FOOTNOTES:
[248] The insistence on Hebrew in the latter case is connected with the rabbinical form of promissory note, the so-called Shtar Iska [249] See Nikitin, "The Jewish Agriculturists" (in Russian), St. Petersburg, 1887, p. 16. [252] [The word is used here in the sense of leader of partisan, i. e. irregular, troops. Davidov attained to great fame during the War of 1812, in which he interfered effectively with the communications of the French.] [253] Compare the prohibition barring Jews from registering in the mercantile guilds of Moscow and Smolensk, p. 315. [254] See p. [286] and p. [287]. 1. Kahal Autonomy and City Government The system of state patronage spread its wings also over the self-government of the Jewish communities. Towards the end of Catherine II.'s reign the Government clearly betrayed its tendency to curtail the extensive communal autonomy which the Jews had been guaranteed earlier, in 1776, when the promise of the Empress, to allow the Jews of annexed White Russia "to retain their former liberties," was still fresh in the official mind. But the Russian Government, not in the habit of tolerating such "licentiousness" among its subjects, looked askance at the large economic, spiritual, and judicial functions granted to the Kahals, in addition to their fiscal duties as the collecting agencies of the state taxes. As a result of this attitude, the ukases of 1786 and 1795 had limited the range of activity of the Kahals to spiritual and fiscal affairs. The "Jewish Constitution" of 1804 went one step further by dividing these two functions between the rabbinate and the Kahals, which had previously formed one whole. The rabbis were given permission "to look after all the ceremonies of the Jewish faith and decide all disputes bearing on religion," while the Kahals were ordered "to see to the regular payment of the state taxes." This was all that was left of the ancient autonomy of the Jewish communities in Poland, with its vast network of institutions and central assemblies, or Waads. It is apparent that in real life the power of the communities was larger than on paper. The Jews went on submitting most of their cases, even those involving monetary disputes, to their own rabbinical tribunals. The prohibition of imposing the herem (excommunication) upon obstreperous members of the community was occasionally disregarded, since the "spiritual" tribunals had no other means of coercion at their disposal. On the other hand, the Government itself, being in need not only of the fiscal services of the Kahals, but also of a responsible organization to be consulted upon Jewish matters, could not help tolerating the extension of Kahal activities far beyond the range of fiscal interests. When the Government was desirous of ascertaining the views of the Jewish communities on some of the measures planned by it, it addressed itself, as was the case in 1802, 1803, and 1807,[255] to the Kahals, and authorized them to send delegates to St. Petersburg or the provincial capitals. This extension of Jewish autonomy was a concession wrested from the Government by the force of circumstances, by the power of a compact population living a life of its own and refusing to efface itself to the point of merging with the surrounding population and fusing all its public interests with the affairs of the general city administration. Yet it was just this "municipalization" of the Jewish communities that the Russian Government had been aiming at for a long time. From the time of Catherine II. it cherished the thought of "destroying Jewish separateness," by forcing the Jews into the framework of the Russian class organization, particularly into the estates of the merchants and burghers. When, shortly after 1780, the Jews were accorded the hitherto unheard-of privilege of participating in the city government with the right of active and passive suffrage for the magistracies and municipal courts, the lawgivers of St. Petersburg were confident that Russian Jewry, in a transport of delight, would throw overboard its old Kahal autonomy, and eagerly coalesce with the Christian urban estates, to form a common municipal organization. But neither the Jews nor the Christians justified these confident expectations. The former, while clinging as heretofore to their time-honored communal organization, were glad to participate in the elections to the magistracies, in which up till then their traditional enemies, the Christian merchants and burghers, had been the masters, and in which they frankly proposed to protect their interests, representing as they did a considerable portion of the urban population. But here they encountered furious opposition on the part of their Christian fellow-residents. In the two White Russian Governments of Vitebsk and Moghilev several Jews had been elected to the magistracies as aldermen and members of the law courts. But in the majority of cases the Christians managed to obtain an artificial majority and keep the Jews out of the municipal administration. Complaints lodged with the central authorities in St. Petersburg were of no avail, for the Russian, and even more so the Polish, burghers regarded the bestowal of municipal rights upon the Jews as a violation of their own chartered privileges. Yielding to this mood of the Christian population, the administrators of the southwestern Governments established on their own responsibility a restrictive percentage for the participation of Jews in the magistracies, by limiting, even in places with a predominatingly Jewish population, the number of Jewish members to be elected to the magistracies to one-third. The representatives of the Jewish majority of the population in the city administration were thus invariably reduced to a minority, and were not in a position to protect the interests of their coreligionists, either in the assessment of the municipal taxes or in the cases brought before the municipal law courts. Here, too, the protest addressed to St. Petersburg by a delegate acting on behalf of the Podolian Jews did not remedy the situation. In the two Lithuanian Governments which had fallen into the hands of Russia after the third partition of Poland, in 1795, the Christian opposition scored even a greater success. For here it became necessary to suspend altogether the operation of the law granting the Jews representation in the magistracies. When the Senatorial ukase of 1802, making the Jews eligible for public office, became known in Vilna, the local Christian population raised a cry of indignation. The Philistine arrogance of the old "city fathers," combined with the low motives of religious and class hatred, manifested itself in a petition addressed in February, 1803, by the Christian burghers of Vilna to Alexander I. In this petition the residents of Vilna protest against the violation of their ancient privilege, in pursuance of which "Jews and members of other faiths are forbidden to hold office" in Lithuania. The admission of Jews to the magistracies is a misfortune and a disgrace for the capital of Lithuania, for they [the Jews] have not the slightest conception of morality, while their form of education does not fit them for the calling of a judge, and altogether this people can only maintain itself by all kinds of trickery.... The Christians will lose all interest in accepting public office once the Jews are given the right to dominate them. The petitioners point out threateningly that the domination of the Jews, i. e. their participation in the magistracies, though it be limited to one-third of the number of aldermen, will undermine the people's confidence in the municipal administration and judiciary. "For the obedience of the mob will be turned into defamation when the Christian who enters the sacred place [of justice] beholds a Jew as his superior and judge, submission to whom is unnatural, by reason of class and religion." The Christian population of Kovno resorted, in presenting a similar petition, to another incontrovertible argument against the admission of Jews to municipal offices. Referring to the cross with the "sacred figure" of the crucifixion, which is placed on the court table for the administration of the oath, the petitioners assert that the Jewish members of the court "will refuse to look upon it, but, by reason of their faith, will think disrespectfully of it, so that, instead of judicial impartiality, there will be mockery of the Christian law." The Government found these arguments convincing, and in 1805 repealed the ukase of the Senate concerning the election of Jews to the magistracies of Lithuania. In this way the stolid rancor of the "privileged" burghers in some places handicapped the activity of the Jews in the city administration, and in others entirely suppressed it. The Jewish communities, backward though they were, displayed sufficient civic courage to send their representatives to the camp of the enemy to work in common with him for the benefit of the whole urban population. But the narrow-minded burghers, who were thoroughly saturated with medieval prejudices, would not recognize the Jews as their fellow-townsmen. The Jews had to reckon with this coarse conservatism of the surrounding population. They were still able to fall back upon their own communal self-government, and, had their social energies been directed towards that end, the old Kahal autonomy, in spite of all Government restrictions, might to a certain extent have come into its own again. But another factor thwarted this revival—the deep rift in the Russian Jewish community, which began with the rise of Hasidism in the second half of the eighteenth century, and was an accomplished fact at the beginning of the nineteenth century. 2. The Hasidic Schism and the Intervention of the Government The period of Poland's partitions was also a period of divisions within Polish Jewry. The external division was accompanied by an internal split; the political partition, by a spiritual schism. The body of Polish Jewry was divided among Russia, Austria, and Prussia, and its soul between Rabbinism and Hasidism. There was even a significant coincidence in dates: the first declaration against Hasidism by the rabbinate of Vilna, which started the religious schism, was issued in 1772, in the year of the first Polish partition, and the second emphatic declaration of the same rabbinate, which completed the schism, followed close upon the third partition of Poland, in 1796. The interval between these two dates represents one continuous stretch of Hasidic triumphs. The Russian Southwest, Volhynia, the province of Kiev, and Podolia, had by the end of the period, been almost completely conquered by the Hasidim. With the exception of a few cities, they now formed the predominating element in the communities; their ritual was adopted in synagogue worship, and their spiritual rulers, the Tzaddiks, exercised control over the official rabbinate. As far as the Northwest is concerned, Hasidism had managed during that interval to obtain a foothold in White Russia, the only Polish province which for over twenty years had been under Russian dominion, and thus politically severed from the rest of curtailed Poland. Under the leadership of the Tzaddik Shneor Zalman of Lozno, a strong Hasidic center had been built up in that part of the Northwest, but there were yet no compact Hasidic communities in that region. In the majority of towns the communities were composed of both elements, Hasidim and their opponents, the Rabbinists, who were nicknamed Mithnagdim ("Protestants"), the preponderance being now on this side, now on the other, a state of affairs which gave rise to endless dissensions in the Kahals and synagogues. In Lithuania alone, the stronghold of Rabbinism, Hasidism failed to take root. Here a few small Hasidic groups were ensconced in a number of cities. They held their services in modest rooms in private residences (minyanim), which they were often forced to hide from the gaze of the hostile Kahal authorities. In Vilna, the residence of the great zealot of Rabbinism, Elijah Gaon, the Hasidim constituted an "illegal" secret organization. Only in the suburb of Pinsk, in Karlin, the Hasidim succeeded in establishing themselves firmly, and could boast of having their own synagogues and Tzaddiks.[256] Karlin became the seat of a Hasidic propaganda extending all over Lithuania, where the Hasidim were accordingly nicknamed "Karliners." The second and third partition of Poland, which united Lithuania and White Russia under the sovereignty of Russia, tended to buoy up the oppressed Lithuanian Hasidim, who could now join forces against the common enemy with their brethren all over the northwestern region. The Hasidic propaganda took on new courage. To enhance the success of their missionary activity, the Hasidim spread a rumor, that the former anti-Hasidic thunderer, the veteran Rabbi Elijah Gaon, was sorry for all the hostile acts he had committed against the sectarians, and that in consequence the excommunication formerly hurled by him against them was no longer valid. When this clever ruse became known in Vilna, the indignant champions of Rabbinism prompted the aged Gaon to publish an epistle in which he reaffirmed his former attitude towards the "heretics," and declared that all the herems previously issued against them remained in force (May, 1796). The epistle was intrusted to two envoys, who were dispatched from Vilna to a number of cities, for the purpose of stirring up an anti-Hasidic agitation. When the envoys arrived in Minsk, and set about executing their instructions, the Hasidim started a rumor to the effect that the Gaon's signature under the epistle was not genuine. The Kahal of Minsk sent an inquiry to Vilna, and in reply received, in September, 1796, a new energetic appeal of the Gaon addressed to all the gubernatorial Kahals of Lithuania, White Russia, Volhynia, and Podolia. Ye mountains of Israel—cried the great zealot—ye spiritual shepherds, and ye lay leaders of every Government, also ye, the heads of the Kahals of Moghilev, Polotzk, Zhitomir, Vinnitza, and Kamenetz-Podolsk, you hold in your hands a hammer wherewith you may shatter the plotters of evil, the enemies of light, the foes of the [Jewish] people. Woe unto this generation! They [the Hasidim] violate the Law, distort our teachings, and set up a new covenant; they lay snares in the house of the Lord, and give a perverted exposition of the tenets of our faith. It behooves us to avenge the Law of the Lord, it behooves us to punish these madmen before the whole world, for their own improvement. Let none have pity on them and grant them shelter!... Gird yourselves with zeal in the name of the Lord! In calling to arms against the Hasidim in these fulminant terms, the venerable knight of Rabbinism was moved by the profound conviction that the "new sect," which by that time numbered its adherents by the hundreds of thousands, was leading the Jewish religion and nation to ruin, because it was rending asunder the Jewish camp internally while the political upheavals were severing it externally. He was moreover alarmed by the luxuriant growth of the cult of the Tzaddiks, or miracle-workers, which constituted a menace to the purity of the Jewish doctrine. The Gaon's ire was particularly aroused by a work published in the same year as his epistle (1796), by Rabbi Shneor Zalman, the head of the White Russian Hasidim. The work was familiarly called Tanyo,[257] and contained a bold exposition of the pantheistic doctrine of Hasidism, which the champions of the established dogma were prone to regard as blasphemy and heresy.[258] The Gaon's proclamation hinted at this work, and its author felt painfully hurt by the attack. Shneor Zalman responded in a counter-epistle, in which he tried to prove that the patriarch of Rabbinism had been misinformed about the true essence of Hasidism, and he invited his opponent to a literary dispute for the purpose of elucidating the truth and "restoring peace in Israel." But the Gaon refused to enter into polemics with a "heretic." In the meantime the Vilna epistle continued to circulate in many communities, and gave rise to severe conflicts between Mithnagdim and Hasidim, the former as a rule taking the offensive. Exasperated to the point of madness by these persecutions, the Hasidic association of Vilna was stung into perpetrating an act of gross tactlessness. When, in the fall of 1797, about a year after the publication of his last circular, the aged Gaon closed his eyes, and the whole community of Vilna was plunged into mourning, the local Hasidic society met in a private house and indulged in a gay drinking bout, to celebrate the deliverance of the sect from its principal enemy. This ugly demonstration arranged on the day of the funeral raised a storm of indignation throughout the community. Before leaving the cemetery, the leaders of the community, standing at the Gaon's grave, pledged themselves solemnly to wreak vengeance upon the Hasidim. On the following day the Kahal elders were called to a special meeting, at which a series of repressive measures against the Hasidim was adopted. Apart from the measures to be made public, such as a new bull of excommunication against the sectarians, the meeting passed several resolutions which were to remain confidential. A special committee of five Kahal members was appointed, and was vested with large powers, for the purpose of grappling with the "heresy." Subsequent events proved that among the contemplated means of warfare was included the plan of informing against the leaders of the sect to the Russian Government. It did not take long for the disgraceful scheme to be put into action. Soon the Prosecutor-General in St. Petersburg, Lopukhin, received a denunciation directing his attention "to the political misdeeds perpetrated by the chief of the Karliner [Hasidic] sect, Zalman Borukhovich [son of Borukh]," and his fellow-workers in Lithuania. Under the influence of this denunciation, Lopukhin, acting in the name of the Tzar, ordered the local gubernatorial administration, early in the fall of 1798, to arrest Zalman, the head of the sect, in the townlet of Lozno, together with twenty-two of his accomplices who were found in Lithuania. Zalman was apprehended and dispatched post-haste to St. Petersburg, accompanied by "a strong convoy"; his incriminated followers remained under arrest in Vilna. Zalman was arraigned before the so-called "Secret Expedition," a department which dealt with crimes of a political nature. A long bill of indictments was read out to him. He was accused of being the founder of a harmful religious sect, which had changed the order of divine service among Jews, of spreading pernicious ideas, and collecting funds for mysterious purposes in Palestine. The cross-examination clearly implied the charge of political disloyalty. To all questions laid before him, the accused gave an elaborate written reply in Hebrew. Zalman's defense, which was translated from the Hebrew into Russian, produced a favorable impression in Government circles. Acting upon the report submitted to him by the Prosecutor-General respecting "all the circumstances revealed by the investigation," Tzar Paul I. issued an order to liberate Zalman and the other sectarian chiefs who had been placed under arrest, but to keep "a strict watch over them as to whether there exists, or is liable to come into existence, a secret relationship or correspondence between them and those who entertain perverted notions concerning the authorities and the form of Government." Towards the end of 1798 Zalman was allowed to return home, and the other prisoners were likewise set at liberty. Now it was the turn of the Hasidim to retaliate on their persecutors. In view of the fact that the persecutions against them had been instigated by the Kahal elders of Vilna, who had composed the "Committee of Five," the Hasidim made up their mind to depose these elders and put their own partisans in their places. With the help of bakhshish the Vilna Hasidim managed to secure the good-will of the gubernatorial administration. In the beginning of 1799 they lodged a complaint with the local authorities against the Kahal elders, charging them with having perpetrated all kinds of abuses, including the embezzlement of public funds. This action resulted in the removal and imprisonment of several elders. Under official pressure their places were filled by new elders, who either were themselves Hasidim or had been recommended by them. The community of Vilna was rent in twain. One section remained true to the dismissed elders, the other stood up for the newly-elected. The warring factions were busy sending complaints and denunciations directed against each other to the Government in St. Petersburg. The canker of "informing," which, perhaps not accidentally, had developed in the first years of Russian rule in Lithuania, brought to the front one hideous personality, a rabbi-informer by the name of Avigdor Haïmovich (son of Hayyim), of Pinsk. Avigdor, formerly rabbi of Pinsk and the surrounding district, had been dismissed from office owing to the intrigues of the Hasidic members of the community, who were his opponents. What Avigdor lamented most was the loss of revenue. For a long time the dethroned shepherd had been dragging his flock through the magistracies and law courts. Having failed in his efforts, he decided to wreak vengeance upon the leader of the sect responsible for his ruin. In the beginning of 1800 Avigdor addressed an elaborate petition to Tzar Paul I., in which he described the Hasidic sect as "a pernicious and dangerous organization," which was continuing the work of the former Messianic Sabbatians. By a vast array of distorted quotations from Hasidic literature the informer endeavored to prove that the teachers of the sect enjoined upon their followers to fear only God and not men, in other words, to disregard the authorities, including the Tzar. The denunciation was allowed to take its course. Early in November of the same year, the Tzaddik Zalman Borukhovich was rearrested in Lozno and dispatched to St. Petersburg under the convoy of two Senatorial couriers. On his arrival in the capital the Tzaddik was incarcerated in the fortress, and after a cross-examination confronted with his accuser Avigdor. Zalman again replied in writing to the indictments against him, which now mounted up to nineteen counts. He repudiated emphatically the charge of not recognizing the authority of the Government, of immorality, of collecting money, and arranging meetings for secret purposes. Towards the end of November Zalman was set at liberty, but was ordered to remain in St. Petersburg pending the examination of his case by the Senate, to which it had now been transferred from the Secret Expedition. While the Senate was preparing to take up the case, the palace revolution of March, 1801, cut short Paul's reign, and placed Alexander I. upon the throne. The political wind veered round, and on March 29, 1801, the new Tzar gave Zalman permission to depart from St. Petersburg. Having satisfied itself that the religious schism in Judaism was perfectly harmless from the political point of view, the Government was ready to give it its sanction. One of the clauses of the Statute of 1804 permits the sectarians to establish their own synagogues in every community and to elect their own rabbis, with the sole stipulation that the Kahal administration in each city shall remain one and the same for all sections of the community. As a matter of fact, the law merely recognized what had already become the living practice. The religious split had long been an accomplished fact, and the internecine strife of 1796-1801 was merely its final act. As for the communal organization of the Jews, which had already been undermined by the political changes, the schism proved nothing short of disastrous. The Kahals, weakened by inner struggles and demoralized by denunciations and bureaucratic interference, failed to present a united front in the first years of Alexander's reign, when the Government was carrying out its "plan of reform," and invited the Kahal leaders to share in its labors. The communities of the Southwest, which were completely under the ban of Hasidic mysticism, reacted feebly to the social and economic crisis facing them. The Jewish delegates who presented their views in reply to the official inquiries of 1803 and 1807[259] were recruited principally from the White Russian and Lithuanian Governments, where the political sense of the Jews had not yet been completely dulled. 3. Rabbinism, Hasidism, and Enlightened "Berlinerdom" While in Western Europe the old forms of Jewish life were breaking up, the cultural development of the Jewish masses of Eastern Europe remained stationary. The two dominating forces in their spiritual life, Rabbinism and Hasidism, watched with equal zeal over the maintenance of the old order of things. The traditional form of education remained unchanged. The old school, the heder and yeshibah, with its exclusive Talmudic training, supplied its pupils with a vast amount of mental energy, but failed to prepare them for practical life, and the girls and women remained entirely outside the influence of the school. Just as firmly established was the old-fashioned scheme of family life, with its early marriages, between the years of thirteen and sixteen, with the prolonged maintenance of such married children in the paternal home, with its excessive fertility in the midst of habitual poverty, with its reduction of physical wants to the point of exhaustion and degeneration. This patriarchal mass of Jews fought shy of all cultural "novelties," and deprecated the slightest attempt to extend its mental and social horizon. Religious culture had not yet had a chance to cross swords with secular culture. The war between Hasidism and Rabbinism was fought on purely religious soil. Its sole issue was the type of the believer: the old discipline with its emphasis upon the scholastic and ceremonial aspect of Judaism was fighting against the onrush of ecstatic mysticism and the blind "cult of saints." It cannot be said that benumbed Rabbinism revived under the effect of this vehement contest. At the time we are speaking of no distinct traces of such a revival are to be seen, and all one can discern are the signs of a purely scholastic renaissance. The method of textual analysis introduced by Elijah Gaon into Talmudic research, which took the place of the hair-splitting casuistry formerly in vogue, gained ever wider currency and an ever firmer foothold in the yeshibahs of Lithuania. In the new center of Talmudic learning, the yeshibah of the Lithuanian townlet of Volozhin,[260] established in 1803, this novel method received particular attention at the hands of its founder, Rabbi Hayyim Volozhiner, a pupil of the Gaon. The yeshibah of Volozhin raised a whole generation of scholars and rabbis "in the spirit of the Gaon." In these circles one could even detect a certain amount of toleration towards the anathematized "secular sciences," though this toleration was limited to the realm of mathematics and partly that of natural history. The Gaon, who had himself engaged in mathematical exercises in his spare moments, permitted his pupil Borukh Shklover to publish a Hebrew translation of Euclid's Geometry (1780). Yet the dread of philosophy was as great as theretofore, and the incompatibility of free research with Judaism was looked upon as an inviolable dogma. The Jewish mind continued to move within the narrow range of "the four ells of the Halakha," and was doomed to sterility. In the course of that whole stormy period, extending over a quarter of a century, Rabbinism, aside from the Gaon, had not put forward a single literary figure of any magnitude, not a single writer of large vision. It seemed as if the spirit of originality had fled from it. Greater productivity was to be found among the Hasidim of the period, although in point of originality it yielded considerably to the preceding era of the Besht and his first apostles. Alongside of triumphant practical Tzaddikism, trading in miracles and thriving on the credulity of the masses, we observe to a certain degree the continued development of the Hasidic doctrine on the lines laid down by Besht. In the North a new Hasidic theory was spreading, which strove to adapt the emotional pietism of Besht to the "intellectualism" of the Lithuanian schoolmen. The originator of this doctrine, Rabbi Shneor Zalman, the hero of the religious struggle depicted in the foregoing chapters, endeavored to rationalize Hasidism, which had manifested a decided leaning toward the principle credo quia absurdum sit. In the hands of the author of Tanyo, the ecstasy of feeling is transformed into ecstasy of thinking. Occasionally he speaks of the knowledge of God in terms worthy of a Maimonides. Needless to say, Rabbi Zalman rejects the Tzaddik cult in the vulgar form of miracle-mongering, which it had assumed in the South. In the South—to speak more exactly, in the Ukraina—Hasidism persisted in the beaten track. Its two pillars, Levi Itzhok (Isaac) of Berdychev (died 1809) and Nohum (Nahum) of Chernobyl (died 1799), continued to uphold Besht's traditions. The former, the author of Kedushath Levi[261] (1798), manifests in his work the genuine fervor of Hasidic faith, without its morbid ecstasy. In his private life this leader of Volhynian Hasidism was the embodiment of lovingkindness, extending alike to Jew and non-Jew. Many popular legends tell of his surpassing affection for the humble and suffering. The Tzaddik Nohum of Chernobyl, who was an itinerant preacher in the Government of Kiev, laid in his sermons special emphasis on the element of the Cabala. Towards the end of his life he was primarily a Tzaddik, of the "practitioner" and "miracle-worker" type, and founded the "Chernobyl Tzaddik dynasty," which is still widely ramified in the Ukraina. Quite apart from the rest stands the figure of the Podolian Tzaddik and dreamer Nahman of Bratzlav (1772-1810), a great-grandson of Besht. Gifted with a profoundly poetical disposition, he spurned the beaten tracks of the professional "Righteous," and struck out into a path of his own. The goal he aimed at was the return to the childlike simplicity of Besht's teachings. In 1798-1799 Nahman made a pilgrimage to Palestine, just about the time when Bonaparte's army was marching through the Holy Land, and a gust from tempestuous Europe drifted through the slumbering East. But the Podolian youth had an ear only for the whisper from the tombs of the great Cabalist teachers, Rabbi Shimeon ben Yohai and Ari, and for the discourses of the living Tzaddiks who had settled in Tiberias. On his return to Europe, Nahman made his home in Bratzlav, and became the head of a group of Podolian Hasidim. In his intimate circle he was wont to preach, or rather to muse aloud, on the reign of the spirit, on the communion of the Tzaddik with his flock in religious ecstasy. He spoke in epigrams, sometimes clothing his thoughts in the form of folk-tales. He wrote a number of books,[262] in which he constantly emphasized the need of blind, unsophisticated faith. Philosophy he regarded as destructive to the soul; Maimonides and the rationalists were hateful to him. The unfamiliar Berlin "enlightenment" filled his heart with mysterious awe. Nahman's life was cut short prematurely. Surrounded by his admirers, he died of consumption, in Uman, at the age of thirty-eight. Down to this day his grave serves as a place of pilgrimage for the "Bratzlav Hasidim." However, the average Tzaddik of the type which had assumed definite shape in that period was equally removed from the complexity of Rabbi Zalman and the simplicity of Rabbi Nahman. On the whole, the Tzaddiks drifted further and further away from their mission of religious teachers, and became more and more "practitioners." Surrounded by a host of enthusiastic worshipers, these "middlemen between God and mankind" understood the art of turning the blind faith of the masses to good account. They waxed rich on the gifts and offerings of their admirers, lived in palaces, much after the manner of the Polish magnates and Church dignitaries. The "court" of Besht's grandson in Medzhibozh, Borukh Tulchinski (1780-1810), was marked by particular splendor. Borukh even had his court-fool, Herschel Ostropoler, the well-known hero of popular anecdotes. In the original Polish provinces, afterwards incorporated into the Duchy of Warsaw, the commanders-in-chief of the Hasidic army were two Tzaddiks, Rabbi Israel of Kozhenitz and Rabbi Jacob Itzhok (Isaac) of Lublin. These two pupils of the "apostle" Baer of Mezherich became the pioneers of Hasidism on the banks of the Vistula towards the end of the eighteenth century. At the close of their careers—both died in 1815—the banner of Hasidism floated over the whole of Poland. The breezes of Western culture had hardly a chance to penetrate to this realm, protected as it was by the double wall of Rabbinism and Hasidism. And yet here and there one may discern on the surface of social life the foam of the wave from the far-off West. From Germany the free-minded "Berliner," the nickname applied to these "new men," was moving towards the borders of Russia. He arrayed himself in a short German coat, cut off his earlocks, shaved his beard, neglected the religious observances, spoke German or "the language of the land," and swore by the name of Moses Mendelssohn. The culture of which he was the banner-bearer was a rather shallow enlightenment, which affected exterior and form rather than mind and heart. It was "Berlinerdom," the harbinger of the more complicated Haskala of the following period, which was imported into Warsaw during the decade of Prussian dominion (1796-1806). The contact between the capitals of Poland and Prussia yielded its fruits. The Jewish "dandy" of Berlin appeared on the streets of Warsaw, and not infrequently the long robe of the Polish Hasid made way timidly for the German coat, the symbol of "enlightenment." Alongside of this external assimilation, attempts were also made to copy the literary models of Prussian Jewry. In 1796 a Jewish Mendelssohnian named Jacques Kalmansohn published a French pamphlet in Warsaw, under the title Essai sur l'état actuel des Juifs de Pologne et leur perfectibilité, dedicating it to the Prussian Minister Hoym, who had carried out Jewish reforms in the Polish provinces of Prussia. The pamphlet contains an account of the status of Polish Jewry of his time and a plan for its amelioration. The account is rather superficial, concocted after the approved Western recipe. In the judgment of the author, the misfortune of the Jews lies in their separation from the surrounding nations, and their happiness in merging with them. The scheme of reform proposed by the Jew Kalmansohn differs but slightly from the Polish projects of Butrymovich and Chatzki. It advocates equally the weakening of rabbinical and Kahal authority, the extermination of Hasidism and Tzaddikism, the introduction of German dress, the shaving of beards, the establishment of German schools, and in general the cultivation of "civism." The mould of Berlin fashion was overlaid with a Parisian veneer when soon afterwards (1807-1812), at the bidding of Napoleon, the Duchy of Warsaw sprang into being. Now a new note was sounded. A group of Parisian "dandies" claim equal rights as a compensation for having changed their dress and their "moral conduct."[263] Even respectable representatives of the Warsaw Jewish community designate themselves in their petition to the Senate as "members of the Polish nation of the Mosaic persuasion," copying the latest Parisian fashion, in vogue at the time of the Napoleonic Synhedrion.[264] This was the first, though as yet naïve and unsophisticated, attempt to secure the "transfer" from the Jewish nation to the Polish, the germ of the future "Poles of the Old Testament persuasion." The torch-bearers of Berlin culture from among the followers of David Friedländer encouraged this frame of mind in every possible manner, and in their organ[265] constantly appealed in this spirit to their Polish brethren. How long will you continue—one of these appeals reads—to speak a corrupt German dialect [Yiddish] instead of the language of your country, the Polish? How many misfortunes might have been averted by your forefathers, had they been able to express themselves adequately in the Polish tongue before the magnates and kings! Take a group of a hundred Jews in Germany, and you will find that either all or most of them can speak to the magnates and rulers, but in Poland scarcely five or ten out of a hundred are capable of doing so. Some stray seeds of Western "enlightenment" were carried as far as the distant Russian North. During Dyerzhavin's tour of inspection through White Russia there flitted across his vision the figure of the physician Frank in Kreslavka, an avowed follower of Mendelssohn, calling for religious and educational reforms.[266] In St. Petersburg, in the house of the Maecenas Abraham Peretz, lived his teacher Judah Leib Nyevakhovich, a native of Podolia. In 1803, the same year in which the Jewish deputies sojourned in St. Petersburg, Nyevakhovich published a pamphlet in Russian, under the title, "The Wailing of the Daughter of Judah," with a dedication to Kochubay, the Minister of the Interior and Chairman of the "Jewish Committee." The dedication strikes the keynote of the "Wailing": genuflexion before the greatness of Russia and mortification at the fate of his coreligionists, who are deprived of their share in the "blessings" of the country. "How greatly," exclaims the author, "doth my soul exult over these matters [the victories and might of the Russian Empire]; how deeply doth it grieve over my coreligionists, who are removed from the hearts of their compatriots." And throughout the whole of the pamphlet the "Daughter of Judah" bewails the fact that neither the eighteenth century, "the age of humanity, toleration, and meekness," nor "the smiling spring of the present century, the beginning of which hath been crowned ... by the accession of Alexander the Merciful, has removed the deep-seated Jewish hatred in Russia." "Many minds doom the tribe of Judah to contempt. The name 'Judean' hath become an object of ridicule, contempt, and scorn for children and the feeble-minded." With particular reference to Mendelssohn and Lessing the author exclaims: "You search for the Jew in man. Search for man in the Jew, and you will no doubt find him." Nyevakhovich's pamphlet concludes with a grievous moan: While the hearts of all the European nations have drawn nearer to one another, the Jewish people still finds itself despised. I feel the full weight of this torment. I appeal to all who have sympathy and compassion. Why do you sentence my entire people to contempt? Thus waileth sadly the daughter of Judah, wiping her tears, sighing and yet uncomforted. The author himself, by the way, subsequently managed to obtain comfort. A few years after the publication of the "Wailing," still finding himself "removed from the hearts of his compatriots," he discovered the magic key to these obstreperous hearts. He embraced Christianity, and, transformed into Lev Alexandrovich Nyevakhovich, began to write moralizing Russian plays, which pleased the unsophisticated taste of the Russian public of the day. Nyevakhovich thus carried his "Berlinerdom" to that dramatic dénouement which was in fashion in Berlin itself, where an epidemic of baptism was raging. His example was followed by his patron Abraham Peretz, who had been ruined in the War of 1812 by military contracts. The descendants of both converts occupied important posts in the Russian civil service. One of the Peretz family was a member of the Council of State during the reign of Alexander II. A faint reflection of the Western literature of enlightenment is visible during this period on the somber horizon of Russia. Mendel Lewin, of Satanov[267] (1741-1819), who had been privileged to behold in the flesh the Father of Enlightenment in Berlin, scattered new seeds in his native country. He translated into Hebrew the popular manual of medicine by Tissot, the moral philosophy of Franklin, and the books of travel by Campe. He also made an attempt to render the Book of Proverbs and Ecclesiastes into the vernacular Yiddish. The last undertaking drew upon Lewin the wrath of another "enlightened" writer, Tobias Feder of Piotrkov and Berdychev (died 1817), who attacked him savagely for "profaning" Holy Writ by turning it into the "language of the street." Feder himself published studies in Hebrew grammar and Biblical exegesis, moralizing treatises, harmless satires, and poetical odes. These publications cannot be said to mark an epoch in the realm of literature, but they undoubtedly symbolize a new departure in cultural life. The secular book, of which the mere appearance was apt to arouse a murmur of discontent among the alarmed Orthodox, takes its place side by side with the religious literature of Rabbinism and Hasidism. These literary attempts were the harbingers of the subsequent secularization of Hebrew literature.CHAPTER XI
THE INNER LIFE OF RUSSIAN JEWRY DURING THE PERIOD OF "ENLIGHTENED ABSOLUTISM"