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HISTORY OF THE JEWS IN RUSSIA AND POLAND |
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Chapter 25: Inner Upheavals 1. Disillusionment of the Intelligenzia and the National Revival The catastrophe at the beginning of the eighties took the Jews of Russia unawares, and found them unprepared for spiritual self-defence. The impressions of the recent brief "era of reforms" were still fresh in their minds. They still remembered the initial steps of Alexander II's Government in the direction of the complete civil emancipation of Russian Jewry, the appeals of the intellectual classes of Russia calling upon the Jews to draw nearer to them, the bright prospects of a rejuvenated Russia. The niggardly gifts of the Russian Government were received by Russian Jewry with an outburst of gratitude and devotion which bordered on flunkeyism. The intellectual young Jews and Jewesses who had passed through the Russian public schools made frantic endeavors, not only towards association but also towards complete cultural amalgamation with the Russian people. Assimilation and Russification became the watchwords of the day. The literary ideals of young Russia became the sacred tablets of the Jewish youth. But suddenly, lo and behold! that same Russian people, in which the progressive forces of Jewry were ready to merge their identity, appeared in the shape of a monster, which belched forth hordes upon hordes of rioters and murderers. The Government had changed front, and adopted a policy of reaction and fierce Jew-hatred, while the liberal classes of Russia showed but scant sympathy with the downtrodden and maltreated nation. The voice of the hostile press, the Novoye Vremya, the Russ, and others, resounded through the air with full vigor, whereas the liberal press, owing partly -- but only partly -- to the tightening grip of the censor, defended the Jews in a perfunctory manner. Even the publicists of the radical type, who were principally grouped around the periodical Otyechest-vennyia Zapiski ("Records of the Fatherland"), looked upon the pogroms merely as the brutal manifestation of an economic struggle, and viewed the whole complicated Jewish problem, with all its century-long tragic implications, in the light of a subordinate social-economic question. The only one whose soul was deeply stirred by the sight of the new sufferings of an ancient people was the Russian satirist, Shchedrin-Saltykov, and he poured forth his sentiments in the summer of 1882, after the completion of the first cycle of pogroms, in an article marked by a lyric strain, so different from his usual style. [1] But Shchedrin was the only Russian writer of prominence who responded to the Jewish sorrow. Turgenyev and Tolstoi held their peace, whereas the literary celebrities of Western Europe, Victor Hugo, Renan, and man others, came forward with passionate protests. The Russian intelligenzia remained cold in the face of the burning tortures of Jewry. The educated classes of Russian Jewry were hurt to the quick by this chilly attitude, and their former enthusiasm gave way to disillusionment. This disillusionment found its early expression in the lamentations of repentant assimilators. One of these assimilators, writing in the first months of the pogroms, makes the following confession:
Another representative of the Jewish intelligenzia writes in the following strain to the editor of a Russian-Jewish periodical:
Russian-Jewish literature of that period is full of similar self-revelations of disillusioned intellectuals. However, this repentant mood did not always lead to positive results. Some of these intellectuals, having become part and parcel of Russian cultural life, were no longer able to find their way back to Judaism, and they were carried off by the current of assimilation, culminating in baptism. Others stood at the crossroads, wavering between assimilation and Jewish nationalism. Still others were so stunned by the blow they had received that they reeled violently backward, and proclaimed as their slogan the return "home," in the sense of a complete renunciation of free criticism and of all strivings for inner reforms. However, in the healthy party of Russian Jewry this change of mind resulted in turning their ideals definitely in the direction of national rejuvenation upon modern foundations. The idea of a struggle for national rejuvenation in Russia itself had not yet matured. It appeared as an active force only in the following decade. [2] During the era of pogroms the salvation of Judaism was primarily associated with the idea of emigration. The champions of American emigration were prone to idealize this movement, which had in reality sprung from practical necessity, and they saw in it, not without justification, the beginning of a new free center of Judaism in the Diaspora. The Hebrew poet Judah Leib Gordon [3] addresses "The Daughter of Jacob [the Jewish people], disgraced by the son of Hamor [The Russian Government]" [4] in the following words:
The exponents of American emigration were inspired by the prospect of an exodus from the land of slavery into the land of freedom. Many of them looked forward to the establishment of agricultural and farming settlements in that country and to the concentration of large Jewish masses in the thinly populated States of the Union where they hoped the Jews might be granted a considerable amount of self-government. Side by side with the striving for a transplantation of Jewish centers within the Diaspora, another idea, which negatives the Diaspora altogether and places in its stead the resuscitation of the Jewish national center in Palestine, struggled to life amidst the birth pangs of the pogroms. The first theoretic exponent of this new movement, called "Love of Zion," [6] was M. L. Lilienblum, who in a former stage of radicalism had preached the need of religious reforms in Judaism. [7] As far back as in the autumn of the first pogrom year Lilienblum published a series of articles in which he interpreted the idea of Palestinian colonization, which had but recently sprung to life, in the light of a common national task for the whole of Jewry. Lilienblum endeavored to show that the root of all the historic misfortunes of the Jewish people lay in the fact that it was in all lands an alien element which refuses to assimilate in its entirety with the dominant nation -- with the landlord, as it were. The landlord tolerates his tenant only so long as he finds him convenient; let the tenant make the slightest attempt at competing with the landlord, and he will be promptly evicted. During the Middle Ages the Jews were persecuted in the name of religious fanaticism. Now a beginning has been made to persecute them in the name of national fanaticism, coupled with economic factors, and this "second chapter of our history will no doubt contain many a bloody page." Jewish suffering can only be removed by removing its cause. We must cease to be strangers in every land of the globe, and establish ourselves in a country where we ourselves may be the landlords. Such a country can only be our ancient fatherland, Palestine, which belongs to us by the right of history. "We must undertake the colonization of Palestine on so comprehensive a scale that in the course of one century the Jews may be able to leave inhospitable Europe almost entirely and settle in the land of our forefathers to which we are legally entitled." These thoughts, expounded with that simplified logic which will strike certain types of mind as incontrovertible, were fully attuned to the sentiments of the Jewish masses which were standing with "girded loins," ready for their exodus from the new Egypt. The emigration societies formed in the beginning of 1882 counted in their ranks many advocates of Palestinian colonization. Bitter literary feuds were waged between the "Americans" and "Palestinians." A young poet, Simon Frug [8] composed the following enthusiastic exodus march, which he prefaced by the biblical verse "Speak unto the children of Israel, that they go forward" (Ex. 14. 15):
This march voiced the sentiments of those who dreamed of the Promised Land -- whether it be on the shores of the Jordan or on the banks of the Mississippi. 2. Pinsker's "Autoemancipation" The conception of emigration as a means of national rejuvenation, which had sprung to life amidst the "thunder and lightning" of the pogroms, found a thoughtful exponent in the person of Dr. Leon Pinsker, a prominent communal worker in Odessa, who had at one time looked to assimilation as promising a solution of the Jewish problem. In his pamphlet "Autoemancipation" (published in September, 1882), which is marked by profound thinking, Pinsker vividly describes the mental agony experienced by him at the sight of the physical slavery of the Jewry of Russia and the spiritual slavery of the emancipated Jewry of Western Europe. To him the Jewish people in the Diaspora is not a living nation, but rather the ghost of a nation, haunting the globe and scaring all living national organisms. The salvation of Judaism can only be brought about by transforming this ghost into a real being, by reestablishing the Jewish people upon a territory of its own which might be obtained through the common endeavor of Jewry and through international Jewish cooperation in some convenient part of the globe, be it Palestine or America. Such is the way of Jewish autoemancipation in contradistinction from the civic emancipation, which had been bestowed by the dominant nationalities upon the Jews as an act of grace and which does not safeguard them against anti-Semitism and the humiliating position of second-rate citizens. The Jewiseh people can be restored, if, instead of many places of refuge scattered all over the globe, it will be concentrated in one politically guaranteed place of refuge. For this purpose a general Jewish congress ought to be called which should be entrusted with the financial and political issues involved in the plan. The present generation must take the first step towards this national restoration; posterity will do the rest. Pinsker's pamphlet, which was written in German and printed abroad [9] with the intention of appealing to the Jews of Western Europe, failed to produce any effect upon that assimilated section of the Jewish people. In Russia, however, it became the catechism of the "Love of Zion" movement and eventually of Zionism and Territorialism. The theory expounded in Pinsker's pamphlet made a strong appeal to the Russian Jews, not only on account of its close reasoning, but also because it gave powerful utterance to that pessimistic frame of mind which seemed to have seized upon them all. Its weakest point lay in the fact that it rested on a wrong historic premise and on a narrow definition of the term "nation" in the sense of territorial and political organism. Pinsker seems to have overlooked that the Jews of the Diaspora, taken as a whole, have not ceased to form a nation, though of a type of its own, and that in modern political history nations of this "cultural" complexion have appeared on the scene more and more frequently. Lacking a definite practical foundation, Pinsker's doctrine could not but accommodate itself to the Palestinian colonization movement, although its insignificant dimensions were entirely out of proportion to the far-reaching plans conceived by the author of "Autoemancipation." Lilienblum and Pinsker were joined by the old nationalist Smolenskin and the former assimilator Levanda. Hcu-Shahar and ha-Melitz in Hebrew and the Razsvyet in Russian became the literary vehicles of the new movement. In opposition to these tendencies, the Vokshod of St. Petersburg reflected the ideas of the Progressive Russian-Jewish intelligenzia, and defended their old position which was that of civil emancipation and inner Jewish reforms. In the middle between these two extremes stood the Russian weekly Russki Yevrey [10] ("The Russian Jew"), in St. Petersburg and the Hebrew weekly ha-Tzefirah ("The Dawn"), in Warsaw, voicing the moderate views of the Has-kalah period, with a decided bent towards the nationalistic movement. 3. Miscarried Religious Reforms The storm of pogroms not only broke many young twigs on the tree of "enlightenment," which had attained to full bloom in the preceding period, but it also bent others into monstrous shapes. This abnormal development is particularly characteristic of the ideas of religious reforms in Judaism which sprang to life in the beginning of the eighties. A fortnight before the pogrom at Yelisavetgrad, which inaugurated another gloomy chapter in the annals of Russian Jewry, the papers reported that a new Jewish sect had appeared in that city under the name of "The Spiritual Biblical Brotherhood." Its members denied all religious dogmas and ceremonies, and acknowledged the moral doctrines of the Bible, they condemned all mercantile pursuits, and endeavored to live by physical labor, primarily by agriculture. The founder of this "Brotherhood" was a local teacher and journalist, Jacob Gordin, who stood at that time under the influence of the South-Russian Stundists [11] as well as of the socialistic Russian Populists. [12] The "Spiritual Biblical Brotherhood" was made up altogether of a score of people. In a newspaper appeal which appeared shortly after the spring pogroms of 1881 the leader of the sect, hiding his identity under the pen name of "A Brother-Biblist," called upon the Jews to divest themselves of those character traits and economic pursuits which excited the hatred of the native population against them: the love of money, the hunt for barter, usury, and petty trading. This appeal, which sounded in unison with the voice of the Russian Jew-baiters and appeared at a time when the wounds of the pogrom victims were not yet healed, aroused profound indignation among the Jews. Shortly afterwards the "Spiritual Biblical Brotherhood" fell asunder. Some of its members joined a like-minded sect in Odessa which had been founded there in the beginning of 1882 by a teacher, Jacob Priluker, under the name of "New Israel." The aim of "New Israel" was to facilitate, by means of radical religious reforms conceived in the spirit of rationalism, the contact between Jews and Christians and thereby pave the way for civil emancipation. The twofold religio-social program of the sect was as follows:
As a reward for all these virtuous endeavors the sect expected from the Russian Government, which it petitioned to that effect, complete civil equality for its members, permission to intermarry with Christians, and the right to wear a special badge by which they were to be marked off from the "Talmudic Jews." As an expression of gratitude for the anticipated governmental benefits, the members of the sect pledged themselves to give their boys and girls who were to be born during the coming year the names of Alexander or Alexandra, in honor of the Russian Tzar. The first religious half of the program of "New Israel" might possibly have attracted a few adherents. But the second "business-like" part of it opened the eyes of the public to the true aspirations of these "reformers," who, in their eagerness for civil equality, were ready to barter away religion, conscience, and honor, and who did not balk at betraying such low flunkeyism at a time when the blood of the victims of the Balta pogrom had not yet dried. Thus it was that the withering influence of reactionary Judaeophobia compromised and crippled the second attempt at inner reforms in Judaism. Both movements soon passed out of existence, and their founders subsequently left Russia. Gordin went to America, and renouncing his sins of youth, became a popular Yiddish playwright. Priluker settled in England, and entered the employ of the missionaries who were anxious to propagate Christianity among the Jews. A few years later, during 1884 and 1885, "New Israel" cropped up in a new shape, this time in Kishinev, where the puny "Congregation of New Testament Israelites" was founded by I. Rabinovich, having for its aim "the fusion of Judaism with Christianity." In the house of prayer, in which this "Congregation," consisting altogether of ten members, worshipped, sermons were also delivered by a Protestant clergyman. A few years later this new missionary device was also abandoned. The pestiferous atmosphere which surrounded Russian-Jewish life at that time could do no more than produce these poisonous growths of "religious reform." For the wholesome seeds of such a reform were bound to wither after the collapse of the ideas which had served as a lode star during the period of "enlightenment." _______________ Notes: 1. The article appeared in the Otyechestvennnyia Zapiski in August, 1882. The following sentences in that article are worthy of reproduction: "History has never recorded in its pages a question more replete with sadness, more foreign to the sentiments of humanity, and more filled with tortures than the Jewish question. The history of mankind as a whole is one endless martyrology; yet at the same time it is also a record of endless progress. In the records of martyrology the Hebrew tribe occupies the first place; in the annals of progress it stands aside, as if the luminous perspectives of history could never reach it. There is no more heart-rending tale than the story of this endless torture of man by man." In the same article the Russian satirist draws a clever parallel between the merciless Russian Kulak, or "boss," who ruins the peasantry, and the pitiful Jewish "exploiter," the half-starved tradesman, who in turn is exploited by everyone. 2. That idea was subsequently championed by the writer of this volume. See more about it in vol. III 3.See p. 315 et seq. 4. An allusion to Gen. 34, with a play on the words Ben-hamor, "the son of an ass." 5. From his Hebrew poem Ahoti Ruhama, "My Beloved Sister." 6. A translation of the Hebrew term Hibbat Zion. In Russian it was generally terms Palestino-philistvo, i.e., "Love of Palestine." 7. See p. 319 et seq. 8. He became later a celebrated poet in Russian and Yiddish. He died in 1916. 9. He became later a celebrated poet in Russian and Yiddish. He died in 1916. 9. The first edition appeared in Berlin, in 1882. It bears the sub-title: "An Appeal to his Brethren by a Russian Jew." It was published anonymously. 10. See p. 221. It appeared simultaneously as a weekly and a monthly. 11. A Russian sect with rationalistic tendencies which are traceable to Western Protestantism. 12. See above, p. 312.
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