The Haskalah Movement in Russia Part 9

Those are my children yonder!

Yes, my dearest and my truest coming home once more!

But Zionism is not exclusively either a political or a religious movement. It is both plus something else; it is eminently educational.

It has produced novelists and poets, whose writings are full of the virility and beauty of a rejuvenated nation. In Jaffa it established a high school (Bet ha-Sefer), it inspired Doctor Chazanowicz to establish a national library, and ways and means are being considered to establish a national university in Palestine.

Even among the devotees of the arts it has given rise to a new romantic school, young painters and sculptors who are depicting their Judenschmerz.

Their cunning hands--says Mr. Leo Mielziner--have mastered the technique of their art, be it in Moscow or Munich, or Berlin, or Paris, but the heart which inspires their brush or mallet pulsates in Palestine. The wandering Jew in them pauses, not to portray the impression of the foreign lands and stranger customs, but to depict his own suffering, his own Heimweh, his own aspirations.

Struck, Ashkenasi, Maimon, Hirszenberg, Gottlieb, Epstein, Lobschutz, and Schatz are the leaders of this new movement. The last-named, together with Ephraim Moses Lilien of Galicia, perhaps the greatest Jewish ill.u.s.trator of our time, has founded a national school, Bezalel, to propagate Jewish art in Palestine, on the same principles on which the great national art schools of other countries are based. The language of instruction is Hebrew.

Meanwhile the Society for the Promotion of Haskalah continued its work of Russification and general civilization. After 1880 its activity was greatly enhanced, and its members worked with renewed zeal. It opened elementary schools, and expended large sums on stipends for students, and the publication of useful and scholarly books. The branch in Odessa secured two hundred and thirty-one new members in one year (1900), making the total in that city alone nine hundred and sixty-eight. It organized a bureau of information on pedagogic subjects, and through the liberality of Kalonymos Wissotzky inst.i.tuted prizes for original works in Hebrew or Russian. Individual philanthropists did their utmost to counterbalance the restrictions on education.[15]

Trade schools were opened by the Committee for the Promotion of a Knowledge of Trade and Agriculture among the Jews of Russia, in Minsk, Vilna, and Vitebsk, besides fifteen manual training schools for boys and twenty for girls, in which the indigent pupils are provided with food, clothes, and books. In 1900 thirteen new schools were opened in Kherson and Yekaterinoslav, to supply the educational demand of the thirty-eight colonies existing in those Governments. In the vicinity of Minsk a Junior Republic was organized, and in many cities art and choral societies were formed.[16]

The desire for self-help and the tendency towards organization, to which Zionism gave an impetus, was rapidly reflected in every sphere of Russo-Jewish activity. In a series of works and articles, Jacob Wolf Mendlin, who studied under La.s.salle, pointed out the importance of the co-operative system. Accordingly, a union was organized by the Jewish salesmen in Warsaw. In 1897 a conference of Jewish workingmen was held in that city and Der allgemeine judische Arbeiterbund in Littauen, Polen, und Russland (Federation of Jewish Labor Unions in Lithuania, Poland, and Russia) was perfected. It published three papers as its organs, Die Arbeiterstimme, Der judischer Arbeiter, and, in Switzerland, Letzte Nachrichten. Soon workmen's a.s.sociations and artisans' clubs appeared wherever there was a sufficient number of Jewish tailors, hatters, bookbinders, etc., for the purpose of increasing and improving the value of their production, and to do away with middlemen and money-lenders. They organized a tailors', dyers', and shoemakers' union in Kharkov, and a carpenters' union in Minsk, for mutual support in the struggle for existence, and for the construction of sanitary workingmen's houses. The cultural desire of the handicraftsmen, const.i.tuting twelve per cent of the Russo-Jewish population and occasionally fifty-two per cent (Odessa), seventy-three per cent (Kovno), and even ninety per cent (Byelostok), is phenomenal. Their object is not only physical improvement. Their highest aim is that their members be enabled, by means of efficient night schools and private instruction, to acquire elementary and higher education; in the words of the const.i.tution of the carpenters' union of Minsk, "to protect their material interests, raise their moral and intellectual status, and foster efforts of self-help."[17]

The Hebrew teachers, a cla.s.s which, though more respected, underwent as hard a struggle as the workingmen, banded themselves together in 1899 in the Society for Aiding Hebrew Teachers of the Province of Vilna. Their president was Michael Wolper, the inspector of the Hebrew Inst.i.tute and successor to Wohl as censor of Hebrew publications. Similar attempts were made in Bessarabia. Rabbi Shachor, chairman of the Hebrew Teachers'

a.s.sociation of Yekaterinoslav, was instrumental in opening a normal school conducted on Chautauqua principles, and so advanced the cause of education considerably.[18]

With the establishment of the rabbinical seminaries and the ukase (May 3, 1855) that only such may officiate as rabbis as have completed a prescribed course of study, Russian Jewry was placed in a sore predicament. It was a very difficult task to find men who united secular knowledge with that thorough mastery of Talmudic literature which the Jews of Russia exact from their rabbis. Every community was compelled to appoint two rabbis: an orthodox rabbi (dukhovny rabbin) and a "crown,"

or Government, rabbi (kazyony rabbin). The people recognized only the authority of the former, the Government that of the latter. The consequence was that a man with a mere high-school education would apply for, and would often receive, the position of crown-rabbi. His duties consisted in merely keeping a register of marriages, births, and deaths, administering the oath, and the like. The many lawyers and physicians who were debarred from practicing their professions sought to become candidates for the rabbinate. To avoid the unpleasant results which followed, Rabbi Chernovich of Odessa and Rabbi I.J. Reines of Lyda established seminaries in Odessa and Lyda, to take the place and to continue the teaching of the Vilna and the Volozhin yes.h.i.+bot, which had been closed, and to furnish proper rabbis for the various congregations.[19]

The century-long struggle for enlightenment had a telling effect. What the early Maskilim had only dreamed of finally came to be. The metamorphosis was so great and so general as to be hardly credible. It was shown by Mr. Landman, in a paper read before the Russo-Jewish Historical Society of Odessa, that while among the Gentiles of that city the reading public const.i.tuted seven per cent of the population, among Jews it was no less than thirty-three per cent, and twenty-five per cent of all readers were Jewish women.[20] By 1905 there were two Yiddish and three Hebrew dailies, besides several weekly, monthly, and quarterly periodicals and annuals in Yiddish, Hebrew, and Russian, notwithstanding the fact that a numerous cla.s.s depended on the general Russian literary output for their mental pabulum.

As the number of those who read Hebrew was still considerable, Abraham Lob Shalkovich (Ben Avigdor) began, with the a.s.sistance of a number of Maskilim, the publication of "penny literature" (Sifre Agorah, Warsaw, 1893). Shortly afterwards the Ahiasaf Society and, a little later, the Tus.h.i.+yah Society were founded. The object was to edit and publish "good and useful books in the Hebrew language for the spread of knowledge and the teaching of morality and culture among the Hebrew youth, also scientific books in all departments of learning." Both these a.s.sociations have done admirable work. They have published many good text-books for teaching Hebrew and Jewish history, an ill.u.s.trated periodical for children, Olam Katan (The Little World), and numerous works of interest to the adult. Among their publications were, besides the original writings of Peretz, Taviov, Frischman, Berdichevsky, Chernikhovsky, and others, also translations from Bogrov, Byron, Frug, Hugo, Nordau, Shakespeare, Spencer, Zangwill, Zola, critical biographies of Aristotle, Copernicus, George Eliot, Heine, La.s.salle, Nietzsche, Rousseau, and a great many equally famous men of letters, which followed each other in promiscuous but uninterrupted succession, all handsomely printed and prettily bound, and sold at a moderate price.

One evil, however, remained, in the face of which both the Maskilim and the financiers found themselves utterly helpless, the evil of the exclusion of Jews from the universities. They could found elementary and high schools for the young, night schools and Sabbath Schools for the adult working-men, but to establish a university was an absolute impossibility. Jewish youths were again compelled, as in the days of Tobias Cohn and Solomon Maimon, to seek in foreign lands the education denied them in their own. Austria, Switzerland, France, and chiefly Germany, became once more the Meccas whither Russo-Jewish graduates repaired to finish their studies, and where they formed a sort of Latin Quarters of their own, and led almost a communal life. Their numbers in the German universities grew to such proportions, and their material condition became so wretched, that a society was organized in Berlin for the express purpose of helping them. On the other hand, the authorities protested (1906) against expending the funds granted each year for German educational inst.i.tutions on the education of non-Germans, and the Akademischer Club of Berlin pa.s.sed resolutions demanding a regulation against their admission. In Leipsic alone, of the six hundred and sixty-two foreign students who attended the university, three hundred and forty, or over one-half, are Russian Jews (1906). Of the five hundred and eighty-six students enrolled in the Commercial University, three hundred and twenty-two are foreigners, among whom Russians predominate, and of the eight hundred students who attend the Royal Conservatory of Music, three hundred are foreigners, also mostly Russians. Russians const.i.tute two hundred and two of the three hundred and forty-seven pupils in the Dresden Polytechnic.u.m, and sixty out of one hundred and thirty-seven in the Dresden Veterinary College, while in the Freiberg School of Mines and in the Tharand Forestry Academy they are in a majority, though they pay twice, and in some places three times, the amount of tuition fee required from the native students. The proportion is still greater in the Swiss universities of Basle, Berne, Geneva, Lausanne, and Zurich, where they sometimes const.i.tute three-fourths of the entire student body in the medical schools (Geneva, 1907).

And as for the progress made by the Russo-Jewish woman, it is wonderful, indeed. It is hardly a quarter of a century since attention began to be given to her mental development, and yet she has seldom lagged behind her sisters in more enlightened lands, and has lately attained to a proud height. Vilna, with her "many well-educated wives," attracted the attention of Montefiore in the early "forties"; Tarnopol speaks in terms of high praise of the Jewish women of Odessa in the "sixties"; they "charm by their culture, by the ease and precision with which they speak several European languages, by the correctness of their judgment, and the beauty of their conversation."[21] The memoirs of Madame Pauline Wengeroff throw a sidelight also on the accomplishments of her sisters in the less enlightened districts of Russian Jewry. But in the last quarter of the nineteenth and the early part of the twentieth century, their advance was prodigious.[22] When decent Jewish women were prohibited to reside in St. Petersburg, some of the Jewish female students, at the risk of their reputation, secured the yellow ticket of the prost.i.tute rather than sacrifice their education. But the majority went to other countries. The press has lately been interested in what these seekers for light in foreign lands have accomplished, and reported the successes of f.a.n.n.y Berlin, who graduated from the University of Berne as doctor of law _summa c.u.m laude_, and of Miss Kanyevsky of Zinkoff (Poltava), who was the first woman to take her degree as engineer at the Ecole des Pontes et Chaussees, in Paris.

It is a curious fact--remarks a correspondent in the Pall Mall Gazette--the majority [of lady doctors practicing in Paris] are Russian Jewesses, just as are the greatest number of young women medical students. At a rough calculation there are three hundred ladies pursuing medical studies at the various schools, and working side by side with the male students. The reason of the invasion of the Jewess is, of course, the disabilities that exist in Russia for those of the faith of Israel ...

disabilities that are hardly lessened in Germany. Moreover, there exists only one university in Russia, and that is in St.

Petersburg. Some of the women who graduate in medicine do extremely well afterwards in practice, and are greatly in vogue in the highest society in Paris.... The lady doctor who is also a Russian subject has likewise found a field for her energies in China, where Russian influence is so dominant at the present moment.

Another writer, in Harper's Bazaar, speaking of girl-students in Paris, has this to say:

The Russian students are an interesting cla.s.s in Paris. There are some one hundred and thirty of them in all, nearly all Hebrews, as the Russian universities admit only about four Jews to every hundred students. Their monthly allowance from their families is often no more than twenty dollars, and out of that they must pay board, room-rent, and all outside expenses. These Russian "new women" are extraordinary students. Mlle. Lepinska, one of the first to graduate in medicine, presented a thesis six hundred and sixty pages long to her astonished professors.

With pitying admiration the world looks on the struggle for enlightenment of these brave sons and daughters of Judah. Their trials and tribulations, their heart-burnings and disappointments, have inspired poets and painters, novelists and playwrights. From Chamisso's _Abba Glusk Leczeka_ to Korolenko's _Skazanye o Florye Rimlyaninye_, czars have died or have been a.s.sa.s.sinated, statesmen have risen and fallen, but the Russian Jew, like the heroes of the poem or novel, did not wait to conquer by submitting. Thanks to his indomitable spirit he has made unexampled progress. Within the last twenty-five years he has not only emanc.i.p.ated himself, but he is now the most potent factor in the struggle for the emanc.i.p.ation of his countrymen. Within these years he has become the recognized torch-bearer of liberty and enlightenment in darkest Russia. Uvarov justified his inhuman treatment of the Jews by the plea that they are "orthodox and believers in the Talmud." The latest excuse (1904) of von Plehve was that "if we admitted Jews to our universities without restriction, they would surpa.s.s our Russian students and dominate our intellectual life." But neither the former prevails, nor the latter, nor their henchmen who fill the columns of the Grazhdanin, Kievlyanin, Novoye Vremya, and the like. The words and writings of such n.o.ble and world-famous Russians as Popoff, Demidov, Strogonoff, Bershadsky, Shchedrin, Tolstoi, and the cream of the Russian "intelligentia," as well as such foreigners as Mommsen, Gladstone, Leroy-Beaulieu, and Michael Davitt, will have their salutary effect. The consciousness of the Russian people will awaken. The att.i.tude lately manifested both in St. Petersburg and the provinces against the _Kontrabandisti_, a libellous play written by an apostate Jew, Levin, will become more and more general. Then the heroic effort and the unexampled progress of the Russian Jews will be more fully appreciated, and a patriotic nation will gratefully acknowledge its indebtedness to that smallest but most energetic and self-sacrificing portion of its heterogeneous population, the Jews, who have done so much, not only for Jewish Russians, but for Christian Russians as well, to hasten the time when "many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased."

(Notes, pp. 327-330.)

NOTES

ABBREVIATIONS USED IN THE NOTES

AZJ = Allgemeine Zeitung des Judenthums, Leipsic, 1837-- FKI = Funn, Keneset Yisrael, Warsaw, 1860.

FKN = Funn, Kiryah Ne'emanah, Vilna, 1860.

FSL = Funn, Safah le-Ne'emanim, Vilna, 1881.

GMC = Ginzberg and Marek, Yevreyskiya Narodniya Pyesni, St. Petersburg, 1901.

HUH = Harkavy, Ha-Yehudim u-Sefat ha-Selavim, Vilna, 1867.

JE = Jewish Encyclopedia, 12 vols., New York, 1901-1906.

LBJ = Levinsohn, Bet Yehudah, Warsaw, 1901.

LTI = Levinsohn, Te'udah be-Yisrael, Warsaw, 1901.

WMG = Wengeroff, Memoiren einer Grossrautter, i., Berlin, 1908.

CHAPTER I

THE PRE-HASKALAH PERIOD

?-1648

(pp. 17-52)

[Footnote 1: Mention might, indeed, be made of Dr. Zunz's pioneer work in his Aelteste Nachrichten uber Juden und judische Gelehrte in Polen, Slavonien, Russland (Gesammelte Schriften, Berlin, 1875, iii. 82-87), and Firkovich, who, in his Abne Zikkaron (Vilna, 1872), threw much light on the history of the Crimean Jews. The best contributions to the subject, however, are those of Harkavy, Russ i Russkiye v Sred. Yevr.

Lit. (Voskhod, 1881), and Malishevsky, Yevreyi v Yuzhnoy Rossii i Kieve, v. x-xii. Vyekakh, St. Petersburg, 1878.]

[Footnote 2: LTI, p. 33, n. 2; LBJ, ii. 94, n. 2.]

[Footnote 3: See JE, s.v. Azov, and Kertch. See also Fishberg, The Jews: A Study of Race and Environment, New York, 1911, pp. 150, 192-194.]

[Footnote 4: See Judah Halevi's Kuzari, Introduction.]

[Footnote 5: Minor, Rukovodstvo, Moscow, 1881, iv; Ha-Pardes, St.

Petersburg, 1902, p. 155.]

[Footnote 6: HUH, pp. 31-32, 69-76.]

[Footnote 7: Yevrey Minister, Voskhod, 1885, v. 105 f.]

[Footnote 8: JE, i. 112, 119, 223; viii. 652.]

[Footnote 9: The synagogue in Brest-Litovsk, which Saul Wahl built in memory of his wife Deborah, was demolished in 1836. WMG, p. 84.]

[Footnote 10: HUH, pp. 77-134.]

[Footnote 11: JE, x. 569.]

[Footnote 12: The story of Zacharias de Guizolfi deserves to be given at greater length. He was a prince and ruler of the Taman peninsula near the Black Sea (1419). After he had been unsuccessful in a war against the Turks, Czar Ivan III sent him a message sealed with the gold seal (March 14, 1484) as follows:

"By the grace of G.o.d, the great ruler of the Russian land, the Grand Duke Ivan Va.s.silyevich, czar of all the Russias, to Skariya the Hebrew.