Haskalah

“ The real history of Haskalah in Russia commences with Lilienthal.
Time helped greatly to restore, even to deepen, the affection of the Maskilim for Lilienthal. A modern critic speaking of "life and literature" in {181} Hebrew, pictures him in glowing colors, and finishes his description thus:
I have presented to you, reader, a man of deep culture, known and respected in the highest circles, and yet inseparably connected with his race and religion, and ready to offer his life for their welfare ”

“ 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 {194} 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ To understand the raison d'Être of the Haskalah movement, it may not be superfluous to cast a glance at the inner social and religious life of the Slavonic Jews during pre-Haskalah times. The labors of the farmer are crowned with success only when nature lends him a helping hand. His soil must be fertile, and blessed with frequent showers. Nor would the Maskilim have accomplished their aim, had the material they found at hand been different from what it was. ”

“ This, however, was not strong enough to uproot the original sin of the Haskalah: its constant readiness to lean for support upon "enlightened absolutism." The despotism of the orthodox and the intolerance of the unenlightened masses forced the handful of Maskilim to fall back upon those who in the eyes of the Jewish populace were the source of its sorrow and tears. ”

“ The recently deceased veteran novelist Solomon (Shalom) Jacob Abramowitsch (1836‒1918) “Mendele Mocher Sephorim”2 still continued to carry on the Haskalah tradition; and although dubbed “Grandfather of Yiddish,” he also produced Hebrew works of immortal value, the works of a giant artist in language and imagination. But broadly speaking the ideals of the Haskalah have given place since about 1880 to a more distinctly nationalist tendency. ”

“ Is not the materialism of the emancipated Maskilim often greater than the medievalism of the fanatical Hasidim? In his native town, gloomy as it was, there was at least the glow of sincerity. Haskalah had to be snatched by stealth, but it was sweeter because thus snatched. In Odessa, where the fruit of the tree of knowledge could be obtained for the asking, it turned into the apples of Sodom. The "lishmah" ideal, the love of culture for its own sake, yielded to the greed which changes everything into a commodity to profit by. ”

“ They surpassed their brethren in Poland and in Germany in learning and {198} 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." ”

“ That the children of the poor from whom learning cometh forth still forsake their city and country and acquire knowledge, ... that societies for the spread of Haskalah are formed every day, ... that strict and pious Jews send their sons and daughters to where they can obtain enlightenment, that rabbis, dayyanim, and maggidim urge their children to become proficient in the requirements of the times ... ”

“ At such a time the champions of the Haskalah opposed ignorance and prejudice in the name of the past, and in the name of morality and idealism they sought to win the hearts of the populace for the "Divine Haskalah".
The influence of Hebrew romanticism was many-sided. The blending of the rationalism of the first humanists with the patriotic sentiments of Luzzatto fortified the bonds that united the writers to the mass of the faithful believers. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The Enlightenment, or Haskalah movement, broadly speaking, comprises the Jewish absorption of secular learning, particularly in literature and science, the abandonment of the study of the Talmud for modern subjects, and the adoption of farm and craft life. ”

“ The German Jews wrote, the Russian Jews read. Germany was to the Jewish world, during the early Haskalah movement, what France, according to Guizot, was to Europe during the Renaissance: both received an impetus from the outside in the form of raw ideas, and modified them to suit their environment. Berlin was still, as it had been during the days of Mendelssohn and Wessely, the sanctuary of learning, the citadel of culture. In the highly cultivated German literature they found treasures of wisdom and science. The poetical gems of Goethe, Schiller, Lessing, and Herder captivated their fancy ”

“ Reform Judaism began as a result of the Haskalah by simplifying and beautifying, according to European standards, the Orthodox religious service (Germany 1810-20) , and ended by abandoning the Messianic Restoration, the doctrine that Israel is in exile and that the prophecies are literally to be fulfilled. The expediency of these measures is apparent. To refute the anti-Semitic charge of racial inferiority, the existence of the race as a separate entity was denied, and the necessary scientific backing has lately been secured. ”

“ The striving for knowledge, not for the purpose of obtaining a coveted privilege, but for its own sake, became an irresistible passion, and it was accompanied by an unquenchable desire to disseminate knowledge among the masses, to make learning and wisdom common property. The Hebrew language being the best vehicle for the purpose, it was soon impressed into the service of Haskalah. The pioneer Maskilim learned to handle it with ease and clearness that would do credit to a modern writer in a much more developed European language. ”

“ There, too, the charm and fecundity of German literature, the similarity of Yiddish to German, and the privileges the Austrian Government accorded them, proved too strong a temptation for the Jews, and many of those who became enlightened were rapidly assimilated with their Gentile countrymen. While, therefore, in Galicia the Haskalah movement lasted longer than in Germany, it had ceased long before it reached its fullest development in Russia. Austrian civilization accelerated the assimilation of the educated, Polish prejudice retarded the progress of the masses. ”

“ 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"; Smolenskin dreamed of the rehabilitation of Jews in Palestine; and Ahad Ha-'Am hopes for the spiritual regeneration of his beloved people. Others advocated the levelling of all distinctions between Jews and Gentiles, or the upliftment of mankind in general and Russia in particular. To each of them Haskalah implied different ideals, and through each it promulgated diverse doctrines. ”

“ Intermarriage, social intercourse of any kind, was prohibited between Hasidim and Mitnaggedim. In Vilna, Grodno, Brest, Slutsk, Minsk, Pinsk, etc., the ban was hurled against the dissenters by the most prominent rabbis. Israel was divided into two hostile camps.20 But soon everything was changed. Hasidim and Mitnaggedim discovered that while they were fighting each other, a common enemy was undermining the ground on which they stood. The Haskalah was steadily drawing recruits from both, and it threatened ultimately to become more dangerous to both than they were to each other. ”

“ Thus was the deep-rooted yearning for enlightenment finally let loose, and the gyves of tradition were at last removed. The Maskilim of the "forties" and "fifties" were antiquated in the "sixties" and "seventies." They began to see that the fears of the orthodox and their denunciations of Haskalah were not altogether unfounded. A young generation had grown up who had never experienced the strife and struggles of the fathers, and who lacked the submissive temper that had characterized their ancestors. ”

“ This tendency is seen most strongly in the greatest of these Maskilim, Judah Löb (Leon) ben Asher Gordon (1831‒1892) , a poet, essayist and story-teller, who united lightness of touch, clearness and elegance of diction with a great gift of expression, and combined in one harmonious whole accurate reflection and vivid imagination—an exceedingly keen satirist, and the most profound among writers of the Haskalah in the knowledge and use as well of the biblical as of the post-biblical Hebrew idiom. ”

“ FKN, pp. 246-247; Günzburg, op. cit., i. 48. Moses Reines also points out the fact that the prominent rabbis did not withhold their approval of the most typical Haskalah works when their authors were not suspected of heresy, as shown by Abele's haskamah on Levinsohn's Te'udah be-Yisraël, Tiktin's on Günzburg's Toledot ha-Arez, and Malbim's on Zweifel's Sanegor (Ozar ha-Sifrut, 1888, p. 61) .
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Footnote 32: (return)
Ha-Boker Or, 1879, no. 4; FKI, pp. 537-538, 1132; Ha-Lebanon, 1872, no. 35; Ha-Zefirah, 1879, no. 9; Jewish Chronicle, May 4, 1877; Keneset Yisraël, 1887, pp. 157-162 ”

“ 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. ”

“ It was more especially so in Russia during the "sixties." Odessa was the most enlightened, because it was the wealthiest, of Jewish communities, as the benumbing poverty of the Pale was largely to blame for the unfriendly attitude towards whatever did not bear the stamp of Jewishness on its surface. The Society for the Promotion of Haskalah, too, owes its existence to some of the most prominent Russo-Jewish merchants. Its original officers were Joseph Yosel Günzburg, President; his son Horace Günzburg, First Vice-president; Rabbi A. Neuman, Second Vice-president ”

“ THE HARBINGER OF JEWISH NATIONALISM (PEREZ SMOLENSKIN) The artistic portrayer of life was, however, a rare exception in the literature of the Haskalah. Riven by social and cultural strife, the period of enlightenment called rather for theories than for art, and the novelist no less than the publicist was called upon to supply the want. This theoretic element was paramount in the novels of Perez Smolenskin. (1842-1885) , the editor of the popular Hebrew magazine ha-Shahar. ”

“ The disciple and successor of the German Meassefim, Rapoport inherited from them the conviction which characterized the Jewish Maskil, that science alone and modern civilization can raise the intellectual level and improve the political situation of his co-religionists. All his life he fought for the Haskalah. He loved knowledge with disinterested devotion, and not merely because it was an instrument to promote the political emancipation of the Jews. The work of assimilation set on foot in the Occident, he realized, was not applicable in the East of Europe, and would even be useless there. ”

“ The waves of the Talmud, the casuistry of more than a millennium of scholasticism, have left their traces in his mind and personality. In his hatred of the adversaries of the Haskalah, Lebensohn depicts him, besides, as a hypocrite, a lover of the good things of this world, and given to lewdness, which are not the usual traits of these Rabbis. The alleged Tartufe of the ghetto cannot be called a hypocrite. He is a believer, and hence sincere. What leads him to commit the worst excesses, is his fanaticism, his blind piety. ”

“ Isaac Luria and Hayyim Vital were equally venerated by both, and hero worship was common to both. The Ascension of Elijah (Gaon) is as full of miracles as The Praises of the Besht. It is no wonder, then, that the animosities, which reached their acme during the last few years of the Gaon's life, were weakened after his death, and that the compromise, pleaded for by Doctor Hurwitz and Manasseh Ilye, was somehow effected. But it was otherwise with the Haskalah. "Verily," says the {135} zaddik Menahem Mendel of Vitebsk, "verily, grammar is useful ”