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HISTORY OF THE JEWS IN RUSSIA AND POLAND

CHAPTER XI: THE INNER LIFE OF RUSSIAN JEWRY DURING THE PERIOD OF "ENLIGHTENED ABSOLUTISM"

1. KAHAL AUTONOMY AND CITY GOVERNMENT

The system of state patronage spread its wings also over the
self-government of the Jewish communities. 'l'owards the end
of Catherine II.'s reign the Government clearly betrayed its
tendency to curtail the extensive communal autonomy which
the Jews had been guaranteed earlier, in 1776, when the
promise of the Empress, to allow the Jews of annexed White
Russia "to retain their former liberties," was still fresh in
the official mind. But the Russian Government, not in the
habit of tolerating such "licentiousness" among its subjects,
looked askance at the large economic, spiritual, and judicial
functions granted to the Kahals, in addition to their fiscal
duties as the collecting agencies of the state taxes. As a result
of this attitude, the ukases of 1786 and 1795 had limited the
range of activity of the Kahals to spiritual and fiscal affairs.
The "Jewish Constitution" of 1804 went one step further
by dividing these two functions between the rabbinate and the
Kahals, which had previously formed one whole. The rabbis
were given permission" to look after all the ceremonies of the
Jewish faith and decide all disputes bearing on religion,"
while the Kahals were ordered" to see to the regular payment
of the state taxes." 'l'his was all that was left of the ancient
autonomy of the Jewish communities in Poland, with its vast
network of institutions and central assemblies, or Waads.
It is apparent that in real life the power of the communities
w&slarger than on paper. The Jews went on submitting most
INNER LrFE UNDER ENLIGHTENED ABSOLUTISM 36t
01 their cases, even those involving monetary disputes, to their
own rabbinical tribunals. TIle prohibition of imposing the
herem (excommunication) upon obstreperous members of
the community was occasionally disregarded, since the" spiritual"
tribunals had no other means or coercion at their
disposal. On the other hand, the Government itself, being in
need not only of the fiscal services of the Kahals, but also of
a responsible organization to be consulted upon Jewish matters,
could not help tolerating the extension of Kahal activities
far beyond the range of fiscal interests. When the Government
was desirous of ascertaining the views of the Jewish
communities on some 01 the measures planned by it, it
addressed itself, as was the case in 1802, 1803, and 1807:
to the Kahals, and authorized them to send delegates to St.
Petersburg or the provincial capitals.
This extension of J"ewish autonomy was a concession wrested
from the Government by the force of circumstances, by the
power of a compact population living a life of its own and
refusing to efface itself to the point of merging with the surrounding
population and fusing all its public interests with the
affairs of the general city administration. Yet it was just this
"municipalization" of the Jewish communities that the Russian
Government had been aiming at for a long time. From
the time of Catherine II. it cherished the thought of " destroying
.Tewish separateness," by forcing the Jews into the framework
of the 1{ussian class organization, particularly into the
estates of the merchants and burghers.
When, shortly after 1780, the Jews were accorded the
hitherto unheard-of privilege of participating in the city
government with the right of active and passive suffrage for
1 See pp. 337, 339, 349.
24
368 THE JEWS IN RUSSIA AND POLAND
the magistracies and municipal courts, the lawgivers of St.
Petersburg were confident that Russian Jewry, in a transport
of delight, would throw overboard its old Kahal autonomy,
and eagerly coalescewith the Christian urban estates, to form
a common municipal organization. But neither the Jews nor
the Christians justified these confident expectationE'. The
former, while clinging as heretofore to their time-honored
communal organization, were glad to participate in the elections
to the magistracies, in which up till then their traditional
enemies, the Christian merchants and burghers, had been
the masters, and in which they frankly proposedto protect their
interests, representing as they did a considerable portion of the
urban population.
But here they encountered furious opposition on the part of
their Christian fellow-residents. In the two White Russian
Governments of Vitebsk and Moghilev several Jews had been
elected to the magistracies as aldermen and members of the
law courts. But in the majority of cases the Christians managed
to obtain an artifical majority and keep the Jews out
of the municipal administration. Complaints lodged with the
central authorities in St. Petersburg were of no avail, for the
Russian, and even more so the Polish, burghers regarded the
bestowal of municipal rights upon the Jews as a violation of
their own chartered privileges. Yielding to this mood of the
Christian population, the administrators of the southwestern
Governments established on their own responsibility a restrictive
percentage for the participation of Jews in the magistracies,
by limiting, even in places with a predominatingly
Jewish population, the number of Jewish members to be
elected to the magistracies to one-third. The representatives
of the Jewish majority of the population in the city admiDisINNER
LIFE UNDER ENLIGHTENED ABSOLUTISM 369
tratioll were thus invariably reduced to a minority, and were
not in a position to protect the interests of their coreligionists,
either in the assessment of the municipal taxes or in the cases
brought before the municipal law courts. Here, too, the protest
addressed to St. PetersbUl'g by a Jelegate acting on behalf
of the Podolian Jews did 110t remedy the situation,
In the two Lithuanian Governments which hail fallen into
the hands of Russia after the third partition of Poland, in
1795, the Christian opposition scored e\'en a gl'eater success.
For here it became necessary to suspend altogether the operation
of the law granting the Jews representation in the magistracies,
When the Senatorial ukase of 1802, making the
Jews eligible for public office, became known in Vilna, the
local Christian population raised a cry of indignation. The
Philistine arrogance of the old" city fathers," combined with
the low motives of religious and class hatred, manifested itself
ill a petition addressed in February, 1803, by the Christian
burghers of ViluH to Alexander 1.
In this petition the residents of Vilna protest against the
violation of their ancient privilege, in pursuance of which
"Jews and members of other faiths are forbidden to hold
office" in Lithuania. The admiss.ion of Jews to the magistracies
is a misfortune and a disgrace for the capital of Lithuania,
for
they [the Jews] have not the slightest conception of morality,
while their form of education does not fit them for the calling of
a judge, and altogether this peopie can only maintain itself by all
kinds of trickery. . . .. The Christians will lose all Interest in
accepting public office once the Jews are given the right to
dominate them.
The petitioners point out threateningly that the domination
or the Jews, i. e. their participation in the magistracies,
370 THE JEWS IN RUSSIA AND POLAND
though it be limited to one-third of the number of aldermen,
will undermine the people's confidence in the municipal administration
and judiciary. "For the obedience of the mob
will be turned into defamation when the Christian who enters
the sacred place [of justice] beholds a Jew as his superior
and judge, submission to whom is unnatural, by reason of
class and religion."
The Christian population of Kovno resorted, in presenting
a similar petition, to another incontrovertible argument against
the admission of Jews to municipal offices. Referring to
the cross with the "sacred figure" of the crucifixion, which
is placed on the court table for the administration of the oath,
the petitioners assert that the Jewish members of the court
" will refuse to look upon it, but, by reason of their faith, wIll
think disrespectfully of it, so that, instead of judicial impartiality,
there will be mockery of the Christian law." 'rhe
Government found these arguments convincing", and ill 1805
repealed the ukase of the Senate concerning the election of Jews
to the magistracies of Lithuania.
In this way the stolid raucor of tlw " pri viJcged " burghers
in BOrneplaces handicapped thc activity of the Jews in the
city administration, and in others entirely suppressed it. The
Jewish communities, backward though they were, displayed
sufficient civic courage to send their representatives to the
camp of the enemy to work in common with him for the benefit
of the whole urban population. But the liarrow-minded
burghers, who were thoroughly saturated with medieval prejudices,
would not recognize the Jews as their fellow-townsmen.
'l'he Jews had to reckon with this coarse conservatism of the
8urrolmding population. They were still able to fall back upon
their own communal Rolf-government. and, had their social
INNER LLF'E UNDER ENLIGHTENED ABSOLUTISM 371
energies been direetcd towards that end, the old Kahal autonomy,
in spite of all Government restrictions, might to a certain
extent have corne into its own again. But another factor
thwart.ed this revival-the deep rift in the Russian Jewish
community, which began with the rise of Hasidism in the
second half of the eighteenth century, and was an accomplished
fact at the beginning of the nineteenth century.

2. THE HASIDIC SCHISM AND THE INTERVENTION OF THE GOVERNMENT

The period of Poland's partitions was also a period «;>£ divisions
within Polish Jewry. The external division was accompanied
by an internal split; the political partition, by a spiritual
schism. The body of Polish Jewry was divided among Russia,
Austria, and Prussia, and its soul between Rabbinism and
Hasidism. There was even a significant coincidence in dates:
the first declaration against Hasidism by the rabbinate of
Vilna, which started the religious schism, was issued in 1772,
in the year of the first Polish partition, and the second emphatic
declaration of the same rabbinate, which completed the
schism, followed close upon the third partition of Poland, in
1796.
'L'he interval between these two dates represents one continuous
stretch of Hasidic triumphs. The Russian Southwest,
Volhynia, the province of Kiev, and Podolia, had by the end of
the period, been almost cOll1pletely conquered by the Hasidim.
With the exception of a few cities, they now formed the predominating
element in the communities; their ritual was
adopted in synagogue worship, and their spiritual rulers, the
'l'7,addiks, exercised control over the oflicial rabbinate. As far
as the Northwest is concerned, Hasidism had managed during
372 THE .JEWS IN RUSSIA AND POLAND
that interval to obtain a foothold in White Russia, the only
Polish province which for over twenty years had been under
Russian dominion, and thus politically severed from the rest
of curtailed Poland. Under the leadership of the Tzaddik
Shneor Zalman of IJozno,a strong Hasidic center had been built
up in that part of the Northwest, but there were yet no compact
Hasidic communities in that region. In the majority of towns
the communities were composed of both elements, Hasidim and
their opponents, the Habbinists, who were nicknamed Mithnagdim
(" Protestants ."), the preponderance being now on this
side, now on the other, a state of affairs which gave rise to
endless dissensions in the Kahals and synagogues.
In Lithuania alone, the stronghold of Habbinism, Hasidi8m
failed to take root. Here a few small Hasidic groups were
ensconced in a number of cities. They held their services in
modest rooms in private residences (minyanim), which they
were often forced to hide from the gaze of the hostile Kahal
authorities. In Vilna, the residence of the great zealot of
Rabbinism, Elijah Gaon, the Hasidim constituted an " illegal"
secret organization. Only in the suburb of Pinsk, in Karlin,
the Hasidim succeeded in establishing themselves firmly, and
could boast of having their own synagogues and rrzaddiks.'
Karlin, became the seat of a Hasidic propaganda extending all
over Lithuania, where the Hasidim were accordingly nicknamed
" Karliners."
'rhe second and third partition of Poland, which united
Lithuania and White Russia under the sovereignty of Russia,
tended to buoy up the oppressed Lithuanian Hasidim, who
'One of these Tzaddiks, :aabbi Solomon (Shelomo) of Karlin.
lost his lite. according to Hasidic tradition. during the riots of the
Russo-Polish confederate troops in the district of Minsk.
INNER LIFE UNDER ENLIGHTENED ABSOLUTISM 373
could HOW join forces agaillst the common enemy with their
brethren all over the northwestern region. 'rhe Hasidic propaganda
took on new courage. 'Co enhance the success of their
missio.nary activity, the Hasidim spread a rumor, that the
former anti-Hasidic thunderer, the veteran Rabbi Elijah Gaon,
was sorry for all the hostile acts he had committed against the
sectarians, and that in consequence the excommunication formerly
hurled by him against them was no longer valid. When
this clever ruse became known in Vilna, the indignant champions
of Rabbinism prompted the aged Gaon to publish all
epistle in which he reaffirmed his former attituue towards the
" heretics," and declared that all the herems previously issued
against them remained in force (May, 1796). The epistle was
intrusted to two envoys, who were dispatched from Vilna to a
number of cities, for the purpose of stirring up an anti-Hasidic
agitation. When the envoys arrived in Minsk, and set about
executing their instructions, the Hasidim started a rumor to
the effect that the Gaon's signature under the epistle was not
genuine. The Kahal of Minsk sent an inquiry to Vilna, and in
reply received, in September, 1796, a new energetic appeal of
the Gaon addressed to all the gubernatorial Kahals of Lithuania,
White Russia, Volhynia, and Podolia.
Ye mountains of Israel-cried the great zealot-ye spiritual
shepherds, and ye lay leaders of ever)" Government, also ye, the
heads of the Kahals of Moghllev, Polotzk, Zhitomlr, Vinnitza, and
Kamenetz-Podolsk, you hold in your hands a hammer wherewith
you may shatter the plotters of evil, the enemies of light, the
foes of the [Jewish] people. Woe unto this generation! They
[the Hasidim] violate the Law, distort our teachings, and set up
a new covenant; they lay snares in the house of the Lord, and
give a perverted exposition of the tenets of our faith. It behooves
us to avenge the Law of the Lord, it behooves us to punish
374 THE JEWS IN RUSSIA AND POLAND
these madmen before the whole world, for their own improvement.
Let none have pity on them and grant them shelter! . • •• Gird
yourselves with zeal in the na~e of the Lord!
In calling to arms against the Hasidim in these fulminant
terms, the venerable knight of Rabbinism was moved by the
profound conviction that the" new sect," which by that time
numbered its adherents by the hundreds of thousands, was
leading the Jewish religion and nation to ruin, because it
was rending asunder the Jewish camp internally while the
political upheavals were severing it externally. Hc was morcover
alarmed by the luxuriant growth of the cult of the
Tzaddiks, or miracle-workers, which constituted a menace to
the purity of the Jewish doctrine.
The Gaon's ire was particularly aroused by a work published
in the same year as his epistle (1796), by Rabbi 8hn80r
Zalman, the head of the White Russian Hasidim. The work
was familiarly called Tanyo/ and contained a bold exposition
of the pantheistic doctrine of Hasidism, which the champions
of the established dogma were prone to regard as blasphemy
and heresy: The Gaon's proclamation hinted at this work, and
its author felt painfully hurt by the attack. 8hneor Zalman
responded in a counter-epistle, in which he tried to prove that
the patriarch of Rabbinism had been misinformed about the
true essence of Hasidisll1, and he invited his opponent to it
literary dispute for the purpose of elucidating the truth and
"restoring peace in Irsae1." But the Gaon refused to enter
[' The title of the work Is Likkute Amarim, ••Collected Discourses."
It is called Tanya ~rom the first word.]
I Among the incriminated ideas was that of the presence of the
Deity in all existing things and In all, even sinful, thoughts, and
the concomitant mystical theory of ••raising the sparks to the
source," i. e. extracting good from evil, righteousness from sinfulness,
and pure passion 'rom impure impulses.
INNER LIFE UNDER ENLIGHTENED ABSOLUTISM 375
into polemics with a "heretic." In the meantime the Vilna
epistlc continued to circulate in many communities, and gave
rise to severe conflicts between Mithnagdim and Hasidim, the
former as a rule taking the offensive.
Exasperated to the point of madness by these persecutions,
the Hasidic association of Yilna was stung into perpetrating
an act of gross tactlessness. When, in the fall of 1797, about a
year after the publication of his last circular, the aged Gaon
closed his eyes, and the whole community of Vilna was plunged
into mourning, the local Hasidic society met in a private housc
and indulged in a gay drinking bout, to celebrate the deliverance
of the sect from its principal enemy. This ugly demonstration
arranged on the day of the funeral raised a storm of
indignation throughout the community. Before leaving the
cemetery, the leaders of the community, standing at the Gaon's
grave, pledged themselves solemnly to wreak vengeance upon
. the Hasidim. On the following day the Kahal elders were
called to a special meeting, at which a series of repressive
measures against the Hasidim was adopted. Apart from the
measures to be madc public, such as a new bull of excommunication
against the sectarians, the meeting passed several
resolutions 'which were to remain confidential. A special
committee of five Kahal members was appointed, and was
vested with large powers, for the purpose ot' grappling with the
"heresy." Subsequent events proved that among the contemplated
means of warfare was included thc plan of informing
against the leaders of the sect to the Hussian Government.
It did not take long for th/) disgraceful scheme to be put
into action. Soon the Prosecutor-General in St. Petersburg,
I.JOpukhin, received a denunciation directing his attention" to
the political misdeeds perpetrated by the chief of the Karliner
316 THE JEWS IN RUSSIA AND POLAND
[Hasidic] sect, Zalman Borukhovich [son of Borukh ]," and
his fellow-workers in Lithuania. Under the influence of this
denunciation, Lopukhin, acting in the name of the 'fzar,
ordered the local gubernatorial administration, early in the fall
of 1798, to arrest Zalman, the head of the sect, in the townlet of
Lozno, together with twenty-two of his accomplices who were
found in Lithuania. Zalman was apprehended and dispatched
post-haste to St. Petersburg, accompanied by "a strong convoy";
his incriminated followers remained under arrest in
Vilna.
Zalman was arraigned before the so-called "Secret Expedition,"
a department which uealt with crimes of a political
nature. A long bill of indictments was read out to him. He
was accused of being the founder of a harmful religious sect,
which had changed the order of divine service among Jews,
of spreading pernicious ideas, and collecting funds for mysterious
purposes in Palestine. The cross-examination clearly
implied the charge of political disloyalty. '1.'0 all questions
laid before him, the accused gave an elaborate written reply
in Hebrew. Zalman's defense, which was translat~d from
the Hebrew into Russian, produced a favorable impression in
Government circles. Acting upon the report submitted to him
by the Proseeutor-General respecting" all the circumstances
revealed by the investigation," Tzar Paul I. issued an order
to liberate Zalman and the other sectarian chiefs who had been
placed under arrest, but to keep" a strict watch over them as
to whether there exists, or is liable to come into existence, a
secret relationship or correspondence between them and those
who entertain perverted notions concerning the authorities and
the form of Government." Towards the end of 1798 Zalman
was allowed to return home, and the other prisoners were likewise
set at liberty.
INNER LIFE UNDER ENLIGHTF.NED ABSOLUTISM 377'
Now it was the turn of the Hasidim to retaliate on their
persecutors. In view of the fact that the persecutions against
them had been instigated by the Kahal elders of Vilna, who
had composed the "Committee of Five," the Hasidim made
up their mind to depose these elders and put their own partisans
in their places. With the help of bakhshish the Vilna
Hasidim managed to secure the good-will of the gubernatorial
administration. In the beginning of 1799 they lodged a complaint
with the local authorities against the Kahal elders,
charging them with having perpetrated all kinus of abuses,
including the embezzlement of public funds. This action resulted
in the removal and imprisonment of several elders.
Under official pressure their places were filled by new elders,
who either were themselves Hasidim or had been recommended
by them. The community of Vilna was rent in twain.
One section remained true to the dismissed elders, the other
sto.od up for the newly-elected. The warring factions were
busy sending complaints and denunciations directed against
each other to the Government in 81. Petersburg. The canker
of "informing," which, perhaps not accidentally, had developed
in the first years of Russian rule in Lithuania,
brought to the front one hideous personality, a rabbi-informer
by the name of Avigdor Ha'imovich (son of Hayyim), of Pinsk.
Avigdor, formerly rabbi of Pinsk and the surrounding
district, had been dismissed from office owing to the intrigues
of the Hasidic members of the community, who were his
opponents. What Avigdor lamented most was the loss of
revenue. For a long time the dethroned shepherd had been
dragging his flock through the magistracies and law courts .
. Having failed in his efforts, he decided to wreak vengeance
upon the leader of the sect responsible for his ruin. In
6'/8 THE JEWS TN RUSSIA AND POLAND
the beginning of 1800 Avigdor addressed an elaborate petition
to Tzar Paul I., in which he described the Hasidic sect
as " a pernicious and dangerous organization," which was l:ontinuing
the work of the former Messianic Sabbatians. By a
vast array of distorted quotations from Hasidic literature the
informer endeal'ored to prove that the teachers of the seet
enjoined upon their followers to fear only God and not men,
in other words, to disregard the authorities, including the Tzar.
The denunciation was allowed to take its course. Early in
November of the same year, the TZl1ddik Zahnan Borukhovich
was rearrested in Lozno and dispatched to St. Petersburg
under the convoy of two Senatorial couriers. On his arrival
in the capital the Tzaddik was incarcerated in the fortress,
and after a cross-examination confronted with his accuser
Avigdor. Zalman again replied in writing to the indictments
against him, which now mounted up to nineteen counts. He
repudiated emphatically the charge of not recognizing the
authority of the Government, of immorality, of collecting
money, and arranging meetings for secret purposes. 'Towards
the end of November Zalman was set at liberty, but was
ordered to remain in St. Petersburg pending the examination
of his case by the Senate, to which it had now "been transferred
from the Secret Expedition. While the Senate was preparing
to take up the case, the palace revolution of March, 1801, cut
short Paul's reign, and placed Alexander 1. upon the throne.
The political wind veered round, and on March 29, 1801, the
new Tzar gave Zalman permission to depart from St. Petersburg.
Having satisfied itself that the religious schism in Judaism
was perfectly harmless from the political point of view,
the Government was ready to give it its sanction. One of the
INNER L1I'''E UNDER ENLIGHTENED ABSOLUTISM 379
clauses of the Statute of 1804 permits the sectarians to establish
their own synagogues in every community and to elect
their own rabbis, with the sole stipulation that the Kahal
administration in each city shall remain one and the same
for all sections of the community. As a matter of fact, the
law merely recognized what had already become the living
practice. The religious split had long been an accomplished
fact, and the internecine strife of 1796-1801 was merely its
final act. As for the communal organization of the Jews, which
had already been undermined by the political changes, the
schism proved nothing short of disastrous. The Kahals, weakened
by inner struggles and demoralized by denunciations and
bureaucratic interference, failed to present a united front in the
first years of Alexander's reign, when the Government was
carrying out its "plan of reform," and invited the Kahal
leaders to share in its labors. The communities of the Southwest,
which were completely under the ban of Hasidic mysticism,
reacted feebly to the social and economic crisis facing
them. The Jewish delegates who presented their views in reply
to the official inquiries of 1803 and 1807 1 were recruited principally
from the White Russian and Lithuanian Governments,
where the political sense of the Jews had not yet been completely
dulled.

3. RABBINISM, HASIDISM, AND ENLIGHTENED "BERLINERDOM"

While in Western Europe the old forms of Jewish life were
breaking up, the cultural development of the Jewish masses
of Eastern Europe remained stationary. The two dominating
forces in their spiritual life, Habbinism and Hasidism, watched
1 See pp. 339, 349.
380 THE JEWS IN RUSSIA AND POLAND
with equal zeal over the maintenance of the old order of things.
The traditional form of education remained unchanged. 'rhe
old school, the heder and yeshibah, with its exclusive 'ralmudic
training, supplied its pupils with a vast amount of mental
energy, but failed to prepare them for practical life, and the
girls and women remained entirely outside the influence of the
school. J list as firmly established was the old-fashioned i:icheme
of family life, with its early marriages, between the years of
thirteen and sixteen, with the prolonged maintenance of i:iueh
married children in the paternal home, with its excessive fertility
in the midst of habitual poverty, with its reduction of
physical wants to the point of exhaustion and degeneration.
T'his patriarchal mass of Jews fought shy of all cultural
" noveltiei:i,"and deprecated the slightest attempt to extend its
mental and social horizon. Religious culture had not yet had a
chance to cross swords with secular culture. The war between
Hasidism and Rabbinism was fought on purely religious soil.
Its sole issue was the type of th.:!believer: the old discipline
with its emphasis upon the scholastic and ceremonial aspect of
Judaism was fighting against the onrush of ecstatic mysticism
and the blind" cult of saints."
It cannot be said that benumbed Rabbinism revived uuder
the effect of this vehement contest. At the time we are speaking
of no distinct traces of such a revival are to be seen, and all
one can di,scern are the signs of a purely scholastic renaissance.
The method of textual analysis introduced by Elijah Gaon into
Talmudic research, which took the place of the hair-splitting
casuistry formerly in vogue, gained ever wider currency and
an ever firmer foothold in the yeshibahs of Lithuania.
In the new center of Talmudic learning, the yeshibah of
the Lithuanian townlet of Volozhin,' established in 1803, this
[' In the Government of Vilna.]
INNER LIFE UNDER ENLIGHTENED ABSOLUTISM :';Sl
novel method received particular attention at the hands of its
founder, Rabbi Hayyim Volozhiner, a pupil of the Gaon. The
yeshibah of Volozhin raised a whole generation of scholars and
rabbis' " in the spirit of the Gaon." In these circles one could
even detect a certain amount of toleration towards the anathema.
tized " secular sciences," though this toleration was limited
to the realm of mathematics and partly that of natural history.
The Gaon, who had himself engaged in mathematical exercises
in his spare moments, permitted his pupil Borukh Shklover
to publish a Hebrew translation of Euclid's Geometry (1'180).
Yet the dread of philosophy was as great as theretofore,
and the incompatibility of free research with Judaism was
looked upon as an inviolable dogma. The Jewish mind continued
to move within the narrow range of " the four ells of the
Halakha," and was doomed to sterility. In the course of that
whole stormy period, extending over a quarter of a century,
Rabbinism, aside from the Gaon, had not put forward a single
literary figure of any magnitude, not a single writer of large
vision. It seemed as if the spirit of originality had fled from it.
Greater productivity was to be found among the Hasidim of
the period, although in point of originality it yielded considerably
to the preceding era of the Besht and his first apostles.
Alongside of triumphant practical Tzaddikism, trading in miracles
and thriving on the credulity of the masses, we observe to
a certain degree the continued development of the Hasidic
doctrine on the lines laid down by Besht. In the Norlh a new
Hasidic theory was spreading, which strove to adapt the
emotional pietism of Besht to the "intellectualism" of the
Lithuanian schoolmen. The originator of this doctrine, Rabbi
Shnoor Zalman, the hero of the religious struggle depicted in
382 THE JEWS IN RUSSIA AND POLAND
the foregoing chapters, endeavored to rationalize Hasidism,
which had manifested a decided leaning toward the principle
credo quia absurdum sit. In the hands of the author of
Tanyo} the ecstasy of feeling is transformed into ecstasy of
thinking. Occasionally he speaks of the knowledgc of God in
terms worthy of a Maimonides. Needless to say, Rabbi Zalman
rejects the Tzaddik cult in the vulgar form of miracle-mongering,
which it had assumed in the South.
In the South-to speak more exactly, in the Ukraina-
Hasidism persisted in the beaten track. Us two pillars, Levi
Itzhok (Isaac) of Berdych.ev (died 1809) and Nohum
(Nahum) of Ohernobyl (died 1799), continued to uphold
Besht's traditions. The former, the author of K edushath Levi 1
(1798), manifests in his work the genuine fervor of Hasidic
faith, without its morbid ecstasy. In his private life this leader
of Volhynian Hasidism was the embodiment of lovingkindness,
extending alike to Jew and nOTl-Jew. Many popular legends
tell of his surpassing affection for the humhle and suffering.
The Tzaddik Nohum of Ohernobyl, who was an itinerant
preacher in the Government of Kiev, laid in his sermons special
emphasis on the element of the Oabala. Towards the end of
his life he was primarily a Tzaddik, of the" practitioner" and
"miracle-worker" type, and founded the" Ohernobyl Tzaddik
dynasty," which is still widely ramified in the Ukraina.
Quite apart from the rest stands the figure of the Podolian
Tzaddik and dreamer Nahman of Bratzlav (1772-1810), a
great-grandson of Besht. Gifted with a profoundly poetical
disposition, he spurned the beaten tracks of the professional
"Righteous," and struck out into a path of his own. The goal
he aimed at was the return to the childlike simplicity of
[' ••The Holiness of Lev!."]
INNER LIFE UNDER ENLIGHTENED ABSOLUTISM 383
Besht's teachings. In 1798-1799 Nahman made a pilgrimage
to Palestine, just about the time when Bonaparte's army was
marching through the Holy Land, and a gust from tempestuous
Europe drifted through the slumbering East. But the Podolian
youth had an ear only for the whisper from the tombs
of the great Cabalist teachers, Rabbi Shimeon ben Yohai and
Ari, and for the discourses of the living Tzaddiks who had settled
in Tiberias. On his return to Europe, Nahman made his
home in Bratzlav, and became the head of a group of Podolian
Hasidim. In his intimate circle he was wont to preach, or
rather to muse aloud, on the reign of the spirit, on the communion
of the Tzaddik with his flock in religious ecstasy. He
spoke in epigrams, sometimes clothing his thoughts in the
form of folk-tales. He wrote a number of books/ in which he
constantly emphasized the need of blind, unsophisticated faith.
Philosophy he regarded as destructive to the soul; Maimonides
and the rationalists were hateful to him. The unfamiliar
Berlin" enlightenment" filled his heart with mysterious awe.
~ ahman's life was cut short prematurely. Surrounded by
his admirers, he died of consumption, in Uman, at the age of
thirty-eight. Down to this day his grave serves as a place of
pilgrimage for the" Bratzlav Hasidim."
However, the average 'l'zaddik of the type which had assumed
definite shape in that period was equally removed from
the complexity of Rabbi Zalman and the simplicity of Rabbi
Nahman. Oll the whole, the Tzadc1iks drifted further and
further away from their mission of religious teachers, and
became more and. more "practitioners." Surrounded by a
host of enthusiastic worshipers, these "middlemen between
1 Lilckute Maha·ran .•• Collected Sayings of MaHaRaN" [abbreviation
of Morenu Ha-Rab Rabbi Nahman). and others.
26
384 THE JEWS IN RUSSIA AND POLAND
God and mankind" understood the art of tUrl1ing the blind
faith of the masses to good account. They waxed rich on the
gifts and offerings of their admirers, lived in palaces, much
after the manner of the Polish magnates and Church dignitaries.
The" court" of Besht's grandson in Medzhibozh,
Borukh Tulchinski (1'1'80-1810), was marked by particular
splendor. Borukh even had his court-fool, Herschel Ostropoler,
the well-known hero of popular anecdotes.
In the original Polish provinces, afterwards incorporated
into the Duchy of Warsaw, the commanders-in-chief of the
Hasidic' army were two Tzaddiks, Rabbi Israel of Km>;henitz
and Habbi Jacob Itzhok (Isaac) of Lublin. These two pupils
of the" apostle" Baer of Mezherich became the pioneers of
Hasidism on the banks of the Vistula towards the end of the
eighteenth century. At the close of their careers-both djed in
1815-the banner of Hasidism floated over the whole of
Poland.
The breezes of Western culture had hardly a chance to penetrate
to this realm, protected as it was by the double wall of
Rabbinism and Hasidism. And yet here and there one may
discern on the surface of social life the foam of the wave from
the far-off West. From Germany the free-minded" Berliner,"
the nickname applied to these" new men," was moving towards
the borders of Hussia. He ~rrayed himself in a short
German coat, cut off his earlocks, shaved his beard, neglected
the religieus observances, spoke Germm 01' "the 111nguageof
the land," and swore by the name of Moses Mendelssohn. The
culture of which he was the banner-bearer was a rather shallow
en~htenment, which a1'(ectedexterior and form rather than
mind and beart. It was" BeJ:linerdom," the harbinger of the
more complicated Haskala of the following period, which was
INNER LIFE UNDER ENLIGHTENED ABSOLUTISM 385
imported into Warsaw during the decade of Prussian dominion
(1~96-1806). The contact between the capitals of Poland and
Prussia yielded its fruits. The Jewish" dandy" of Berlin
appeared on the streets of Warsaw, and not infrequently the
long robe of the Polish Rasid made way timidly for the
German coat, the symbol of " enlightenment."
Alongside of this external assimilation, attempts were also
made to copy the literary models of Prussian Jewry. In 1~96
a Jewish Mendelssohnian named Jacques Kalmansohn published
a French pamphlet in Warsaw, under the title Essai sur
l'etat actuel des Juifs de Pologne et leur perfectibilite, dedi·
cating it to the Prussian Minister Roym, who had carried out
Jewish reforms in the Polish provinces of Prussia. The
pamphlet contains an account of the status of Polish Jewry
of his time and a plan for its amelioration. The account is
rather superficial, concocted after the approved Western
recipe. In the judgment of the author, the misfortune of the
Jews lies in their separation from the surrounding nations,
and their happiness in merging with them. The scheme of
reform proposed by the Jew Kalmansohn differs but slightly
from the Polish projects of Butrymovich and Chatzki. It
advocates equally the weakening of rabbinical and Kahal
authority, the extermination of Rasidism and Tzaddikism,
the introduction of German dress, the shaving of beards, the
establishment of German schools, and in general the cultivation
of " civism."
The mould of Berlin fashion was overlaid with a Parisian
veneer when soon afterwards (1807-1812), at the bidding of
Napoleon, the Duchy of Warsaw sprang into being. Now a
new note was sounded. A group of Parieian " dandies" claim
equal rights as a compensation for having changed their dress
386 THE JEWS IN RUSSIA AND POLAND
and their" moral conduct." 1 Even respectable representatives
of the Warsaw Jewish community designate themselves in their
petition to the Senate as " members of the Polish nation of the
Mosaic persuasion," copying the latest Parisian fashion, in
vogue at the time of the Napoleonic Synhedrion: This was
the first, though as yet naIve and unsophisticated, attempt to
secure the" transfer" from the Jewish nation to the Polish, the
germ of thc future" Poles of the Old Testament persuasion."
The torch-bearers of Berlin culture from among the followers
of David Friedlander encouraged this frame of mind in every
possible manner, and in their organ I constantly appealed in
this spirit to their Polish brethren.
How long will you continue-one of these appeals reads-to speak
a corrupt German dialect [Yiddish] instead of the language of
your country. the Polish? How many misfortunes might have
been averted by your forefathers. had they been able to express
themselves adequately in the Polish tongue before the magnates
an~ kings! Take a gl'OUPof a hundred Jews in Germany. and
you will find that either all or most of them can speak to the
magnates and rulers, but in Poland scarcely five or ten out of a
hundred are capable of doing so.
Some stray seeds of Western" enlightenment" were carried
as far as the distant Russian North. During Dyerzhavin's tour
of inspection through White Rusflia there flitted across his
vision the figure of the physician If rank in Kreslavka, an
avowed follower of Mendelssohn, callil,g for religious and educational
reforms.' In St. Petersburg, in the house of the
Maecenas Abraham Peretz, liveJ his teacher JuJah Leib Nye-
[' See p. 300.]
2 See p. 301.
[n The Hebrew periodical Ha·Me'asse/ (U The Collector "). which
was founded in Berlin in 1784, lflld appeared until 1811.]
• See p. 331.
INNER LIFE UNDER ENLIGHTENED ABSOLUTISM ;;8 i
vakhovich, a native of Podolia. In 1803, the same year in which
the Jewish deputies sojourned in St. Petersburg, Nyevakhovich
published a pamphlet in Russian, under the title, " The Wailing
of the Daughter of Judah," with a dedication to Kochubay, the
Minister of the Interior and Chairman of the" Jewish Committee."
The dedication strikes the keynote of the" \Vailing":
genuflexion before the greatness of Russia and mortification
at the fate of his coreligionists, who are deprived of thel r
share in the" blessings" of the country.
" How greatly," exclaims the author, "doth my soul exult
over these matters [the victories and might of the Russian
Empire]; how deeply cloth it grieve over my coreligionists,
who are remoyed from the hearts of their compatriots."
And throughout the whole of the pamphlet the "Daughter
of Judah" bewails the fact that neither the eighteenth century,
"the age of humanity, toleration, and meekness," nor
" the smiling spring of the present century, the beginning of
which hath been crowned .... by the accession of Alexander
the Merciful, has removed the deep-seated Jewish hatred in
Russia." "Many minds doom the tribe of Judah to contempt.
The name' J'udean ' hath become an object of ridicule, contempt,
and scom for children and the feeble-minded." With
particular reference to Mendelssohn and Lessing the author
exclaims: " You search for the Jew in man. Search for man
in the Jew, and you will no doubt find him."
Nyevakhovich's pamphlet concludes with a grievous moan:
While the hearts of all the European nations have drawn nearer
to one another, the Jewish people still finds itself despised. I feel
the full weight of this torment. I appeal to all who have sympathy
and compassion. Why do you sentence my entire people to contempt?
Thus waileth sadly the daughter of Judah. wiping her
tears, sighing ana yet uncomforted.
3Sl:l THE JEWS IN RUSSIA AND POLAND
The author himself, by the way, subsequently managed to
obtain comfort. A few years after the publication of the
" Wailing," still finding himself" removed from the hearts of
his compatriots," he discovered the magic key to these obstreperous
hearts. He embraced Christianity, and, transformed into
Lev Alexandrovich Nyevakhovich, began to write moralizing
Russian plays, which pleased the unsophisticated taste of the
Russian public of the day. Nyevakhovich thus carried his
" Berlinerdom" to that dramatic denouement which was in
fashion in Berlin itself, where an epidemic of baptism was raging.
His example was followed by his patron Abraham Peretz,
who had been ruined in the War of 1812 by military contracts.
1'he descendants of both converts occupied important posts in
the Russian civil service. One of the Peretz family was a member
of the Council of State during the reign of Alexander II.
A faint reflection of the Western literature of enlightenment
is visible during this period on the somber horizon of
Russia. Mendel Lewin, of Satanov 1 (1741-1819), who had
been privileged to behold in the flesh the Father of Enlightenment
in Berlin, scattered new seeds in his native country.
He translated into Hebrew the popular manual of medicine by
1'issot, the moral philosophy of Franklin, and the books of
travel by Campe. He also made an attempt to render the Book
of Proverbs and Ecclesiastes into the vernacular Yiddish.
'rhe last undertaking drew upon Lewin the wrath of another
" enlightened" writer, Tobias Feeler of Piotrkov and Berdychev
(died 1817), who attacked him savagely for" profaning"
Holy Writ by turning it into the" language of the street."
Feder himself published studies in Hebrew grammar and
Biblical exegesis, moralizing treatises, harmless satires, and
[' In Podolia.]
INNER LIFE UNDER ENLIGHTENED ABSOLUTISM 389
poetical odes. These publications cannot be said to mark an
epoch in the realm of literature, but they undoubtedly symbolize
a new departure in cultural life. The secular book, of which
the mere appearance was apt to arouse a murmur of discontent
among the alarmed Orthodox, takes its place side by side with
the religious literature of Rabbinism and Hasidism. These
literary attempts were the harbingers of the subsequent secularization
of Hebrew literature.

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