Volume II Part 16 (1/2)
[Footnote 3: Famous publicist and author, died 1889.]
[Footnote 4: A famous literary critic, died 1861.]
This change of att.i.tude may well be ill.u.s.trated by the following incident. In 1858 the magazine _Ill.u.s.tratzia_ (”Ill.u.s.tration”) 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 _Ill.u.s.tratzia_ showered a torrent of abuse upon the two authors who were contemptuously styled ”Reb Chatzkin” and ”Reb Horvitz,”
and whose pro-Jewish att.i.tude 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 _Ill.u.s.tratzia_ was condemned in a public protest which bore the signatures of 140 writers, including some of the most ill.u.s.trious 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” pa.s.s 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 a.s.sumption that the Jews of Russia formed part of the Russian people.
Several sympathetic articles in influential periodicals, advocating the necessity of Jewish emanc.i.p.ation, 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 emanc.i.p.ation 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 friends.h.i.+p 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 _gymn.a.z.ia_ 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 yes.h.i.+bahs 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 ma.s.ses 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 t.i.tle 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 superst.i.tion, to ridicule the ignorance and credulity of the ma.s.ses, and occasionally went so far as to complain of the burdensome ceremonial discipline, hinting at the need of moderate religious reforms. Their princ.i.p.al 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 emanc.i.p.ated 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 pa.s.sed 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 circ.u.mstances, to a.s.sume a radical form, while the champions of extreme Russification saw no harm for Jewry in following the example of complete a.s.similation 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 superst.i.tion of the hasidic environment, against the charlatanism of degenerating Tzaddikism, against the impenetrable religious fanaticism which was throttling the n.o.blest 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 a.s.similation, 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 role 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 ma.s.ses by their ostentatious disregard of the Jewish religious ceremonies. When the communities refused to appoint rabbis of this cla.s.s, 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 ma.s.ses 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 ma.s.ses, 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 censors.h.i.+p, 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 ma.s.ses 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 a.s.similationist tendencies sprang up among the upper cla.s.s of Jews in the Kingdom of Poland, more especially in Warsaw.
It was a most repellent variety of a.s.similation, exhibiting more flunkeyism than pursuit of culture. The ”Poles of the Mosaic Persuasion,” as these a.s.similationists 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 a.s.similationists, 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 professors.h.i.+p 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 const.i.tutes the misfortune alluded to.”
[Footnote 1: p.r.o.nounce _Yutzhenka_.]
After the insurrection, the Polonization of the Jewish population a.s.sumed 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 ma.s.ses, 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 Gunzburg, 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 a.s.surances 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.