When the nineteenth century dawned in Eastern Europe, Lithuanian Jewry was caught in strong new currents, coming from east and west and roiling the quiet of Jewish villages and the Jewish communities in large cities. Under pressure of the worsening economic condition of East Europe, in its failure to keep up with the West, Jewry was harassed and torn as never before since the Middle Ages and the great migration eastward. There was the need, sensed, rather than consciously realized, to find an economic basis and a new modus for Jewish life. Eddying about Lithuania were strong currents from Germany and Russia, one the Aufklarung and the other the Haskalah movement, urged on the populace as the way of escape and salvation from economic strangulation. Westernization and secularization became the battle cry of these groups, and found a response in the Lithuanian Maskilim, whose leader, Isaac Baer Levinsohn was termed the Lithuanian Mendelssohn. He worked tirelessly in petitioning the Czar asking aid in alleviating the plight of the Jews, in insisting on internal changes in communal life and leadership, and blaming the rabbis and teachers for the low intellectual and economic status of the Jews. The Maskilim charged that the emotional inbreeding that led to the hysterics and irrationality of Hasidism, was caused by the failure of the educational system.

But the majority of the small town Jews were not moved by the enlightenment movements, nor did they accept the explanation for Hasidism, since they opposed it. The Mithnagdim opposed the Haskalah as a foreign, Russian-inspired movement and the Aufklarung as a Daitshishe movement of the assimilatory Yahudim. They rejected the "Seekers of Knowledge" as seeking rapport with the Czar's program for the Jews, which they charged was a form of Russification and assimilation. They resisted the schemes for the introduction of modern dress for Jews, a different mode of life and military conscription, as covert and overt plans for subverting their essential Jewishness.

Dr. Lilienthal, one of the leaders of the German Aufklarung movement, was especially viewed with suspicion because of his efforts, aided by the Russian government, to establish secular schools which would hasten the process of secularization and assimilation to Western ways. They did not agree with his conviction that the Eastern European Jews "of all their coreligionists are behind the civilization of the age."

Nonetheless the pressure of the problems of a new orientation nagged the Mithnagdim incessantly. Their answer was to increase the strength of Orthodoxy, tighten their communal organizations, war against the hysteria of the Hasidism as well as the blandishments of the Maskilim. But orthodoxy tended to generate new departures in seeking to answer the problems of the age. Israel Salanter's answer was only one of many, but it became widely disseminated by the time he reached maturity.

Rabbi Israel Lipkin was endowed with clear vision and true foresight. "Who is wise? - He who foresees results."[1] Rabbi Israel was able to foresee the results of the pseudo-Haskalah for such it was, especially in the days of Dr. Lilienthal. It took many of the nationalistically inclined Maskilim, the Maskilim of the school of Isaac Baer Levinsohn, Menashe of Ilye, Mendel Levin, those who really wanted the Jew to be devoted to his religion and at the same time to be a good citizen, many decades to find out that they were worshipping a foreign idol. They realized that Haskalah, the Daughter of Heaven, was rather the Daughter of an alien God. Rabbis of the type of Rabbi Israel had before them as an example the Haskalah of Germany and Galicia, the product of Maskilim who in many cases had turned their backs on Judaism; thus forewarned they were on their guard.[2].

Haskalah was not an indigenous product; it was transplanted from foreign soil and artificially cultivated. This so called Enlightenment could not make headway among a people always scornful of ignorance. The younger generation did not realize this. Many of the Rabbis had never fought knowledge; to them knowledge was religion and they welcomed it. Neither did they ever fear instituting inquiries into the fundamental nature of law and religion. Most of our learned men at all times took a cue from the verse of Proverbs,[3] אמר לחכמה אחותי את. ("Say unto wisdom: Thou art my sister.") To say that all Talmudists feared secular knowledge is a misinterpretation of Jewish history. Historical records, especially from the Spanish "Golden Era" bear testimony to this. Indeed, the onslaught of the Maskilim upon the Rabbis and traditional Judaism was, looking at it in retrospect, not that of Enlighteners upon obscurantists but the action of a group of Jews who dreamt the mirage-like dreams of salvation through assimilation.[4] Those who believed themselves "Seekers of Knowledge" were blind to the fact that in the new policy launched by the government of Czar Nicholas I (Emperor 1825-55) lay the seeds of their spiritual extermination. The "benevolent" Czar Nicholas I, who wanted to introduce modern garb among the Jews and change their mode of living, tore away small children from their parents' homes, ostensibly to recruit them into the army, but really to convert them to Christianity, assumed the role of an "Educator" of the Jews. Rabbi Israel saw through this czaristic scheme. It is amazing that those whose purpose was to spread Enlightenment did not discern the real trend of the Russification policy of the government. They adopted the newly-blazoned mottoes like "Enlightenment, the Daughter of Heaven" and "The Battle of Light against Darkness."[5] They really believed that as soon as Haskalah spread among the Jews, it would put an end to all trouble, and would allow light to enter the Jewish "Pale of Settlement." They thought that waving the magic wand of the Haskalah would act as a spell which would break down the walls of the Ghetto; Israel would become heir to the right of full citizenship. To be sure, those who stood in the way of securing those liberties were regarded as traitors to their own people, and the Rabbis were looked upon as barriers between the people and their freedom.[6]

Undoubtedly, the Russian Government had in its way some considerations for Jewish well-being. The Haskalah writers, of course, believed this; they said: "the Government has only in mind our goodness and welfare,"[7] and they had some ground for their belief. At that period four Jewish classes were recognized as such: merchants of the First Guild,[8] artisans, laborers, and the clergy. All other groups were considered idlers.[9] The government faced the problem as to how to treat these latter to which most of the Jews, especially in the Pale of Settlement, belonged. Yet there was no reason why a people so distinguished for its industry should be unable to earn a living. The fault, of course, lay with the Government which deprived the Jews of the right to do business with the Russian metropoleis. In spite of the fact that Russian industry had increased because of conquest and expansion Jewish enterprise with few exceptions sank low.[10]

Most of the Maskilim, it must be remembered were self-educated who received no systematic education. They were guilty of the very faults they found in the Rabbis and teachers. They had such faith in Haskalah that they sent their children to the secular schools. The result was that the youngsters became so Russified, so thoroughly assimilated that in many cases they left the Jewish fold.[11] It may be said that the Haskalah was responsible for the conversion of some of the children of the Maskilim themselves. The Jew of Lithuania, especially, had a gift for divining evil that was about to befall him. Either his rationalism, or his hard common sense, kept alive by poverty and hardship, developed this gift. Who more than he had struggled so much against Hasidism? And who more than he fought in behalf of true religion against superstition? He did not disapprove of secular knowledge as long as it did not come in direct conflict with religion. He did not condemn the Haskalah but the Maskil,[12] as Raisin says, Moses Mendelssohn's translation of the Bible was as gladly welcomed in Lithuania as in Germany. It was recognized as a work the object of which was to further Jewish knowledge, and give the Jew a key to writings of the enlightenment. No ban was put on Moses Mendelssohn, he was still Rabbi Moses Dessauer. But when some of his children were baptized he was blamed and charged with heresy, all that Mendelssohn and his school stood for was condemned and his Biur and the works of other Maskilim were publicly destroyed. Much hatred was stored up in the word "Deitschel" or "Berlin'chick," a German or a Berliner, with which a Maskil was designated. "To be called "Deitschel" or "Berlin'chick" was really tantamount to being called infidel, apikoires,[12a] and outlaw."[13]

Forgotten now was the animosity of the Lithuanian Jew against Hasidism; after all the fight against Hasidism was a family feud; now it was the foreign foe of Haskalah that orthodox Jewry had to combat vigorously, for in the Haskalah lay the danger to religious Judaism. The Hasidic and the Mithnagdic Rabbis put a ban on anything that came from the German Aufklarerei;[14] and as a temporary measure they even forbade the study of the Bible. For it was through that study, they realized, that the youth fell prey to the Aufklarung.

About the time Rabbi Israel began his services in the cause of Judaism, Dr. Max Lilienthal took up his activities. The former was from a town where traditionalism prevailed,[15] the latter from a city where the Jews were influenced by modern culture. One personified the form of Judaism, call Orthodoxy,[16] and the other personified the form of the German type of Haskalah. One was the prototype of real Rabbis whom the Maskilim abhorred, and the other the model of modernism, a Rabbi, one who could even stand before kings and was at home in the houses of high officials. These two men had diverse conceptions of Judaism: Rabbi Israel dwelt among his people and was one of them in word and manner. Dr. Lilienthal, while he also clung to his fellow Jews despised the very speech of his people,[17] disapproved of their habit and looked away from them towards the outside world.[18] Rabbi Israel said to his oppressed brethren: "Know ye yourselves!" He told them that if enlightenment was to come, it had to come from within. Rabbi Israel's way for aid to Jews led from East to West. Dr. Lilienthal's led from West to East. Dr. Lilienthal said to the Russian Jews: "Know the world." It was his opinion that only from the outside world would salvation come to them. At first it looked as if Dr. Lilienthal would be master of the situation. It took however only a few years for Rabbi Israel to vindicate himself.[19]

After almost half a decade of indefatigable labor, Lilienthal finally came to realize the real purpose of the Russian state policy which was "to assign a plausible reason for every act done by the Government in order to stand justified in the eyes of the world, especially in West Europe."[20] Thus the Lilienthal fiasco came to an end. His work was taken over by his assistant Leon Mandelstamm, first Jewish graduate of the University of Petersburg, whose brother, Benjamin, criticized Lilienthal severely for his arrogance and lack of understanding of Jewish needs in Russia.

Yet some of the later Maskilim sang Lilienthal's praises. Undoubtedly the fact that he was so young, so very German, so thoroughly anti-Lithuanian and anti-Polish, so utterly snobbish, made his mission a failure. Most likely had the Government engaged a Russian Jew for this post, he would have succeeded where Lilienthal had failed. The successful establishment of the Rabbinical seminaries is proof of this.

Lilienthal also later admitted that notwithstanding the value of these seminaries, they were not the kind to which Russian Jews could adapt themselves. Thorough knowledge of the Talmud was a condition sine qua non for a rabbinical student - and also true orthodoxy. Ouvarov,[21] the Russian Minister of Public Instruction, and his friends the gracious benefactors and enlighteners of the Jewish "obscurantists" thought otherwise. The Lithuanian communities, used to Talmudic luminaries, could not and would not accept the authority of a Rabbi for whom reading unvocalized Hebrew was a great achievement. When the Government invited the great rabbi, Israel Salanter, Jacob Barit,[22] and Mattathias Straschun[23] to become deans in those institutions they declined. They had before them as examples the West-European seminaries, they saw before them the product in a rabbi of the type of this very Dr. Lilienthal. Rabbi Israel believed in training the youth to become Rabbis - but not as students of a seminary forced upon the Jews by a tyrannical Government whose secret aim was apparent. Rabbi Jacob Barit did become the head of an exclusive Rabbinical academy - the Rabbi Hayyim Nahman Parnes' Yeshivah,[24] (Rabbi Israel Salanter, however, although he became an integral part of the Lithuanian metropolis and liked to associate with its scholars and sages, left that beloved city.)

Dr. Lilienthal and Rabbi Israel, two young leaders and teachers in Jewry, were contrasts - one wrote on his ensign, "Know the world, Jew,"[25] the other - Rabbi Israel - blazoned on his standard: "World, know the Jew! The Jew as he is." Dr. Lilienthal went to America, the land of religious freedom, and did free his religion from (what seemed to him) many of its unnecessary bonds and ties; Rabbi Israel stayed in Europe, perfected his Moralist system, did some traveling in the West, brought the Jewish spirit to the outside world and tried to give his people what he regarded as the true Enlightenment.

1 איזהו חכם הרואה את הנולד (Tamid 32a) thus the phrase in Tamid. It also appears in Avoth II. 13, attributed to R. Simeo, איזו הוא דרך טובה שידבק בה האדם.... הרואה את הנולד.

2 See J. Lipschitz, op. cit., part II, p. 18 ff.

3 Proverbs 7.4.

4 "Assimilation" - in its etymological meaning - ad similare in Latin. It also connotes the idea of absorption as in food or chemicals. Roget's Thesaurus gives also the synonym of imitation for this word. Jews understand by assimilation the blind aping of the Gentiles, becoming like them even to the extent of denying one's own national identity. Such assimilation is a step nearer to complete טמיעה, using the Hebrew word which expresses it perfectly, sinking in, merging with the people in whose midst the Jew lives. Prof. Dubnow takes assimilation as synonymous with Polonization or Russification. Prof. S. Zeitlin had a different and novel idea about this term, very stimulating and argumentative, but in this book the word is used in its popular meaning, which is anti-nationalistic: to talk like the Gentiles, living like them and acting like them. An assimilationist does not believe in Jewish nomocracy (Prof. Zeitlin's term in his work: Judaism as a Religion) nor in ancient theocracy. The Maskilim were to a certain degree assimilationists, hence their acceptance of both Russification and Polonization and in Germany - Germanization. And to quote Prof. S. Zeitlin from op. cit., "another group of Jews arose in Jewish history as Haskalah (Enlightenment). It opposed nomocracy because of its rigid interpretation of the law and the uncritical study of the Talmud permitted by it. Among those belonging to this movement were some who sought to destroy the fundamentals of Judaism. There were others who wanted to reconstruct Judaism and who were imbued with the rationalistic views of the great philosophers of the middle ages. However, the Haskalah never contributed a religious movement among the Jews" (op. cit., chap. X, section 5 at the end). The Maskilim, most of whom were assimilationists, did therefore seek to destroy the fundamentals of Judaism. Prof. Zeitlin in chapter IX, sec. 4 of opc. cit. says: "Modern authors in writing of the Jewish Notables... call them hypocrites and assimilationists etc." and in footnote 470 upon the word assimilationist Prof. Zeitlin adds: "A word often misused and abused by modern Jewish writers." One really wonders what the misusage is. When we lost our national status, and became a nationality without a land, we emphasize language, religion, and tradition. Giving up his religion, the Jew becomes an apostate, abandoning his language, he becomes a Jew by religion only. Dr Zeitlin's type of an assimilationist, however, is only one who adopts the customs of other religions.

5 מלחמת האור נגד החושך; השכלה בת השמים. Cf. J. Lipschitz, op. cit., part II, pp. 21-24.

6 Ibid.

7 הממשלה רק את טובתנו ושלומנו היא דורשת. The famous Maskil, who was called the Russian Mendelssohn, Isaac Baer Levinson (Levinsohn) known as ריב"ל
(1788-1860), has nothing but praise for the Russian Government of Czar Nicholas I. (See Introduction to his book Beth Jehudah.) His poems to the same monarch are replete with sycophancy of the highest degree. See Appendix II, pp. 160-61.

8 Merchants of the First Guild - upon paying the government the sum of about 3000 roubles yearly, one could live all over Russia, even outside of the Pale of Settlement.

9 Tuneyadtzi.

10 See Moshe Kleinman, "דמויות וקומות" (Paris 1928), pp. 40-43.

12 J. S. Raisin, op. cit., p. 131.

12a See Glossary. See supra, chap. I, note 72.

13 Ibid., p. 133.

14 Ibid., p. 134.

15 We are given a picture of Jewish life in that town by the Maskil who was born there, Mordecai Aaron Guntzburg, in his אביעזר; see Menahem G. Glenn, op. cit., ibid. (supra, chap. I, note 25).

16 The German orthodoxy, we shall see, fought Haskalah and Aufklaerung with what Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch (1808-1888) called Wissenschaftlicher Aufbau des Judenthums," fighting Wissenschaft with Wissenschaft. See preface to Nineteen Letters of Ben Uziel by Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, English translation by Dr. Bernard Drachman, New York 1899. (See chap. V, No. 26, infra).

17 I. Zinberg, op. cit., Vol. VIII, Part II, p. 113; see also Lilienthal's own My Travels in Russia in David Philipson's Max Lilienthal op. cit., American Rabbi; Life and Letter, New York, Bloch, 1915. Chapter II, pp. 12-45 is entitled "The Russian Career."

Menahem (Max), son of Seligman Loeb Lilienthal was born in Munich, Germany, on October 16, 1815. He studied in his native city, receiving the degree of Ph.D. from the University of Munich in 1837. He also received his Jewish education from Rabbi Moses Wittelsbacher and attended the Yeshivah of Wolf Hamburger at Fuerth, Germany. From that academy of higher Jewish learning came out men who later became known as famous reform rabbis, such as: David Einhorn, Isaac Loewi, Leopold Stein, Kaufmann Kohler and Joseph Aub. The famous orthodox Rabbi Seligman Baer Bamberger studied there. Lilienthal received his rabbinic degree from Hirsch Aub, Rabbi of Munich. He was indeed in his way an `Ilui. He passed his examinations brilliantly and was offered a position in the diplomatic service, although he studied for the rabbinate. But he would have had to embrace Catholicism as the price for it. He spent his time since he had no position - in the famous Munchen Library studying the Hebrew Manuscript Collection, and then wrote Bibliographische Notizen uber die hebraishcen Manuskripte der koniglichen Bibliothek in Munchen. These notes were published serially from May 19, 1838 to November 16, 1839 in the literary supplement of Ludwig Phillipsohn's Allgemeine Zeitung des Judentums. It was through this connection with the editor of the only Jewish weekly in German that Lilienthal was sent to the great Russian empire as an emissary for Jewish education. The Russian Minister of Education under Czar Nicholas I, Count Sergei Semonovitsh Ouvarov turned for advice to the same Phillipson to send him a man worthy of occupying the place of superintendent of the new school about to be opened in Riga. Lilienthal accepted this position for the reason he stated himself in his My Travels in Russia: "I accepted this call at once, (and he was only 23 years of age) as Rev. I. N. Mannheimer, the renowned preacher at Vienna, had convinced me in a correspondence which I conducted with him, that something ought to be done for the Russian Jews who alone of all their coreligionists were behind the civilization of the age. The sphere of activity in such a vast empire flattered my youthful vanity and hoping for the best results of my sincere endeavors, to raise millions of Jews to a higher standard, I asked for my passport." (ibid., p. 11) For a further account, see David Phillipson, Max Lilienthal, op. cit. and Hyman B. Grinstein, The Rise of the Jewish Community in New York 1654-1860, pp. 27, 90, 367 and passim.

Thus it is clearly evident that this youthful Doctor and Rabbi looked upon himself as a cultural savior of his benighted brethren in Russia, and with thoughts such as these and with a thorough lack of understanding of the Russian Jews - Jews who only recently were added to the Russian people - Lilienthal embarked on his mission. This will account for Lilienthal's failure in his mission upon his arrival in Russia, since he was not even favored by the Maskilim who first did see in him a savior. Lilienthal arrived in New York in 1845 and was soon thereafter elected Rabbi of three German orthodox congregations. He served as Rabbi until 1850 when he established a private school for boys. In 1855 he moved to Cincinnati where he became Rabbi of the Bene Israel congregation. He became one of the founders of the Hebrew Union College and a pillar of Reform Judaism in America. He died in Cincinnati in 1882. He was associate editor of the American Israelite and its German supplement, Die Deborah.

18 No wonder Lilienthal called the letter that he sent from Vilna to the Jews מייד ישועה - the announcer of salvation. This letter was reproduced by A. B. Gottlober in Hoboker `Or, Vol. IV, pp. 912-918. Lilienthal wrote this letter in German and S. J. Fuenn - according to Gottlober - translated it into excellent Hebrew. Lilienthal himself, as may be seen from other letters, wrote Hebrew with some difficulty. See, for instance his letter to the Maskil of Vilna, Hirsch Katzenelenbogen, in Zinberg, op. cit., p. 261.

19 Cf. S. Rosenfeld, ibid., p. 7.

20 Quoted from J. S. Raisin, op. cit., p. 179.

21 It was strange that there were found Enlightened Jews who took the government's efforts on behalf of Jewish education seriously. It is even yet more paradoxical that Isaac Baer Levinsohn, who was religious and wrote books in vindication of the Talmud should have composed one Hebrew epigrammatic stanza about the Minister of Education.

לבן יהודה מכתם:
על שמש החכמה סך עב נורא
ויצו אל ויקם מושיע ורב,
כמעט נשבה רוחו והיתה אורה,
ויקרא העם עבר עב, עבר עב!

A terrible cloud covered the sun of Wisdom
So God decreed and a savior and great leader arose
No sooner had his breath blown, and there was light
And the people exclaimed "the cloud has lifted, lifted has the cloud."

22 Rabbi Jacob Barit, known as Reb Yenkele Kovner, was born in the town of Simna near Suvalki, Elul 21 5557 (1797). He was a prodigy, who ate the age of eight was already well versed in the Bible and Talmud, receiving his knowledge from an old Talmudist who spent most of his time in the Beth-Midrash. Before he reached Bar-Mitzvah age, he lost both his father and mother. The townspeople maintained him. At the age of 14 he journeyed to Kovno, studying in a Yeshivah in the suburb, Slobodka. At 18 he married the daughter of a rich man whose family name was BaRIT, i.e. בן ר' יהודא טייצ. Being well taken care of, he devoted all his time to further study, till, six years after they were married his wife died, leaving him a daughter. He moved to Vilna where he remarried. There he earned his livelihood from distillery, and spent his spare time studying sciences and modern languages. When the Russian government closed all whisky distilleries in 1815, Rabbi Jacob Barit assumed the Deanship of a newly established rabbinical academy, organized and supervised by Hayyim Nahman Parnes of Vilna. That academy was attended by a small number of very able young men who prepared for the rabbinate. He held his position there for twenty-five years. Being one of the very few orthodox Jews who knew the Russian language, he helped Moses Montefiore (when the latter visited Russia in 1846) to draw up the petition to the Czar to ease Jewish oppression. He became the undisputed head of the Jewish community of Vilna and gained the good will of Nazimov, the Governor-General. In 1857 he became chief Dayyan (מוצ"נ) of Vilna. Several times he acted as chairman of the Rabbinical Commissions appointed by the government to decide on matters of Jewish law. When the Russian Pfefferkorn, Jacob Brafman, published his infamous book, Kniga Kagala, which contained serious but false charges, Rabbi Jacob Barit refuted those charges at an assembly convened for that purpose and he convincingly demonstrated the falsity of statements in that anti-Jewish book. Strictly orthodox as he was in his living and acting, he was beloved and esteemed by Jews and Christians alike. He died at the age of 86. See Monograph Toledoth Jacob, written by his son, published in Vilna 1883, the year his father died; also, Maggid-Steinchneider, op. cit., 62-67; also S. J. Fuenn, op. cit., 537 ff. Cf. J. S. Raisin, op. cit., pp. 200, 255, 259.

23 Mattathias Straschun, son of Rabbi Samuel Straschun, of the famous Strachun family in Vilna, was born in Vilna on Hoshana Rabbah of the year 5578 (1818). He was a student in the famous Yeshivah of Volozhin, was friendly with Rabbi Manasseh of Ilye, acquired a profound knowledge of Talmud and became well versed in modern languages. He was well-known and gathered a large private Hebrew library (which existed until the Nazi occupation of Vilna in world war II) which was the principal Jewish library in Vilna. His home was a meeting place for scholars. He was a wealthy man, who gave freely to charities and himself presided over the Great Charity Institution (צדקה גדולה). He was a Maskil, yet orthodox Jew. He published a catalogue of his library under the title Likutei Shoshanim, and left an endowment for a librarian and the library under his name. Rabbi Mattathias died in 1886. See Maggid-Steinschneider, op. cit., p. 283 ff.

24 These three Rabbis were proposed for the positions of instructors of Talmud but declined, see B. Epstein, op. cit., p. 1084. In Isaac Ben Jacob's letter to R. Isaac Baer Levinsohn, no mention is made of this fact. A brother of Rabbi Samuel Straschun had been a teacher in the Vilna Rabbinical Seminary.

25 Cf. S. Rosenfeld, op. cit., ibid.