And the "Maskilim" shall shine As the brightness of the firmament ... Many shall run to and fro, And knowledge shall be increased . —Dan. xii. 3-4...

  TO AARON S. RAISIN Your name, dear father, will not be 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

To the lover of mankind the history of the Russo-Jewish renaissance is an encouraging and inspiring 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,

"There is but one key to the present," says Max Müller, "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 necessary, 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

The storm of persecution that had been brewing in the sixteenth century, and which burst in all its fury by the middle of the seventeenth century, was allayed but little by the rivers of blood that streamed over the length and breadth of the Slavonic land. Half a million Jewish victims were not sufficient to satisfy the followers of a religion of love. They only whetted their insatiable appetite. The anarchy among the Gentiles increased the misery of the Jews. The towns fell into the hands of th

A glimmer of light pierced the Russian sky at the accession of Catherine II (1762-1796). This "Semiramis of the North," the admirer of Buffon, Montesquieu, Diderot, and, more especially, Voltaire, whose motto, N'en croyez rien , she adopted, endeavored, and for a while not without success, to introduce into her own country the spirit of tolerance which pervaded France. Her ukases were intended for all alike, "without distinction of religion and nationality." Her regard for her Jewish citizens sh

The charges brought against the Jews of Russia by henchmen of the czar were grave, indeed, only they did not contain a particle of truth. In Russia itself, not only Jews and non-Russians but even many Christians testified to the innocence of the Jews, and protested against their oppressors. Bibikov, the Governor-General of Podolia and Volhynia; Diakov, the Governor-General of Smolensk; and Surovyetsky, the noted statesman, all write in terms of such praise of their unfortunate countrymen of the

The year 1856 will always be remembered as the annus mirabilis in the history of Russia. It marked at once the cessation of the Crimean war and the accession of the most liberal and benevolent monarch Russia ever had. On January 16, the heir apparent signified his consent to accept Austrian intervention, which resulted in the Treaty of Paris (March 30), granting the Powers involved "peace with honor"; and in August, in the Cathedral of the Assumption at Moscow, amidst unprecedented rejoicing, th

The reign of Alexander III, like that of Nicholas I, was devoid of even that faint glamor of liberalism which, in the days of Alexander I and Alexander II, had aroused deceptive hopes of better times. During the thirteen years of Alexander III's autocracy (1881-1894) not a ray of light was permitted to penetrate into Holy Russia. On May 14, 1881, the manifesto prohibiting the slightest infringement of the absolute power of the czar was promulgated, to continue unbroken till the Russo-Japanese wa

AZJ = Allgemeine Zeitung des Judenthums, Leipsic, 1837— FKI = Fünn, Keneset Yisraël, Warsaw, 1860. FKN = Fünn, Kiryah Ne'emanah, Vilna, 1860. FSL = Fünn, Safah le-Ne'emanim, Vilna, 1881. GMC = Ginzberg and Marek, Yevreyskiya Narodniya Pyesni, St. Petersburg, 1901. HUH = Harkavy, Ha-Yehudim u-Sefat ha-Selavim, Vilna, 1867. JE = Jewish Encyclopedia, 12 vols., New York, 1901-1906. LBJ = Levinsohn, Bet Yehudah, Warsaw, 1901. LTI = Levinsohn, Te'udah be-Yisraël, Warsaw, 1901. WMG = Wengeroff, Memoire

Mention might, indeed, be made of Dr. Zunz's pioneer work in his Aelteste Nachrichten über Juden und jüdische Gelehrte in Polen, Slavonien, Russland (Gesammelte Schriften, Berlin, 1875, iii. 82-87), and Firkovich, who, in his Abne Zikkaron (Vilna, 1872), threw much light on the history of the Crimean Jews. The best contributions to the subject, however, are those of Harkavy, Russ i Russkiye v Sred. Yevr. Lit. (Voskhod, 1881), and Malishevsky, Yevreyi v Yuzhnoy Rossii i Kieve, v. x-xii. Vyekakh,

JE, s.v. Bratzlav. In the diary of a Polish squire we find the following item: "Jan. 5. As the lessee Herszka had not yet paid me the rental of 91 gulden, I went to his house to get my debt. According to the contract, I can arrest him and his wife for as long as I wish, until he settles the bill, and so I ordered him locked up in the pig-sty and left his wife and his sons in the inn. The youngest son, however, I took with me to the palace to be instructed in the rudiments of our religion. The bo

See Orshansky, in Yevreyskaya Biblyotyeka, ii. 240; Drabkin, in Monatsschrift, xix-xx. FKN, pp. 27, 303. JE, iv. 301; Plungian, op. cit, p. 59. FKN, p. 193. JE, iv. 407. FKN, p. 193; Jellinek, Kuntres ha-Rambam, pp. 39f. Occident, v. 360. Jost, Culturgeschichte, Berlin, 1847, p. 302. Steinschneider, 'Ir Vilna, 1900, p. 146. Voskhod, 1881, ii. 29-30; 1900, p. 55. FKN, pp. 277-279. See Rabinovitz, Ma'amar 'al ha-Defosat ha-Talmud, Munich, 1876, p. 112. Cf. Zweifel, op. cit., iv. 7. FKN, pp. 277-27

Diakov states that "when the population degenerated in West Russia, business and industry declined, and the number of the rich greatly diminished, while the nobles, embittered against the Government, did absolutely nothing for their country, the Jews formed an exception.... There is no doubt that they are doing their utmost for the regeneration of our land, despite the restrictions heaped upon them without any cause" (Elk, op. cit., p. 41 seq.). Surovyetsky likewise maintains that "after the dev

San Donato, The Jewish Question, St. Petersburg, 1883, p. 36. Ha-Meliz, 1888, nos. 95, 163; Gordon, Iggerot, Warsaw, 1894, ii., and Russky Vyestnik, 1858, i. 126. Scholz, Die Juden in Russland, Berlin, 1900, pp. 102-107; Hessen, Galeriya, p. 23; Voskhod, 1881, v. 1893; viii; Russky Yevrey, 1882, i. Second Complete Russian Code, xxv, nos. 24, 768; xxvii. nos. 26, 508. Voskhod, October, 1881; Chwolson, Die Blutanklage, Frankfort-on-the-Main, 1901, p. 117. Zunser, Biography, p. 28. Kol Shire Mahall

Most of this is based on Persecution of the Jews in Russia, Philadelphia, 1891, pp. 8-18, 22, 35, 51-82, 184-185; Frederick, The New Exodus, London, 1892, pp. 192-208; Errera, Les juifs russes, Brussels, 1893, pp. 29, 43 f., 89-90, 188-189. Between 1883 and 1885, the Mining Institute and Engineering Institute for Public Roads adopted the five per cent limit, the Kharkov Technical Institute a ten per cent limit, and the Veterinary Institute, of the same city, the only one of the sort in Russia, e

An asterisk (*) marks a book or periodical of especial importance. Antin, The Promised Land, Boston and New York, 1912. Atlas, Mah Lefanim u-mah Leaher, Warsaw, 1898. Baskerville, The Polish Jew, New York, 1906. Ben Sion, Yevreyi Reformatory, St. Petersburg, 1882. Bentwich, The Progress of Zionism, New York, 1899. Bernfeld, Dor Tahapukot, Warsaw, 1897. Bershadsky, Zhurnal Ministerstva Narodnaho Prosvyeshchaniya, St. Petersburg, 1912. Bersohn, Tobiasz Cohn, Warsaw, 1872. Blaustein, Memoirs, New Y