But more efficacious than all other agencies was Mendelssohn's German translation of the Bible, and the Biur commentary published therewith. Renaissance and Reformation, those mighty, revolutionary forces, have entered every country by side-doors, so to say. The Jewish Pale was no exception to the rule. What Wycliffe's translation did for England, and Luther's for Germany, Mendelssohn's did for Russian Jewry. Like the Septuagint, it marked a new epoch in the history of Jewish advancement. It is said that Mendelssohn's aim was chiefly to show the grandeur of the Hebrew poetry found in the Bible, but by the irony of fate his translation displayed to the Russian Jew the beauty and elegance of the German language. To the member of the Lovers of the New Haskalah, surreptitiously studying the Bible of the "Dessauer," the Hebrew was rather a translation of, or commentary on, the German, and served him as a bridge to cross over into the otherwise hardly accessible field of German literature.
The cities on the borders of Russia were the first strongholds of Haskalah, and among them, as noted before, few struggled so intensely for their intellectual and civil emancipation as those in the provinces of Courland and Livonia. Though their lot was not better than that of their coreligionists, yet, having formerly belonged to Germany, and being surrounded by a people whose culture was superior to that of the rest of Russia, they were the first to adopt western customs, and were surpassed only by the Jews in Germany in their desire for reform. Their strenuous pleadings for equal rights were, indeed, ineffectual, but this did not lessen their admiration for the beauties of civilization, nor blind them to its benefits. "Long ago," remarks Lilienthal, "before the peculiar Jewish dress was prohibited, a great many could be seen here [in Courland] dressed after the German fashion, speaking pure German, and having their whole household arranged after the German custom. The works of Mendelssohn were not trefah pasul [unclean and unfit], the children visited the public schools, the academies, and the universities."[27]
The beautiful city of Odessa, on the Black Sea, at that time just out of its infancy and full of the virility and aspiration of youth, was also in the full glare of the German Haskalah movement. With its wide and straight streets, its public and private parks, and its magnificent structures, it presents even to-day a marked contrast to other Russian cities, and the Russians, not without pride, speak of it as "our little Paris." In the upbuilding of this southern metropolis Jews played an exceedingly important part. For, as regards the promotion of trade and commerce, Russia had outgrown the narrow policy of Elizabeta Petrovna, and did not begrudge her Jews the privilege of taking the lead. The "enemies of Christ" were permitted, even invited, to accomplish their "mission" also in Odessa, and thither they accordingly came, not only from Volhynia, Podolia, and Lithuania, but also from Germany, Austria, and especially Galicia. Erter, Letteris, Krochmal, Perl, Rapoport, Eichenbaum, Pinsker, and Werbel became better known in Russia than in their own land. As the Russo-Polish Jews had carried their Talmudic learning back to the countries whence they originally received it, so the Galician Jews, mostly hailing from the city of Brody, where Israel Zamoscz, Mendel Levin, Joseph Hakohen, and others had implanted the germs of Haskalah, now reimported it into Russia. The Jews of Odessa were, therefore, more cultured than other Russian Jews, not excepting those of Riga. Prosperous in business, they lavished money on their schools, and their educational system surpassed all others in the empire. In 1826 they had the best public school for boys, in 1835 a similar one for girls, and in 1852 there existed fifty-nine public schools, eleven boarding schools, and four day schools. The children attended the Richelieu Lyceum and the "gymnasia" in larger proportion than children of other denominations, and they were among the first, not only in Russia, but in the whole Diaspora, to establish a "choir-synagogue" (1840). "In most of the families," says Lilienthal, "can be found a degree of refinement which may easily bear comparison with the best French salon." Even Nicholas I found words of praise for the Odessa Jews. "Yes," said he, "in Odessa I have also seen Jews, but they were men"; while the zaddik "Rabbi Yisrolze" declared that he saw "the flames of Gehennah round Odessa."[28]
Warsaw, too, was a beneficiary of Germany, having been occupied by the Prussians before it fell to the lot of the Russians. It was there that practically the first Jewish weekly journals were published in Yiddish and Polish, Der Beobachter an der Weichsel, and Dostrzegacz Nadvisyansky (1823). There was opened the first so-called rabbinical seminary, with Anton Eisenbaum as principal, and Cylkov, Buchner, and Kramsztyk as teachers. The public schools were largely attended, owing to the efforts of Mattathias Rosen, and a year after a reformed synagogue had been organized in Odessa another was founded in Warsaw, where sermons were preached in German by Abraham Meïr Goldschmidt.
But Riga on the Baltic, Odessa on the Black Sea, and Warsaw on the Vistula were outdone by some cities in the interior. Haskalah lovers multiplied rapidly, and were found in the early "forties" in every city of any size in the Pale. "The further we go from Pinsk to Kletzk and Nieszvicz," writes a correspondent in the Annalen,[29] "the more we lose sight of the fanatics, and the greater grows the number of the enlightened." With the establishment of the rabbinical seminaries in Zhitomir (1848), this former centre of Hasidism became the nursery of Haskalah. The movement was especially strong in Vilna, the "Jerusalem of Lithuania," as Napoleon is said to have called it. From time immemorial, long before the Gaon's day, it had been famous for its Talmudic scholars. "Its yeshibot," says Jacob Emden in the middle of the eighteenth century, "were closed neither by day nor by night; many scholars came home from the bet ha-midrash but once a week. They surpassed their brethren in Poland and in Germany in learning and knowledge, and it was regarded of much consequence to secure a rabbi from Vilna." Now this "city and mother in Israel" became one of the pioneers of Haskalah, all the more because, in addition to the public schools and the rabbinical seminary, the Jews were admitted to its university on equal terms with the Gentiles. "Within six years," exclaims Mandelstamm, "what a change has come over Vilna! Youths and maidens, anxious for the new Haskalah, are now to be met with everywhere, nor are any ashamed to learn a trade." The schools exerted a salutary influence on the younger generation, and the older people, too, began to view life differently, only that they were still reluctant to discard their old-fashioned garb. There also, in 1847, the leading Maskilim started a reform synagogue, which they named Taharat ha-Kodesh, the Essence of Holiness.[30]
It should not be forgotten that, if Lilienthal met with mighty opposition, he also had powerful supporters. There were many who, though remaining in the background, strongly sympathized with his plan. Indeed, the number of educated Jews, as proved by an investigation ordered by Nicholas I, was far greater than had been commonly supposed. Not only in the border towns, but even in the interior of the Pale, the students of German literature and secular science were not few, and Doctor Loewe discovered in Hebron an exceptional German scholar in the person of an immigrant from Vilna.[31] The tendency of the time is well illustrated by an anecdote told by Slonimsky, to the effect that when he went to ask the approval of Rabbi Abele of Zaslava on his Mosde Hokmah, he found that those who came to be examined for ordination received their award without delay, while he was put off from week to week. Ill at ease, Slonimsky approached the venerable rabbi and demanded an explanation: "You grant a semikah [rabbinical diploma] so readily, why do you seem so reluctant when a mere haskamah [recommendation] is the matter at issue?" To his surprise the reason given was that the rabbi enjoyed his scientific debates so much that he would not willingly part with the young author.
Stories were told how the deans of the yeshibot were frequently found to have mastered the very books they confiscated because of the teachings they inculcated. Before the reign of Nicholas I drew to its end, Haskalah centres were as numerous as the cities wherein Jews resided. In Byelostok the Talmudist Jehiel Michael Zabludovsky was lending German books to young Slonimsky, the future inventor and publicist; in Vlotslavek Rabbi Joseph Hayyim Caro was writing and preaching in classic German; in Zhagory, Hayyim Sack helped Leon Mandelstamm (1809-1889), the first Jewish "candidate," or bachelor, in philology to graduate from the St. Petersburg University (1844) and the assistant and successor of Lilienthal, in the expurgation and German translation of Maimuni's Mishneh Torah. When, in 1857, Mandelstamm resigned, he was followed by Seiberling, for fifteen years the censor of Jewish books in Kiev, upon whom a German university conferred the doctor's degree. The poverty-stricken Wolf Adelsohn, known as the Hebrew Diogenes, formed a group of Seekers after Light in Dubno, while such wealthy merchants as Abraham Rathaus, Lilienthal's secretary during his campaign in Berdichev, Issachar Bompi, the bibliophile in Minsk, Leon Rosenthal, financier and philanthropist in Brest-Litovsk, and Aaron Rabinovich, in Kobelyaki (Poltava), promoted enlightenment by precept and example. In Vilna, Joseph Sackheim's young son acted as English interpreter when Montefiore was entertained by his father, and Jacob Barit, the incomparable "Yankele Kovner" (1793-1833) another of Montefiore's hosts, was master of Russian, German, and French, and aroused the admiration of the Governor-General Nazimov by his learning and his ability.
Yes, the Jews began to pay, if they had ever been in debt, for the good that had for a while been bestowed upon them by Alexander I. Alexander Nebakhovich was a well-known theatrical director, his brother Michael was the editor of the first Russian comic paper Yeralash, and Osip Rabinovich showed marked ability in serious journalism. In 1842 died Abraham Jacob Stern, the greatest inventor Russia had till then produced; and, as if to corroborate the statement of the Talmud, that when one sun sets another rises, the Demidoff prize of two thousand five hundred rubles was the same year awarded to his son-in-law, Hayyim Selig Slonimsky (HaZas, 1810-1904) of Byelostok, for the first of his valuable inventions. Stern's genius was surpassed, though in a different direction, only by that of Elijah Vilna. His first invention was a calculating machine, which led to his election as a member of the Warsaw Society of the Friends of Science (1817) and to his being received twice by Alexander I (1816, 1818), who bestowed upon him an annual pension of three hundred and fifty rubles. This invention was followed by another, "a topographical wagon for the measurement of level surfaces, an invention of great benefit to both civil and military engineers." He also constructed an improved threshing and harvesting machine and a sickle of immense value to agriculture.[32]
But it is scarcely possible, nor would it be profitable, to enumerate either the places or the persons who were, so to speak, inoculated with the Haskalah virus. In Grodno, Kovno, Lodz, Minsk, Mohilev, Pinsk, Zamoscz, Slutsk, Vitebsk, Zhagory, and other places, they were toiling zealously and diligently, these anchorites in the desert of knowledge. Among them were men of all classes and callings, from the cloistered Talmudist to the worldly merchant. The path of Haskalah was slowly yet surely cleared. The efforts of the conservative Maskilim were not devoid of some good results, nor even were those of Nicholas, though aimed at Christianizing rather than civilizing, entirely wasted. With all their shortcomings, and though producing but few rabbis acceptable to Russo-Jewish congregations, the seminaries in Warsaw, Zhitomir, and Vilna were powers for enlightenment. In them the future prominent scientists, scholars, and litterateurs were reared, and there the foundations were laid for the activities of Goldfaden, Gurland, Harkavy, Kantor, Landau, Levanda, Mandelkern, Paperna, Pumpyansky, Rosenberg, Steinberg, and others. Their fate was that of Mendelssohn's Bible translation. The end became a means, the means, an end. But they not only "brought forth" great men, they rendered no less important a service in "bringing out" those already great. Had it not been for their professorships, men like Abramovitsch, Lerner, Plungian, Slonimsky, Suchastover, and Zweifel, who were not blessed with worldly goods like Fünn, Katzenellenbogen, Luria, or Strashun, would probably have sought in private teaching or petty trading a source of subsistence, and Judaism in general and Russian Jewry in particular would have sustained a considerable loss. They helped to prepare the soil, even to implant the germ, and
Once the germ implanted,