THE HASKALAH MOVEMENT in RUSSIA and the "Maskilim" Shall Shine

THE HASKALAH MOVEMENT IN RUSSIA And the "Maskilim" shall shine As the brightness of the firmament , , , Many shall run to and fro, And knoivledge shall be increased. — Dan. xii. 3-4 TOBIAS COHN 1652-1759 FROM THE FRONTISPIECE OF HIS MA'ASEH TOBIAH THE HASKALAH MOVEMENT IN RUSSIA BY JACOB S. RAISIN, ph.d.,d.d. Author of "Sect, Creed and Custom in Judaism," etc. Philadelphia Th« Jewish Publication Society of America 1913 Copyright, 1914, BY The Jewish Publication Society or America TO AARON S. RAISIN Your name, dear father, will not he found in the following pages, for, like " the waters of the Siloam that run softly," you ever preferred to pursue your useful course in unassuming silence. Yet, as it is your life, devoted entirely to meditating, learning, and teaching, that inspired me in my effort, I dedicate this book to you; and I am happy to know that I thus not only dedicate it to one of the noblest of Maskilim, but at the same time offer you some slight token of the esteem and affection felt for you by Your Son, JACOB S. RAISIN CONTENTS PAGE Preface n Chapter I. The Pre-Haskalah Period 17 Chapter II. The Period of Transition 53 Chapter III. The Dawn of Haskalah no Chapter IV. Conflicts and Conquests 162 Chapter V. Russification, Reformation, and Assimila- tion 222 Chapter VI. The Awakening 268 Notes 305 Bibliography 331 Index 339 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Tobias Cohn (1652-1759) Frontispiece Isaac Bar Levinsohn (1788-1860) facing page 64 Max LiLiENTHAL (1815-1882) " " 120 Alexander Zederbaum (1816-1893) " " 175 Perez BEN MosHEH Smolenskin (1842-1885)... " " 220 Moses Lob LiLiENBLUM (1843-1910) " " 280 PREFACE To the lover of mankind the history of the Russo-Jewish renaissance is an encouraging and in- spiring phenomenon. Seldom has a people made such rapid strides forward as the Russian Jews. From the melancholy regularity that marked their existence a little more than two generations ago, from the darkness of the Middle Ages in which they were steeped until the time of Alexander II, they emerged suddenly into the life and light of the West, and some of the most intrepid devotees of latter-day culture, both in Europe and in America, have come from among them. Destitute of every- thing that makes for enlightenment, and under the dominion of a Government which sought to extin- guish the few rushlights that scattered the shadows around them, they nevertheless snatched victory from defeat, sloughed off medieval superstition, and, disregarding the Dejanira shirt of modern dis- abilities, compelled their countrymen to admit mora than once that Tho' I've belted you and flayed you, By the Hvin' Gawd that made you, You're a better man than I ami 11 PREFACE Similar movements were started in Germany during the latter part of the eighteenth century, and in Austria, notably Galicia, at the beginning of the nineteenth, but none stirred the mind of the Jews to the same degree as the Haskalah movement in Russia during the last fifty years. In the former, the removal of restrictions soon rendered attempts toward self-emancipation unnecessary on the part of Jews, and the few Maskilim among them, satisfied with the present, devoted themselves to investi- gating and elucidating the past of their people's history. In Russia the past was all but forgotten on account of the immediate duties of the present. The energy and acquisitiveness that made the Jews of happier and more prosperous lands prominent In every sphere of practical life, were directed toward the realm of thought, and the merciless severity with which the Government excluded them from the enjoyment of things material only increased their ardor for things spiritual and intellectual. In its wide sense Haskalah denotes enlightenment. Those who strove to enlighten their be- nighted coreligionists or disseminate European culture among them, were called Maskilim. A care- ful perusal of this work will reveal the exact ideals these terms embody. For Haskalah was not only 12 PREFACE progressive, it was also aggressive, militant, some- times destructive. From the days of Mordecai Giinzburg to the time of Asher Ginzberg (Ahad Ha-'Am), it changed its tendencies and motives more than once. Levinsohn, " the father of the Maskilim," was satisfied with removing the ban from secular learning; Gordon wished to see his " brethren "Jews at home and men abroad ; Smolen- skin dreamed of the rehabilitation of Jews in Pales- tine; and Ahad Ha-Am hopes for the spiritual re- generation of his beloved people. Others advo- cated the levelling of all distinctions between Jews and Gentiles, or the upliftment of mankind in gen- eral and Russia in particular. To each of them Haskalah implied different ideals, and through each it promulgated diverse doctrines. To trace these varying phases from an indistinct glimmering in the eighteenth century to the glorious effulgence of the beginning of the twentieth, is the main object of this book. In pursuance of my end, I have paid particular attention to the causes that retarded or accelerated Russo-Jewish cultural advance. As these causes originate in the social, economic, and political status of the Russian Jew, I frequently portray political events as well as the state of knowledge, belief, art, 13 PREFACE and morals of the periods under consideration. For this reason also I have marked the boundaries of the Haskalah epochs in correspondence to the dates of the reigns of the several czars, though the correspondence is not always exact. Essays have been published, on some of the topics treated in these pages, by writers in different languages: in Russian, by Bramson, Klausner, and Morgulis; in Hebrew, by Izgur, Katz, and Klaus- ner; in German, by Maimon, Lilienthal, Wengeroff, and Weissberg; in English, by Lilienthal and Wiener; and in French, by Slouschz. The subject as a whole, however, has not been treated. Should this work stimulate further research, I shall feel amply rewarded. Without prejudice and without partiality, by an honest presentation of facts drawn from what I regard as reliable sources, I have tried to unfold the story of the struggle of five millions of human beings for right living and rational thinking, in the hope of throwing light on the ideals and aspirations and the real character of the largely prejudged and misunderstood Russian Jew. In conclusion, I wish to express my gratitude and Indebtedness to those who encouraged me to pro- ceed with my work after some specimens of It had been published In several Jewish periodicals- espe- 14 PREFACE cially to Doctor Solomon Schechter, Rabbi Max Heller, and Mr. A. S. Freidus, for their courtesy and assistance while the work was being written. Jacob S. Raisin. E. Las Vegas, N. Mex., Thanksgiving Day, 1909. 15 CHAPTER I THE PRE-HASKALAH PERIOD ?-i648 " There Is but one key to the present," says Max Miiller, " and that is the past." To understand fully the growth and historical development of a people's mind, one must be familiar with the conditions that have shaped its present form. It would seem neces- sary, therefore, to introduce a description of the Haskalah movement with a rapid survey of the history of the Russo-Polish Jews from the time of their emergence from obscurity up to the middle of the seventeenth century. Among those who laid the foundations for the study of this almost unexplored department of Jew- ish history, the settlement of Jews In Russia and their vicissitudes during the dark ages, the most prominent are perhaps Isaac Bar Levlnsohn, Abra- ham Harkavy, and Simon Dubnow. There Is much to be said of each of these as writers, scholars, and men. Here they concern us as Russio-Jewish hlsto- 2 17 THE HASKALAH MOVEMENT IN RUSSIA rians. What Linnaeus, Agassiz, and Cuvier did in the field of natural philosophy, they accomplished in their chosen province of Jewish history/ Levin- sohn was the first to express the opinion that the Russian Jews hailed, not from Germany, as is com- monly supposed, but from the banks of the Volga. This hypothesis, corroborated by tradition, Har- kavy established as a fact. Originally the vernacu- lar of the Jews of Volhynia, Podolia, and Kiev was Russian and Polish, or, rather, the two being closely allied, Palaeo-Slavonic. The havoc wrought by the Crusades in the Jewish communities of Western Europe caused a constant stream of German-Jewish immigrants to pour, since 1090, into the compara- tively free countries of the Slavonians. Russo- Poland became the America of the Old World. The Jewish settlers from abroad soon outnumbered the native Jews, and they spread a new language and new customs wherever they established themselves.* Whether the Jews of Russia were originally pagans from the shores of the Black and Caspian Seas, converted to Judaism under the Khazars during the eighth century, or Palestinian exiles subju- gated by their Slavonian conquerors and assimilated with them, it is indisputable that they inhabited what we know to-day as Russia long before the 18 THE PRE-HASKALAH PERIOD Varangian prince Rurik came, at the invitation of Scythian and Sarmatian savages, to lay the founda- tion of the Muscovite empire. In Feodosia there is a synagogue at least a thousand years old. The Greek inscription on a marble slab, dating back to 80-81 B. c. E., preserved in the Imperial Hermitage in St. Petersburg, makes it certain that they flour- ished in the Crimea before the destruction of the Temple. In a communication to the Russian Geo- graphical Society, M. Pogodin makes the statement, that there still exist a synagogue and a cemetery in the Crimea that belong to the pre-Christian era.

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