The Haskalah Movement in Russia Part 11

[Footnote 2: 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 boy is unusually bright and shall be baptized. I already wrote to our priest concerning it, and he promised to come to prepare him. Leisza at first stubbornly refused to make the sign of the cross and repeat our prayers, but Strelicki administered a sound whipping, and to-day he even ate ham.

Our venerable priest Bonapari ... is inventing all manner of means to break his stiff-neckedness." Mea.s.sef, St. Petersburg, 1902, pp.

192-193.]

[Footnote 3: See Wolkonsky, Pictures of Russian History and Literature, Boston, 1897, p. 136.]

[Footnote 4: Orshansky, in Yevreyskaya Biblyotyeka, ii. 207.]

[Footnote 5: Mea.s.sef, St. Petersburg, 1902, p. 195; Beck and Brann, Yevreyskaya Istoriya, p. 326; JE, iv. 155; xi. 113.]

[Footnote 6: Mea.s.sef, p. 200. On Russia at the time of Peter the Great, see Macaulay, History of England, ch. xxiii., where he describes the "savage ignorance and the squalid poverty of the barbarous country." In that country "there was neither literature nor science, neither school nor college. It was not till more than a hundred years after the invention of printing that a single printing-press had been introduced into the Russian empire, and that printing-press speedily perished in a fire, which was supposed to have been kindled by priests." When Pyoter Vyeliki (Peter the Great), while in London, saw the archiepiscopal library, he declared that "he had never imagined that there were so many printed volumes in the world." See also Carlyle, History of Frederick the Great, iv. 7.]

[Footnote 7: FKN, pp. 126-132; Voskhod, 1893; on the Hasidim and Mitnaggedim see below.]

[Footnote 8: Ma'aseh Tobiah, p. 18; Mea.s.sef, pp. 206-209; Geiger (Melo Hofnayim, Berlin, 1840, pp. 1-29) published Delmedigo's corroboration of this statement.]

[Footnote 9: Rapoport, Etan ha-'Ezrahi, Ostrog, 1776, Introduction.]

[Footnote 10: Cf. Zederbaum, Keter Kehunnah, pp. 72-74, 84, 121, etc., and Ha-s.h.i.+loah, xxi. 165; Schechter, Studies in Judaism, i., Philadelphia, 1896, i. 17 f., and Greenstone, The Messiah Idea in Jewish History, pp. 237 f. According to some, Judah he-Hasid and his followers went to Palestine in the expectation, not of the Messiah, but of Shabbata Zebi, who was believed to have been in hiding for forty years, in imitation of the retirement of Moses in Midian for a similar period of years. "The ruins of Rabbi Judah he-Hasid's synagogue" and Yes.h.i.+bah in Jerusalem still keep the memory of the event fresh in the minds of Palestinian Jews.]

[Footnote 11: Among the many wonderful episodes in the life of the master, his biographer mentions also that he could swallow down the largest gobletful in a single gulp (s.h.i.+bhe ha-Besht, Berdichev, 1815, pp. 7-8). The best, though not an impartial work on Hasidism is Zweifel's Shalom 'al Yisrael, 4 vols., Zhitomir, 1868-1872.]

[Footnote 12: Ha-Boker Or, iv. 103-105: [Hebrew: H'fkormot Mn Nshmot M'lh Hngon.]]

[Footnote 13: Cf. Emden, op. cit., p. 185, and s.h.i.+mush, Amsterdam, 1785, pp. 78-80, with Pardes, ii. 204-214.]

[Footnote 14: See Schechter, op. cit., pp. 73-93; Silber, Elijah Gaon, 1906; Levin, 'Aliyat Eliyahu, Vilna, 1856, and FKN, pp. 133-155.]

[Footnote 15: Levin, op. cit., pp. 28-30.]

[Footnote 16: See Ha-Bikkurim, i. 1-26; ii. 1-20; Ha-Zeman (monthly), 1903, ii. 6; Plungian, Ben Porat, Vilna, 1858, p. 33; Keneset Yisrael, iii. 152 seq.]

[Footnote 17: Sirkes (Bayit Hadash, Cracow, 1631, p. 40) decides that Jews may employ in their synagogue melodies used in the church, since "music is neither Jewish nor Christian, but is governed by universal laws." See also Hayyim ben Bezalel's Wikkuah Mayim Hayyim, Introduction, and pa.s.sim.]

[Footnote 18: See J.S. Raisin, Sect, Creed and Custom in Judaism, Philadelphia, 1907, p. 9, and ch. viii.; Ha-Meliz, x. 186, 192-194.]

[Footnote 19: See Ha-Zeman (monthly), 1903, ii. 7.; Shklov, Euclidus, Introduction; Keneset Yisrael, 1887, and Hagra on Orah Hayyim, Shklov, 1803, Introduction.]

[Footnote 20: See Graetz, op. cit, xi. 590, 604, 606. The Gaon, who as a rule was very mild, lost patience with the Hasidim and wielded the weapons of the kuni (or stocks and exposures) and excommunication without mercy. The Hasidim were also accused of being not only religious dissenters but revolutionaries. Zeitlin, quoted in Yiddishes Tageblatt, from the Moment, March, 1913.]

[Footnote 21: See Karpeles, Time of Mendelssohn, p. 297; Kayserling, Mendelssohn, p. 12; Ha-Meliz, 1900, nos. 194-196.]

[Footnote 22: Epstein, Geburat ha-Ari, Vilna, 1870, p. 29; Rabinovich, Zunz, Warsaw, 1896; Wessely, op. cit., ii.; Linda, Res.h.i.+t Limmudim, Berlin, 1789, and Ha-Zeman (monthly), ii. 28.]

[Footnote 23: Delitzsch, Zur Geschichte der judischen Poesie, Leipsic, 1836, p. 118; Bernfeld, Dor Tahapukot, Warsaw, 1897, pp. 88 f. Dubno also edited Luzzatto's La-Yesharim Tehillah, which, according to Slouschz, marks the beginning of the renaissance in Hebrew belles-lettres.]

[Footnote 24: Published in Berlin in 1793. It was translated into English by Murray (Solomon Maimon, Boston, 1888) and into Hebrew by Taviov (Warsaw, 1899).]

[Footnote 25: Bernfeld, op. cit., ii. 66 f. JE, s.v. Maimon; and Autobiography (Engl. transl.), p. 217. For Maimon's system of philosophy and also for a complete bibliography of his writings, see Kunz, Die Philosophic Salomon Maimons, Heidelberg, 1912, pp. xxv, 531.]

[Footnote 26: Wolff, Maimoniana, Berlin, 1813, p. 177.]

[Footnote 27: How touching and suggestive is the word [Hebrew: Shbi]] in an acrostic at the end of his Introduction to his Gibe'at ha-Moreh, a commentary on the Moreh Nebukim:

'hobi ykr kor'

'bi vshm shmi hd'

Shbi bmlt bhtboknn]

[Footnote 28: See Murray's Introduction to the Autobiography; Auerbach, Dichter und Kaufmann; Zangwill, Nathan the Wise and Solomon the Fool.]

[Footnote 29: FKI, p. 196.]

[Footnote 30: Maggid, Toledot Mishpehot Ginzberg, pp. 52-53; Emden, Sheelat Ya'abez, Altona, 1739, p. 65 a.]

[Footnote 31: FKN, pp. 109-114, 269; FKI, p. 300.]

[Footnote 32: FKI, p. 394; Delitzsch, op. cit, p. 84.]

[Footnote 33: L'univers Israelite, liii. 831-841: "C'est, vous le voyez, un juif polonais qui contribua puissamment a l'emanc.i.p.ation des juifs de France. Et je me demande si le Judaisme du monde entier ne doit pas rendre hommage a notre coreligionnaire polonais autant peut-etre qu' a Mena.s.se ben Israel." FKI, p. 333; Ha-Meliz, ii. no. 50; Shulammit, iii.

425; Graetz, op. cit. (Engl. transl.), v. 443.]

[Footnote 34: See Berliner, Festschrift, 1903, pp. 1-4.]

[Footnote 35: See Ha-Meliz, viii. nos. 11, 22, 23; FSL, p. 139; Monatsschrift, xxiv, 348-357.]

[Footnote 36: Delitzsch, op. cit., pp. 115-118; Ha-Zeman (monthly), ii.

23 f.]

[Footnote 37: See Mea.s.sef, 1788, p. 32, and Levin's ed. of Moreh Nebukim, Zolkiev, 1829, Introduction.]

[Footnote 38: Ha-Mea.s.sef, 1809, pp. 68-75, 136-171.]

[Footnote 39: See Sefer ha-Berit, Introduction, and Weissberg, Aufklarungsliteratur, Vienna, 1898, p. 83.]

[Footnote 40: FKI, p. 428.]

[Footnote 41: See Emden, Torat ha-Kenaot, pp. 123-127, and Hitabkut (Pinczov's letters); Voskhod, 1882, nos. viii-ix; FSL, pp. 136-137; Friedrichsfeld, Zeker Zaddik, p. 12.]

[Footnote 42: Maimon, Autobiography, pp. 106-107; FSL, p. 135.]

[Footnote 43: See LTI, ii. 96, n. 1, and Yellin and Abrahams, Maimonides, p. 160, and reference on p. 330, n. 72; Ha-Zeman (monthly), i. 102-103; Margolioth, Bet Middot, p. 20. Heine's admiration for these idealists or those who succeeded them is well worth quoting. In his essay on Poland, he says: "In spite of the barbaric fur cap which covers his head and the even more barbaric ideas which fill it, I value the Polish Jew much more than many a German Jew with his Bolivar on his head and his Jean Paul inside of it.... The Polish Jew in his unclean furred coat, with his populous beard and his smell of garlic and his Jewish jargon, is nevertheless dearer to me than many a Westerner in all the glory of his stocks and bonds."]

[Footnote 44: Op. cit. Letter ii.]

[Footnote 45: Likkute Kadmoniot, Vilna, 1860, Introduction.]

CHAPTER III