INNER UPHEAVALS
1. DISILLUSIONMENT OF THE INTELLIGENZIA AND
THE NATIONAL REVIVAL
The catastrophe at the beginning of the eighties took the Jews of Russia
unawares, and found them unprepared for spiritual self-defence. The
impressions of the recent brief "era of reforms" were still fresh in
their minds. They still remembered the initial steps of Alexander II's
Government in the direction of the complete civil emancipation of
Russian Jewry, the appeals of the intellectual classes of Russia calling
upon the Jews to draw nearer to them, the bright prospects of a
rejuvenated Russia. The niggardly gifts of the Russian Government were
received by Russian Jewry with an outburst of gratitude and devotion
which bordered on flunkeyism. The intellectual young Jews and Jewesses
who had passed through the Russian public schools made frantic
endeavors, not only towards association but also towards complete
cultural amalgamation with the Russian people. Assimilation and
Russification became the watchwords of the day. The literary ideals of
young Russia became the sacred tablets of the Jewish youth.
But suddenly, lo and behold! that same Russian people, in which the
progressive forces of Jewry were ready to merge their identity, appeared
in the shape of a monster, which belched forth hordes upon hordes of
rioters and murderers. The Government had changed front, and adopted a
policy of reaction and fierce Jew-hatred, while the liberal classes of
Russia showed but scant sympathy with the downtrodden and maltreated
nation. The voice of the hostile press, the _Novoye Vremya_, the _Russ_,
and others, resounded through the air with fall vigor, whereas the
liberal press, owing partly--but only partly--to the tightening grip of
the censor, defended the Jews in a perfunctory manner. Even the
publicists of the radical type, who were principally grouped around the
periodical _Otyechestvennyia Zapiski_ ("Records of the Fatherland"),
looked upon the pogroms merely as the brutal manifestation of an
economic struggle, and viewed the whole complicated Jewish problem, with
all its century-long tragic implications, in the light of a subordinate
social-economic question.
The only one whose soul was deeply stirred by the sight of the new
sufferings of an ancient people was the Russian satirist,
Shchedrin-Saltykov, and he poured forth his, sentiments in the summer of
1882, after the completion of the first cycle of pogroms, in an article
marked by a lyric strain, so different from his usual style. [1] But
Shchedrin was the only Russian writer of prominence who responded to the
Jewish sorrow. Turgenyev and Tolstoi held their peace, whereas the
literary celebrities of Western Europe, Victor Hugo, Renau, and many
others, came forward with passionate protests. The Russian
_intelligenzia_ remained cold in the face of the burning tortures of
Jewry. The educated classes of Russian Jewry were hurt to the quick by
this chilly attitude, and their former enthusiasm gave way to
disillusionment.
[Footnote 1: The article appeared in the _Otyechestvennyia Zapiski_ in
August, 1882. The following sentences in that article are worthy of
re-production: "History has never recorded in its pages a question more
replete, with sadness, more foreign to the sentiments of humanity, and
more filled with tortures than the Jewish question. The history of
mankind as a whole is one endless martyrology; yet at the same time it
is also a record of endless progress. In the records of martyrology the
Hebrew tribe occupies the first place; in the annals of progress it
stands aside, as if the luminous perspectives of history could never
reach it. There is no more heart-rending tale than the story of this
endless torture of man by man."
In the same article the Russian satirist draws a clever parallel between
the merciless Russian _Kulak_, or "boss," who ruins the peasantry, and
the pitiful Jewish "exploiter," the half-starved tradesman, who in turn
is exploited by everyone.]
This disillusionment found its early expression in the lamentations of
repentant assimilators. One of these assimilators, writing in the first
months of the pogroms, makes the following confession:
The cultured Jewish classes have turned their back upon their
history, have forgotten their traditions, and have conceived a
contempt for everything which might make them realize that they are
the members of the "eternal people." With no definite ideals,
dragging their Judaism behind them as a fugitive galley-slave drags
his heavy chain, how could these men justify their belonging to the
tribe of "Christ-killers" and "exploiters"?... Truly pitiful has
become the position of these assimilators, who but yesterday were
the champions of national self-effacement. Life demands
self-determination. To sit between two stools has now become an
impossibility. The logic of events has placed them before the
alternative: either to declare themselves openly as renegades, or to
take their proper share in the sufferings of their people.
Another representative of the Jewish _intelligenzia_ writes in the
following strain to the editor of a Russian-Jewish periodical:
When I remember what has been done to us, how we have been taught to
love Russia and Russian speech, how we have been induced and
compelled to introduce the Russian language and everything Russian,
into our families so that our children know no other language but
Russian, and how we are now repulsed and persecuted, then our hearts
are filled with sickening despair from which there seems to be no
escape. This terrible insult gnaws at my vitals. It may be that I am
mistaken, but I do honestly believe that even if I succeeded in
moving to a happier country where all men are equal, where there are
no pogroms by day and "Jewish commissions" by night, I would yet
remain sick at heart to the very end of my life--to such an extent
do I feel worn out by this accursed year, this universal mental
eclipse which has visited our dear fatherland.
Russian-Jewish literature of that period is full of similar
self-revelations of disillusioned intellectuals. However, this
repentant mood did not always lead to positive results. Some
of these intellectuals, having become part and parcel of Russian
cultural life, were no longer able to find their way back to
Judaism, and they were carried off by the current of assimilation,
culminating in baptism. Others stood at the cross-roads,
wavering between assimilation and Jewish nationalism. Still
others were so stunned by the blow they had received that
they reeled violently backward, and proclaimed as their slogan
the return "home," in the sense of a complete renunciation
of free criticism and of all strivings for inner reforms.
However, in the healthy part of Russian Jewry this change of mind
resulted in turning their ideals definitely in the direction of national
rejuvenation upon modern foundations. The idea of a struggle for
national rejuvenation in Eussia itself had not yet matured. It appeared
as an active force only in the following decade. [1] During the era of
pogroms the salvation of Judaism was primarily associated with the idea
of emigration. The champions of American emigration were prone to
idealize this movement, which had in reality sprung from practical
necessity, and they saw in it, not without justification, the beginning
of a new free center of Judaism in the Diaspora. The Hebrew poet Judah
Leib Gordon [2] addresses "The Daughter of Jacob [the Jewish people],
disgraced by the son of Hamor [the Russian Government]" [3] in the
following words:
[Footnote 1: That idea was subsequently championed by the writer of this
volume. See more about it in Vol. III.]
[Footnote 2: See p. 228 et seq.]
[Footnote 3: An allusion to Gen. 34, with a play on the words
_Bem-hamor,_ "the son of an ass."]
Come, let as go where liberty's light
Doth shine upon all with equal might,
Where every man, without disgrace,
Is free to adhere to his creed and his race,
Where thou, too, shalt no longer fear
Dishonor from brutes, my sister dear![1]
[Footnote 1: From his Hebrew poem _Ahoti Ruhama_, "My Beloved Sister."]
The exponents of American emigration were inspired by the
prospect of an exodus from the land of slavery into the land
of freedom. Many of them looked forward to the establishment
of agricultural and farming settlements in that country
and to the concentration of large Jewish masses in the thinly
populated States of the Union where they hoped the Jews
might be granted a considerable amount of self-government.
Side by side with the striving for a transplantation of Jewish centers
centers within the Diaspora, another idea, which negatives the Diaspora
Diaspora altogether and places in its stead the resuscitation of the
Jewish national center in Palestine, struggled to life amidst the
birth pangs of the pogroms. The first theoretic exponent of this
new movement, called "Love of Zion," [1] was M.L. Lilienblum, who in a
former stage of radicalism had preached the need of religious
reforms in Judaism. [2] As far back as in the autumn of the first pogrom
year Lilienblum published a series of articles in which he interpreted
the idea of Palestinian colonization, which had but recently sprung
to life, in the light of a common national task for the whole of
Jewry. Lilienblum endeavored to show that the root of all the
historic misfortunes of the Jewish people lay in the fact that it
was in all lands an alien element which refuses to assimilate in
its entirety with the dominant nation--with the landlord, as it
were. The landlord tolerates his tenant only so long as he finds him
convenient; let the tenant make the slightest attempt at competing
with the landlord, and he will be promptly evicted. During the Middle
Ages the Jews were persecuted in the name of religious fanaticism.
Now a beginning has been made to persecute them in the name of
national fanaticism, coupled with economic factors, and this "second
chapter of our history will no doubt contain many a bloody page."
[Footnote 1: A translation of the Hebrew term _Hibbat Zion_. In Russian
it was generally termed _Palestinophilstvo_, i.e., "Love of Palestine."]
[Footnote 2: See p. 236 et seq.]
Jewish suffering can only be removed by removing its cause. We must
cease to be strangers in every land of the globe, and establish
ourselves in a country where we ourselves may be the landlords. Such a
country can only be our ancient fatherland, Palestine, which belongs to
us by the right of history. "We must undertake the colonization of
Palestine on so comprehensive a scale that in the course of one century
the Jews may be able to leave inhospitable Europe almost entirely and
settle in the land of our forefathers to which we are legally entitled."
These thoughts, expounded with that simplified logic which will strike
certain types of mind as incontrovertible, were fully attuned to the
sentiments of the Jewish masses which were standing with "girded loins,"
ready for their exodus from, the new Egypt. The emigration societies
formed in the beginning of 1882 counted in their ranks many advocates of
Palestinian colonization. Bitter literary feuds were waged between the
"Americans" and "Palestinians." A young poet, Simon Frug[1], composed
the following enthusiastic exodus march, which he prefaced by the
biblical verse "Speak unto the children of Israel, that they go forward"
(Ex. 14.15):
[Footnote 1: He became later a celebrated poet in Russian and Yiddish.
He died in 1916.]
Thine eyes are keen, thy feet are strong, thy staff is firm--
why then, my nation,
Dost thou on the road stop and droop, thy gray head
lost in contemplation?
Look up and see: in numerous bands
Thy sons return from all the lands.
Forward then march, through a sea of sorrow,
Through a chain of tortures, towards the dawn of the
morrow!
Forward--to the strains of the song of days gone by!
For future ages like thunder to us cry:
"Arise, my people, from thy grave,
And live once more, a nation free and brave!"
And in our ears songs of a _new_ life ring,
And hymns of triumph the storms to as sing.
This march voiced the sentiments of those who dreamed of the Promised
Land--whether it be on the shores of the Jordan or on the banks of the
Mississippi.
2. PINSKER'S "AUTOEMANCIPATION"
The conception of emigration as a means of national rejuvenation, which
had sprung to life amidst the "thunder and lightning" of the pogroms,
found a thoughtful exponent in the person of Dr. Leon Pinsker, a
prominent communal worker in Odessa, who had at one time looked to
assimilation as promising a solution of the Jewish problem. In his
pamphlet "Autoemancipation" (published in September, 1882), which is
marked by profound thinking, Pinsker vividly describes the mental agony
experienced by him at the sight of the physical slavery of the Jewry of
Russia and the spiritual slavery of the emancipated Jewry of Western
Europe. To him the Jewish people in the Diaspora is not a living nation,
but rather the ghost of a nation, haunting the globe and scaring all
living national organisms. The salvation of Judaism can only be brought
about by transforming this ghost into a real being, by re-establishing
the Jewish people upon a territory of its own which might be obtained
through the common endeavor of Jewry and through international Jewish
co-operation in some convenient part of the globe, be it Palestine or
America. Such is the way of Jewish autoemancipation, in
contradistinction from the civic emancipation, which had been bestowed
by the dominant nationalities upon the Jews as an act of grace and which
does not safeguard them against anti-Semitism and the humiliating
position of second-rate citizens. The Jewish people can be restored, if,
instead of many places of refuge scattered all over the globe, it will
be concentrated in one politically guaranteed place of refuge. For this
purpose a general Jewish congress ought to be called which should be
entrusted with the financial and political issues involved in the plan.
The present generation must take the first step towards this national
restoration; posterity will do the rest.
Pinsker's pamphlet, which was written in German and printed abroad [1]
with the intention of appealing to the Jews of Western Europe, failed to
produce any effect upon that assimilated section of the Jewish people.
In Russia, however, it became the catechism of the "Love of Zion"
movement and eventually of Zionism and Territorialism. The theory
expounded in Pinsker's pamphlet made a strong appeal to the Russian
Jews, not only on account of its close reasoning but also because it
gave powerful utterance to that pessimistic frame of mind which seemed
to have seized upon them all. Its weakest point lay in the fact that it
rested on a wrong historic premise and on a narrow definition of the
term "nation" in the sense of a territorial and political organism.
Pinaker seems to have overlooked that the Jews of the Diaspora, taken as
a whole, have not ceased to form a nation, though of a type of its own,
and that in modern political history nations of this "cultural"
complexion have appeared on the scene more and more frequently.
[Footnote 1: The first edition appeared in Berlin, in 1882. It bears the
sub-title: "An Appeal to his Brethren by a Russian Jew," It was
published anonymously.]
Lacking a definite practical foundation, Pinsker's doctrine could not
but accomodate itself to the Palestinian colonization movement, although
its insignificant dimensions were entirely out of proportion to the
far-reaching plans conceived by the author of "Autoemancipation."
Lilienblum and Pinsker were joined by the old nationalist Smolenskin and
the former assimilator Levanda. _Ha-Shahar_ and _ha-Melitx_ in Hebrew
and the _Razsvyet_ in Russian became the literary vehicles of the new
movement. In opposition to these tendencies, the _Voskhod_ of St.
Petersburg[1] reflected the ideas of the progressive Russian-Jewish
_intelligenzia_, and defended their old position which was that of civil
emancipation and inner Jewish reforms. In the middle between these two
extremes stood the Russian weekly _Russki Yevrey_ ("The Russian Jew"),
in St. Petersburg, and the Hebrew weekly _ha-Tzefirah_ ("The Dawn"), in
Warsaw, voicing the moderate views of the Haskalah period, with a
decided bent towards the nationalistic movement.
[Footnote 1: See p. 221, It appeared simultaneously as a weekly and a
monthly.]
3. MISCARRIED RELIGIOUS REFORMS
The storm of pogroms not only broke many young twigs on the tree of
"enlightenment," which had attained to full bloom in the preceding
period, but it also bent others into monstrous shapes. This abnormal
development is particularly characteristic of the idea of religious
reforms in Judaism which sprang to life in the beginning of the
eighties. A fortnight before the pogrom at Yelisavetgrad, which
inaugurated another gloomy chapter in the annals of Russian Jewry, the
papers reported that a new Jewish sect had appeared in that city under
the name of "The Spiritual Biblical Brotherhood." Its members denied all
religious dogmas and ceremonies, and acknowledged only the moral
doctrines of the Bible; they condemned all mercantile pursuits, and
endeavored to live by physical labor, primarily by agriculture.
The founder of this "Brotherhood" was a local teacher and journalist,
Jacob Gordin, who stood at that time under the influence of the
South-Russian Stundists [1] as well as of the socialistic Russian
Populists. [2] The "Spiritual Biblical Brotherhood" was made up
altogether of a score of people. In a newspaper appeal which appeared
shortly after the spring pogroms of 1881 the leader of the sect, hiding
his identity under the pen-name of "A Brother-Biblist," called upon the
Jews to divest themselves, of those character traits and economic
pursuits which excited the hatred of the native population against them:
the love of money, the hunt for barter, usury, and petty trading. This
appeal, which, sounded in unison with the voice of the Russian
Jew-baiters and appeared at a time when the wounds of the pogrom victims
were not yet healed, aroused profound indignation among the Jews.
Shortly afterwards the "Spiritual Biblical Brotherhood" fell asunder.
Some of its members joined a like-minded sect in Odessa which had been
founded there in the beginning of 1883 by a teacher, Jacob Priluker,
under the name of "New Israel."
[Footnote 1: A Russian sect with rationalistic tendencies which are
traceable to Western Protestantism.]
[Footnote 2: See above, p. 222.]
The aim of "New Israel" was to facilitate, by means of radical religious
reforms conceived in the spirit of rationalism, the contact between Jews
and Christians and thereby pave the way for civil emancipation. The
twofold religio-social program of the sect was as follows:
The sect recognizes only the teachings of Moses; it rejects the
Talmud, the dietary laws, the rite of circumcision, and the
traditional form of worship; the day of rest is transferred from
Saturday to Sunday; the Russian language is declared to be the
"native" tongue of the Jews and made obligatory in every-day life;
usury and similar distasteful pursuits are forbidden.
As a reward for all these virtuous endeavors the sect expected from the
Russian Government, which it petitioned to that effect, complete civil
equality for its members, permission to intermarry with Christians, and
the right to wear a special badge by which they were to be marked off
from the "Talmudic Jews." As an expression of gratitude for the
anticipated governmental benefits, the members of the sect pledged
themselves to give their boys and girls who were to be born during the
coming year the names of Alexander or Alexandra, in honor of the Russian
Tzar.
The first religious half of the program of "New Israel" might possibly
have attracted a few adherents. But the second "business-like" part of
it opened the eyes of the public to the true aspirations of these
"reformers," who, in their eagerness for civil equality, were ready to
barter away religion, conscience, and honor, and who did not balk at
betraying such low flunkeyism at a time when the blood of the victims of
the Balta pogrom had not yet dried.
Thus it was that the withering influence of reactionary Judaeophobia
compromised and crippled the second attempt at inner reforms in Judaism.
Both movements soon passed out of existence, and their founders
subsequently left Russia. Gordin went to America, and, renouncing his
sins of youth, became a popular Yiddish playwright. Priluker settled in
England, and entered the employ of the missionaries who were anxious to
propagate Christianity among the Jews. A few years later, during 1884
and 1885, "New Israel" cropped up in a new shape, this time in Kishinev,
where the puny "Congregation of New Testament Israelites" was founded by
I. Rabinovich, having for its aim "the fusion of Judaism with
Christianity." In the house of prayer, in which this "Congregation,"
consisting altogether of ten members, worshipped, sermons were also
delivered by a Protestant clergyman.
A few years later this new missionary device was also abandoned. The
pestiferous atmosphere which surrounded Russian-Jewish life at that time
could do no more than produce these poisonous growths of "religious
reform." For the wholesome seeds of such a reform were bound to wither
after the collapse of the ideals which had served as a lode star during
the period of "enlightenment."