The most efficient factor of cultural regeneration was the secular school, both the general Russian and the Jewish Crown school. A flood of young men, lured by the rosy prospects of a free human existence in the midst of a free Russian people, rushed from the farthermost nooks and corners of the Pale into the gymnazia and universities whose doors were kept wide open for the Jews. Many children of the ghetto rapidly enlisted under the banner of the Russian youth, and became intoxicated with the luxuriant growth of Russian literature which carried to them the intellectual gifts of the contemporary European writers. The masters of thought in that generation, Chernyshevski, Dobrolubov, Pisaryev, Buckle, Darwin, Spencer, became also the idols of the Jewish youth. The heads which had but recently been bending over the Talmud folios in the stuffy atmosphere of the heders and yeshibahs were now crammed with the ideas of positivism, evolution, and socialism. Sharp and sudden was the transition from rabbinic scholasticism and soporific hasidic mysticism to this new world of ideas, flooded with the light of science, to these new revelations announcing the glad tidings of the freedom of thought, of the demolition of all traditional fetters, of the annihilation of all religious and national barriers, of the brotherhood of all mankind. The Jewish youth began to shatter the old idols, disregarding the outcry of the masses that had bowed down before them. A tragic war ensued between "fathers and children," [1] a war of annihilation, for the belligerent parties were extreme obscurantism and fanaticism, on the one hand, and the negation of all historic forms of Judaism, both religious and national, on the other.
[Footnote 1: The title of a famous novel by Turgenieff, written in 1862, depicting the break between the old and the new generation.]
In the middle between these two extremes stood the men of the transitional period, the adepts of Haskalah, those "lovers of enlightenment" who had in younger years suffered for their convictions at the hands of fanatics and now came forward to make peace between religion and culture. Encouraged by the success of the new ideas, the Maskilim became more aggressive in their struggle with obscurantism. They ventured to expose the Tzaddiks who scattered the seeds of superstition, to ridicule the ignorance and credulity of the masses, and occasionally went so far as to complain of the burdensome ceremonial discipline, hinting at the need of moderate religious reforms. Their principal task, however, was the cultivation of the Neo-Hebraic literary style and the rejuvenation of the content of that literature. They were willing to pursue the road of the emancipated Jewry of Western Europe, but only to a certain limit, refusing to cut themselves adrift from the national language or the religious and national ideals.
On the other hand, that section of the young generation which had passed through a Russian school refused to recognize any such barriers, and rushed with elemental force on the road of self-annihilation. Russification became the war cry of these Jewish circles, as it had long been the watchword of the Government. The one side was anxious to Russify, the other was equally anxious to be Russified, and the natural result was an entente cordiale between the new Jewish intelligenzia and the Government.
The ideal of Russification was marked by different stages, beginning with the harmless acquisition of the Russian language, and culminating in a complete identification with Russian culture and Russian national ideals, involving the renunciation of the religious and national traditions of Judaism. The advocates of moderate Russification did not foresee that the latter was bound, by the force of circumstances, to assume a radical form, while the champions of extreme Russification saw no harm for Jewry in following the example of complete assimilation set by Western Europe. To the former all that Russification implied was the removal of the obnoxious excrescences of Judaism but not the demolition of the national organism itself. Progressive Jewry was rightly incensed against the obsolete forms of Jewish life which obstructed all healthy development; against the fierce superstition of the hasidic environment, against the charlatanism of degenerating Tzaddikism, against the impenetrable religious fanaticism which was throttling the noblest strivings of the Jewish mind. But this struggle for freedom of thought should have been fought out within the confines of Judaism, by means of a thorough-going cultural self-improvement, and not on the soil of assimilation, nor in alliance with the powers that be, which were aiming not at the rejuvenation but at the obliteration of Judaism, in accordance with the official program of "fusion."
At any rate, the league between the new Jewish intelligenzia and the Government was an undeniable fact. The "Crown rabbis" [1] and school teachers from among the graduates of the rabbinical schools of Vilna and Zhitomir played the rôle of Government agents who were apt to resort to police force in their fight against orthodoxy. Feeling secure beneath the protecting wings of the Russian authorities, they often went out of their way to hurt the susceptibilities of the masses by their ostentatious disregard of the Jewish religious ceremonies. When the communities refused to appoint rabbis of this class, the latter obtained their posts either by direct appointment from the Government or by bringing the pressure of the provincial administration to bear upon the electors.
[Footnote 1: See above, p. 176, n. 1.]
Needless to say, the "enlightenment" propagated by these Government underlings did not win the confidence of the orthodox masses who remembered vividly how official enlightenment was disseminated by the Government of Nicholas I. during the era of juvenile conscription.
The new Jewish intelligenzia showed utter indifference to the sentiments of the Jewish masses, and did not hesitate to induce the Government to interfere in the affairs of inner Jewish life. Thus by a regulation issued in 1864 all hasidic books were subjected to a most rigorous censorship, and Jewish printing-presses were placed under a more vigilant supervision than theretofore. The Tzaddiks were barred from visiting their parishes for the purpose of "working miracles" and "collecting tribute," a measure which only served to surround the hasidic chieftains with a halo of martyrdom and resulted in the pilgrimage of vast numbers of Hasidim to the "holy places," the "capitals" of the Tzaddiks. All this only went to intensify the distrust of the masses toward the college-bred, officially hall-marked Jewish intellectuals and to lower their moral prestige, to the detriment of the cause of enlightenment of which they professed to be the missionaries.
A peculiar variety of assimilationist tendencies sprang up among the upper class of Jews in the Kingdom of Poland, more especially in Warsaw. It was a most repellent variety of assimilation, exhibiting more flunkeyism than pursuit of culture. The "Poles of the Mosaic Persuasion," as these assimilationists styled themselves, had long been begging for admission into Polish society, though rudely repulsed by it. During the insurrection of 1861-1863, when they were graciously received as useful allies, they were indefatigable in parading their Polish patriotism. In the Polish Jewish weekly, Jutrzenka, [1] "The Dawn," the organ of these assimilationists, the trite West-European theory, which looks upon Judaism as a religious sect and not as a national community, was repeated ad nauseam. One of the most prominent contributors to that journal, Ludwig Gumplovich, the author of a monograph on the history of the Jews in Poland, who subsequently made a name for himself as a sociologist, and, after his conversion to Christianity, received a professorship at an Austrian university, opened his series of articles on Polish-Jewish history with the following observation: "The fact that the Jews had a history was their misfortune in Europe…. For their history inevitably presupposes an isolated life severed from that of the other nations. It is just this which constitutes the misfortune alluded to."