The Haskalah Movement in Russia

To have a scholarly son or son-in-law was the best passport to the highest circles, a means of rising from the lowliest to the loftiest station in life.

It is no wonder, then, that schools abounded in every community. At the early age of four the child was usually sent to the heder (school; literally, room), where he studied until he was ready for the yeshibah, the higher "seat" of learning. The melammedim, teachers, were graded according to their ability, and the school year consisted of two terms, zemannim, from the first Sabbath after the Holy Days to Passover and from after Passover to Rosh ha-Shanah. The boy's intellectual capacities were steadily, if not systematically, cultivated, sometimes at the expense of his bodily development. It was not unusual for a child of seven or eight to handle a difficult problem in the Talmud, a precocity characteristic to this day of the children hailing from Slavonic countries. Their 'illuyim (prodigies) might furnish ample material for more than one volume of les enfants célèbres.

Nor were the children of the poor left to grow up in ignorance. Learning was free, to be had for the asking. More than this, stringent measures were taken that no child be without instruction. Talmud Torahs were founded even in the smallest kehillot (communities), and the students were supplied, not only with books, but also with the necessaries of life. Communal and individual benefactors furnished clothes, and every member (ba'al ha-bayit) had to provide food and lodging for an indigent pupil at least one day of each week. The "Freitisch" (free board) was an inseparable adjunct to every school. Poor young men were not regarded as "beggar students." They were looked upon as earning their living by study, even as teachers by instructing. To pray for the dead or the living in return for their support is a recent innovation, and mostly among other than Slavonic Jews. It is a custom adopted from medieval Christianity, and practiced in England by the poor student, who, in the words of Chaucer,

For a faithful and vivid description of the yeshibot we cannot do better than transcribe the account given in the pages of the little pamphlet Yeven Mezulah in which Nathan Hannover, mentioned above, has left us a reliable history of the Cossack uprisings and the Kulturgeschichte of his own time.

I need bring no proof for the statement that nowhere was the study of the Law so universal as in Russo-Poland. In every community there was a well-paid dean (rosh yeshibah), who, exempt from worry about a livelihood, devoted himself exclusively to teaching and studying by day and by night. In every kahal, many youths, maintained liberally, studied under the guidance of the dean. In turn, they instructed the less advanced, who were also supported by the community. A kahal of fifty [families] had to provide for at least thirty such. They boarded and lodged in the homes of their patrons, and frequently received pocket-money in addition. Thus there was hardly a house in which the Torah was not studied, either by the master of the house, a son, a son-in-law, or a student stranger. They always bore in mind the dictum of Rabba, "He who loves scholars will have scholarly sons; he who welcomes scholars will have scholarly sons-in-law; he who admires scholars will become learned himself." No wonder, then, that every community swarmed with scholars, that out of every fifty of its members at least twenty were far advanced, and had the morenu (i.e. bachelor) degree.

The dean was vested with absolute authority. He could punish an offender, whether rich or poor. Everybody respected him, and he often received gifts of money or valuables. In all religious processions he came first. Then followed the students, then the learned, and the rest of the congregation brought up the rear. This veneration for the dean prompted many a youth to imitate his example, and thus our country was rendered full of the knowledge of the Law.

What became of the students when they were graduated? Let us turn once more to Hannover's interesting narrative. The "fairs" of those days were much more than opportunities for barter; they afforded favorable and attractive occasions for other objects. Zaslav and Yaroslav during the summer, Lemberg and Lublin in the winter, were "filled with hundreds of deans and thousands of students," and one who had a marriageable daughter had but to resort thither to have his worries allayed. Therefore, "Jews and Jewesses attended these bazaars in magnificent attire, and [each season] several hundred, sometimes as many as a thousand, alliances were consummated."

That the rabbi, living in a strange land and recalling a glorious past, should have indulged in a bit of exaggeration in his sorrowful retrospect, is not more than natural; and that his picture on the whole is true is proved by similar schools which existed in Russia till recently. The descriptions of these institutions by Smolenskin as well as writers of less repute are graphic and intensely interesting. They constituted a unique world, in which the Jewish youth lived and moved until he reached man's estate. In later years, when Russian Jewry became infected, so to speak, with the Aufklärungs-bacilli, they became the nurseries of the new learning. But in the earlier time, too, a spirit of enlightenment pervaded them. The study of the Talmud fostered in them was regarded both as a religious duty and as a means to an end, the rabbinate. Even in the Middle Ages Aristotle was a favorite with the older students, and Solomon Luria complained that in the prayer books of many of them he had noticed the prayer of Aristotle, for which he blamed the liberal views of Moses Isserles!⁴⁰

Another typically, though not exclusively, Slavonic Jewish institution was the study-hall, or bet ha-midrash. As the synagogues gradually became Schulen (schools), so, by a contrary process, the bet ha-midrash assumed the function of a house of prayer. Its uniqueness it has retained to this day. It was at once a library, a reading-room, and a class-room; yet those who frequented it were bound by the rigorous laws of none of the three. There were no restrictions as to when, or what, or how one should study. It was a place in which originality was admired and research encouraged. As at a Spartan feast, youth and age commingled, men of all ages and diverse attainments exchanged views, and all benefited by mutual contact.

Those whose position precluded devotion to study availed themselves at least of the means for mutual improvement at their disposal. They organized societies for the study of certain branches of Jewish lore, and for the meetings of these societies the busiest spared time and the poorest put aside his work. It was a people composed of scholars and those who maintained scholars, and the scholars, in dress and appearance, represented the aristocracy, an aristocracy of the intellect.

Such was the pre-Haskalah period. From the meagre data at our disposal we are justified in concluding, that, left undisturbed, the Slavonic Jews would have evolved a civilization rivalling, if not surpassing, that of the golden era of the Spanish Jews. But this was not to be. Their onward march met a sudden and terrific check. Hetman Chmielnicki at the head of his savage hordes of Russians and Tatars conquered the Poles, and Jews and Catholics were subjected to the most inhuman treatment. The descendants of those who, in 1090, had escaped the Crusaders fell victims in 1648 to the more cruel Cossacks. About half a million Jews, it is estimated, lost their lives in Chmielnicki's horrible massacres. The few communities remaining were utterly demoralized. The education of the young was neglected, both sacred and secular branches of study were abandoned. And when the storm calmed down, they found themselves deprived of the accumulations of centuries, forced, like Noah after the deluge, but without his means, to start again from the very beginning. Indeed, as Levinsohn remarks, the wonder is that, despite the fiendish persecution they endured, these unfortunates should have preserved a spark of love of knowledge. Yet a little later it was to burst into flame again and bring light and warmth to hearts crushed by "man's inhumanity to man."

(Notes, pp. 305-310.)

CHAPTER II

THE PERIOD OF TRANSITION

1648-1794

The storm of persecution that had been brewing in the sixteenth century, and which burst in all its fury by the middle of the seventeenth century, was allayed but little by the rivers of blood that streamed over the length and breadth of the Slavonic land. Half a million Jewish victims were not sufficient to satisfy the followers of a religion of love. They only whetted their insatiable appetite. The anarchy among the Gentiles increased the misery of the Jews. The towns fell into the hands of the Lithuanians, Poles, Russians, and Tatars successively, and it was upon the Jews that the hounds of war were let loose at each defeat or conquest. Determined to exterminate each other, they joined forces in exterminating the Jews. When Bratzlav, for instance, was destroyed by the Tatars, in 1479, more than four hundred of its six hundred Jewish citizens were slain. When the city was attacked by the Cossacks in 1569, the greater number of the plundered and murdered were Jews. The same happened when Chmielnicki gained the upper hand in Bratzlav in 1648, again when the Russians slaughtered all the inhabitants in 1664, and when the Tatars plotted against their victorious enemy, Peter the Great.¹ Swedish attacks without and popular uprisings within rendered the Polish pan (dubbed among Jews poriz, rowdy or ruffian) as reckless as he was irresponsible. The Jew became for him a sponge to be squeezed for money, and a clown to contribute to his brutal amusements. The subtle and baneful influence of the Jesuits succeeded, besides, in introducing religion into politics and making the Jew the scapegoat for the evils of both. The Judaeus infidelis was the target of abuse and persecution. It was only the fear that the Government's exchequer might suffer that prevented his being turned into a veritable slave. His condition, indeed, was worse than slavery; his life was worth less than a beast's. It was frequently taken for the mere fun of it, and with impunity. An overseer once ordered all Jewish mothers living on the estate to climb to the tree-tops and leave their little ones below. He then fired at the children, and when the women fell from the trees at the horrible sight, he presented each with a piece of money, and thanked them for the pleasure they had afforded him.²

In the cities, though the pan's excesses were bound to be somewhat bridled there, the lot of the Jews was equally gloomy. They were treated like outlaws, were forbidden to engage in all but a few branches of trade or handicraft, or to live with Christians, or employ them as servants. In 1720 they were prohibited to build new synagogues or even repair the old ones. Sometimes the synagogues were locked "by order of ..." until a stipulated amount of money bought permission to reopen them. We of to-day can hardly imagine what pain a Jew of that time experienced when he hastened to the house of God on one of the great Holy Days only to find its doors closed by the police!

Their status was no better in Lithuania and Great Russia. The accession of Ivan IV, the Terrible (1533-1584), dealt their former comparative prosperity a blow from which it has not recovered to this day. As if to remove the impression of liberalism made by his predecessor and obliterate from memory his amicable relations with Doctor Leo, de Guizolfi, and Chozi Kolos, this monster czar, with the fiendishness of a Caligula, but lacking the accomplishments of his heathen prototype, delighted to invent tortures for inoffensive Jews. He expelled them from Moscow, and deprived them of the right of travel from place to place. During his occupancy of Polotsk he ordered all Jews residing there either to become converts to Greek Catholicism or choose between being drowned in the Dwina and burnt at the stake.

But even the removal of the terrible czar and the dawn of the century of reason and humanitarianism failed to effect a change for the better in the condition of the Slavonic Jews. For a while it appeared as if the Zeitgeist might penetrate even into Russo-Poland, and the Renaissance and the Reformation would not pass over the eastern portion of Europe without beneficent results. In Lithuania Calvinism threatened to oust Catholicism, science and culture began to be pursued, and Jewish and Gentile children attended the same schools. The successors of Ivan IV were men of better breeding, and the praiseworthy attempts of Peter the Great to introduce Western civilization are known to all.³ But Slavonic soil has never been susceptible to the elevating influences that have transformed the rest of Europe. Every reformatory effort was nipped in the bud. The lot of the Jews accordingly grew from bad to worse. In 1727 they were expelled from the Ukraine and other provinces, and they were recalled, "for the benefit of the citizens," only at the instance of Apostol, the hetman of the very Cossacks that had massacred them in 1648. Baruch Leibov was burned alive in St. Petersburg, in 1738, for having dared "insult the Christian religion by building a synagogue in the village of Zvyerovichi," an offence that was aggravated by the suspicion that he had converted the Russian Captain Vosnitzin to Judaism. The same fate was, in 1783, meted out to Moses, a Jewish tailor, for refusing to accept Christianity, and in 1790 a Jew was quartered in Grodno, though the king had declined to sign his death warrant. In some places Jews had to contribute towards the maintenance of churches, and in Slutsk the law, enacted there in 1766, remains unrevoked to this day. Elizabeta Petrovna did not imitate Ivan III. When she discovered that Sanchez, her physician, was of the Jewish persuasion, she discharged him without notice, after eighteen years of faithful service. Similarly, when the Livonian merchants remonstrated, maintaining that the exclusion of Jews from their fairs was fraught with disastrous consequences to the commerce of the country, she is reported to have replied, "From the enemies of Christ I will not receive even a benefit."⁴

But worse things were yet to come, the worst since Chmielnicki's massacres. The bitterness of both Poles and Russians against the Jews grew especially intense as the days of the rozbior, the Partition of Poland, drew near (1794). The Poles, forgetting the many examples of loyalty and self-sacrifice shown by Jews in times of peace and war, suspected them of being treacherous and unreliable; while the Russians, though denying the patriotism of their own Jews, persisted in the accusation that Polish Jews spent money lavishly in fomenting rebellion and anarchy. The pupils of the Jesuits found great delight in attacks upon the Jews, which frequently culminated in riot and bloodshed and the payment of money by Jews to Catholic institutions. "What appalling spectacles," exclaims a Christian writer, "must we witness in the capital [Warsaw] on solemn holidays. Students and even adults in noisy mobs assault the Jews, and sometimes beat them with sticks. We have seen a gang waylay a Jew, stop his horses, and strike him till he fell from the wagon. How can we look with indifference on such a survival of barbarism?" The commonest manifestations of hatred and superstition, however, were, as in other countries, the charge that Jews were magicians, using the black art to avenge themselves on their persecutors, and that they used Christian blood for their observance of the Passover. The latter crime, the imputing of which was sternly prohibited by an edict of the liberal Bathory, in 1576, was so frequently laid at their door, that in the short period of sixty years (1700-1760) not less than twenty such accusations were brought against them, ending each time in the massacre of Jews by infuriated mobs. Even more shocking, if possible, was the frequent extermination of whole communities by the brigand bands known as Haidamacks. They added the "Massacre of Uman" (1768) to the Jewish calendar of misfortunes, the most terrible slaughter, equalled, perhaps, only by that of Nemirov in 1648.⁵

That all this should have left a marked impression on the mentality and intellectuality of the Jews, is little to be wondered at. The marvel is that they should have maintained their superiority over their surroundings, and continued to be a law-abiding and God-fearing people. While among the Russians and Poles the nobles who learned to read or write formed a rare exception, there was hardly one among the Jews, the very lowliest of them, who could not read Hebrew, and even translate it into the vernacular. Maimon tells us that in his early youth he became the family tutor of "a miserable farmer in a still more miserable village," who yet was ambitious of giving his children an education of some kind.

Fortunately for the Jews of those times—says a writer—their civilization was by far superior to that of the Christians. The rabbi, though in no way inferior to the priest mentally, was immeasurably above him morally. The students of the yeshibot, despite their exclusive devotion to the study of the Talmud, yet were better equipped for intellectual work, were of broader minds and better manners, than the pupils of the Jesuits. And the Jewish ba'ale battim, with an education as good as that of the Gentile shlyakhta, had a more ennobling and elevating object in life.⁶

It is remarkable how quickly they recuperated from the blows they received. In 1648 thousands of people were killed, whole communities exterminated, Volhynia, Podolia, and a great part of Lithuania utterly ruined. In 1660, in those very places, we hear again of Jewish settlements, with synagogues and schools and a system of education of the kind described in the preceding chapter, and we hear of the Council of Lithuania struggling to re-establish and cement the shattered foundation of their self-government. Yet all their efforts improved the demoralized condition of the country but little. As always in national crises, the individual was sacrificed to the community, and deprived of the few rights remaining to him. The kehillot became brutally oppressive. There were no longer men of the stamp of Abraham Rapoport, Solomon Luria, Mordecai Jaffe, and Meïr Katz, to put their feet on the neck of tyranny. Without special permission no one could buy or sell, or move from one place to another, or learn a trade or practice a profession. Rabbinism became synonymous with rigorism, the coercion of untold customs became unbearable, and the spirit of Judaism was lost in a heap of innumerable rites. The Jew's every act had to be sanctioned by religion. He knew of the outward world only from the heavy taxes he paid in order to be allowed to exist, and from the bloody riots with which his people was frequently visited.

What could result from such a state of affairs but poverty, material and spiritual, with all the suffering it engenders? Those at the head of the kehillot, being responsible solely to the Government, often had to deliver the full tale of bricks like the Jewish overseers in Egypt, though no straw was given to them. On one occasion Rabbi Mikel of Shkud was arrested because the kahal could not pay the thousand gulden it owed. In 1767, the whole kahal of Vilna went to Warsaw to protest against intolerable taxation. Such protests were usually of little avail. On the other hand, a few powerful families throve at the expense of their oppressed coreligionists. This aroused a spirit of animosity and a clamor for the abolition of the kahal institution. Jewish autonomy was more and more encroached upon. Rabbinates were bought and sold, and the aid of the Government was invoked in religious controversies. A question regarding the preferable form of prayer was submitted to the decision of Paul I. In 1777, Prince Radziwill decided who should officiate as rabbi in so important a centre of Judaism as Vilna,⁷ and in 1804 the Government issued a "regulation" depriving the kahal of its judicial functions altogether.

What was even more disastrous was the spiritual poverty of the masses. Seldom have the awful warnings of the great lawgiver been fulfilled so literally as during the eighteenth century:

And upon them that remain of you, I will send a faintness into their hearts in the land of their enemies; and the sound of a shaken leaf shall chase them; and they shall flee as fleeing from a sword; and they shall fall, when none pursueth. And they shall fall one upon another, as it were before a sword, when none pursueth: and ye shall have no power to stand before your enemies (Lev. 26: 36-37).

But the Lord shall give thee there a trembling heart, and failing of eyes, and sorrow of mind. And thy life shall hang in doubt before thee; and thou shalt fear day and night, and thou shalt have none assurance of thy life (Deut. 29: 65-66).

Having learned from sad experience that there was no crime their foes were incapable of perpetrating, they gave credence to every rumor as to an established fact. A report that boys and girls were to be prohibited from marrying before a certain age resulted in behalot (panics), during which children of the tenderest ages were united as husband and wife (1754, 1764, 1793). Mysticism became rampant. "Messiah" after "Messiah" "revealed" himself as the one promised to redeem Israel from all his troubles. Love of God began to be tinged with fear of the devil, and incantations to take the place of religious belief. The Zohar and works full of superstition, such as the Kab ha-Yashar, Midrash Talpiyot, and Nishmat Hayyim, the first studied by men, the others by both sexes, but mostly by women, prepared their minds for all sorts of mongrel beliefs. "In no land," says Tobias Cohn, "is the practice of summoning up devils and spirits by means of the Cabbalistic abracadabra so prevalent, and the belief in dreams and visions so strong, as in Poland."⁸ All this, though it strengthened religious fervor in some, undermined it in others. Sects came into being, struggled, and, having brought added misery upon their followers, disappeared. Jewish criminals escaped justice by invoking the power of the Catholic priesthood and promising to become converted to Christianity.⁹ And now and then even Talmudists left the fold, as, for instance, Carl Anton, the Courland pupil of Eybeschütz, who became professor of Hebrew at Hamsted, and wrote numerous works on Judaism. Others hoped to win the favor of the Gentiles by preaching a mixture of Judaism and Catholicism. In many places, especially in the Ukraine, the seat of learning that had suffered most from the ravages of the Cossacks, the state of morals sank very low, owing to the teaching of Jacob Querido, the self-proclaimed son of the pseudo-Messiah Shabbataï Zebi, "that the sinfulness of the world can be overcome only by a super-abundance of sin." This paved the way for the last of the long list of Messiahs, Jacob (Yankev Leibovich) Frank of Podolia. His experiences, adventures, and hairbreadth escapes, his entire career, beginning with his return from his travels in Turkey, through his conversion to Catholicism (1759), to the day of his death as "Baron von Offenbach," would furnish material for a stirring drama. As if to counteract this demoralizing tendency, a new sect, known as Hasidim, originating in Lithuania and headed by Judah Hasid of Dubno and Hayyim Malak, taught its devotees to hasten the advent of the Messiah by doing penance for the sins of Israel. They were so firmly convinced of the efficacy of fasts and prayers that they went to Jerusalem by hundreds to witness the impending redemption (ab. 1706). But the ascetic Hasidim and the epicurean Frankists were alike doomed to disappear or to be swallowed up by a new Hasidism, combining the teachings and aspirations of both, the sect founded by Israel Baal Shem, or Besht (ab. 1698-1759), and fully developed by Bar of Meseritz and Jacob Joseph of Polonnoy.

Time was when all writers on the subject, usually Maskilim, thought it their duty to cast a stone at Hasidism. They described it as a Chinese wall shutting the Jews in and shutting the world out. It is becoming more and more plainly recognized and admitted, that it was, in reality, an attempt at reform rendered imperative by the tyranny of the kahal, the rigorism of the rabbis, the superciliousness of the learned classes, and the superstition of the masses. Its aim was to bring about a deep psychologic improvement, to change not so much the belief as the believer. It insisted on purity rather than profundity of thought. Unable to remove the galling yoke, it gave strength to its wearers by prohibiting sadness and asceticism, and emphasizing joy and fellowship as important elements in the fabric of its theology.

Hasidism was thus a plant the seeds of which had been sown by the various sects. Like the former Hasidim, or even the Assideans of nearly two thousand years before, their latter-day namesakes rigidly adhered to the laws of Levitical purification, and, to a certain extent, led a communistic life. In addition they accepted, in a modified form, certain customs and beliefs of the Catholic church that had been adopted by the followers of Frank. The prayers to the saints (zaddikim), the conception of faith as the fountain of salvation, even the belief in a trinity consisting of the Godhead, the Shekinah, and the Holy Ghost, these and other exotic doctrines introduced by the Cabbala took root and grew in the vineyard of Hasidism.¹⁰

The founder of the sect has an interesting history. In his childhood he gave no evidence of future greatness. His education was of a low order, but his feeling heart and sympathetic soul won him the esteem of all that knew him. The woods possessed the same charm for him as for Wordsworth or Whitman. With the latter especially he seems to have much in common. While a child, he absented himself frequently from the narrow and noisy heder, and spent the day in the quiet of the neighboring woods. When he grew up, he accepted the menial position of a school usher. His office was to go from house to house, arouse the sleeping children, dress them, and bring them to heder. But the time soon came when humble and obscure Israel "revealed" himself to the world. Owing to his tact and knowledge of human nature, combined with the conditions of the times, his teachings spread rapidly. He was speedily crowned with the glory of a "good name" (Baal Shem Tob), and in the end he was immortalized.

From such a man we can expect only originality, not profundity. Indeed, his whole life was a protest against the subtleties of the Talmudists and the ceremonies, meaningless to him, which they introduced into Judaism. His object was to remove the petrified rabbinical restrictions (gezerot) and develop the emotional side of the Jew in their stead. He was primarily a man of action, and had little love for the rabbis, their passivity, world-weariness, and pride of intellect. It is said that when he "overheard the sounds of eager, loud discussions issuing from a rabbinical college, closing his ears with his hands, [he] declared that it was such disputants who delayed the redemption of Israel from captivity." Men like these, who study the Law for the sake of knowing, not of feeling, cannot claim any merit for it. They deserve to be called "Jewish devils." Only he is worthy of reward who is virtuous rather than innocent, who does what he is afraid to do, who, as Jacob Joseph of Polonnoy puts it, "acquires evil thoughts and converts them into holy ones." No asceticism for him. All kinds of human feelings deserve our respect, for it is not the body that feels but the soul, and the soul, "being a part of God on high, cannot possibly have an absolutely bad tendency." Men may not be heresy-hunters and fault-finders, for none is free from heresy and faults himself: the face he brings to the mirror, he finds reflected in it. Yea, even the followers of Abraham possess evil propensities, and noble qualities frequently belong to the disciples of Balaam himself.¹¹

These democratic principles put the most ignorant Jew in Russia on an equality with the erudite Lithuanian. No wonder that they obtained such strong hold on the people of the Ukraine, the province shorn of all its glory. Hasidism invaded Podolia and Volhynia, swept over Galicia and Hungary, and found adherents even in many a large community in Western Russia and Prussia. It brought cheer and happiness in its wake, and rendered the unfortunate Jew forgetful of his misery. Gottlober maintains that the inspiring melodies of the Hasidic hymns were largely responsible for the spread of the movement, even as Moody attributed the success of his revivals to the singing of Sankey. For, as Doctor Schechter has it, "the Besht was a religious revivalist in the best sense, full of burning faith in his God and his cause; convinced of the value of his teaching and his truth."¹²

One province there was to which the Besht could not penetrate, at least not without a long siege and great losses. In Lithuania the inroads of Hasidism were strenuously opposed, and its advance disputed step by step. The Lithuanian Jews, to whom the Talmud was as dear as ever, could not countenance a movement sprung, as they believed, from the seed sown by Shabbataï Zebi, an opponent of the Talmud, and by Jacob Frank, at whose instigation the Bishop of Kamenetz ordered the Talmud to be publicly burnt.¹³

The opponents (Mitnaggedim) of Hasidism were headed by a leader who was as typical an exponent of the cause he espoused as the Besht was of his. Among the students of Jewish literature since the close of the Talmud, few have surpassed, or even equalled, Elijah of Vilna (1720-1797). Not inappropriately he was called Gaon and Hasid, for in mental and moral attainments he was unique in his generation. As the Besht was noted in his early life for dulness and indifference, so Elijah was remarkable for diligence and versatility. His life, like the Besht's, became the nucleus of many wonderful tales, which his biographer narrates with painstaking exactness. They present the picture of a man diametrically different from Israel Baal Shem Tob. Every year, we are told, added to the marvellous development of the young intellectual giant. When he was six years old, none but Rabbi Moses Margolioth, the renowned Talmudist and author, was competent enough to teach him. At seven, he worsted the chief rabbi of his native city in a Talmudic discussion. At nine, there was nothing in Jewish literature with which he was not familiar, and he turned to other studies to satisfy his craving for knowledge. And at thirteen, he was acknowledged by his fellows as the greatest of Talmudists.¹⁴ He had neither guide nor teacher. All unaided he discovered the path of truth. He held neither a rabbinical nor any other public office. He was as retiring as the Besht was aggressive. Nevertheless his word was law, and his influence immense. The centenary of his death (1897) was celebrated among all classes with the solemnity which the memories of "men of God" inspire.¹⁵

Now, this Gaon of Vilna, or Hagra, was perhaps no less dissatisfied with prevailing conditions than the Besht, but his remedy for them was as different as the two personalities were unlike. He did not desire to abolish the Talmud, but rather to render it more attractive, by making its acquisition easier and putting its study on a scientific basis. Even in Lithuania, the citadel of the Talmud, the development of Talmudic learning had been hampered. In accordance with a Talmudic principle, mankind is continually degenerating, not only physically, but morally and mentally as well. It holds that if "the ancients were angels, we are mere men; if they were but men, we are asses." This high regard for antiquity produced a belief in the infallibility of the rabbis on the part of the Mitnaggedim, similar to that in their zaddikim by the Hasidim. No scholar of a later generation dared disagree with the statement of a rabbi of a previous generation. But as authorities sometimes conflict with each other, the Talmudists regarded it their duty to reconcile them or to prove, in the words of the ancient sages, that "these as well as those are the words of the living God." Similarly, the popes declared that, despite their contradictions, the Biblical translations of Sixtus V and Clement VIII were both correct.

It is true that Lithuanian Talmudists were not always the slaves of authority which they ultimately became. A study of the works of the early Slavonian rabbis, before and after Rabbi Polack, shows that they were free from unhealthy awe of their predecessors, and sometimes were audaciously independent. Neither Solomon Luria (Maharshal), Samuel Edels (Maharsha), or Meïr Lublin (Maharam) refrained from criticising and amending whenever they deemed it necessary. But in the course of time the casuistic method, originally a mere pastime, became the approved method of study, and produced what is known as pilpul. Scholars wasted days and nights in heaping Ossa upon Pelion, in reconciling difficulties which no logic could harmonize. Here the Gaon found the first and most urgent need for reform. The Talmudists, he declared, were not infallible. Every one may interpret the Mishnah in accordance with reason, even if the interpretation be not in keeping with the traditional meaning as construed by the Amoraim.¹⁶

His views on religion were equally liberal. The same process of reasoning which, spun out to its logical conclusion, led to pilpul in the schools, produced, when turned into the channel of religion, the over-piety culminating in the Shulhan 'Aruk. This remarkable book, with the euphonious name The Ready Table, prescribed enough regulations to keep one busy from early morning till late at night. The Jews found themselves bound hand and foot by ceremonial trammels and weighted down by a burden of innumerable customs. The spirit of freedom that had animated Slavonian Judaism during the Middle Ages had fled. The breadth of view that had marked the decision of many of its rabbis was gone.¹⁷ Judaism was a mere mummy of its former self. Here, too, the Gaon came to the rescue. Rightly or wrongly, he "established the importance of Minhagim [religious ceremonies] according to their antiquity or primitivism, regarding those which have originated since the codification of the Shulhan 'Aruk as not binding at all; those which have been adopted since the Talmudic period to be subject to change by common consent; while those of the Bible and in the Talmud were to him fundamental and unalterable."¹⁸

But the Gaon's influence on the Haskalah movement by far surpassed his influence on the study of the Talmud or on the ceremonials of the synagogue. Many, in point of fact, regard him as the originator of the movement. As he was the first to oppose the authority of the Talmudists, so he was the first to inveigh against the educational system among the Jews of his day and country. The mania for distinction in rabbinical learning plunged the child into the mazes of Talmudic casuistry as soon as he could read; frequently he had not read the Bible or studied the rudiments of grammar. The Gaon insisted that every one should first master the twenty-four books of the Bible, their etymology, prosody, and syntax, then the six divisions of the Mishnah with the important commentaries and the suggested emendations, and finally the Talmud in general, without wasting much time on pilpul, which brings no practical result. "These few lines," says a writer, "contain a more thorough course of study than Wessely suggested in his Words of Peace and Truth. Though they did not entirely change the system in vogue—for great is the power of habit—they produced a wholesome effect, which was visible in a short time among the people." Furthermore, the Gaon exhorted the Talmudists to study secular science, since, "if one is ignorant of the other sciences, one is a hundredfold more ignorant of the sciences of the Torah, for the two are inseparably connected." He set the example by writing, not only on the most important Hebrew books, Biblical, Talmudic, and Cabbalistic, but also on algebra, geometry, trigonometry, astronomy, and grammar.¹⁹ And his example served as an impetus and encouragement to the Maskilim in spreading knowledge among their coreligionists.

Such was the man who led the crusade against the converts to Hasidism. But even he could not stem the current. In their despair, the Lithuanian Jews turned to their coreligionists in Germany, and implored their assistance in eradicating, or at least suppressing, the threatened invasion. The great learning and literary ability of the "divine philosopher, Rabbi Moses ben Menahem" (Mendelssohn, 1729-1786), were appealed to for help. Not a stone was left unturned to crush the new sect (kat), so called. Volumes of the Toledot Ya'akob Yosef, in which Rabbi Jacob Joseph of Polonnoy set forth the principles of the Besht, were burnt in the market-place in Vilna. Intermarriage, social intercourse of any kind, was prohibited between Hasidim and Mitnaggedim. In Vilna, Grodno, Brest, Slutsk, Minsk, Pinsk, etc., the ban was hurled against the dissenters by the most prominent rabbis. Israel was divided into two hostile camps.²⁰ But soon everything was changed. Hasidim and Mitnaggedim discovered that while they were fighting each other, a common enemy was undermining the ground on which they stood. The Haskalah was steadily drawing recruits from both, and it threatened ultimately to become more dangerous to both than they were to each other.

From the South had come the impulse of religious revivalism through the followers of the Besht, and the North was showing signs of awakening through the reforms of the Gaon. At the same time a ray of enlightenment from the West pierced through the night. To make the regeneration of Slavonic Judaism complete, the element of estheticism had to be added to emotionalism and reason. From the warm South came Besht, from the studious North Hagra, and Rambman (Mendelssohn) made his appearance from the enlightened West. The triumvirate was complete.

Not that Mendelssohn ever visited or resided in Russo-Poland. But the gentle, cultured little savant of Berlin, with whose lips, Carlyle tells us, Socrates spoke like Socrates in German as in no other modern language, "for his own character was Socratic," was at no period of his life wholly cut off from influencing Slavonic Jews and from being influenced by them. As a lad Mendelssohn was instructed by Israel Moses Halevi of Zamoscz (ab. 1700-1772). This teacher of his, who is credited with several inventions, and of whom Lessing says, in a letter to Mendelssohn, that he was "one of the first to arouse a love for science in the hearts of Jews," imbued him with love for philosophy. When Mendelssohn emerged from obscurity, and, despite ill-health and ignorance, attained culture and breeding, his associate, who was with him the most important factor in German Haskalah, was the renowned Naphtali, or Hartwig, Wessely, whose grandfather Joseph Reis had been among the fugitives from the Cossack massacres in 1648. And when he became famous, and took his place among the greatest of his age, he still sought diversion and instruction among the Slavonian Jews, and boasted of being a descendant of one of them, Moses Isserles of Cracow. As formerly with the Talmud, the Haskalah seemed, at the time of Mendelssohn, to be moving from the East westward, through the agency of the Slavonic Jews pouring perennially into Germany. Positions, from the lowly melammed's to the honorable chief rabbi's in prominent communities, were filled almost exclusively by them. The cause of Judaism seems to have been entrusted to them. Ezekiel Landau, whose tactful intercession helped greatly to establish peace between the Emden-Eybeschütz factions, was rabbi of Prague for almost forty years (1755-1793); the equally prominent, but at first somewhat less liberal Phinehas Horowitz was rabbi and dean in Frankfort-on-the-Main for over thirty years (1771-1805); his brother Shmelke, regarded as a saint, was chief rabbi of Moravia (1775). Another Horwitz, Aaron Halevi, was rabbi of Berlin, one of those who favored Mendelssohn's translation of the Pentateuch; while the cultured and profound Talmudist Raphael Hakohen, whose grandson, Gabriel Riesser, became the greatest champion of Jewish emancipation Germany has yet produced, was offered the rabbinate of Berlin (1771). He declined the post, and finally became chief rabbi (1776-1803) of the united congregations of Altona, Hamburg, and Wandsbeck. It is also recorded that Samuel ben Avigdor, the last rabbi of Vilna, held the rabbinate of Königsberg,²¹ and there certainly must have been many more who, because of their inferior positions, cannot be so easily traced. Besides, Germany, as we have seen, was the common fatherland of the greater part of both Slavonic and Teutonic Jews. It never remained a terra incognita to the former for any length of time. Its proximity to Russia, the business relations between the Jews of the two countries, intermarriage, and, with a few insignificant exceptions, the identity of language, made the Jews of both countries come into closer contact than was possible with any other Jews. For the studious, Germany possessed the attraction which the "land of universities" exerts upon seekers after knowledge the world over. To whom, indeed, could the profound and abstruse speculations of Leibnitz and Kant make a stronger appeal than to the Jew who had been initiated into metaphysical abstractions from his very childhood? It is no wonder, then, that immigration from Russo-Poland into Germany was constantly on the increase, until, under Alexander II, the advancement of Russian civilization put a stop in a measure to these roamings, to be resumed under Alexander III and Nicholas II.

The Russo-Polish youth, therefore, found himself quite at home in the country of Mendelssohn, and thither, in case of necessity, he would go. In the eleventh century Jews had gone from Germany to Poland. In the eighteenth they retraced their steps from Poland to Germany. Outnumbering by far those who went there from choice or by invitation, were those compelled to go in search of a livelihood. "When I reached the age of twenty, peaceful and comfortable in my father's house, I began to hope that henceforth I should pursue my studies uninterrupted. But all at once my father lost his fortune, and I was forced to go somewhere to provide for myself. So I became a melammed in Berlin." This piece of autobiography in the preface to a Talmudic treatise by Reuben of Zamoscz might have been written by many others, too. But there were also the goodly number led thither by thirst for knowledge, whose remarkable abilities attracted the admiration of Jew and Gentile alike. Wessely the poet and Linda the mathematician more than once expressed surprise at the amount of learning many of the poor immigrants were found to possess.²²