Such scenes occurred not only in Pinsk, but, not infrequently, in other towns of the Pale as well.
The striving for intellectual enlightenment manifested itself in the refining of religious customs. Though Russian Jewry "has never experienced any of the ritualistic struggles that Germany has witnessed,"[14] yet reform and Haskalah always went hand in hand. The attacks on tradition by the Maskilim of the "forties" and the early "fifties" were mild and guarded compared with the assaults by the generation that followed. With the appearance of the periodicals the combat was intensified. Ha-Meliz, and, later, Ha-Shahar in Hebrew, and Kol Mebasser in Yiddish were the organs of those who were dissatisfied with the old, and sought to introduce the new. It was in the latter that Dos Polische Yingel (The Polish Boy), by Linetzky, first appeared, and it proved so popular that the editor published it in book form long before it was finished in the periodical. In an article on The Ways of the Talmud, by Moses Löb Lilienblum, the prevailing Jewish religious observances were vehemently attacked. This was followed by another article from the pen of Gordon, Wisdom for Those Who Wander in Spirit, with suggestions for adapting religion to the needs of the times, and a still more powerful one, The Chaotic World, by Smolenskin. The muse ceased to content herself with "flame-songs that burn their pathway" to the heart. She preferred to appeal to the head. She no longer tried
In strains as sweet
As angels use ... to whisper peace.
In cutting criticisms and biting satires she exposed time-honored but time-worn beliefs and practices. Gordon was a militant reformer in his younger days, and so were Menahem Mendel Dolitzky and the lesser poets of the period. Needless to say, the Jewish-Russian press was an enemy of ultra-orthodoxy. Osip Rabinovich, the leading Russo-Jewish journalist, made his debut with an article in which he denounced the superstitious customs of his people in unmeasured terms.[15] The motto chosen for the Razsvyet (1860) was "Let there be light," and the platform it adopted was to elevate the masses by teaching them to lead the life of all nations, participate in their civilization and progress, and preserve, increase, and improve the national heritage of Israel.[16]
Yet journalists and poets were outdone by scholars and novelists in the battle for reform. Lebensohn's didactic drama Emet we-Emunah (Truth and Faith, Vilna, 1867, 1870), in which he attempts to reconcile true religion with the teachings of science, was mild compared with Dos Polische Yingel or Shatzkes' radical interpretations of the stories of the rabbis in his Ha-Mafteah (The Key, Warsaw, 1866-1869), and both were surpassed by Raphael Kohn's clever little work Hut ha-Meshullash (The Triple Cord, Odessa, 1874), in which many prohibited things are ingeniously proved permissible according to the Talmud. But the most outspoken advocate of reform was Abraham Mapu (1808-1867), author of the first realistic novel, or novel of any kind, in Hebrew literature, the 'Ayit Zabua' (The Painted Vulture). His Rabbi Zadok, the miracle-worker, who exploits superstition for his own aggrandizement; Rabbi Gaddiel, the honest but mistaken henchman of Rabbi Zadok; Ga'al, the parvenu, who seeks to obliterate an unsavory past by fawning upon both; the Shadkan, or marriage-broker, who pretends to be the ambassador of Heaven, to unite men and women on earth,—in these and similar types drawn from life and depicted vividly, Mapu held up to the execration of the world the hypocrites who "do the deeds of Zimri and claim the reward of Phinehas," whose outward piety is often a cloak for inner impurity, and whose ceremonialism is their skin-deep religion. These characters served for many years as weapons in the hands of the combatants enlisted in the army arrayed for "the struggle between light and darkness."
The waves of the Renaissance and the Reformation sweeping over Russian Jewry reached even the sacred precincts of the synagogues, the batte midrashim, and the yeshibot. The Tree of Life College in Volozhin became a foster-home of Haskalah. The rendezvous of the brightest Russo-Jewish youths, it was the centre in which grew science and culture, and whence they were disseminated far and wide over the Pale. Hebrew, German, and Russian were surreptitiously studied and taught. Buckle and Spencer, Turgenief and Tolstoi were secretly passed from hand to hand, and read and studied with avidity. Some students advocated openly the transformation of the yeshibah into a rabbinical seminary on the order of the Berlin Hochschule. The new learning found an ardent supporter in Zebi Hirsh Dainov, "the Slutsker Maggid" (1832-1877), who preached Russification and Reformation from the pulpits of the synagogues, and whom the Society for the Promotion of Haskalah employed as its mouthpiece among the less advanced.[17] In the existing reform synagogues, in Riga, Odessa, Warsaw, and Vilna, and even in more conservative communities, sermons began to be preached in Russian. Solomon Zalkind Minor, who lectured in German, acquired a reputation as a preacher in Russian since his election to the rabbinate of Minsk (1860). He was called "the Jellinek of Russia" by the Maskilim.[18] Aaron Elijah Pumpyansky began to preach in Russian at Ponevezh, in Kovno (1861). Germanization at last gave way to Russification. Even in Odessa, where German culture predominated during the reign of Nicholas I, it was found necessary, for the sake of the younger generation, to elect, as associate to the German Doctor Schwabacher, Doctor Solomon Mandelkern to preach in Russian. Similar changes were made in other communities. In the Polish provinces the Reformation was making even greater strides. There the Jews, whether reform, like Doctor Marcus Jastrow, or orthodox like Rabbi Berish Meisels, identified themselves with the Poles, and participated in their cultural and political aspirations, which were frequently antagonistic to Russification. A society which called itself Poles of the Mosaic Persuasion was organized in Warsaw, an organ of extreme liberalism was founded in the weekly Israelita, and, with the election of Isaac Kramsztyk to the rabbinate, German was replaced (1852) by the native Polish as the language of the pulpit.
Some champions of reform did not rest satisfied with mere innovations and improvements. They went so far as to discard Judaism altogether and improvise religions of their own. Moses Rosensohn of Vilna was the first, in his works Advice and Help ('Ezrah we-Tushiah, Vilna, 1870) and The Peace of Brothers (Shelom Ahim, ibid.), to suggest a way to cosmopolitanism and universalism through Judaism.[19] In 1879, Jacob Gordin founded in Yelisavetgrad a sort of ethical culture society called Bibleitsy (also Dukhovnoye Bibleyskoye Bratstvo, Spiritual Bible Brotherhood), which obtained a considerable following among the workmen of the section. It advocated the abolition of ritual observances, even prayer, and the hastening of the era of the brotherhood of man. It preached, in the words of one of its leaders, that "our morality is our religion. God, the acme of highest reason, of surest truth, and of the most sublime justice, does not demand useless external forms and ceremonies."[20] Following the organization of the Bibleitsy, and based on almost the same principles, branches of a Jewish sect, which called itself New Israel (Novy Izrail), were started almost simultaneously in Odessa and Kishinev. In the former city, the organization was headed by Jacob Prelooker, in the latter, by Joseph Rabinowitz. Prelooker, who after graduating from the seminary at Zhitomir became a school-master at Odessa, sought to bring about a consolidation between his own people and Russian Dissenters (Raskolniki: the Molocans, Stundists, and Dukhobortzi). The theme of his book, New Israel, is a "reformed synagogue, a mitigation of the cleavage between Jew and Christian, and recognition of a common brotherhood in religion." Rabinowitz went still further, and preached on actual conversion to one of the more liberal forms of Christianity.[21]
These sects, which sprang up in church and synagogue during the latter part of the "seventies," were the outcome of political and social as well as religious unrest. Alexander II fulfilled the expectation which the first years of his reign aroused in Jewish hearts no more than Catherine II and Alexander I. Those who had hoped for equal rights were doomed to disappointment. Most of the reforms of the Liberator Czar proved a failure owing to the antipathy and machinations of his untrustworthy officials. Russia was split between two diametrically opposed parties, the extreme radicals and the extreme reactionaries, waging an internecine war with each other. The former originated with the young Russians that had served in the European campaigns during the Napoleonic invasion, and who, in imitation of the secret organizations which had so greatly contributed to the liberation of Germany, united to throw off the yoke of autocracy in Russia. These secret orders, the Southern, the Northern, the United Slavonian, and the Polish, Alexander I had endeavored in vain to suppress, and the drastic measures taken by Nicholas I against the Dekabrists (1825) proved of no avail. Nor did the reforms of Alexander II help to heal the breach. On the contrary, seeing that the constitution they expected from the Liberator Czar was not forthcoming, and the democracy they hoped for was far from being realized, they became desperate, and determined to demand their rights by force. The peasants, too, sobering up from the intoxication, the figurative as well as the literal, caused by the vodka drunk in honor of their newly-acquired volyushka (sweet liberty), discovered that the emancipation ukase of the czar had been craftily intercepted by the bureaucrats, and their dream of owning the land they had hitherto cultivated as serfs would never come true. Russia was rife with discontent, and disaffection assumed a national range. The cry was raised for a "new freedom." A certain Anton Petrov impersonated the czar, and gathered around him ten thousand Russians. Pamphlets entitled Land and Liberty (Zemlya i Volya) were spread broadcast among the masses, the mind of the populace was inflamed, and attempts on the life of the czar ensued.
The extreme reactionaries, consisting mostly of nobles who had become impoverished by the emancipation of the serfs, grasped the opportunity to point out to the bewildered czar the evil of his liberal policy. Slavophilism was rampant. Men like Turgenief, Dostoyevsky, and Tolstoi, were condemned as "Westernists," or German sympathizers, the enemies of Russia. At the recommendation of Princess Helena Petrovna, the czar engaged as the teacher of his children a comparatively unknown professor of history, Pobyedonostsev, who later became the soul of Russian despotism. This man, meek as a dove and cunning as a serpent, easily ingratiated himself with the czar, and soon there began "a war upon ideas, a crusade of ignorance." "Karakazov's pistol-shot," as Turgenief says, "drove back into the shade the phantom of liberty, the appearance of which all Russia had hailed with acclamations. From that moment to the end of his life, the emperor devoted himself to the undoing of all he had accomplished. If he could have cancelled with one stroke the glorious ukase that had proclaimed the emancipation of the serfs, he would have been only too glad to disgrace himself."[22]