, at the age of twenty-four. A small
collection of lyrical poems, published after his death under the title
_Kinnor bat Zion_ ("The Harp of the Daughter of Zion"), exhibited even
more brilliantly the wealth of creative energy which was hidden in the
soul of this prematurely cut-off youth, who on the brink of the grave
sang so touchingly of love, beauty, and the pure joys of life.
[Footnote 1: See above, p. 134 et seq.]
[Footnote 2: It was made from the German translation of Schiller]
[Footnote 3: See the poems "Solomon and Koheleth," "Jael and Sisera,"
and "Judah ha-Levi."]
A year after the death of our poet, in 1853, there appeared in the same
capital of Lithuania the historic novel _Ahabat Zion_ ("Love of Zion").
Its author, Abraham Mapu of Kovno (1808-1867), was a poor melammed who
had by his own endeavors and without the help of a teacher raised
himself to the level of a modern Hebrew pedagogue. He lived in two
worlds, in the valley of tears, such as the ghetto presented during the
reign of Nicholas, and in the radiant recollections of the far-off
biblical past. The inspired dreamer, while strolling on the banks of the
Niemen, among the hills which skirt the city of Kovno, was picturing to
himself the luminous dawn of the Jewish nation. He published these
radiant descriptions of ancient Judaea in the dismal year of the
"captured recruits." [1] The youths of the ghetto, who had been poring
over talmudic folios, fell eagerly upon this little book which breathed
the perfumes of Sharon and Carmel. They read it in secret--to read a
novel openly was not a safe thing in those days--, and their hearts
expanded with rapture over the enchanting idyls of the time of King
Hezekiah, the portrayal of tumultuous Jerusalem and peaceful Beth-lehem.
They sighed over the fate of the lovers Amnon and Tamar, and in their
flight of imagination were carried far away from painful reality. The
naive literary construction of the plot was of no consequence to the
reader who tasted a novel for the first time in his life. The _naïveté_
of the plot was in keeping with the naive, artificially reproduced
language of the prophet Isaiah and the biblical annals, which
intensified the illusion of antiquity.
[Footnote 1: See on this expression above, p. 148 et seq.]
Several years after the publication of his "Love of Zion," when social
currents had begun to stir Russian Jewry, Mapu began his five volume
novel of contemporary life, under the title _'Ayit Tzabua'_, "The
Speckled Bird," or "The Hypocrite" (1857-1869). In his naive diction,
which is curiously out of harmony with the complex plot in sensational
French style, the author pictures the life of an obscure Lithuanian
townlet: the Kahal bosses who hide their misdeeds beneath the cloak of
piety; the fanatical rabbis, the Tartuffes of the Pale of Settlement,
who persecute the champions of enlightenment. As an offset against these
shadows of the past, Mapu lovingly paints the barely visible shoots of
the new life, the _Maskil_, who strives to reconcile religion and
science, the misty figure of the Jewish youth who goes to the Russian
school in the hope of serving his people, the profiles of the Russian
Jewish intellectuals, and the captains of industry from among the rising
Jewish plutocracy.
Toward the end of his life Mapu returned to the historical novel, and in
the "Transgression of Samaria" (_Ashmat Shomron_, 1865) he attempted to
draw a picture of ancient Hebrew life during the declining years of the
Northern Kingdom. But this novel, appearing as it did at the height of
the cultural movement, failed to produce the powerful effect of his
_Ahabat Zion_, although its charming biblical diction enraptured the
lovers of _Melitzah_. [1]
[Footnote 1: An imitation of the biblical Hebrew diction. Compare p.
225.]
The noise of the new Jewish life, with its constantly growing
problems, invaded the precincts of literature, and even the poets were
impelled to take sides in the burning questions of the day. The most
important poet of that era, Judah Leib Gordon (1830-1892), who began by
composing biblical epics and moralistic fables, soon entered the field
of "intellectual poetry," and became the champion of enlightenment and a
trenchant critic of old-fashioned Jewish life. As far back as 1863,
while active as a teacher at a Crown school [1] in Lithuania, he
composed his "Marseillaise of Enlightenment" (_Hakitzah 'ammi_, "Awake,
My People"). In it he sang of the sun shedding its rays over the "Land
of Eden," where the neck of the enslaved was freed from the yoke and
where the modern Jew was welcomed with a brotherly embrace. The poet
calls upon his people to join the ranks of their fellow-countrymen, the
hosts of cultured Russian citizens who speak the language of the land,
and offers his Jewish contemporaries the brief formula: "Be a man on the
street and a Jew in the house," [2] i.e., be a Russian in public and a
Jew in private life.
[Footnote 1: See on the Crown schools pp. 74 and 77.]
[Footnote 2: _Heye adam be-tzeteka, wihudi be-oholeka._]
Gordon himself defined his function in the work of Jewish regeneration
to be that of exposing the inner ills of the people, of fighting
rabbinical orthodoxy and the tyranny of ceremonialism. This carping
tendency, which implies a condemnation of the whole historic structure
of Judaism, manifested itself as early as 1868 in his "Songs of Judah"
(_Shire Yehudah_), in strophes radiant with the beauty of their Hebrew
diction:
To live by soulless rites hast thou been taught,
To swim against life, and the lifeless letter to keep;
To be dead upon earth, and in heaven alive,
To dream while awake, and to speak while asleep.
During the seventies, Gordon joined the ranks of the official agents of
enlightenment. He removed to St. Petersburg, and became secretary of the
Society for the Diffusion of Enlightenment. The new Hebrew periodical
_ha-Shahar_ [1] published several of his "contemporary epics" in which
he vented his wrath against petrified Rabbinism. He portrays the misery
of a Jewish woman who is condemned to enter married life at the bidding
of the marriage-broker, without love and without happiness, or he
describes the tragedy of another woman whose future is wrecked by a "Dot
over the _i_." [2] He lashes furiously the orthodox spiders, the official
leaders of the community, who catch the young pioneers of enlightenment
in the meshes of Kabal authority, backed by police force. Climbing
higher upon the ladder of history, the poet registers his protest
against the predominance of the spiritual over the worldly element in
the whole evolution of Judaism. He assails the prophet Jeremiah who in
beleaguered Jerusalem preaches submission to the Babylonians and strict
obedience to the Law: the prophet, dressed up in the garb of a
contemporary orthodox rabbi, was to be exhibited as a terrifying
incarnation of the soulless formula "Law above Life." [3]
[Footnote 1: See p. 218.]
[Footnote 2: The title of a famous poem by Gordon, _Kotzo shel Yod_,
literally "the tittle of the Yod" the smallest letter in the Hebrew
alphabet. The poem in question pictures the tragedy of a woman who
remained unhappy the rest of her life because the Hebrew bill of divorce
which she had obtained from her husband was declared void on account of
a trifling error in spelling.]
[Footnote 3: The author alludes to Gordon's poem "_Tzidkiyyahu be-bet
hapekuddot_" ("Zedekiah in Prison"), in which the defeated and
blinded Judean ruler (see Jer. 52. 11) bitterly complains of the
evil effects of the prophetic doctrine.]
The implication is obvious: the power of orthodoxy must be broken and
Jewish life must be secularized. But while unmasking the old, Gordon
could not fail to perceive the sore spots in the new, "enlightened"
generation. He saw the flight of the educated youth from the Jewish
camp, its ever-growing estrangement from the national tongue in which
the poet uttered his songs, and a cry of anguish burst from his lips:
"For Whom Do I Labor?" [1] It seemed to him that the rising generation,
detached from the fountain-head of Jewish culture, would no more be able
to read the "Songs of Zion," and that the poet's rhymes were limited in
their appeal to the last handful of the worshippers of the Hebrew Muse:
[Footnote 1: Title of a poem by Gordon, _Lemi ani 'amel!_]
Who knows, but I am the last singer of Zion,
And you are the last who my songs understand.
These lines were penned on the threshold of the new era of the eighties.
The exponent of Jewish self-criticism lived to see not only the horrors
of the pogroms but also the misty dawn of the national movement, and he
could comfort himself with the conviction that he was destined to be the
singer for more than one generation.
The question "For whom do I labor?" was approached and solved in a
different way by another writer, whose genius expanded with the
increasing years of his long life. During the first years of his
activity, Shalom Jacob Abramovich (born in 1836) tried his strength in
various fields. He wrote Hebrew essays on literary criticism (_Mishpat
Shalom_ [1] 1859), adapted books on natural science written in modern
languages (_Toldot ha-teba'_, "Natural History," 1862, ff.), composed a
social _Tendenzroman_ under the title "Fathers and Children" (_Ha-abot
we-ha-banim_, 1868 [2]); but all this left him dissatisfied. Pondering
over the question "For whom do I labor?," he came to the conclusion that
his labors belonged to the people at large, to the down-trodden masses,
instead of being limited to the educated classes who understood the
national tongue. A profound observer of Jewish conditions in the Pale,
he realized that the concrete life of the masses should be portrayed in
their living daily speech, in the Yiddish vernacular, which was treated
with contempt by nearly all the Maskilim of that period.
[Footnote 1: "The Judgment of Shalom," with reference to the author's
first name and with a clever allusion to the Hebrew text of Zech. 8.16.]
[Footnote 2: Written under the influence of Turgenyev's famous novel
which bears the same title. See above, p. 210, n. 1.]
Accordingly, Abramovich began to write in the dialect of the people,
under the assumed pen-name of _Mendele Mokher Sforim_ (Mendele the
Bookseller). Choosing his subjects from the life of the lower classes,
he portrayed the pariahs of Jewish society and their oppressors (_Dos
kleine Menshele_, "A Humble Man"), the life of Jewish beggars and
vagrants (_Fishke der Krummer_, "Fishke the Cripple"), and the immense
cobweb which had been spun around the destitute masses by the
contractors of the meat tax and their accomplices, the alleged
benefactors of the community (_Die Taxe, oder die Bande Stodt Bale
Toyvos_, "The Meat Tax, or the Gang of Town Benefactors"). His trenchant
satire on the "tax" hit the mark, and the author had reason to fear the
ire of those who were hurt to the quick by his literary shafts. He had
to leave the town of Berdychev in which he resided at the time, and
removed to Zhitomir.
Here he wrote in 1873 one of his ripest works, "The Mare, or Prevention
of Cruelty to Animals" (_Die Klache_). In his allegorical narrative he
depicts a homeless mare, the personification of the Jewish masses, which
is pursued by the "bosses of the town" who do not allow her to graze on
the common pasture-lands with the "town cattle," and who set street
loafers and dogs at her heels. "The Society for the Prevention of
Cruelty to Animals" (the Government) cannot make up its mind whether the
mare should be granted equal rights with the native horses, or should be
left unprotected, and the matter is submitted to a special commission.
In the meantime, certain horsemen from among the "communal benefactors"
jump upon the back of the unfortunate mare, beat and torment her
well-nigh to death, and drive her for their pleasure, until she
collapses.
Leaving the field of polemical allegory, Abramovich published the
humorous description of the "Travels of Benjamin the Third" (_Masse'ot
Benyamin ha-Shelishi_, 1878), [1] portraying a Jewish Don Quixote and
Sancho Panza, who make an oversea journey to the mythical river
Sambation--on the way from Berdychev to Kiev. A subtle observation of
existing conditions combined with a profound analysis of the problems of
Jewish life, artistic power matched with publicistic skill--such are the
salient features of the first phase of Abramovich's literary activity.
[Footnote 1: A famous Jewish traveller by the name of Benjamin lived in
the twelfth century. Another modern Jewish traveller by the name of
Joseph Israel, who died in 1864, adopted the name Benjamin II.
Abramovich humorously designates his fictitious travelling hero as
Benjamin III.]
In the following period, beginning with the eighties, his literary
creations exhibit greater artistic harmony in their content. As far as
their linguistic garb is concerned, they combine the Yiddish vernacular
with the Hebrew national tongue, which are employed side by side by our
author as the vehicles of his thought, and reach at his hands an equally
high state of perfection.
6. THE HARBINGER OF JEWISH NATIONALISM (PEREZ
SMOLENSKIN)
The artistic portrayer of life was, however, a rare exception in the
literature of the Haskalah. Riven by social and cultural strife, the
period of enlightenment called rather for theories than for art, and the
novelist no less than the publicist was called upon to supply the want.
This theoretic element was paramount in the novels of Perez Smolenskin.
(1842-1885), the editor of the popular Hebrew magazine _ha-Shahar_. [1]
The pupil of a White Russian yeshibah, he afterwards drifted into
frivolous Odessa and still later to Vienna, suffering painfully from the
shock of the contrast. Personally he had emerged unscathed from this
conflict of ideas. But round about him he witnessed "the dead bodies of
enlightenment, which are just as numerous as the victims of ignorance."
He saw the Jewish youth fleeing from its people and forgetting its
national language. He saw Reform Judaism of Western Europe which had
retained nothing of Jewish culture except the modernized
superficialities of the synagogue. Repelled by this spectacle,
Smolenskin decided from the very beginning to fight on two fronts:
against the fanatics of orthodoxy in the name of European progress, and
against the champions of assimilation in the name of national Jewish
culture, and more particularly of the Hebrew language. "You say,"
Smolenskin exclaims, addressing himself to the assimilators, "let us be
like the other nations. Well and good. Let us, indeed, be like the other
nations: cultured men and women, free from superstition, loyal citizens
of the country. But let us also remember, as the other nations do, that
we have no right to be ashamed of our origin, that it is our duty to
hold dear our national language and our national dignity."
[Footnote 1: See above, p. 218.]
In his first great novel "A Rover on Life's Paths" (_Ha-to-'eh bedarke
ha-hayyim_, 1869-1876), Smolenskin carries his hero through all the
stages of cultural development, leading from an obscure White Russian
hamlet to the centers of European civilization in London and Paris. But
at the end of his "rovings" the hero ultimately attains to a synthesis
of Jewish nationalism and European progress, and ends by sacrificing his
life while defending his brethren during the Odessa pogrom of 1871. The
other _Tendenz_-novels of Smolenskin reflect the same double-fronted
struggle: against the stagnation of the orthodox, particularly the
Hasidim, and against the disloyalty of the "enlightened."
Smolenskin's theory of Judaism is formulated in two publicistic works:
"The Eternal People" (_'Am 'olam_, [1] 1872) and "There is a Time to
Plant" (_'Et la-ta'at_ [2], 1875-1877). As a counterbalance to the
artificial religious reforms of the West, he sets up the far-reaching
principle of Jewish evolution, of a gradual amalgamation of the national
and humanitarian element within Judaism. The Messianic dogma, which the
Jews of the West had completely abandoned because of its alleged
incompatibility with Jewish citizenship in the Diaspora, is warmly
defended by Smolenskin as one of the symbols of national unity. In the
very center of his system stands the cult of Hebrew as a national
language, "without which there is no Judaism." In order the more
successfully to demolish the idea of assimilation, Smolenskin bombards
its substructure, the theory of enlightenment as formulated by Moses
Mendelssohn, with its definition of the Jews as a religious community,
and not as a nation, though in his polemical ardor he often goes too
far, and does occasional violence to historic truth.
[Footnote 1: From Isa. 44. 7.]
[Footnote 2: From Eccles. 3. 2.]
In both works one may discern, though in vague outlines only, the theory
of a "spiritual nation." [1] However, Smolenskin did not succeed in
developing and consolidating his theory. The pogroms of 1881 and the
beginning of the Jewish exodus from Russia upset his equilibrium once
more. He laid aside the question of the national development of Jewry in
the Diaspora, and became an enthusiastic preacher of the restoration of
the Jewish people in Palestine. In the midst of this propaganda the life
of the talented publicist was cut short by a premature death.
[Footnote 1: The conception of a "spiritual nation" as applied to
Judaism has been formulated and expounded by the author of the present
volume in a number of works. See his "Jewish History" (Jewish
Publication Society, 1903) p. 29 et seq., and the translator's essay
"Dubnow's Theory of Jewish Nationalism" (reprinted from the
Maccabaean, 1905). More about this theory will be found in Vol. III.]
The same conviction was finally reached, after a prolonged inner
struggle, by Moses Leib Lilienblum (1843-1910), who might well be called
a "martyr of enlightenment." However, during the period under
consideration he moved entirely within the boundaries of the Haskalah,
of which he was a most radical exponent. Persecuted for his harmless
liberalism by the fanatics of his native town of Vilkomir, [1]
Lilienblum began to ponder over the question of Jewish religious
reforms. In advocating the reform of Judaism, he was not actuated, as
were so many in Western Europe, by the desire of adapting Judaism to the
non-Jewish environment, but rather by the profound and painful
conviction that dominant Rabbinism in its medieval phase did not
represent the true essence of Judaism. Reform of Judaism, as interpreted
by Lilienblum, does not mean a revolution, but an evolution of Judaism.
Just as the Talmud had once reformed Judaism in accordance with the
requirements of its time, so must Judaism be reformed by us in
accordance with the demands of our own times. When the youthful writer
embodied these views in a series of articles, published in the
_ha-Melitz_ under the title _Orhot ha-Talmud_ ("The Ways of the Talmud,"
1868-1869), his orthodox townsmen were so thoroughly aroused that his
further stay in Vilkomir was not free from danger, and he was compelled
to remove to Odessa. Here he published in 1870 his rhymed satire _Kehal
refa'im_, [2] in which the dark shadows of a Jewish town, the Kahal
elders, the rabbis, the Tzaddiks, and other worthies, move weirdly about
in the gloom of the nether-world.
[Footnote 1: In the government of Kovno.]
[Footnote 2: "The Congregation of the Dead," with allusion to Prov.
21.16.]
In Odessa Lilienblum joined the ranks of the Russified college youth,
and became imbued with the radical ideas of Chernyshevski and Pisaryev,
gaining the reputation of a "nihilist." His theory of Jewish reform,
superannuated by his new materialistic world view, was thrown aside, and
a gaping void opened in the soul of the writer. This frame of mind is
reflected in Lilienblum's self-revelation, "The Sins of Youth" (_Hattot
ne'urim_, 1876), this agonizing cry of one of the many victims of the
mental cataclysm of the sixties. The book made a tremendous impression,
for the mental tortures depicted in it were typical of the whole age of
transition. However, the final note of the confession, the shriek of a
wasted soul, which, having overthrown the old idols, has failed to find
a new God, did not express the general trend of that period, which was
far from despair.
As for our author, his tempestuous soul was soon set at rest. The events
which filled the minds of progressive Jewry with agitation, the horrors
of the pogroms and the political oppression of the beginning of the
eighties, brought peace to the aching heart of Lilienblum. He found the
solution of the Jewish problems in the "Love of Zion," of which he
became the philosophic exponent. At a later stage he became an ardent
champion of political Zionism.
7. JEWISH LITERATURE IN THE RUSSIAN LANGUAGE
The left wing of "enlightenment" was represented during this period by
Jewish literature in the Russian language, which had several noteworthy
exponents. It is interesting to observe that, whereas all the prominent
writers in Hebrew were children of profoundly nationalistic Lithuania,
those that wrote in Russian, with the sole exception of Levanda, were
natives of South Russia, where the two extremes, stagnant Hasidism and
radical Russification, fought for supremacy. The founder of this branch
of Jewish literature was Osip (Joseph) Rabinovich (1817-1869), a
Southerner, a native of Poltava and a resident of Odessa. [1] Alongside
of journalistic articles he wrote protracted novels. His touching
"Pictures of the Past," his stories "The Penal Recruit" and "The
Inherited Candlestick" (1859-1860) called up before the generation
living at the dawn of the new era of reforms the shadows of the passing
night: the tortures of Nicholas' conscription and the degrading forms of
Jewish rightlessness.
[Footnote 1: See above, p, 219.]
The fight against this rightlessness was the goal of his
journalistic activity which, prior to the publication of the _Razswyet_,
he had carried on in the columns of the liberal Russian press. The
problems of inner Jewish life had but little attraction for him. Like
Riesser, he looked upon civil emancipation as a panacea for all Jewish
ailments. He was snatched away by death before he could be cured of this
illusion.
Rabinovich's work was continued by a talented youth, the journalist Ilya
(Elias) Orshanski of Yekaterinoslav (1846-1875), who was the main
contributor to the _Dyen_ of Odessa and to the _Yevreyskaya
Bibliotyeka_. [1] To fight for Jewish rights, not to offer humble
apologies, to demand emancipation, not to beg for it, this attitude
lends a charm of its own to Orshanski's writings. His brilliant analysis
of "Russian Legislation concerning the Jews" [2] offers a complete
anatomy of Jewish disfranchisement in Russia, beginning with Catherine
II. and ending with Alexander II.
[Footnote 1: Compare above, p. 220 et seq.]
[Footnote 2: The title of his work on the same subject which appeared in
St. Petersburg in 1877.]
Nevertheless, being a child of his age, he preached its formula. While a
passionate Jew at heart, he championed the cause of Russification,
though not in the extreme form of spiritual self-effacement. The Odessa
pogrom of 1871 staggered his impressionable soul. He was tossing about
restlessly, seeking an outlet for his resentment, but everywhere he
knocked his head against the barriers of censorship and police. Had he
been granted longer life, he might, like Smolenskin, have chosen the
road of a nationalistic-progressive synthesis, but the white plague
carried him off in his twenty-ninth year.
The literary work of Lev (Leon) Levanda (1835-1888) was of a more
complicated character. A graduate of one of the official rabbinical
schools, he was first active as teacher in a Jewish Crown school in
Minsk, and afterwards occupied the post of a "learned Jew" [1] under
Muravyov, the governor-general of Vilna. He thus moved in the hot-bed of
"official enlightenment" and in the headquarters of the policy of
Russification as represented by Muravyov, a circumstance which left its
impress upon all the products of his pen. In his first novel, "The
Grocery Store" (1860), of little merit from the artistic point of view,
he still appears as the naive bard of that shallow "enlightenment," the
champion of which is sufficiently characterized by wearing a European
costume, calling himself by a well-sounding German or Russian name (in
the novel under discussion the hero goes by the name of Arnold),
cultivating friendly relations with noble-minded Christians and making a
love match unassisted by the marriage-broker.
[Footnote 1: In Russian, _Uchony Yevrey_, an expert in Jewish matters,
attached, according to the Russian law of 1844, to the superintendents
of school districts and to the governors-general within the Pale.]
During this stage of his career, Levanda was convinced that "no educated
Jew could help being a cosmopolitan." But a little later his
cosmopolitanism displayed a distinct propensity toward Russification. In
his novel "A Hot Time" (1871-1872), Levanda renounces his former Polish
sympathies, and, through the mouth of his hero Sarin, preaches the
gospel of the approaching cultural fusion between the Jews and the
Russians which is to mark a new epoch in the history of the Jewish
people. Old-fashioned Jewish life is cleverly ridiculed in his "Sketches
of the Past" ("The Earlocks of my Mellammed," "Schoolophobia," etc.,
1870-1875). His peace of mind was not even disturbed by the
manifestation, towards the end of the sixties, of the anti-Semitic
reaction in those very official circles in which the "learned Jew" moved
and in which Brafman was looked up to as an authority in matters
appertaining to Judaism. [1] But the catastrophe of 1881 dealt a
staggering blow to Levanda's soul, and forced him to overthrow his
former idol of assimilation. With his mind not yet fully settled on the
new theory of nationalism, he joined the Palestine movement towards the
end of his life, and went down to his grave with a clouded soul.
[Footnote 1: Levanda sat side by side with this renegade and informer in
the Commission on the Jewish Question which had been appointed by the
governor-general of Vilna. (See p. 189.)]
One who stuck fast in his denial of Judaism was Grigory Bogrov
(1825-1885). The descendant of a family of rabbis in Poltava, he passed
"from darkness to light" by way of the curious educational institution
of Nicholas' brand, the office of an excise farmer in which he was
employed for a number of years. The enlightened _Aktziznik_ [1] became
conscious of his literary talent late in life. His protracted "Memoirs
of a Jew," largely made up of autobiographic material, were published in
a Russian magazine as late as 1871-1873. [2] They contain an acrimonious
description of Jewish life in the time of Nicholas I. No Jewish artist
had ever yet dipped his brush in colors so dismal and had displayed so
ferocious a hatred as did Bogrov in painting the old Jewish mode of life
within the Pale, with its poverty and darkness, its hunters and victims,
its demoralized Kahal rule of the days of conscription. Bogrov's account
of his childhood and youth is not relieved by a single cheerful
reminiscence, except that of a young _Russian_ girl. The whole
patriarchal life of a Jewish townlet of that period is transformed into
a sort of inferno teeming with criminals or idiots.
[Footnote 1: See p. 186, n. 1.]
[Footnote 2: Shortly afterwards the "Memoirs" were supplemented by
another autobiographic novel, "The Captured Recruit."]
To the mind of Bogrov, only two ways promised an escape from this hell:
the way of cosmopolitanism and rationalism, opening up into humanity at
large, or the way leading into the midst of the Russian nation. Bogrov
himself stood irresolute on this fateful border-line. In 1878 he wrote
to Levanda that as "an emancipated cosmopolitan he would long ago have
crossed over to the opposite shore," where "other sympathies and ideals
smiled upon him," were he not kept within the Jewish fold "by four
million people innocently suffering from systematic persecutions."
Bogrov's hatred of the persecutors of the Jewish people was poured forth
in his historic novel "A Jewish Manuscript" (1876), the plot of which is
based on events of the time of Khmelnitzki. [1] But even here, while
describing, as he himself puts it, the history of the struggle between
the spider and the fly, he finds in the life of the fly nothing worthy
of sympathy except its sufferings. In 1879 Bogrov began a new novel,
"The Scum of the Age," picturing the life of the modern Jewish youth who
were engulfed in the Russian revolutionary propaganda. But the hand
which knew how to portray the horrors of the old conscription was
powerless to reproduce, except in very crude outlines, the world of
political passions which was foreign to the author, and the novel
remained unfinished.
[Footnote 1: See on that period Vol. I, p. 144 et seq.]
The reaction of the eighties produced no change in Bogrov's attitude. He
breathed his last in a distant Russian village, and was buried in a
Russian cemetery, having embraced Christianity shortly before his death,
as a result of a sad concatenation of family circumstances.
Before the young generation which entered upon active life in the
eighties lay the broken tablets of Russian Jewish literature. New
tablets were needed, partly to restore the commandments of the preceding
period of enlightenment, partly to correct its mistakes.