History of the Jews in Russia and Poland Volume II Part 25

_Third_, to appoint Jewish physicians only in those contingents of the army in which the budget calls for at least two physicians, with the proviso that the second physician must be a Christian.

[Footnote 1: See p. 167, n. 2.]

The reason for these provisions was stated in a most offensive form:

It is necessary to stop the constant growth of the number of physicians of the Mosaic persuasion in the Military Department, in view of their deficient conscientiousness in discharging their duties and their unfavorable influence upon the sanitary service in the army.

This revolting affront had the effect that many Jewish physicians handed in their resignations immediately. The resignation of one of these physicians, the well-known novelist Yaroshevski, was couched in such emphatic terms, and parried the moral blow directed at the Jewish professional men with such dignity that the Minister of War deemed it necessary to put the author on trial. Among other things, Yaroshevski wrote:

So long as the aspersions cast upon the Jewish physicians so pitilessly are not removed, every superfluous minute spent by them in serving this Department will merely add to their disgrace. In the name of their human dignity, they have no right to remain there where they are held in abhorrence.

Under these circ.u.mstances it seemed quite natural that the tendency toward emigration, which had called forth a number of emigration societies as far back as the beginning of 1882 [1], took an ever stronger hold upon the Jewish population of Russia. The disastrous consequences of the resolution adopted by the conference of notables in St. Petersburg [2] were now manifest. By rejecting the formation of a central agency for regulating the emigration, the conference had abandoned the movement to the blind elemental forces, and a catastrophe was bound to follow. The pogrom at Balta called forth a new outburst of the emigration panic, and in the summer of 1882 some twenty thousand Jewish refugees were again huddled together in the Galician border-town of Brody. They were without means for continuing their journey to America, having come to Brody in the hope of receiving help from the Jewish societies of Western Europe. The relief committees established in the princ.i.p.al cities of Europe were busily engaged in "evacuating" Brody of this dest.i.tute ma.s.s of fugitives. In the course of the summer and autumn this task was successfully accomplished. A large number of emigrants were dispatched to the United States, and the rest were dispersed over the various centers of Western Europe.

[Footnote 1: See above, p. 297 et seq.]

[Footnote 2: See above, p. 307.]

Aside from the highway of American emigration went, along a tiny parallel path, the Jewish emigration to Palestine. The Palestinian movement which had shortly before come into being [1] attracted many enthusiasts from among the Jewish youth. In the spring of 1882, a society of Jewish young men, consisting mostly of university students, was formed in Kharkov under the name _Bilu_, from the initial letters of their Hebrew motto, _Bet Ya'akob leku we-nelka_"O house of Jacob, come ye, and let us go." [2] The aim of the society was to establish a model agricultural settlement in Palestine and to carry on a wide-spread propaganda for the idea of colonizing the ancient homeland of the Jews.

As a result of this propaganda, several hundred Jews in various parts of Russia joined the _Bilu_ society. Of these only a few dozen pioneers left for Palestine --between June and July of 1882.

[Footnote 1: See later, p. 268.]

[Footnote 2: From Isa. 2.5.]

At first, the leaders of the organization attempted to enter into negotiations with the Turkish Government, with a view to obtaining from it a large tract of land for colonizing purposes, but the negotiations fell through. The handful of pioneers were obliged to work in the agricultural settlements near Jaffa, in _Mikweh Israel_, a foundation of the _Alliance Israelite_ in Paris, and in the colony _Rishon le-Zion_, which had been recently established by private initiative. The youthful idealists had to endure many hards.h.i.+ps in an unaccustomed environment and in a branch of endeavor entirely alien to them. A considerable part of the pioneers were soon forced to give up the struggle and make way for the new settlers who were less intelligent perhaps but physically better fitted for their task. The foundations of Palestinian colonization had been laid, though within exceedingly narrow limits, and the very idea of the national restoration of the Jewish people in Palestine was then as it was later a much greater social factor in Jewish life than the practical colonization of a country which could only absorb an insignificant number of laborers. At those moments, when the Russian horrors made life unbearable, the eyes of many sufferers were turned Eastward, towards the tiny strip of land on the sh.o.r.es of the Mediterranean, where the dream of a new life upon the resuscitated ruins of gray antiquity held out the promise of fulfilment.

A contemporary writer, in surveying recent events in the Russian valley of tears, makes the following observations:

Jewish life during the latter part of 1882 has a.s.sumed a monotonously gloomy, oppressively dull aspect True, the streets are no longer full of whirling feathers from torn bedding; the window-panes no longer crash through the streets. The thunder and lightning which were recently filling the air and gladdening the hearts of the Greek-Orthodox people are no more. But have the Jews actually gained by the change from the illegal persecutions [in the form of pogroms] to the legal persecutions of the third of May?

Maltreated, plundered, reduced to beggary, put to shame, slandered, and dispirited, the Jews have been cast out of the community of human beings. Their dest.i.tution, amounting to beggary, has been firmly established and definitely affixed to them. Gloomy darkness, without a ray of light, has descended upon that bewitched and narrow world in which this unhappy tribe has been languis.h.i.+ng so long, gasping for breath in the suffocating atmosphere of poverty and contempt. Will this go on for a long time? Will the light of day break at last?

CHAPTER XXV

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 emanc.i.p.ation of Russian Jewry, the appeals of the intellectual cla.s.ses of Russia calling upon the Jews to draw nearer to them, the bright prospects of a rejuvenated Russia. The n.i.g.g.ardly gifts of the Russian Government were received by Russian Jewry with an outburst of grat.i.tude and devotion which bordered on flunkeyism. The intellectual young Jews and Jewesses who had pa.s.sed through the Russian public schools made frantic endeavors, not only towards a.s.sociation but also towards complete cultural amalgamation with the Russian people. a.s.similation 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 ident.i.ty, 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 cla.s.ses 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 princ.i.p.ally 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 pa.s.sionate protests. The Russian _intelligenzia_ remained cold in the face of the burning tortures of Jewry. The educated cla.s.ses of Russian Jewry were hurt to the quick by this chilly att.i.tude, 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 a.s.similators. One of these a.s.similators, writing in the first months of the pogroms, makes the following confession:

The cultured Jewish cla.s.ses 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 a.s.similators, 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 a.s.similation, culminating in baptism. Others stood at the cross-roads, wavering between a.s.similation 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 a.s.sociated with the idea of emigration. The champions of American emigration were p.r.o.ne 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 a.s.s."]

Come, let as go where liberty's light Doth s.h.i.+ne 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 ma.s.ses 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 a.s.similate 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 b.l.o.o.d.y 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 ent.i.tled."

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 ma.s.ses 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.