The improvement of the political conditions influenced the intellectual and social life of the Jews to a considerable degree. This is noticeable in their literature, education, religious life and finally in their communal organizations.
Moses Mendelssohn (1729-1786), of Dessau, came as a boy to Berlin. After a youth filled with hardship he found employment in the house of a manufacturer, first as tutor and then as bookkeeper. His main object was to raise Jews from their intellectual isolation. He translated the Pentateuch, the Psalms and some smaller books of the Bible into correct German, and edited this work with a Hebrew commentary. It soon became popular and was the medium for teaching the young people the German language. He also defended Judaism against various attacks and presented its teaching in a German work, “Jerusalem.” In his work on the Bible, he was assisted by various co-workers, among whom the most prominent is Naphtali Herz Wesel, who called himself Hartwig Wessely (1725-1805). The latter’s epic on the life of Moses, patterned on Klopstock’s “Messias,” was written in elegant Hebrew verse, and became an inspiration to many other writers disgusted with the obscure and artificial style of Rabbinic Hebrew, and having a taste for literary beauty. An organ for such endeavors was presented by the publication of the first Hebrew magazine, “Meassef” (1784).
The progress of secular education made Hebrew literature soon disappear in Western Europe, but the influence of Wessely and his disciples made itself very strongly felt in the East of Europe, and particularly in the countries comprising the former kingdom of Poland. Their modern Hebrew writings introduced the young men to the knowledge of history and science, and gave them a taste for secular education and for a western conception of life. Isaac Bär Loewinson (1788-1860) wrote works in defense of Judaism, and advocated secular culture, patriotism, manual trades and the emancipation from mediæval conditions still existing in these countries. Marcus Aaron Guenzburg (1795-1846) worked chiefly as translator of popular works, such as juveniles like Campe’s “Robinson Crusoe.”
A more independent character was given to Hebrew literature by Abraham Mapu (1808-1867) who wrote two novels from Biblical life, “The Love of Zion,” and “The Guilt of Samaria,” and another describing the life of the Jew in his Lithuanian home, “The Hypocrite.” Mapu used Biblical Hebrew with great facility and became the father of a new development in Hebrew and later in Yiddish, giving to Jewish literature a high literary character. He was followed by Judah Loew (Leon) Gordon (1833-1892), whose satirical poems not merely possess a value for the ease with which the author handled the Hebrew language, but have been a great force impressing upon the minds of the Jews in Eastern Europe the defects of their intellectual isolation and the shortcomings of Rabbinic teachings. Among the later poets Chayim Nachman Bialik, born 1873, is the most popular. His elegy on the massacre of Kishineff is one of the gems of modern Hebrew literature.
Yiddish literature from its earliest beginnings in the sixteenth century was mostly used as a vehicle for the religious instruction of women and people of little education or merely adapted and translated some of the popular literature of the countries where its exponents lived. From the middle of the nineteenth century it commenced to assume a more independent character and thus secured a place in the world’s history as is shown by the fact that some of its works were translated into other European languages. Among the novelists may be mentioned Shalom Jacob Abramowitsch (born 1836) who writes under the pseudonym, “Mendele the bookseller,” Shalom Rabinowitsch (born 1859) and, the most popular of all, Isaac Loeb Peretz (born 1851). A poet who presents the tragic as well as the humorous side of the New York ghetto, Morris Rosenfeld, born 1864, is to be mentioned; his works have been translated into various European languages. Of dramatists whose works have occasionally found their way to the German and English stage there are Shalom Asch, and Jacob Gordin (1853-1909), who deals with the life of Russian Jews in America.
The disappearance of the social and intellectual isolation in the life of the Jews created a special literature which is called the ghetto novel. This deals with the life of the Jews in the era of transition from their isolation to modern culture. This literature began in Germany and its best known representatives are Aaron Bernstein (1812-1884), Leopold Kompert (1822-1886), Karl Emil Franzos (1848-1904), and, among Christians who view the life of the Eastern Jews with sympathy, Leopold von Sacher-Masoch (1835-1895) and Eliza de Orzeska (1842-1910). Sketches from the life of the Alsatian Jews were presented in French by Alexander Weill (1811-1898) and in Danish by Meier Aaron Goldschmidt (1819-1887). In the English language, Israel Zangwill, born 1864, wrote novels dealing with the life of the foreign Jews in England. Among his works “The Children of the Ghetto” has obtained a place in the world’s best literature. The English stories of Martha Wolfenstein (1869-1906) deal with the life of European Jews.
A place in modern Jewish literature belongs to the Jewish press as it has developed in the nineteenth century. The first Jewish periodical that had more than an ephemeral existence was “Meassef,” published in Hebrew with some parts in German. It began to appear in 1784, and with some interruptions was kept up until 1810. The oldest periodical still in existence is the “Allgemeine Zeitung des Judentums,” begun by Ludwig Philippson, rabbi in Magdeburg, in 1837. It was followed by the “Archives Israélites” in 1840 in Paris, and by the “Jewish Chronicle” in 1841 in London. Of the numerous periodicals published in the United States, the oldest still existing is the “American Israelite,” founded by Isaac M. Wise in Cincinnati in 1854.
The first Hebrew weekly, which dealt not only with Jewish affairs, was the “Hamaggid,” founded by Lazarus Silbermann in Lyck, East Prussia, in 1858. The first Hebrew daily paper was the “Hazefirah,” published first as a weekly in 1862 and afterwards as a daily from 1886. Quite a number of valuable magazines dealing with Jewish history and literature have been published since the middle of the nineteenth century in Hebrew and in various modern languages. “Wissenschaftliche Zeitschrift fuer Juedische Theologie” (1835-1840) and “Juedische Zeitschrift fuer Wissenschaft und Leben” (1862-1875) were both edited by Abraham Geiger; the “Monatsschrift fuer Geschichte und Wissenschaft des Judentums,” begun by Zechariah Frankel in 1854, was discontinued in 1887 and has been republished since 1891. “Revue des Etudes Juives” dates from 1881; “Jewish Quarterly Review” appeared from 1888 to 1908. Of the Hebrew magazines there are “Kerem Hemed,” of which nine volumes were published from 1833 to 1856, Bikure Ha-ittim (1820-1831), and “Haschiloach” since 1896.
Rabbinic literature of the older type, dealing with the law and Talmudic dialecticism, has also a great number of representatives during this period. Among the foremost may be named Moses Schreiber (Sofer), born at Frankfort-on-the-Main in 1762, died as rabbi of Presburg in 1839, and Akiba Eger (1761-1837). In Western Europe this literature shows a steady decline. Of the authors whose life belongs entirely to the nineteenth century may be mentioned Jacob Ettlinger, rabbi of Altona (1798-1871), and Seligman Bär Bamberger, rabbi of Wuerzburg (1807-1878). Very numerous, however, are the Rabbinic authors of Eastern Europe and the Orient, among whom Isaac Elhanan Spector, rabbi of Kovno (1810-1896), Hayim David Hazan, rabbi of Jerusalem (1790-1868), Hayim Palaggi, rabbi of Smyrna (1784-1868), and Hayim Hezekiah Medini (1834-1904), may be mentioned.
Already before Mendelssohn’s time individual Jews in Germany and Austria distinguished themselves in literature and science. But the education of the masses was almost entirely confined to Bible and Talmud. With the popularization of secular knowledge the necessity for schools arose and the first institution of this kind was founded in Berlin as the “Jewish Free School” in 1778. The efforts of Emperor Joseph II to promote secular culture among the Jews of Austria led to the establishment of a primary school in Prague in 1782. Others followed in different cities: the Wilhelm Schule of Breslau was founded in 1791; the Herzog Franz-Schule in Dessau in 1799. Higher schools were the Jacobson Schule in Seesen in 1801, the Samson Schule in Wolfenbuettel in 1803, and the Philanthropin in Frankfort-on-the-Main in the next year. Even in Eastern Europe, where religious fanaticism was bitterly opposed to secular education, such schools came into existence like the one founded in Tarnopol by Joseph Perls in 1815. The Alliance Israélite Universelle, founded in 1860, made it one of its principal objects to establish schools for secular education in the Orient, and it now has a great number of schools which it maintains in Turkey, Northern Africa and Asia, extending from Palestine and Asia Minor to Persia and Mesopotamia.