Chapter VI
The Awakening
1881-1905
“My zemlyakes” (countrymen), says a reminiscent writer, “soon after they had finished their course in engineering, had taken each a different road. One became a crown-rabbi, one a flour merchant, a third a bookkeeper, but none of them could, on account of his religion, legally pursue his chosen vocation” (Yiddishes Tageblatt, New York, May 13, 1908).
“He who claims that a spirit of reaction has affected our people as a whole,” says Moses Reines (Ozar ha-Sifrut, ii. 45), “is greatly mistaken. 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... write for the press... and deplore the gezerot (restrictions) regarding admission to schools—all this proves convincingly that they do not see right who complain that our entire nation is going backward.”
6
Autobiography, pp. 42-51. See also Kahan, Meahore ha-Pargud, pp. 15-17.
7
Ha-Meliz, 1900, no. 123; Luah Ahiasaf, 5696, p. 312; Zablotzky and Massel, Ha-Yizhari, Manchester, 1895, Introduction; Ha-Meliz, xxxvii, no. 36; The Menorah, April, 1904.
8
Yalkut Ma’arabi, 1904, pp. 46 f.
9
Ha-Shahar, x. 511, 30; Habazelet, 1882, no. 2.
10
Ha-Le’om, 1906, nos. 21-22; Belkind, in Ha-Zefirah, no. 46, 1913; Lubarsky and Lewin-Epstein, Derek Hayyim, New York, 1905.
11
Greenstone, The Messiah Idea in Jewish History, ch. viii.
12
The Progress of Zionism, pp. 3-4; cf. Voskhod, 1895, iv.
13
Zamenhof’s new universal language was primarily intended to be the international language of his people, “who are speechless, and therefore without hope, scattered over the world, and hence unable to understand one another, obliged to take their culture from strange and hostile sources.”
18
Ha-Meliz, 1901, nos. 20, 27, 36, 54, 95.
19
Atlas, Mah Lefanim u-mah Leaher, pp. 53 f.; Ha-Meliz, 1900, no. 47; 1901, no. 27.
20
Ha-Meliz, 1901, no. 87.
21
Réflexions sur l’état des israélites russes, Odessa, 1871, pp. 121-122.
22
Kayserling, Die jüdischen Frauen, Leipsic, 1879, pp. 306-313; Rubinow, op. cit., p. 581. The Russian Jewess has already produced several writers above the average (Einhorn, Mosessohn, Ben Yehudah, Sarah and Eva Schapira) in Hebrew, has given Russian literature at least one novelist of note (Rachel Khin), has furnished leaders in the movement for the emancipation of women (Maria Saker), and especially for the liberation of Russia (Finger, Helfman, Levinsohn, Novinsky, Rabinovich). According to Mr. Rabinow, the Russo-Jewish “women and girls use every available means” to obtain an education, and at least fifty per cent of them possess a knowledge of Russian in addition to their vernacular Yiddish.
Notes
1 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, excluded Jews altogether.
2 Urussov, Memoirs of a Russian Governor (Engl. transl., New York, 1908), pp. 70, 90-91. “Out of 266 students admitted to the Kharkov University in 1901, only 8 were Jews, though at least 12 had ‘finished the gymnasium,’ not only with the ‘highest possible’ marks, but with gold medals. At the Technological Institute of the same city, 7 were Jews in a total of 240, though 12 applying for admission had received the ‘highest possible’ marks. At the Kiev University, of 580 new students, 32, all of them medallists, were Jews. How many applied for admission, the daily and weekly press, from which these figures are taken, did not report.”
5 See Ha-Maggid, 1899, no. 160. While in 1848 there were 2446 and in 1854, 4439 converts, in 1860-1880 there were from 350 to 450 per annum, in 1881, 572, in 1882, 610, and in 1883, 461 converts. With the spread of Zionism conversions continued to diminish, and, while there were relapses during the renewed pogroms of 1891 and 1901, they decreased materially, though the Jewish population is constantly on the increase.
14 Ahiasaf, iv.; Gordon, op. cit., i. xxi; Razsvyet, 1882, i.; Magil’s Kobez (Collection), no. 3, p. 45.
15 Ha-Meliz, 1899, no. 256; 1901, no. 2; weekly Voskhod, 1893, no. 40; monthly Voskhod, 1894, iv. Some Jewish financiers erected gymnasia in Vilna and Warsaw, improved the condition of the hadarim, and turned many Talmud Torahs into technical schools. Of the Lodz Talmud Torah a writer says that “no Jewish community, even outside of Russia, possesses such an institution, not excepting the Hirsch schools in Galicia.”
16 London, Unter jüdischen Proletariern, 1898, pp. 81-83; Bramson, K Istorii, etc., pp. 63-69, 71-74; Ha-Meliz, xli., no. 246 (1901, no, 35); Ha-Zefirah, xxix., no. 285; and the Jewish Gazette, July 16, 1909 (Kunst und Nationalismus). The Ha-Zamir (a choral society), founded in Lodz by Nissan Schapira, counts its members by the thousands.
17 London, op. cit, pp. 64-74; Ha-Meliz, 1900, nos. 192-193; Rubinow, op. cit., pp. 530-532, 548-553, 561-566.