E1X a AHISTORYOF THE JEWS IN MODERN TIMES BY MAX RAISIN, B. A.,. LL. D. NEW YORK HEBREW PUBLISHING COMPANY 1919 Xl) Copyright 1919 By THE HEBREW PUBLISHING COMPANY Stack Annex Solomon Raisin iinforgettaftle CONTENTS PAGE PREFACE CHAPTER IV CHAPTER V vu INTRODUCTION ... CHAPTER I NORTHERN, CENTRAL AND WESTERN EUROPE CHAPTER II RUSSIAN EMPIRE ^ CHAPTER III THE BALKAN STATES .212 AMERICAN CONTINENT 245 COLONIAL JEWRY CHAPTER VI PALESTINE, THE NATIONAL REVIVAL, AND THE ZIONIST HOPE 355 AT.Q BIBLIOGRAPHY INDEX 441 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS PAGB Georg Brandes 8 Prof. Moritz Lazarus 17 [Ferdinand] Lassalle 37 Karl Marx 41 Alfred Dreyfus 67 Bernard Lazare 7o Isaac Bar Levinsohn 112 Dr. Max Lilienthal 116 Sir Moses Montefiore 140 H. S. Slonimsky 147 Micah Joseph Lebensohn 150 Judah Loeb Gordon 153 Perez Smolenskin 171 Eliezer Ben-Yehudah 173 Isidore Singer 176 David Frischman 177 Shalom Jacob Abramovich 184 Solomon Rabbinnovich 186 Isaac Loeb Perez 188 Hayim Nahman Bialik 191 Mendel Beilis 198 Rabbi Jacob Mazeh 201 Col. Berck Joselowicz 203 Dr. Moses Gaster 240 Jacob H. Schiff 312 Prof. Solomon Schechter 244 Isaac Mayer Wise 253 Hebrew Union College 265 David Einhorn 270 Judah Philip Benjamin 278 Rebecca Gratz 286 Leaving the Old Home 294 Michael Heilprin 297 Herman Rosenthal 299 Baron de Hirsch 301 Jewish Theological Seminary 313 Rabbi Jacob Joseph 315 Rabbi A. M. Radin 317 Abraham Goldfaden 320 Morris Rosenfeld 322 Solomon Bloomgarden("Yehoash") 324 Jacob Gordin 326 Louis D. Brandeis 334 Jerusalem 357 George Eliot 365 Scene at Mikveh Israel 372 Moses Hess 375 Baron Edmond de Rothschild 379 Colonists at Rehobot 380 Kattowitz Conference 386 Asher Ginzberg ("Ahad Haam") . . 389 Dr. Joseph Chazanowicz 393 Theodor Herzl 398 M. M. Ussyschkin 401 Max Nordau 406 Israel Zangwill 420 Prof. M. Mandelstamm 422 Jaffa Harbor 424 Tel Aviv 426 Haifa 428 Vladimir Zhabotinsky 430 Col. J. H. Patterson 432 Dr. Ch. Weizmann 434 Gen. Allenby entering Jerusalem.. 436 PREFACE i Modern Jewish history, as the term is under- stood to-day, goes no further back than the French Revolution. This definition may sound arbitrary to those who are accustomed to think of Jewish history in terms of general history, the modern period of which begins with the discov- ery of America in 1492. It should be remem- bered, however, that, as is triie in so many things, Jewish history differs from that of the rest of mankind also in the periods into which it is divided. Thus, if medievalism may be said to have ceased for the bulk of the Western nations of Europe with the close of the I5th century, it has, in a political sense at least, continued for the Jew for at least three hundred years longer. In this sense, therefore, the author feels justified in the construction he has placed upon the term "modern" in its reference to Jewish history. The words "modern times" used in the title of this volume bring out even more clearly the scope of the work. It is, in other words, a history of the Jews in both hemispheres covering more than one hundred years and coming down to 1918. Even here, however, the author found himself con- strained to treat his subject somewhat arbitrarily. Not all of the Jewries of the various countries considered are traced back to the i8th century, this being especially true in the case of the Jews of the Central and Western European countries vii Vlll PREFACE whose fortunes he traces only from the epochal revolutionary year of 1848. The reason for this seeming arbitrariness is that the present work is intended as a companion volume to the English translation of Graetz's "Volkstumliche Geschichte der Juden" as pub- lished by the Hebrew Publishing Company of New York. The author's task was therefore not only to begin where Graetz had left off, but to fill in what the great historian, for one reason or another, had left out. Graetz, we know, has barely touched upon the history of the Jews in Russia, probably owing to the fact that Russia, down to the reign of Alexander II, was largely a terra incognita to the Jews of the West, while the Jewish community of America was scarcely im- portant enough in his day to dwell upon at any length. It thus became necessary to tell the story of these Jewries from the beginning. This will also explain the occasional overlapping of bound- aries and the seeming repetition of facts touched upon by Graetz but not with sufficient adequacy from the writer's standpoint. In a work of the nature of the present volume this, for obvious rea- sons, was unavoidable. The writer has aimed in the following pages to present, on the basis of a number of authorita- tive historical works, a digest of leading events in the history of modern Jewry and the conclusions to be drawn from them. Details have been resorted to mainly in so far as they helped to bring out and corroborate the general picture. Facts and data were condensed, but nothing was allowed to escape that could in any way serve to portray a phase or a movement. On occasions, indeed, the writer found himself impelled to sin on the side of greater elucidation and to expatiate on matters which ordinarily a historian might barely refer to. PREFACE IX This he did not without full consciousness of the peculiarity of the treatment, but in order to sub- serve thereby the tendency underlying his work. He has, however, guarded against causing the his- torian to be lost in the preacher, as the work itself will, he hopes, amply bear out. America is the new Jewish wonder-world, a sort of deus-ex-machina, made-to-order commu- nity which rose into its greatest prominence in Jewish life within the past thirty years. Hence the greater detail with which Reform Judaism, Zionism, the Hebrew and Yiddish literatures, and the Yiddish theatre in America are treated, not- withstanding that these movements, on account of their international character, receive their due at- tention also in other chapters. At the same time the author regrets that even here he has had to limit himself to the enumeration of the more out- standing facts, this applying also to authors and books where he had to guard against turning what is intended as a general history into a mere catalogue of names and titles. On the other hand it will be seen that he has not been averse to quoting liberally from a number of prominent books bearing on the various topics under discus- sion, this both because of the corroborative value of the excerpts, and of the historic importance of the works in themselves. Now this work was completed in February, 1918, but as a result of the relentless course of the Great War many momentous changes have already taken place in the world since then, greatly affecting the position of the Jews, par- ticularly those of what was once the mighty Rus- sian Empire, and of Roumania. It is safe to assume that these changes are of but a tempo- rary nature, resulting as they did, on the one hand, from a revolution which is still in the making, X PREFACE and, on the other hand, from an inconclusive peace forced upon both Russia and Roumania by a Germany that not only has failed to win the war, but that has gone down in disastrous de- feat in the great battle-field events which have stirred the world since the i8th of July, and who, at this writing, famine-stricken and in the throes of revolution, is a suppliant for mercy at the hands of the victorious Allies. By the ar- mistice terms submitted to by Germany on November n, the "Peace" treaties of both Brest- Litovsk and Bucharest have already become null and void, so that the position of the Jews of the above-mentioned countries will presently again become materially changed. All this goes to show how difficult is the task of the writer of present-day history, since what is a fact to-day may become an untruth to-morrow, and prog- nostication is at best but idle speculation. The author herewith expresses his thanks to Mr. Alexander Harkavy and Mr. Abraham S. Freidus, of New York, for many helpful sugges- tions, and to his sister, Mrs. Sarah Frances Levin, of Dayton, Ohio, for assistance in the reading of the manuscript. For whatever typographical errors there may have eluded the watchfulness of the proofreader, he must fall back upon the kindly indulgence of the reader. MAX RAISIN. Brooklyn, N. Y. f November, 1918. INTRODUCTION The very latest period of Jewish history, stretch- ing for seventy years, from 1848 to 1918, will doubtless forever rank in Jewish annals as the most important, and in a large sense the most glorious, page in the story of the Jewish people since the destruction of the Second Temple at the hands of Titus. It is a period mostly of storm and stress, of bitter persecution and untold suffering for the many with but a modicum of relief and of peace for the few. There is, at the same time, a steady flow of gradual uplift, of amelioration and libera- tion. Sunshine and shadow are ever at conflict, the forces of reaction are ceaseless in their on- slaught on liberalism and progress. But the day of complete deliverance finally heaves in sight, and amidst the anguish and suffering of a great world- war, the harrowing effect of which no part of the inhabited globe is permitted to escape, mankind ex- periences a new birth, and the Jew, too, at last is about to come into his own. As in the ancient Biblical vision, the Virgin of Israel, lying faint and prostrate, with her life-blood oozing from a hun- dred wounds, is bid to come to life again and to open a new chapter of history which in the promise of its glory shall transcend the few bright pages to be found in even so sorrow-laden a record as is that of the Jews in the last nineteen hundred years. The signs are unfailing that out of the terrible holocaust which has descended upon the world for the last three years and a half, a new day is at hand when the weak and oppressed of the earth will find themselves permanently delivered; and x ]j INTRODUCTION among these the Jew, the perennial scapegoat of the world's prejudice and hate, must be first to re- ceive due and full consideration even as he was first to suffer. The beginning of this complete emanci- pation has already been made in the wonderful change in the status of six million Jews wrought over night, as it were, by the Russian Revolution, and by the declaration of the English government in favor of the re-establishment of an autonomous- ly free Jewish nation in Palestine. In considering the many events that have played an important part in Jewish life in the past seventy years, we come across three main forces that have been at work during the greater part of this pe- riod: (i) Modern Ant is emitism, which, originating in its organized political form in Germany, has spread to neighboring lands and found an espe- cially fertile field in Russia where, in the influence it exercised upon the heads of the state, like so many other ideas and policies imported into that land from Germany, has led to a renewal of the mediaeval anti-Jewish policy after its suspension during the comparatively liberal regime of the first twenty years of the reign of Czar Alexander II, and resulted in the terrible pogroms and in the in- numerable restrictive laws which marked the reigns of his two successors. Out of these inhuman per- secutions came the two other forces: (2) Immigra- tion to Western Europe and to North and South America, resulting in the establishment of new Jewish centres which, particularly those of the United States, are destined to play a most impor- tant part in the saving and rehabilitation of the many old Jewries now ruined by the war; and (3) The Reawakening of the Jewish Nationalist Spirit, and the revival of the Hebrew language and liter- ature, resulting in the Palestinian colonization and in the rise of the Zionist movement. INTRODUCTION Xlll \Ye need but bear in mind these three forces to have a clear view of the main streams of Jewish life in the period under consideration. Jewry in Western Europe and in America might have been left to lead an uneventful, self-satisfied and gradu- ally decadent life but for the mighty stream of im- migration from Eastern Europe which came to in- fuse new life-blood into the fast drying bones of these sections of emancipated Israel. The awaken- ing to a high degree of the spirit of unity and mu- tual responsibility throughout Jewry is entirely due to these immigrants who brought with them into their new homes a vast amount of Hebraic learn- ing, an intellect sharpened through centuries of ap- plication to the study of the intricacies of Talmudic jurisprudence, and an unquenchable enthusiasm for all things Jewish. Again, this vast immigration would have been impossible, since unnecessary, had there been no persecutions in Russia and Rou- mania which, as already stated, came in the wake of the recrudescence of German Antisemitism and its reaction upon other lands. Jewish nationalism, too, with its accompanying Hebrew revival, would have been very slow in coming but for the self- same causes. The policy of Bismarck and of Treitschke in making Jew-baiting a popular issue in Germany is therefore largely responsible for whatever developments in the international situa- tion of the Jew there have occurred since the memorable events of 1848 when the w r orld was left with a heightened sense of democracy as making for the happiness of a nation, and with the fervent hope that the rights and liberties al- ready achieved, howsoever few and limited, might be but forerunners and stepping-stones to still greater victories for human freedom to come with the growth of culture and progress. K: CHAPTER I NORTHERN. CENTRAL AND WESTERN EUROPE OF the three countries constituting the Scandi- navian Peninsula, Norway is the one of least im- portance for the Jews, while Denmark stands out the more prominently. Indeed, were it not for Swe- den, with which country it became politically united early in the nineteenth century, there could scarcely be said to have been any kind of Jewish history in Norway, the number of Jews there even at the end of the century being too small (about 500 souls) to form much of a Jewish communal life. With the union in 1814 between Norway and Sweden, there immediately arose a Norwegian Jewish prob- lem, since according to Swedish law, now operative also in Norway, foreign Jews were forbidden to settle in the land. Ever since then the political for- tunes of the Norwegian Jews followed closely those of their Swedish co-religionists, they sharing alike in the restrictions and persecutions as well as in the emancipation which ensued toward the middle of the nineteenth century. In only three cities in Norway, Christiania, Trondhjen and Bergen, did Jewish religious life assume an organized form, the congregations being, however, too small to play an important part. As is the case with the communi- ties throughout Scandinavia, Norwegian Jewry is on the decline and probably would have gone out of existence ere now, by the ordinary process of 2 HISTORY OF THE JEWS assimilation with and absorption into the general population, but for the occasional influx of Jewish immigrants from Russia and Poland which has thus far succeeded in maintaining a semblance of Jewish life and in staving off the day of final dis- solution. So, too, in Sweden, where a somewhat larger number of Jews have for several centuries found refuge, coming there from Germany and the Ibe- rian Peninsula, the story is one of gradual falling away and disappearance in the maelstrom of the general life of the country. The fact that the earliest record of the Jews of Sweden, in the sev- enteenth century, is that of the baptism of several Jews in the Lutheran Church as a condition of their admission to the country, is prophetic of nearly all of the subsequent history of the Swedish Jews which has been one of continual dejudaization as the price of political as well as social equality. Un- til late in the nineteenth century these Jews have repeatedly been constrained to buy the right of res- idence in the land, the privileges that were granted to them by the rulers from time to time coming only as a reward for the commercial and financial bene- fits they had conferred upon the state. Through the influence exercised by Jewish financiers upon Charles XII, who frequently resorted to them for funds with which to carry on his many wars, that monarch in 1718 threw his land open to the Jews and granted them the right of the free practice of their religion. But this permission had to be re- newed from time to time, indeed whenever the royal household was in need of money, which was quite often. Freedom of movement, however, es- pecially to foreign Jews, was greatly restricted, it being practically confined to the three cities of Stockholm, Gothenberg and Norkkoeping. No Jew could engage in business unless he possessed four NORTHERN, CENTRAL AND WESTERN EUROPE 3 hundred dollars if a native, or not less than eight hundred dollars if foreign-born. At no time did Judaism or Jewish learning thrive in Sweden, nor could the blame for it be laid at the door of the government which, once it permitted the Jews to settle in the land, rather encouraged them in the cultivation of their religious life. For some time, indeed, intermarriage, which in the last fifty years has wrought such havoc in disintegrating the Jew- ish community, had been forbidden by law. The ordinance of 1782 established a number of Jewish rights which in the succeeding decades were con- siderably augmented with the increase of the Jew- ish population and the growth of Jewish wealth. This led to jealousy and enmity on the part of the Christian populace, culminating in anti-Jewish demonstrations in 1838 which compelled the gov- ernment to rescind the law passed in that year by which the restrictions against the Jews had been removed. The feeling against the Jews now became more pronounced in Sweden, crystallizing itself in re- peated efforts to block the contemplated legislative measures favoring the Jews. In this, however, but little success was attained, nor was the number of Jews in the kingdom at any one time sufficiently great to create a very formidable anti-Jewish move- ment. The complete emancipation of the Jews, in accordance with the provisions of the constitution applying to all non-Lutherans, finally took place in 1860 in the ordinance passed that year granting them the right of acquiring real estate in the rural districts, and in the decree of 1863 by which the ban against their intermarrying with Christians was removed. This, as already alluded to, has been a boon of a doubtful nature so far as the Jews were concerned, the large number of intermar- riages that have since taken place together with 4 HISTORY OF THE JEWS the conversions and the general alienation from Ju- daism undermining- the very foundation of the Swedish Jewish community. Like Norway, Swe- den, too, has benefited by the Russo-Jewish mi- gration. Spiritually, however, the Jewish commu- nity of Sweden is a dependency of Germany by whom it has been influenced the most in the de- velopment of its religious life. The Swedish rab- bis, beginning with Levi Hirsch who came to Stockholm toward the close of the eighteenth cen- tury, all came from German or Austrian theologi- cal schools, as is also the case with Dr. Marcus Ehrenpreis, the present Chief Rabbi of the five thousand Jews to-day resident in Sweden. Not very dissimilar is the story of the Jews of Denmark whose beginnings likewise date back to the seventeenth century and whose pioneers were also of German and Sephardic origin, the latter of whom came from Amsterdam, Here, too, Jews had to secure the permanency of their stay in the country by the offer of monetary loans to the king. The Teixeira and De Lima families of the latter part of the seventeenth century are known to have had such transactions with Frederick III. Though permission to hold religious exercises was granted these Jews in Copenhagen as early as 1684, it was done on condition that such services be held behind closed doors and that no sermons be delivered. In the province of Sleswick-Holstein, which until 1864 was part of Denmark, the relation of the authori- ties to the Jews was friendlier than that in other parts of the country, since the Jews came there from Amsterdam (1622) upon the direct invitation of King Christian IV, who evidently sought to emulate in his own kingdom the commercial pros- perity he knew the Portuguese Jews to have brought to the capital of Holland. Yet these Jews NORTHERN, CENTRAL AND WESTERN EUROPE 5 of Sleswick-Holstein, like all of their co-religion- ists, had to secure a special "Geleitsbrief," or pass- port, whenever they wanted to travel through the kingdom. Jews were classed with Gipsies in the law of 1683, and if any favorable distinction was made it was to grant special privileges to Portu- guese Jews and to deny them to German Jews. This led to much deception since the Christian au- thorities could not well distinguish between the two. There was not wanting an attempt to create a ritual-murder case in Copenhagen at the close of the 1 7th century, and, as in other more bigoted lands, Jews, for a time at least, were not permitted to keep Christian servants (1725). On the whole, however, the political fortunes of the Danish Jews were better than those of their brethren in the rest of the Peninsula and they kept steadily improving, culminating in their almost complete emancipation in 1814. Anti-Jewishness as an organized politi- cal movement made no headway in the kingdom and wherever introduced was not countenanced by the rulers. This friendly attitude of the govern- ment had a marked effect upon the development of the cultural as well as the religious life of the Jews. It hastened assimilation and intermarriage if it did not superinduce proselytism to Christianity, as was true of the neighboring lands where opposition to the Jew on racial and religious grounds was offi- cially fostered and encouraged. Of larger numbers than their Swedish or Nor- wegian co-religionists, and more favored politi- cally and economically, the Danish Jews were in a better position to regulate their spiritual affairs and to evolve a high measure of order and decorum in their organized religious life. In this they had the sanction as well as the support of the govern- ment, which made it obligatory for them to have all religious instruction in the school and from the 6 HISTORY OF THE JEWS pulpit carried on in the Danish language. The des- ignation of "Mosaic religionist" was substituted for the ill-sounding term "Jew," and as there was no educational restriction for Jews many of them availed themselves of the opportunity to acquire a broad secular education in the public schools and university. A number of eminent men were thus produced in the Copenhagen Jewry who shed lustre not only upon their Danish co-religionists but upon other countries as well. Thus, late in the i8th century the Wessely family stands out preeminent- ly, with branches in Glueckstadt (Sleswick-Hol- stein), Copenhagen and Hamburg, and with Xaph- tali Hirz (Hartwig) Wessely (1725-1805), the Hebrew poet, moralist and educational reformer, as its most noted representative. Wessely, though born in Hamburg, had spent many years of his youth in Copenhagen, where he also married and where he acquired much of the Jewish and secular learning which prepared him for the great cultural work he was later to perform in Berlin in collabo- ration with Moses Mendelssohn. The Copenhagen community still cherishes the memorable event of 1766, when Wessely returned to the city to attend the dedication of the new synagogue at which he delivered the oration and read a poem he had writ- ten for the occasion. Another prominent Danish Jew was the Hebrew poet and scholar Isaac Eu- chel (1758-1804) who, but for the objection of Emanuel Kant, might have been appointed profes- sor of Oriental languages at the Koenigsberg Uni- versity, and who was associated with Wessely, Mendelssohn and others in the founding of the "Ha-Meassef" magazine, thus becoming one of the fathers of the Haskalah movement in Germany. From this it will be seen that Danish Jewry, like that of the rest of Scandinavia, was greatly in- fluenced by Germany's leading Jews, and most no- tably by Mendelssohn and his school. The educa- tional reforms advocated by the latter as a means of enlightenment and political emancipation found a responsive echo in Denmark, and was not with- out effect upon the religious thought of the young- er and more progressive elements in the Jewish community. When the great synagogue of Copen- hagen was destroyed by fire in 1795, it was for a long time found impossible to secure the harmoni- ous co-operation of the ultra-orthodox and the lib- eral factions, each of them insisting upon its own view-point. The movement for religious modern- ism soon produced a great leader in the person of Isaac Noah Mannheimer (Copenhagen, i793-Vi- enna, 1865) who is probably the most prominent Jew Denmark gave to the world, "the incarnate re- finement of Jewry," as Graetz calls him. Enjoy- ing the distinction of being the first modern Jewish preacher, or "catechist" in Denmark, to which of- fice he was appointed in 1816, and the first to per- form the ceremony of confirmation in Copenhagen (1817), Mannheimer, when but thirty years old, was called to Vienna in 1821, there to make himself immortal in Jewish history as the master-builder of the modern Jewish community of the Austrian capital. The successors of Mannheimer in Copenhagen, though less gifted in oratory, succeeded in welding together the various elements and in strengthening the sense of unity of the community to the extent of making possible in 1833 the erection of a new synagogue. Radical Reform, though advocated and desired by many, never found a foothold in the kingdom, but instead official orthodoxy itself was sufficiently influenced to permit the moderni- zation of many features of the ritual. Hence no real split ever occurred in Danish Jewry since the days of Mannheimer. At the same time intermar- 8 riages and conversions continued to take place, and were but little halted by the granting of full equal- ity to the Jews in 1849. The growth of material prosperity resulted in an increase of culture and refinement, and many of the Danish scientists, art- ists and literateurs of the last half-century were Jews. Antisemitism exists in Denmark in but a limited degree, owing to the proportionately small number of Jews in the kingdom. Jews have filled high offices in the government and in the educa- tional institutions of the realm, and have exercised a marked influence upon the political and economic thought of the land. The leading Danish news- paper, "Politiken," was for many years edited by Edvard Brandes, a brother of Georg Brandes. The latter (b. Copenhagen, 1842) is the best known literary figure Denmark has yet produced, and as the author of "Main Currents in Nineteenth-Cen- tury Literature" in both Danish and German, be- sides other important works, to-day ranks with the foremost men of letters in Europe. At home in most of the European languages and in possession of a thorough knowledge of all of their literatures, a life-long student of philosophy and of the various streams of thought in his own and in all preceding times, a disciple of John Stuart Mill in philosophy and of Taine in literary criticism, an interpreter of Nietzsche,Lassalle,Disraeli, Renan and other great luminaries, a most voluminous writer on historical and philosophical themes, Georg Morris Cohen Brandes is to-day, at the age of seventy-five, still the most picturesque literary personage in the world and one of the few real great men to come from Denmark. Brandes, however, has for a long time kept aloof from his people, though, in contrast with most assimilationists, he has not been devoid of all sympathy for his race. The accident of his Jewish birth has had little effect upon his views GEORG BRANDES (b. 1842) NORTHERN, CENTRAL AND WESTERN EUROPE 9 as the citizen of the world he proclaims himself to be. As a humanitarian he has given his talents mainly to fighting the battles of other oppressed nationalities and races rather than of his own people, as was instanced in his defense of Finland and Poland against Russia and his si- lence on the persecution of the Jews by all of these states, save for his one attempt to defend the Jews during the disastrous Polish boycott (1912). It was only very recently that Brandes experienced a change of heart by expressing himself in sympathy with Jewish nationalism. Of the rabbis of Denmark who succeeded Mann- heimer, the most prominent were A. A. Wolff and D. Simonsen, both of whom ministered to the Co- penhagen community. That community was also for a number of years the seat of the educational activity of Dr. Moses Mielziner, who later be- came noted in America as a writer on Jewish sci- ence and as professor of Talmud, and later Presi- dent, of the Hebrew Union College at Cincinnati. We shall now turn to Central and Western Eu- rope where, from the nature and scope of the pres- ent work,* our historical review must perforce begin at a comparatively late date, well within the second half of the nineteenth century. After the revolutions of 1848 and the extension of Jewish liberties on the continent, there is for some years an apparent lull in the religious controversies that have agitated the Jewish communities of Western Europe, particularly those of Germany and Aus- tria-Hungary, for the better part of half a cen- tury. Israel in Europe was too busily engaged in adjusting himself to the new conditions of freedom to vigorously maintain the fight for religious re- forms. For many years thereafter conditions in the synagogue remain much as they were before that memorable year. Reform is, indeed, left *See the Preface to this volume. IO HISTORY OF THE JEWS largely undisturbed in most of the places where it had found a foothold, but its progress is halted. Berlin, the largest Jewish centre of Prussia, did not have a Reform temple till 1845, when the Reform "Genossenschaft" came into being, nor has it had any additional lib- eral synagogues since then. In Austria, es- pecially in Vienna which boasted of eloquent preachers like Mannheimer and Jellinek, radical Reform was never countenanced or encouraged, while in Budapest where the fiery-spirited and rev- olutionary Ignatz Einhorn had founded the Jew- ish Reform Association, the movement was so hampered in its work by the orthodox element as will be told here more fully in the next few pages that the Government intervened, and Dr. David Einhorn, who later became prominent as a Reform leader in the United States, was compelled to aban- don his labors (1852). Instead of advocating more reforms and adding to the already existing Reform organizations, there is a tendency everywhere to conserve Jewish learning as a means for the pres- ervation intact of the faith. Both the orthodox and the progressives are giving themselves to the one task of safeguarding Judaism through the dis- semination of Jewish knowledge. The golden era of Jewish science which began with Leopold Zunz and Solomon Rapoport, saw some of its noblest fruition in the two decades preceding and those immediately following the revolution, in the writ- ings of Julius Fuerst, David Cassel, Moritz Stein- sch'neider, Abraham Geiger, Samuel Hirsch, Hein- rich Graetz, Marcus Jost and Abraham Berliner in Germany to mention but a few from among the orthodox and Reform camps alike; of Solomon Munk, Joseph and Hartwig Derenbourg, James and Arsene Darmesteter, Jules Oppert and Joseph Halevy in France; of Solomon Reggio and S. D. NORTHERN, CENTRAL AND WESTERN EUROPE II Luzzatto in Italy; of Adolf Neubauer in England, and of Solomon Buber, S. H. Halberstamm, I. H. Weiss and Meyer Friedman in Austria. A place of special distinction in this movement belongs to Ludwig Philippson (Dessau, i8n-Bonn, 1889) who in 1853 founded in Berlin the "Institute for the Promotion of Israelitish Literature" with the assistance of M. Jost and Adolf Jellinek, then of Leipzig. In its eighteen years of existence this organization published more than eighty prominent w r orks from the pen of the most eminent Jewish scholars of the times. Another factor in the work of strengthening and conserving Judaism was the establishment of theo- logical seminaries for the training of rabbis and preachers. The first rabbinical seminary in Ger- many, that of Breslau, was founded in 1854 under the leadership of Zacharias Frankel and with a faculty consisting of scholars of distinction like Heinrich Graetz, Manuel Joel, Jacob Bernays and Benedict Zuckermann. This school preceded by nearly two decades the opening of the two sem- inaries of Berlin, the "Lehranstalt fuer die Wissen- schaft des Judenthums" (1872), and the "Rab- binerseminar" which was established at about the same time the "Hebrew Union College" of Cin- cinnati was opened (1873). The "Landesrabbin- erschule" of Budapest was founded in 1877, while the theological "Lehranstalt" of Vienna was opened only in 1893. These training schools for rabbis were intended to supplement if not to sup- plant the old-fashioned Yeshibot which had been found inadequate for the demands of modern con- gregational life. The position of the rabbi as the representative of his people before the world at large grew in importance with the emancipation of the Jews, and it was justly believed that an aspirant to the rabbinate should be equipped with a liberal 12 HISTORY OF THE JEWS measure of secular culture in addition to the neces- sary Jewish learning. The Seminary, as distinct from the Yeshibah, was not necessarily a school of advanced theological thought, some of these institu- tions being even distinguished for the conservatism of their teaching. In France, where the rabbinical seminary had been in existence, in Metz, since 1824 (transferred to Paris in 1859), an d in Italy where the Padua school was founded in 1827, Reform was scarcely known. Nevertheless, it was through these institutions that modernism found its way into the synagogue with the effect of at least touch- ing the surface of Jewish life where it failed to influence formal Jewish doctrine. Thus in many of the French and Italian communities, as in most of the German congregations, Orthodoxy is officially sustained and, in a more or less modernized form, steadfastly practiced in the synagogue, yet is not often observed in its minutiae in the private life of the Jew. Here, too, Germany, the land where Reform saw the light of day, now becomes the leader in the movement which, like the Counter-Reformation of the Catholic Church, aimed at the frustration of Reform and the strengthening of Orthodoxy by the building up of a great orthodox party, one that remained strictly loyal to the "Shulhan Arukh" teachings, at the same time as it sought to place Orthodoxy itself in a more attractive form through better organization, and modernized the service at least to the extent of making the sermon in the vernacular a welcome if still optional feature of the service. This movement gained impetus through the activity of the learned Dr. Samson Raphael Hirsch (1808-1888), the already noted author of the "Nineteen Letters of Ben Uziel" (1836) who in 1851 had become the rabbi of the "Israelitish Religious Society" of Frankfort-on- NORTHERN/ CENTRAL AND WESTERN EUROPE 13 the-Main and, by his learning and eloquence, his moral leadership and the uncompromising spirit he evinced in his writings against Re- form, soon became the acknowledged head of the orthodox forces in Germany. His congregation grew most rapidly, in a short time becoming the largest of its kind in Ger- many. He established a parochial school in which Jewish children received both a secular and a thor- oughly religious education, and by means of his monthly magazine, the "Jeschurun," he struck sledge-hammer blows at Reform which he desig- nated as an un-Jewish movement and a dan- ger to the Jewish race. His theological pro- gramme he laid down in the very first num- ber of his periodical: "True and pure Ju- daism is to be found only in the camp of extreme Orthodoxy, and only he is a true Jew who painstakingly follows all the prescriptions of the mediaeval rabbis, and of the 'Shulhan Arukh' and its commentators." Far greater than the dif- ferences in existence between the various sects of Christendom was, in his estimation, the gulf sep- arating Reform from orthodox Judaism. Having found so valiant and capable a leader, the orthodox in Germany now became bolder, and what they could not accomplish peacefully, by means of moral suasion, they often sought to achieve through force, by invoking the aid of the government. At the instance of the orthodox party of Berlin a pe- tition was presented in Parliament (1851) looking to the strengthening of the state's influence over the inner affairs of the Jewish community, but, though warmly championed by Wagener, was corn- batted by the Catholics no less than by the Lib- erals of the Reichstag as an infringement upon the religious liberties of the people. In Posen the po- lice was besought to close the Reform Temple, 14 HISTORY OF THE JEWS which it did, while in Mecklenburg-Schwerin, where the majority of the Jews were friendly to the Re- form movement, the government, always on the side of the conservatives, interfered to check the growth of religious liberalism and appointed as Chief-Rabbi the ultra-orthodox Dr. Bernhard Lippschuetz whom, however, it some time later was compelled to remove (1856) from office owing to his utter incapacity and inactivity in the perform- ance of his duties. A similar interference of the government in the inner affairs of the Jews was at about this time witnessed in Vienna where the gov- ernment would not permit the liberal elements to build their new synagogue except on condition that it be placed under the control of the general com- munity (1855). Sporadic efforts toward religious reforms were made in a number of centres, as was instanced by the conference of the French Rabbis in 1856 in Paris, at which a programme of limited and optional reforms was adopted, and by the slowly moving progress of religious liberalism in England which resulted in the founding of Reform synagogues in Manchester and in Bradford. Gen- erally, however, the times were not propitious for a rapid growth of Reform in Europe, unlike the United States where it was then fast approaching the high-water mark of its success and bid fair to become the dominant phase of Jewish religious life in America. That, however, the leaven of religious liberalism was at work in the Jewries of Western Europe can be seen from the action taken by the Berlin com- munity in 1854 in defeating the leaders of the neo- orthodox party in the elections of that year, which eventually led to the resignation from office of Dr. Michael Sachs, the eloquent and erudite rabbi, who had stubbornly opposed the few mild ritualistic in- novations that had been proposed. Nevertheless, NORTHERN, CENTRAL AND WESTERN EUROPE 1 5 the leaders of Orthodoxy remained on the alert, and new forces were coming to the fore to protect its interests. The infiltration into Germany of a number of intellectuals (Maskilim) from Russia with their knowledge of Hebrew and Talmud, though themselves not avowedly orthodox, aided the cause of conservatism by bringing about, though in a somewhat limited measure, a renewed interest in Hebrew learning. From Zhagory, in the Government of Kovno, came Senior Sachs (1816-1893), the renowned Talmudist, to take up his studies at the university of Berlin, there to meet Zunz and the other celebrities of the day and to enter upon a number of scholarly Hebrew enter- prises. He founded the "Ha-Tehiyah" (The Ren- aissance), a magazine dealing with mediaeval He- brew writings, the "Ha-Yonah" (The Dove), like- wise |or scientific Jewish researches, edited some of Zunz's writings, and even attempted to revive the "Kerem Hemed" which had ceased publication in Prague in 1843. He continued publishing it from 1854 to 1856 when it, too, shared the fate of his other literary ventures, and Sachs was com- pelled to remove to Paris, there to continue his lit- erary labors for many more years. In the Prussian border city of Lyck, Eliezer Silbermann in 1856 founded the "Ha-Maggid," the first politico-liter- ary Hebrew weekly which, while it exercised its greatest influence in Russia where lived the major- ity of its readers, also had a following in Germany. Around it rallied the forces opposed to the ultra- liberals, and in 1864, due to its initiative and prop- aganda, was established the "Mekize Nirdamim" society for the issuing of old Hebrew books and manuscripts. In opposition to the work and ten- dency of Philippson's "Institute for the Promotion of Israelitish Literature," the "Mekize Nirdamim" aimed at giving to the world such works as had a l6 HISTORY OF THE JEWS particular interest for the orthodox, the Talmudist and student of Jewish philosophy. To give it as wide a scope as possible, and to enhance the im- portance of its work, the society was international- ized, having as its directors Dr. Nathan Adler, Sir Moses Montefiore and Joseph Zedner of London; Albert Cohn of Paris; S. D. Luzzatto of Padua; Dr. Michael Sachs of Berlin, and Matthias Stras- chun of Vilna. It has rendered invaluable services to the cause of Jewish literature in bringing to light many old and forgotten or even unknown works by authors both known and obscure. It has long survived Philippson's "Institute" and until shortly before the outbreak of the Great War in 1914 was still active in Berlin whither it had re- moved from Lyck after the death of Silbermann. The liberal tendencies of German Jewry had found great support in Ludwig Philippson's organ, the "Allgemeine Zeitung des Judentums" which he had edited since 1837. It was furnished added strength in Geiger's theological review, "Wissen- schaftliche Zeitschrift fuer Juedische Theologie" (established 1835) and in his later publication, "Juedische Zeitschrift fuer Wissenschaft und Le- ben" (1862-1874). The lack of unity and unanimity among the liberals was, however, making itself sadly felt. The leaders of Reform recognized the need of organization and of concerted effort, and various attempts were made to unite all the liberal elements, with but scant success. The "Verein fuer die allgemeinen religioesen Interessen des Judentums," founded by Geiger and Philippson in 1865 in Frankfort-on-the-Main, was short-lived. Yet it led to the convening of the Cassel rabbinical conference of 1868 and of the celebrated synods of Leipzig (1869) and Augsburg (1871). The main object of these gatherings was to clarify the the- ological situation, adopt a number of much-needed PROF. MORITZ LAZARUS (1824-1903) NORTHERN, CENTRAL AND WESTERN EUROPE \J school reforms, draw up articles of faith and de- cide upon uniformity in matters of ritual and wor- ship. Whatever the resolutions adopted, however, they were not carried out. The congregations that participated in the synods were indifferent to their aims, and lent them but a lukewarm support. Though a number of eminent laymen were among the delegates present, headed by Professor M. Laz- arus of Berlin, the lay-world as a whole cared but little for the doings and declarations of these syn- ods, whose only effect was to widen the breach between the orthodox and Reform elements. The leaders of neo-orthodoxy were not slow to seize upon the opportunities thus presented for renewing their attacks upon Reform with added zest and vigor. Foremost among these was Dr. Israel Hildesheimer (Halberstadt, i82O-Berlin, 1899), a gifted scholar and capable organizer, who splen- didly combined in himself- the spirit of Talmudic Orthodoxy and of modern learning. Fresh from his triumphant achievements as rabbi in Hungary where he had fought many a battle with the leader of the Reform party. Dr. Leopold Loew, and where, despite the opposition of the fanatical orthodox who put him under the ban, he had built up a strong orthodox party whose programme was "a faithful adherence to traditional teachings com- bined with an effective effort to keep in touch with the spirit of progress," Hildesheimer went to Ber- lin in 1869 for the avowed purpose of opposing and thwarting the reform labors of Dr. Geiger who had been called there as rabbi of the liberal com- munity. Due to his efforts Berlin soon became the rival of Frankfort as a stronghold of German Or- thodoxy. He opened a religious school in which children were given a thoroughly traditional train- ing, and established in 1873 a seminary for the education of rabbis in opposition to the liberal 1 8 HISTORY OF THE JEWS "Hochschule fuer die Wissenschaft des Juden- turns" which was opened in that city in the pre- vious year under the leadership of Geiger and Laz- arus. Kind and gentle in disposition toward all men, Hildesheimer was yet adamantine on the ques- tion of Orthodoxy, though he refrained from em- ploying the methods of vilification and abuse in- dulged in by the more fanatical, notably Rabbi Lehmann of Mayence in his weekly publication, the "Israelit." The popularity of Hildesheimer and his personal magnetism can be judged from the fact that his seminary attracted students from countries outside of Germany, many of them com- ing from among his own former pupils in Hungary. The closing fifties of the iQth century saw the hey-day of Jewish progress in Europe since the upheavals of 1848 and the constitutional liberties in which they resulted. The various countries were too busy consolidating their interests and arranging their internal affairs to direct much at- tention to the Jews who, in consequence, were en- abled to place their house in order without much interference from the outside. The favorable out- come of the .Crimean War made England more powerful than ever in the countries of Europe, and the prosperity of the nation as a whole re- acted favorably upon the English Jews, resulting in the removal of whatever disabilities they were still laboring under. The Jews' Disabilities Bill was passed by Parliament in 1858 and Baron Lionel de Rothschild was the first Jew to be seated that year in Parliament without being com- pelled to take the customary oath "on the true faith of a Christian." This heralded the com- plete and final political victory of the Jews of the Island Kingdom over the forces of reaction, and it had a favorable effect upon the position of the Jews in neighboring lands. In Prussia the Re- NORTHERN, CENTRAL AND WESTERN EUROPE IQ gency of Wilhelm, later first Emperor of Ger- many, established in 1858, led to the greater lib- eralization of that country while the defeat of Austria at the hands of the Italians and the rise of a new and constitutional Italian state affected the position of the Jews of those lands. Jewish wealth grew apace with the extension of their freedom, and the opening up to them of new op- portunities of education resulted in the coming to the fore of a number of men and women who be- came noted for their achievements in nearly ev- ery branch of literature, art and science. The historic hatred of the Jew, while it lingered on and here and there led to unpleasant and some- times tragic incidents, on the whole was kept in a state of suppression by the newly-framed laws, and where it broke out in virulent form had the effect of furthering the solidarity of the Jews in all lands and of bringing them closer to each other for mutual self-protection. The Mortara case (1858) led to the founding in Paris of the "Alliance Israelite Universelle" (1860), and was followed by the organization of similar bodies, acting as its auxiliaries, in Berlin, Vienna, Lon- don, and Cincinnati. Eventually we are to see this sense of unity weaken, and Jewish loyalty give way before a wave of assimilation originat- ing in abject and cowardly self-interest. At the period in question, however, the flame of brother- hood, nurtured by the as yet unwavering devotion to faith, still burns bright in Jewish souls, and Israel in Europe largely presents a cheering pic- ture of a race emancipated and doing its utmost to prove itself worthy of the newly-acquired free- dom. In at least one Central European country did the struggle between Reform and Orthodoxy as- sume larger proportions and grow in sharpness 2O HISTORY OF THE JEWS and bitterness in contrast with the situation every- where else in Hungary. Hungarian Jewry had long incurred the displeasure of the Austro-Hun- garian government owing to the prominent part many of its members had played in the revolu- tionary struggle. A special Jewish division was mobilized in Budapest against the Croatians in the summer of 1848, marching off to the battle front under the words of blessing pronounced by Rabbi Schwab. To the Jews of Hungary the suc- cess of the revolution meant their complete eman- cipation under the law, and chief among the ad- vocates for the removal of Jewish disabilities was the leader of the revolution, Louis Kossuth. This was also the prime goal of the Reformers who entertained the hope of seeing all legal discrimina- tion removed from their race by a radical change in synagogal worship. Thus it came about that the Jewish Reform movement in Hungary was in a large sense a revolutionary movement, and among the active participants in the struggle were Reform leaders like the above-mentioned Rabbi Ignatz Einhorn, founder of the liberal congrega- tion of Budapest, Dr. Leopold Rockenstein, rabbi of the temple at Grosswarddein, who rose to the rank of lieutenant in the revolutionary army, Moses Bruck of Nagy-Becskerek, who also was an officer, and Dr. Adolf Huebsch, who subse- quently became rabbi in New York. The politi- cal hopes of these men were indeed realized when the Hungarian national assembly w T hich met in Szeged in July, 1849, adopted a bill granting full citizenship to the Jews. But the failure of the revolution a few weeks later, owing to the mili- tary intervention of Czar Nicholas I of Russia, nullified this as well as the other laws framed by the assembly. The uprising was put down with fire and s\vord and the Jews were made to feel NORTHERN, CENTRAL AND WESTERN EUROPE 21 the heavy hand of an avenging government. Many of them were imprisoned, some were executed, and heavy war-taxes were imposed upon a number of communities, the ones to suffer the most being those of Budapest and Alt-Ofen. Only after much petitioning did the young emperor Francis Joseph, who had only a short time previously as- cended the throne, agree to remit the tax on con- dition that the Jews raise a fund of 1,000,000 Gulden for Jewish educational purposes a condi- tion they were glad to comply with. The attention of the government was now to be directed to the Reformers, who were made to feel the severity of its vindictiveness. Ignatz Ein- horn, with many others, was compelled to flee the country, wandering through many lands, sojourn- ing in Leipzig, Brussels and Paris, and returning to his native land only after twenty years of ex- ile, there again to become active in public life. But in the interim his Reform labors had to be abandoned. The Reform Society of Budapest was suppressed by the government in 1852, Dr. David Einhorn, who succeeded Ignatz Einhorn as preacher, going to America. The ultra-ortho- dox elements made use of the political situation to thwart the efforts of their liberal co-religion- ists, the attitude of the government enabling them to take a bold stand. Religious zeal made them forget that the safety of their race lay in the unity and co-operation of all of its members. Aus- tria's defeat at the hands of the Italians in 1859 put a stop to the era of absolutism in Hungary, and the government of Francis Joseph was now ready to grant a number of concessions, including an extension of the rights of the Jews. In the Diet convened by the emperor in 1861 this ques- tion was indeed formally brought up, but a dis- united Jewry allowed the favorable moment to 22 HISTORY OF THE JEWS pass unused, and the Diet soon dissolved, post- poning- the emancipation of the Jews for six more years. When in 1864 it was proposed to estab- lish a rabbinical seminary for the better preserva- tion of Judaism, the project was frowned upon by the orthodox who regarded it as a subterfuge for the liberalist propaganda, and the emperor acted in accord with their wishes and refused his sanc- tion to the plan. An even more unenviable part was played by the newly-formed orthodox party "Shomere Ha-Dat" (Preservers of the Faith) in 1868. At the instance of Baron Joseph Eotvos, the Minister of Public Worship, a congress of representative Jews was called in February of that year in Budapest for the regulation of in- ternal Jewish affairs in keeping with the spirit and purpose of the emancipation bill which had been passed in parliament several weeks previously. The plans and resolutions adopted by this congress were of a preliminary nature, and were left for discus- sion to the General Jewish Congress which the king called at Budapest on December 14 of that year. The "Shomere Ha-Dat" betook themselves sceptically to this congress, owing no doubt to the circumstance that the majority of the delegates belonged to the liberal class, all possible objections were raised to its proceedings, and a bitter oppo- sition to the regulations it had adopted was or- ganized in the provincial communities. It was only with great difficulty that a compromise was reached between the liberals and the more mod- erate of the orthodox, led by the wise counsel of Dr. Israel Hildesheimer. Eventually, however, the split between the two factions became so wide as to make co-operation impossible, and in 1871, with the approval of the emperor, the orthodox com- munities of Hungary formed their own central or- ganization in contradistinction to the Congress NORTHERN, CENTRAL AND WESTERN EUROPE 23 organization, each of these bodies administering the religious and educational affairs of the con- gregations within its control. But if Reform could boast of a measure of suc- cess in certain parts of Austria-Hungary, its progress in another part of the empire, namely Galicia, was made unusually difficult and well-nigh impossible. It has ever been Galicia's unenviable lot to act as a mere intermediary for progress without retaining much of it herself. The Men- delssohnian Haskalah movement found Galicia but a mere halting place before it made its way into Russia, notwithstanding that some of the most prominent Maskilim like Nahman Krochmal, Solomon Rapoport, Joseph Perl, and Isaac Erter, came from that land. The intellectuals of Galicia always remained a class by themselves without be- ing able to influence the general population. The beginnings of Reform in Galicia go back to Jo- seph Perl's activity in introducing a modern serv- ice in the synagogue he founded in Tarnapol alongside of the German school established by him in 1815. But the sad fate of Rabbi Abraham Kohn, the liberal preacher of Lemberg, who was poisoned in 1848 at the hands of fanatical oppo- nents, served as a due warning to others. The seat and stronghold of "Hassidism," and complete- ly under the sway of the "Zaddikim," or wonder- working rabbis, Galicia has to this day remained immune to all libera.1 influences in religious and Jewish education, with the exception of Cracow, where a Jewish School is conducted on modern lines, and where at least one synagogue exists with a modernized service and with a rabbi of liberal education, in the person of Dr. Osias Thon, as its preacher. Politically, Galician Jewry has ever remained the step-child of the empire, many of the Polish municipalities withholding for many 24 HISTORY OF THE JEWS years from the Jews the rights which were theirs under the constitution of 1861. To Cracow be- longs the distinction of producing a great leader and statesman in the person of the renowned or- thodox rabbi Dob Berush Meisels (died in War- saw, 1870). So great was the respect and ad- miration felt for him by Jews and Christians alike that he was chosen as one of the twelve senators of Cracow in 1846, and in 1848 was elected as member of the Austrian Reichsrath from his home city. When he took his seat in parliament he had the courage of affiliating with the radicals (the "Left") of that body on the ground of the right- lessness of the Jews. The severity with w r hich the Austrian govern- ment was inclined to treat the Jews of Hungary it for a time refrained from manifesting toward the Jews of Austria proper. The revolution of 1848 had the effect of immediately improving the condition of the Jews. Free exercise of religion was granted in the constitution adopted that year and soon thereafter all special Jew taxes were abolished. No less than five Jews were elected to the first Austrian parliament including the learned Rabbi Isaac Noah Mannheimer besides the above- mentioned Rabbi Meisels. A wave of reaction came with the succession to the throne of Francis Joseph who on March 4, 1849, proclaimed, with- out consulting parliament, a new constitution which he again repealed on December 31, 1851. Some of the restrictions that had been removed were again brought into force, and the malevo- lence with which the government regarded all ef- forts at religious reforms was shown in the order issued on August 5, 1855, forbidding Austrian Jews to join Ludwig Philippson's "Institute for the Promotion of Israelitish Literature." The decade of 1849-59 is one of incessant oppression, NORTHERN, CENTRAL AND WESTERN EUROPE 25 the government reviving- old anti-Jewish decrees and adding new ones. Clericalism was once again in the ascendant, and its influence made itself felt in the municipalities throughout Austria and the provinces where the authorities invariably inter- preted the laws to the disadvantage of the Jews, some of them even calling into force the obsolete legislation of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The victorious Italian arms in 1859 wrested lib- erty for the Jew from the unwilling hands of Francis Joseph and his reactionary ministers. Im- mediately after the peace of Villafranca (July n) a more benevolent policy came in vogue. Despite the vigorous opposition of the Catholic leaders, Jewish rights were greatly extended by the par- liamentary legislation of 1860. Two Jews, Ku- randa and Winterstein, were that year elected to the Reichsrath, and in the following year Baron Anselm von Rothschild was appointed by the em- peror as a member of the House of Lords. In the war with Prussia in 1866 the Jews of Austria distinguished themselves on the battlefield and in 1867 Winterstein was elevated to the position of Minister of Commerce. The final emancipation of the Jews came with the constitution adopted on December 21, 1867. Clericalism's influence was now unmistakably on the wane, so much so that persons who were Catholics by birth and rearing could, under the new legislation, withdraw from the Church. Jews could now be raised to the hereditary nobility and take up their homes in all sections of the empire hitherto closed to them. Like victories for liberalism were seen in the neighboring countries, notably in France, where in 1860 the Jews could boast of nearly 200 officers and a great many physicians in the army, and where in that same year a Jew, Achille Fould, was appointed by Napoleon III Minister of Finance, 26 HISTORY OF THE JEWS succeeding in this office another Jew, Michel Goud- chaux. With the fall of the monarchy in 1870 the position of the 100,000 Je\vs of France be- came even more firmly established. Adolphe Cre- mieux was for a second time appointed Minister of Justice. Jews were appointed Prefects or Chiefs of Departments, and by special statutory provision in 1872 Jewish officers and soldiers in the army were allowed the freedom of staying away from their duties on the Jewish Sabbath no less than on the holidays. This friendly attitude of the French government had its effect not only upon the Jews of the Republic but upon those of the colonies, notably of Algeria, who, in 1866, had acquired the right of becoming citizens of France, a right which was corroborated and broadened by additional legislation in 1870. Since then the Jews of Algeria, in contrast with the Mohamme- dan population of the land, became ardent lovers and admirers of France to whose language and culture they assiduously applied themselves and made them their own. Holland, too, long friendly to the Jews, followed in the wake of the new liberalism and imitated the example of France by appointing, in 1860, the head of the Jewish Consistory, M. H. Godefroi, as Minister of Justice, besides admitting Jews to other high offices in the government, the Judici- ary, and the universities. In Italy, the emanci- pation of the Jews followed immediately upon the success of the Italian arms against Austria in 1859 and the unification of the kingdom under the rule of the House of Savoy. Many Jews joined the Sardinian and Italian armies as officers and privates, and a number of them fought under Garibaldi. In Sicily the rights of the Jews were established as soon as the land was freed from Austrian dominion, and when Venice was ceded NORTHERN, CENTRAL AND WESTERN EUROPE 27 by Austria in 1866 a Jew, I. P. Maurongonato, was elected as a member of parliament and as vice president of the Chamber. At that time there were about 43,000 Jews in Italy not including Rome constituting 67 communities with 108 houses of worship and 41 rabbis. In April, 1867, there took place a conference of Italian Jews in Florence, participated in by representatives of twenty of the largest Jewish communities of the land, which deliberated on many matters of im- portance to Italian Jewry, and particularly on the future of the rabbinical seminary at Padua. That the spiritual life of Italian Jewry was astir as never before could be seen from the increased pro- duction of Jewish literature in the Italian lan- guage and the appearance of new periodicals. Al- ready in 1853 Italian Jews possessed a popular monthly review called "L'Educatore Israelita," which was published at Vercelli. This was sup- plemented in 1863 by the more scientific "Corriere Israelitico" of Triest, the founder of which was Abraham Vita Marpurgo, and among its contrib- utors being the celebrated S. D. Luzzatto, Lelio della Torre, and their pupils of the rabbinical school. An attempt made in 1866 to publish in Livorno a monthly organ for extreme Orthodoxy, entitled "L'Israelita," under the editorship of L. Racah, was, however, unsuccessful, it ceasing pub- lication after a year's existence. All this time, however, the old city of Rome re- mained unincluded within the confines of the newly-created Kingdom of Italy, and there, the last stronghold of the Pope's temporal rule, me- diaeval ideas of intolerance toward the Jews still held sway. The walls of the Ghetto still remained erect, and Jews could not enter the holy city ex- cept by special permit. Persecutions and coercive baptisms continued, notwithstanding the storm of 28 HISTORY OF THE JEWS indignation raised by the Mortara case. As late as July in 18/0 the Jews of Rome vainly besought the Pope to lighten this intolerable burden. The days of Papal dominion, however, were numbered, for in September of that year the troops of King Victor Emanuel entered Rome which four months later became the capital of a united Italy. The opening up and destruction of the Ghetto followed as a matter of course. To-day one of the most magnificent structures in the imperial city is that of the new synagogue, erected on the site of the former Ghetto (built in 1901). The irony of fate had it that in this very city, which had brought about the downfall of the Jewish state and for so many centuries had. been the very source and cen- tre of nearly all the evil machinations against the Jewish race throughout Europe, a Jew was des- tined to rule as Mayor only within a generation after the passing of Rome from under the do- minion of the Pope. This man was Ernesto Nathan, who was twice elected Chief Magistrate of Rome, a man noted for his unyielding opposi- tion to the Clerical party and the Papacy. The abolition of the Roman Ghetto led to the reor- ganization of the Jewish community with a con- sequent renewal of interest in Jewish spiritual matters. The rabbinical college of Padua having been abandoned following the death of S. D. Luz- zatto, it was in 1887 reopened in Rome, headed by Rabbi Mortara of Mantua. Later it was transferred to Florence, where the noted rabbi of the community, Dr. S. H. Margulies, assumed charge of its affairs. Italy is to-day probably the most hospitable of countries in Europe for the Jews, there being less of anti-Jewish sentiment among the Italians than anywhere else. She gratefully remembers the he- roic self-sacrifice of her Jewish sons in her hour NORTHERN, CENTRAL AND WESTERN EUROPE 2Q of need, the many Jewish soldiers who took part in the several wars for Italian liberation and whose names appear in the various monuments alongside those of their Christian comrades. In Venice a memorial in bronze has been erected to the above-mentioned Isaac Pesaro Maurogonato, who was Minister of Finance to the Venetian re- public during the war of 1848, while in the pal- ace of the doges there is a marble bust of Samuel Romanin, the Jewish historian of Venice. Isaac Artom, of Piedmont, was secretary to Count Ca- vour, while Mazzini counted among his faithful friends and advisers L'Olper, who later became rabbi of Turin and who was noted for his devo- tion to the cause of Italian freedom. Italy was first among the nations of Eurppe to entrust un- converted Jews with the highest offices in the gov- ernment, two such Jews, Leone Wollenberg and Luigi Luzzatti, having served as Ministers of Finance, while another Jew, General Ottolenghi, served as Minister of War all of them in the opening years of this century. Switzerland long presented a unique situation in that the Je\vish question there was complicated with the foreign politics of the republic. Jews had been living in the various cantons since the thir- teenth century, and the beginning of their liberties date back to the French Revolution. Actual eman- cipation, however, came but slowly, though as far back as the Council of Helvetia (1798-1799) the granting of full civic equality to the Jews had been urged by many of the prominent men of the confederation. Before granting full rights to her own Jews, Switzerland gave such rights only to the foreign Jews within her boundaries as a re- sult of commercial treaties entered into with several European Powers and with the United States. These treaties were often violated, elicit- 3O HISTORY OF THE JEWS ing protests on the part of the countries whose nationals had thus been maltreated. The treat- ment of the Jews in. the Catholic cantons of the confederation being particularly severe, the Jews of other lands were aroused to action in behalf of their co-religionists and in the United States the Rev. Dr. I. M. Wise, then of Albany, issued in 1852 "A Call to the American Israelites" to unite in a petition to the American Congress to intercede in behalf of those Jews.* When, in 1855, a treaty was arranged between the United States and Switzerland, the provisions of Article I read: "The citizens of the United States of America and the citizens of Switzerland shall be admitted and treated upon a footing of reciprocal equality in the two countries where such admis- sion and treatment shall not conflict with the con- stitutional or legal provisions, federal as well as state and cantonal, of the contracting parties." This left a loophole to the Swiss government to continue her practice of discrimination against American Jews. In spite of repeated protests on the part of leading American Jews the treaty was ratified, though this did not become known until 1857 after the American Minister at Berne, The- odore S. Fay, had given expression to the opinion that no American Jew could obtain redress in Switzerland if any of the cantons persisted in denying him the right of domicile and other priv- ileges. But little satisfaction could be had from the American State Department. The Jews of America, however, led by Dr. Wise in his weekly organ, the "Israelite," carried on a strong agita- tion and succeeded in enlisting for the cause many of the influential journals of the day. In various parts of the country indignation meetings were * Published in the "Asmonean," New York, Vol. VI., No. 6. NORTHERN, CENTRAL AND WESTERN EUROPE 3! held, culminating in the assembling of a Jewish convention on October 28th of that year in the city of Baltimore, at which delegations from many states were present. They decided to pre- pare a memorial on the subject to be presented to the President of the United States, and three days later the committee appointed, consisting of M. J. Cohen, M. Bijur, and Isaac M. Wise, ap- peared before President Buchanan who, after lis- tening to all of the views expressed, assured the Jewish representatives that justice would be done. He at once instructed Minister Fay to take up the matter with the Swiss government. Fay went so far as to interview Mr. Furrer, the Swiss Presi- dent, and to obtain his assurance that the matter would be laid before the Federal Council. Grad- ually the various Swiss cantons removed the pre- vailing restrictions against the American Jews. But this had the further effect of influencing the position of all Jews, whether native or foreign, living in Switzerland. The growth of liberalism in government circles in many of the Swiss cantons was evidenced by the fact that at least four Jewish professors were in 1861 on the faculty of the university of Berne, among them the renowned Moritz Lazarus, later of Berlin. Zuerich not only had a Jew, Max Buedinger, as professor of history in its univer- sity, but even sent another Jew, by the name of Dubs, as a member of the Federal Council. Un- fortunately, the liberalism of the upper and gov- ernment circles toward the Jews led to much jeal- ousy and intolerance on the part of the general populace. When the Aargau canton, with but two Jewish communities at Endingen and Len- genau, decided in May of 1862 to grant equality of citizenship to its Jews, the Catholic ultramon- tane element became greatly aroused and its agi- 32 HISTORY OF THE JEWS tation led to, the dissolution of the Great Council of the canton. At the elections which followed, however, the overwhelming Protestant element of the canton carried the day and installed in power the liberal party which had shown friendliness to the Jews. Only the year before, the Aargau gov- ernment approved the appointment as rabbi of Dr. Meyer Kayserling (Hanover, i82Q-Budapest, 1905) who had already attained distinction as the author of the life of Moses Mendelssohn and sev- eral noted works on the history of the Jews in Spain. Kayserling, who remained in Switzerland till called to the rabbinate of Budapest in 1870, was an indefatigable worker for the cause of Jewish emancipation in the republic and its ulti- mate success was in no small measure due to his efforts. The example of Zuerich and Aargau was soon followed by the Solothurn and Schaffhausen can- tons which in 1865 repealed the restrictions on the free settlement of the Jews, and by Thurgau which granted the right of free settlement to all in 1866. At the same time steps were taken by the federal government for the removal of dis- abilities from foreign Jews by special commercial treaties with the governments of the neighboring states, such treaties favoring the Jews being con- cluded in 1865 with the German states and in 1867 with France. It was in 1865 that plans were formulated for changes in the Swiss consti- tution whereby equality was to be granted to all irrespective of religious creed. A vote on this was taken in January, 1866, when the Swiss peo- ple demonstrated at the poles its willingness to emancipate the Jews of the land. The new consti- tution adopted in 1873 confirmed the action taken seven years before on the question of Jewish rights. NORTHERN, CENTRAL AND WESTERN EUROPE 33 Aside from the general feeling of dislike against the Jew, of which Switzerland cannot be said to have more than any other country but which will here and there spring up largely as the result of agitation from the outside, the Swiss republic is to-day, as it has been for the past few decades, a most hospitable land to the Jews. The one great grievance of its Jews, the prohibition of Shehita, or the ritual slaughter of animals, was accom- plished partly through Anti-semitic propaganda but more especially at the instance of the "Aar- gau Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Ani- mals." By the popular vote taken on the ques- tion in August, 1893, ritual animal slaughter was declared constitutionally illegal throughout Switz- erland. In many other respects Switzerland has proved herself a blessing to the Jewish race. It was in the city of Bazel that the Zionists, under the leadership of Theodore Herzl, convened their first congress in 1897 after having been denied the hospitality of the city of Munich. To the persecuted Jews of Russia Switzerland has for the past fifteen years held out a helping hand in welcoming the large number of Jewish students to her high schools and universities, thus affording them those educational facilities which they had grievously been denied by their mother-country. Thus was the position of the Jews of nearly every land of Europe, barring Russia and Rou- mania, a rather promising one at the beginning of the seventies. Their political emancipation as- sured, their economic position strengthened, they had little cause to regard the future in the light of uncertainty. That the progress of liberalism could be halted, that civilization itself could be aligned with the forces of darkness rather than with those of enlightenment, its natural ally, was deemed most improbable. Yet it was when the 34 HISTORY OF THE JEWS skies seemed clearest for European Israel that the clouds of Antisemitism began to mount the horizon. It appeared in Germany as a result of party strife between the ultramontane clericals and the liberals, or more plainly, between the re- actionaries who came mostly from the Catholic Church, and the progressives to whom belonged also the Jewish members of the Reichstag. Bis- marck, then at the height of his power as a result of his personal triumph in carrying the war with France to success, seized upon the occasion to enhance the feeling of hatred against the Jews to further his own political ends. Soon political Antisemitism, destined later to become "scientific" Antisemitism, engulfed the whole of the empire and in no small measure influenced the position of the Jews of other countries as well. Modern Antisemitism differs from the earlier and especially the mediaeval form of Jew-hatred in that it is directed against the Jews as a race rather than as a religious community. The religious differences, to be sure, were the prime and real cause, now as before, a circumstance corroborated by the fact that conversion to Christianity will whitewash the Jew from all stains, racial no less than religious. Yet for the modern Antisemite Judaism is only the sign whereby the race of the Jew can be detected. Not that it makes any real difference to him, his dislike for the religion of the Jew being just as potent as ever. But the Antisemite is a paradoxical creature. Though a rabid reactionary he at the same time lays claim to being a progressive, and the fact that within his clan are included men of letters, scholars of repute and scientists of note, lends an air of truth- fulness to his claim. To attack and persecute the Jew on purely religious grounds is, obviously, not in keeping with the boasted advance of reason NORTHERN, CENTRAL AND WESTERN EUROPE 35 and enlightenment so gloriously inherited by west- ern Europe from the French Revolution. More- over, since Judaism was not the only religion ill- tolerated in the various European states, and since the placing of Judaism on a basis of equality with all other religions was only a logical sequence of the struggle for liberty of conscience long waged by all of the nations, to make it a special target of attack as a reason for withholding political rights from the Jews would be to endanger the very foundation of the structure of religious lib- erty, thus reacting against the vital interests of the people for whose ostensible benefit Antisem- itism was operating. The object remained the same but the tactics and methods had to be changed. Fortunately for the enemies of Israel, the Jew, truly enough, constituted a more or less homogeneous racial factor in all the lands of his sojourn, and herein the Antisemite saw his oppor- tunity. It was, after all, only following ancient precedents, since as far back as the days of Aha- suerus, Haman sought the destruction of the Jews on the ground of their being a people different from the rest of the population whose "laws are diverse from all people, neither keep they the King's laws." In its vindictive malice Antisem- itism knows no distinctions of time and space. In this Apion was at one with Drumont, Tacitus with Pobyedonostseff. Indeed, no better proof that modern Antisemitism is a most retrograde movement need be sought than the circumstance that it falls back upon the very arguments used by the Jew-haters of thousands of years ago. The 'jew, says the Antisemite, is "different" from others, but, more than that, his difference is such as to make him a menace to the well-being of the land in which he lives. He has never ceased being an Asiatic and no matter what his 36 HISTORY OF THE JEWS efforts to amalgamate with his Aryan neighbors they must, even if for no fault of his, remain fu- tile. Because of his cosmopolitan experience and his native intelligence sharpened by centuries of adversity, the Jew has become an instinctively grasping creature with whose methods of astute- ness and cunning the gentile can not compete. He thus prefers to live by his wits alone, rather than by the honest toil of his hands, and to make use of the achievements of others for his personal gain rather than create his own opportunities. He, in other words, is a parasitic growth on the body politic and economic of the Aryan world. Being "an empire within empire," and constitut- ing a united cosmopolitan race whose bank- ers exercise control over the world's international finances, it is but natural that he should be lack- ing in patriotism to the country of his birth, aside from the fact that he is devoid of all courage and sense of honor and as such cannot be depended on in times of national danger. Hence Europe can have no inner peace so long as the Jew con- tinues in her midst. Such are some of the many arguments at all times used by the professional Jew-haters on any and every occasion. Yet with all their emphasis upon the Jew as a racially dangerous element, it is clear that the root of the Antisemitic evil is theological rather than ethnic and that it harks back to the mediaeval idea of the church as the all-dominant factor in the life of a nation. So long as the state finds it convenient and profitable to encourage the doc- trine of a "Christian Nation," and to prate about and uphold a specifically "Christian" civilization, the Jew must logically and inevitably remain an exotic even in the land where he has made his home for many centuries. We have seen it even in democracies like the United States where the FERDINAND LASSALL NORTHERN, CENTRAL AND WESTERN EUROPE 37 formation of numerically large and politically strong organizations whose slogan is that of being" a "Christian" nation, made for indubitable prejudice against the non-Christian elements. In a coun- try ruled by an autocracy of howsoever limited a form whose safety and very life depend upon the continuance of class distinctions, it is only too likely that such a doctrine will receive the en- couragement of the government which will not be averse to using it for the maintenance of the old divisions and the fomenting of new prejudices, if its interests can profit thereby. In Germany, after the Franco-Prussian War, the ruling classes began to feel alarm at the growth of liberal ideas about government as a result of the Socialistic propaganda and, not alto- gether unjustly, saw in this the hand of the Jews. Receiving their full emancipation with the estab- lishment of the North German Confederation (1869) and the founding of the empire in the following year, the Jews who saw in liberalism the greatest safeguard of their liberties became its foremost champions, and often made themselves obnoxious to the government through their prop- aganda. Aaron Bernstein (1812-1884), one of the greatest and most versatile minds German Jewry has produced, long occupied a formidable position as a liberal by his work as editor of the daily "Volkszeitung" of Berlin. In the revolution of 1848 the part taken by the German Jews was considerable and some of their leaders, like Ed- uard Lasker and Ludwig Bamberger, later be- came powerful protagonists of liberalism in the Reichstag. Socialism itself was largely a product of the Jewish mind. In theory and scientific analysis it was the work of Karl Marx, while as a political factor in the empire it claims another Jew, Ferdinand Lassalle, as its organizing genius. 38 HISTORY OF THE JEWS Eduard Bernstein, the leader of the Socialist Democratic party, began to show his great talents of leadership in the early seventies, when he first identified himself with the Socialist party. It be- came apparent that, in order to weaken the liberal movement the Jew had to be discredited so that his influence might be destroyed. The opportu- nity for doing so presented itself in the course of the "Kulturkampf," or the fight on the alleged immoral influence of the educational methods of the Catholics. It should be remembered that Catholic Germany had for some years considered itself a victim of Jewish aggressiveness. Some of the German states, notably those of the South with its large Catholic population, had not been wholly in favor of amalgamation with the North- ern states for the formation of the German Em- pire, fearing the preponderating influence of Prot- estant Prussia in the government of such an em- pire. To counteract this opposition Bismarck, the builder of modern Germany, had allied himself, since 1867, with the liberals, thus securing the necessary parliamentary majorities for his project. And since the Jews were identified with the lib- erals, though they were not necessarily opposed to the Catholics because of it, the impression pro- duced upon the latter was to the effect that the Jews were unitedly inimical to them. The legis- lation affecting the Jesuit orders of Germany and their educational work served to further incense the clericals both within the empire and out of it. Numerous malevolent influences had been at work to fan the flame into a conflagration. In 1871 the notorious August Rohling of Prague pub- lished his "Talmud Jew" ("Der Talmudjude"), a garbled variation of Eisenmenger's "Judaism Re- vealed" ("Entdecktes Judenthum"). Widely circu- lated and extensively quoted in the Catholic press, NORTHERN, CENTRAL AND WESTERN EUROPE 39 the work was now seized upon by the Antisemites as a valuable weapon for their own infamous propaganda. On February 8, 1872, the Prussian Diet legislated that the control of the schools be placed in the hands of the State. This act added fuel to the flame. The clerical organs of Rome, Vienna, and other large Catholic centres printed inflammatory anti-Jewish diatribes which had a far-reaching effect upon Catholics everywhere, and the worst blow to fall upon the Jews came from the very foremost seat of Catholic authority, from Pope Pius IX, who shortly before Christmas, in 1872, delivered a vehement anti-Jewish address before the dignitaries of the Curia, directing his statements mainly at the Jewish journalists, who, he claimed, were responsible for the irreligiosity and low moral tone of the press. A few months later the Pope elaborated upon his first attack in another address in which he branded all Jews as the money-lusting enemies of Christ and Chris- tianity, who are to blame for all the slanders and accusations that had been levelled against the Church. It is clear that the object of the pontiff was to shield the Church against further attack, and to stay the onward march of anti-clericalism which was now making itself felt in a number of lands, by using the old methods resorted to by despotism whenever it sees itself in danger, that of singling the Jews out for scorn and persecu- tion. His words fell like sledge-hammer blows wherever Catholics were in power. In France a number of Jews occupying high government posi- tions were summarily dismissed, while the Cath- olic journals of all lands raged against the Jews, those of Italy clamoring for their disfranchise- ment as the one condition of conciliation between the Vatican and the State. In Germany, how- ever, this agitation had a still more deplorable 4O HISTORY OF THE JEWS effect. Here the leaders of the Centrist, or Cler- ical, party in parliament organized an Anti-Jew- ish campaign in which, declaring them as enemies of all Christendom, they aimed at setting against the Jews not only the Catholics but the Protes- tants as well. Their slogan was: "Liberalism is purely the concern of the Jews and their [Chris- tian] servitors," and in repeated articles in their numerous organs they pointed out that Germany was in danger of falling a helpless prey to the Jews. This anti-Jewish campaign of the German Cath- olics, instigated and abetted by the Vatican itself, was eminently successful in making this universal moral obsession known as judophobeia a burning national issue. Beginning with 1878, German Antisemitism enters upon its political phase, des- tined to dominate German thought and opinion for nearly a quarter of a century during which time it created a wide and scarcely bridgeable chasm between the Jews and their neighbors, and brought untold hardships and sufferings upon the race. All the gains of the various struggles for Jewish emancipation may be said to have been un- done by this movement which succeeded in mak- ing itself so obnoxious to the economic interests of Germany, and brought such discredit upon the reputation of the land as to cause many respect- able Christians, from a sense of shame for their country and of fear for its welfare to organize in 1891 a society of defense against Antisemitism, all the members of which were Christians. In connection with this political anti-Jewish crusade, three sadly prominent names stand out from among the rest of the agitators as having done the greatest amount of mischief: Bismarck, Stoecker and Treitschke. Otto von Bismarck (1815-1898) was indubi- KARL MARX. NORTHERN, CENTRAL AND WESTERN EUROPE 4! tably the brains of the movement in its new po- litical complexion who, because of his vast power and influence as Imperial Chancellor, was able to steer it successfully within the desired channel, though probably not even he had anticipated, even as he may not have desired it, that it would as- sume such a virulent form and lead to such dis- astrous results. Bismarck was not always unfa- vorably disposed to the Jews, though as a mem- ber of the Junker party he doubtless had inher- ited the traditional prejudices of his class toward the race. While Minister of State in Prussia he did not oppose the acquisition of greater freedom by the Jews as a result of the 1848 uprisings, and it was during his administration as chancellor of the North German Federation that the law of July 3, 1869, was adopted, removing all civil, po- litical and religious disabilities from any and all classes of the population. On several occasions he raised his voice in defence of the constitution- al rights of German Jews, and both in 1868, and ten years later at the Congress of Berlin, he went on record as championing the cause of the Jews of Roumania. But Bismarck was a politician to whom the interests of his party and the success of his imperialistic programme came above all other considerations. Socialism in Germany was making too much headway for the comfort of the government, and as the Conservative or Catholic party of the Reichstag was then strongly en- trenched through its anti-Jewish agitation, Bis- marck deemed it expedient to turn from the lib- erals and ally himself with the reactionaries. Though he admired the intelligence of the Jews and appreciated the aid he had received from the Jewish members of parliament, Eduard Lasker, Ludwig Bamberger, Isaac Wolf son and Heinrich Bernhard Oppenheim, the Jews as a race were 42 HISTORY OF THE JEWS not of sufficient importance to him to move him to abandon his political plans for their sake. But probably the real cause for the change of Bis- marck's attitude toward the Jews was the advent of Adolf Stoecker (1835-1909) as court-chaplain in 1878. Stoecker, a social and professional climber, and talented both as an orator and an organizer, appreciated the possibilities of the Antisemitic campaign for the strengthening of his own position. The agitation carried on by the Catholics was, by this time, dying out, its ob- ject having been fully attained. Official and civil Germany was now ready to turn its attention from the politically strong Catholic minority to the politically weakest and numerically smallest portion of the population the Jews. The ultra- montanes could now well afford to withdraw from the arena and leave the conduct of the war against the Jews in stronger and more capable hands. Instead of being confined to the Catholic leaders, Jew-baiting now became the concern of Protestant theologians close to the government. The latter realized that against the steady ad- vance of liberalism with its persistent demands for greater constitutional freedom it could find encouragement and help only among the conserva- tives and reactionaries who were not necessarily limited to the Catholic party. The Jews being among the liberals, they could not escape coming under the odium of the government reactionaries. Yet liberalism was not to be disposed of in such summary fashion, and socialism had driven its roots too deeply into the heart of the people to be eradicated by a mere change of policy on the part of the monarch and the Chancellor. To de- prive the socialistic snake of its deadly fangs, to remove the kernel while retaining the husk, was therefore deemed the wisest course. Stoecker's NORTHERN, CENTRAL AND WESTERN EUROPE 43 plan was to make of Socialism a Christian theo- logical issue, to find for it the authority and ap- proval of the New Testament, at the same time disarming it by discrediting its most radical phases on the strength of the same religious au- thority. This would at once serve a double pur- pose: it would throw a sop to the discontented classes by retaining the name and the shadow of an emasculated Socialism, and would also dis- credit the Jews who, as the historic "enemies of Christ," would find themselves barred from iden- tifying themselves with a Socialism based upon the teachings of Christ. The originality of this plan belonged to a Protestant pastor by the name of Todt who was first to found a "Christian So- cialist" society. It was Stoecker, however, who gave the plan its widest possible scope of activ- ity, made Todt's society into a "Christian Social- ist Party," and by dint of his great influence suc- ceeded in making the new socialism a tremendous power for evil. Ostensibly aimed against radi- calism and as a safety valve for the pent-up dis- satisfaction of the masses, it was in reality a movement against the Jews. Ere x long German Jewry was to feel the full bitterness of the cup of sorrow thus brewed and prepared at the hands of the crafty Stoecker who, for political reasons, let us hope, rather than for any other ulterior con- siderations on the part of the "Iron Chancellor," obtained the entire approval and co-operation of Bismarck. Germany was now sorely in need of another Ephraim Lessing to write a new "Nathan the Wise" to place the Jew in a favorable light be- fore the people. The extent of the anti-Jewish reaction following in the wake of the "Christian Socialist" agitation may be judged by the very large number of cultured persons, men eminent 44 HISTORY OF THE JEWS in the professions, authors and publicists, scien- tists and educators, who enlisted in the new party and made its anti-Jewish objects their own. Largely dependent upon the government which, in Germany, is in control of all public educational institutions and exercises a strict surveillance over the press and all literary output, these intellectu- als scented the real attitude of their masters, and were not slow in aligning themselves with the forces with which their interests were most close- ly allied. At their head stood the professor of history at the University of Berlin, Heinrich von Treitschke (1834-1896) who shortly after the formation of the new party, in 1879, came out in the "Preussische Jahrbuecher" with a vehement article under the heading: "A Word About Our Judaism." Germany, he laments, is being over- run with Polish Jewish peddlers whose children and children's children will some day be in con- trol of the exchanges and the newspapers of the country. England and France may well be puz- zled over the prevailing Antisemitism of the Ger- mans. They have not the same problem as the Germans, since their Jews are of Spanish origin who can look back to a proud past, and who make comparatively good and loyal citizens. Not so the Jews of Germany who, having come mostly from Russian Poland, do not feel like the Germans, and are in many ways a misfortune to the land. The effect of this onslaught from the pen of a learned and prominent educator was immediately felt all through Germany. In vain did leading Jews like Dr. M. Joel of Breslau endeavor to stem the ris- ing tide of ill-will by denying all of the unfounded allegations, or by explaining the historic reasons for the existence of whatever bad traits there did obtain among the Jews. In vain did Ludwig Phil- ippson in his weekly "Allgemeine Zeitung des Ju- NORTHERN, CENTRAL AND WESTERN EUROPE 45 denthums," and Moritz Lazarus in a special dissertation, protest that the Jews of Germany formed an integral part of the nation since "na- tionalism was but a community of spirit deter- mined by a common nation-consciousness and a common language." In vain did some of the noblest of Christians, like Theodor Mommsen, the famous historian, and Paulus Cassel, the noted scholar and preacher, himself a converted Jew, take up the cudgels in behalf of the Jews; in vain did even the Crown Prince take a hand in the melee as a champion of Israel by branding Anti- semitism as "the shame of the Century," and de- claring that because of it he, as a German, felt ashamed of his country when abroad. The poi- sonous agitation continued its deadly work. Henceforth Jewish candidates for office were cer- tain to suffer defeat at the polls, while Jewish men and women were not secure against personal assault on the streets or in public places. In the Reichstag von Puttkamer, Minister of Public Worship, spoke of the need of safeguarding the Protestant Christian character of the public schools, while the more liberal members insisted that the government should step in to check the growth of Antisemitism which was sapping the strength of the country, and Professor Virchow plainly accused the government as the real insti- gator of the movement, which it was subsidizing for its own ends. Antisemitism now became the leading issue of the day in Germany before which all other mat- ters paled into insignificance. On the 27th of May, 1880, the Protestant clergy of Berlin launched a vicious attack against the Jews whom they stigmatized as the inexorable enemies of the Church and of the whole of Christendom which they are seeking to subvert through money and, 46 HISTORY OF THE JEWS their influence over the press. Jews could not now be appointed as teachers in high schools. A com- mercial boycott of Jewish shops was started by women in numerous communities, students of the high schools and universities were enlisted in the work, while throughout the land a petition was circulated for the disfranchisement of the Jews. On all sides threats were heard of bloody riots against the alleged common enemy, some of which actually occurred on July 17 and 18, 1881, in Neu- stettin, followed by like scenes in other towns a sad prelude to the terrible pogroms that occurred shortly thereafter in many places in Russia which thus followed to its logical conclusion the exam- ple of her more cultured Western neighbor. Con- tinuing their agitation, in which even some of the foremost leaders among the clergy did not hesi- tate to demand the blood of the Jews/ the organ- ized Antisemites sought to undermine the civic standing of the Jews by refusing to take oath before Jewish judges, Pastor Hapke, of Berlin, himself in 1883 setting the example for such re- sistance. A clamor was made for the prohibition of Jewish immigration from Russia which had the effect of making the- treatment by the author- ities of the hapless immigrants, on their way to America through Germany, more severe and well- nigh intolerable. Russian-Polish Jews in the em- ploy of Jewish congregations, such as teachers, cantors, etc., were subject to summary expulsion, while by the law adopted in May, 1885, all for- eign Russian-Poles, by which term was under- stood Polish Jews, were to be expelled from the eastern provinces of the empire. The lengths to which governmental encouragement of Antisemit- ism went may be gleaned from the action of Bis- marck in 1884 in refusing to present before the Reichstag the resolutions of sympathy adopted in NORTHERN, CENTRAL AND WESTERN EUROPE 47 the American Congress on the death of the re- nowned German-Jewish parliamentarian, Eduard Lasker, which occurred while he was on a visit to New York. It was the unmistakable wish of the government that the Jew should be discredited by means fair or foul, though Bismarck would now and then adopt half-hearted measures to check the spread of the anti-Jewish propaganda. When on June 15, 1888, William II became Emperor, professional Antisemites believed that the time was near for the realization of all of their plans of revenge against the hated Jewish race. In large measure their hopes were not without jus- tification. In her barbarous attitude toward the Jews, Germany was fast heading toward medievalism. All that was lacking to make her truly mediaeval was a ritual-blood accusation that ever-ready bogey of fanatical Christendom, with which to accomplish the certain discomfiture of the Jews. If this be one of the criteria by which a land's state of culture may be judged then did Germany, in the last decade of the nineteenth century, the land of a much vaunted civilization, sink to a piti- fully low moral level. For the ritual-accusation, too, was not slow in coming. In the little Prus- sian town of Xanten, on the 29th of June, 1891, there was discovered in a barn the dead body of a five-year-old boy, John Hegemann, apparently murdered. No clue to the murder could be found, and as Antisemitic feeling ran high in the com- munity, the rumor that Jews were the child's murderers for ritualistic purposes found credence and soon assumed tangible shape in the arrest of a Jewish butcher and former Shohet, Adolf Bus- chorf, with his family. Released for lack of evi- dence, Buschoff was rearrested after Stoecker had attacked the Jews in the Reichstag. The trial 48 HISTORY OF THE JEWS which lasted for eleven days (1892) only demon- strated the complete absurdity of the charge, the government prosecutor himself asking for the ac- quittal of the accused. But Buschoff and many other Jews had to leave the village for fear of mob vengeance. Unsuccessful as this attack on the integrity of the Jewish religion proved, it only made the Antisemites more determined to harass the Jews in all possible ways. A new constella- tion on the Antisemitic firmament, the bitterest and most dangerous of his clan, now appears in Germany in the person of Hermann Ahlwardt, at one time a teacher and later a principal of a Ber- lin public school. Shiftless and unscrupulous, an embezzler of public funds and a victim of money- lenders from whom he was rescued by the gener- osity of Jewish friends, Ahlwardt did not scruple to turn against the race of his benefactors when his interests so demanded. His debut as an Anti- semite Ahlwardt made in 1890 with his inflam- matory brochure: "The Desperate Struggle of the Aryan People Against the Jews," which was followed in 1891 by "The Oath of a Jew" and in 1892 by "Jewish Tactics." The most sensational of his attacks, however, was contained in his pamphlet "Judenflinten" (Jewstones), published in 1892, in which he defamed the great German- Jewish firm of Ludwig Loewe and Company as being agents of the French government against the fatherland, accusing it of having furnished defective guns and supplies to the German army. This scandalous falsehood was rapidly circulated throughout the land and became the subject of debate in the Reichstag where the head of the Loewe firm was a member. Ahlwardt was tried for libel and sentenced to five months' imprison- ment. His object, however, was attained. He now became the idol of a large section of the NORTHERN, CENTRAL AND WESTERN EUROPE 49 German people, and on December 5 of that year was elected to the Reichstag, being returned to it in the general elections of the following year. .Confidence in his ability to make trouble for the Jews grew with the increase of his popularity, and Ahlwardt decided to cast his net across the ocean and to start an Antisemitic propaganda, in true German fashion, in the United States (1896). Here, however, he met with unqualified defeat. In New York, where he delivered lectures in Cooper Union and other halls under the protec- tion of Jewish police officers an ingenious hoax perpetrated on him by Theodore Roosevelt, who was then Police Commissioner of the city, he was received with indifference and disdain even on the part of the German-American element. He re- turned to Germany after a year's sojourn in America, some years later dying a poor, broken and discredited man. The extent to which German Antisemitism was not merely tolerated but even encouraged by the authorities is illustrated in the latitude allowed another notorious Jew-baiter, Count Pueckler, who for a number of years was permitted to harangue Berlin mobs against the Jews. He even loudly called for violence and murder without meeting with any serious interference from the police. It was subsequently established that Pueckler was a mentally deranged creature, making necessary his confinement in a mad-house. Yet this insane Count was only one of a large host of an Anti- semitic brood called into life by the Stoecker- Treitschke-Ahlwardt clan, which for many years basked in the favor of a reactionary government to the undoing of the civil and political standing of German Jewry. The avowed desire of the German government to check the spread of the movement at best resulted in only half-way meas- 5O HISTORY OF THE JEWS ures. In practical life Antisemitism held sway, penetrating all classes, trades and professions and reacting upon the economic condition of the Jews to a frightful degree. Ostracized both for their religion and their race, and finding themselves barred against promotion in the army, the univer- sities or in the civil government, it need not be wondered at that many of them could not resist the temptation of escaping the stigma and mis- fortune of their birth by embracing Christianity. While defections from Judaism have always taken place in Germany, it was in the last two decades of the nineteenth century that they assume alarm- ing proportions. Dr. Arthur Ruppin* estimates the number of such conversions in the city of Berlin as at least 200 persons annually for the years 1899-1903, or one convert to every 600 Jews. Intermarriage, too, has served to undermine the foundations of the race which, as was clearly demonstrated by so eminent an authority as Dr. Felix A. Theilhaber in his book on "The Disap- pearance of the German Jews" ("Der Untergang der deutschen Juden") is steadily on the decline and facing certain and inevitable dissolution. But probably the most deplorable result of Ger- man Antisemitism consisted in the impetus it lent to the anti-Jewish sentiment in neighboring lands and the unfortunate reaction there upon the social and economic condition of the Jews. Having in- vaded Germany by way of Austria where the cler- icals had never slackened their incendiary propa- ganda, the anti-Jewish agitation soon made its way back tow*ard the land of its origin, finding an especially fertile field for its operations in Hun- gary. Its progress and spread has since the early seventies kept pace in Austria-Hungary with that In "The Jews of To-Day," London, 1913, p. 189. NORTHERN, CENTRAL AND WESTERN EUROPE 51 of the movement in Germany, only sometimes as- suming coarser and more repulsive aspects if this be at all possible in a movement itself so coarse and repulsive from every view-point. De- spite the bitter enmity felt against Germany after the defeat of 1866, Austro-Hungarians were not averse to learning from the Germans and adopt- ing their ideas and methods at least in the matter of Jew-baiting. The constitution of 1867 estab- lished the principle of religious liberty and politi- cal equality for all races of the empire. The Antisemites therefore gave themselves to the task of robbing the Jews of their rights through indi- rect discriminatory legislation. Thus they suc- ceeded in having a law passed in the Reichsrath in 1883 whereby a public school principal had to belong to the religion professed by the majority of the pupils of his school, Jews forming a minor- ity, especially in the country districts, being there- fore barred from such appointments. The re- strictions imposed on peddling and the clothing trades were also directed in the main against the Jews. The most formidable Antisemite in Aus- tria at this time was revealed in the person of Georg von Schoenerer, a member of the Reichs- rath, who organized an Antisemitic movement among the university students, incited the masses to violence, and sought to bring about legislative measures against the admission of immigrant Jews from Russia (1882). Antisemitism now became a spade to dig with for those ambitious for po- litical preferment and in the elections both of 1884 and 1891 many candidates were elected to the Reichsrath upon their anti-Jewish platform. The blood of the Jews was clamored for in parlia- mentary debate, their very status as human be- ings was called into question, and the notorious Luec^r succeeded in becoming the head of the 52 HISTORY OF THE JEWS clerical party on the strength of his Antisemitism in 1897 becoming with the help of the reaction- aries, though against the wishes of the govern- ment, the burgomaster of the city of Vienna. Following the example of their German masters, the Austrian Antisemites succeeded in inciting the populace to violence, riots against the Jews taking place in Prague in 1897, and in Nachod and Holle- schau in 1899. The spectre of a ritual-murder charge was also to be conjured now in order that the picture of horrors might be complete in all its details. It made its appearance in the small Bo- hemian town of Polna. A nineteen-year-old seams- tress Agnes Hruza, from a near-by village, was found murdered on the first of April, 1899, in the neighboring forest, and among those against whom the suspicion of the authorities was directed was a young Jew r by the name of Leopold Hilsner. The evidence against Hilsner was by no means such as to justify his conviction, and, under ordinary cir- cumstances his acquittal w r ould assuredly have fol- lowed. The bugbear of a ritual murder, however, strengthened the case against him, the attorneys for both the state and the Hruza family invoking this century-old falsehood to bolster up an other- wise lame charge. Hilsner was condemned to die. An appeal made to a higher court resulted in a new trial when the prisoner was intimidated into confessing his guilt and implicating two other Jews in the crime. The latter readily furnished alibis, and Hilsner himself recanted. Shortly thereafter, however, another body of an apparently murdered woman was discovered in the same forest, sup- posedly that of a servant girl, Maria Klima, who had been missing for several months. Hilsner was now charged with this additional crime and at the trial which took place in October and November, 1900, despite conflicting and uncorroborated testi- NORTHERN, CENTRAL AND WESTERN EUROPE 53 mony, was again sentenced to death. The outcry against the prisoner and all the Jews in the Anti- semitic press and by members of the Reichsrath doubtless had its effect upon the jury. The em- peror commuted the sentence to life imprisonment, and Hilsner is to this day languishing in prison, a victim not of mistaken judicial zeal, but of the hor- rible figment, the result of deep-seated Christian hate, that the Jew is practicing cannibalism in con- nection with his religious rites.* Even more revolting was the Antisemitic agita- tion carried on for many years in Hungary, result- ing in the movement set on foot in 1882 by mem- bers of the House of Deputies to deprive the Jews of their constitutional rights, and culminating in the ritual-murder charge at Tisza-Eslar (1882) which led to bloody riots in a number of places, among them the large Jewish centers of Presburg and Budapest. Of all the blood-accusations made against the Jews in all ages, barring perhaps the Beilis affair in Kiev, Russia, in 1913, that of Tisza- Eslar stands out as the most pronounced example of the extremes to which blind and fanatical anti- Jewishness will lead. The disappearance in that place of a peasant girl, Esther Solymosi, shortly before the Jewish Passover, immediately gave rise to the rumor that she had fallen a victim to the re- ligious zeal of the Jews. Without even a semblance of plausibility, the authorities seized upon the base- less rumor to concoct a ritual-murder charge against the entire Tisza-Eslar community. For this diabolical purpose the two children of Joseph Scharf, the sexton of the synagogue Samuel, five years old, and Moriz, fourteen years old were in- veigled into testifying against their parents and other members of the congregation, their testimony having been elicited both by bribes and threats and, as in the case of the older boy, by physical violence. * Since the above was written Hilsner has at last been freed (April, 1918), after a confinement of nineteen years. 54 HISTORY OF THE JEWS Thus, upon the mere word of irresponsible chil- dren, were many representative Jews jailed and tor- tured, and the entire machinery of the Hungarian judicial system was thrown into the scale to fasten upon the whole of Hungarian Jewry an unspeak- able crime. For more than a year and a half all Hungary was convulsed with the passion of re- venge against the Jews, diligently and persistently stimulated by the Antisemites in pulpit and press. Louis Kossuth, from his exile in Italy, pleaded in vain with his countrymen against the shameful procedure, the words of the great patriot bearing but little weight with a nation gone mad on the Jewish question. Not even the Medievalism thus let loose could, however, stem the tide of justice in the end. The grounds of accusation were too flimsy for even a prejudiced court and jury, and the hapless Tisza-Eslar Jews were finally acquitted and released, broken in health and in spirit. The importance of the Tisza-Eslar affair lies in the revelation it must have brought to thinking Jews everywhere that nothing was impossible, even in so-called enlightened Western Europe where Jews were concerned, that civilization, Kultitr and glib professions of humanity were one thing, and blind, deep-seated hatred for the Jew quite a dif- ferent thing. It was scarcely more than the life- time of a generation since the great struggle for human freedom of 1848, and less than two decades since the legal emancipation of the Jews in Austria- Hungary and Germany. Yet the hands on the dial of Time were already moving backward, and the constitutional guarantees of the Jews could not save them in days of popular wrath ingeniously stirred up by shrewd, scheming and self-seeking propagandists. Germany having opened up the Pandora box of Jew-hatred, the evils arising from it were now spreading in all directions and bid fair NORTHERN, CENTRAL AND WESTERN EUROPE 55 to engulf nearly all of the European Continent. The Xanten blood accusation already mentioned was only a belated echo of the affair at Tisza-Eslar. Nor was this the end of it. For as late as March in 1900 Germany was to witness a new ritual-murder trial, this time in the town of Konitz, West Prus- sia. In substance this case resembled the others: the discovery of a dead body showing murder, a trumped-up ritual-murder charge against Jews, Antisemitic agitation, wilful suppression of facts and perversion of justice, harassing and persecu- tion of Jews on the part of infuriated mobs, with here and there rioting, pillage and the murder of Jews on the least provocation. As regards Ger- many, however, the world in the closing years of the century had become convinced that true enlight- enment, toleration and justice to the Jew were words foreign to German vocabulary. The bitter- est disappointment of the Jews came not from Ger- many, where all hope of fair-play had been aban- doned, but from the more liberal countries where Antisemitism had for many years been kept strictly under cover, from the great centre of republican freedom, France, and, in only a smaller measure, from democratic England. It was the Dreyfus affair in France in 1894 which shook the Jewish world from centre to circumference and served as nothing else could to shatter the confidence of the Jews in their future security among the so-called civilized nations of Europe. French Antisemitism goes back to the very time of the founding of the present republic. The fall of the empire meant the weakening of the power of the clericals and the ultimate waning of the great influence wielded by the Catholic Church in the affairs of the nation. Never a friend of the Jews, Catholicism saw in the prominent part played by a number of them in the reconstruction of the coun- 56 HISTORY OF THE JEWS try after the Prussian war a special reason for her dislike of the race. Ernest Renan had for many years been preaching" a theoretical Antisemitism, and though he refrained from applying his the- ories about the Jews to the conditions of his own time, his ideas must nevertheless have impressed countless minds as to the undesirability or even the menace of the Jewish race. In 1875 a French Turk by the name of Osman-Bey published a book en- titled "The Conquest of the World by the Jews" in which he sought to prove how the Jew was seiz- ing hold of everything making for power, and gave as concrete examples the powerful influence exer- cised by the house of Rothschild and the Alliance Israelite Universelle, both of them, as he alleged, working for the aggrandizement of the Jews in all lands by means of their control of the world's finances. Nevertheless, it was not until 1881 that French Antisemitism emerged from a state of par- lor-philosophy to ente'r upon an active propaganda. In that year there was founded in the city of Paris a weekly newspaper, "L'Antijuif" which, true to its name, enlarged upon the libelous statements of Osman-Bey, imputed to the Jew all of the ills and evils of society, and urged the disfranchisement of French Jewry. This agitation was taken up by two of the more prominent dailies of the capital, the "Figaro" and "Revue des deux Mondes," both of them organs of the Clerical Party. The perse- cution of the Jesuit Orders by Gambetta who suc- ceeded in enacting legislation affecting the exist- ence of 261 monasteries, served to further embitter the Catholics against the Jews who were credited as being behind the anti-Clerical movement. The cry was raised that the country was in the grip of free-thinkers, in reality Jews, and Gambetta him- self was denounced as a Je\v. And when in the elections of 1885 a great number of Clericals and NORTHERN, CENTRAL AND WESTERN EUROPE 57 Monarchists were returned to the Chamber of Dep- uties it was a signal to the reactionary elements that the day was at hand when they could profit- ably exploit the prevailing anti-Jewish feeling. One of these reactionaries was Edouard Adolphe Dru- mont, an obscure but shrewd journalist, not averse to using vulgar methods, who because of his dis- agreement with the Jewish publishers of "Liberte," the daily paper on which he was employed, sought, like Haman of old, to turn against all of the Jews the hatred he was harboring against one of them. Accordingly he, in 1886, published his "La France Juive" (Jewish France). The book met with great and unprecedented success, passed through more than a hundred editions, and established for all times the reputation of its author as the cleverest and most dangerous of his tribe. French Anti- semitism now ceased being a theory but became a veritable power for evil under the leadership of Drumont and the lieutenants who flocked to his banner. The hatred of everything German on the part of the French as a result of the Franco-Prussian War had, to be sure, much to do with this anti-Jewish sentiment. For, unhappily for the Jews, many of them were of German origin, though they had lived in France for generations, and they still re- tained their German names, this being especially true of the Jews coming from Alsace-Lorraine. It mattered little that such Jews were most patriotic Frenchmen, that they had sacrificed everything, aye, had even expatriated themselves for the love of France. In the eyes of the unthinking masses they were Germans and this as the irony of fate had it at the very time when the Jews in Germany were being denounced as aliens and enemies of the fatherland. Several political events of great mo- ment served as pretexts for the continued on- 58 HISTORY OF THE JEWS slaughts on the character and integrity of the Jews. One of these was the unsuccessful attempt of Gen- eral Boulanger to overthrow the government, when the Antisemites found it an easy task to identity some Jews with the movement. But an event of far greater moment was the scandal connected with the failure of the Panama Canal Company which, be- cause of the connection of a number of Jews with the enterprise something inevitable in view of the position occupied by the Jew in the world of high finance gave the Jew-baiters their long-looked- for chance to foster upon the Jews the responsibility for all of France's misfortunes. Drumont estab- lished his daily "La Libre Parole" (The Free \Yord), while the Marquis de Rochefort, Clovis Hugues and the Marquis de Mores gained an un- savory popularity through their fierce attack on the Jewish race. The name "Jew" became a stigma of reproach and in many places Jews were not safe against insult and assault. To vindicate their hon- or, a number of Jews fought duels in one of which, with the Marquis de Mores, the Jewish Captain Mayer, a man of thirty-three years, lost his life. So great was the anti-Jewish feeling in the army that Jewish officers had to be ordered by Minister of \Yar de Freycinet not to challenge nor accept a challenge to a duel over race quarrels. At this period of darkness in the history of French Jewry there came to the fore as champions of the much-maligned race two noble Christians, each of them a writer of greatest distinction in his chosen fields. The one was Emile Zola, France's greatest novelist in the closing decades of the cen- tury, who defended the Jews in the daily press with all the power of his trenchant pen and all the weight of his mighty influence. The other was the eminent historian Anatole Leroy-Beaulieu who in ^93 published his great defence of the Jews, "Israel NORTHERN, CENTRAL AND WESTERN EUROPE 59 Chez les Nations" (Israel Among the Nations). Like a light-tower on a dark and stormy night, this book of the famous and genial Frenchman came as a messenger of hope and reassurance that not all of France had capitulated to the forces of preju- dice and unreason, that here and there hearts beat true to the humanitarian ideals of the Republic. We shall let Leroy-Beaulieu speak for himself: "As a Frenchman, the author is one of those who are convinced that France ought to remain true to her traditions of justice and liberty. .They are the only glory and the only wealth which the fortunes of war cannot wrest from her. The more severe the trials that she has undergone, the more menac- ing the dangers that await her, the more essential is it to her honor that she should remain herself and not belie, in the eyes of the nations, those great ideas which she was the first to proclaim. To ab- jure them would be not only an act of apostasy, but a forfeiture of her place in history. A France that should stoop, more than a century after 1789, to abridge religious and civil liberty and to establish among her inhabitants distinctions based upon name or birth, would no longer be the France that the world has thus far known. . . . "Antisemitism is consistent with neither the prin- ciples nor the genius of our nation. It came to us from the outside, from countries which have neither our spirit nor our traditions. It came to us from across the Rhine, from old Germany, always ready for religious quarrels, always imbued with the spirit of caste ; from New Germany, all inflated with race pride and scornful of whatever is not Teu- tonic. . . . "Let us confess it once again: We have pre- sumed too much on reason, and relied too confident- ly on civilization. This brilliant civilization, which inspired our idlers with such ludicrous pride, is 60 HISTORY OF THE JEWS often shallow and unsound, even in the most ad- vanced countries of the continent. In our proudest capitals, it is barely thicker than a light veneer, un- derneath whose surface, if we scratch it ever so little, we shall find all the ignorance and savagery of the ages that we deem barbarous. Thus, in Paris, Vienna, and Berlin, the close of our century suffers the disgrace of seeing measures of proscrip- tion and confiscation advocated by people who are really good-natured and ordinarily harmless." With as clear a vision as is only possible, for one not himself a Jew, to estimate the true qualities of the Jewish race, the bad qualities and the historic reasons for their existence, and the good qualities and their lasting benefits to the race and the world at large, Anatole Leroy-Beaulieu gives the follow- ing memorable characteristic of the psychology of the Jew : "Never was son better interpreted by his fathers. Both the good and the evil qualities of the modern Jews are rooted in the bosom of the old mediaeval Jews. Let us cast a glance at those far-off ances- tors. The Jew's genealogy is indeed easily traced ; he had no need to examine the archives of his Ghettoes. We know who were his forefathers; with one of them we are but too well acquainted ; it is the pawnbroker, the money-lender, the dealer in second-hand goods, the huckster, the old-clothes man, the usurer, the stock-jobber, always the same, under divers names and garbs, for fifty genera- tions. Such is, for most of them, the great ances- tor from whom all modern Jews, be they beggars or millionaires, uneducated or refined, have de- scended. We shall see before long that he is not the only one; but he is the best known, the principal ancestor, if you will. The Jew of to-day resembles him strongly, in intellect as well as in character. "From this long line of forefathers engrossed in NORTHERN, CENTRAL AND WESTERN EUROPE 6l barter, traffic, calculation and figuring, the Jew has received his mental precision, his cleanness of vision, his habit of taking nothing at its full value. The Jewish merchant is not easily taken in by words or good appearances. His eyes are used to measuring, his hands to weighing. He distrusts and dislikes approximations. Observe the money- changer as he handles the gold pieces. He exam- ines the metal and the stamp, he listens to their ring, verifies their weight, satisfies himself that the edges are not worn or chipped. Observe the dealer in precious stones, who pursues a vocation likewise long followed by the Jews; see how he turns the diamonds and rubies over and over, looking at them from all sides, bringing them close to his eyes and then holding them far off, letting both daylight and lamplight shine through them, while he tries to estimate their size, transparency, brilliancy, and purity. In this manner does the Jew handle things and ideas; he appraises everything at its correct worth; he is careful not to be carried away. This spirit of exactness is always displayed by the Jew, in his private as well as in his business life, in his scientific work as \vell as in his commercial under- takings. It is one of the secrets of his strength. Above all other men, he likes and comprehends realities. "As he has learned to value things, so has he learned to understand men. He has seen so many of them, of all ages and conditions, in the market- place, or in the counting-house of his forefather, the money-changer, or gliding furtively at night- fall through the low doorway of his grandsire, the pawnbroker. He has known them all, small and great, rich and poor, the gambler, the ambitious man, the prodigal, the miser, the profligate, the man of frank and open character ; he has observed them, at his ease, in their moments of transport, trouble, 62 HISTORY OF THE JEWS anguish, when all disguise is thrown off. Young and old, nobleman and commoner, burgher and peasant, all came to borrow from him; for cen- turies he was able to gauge them at leisure; were they not all clients of Israel? Indeed, the Jew has an instinctive knowledge 01 men ; he knows how to take them and how to cajoie them. From his an- cestors, the stock-jobber ana the middleman, he has inherited an insinuating and flattering tongue, a merchant's cleverness as well as his art of display- ing his wares to advantage and of attracting cus- tomers. In the art of getting on the Jew has no equal. He knows that time has, in reality, no fore- lock, and no one is so nimble in the pursuit of for- tune or so clever in holding fast to it. He is need we say the keenest huntsman in the chase after florins and ducats. We, ourselves, have trained him to this. He has been reared to it as an English hound to fox-hunting. There is no need of dwell- ing longer on this aptitude peculiar to the race. We are familiar with it, we are even in danger of exaggerating its importance. We are apt to pic- ture the Jew to ourselves most frequently under this aspect of trader, of money-getter, because it is this side which he generally turns tow-ard us. But we must be careful not to imagine that the Jew is, or ever has been, a money-maker and noth- ing more. "The money-changer, the broker, the second- hand dealer, the usurer, are by no means the only ancestors of the modern Jew. He has another, less familiar to us, but to whom he bears as great a resemblance. It would be unjust to overlook this ancestor, for he embodies Israel's traditions and her true spirit, while the other, the money-dealer, represents only the trades which we ourselves have forced upon the Jew. This forefather, the oldest and most beloved by Israel, is the rabbi, the sage, NORTHERN, CENTRAL AND WESTERN EUROPE 63 the Talmudist. It is not true that for twenty cen- turies Israel's soul was absorbed in banking and speculation. The traffic in gold was for a long time but a means of subsistence for the Jews, the only one permitted to them. It was not the pub- lican nor the financier whom the sons of Israel hon- ored and aspired to emulate; it was the rabbi, the interpreter of the law, the scribe, the scholar, the Hakham. Israel was a nation of students before she became a nation of money-makers. She has always remembered this. The Jew has had a two- fold education, two entirely different teachers whose lessons he learned simultaneously. While in the hands of the money-changer and the broker, he was being trained to precise calculations, to a practical sense, to the knowledge of men and things, under the guidance of' the rabbi, the Hakham, he acquired the habit of theoretical speculation, of in- tellectual study, of scientific abstraction. These two warring tendencies in human life thus met and became, as it were, blended in Israel. Of the two directions in which man's activity is tempted to spend itself, the one most prized by the select of Israel, most sought after by this race apparently given over to material cares, was invariably the spiritual one. In the old Jewries the banker has ever been less esteemed than the scholar, the money-changer less than the student. If such is not now the rule, it is because, through our influ- ence, Israel has fallen away from her traditions." But the most touching appeal of this eminent Frenchman is contained in the final chapter of his work in which he endeavors to show that both Ju- daism as a religion and the Jews as a race have ever worked for the betterment and ennoblement of the world: "How can we forget that the great doctrine of human brotherhood given to the world by the apos- 64 HISTORY OF THE JEWS ties of Galilee the doctrine in which it is so often claimed to-day that all religion and all morality are summed up is a Jewish-Christian doctrine that has its roots in the Hebrew religion? These Jews, who are accused of an incurable tribal spirit, were the first to proclaim that all men are brothers, de- scendants of the same Adam and the same Eve. 'Why/ asks the Talmud, 'was there but one Adam in the beginning? In order that all men should have the same father, and that one nation should not be able to say to another : Our ancestors were richer and greater than thine. All men are broth- ers, all nations are sisters.' 'In thee,' said the Lord to Abraham, 'shall all families of the earth be blessed.' And this human brotherhood, which the sacred books placed in the cradle of the race, the seers of Judah have embodied in their visions of the future. "At a time when the mitred Assyrian crushed the people beneath the wheels of his chariot of war, the captive Jew yet dared to proclaim that the day was coming when peace and harmony would reign for- ever among the nations. The primitive brother- hood was to be re-established at the end of time. Its prophetic emblems are well known; they are those of Eden : the leopard shall lie down with the kid, and the wolf and the lamb shall pasture to- gether. Beautiful symbols of a noble hope ! What do they mean, if not that the weakness of. the little nations will be respected by those that are great and strong? Maimonides, the eagle of the Syna- gogue, takes pains to tell us that this will be accom- plished without a miracle. In his eyes, the lamb and the kid stand for Israel, the wolf and the pan- ther for the nations converted to justice and peace. What matters the interpretation of the rabbis? Brotherhood among men, peace among nations, this is an ideal in which there is nothing exclusive; and NORTHERN, CENTRAL AND WESTERN EUROPE 65 if this is cosmopolitanism, where is the patriot who could take offence at it?" And these sublime words addressed to the better nature of his countrymen, to their sense of justice, peace and loving-kindness, were written on the eve of the notorious and epoch-making Dreyfus affair. This affair, which in its day was the most sensa- tional of all occurrences, for a number of years forming the chief topic of interest everywhere, causing the suicide of a number of persons, the dis- grace of many prominent personages, and threaten- ing even the peace of the world, was the most strik- ing example of the lengths to which Antisernitism is prepared to go in its plannings to render the lot of the Jew miserable. Alfred Dreyfus was in real- ity a victim of the historic hatred of the French against the Germans, their constant fear of a Teu- tonic invasion, and their anxiety to make use of all available measures for the safeguarding of the fatherland against the aggression of their long- prepared and well-organized military neighbor across the Rhine. The Antisemites played upon this fear of a German invasion for the undoing of the Jews. Dreyfus the individual was of little con- cern to them. But Dreyfus the Jew through whose degradation and fall a staggering blow might be dealt at the civic character and patriotic standing of the entire hateful race here the artillery cap- tain assumed the proportions of a valuable prize. The presence of many Jewish officers in the army had long been a thorn in their flesh. The convic- tion and punishment of one of them would there- fore condemn all other Jewish officers and bar the doors of the army against further Jewish ambition. Antisernitism had by this time permeated all branches of the army, and it was quite within the bounds of probability that some mean-spirited offi- cer, himself guilty of the crime and envious of the 66 HISTORY OF THE JEWS gifted and promising Jewish captain, who was en- joying wealth and a happily married life, should prepare a compromising document with the calcu- lation of bringing about Dreyfus's downfall, even as under the circumstances it was a most natural thing that his superior officers should readily seize upon the charge as a means of ridding themselves of a hated Jew-subordinate. Under the circum- stances Dreyfus stood no chance whatever of ob- taining justice when placed on trial for a crime of which he was entirely innocent. The crime itself that of having sold military secrets to the German military attache in France was bad enough, but when imputed to a Jew its importance at once be- came magnified a thousandfold. Dreyfus, indeed, was convicted even before he was tried. The charge of treason based upon the discovery by the French Intelligence Office of an anonymous letter, known as the bordereau, the writing of which slighty resembled that of Dreyfus, probably would have been dismissed in the case of a non-Jewish suspect. In the case of Dreyfus it was firmly per- sisted in despite the flimsiness of its grounds; even the doubtful circumstances were interpreted as strengthening the case of the state, while the least element of truth pointing to the guilt of the prisoner was stretched to the utmost. Men of sci- ence and professional standing prostituted their calling to give unfavorable testimony while the prisoner's fellow-officers manifested a flagrant lack of esprit-de-corps in the interest they took in the conviction of their comrade. Under the lash of Antisemitic agitation all of France became inflamed with the passion to see a Jew punished and degrad- ed. The whole "affaire" was but a paraphrased version of "The Merchant of Venice" with the Jew this time playing Antonio while a fiendish Shylock, insisting upon his pound of flesh, was impersonat- ALFRED DREYFUS (b. 1859) NORTHERN, CENTRAL AND WESTERN EUROPE 67 ed by a hopelessly bigoted Antisemitism adaman- tine in its purpose, a stranger to all considerations of pity and mercy, speaking a thousand tongues through press and pulpit, self-seeking, venal and brutal. Found guilty, sentenced to life-imprisonment, and suffering public humiliation, Dreyfus would have taken his life but for the thought of his be- loved wife and children, and the determination to live on in the hope of one day vindicating his honor and that of his race. He never ceased protesting his innocence. At the very time of his degradation on January 5, 1895, on the Field of Mars, as the sergeant tore off his shoulder straps and broke his sword, the martyr shouted : "Soldiers, they are dis- honoring an innocent man ! Long live France, long live the army!" Repeatedly this cry of anguish rang out as the prisoner was led around the square only to be met with the shouts of "Death to the traitor !" "Judas !" "Dirty Jew !" from the infuri- ated crowd. Dragged from one prison to another, roughly handled by the officials and everywhere threatened by the populace, Dreyfus was finally transferred to the "Devil's Island," one of a group known as the "lies de Salut" off French Guiana, there to begin his imprisonment under most fright- ful conditions. Still, despite the harsh treatment, the strictly enforced silence and solitude, the sever- ity of the climate and the disease-breeding marshes of the place, Dreyfus managed to retain his health, all the time animated with the thought that the day of his delivery and complete vindication would soon arrive. Nor was it an empty hope. France soon discovered that the case of Dreyfus was by no means disposed of with his conviction and punish- ment. The cry "I am innocent!" rang with ever greater volume through the hearts and consciences of men since that terrible day on the Field of Mars. 68 HISTORY OF THE JEWS "Truth sprouteth from the ground," and the truth of the innocence of the Jewish martyr stalked like a spectre through France, causing dismay, restless- ness and fear in the hearts of many a high-placed official \vho had a hand in the conviction, and not stopping even at the presidency of the republic. The first impetus to the clearing up of the matter was given by the German government which, quite justly, resented the implication of her embassy in a case with which she was not concerned. Whatever work of espionage her agents in France may have been doing, she knew that Dreyfus was not one of her tools. Accordingly she made repeated protests to the French government and, in the end, threat- ened to withdraw her ambassador, Count Muen- ster, unless France would disavow 7 her belief that the German embassy had anything to do with Drey- fus. Reserving their skepticism to themselves, President Casimir-Perier as well as Hanotaux, the head of the Foreign Office, deemed it best to exon- erate that embassy. Soon afterward Casimir- Perier resigned as president, and his action, brought on doubtless by the ever-growing compli- cations of the Dreyfus case, added not a little to the mystery of the affair. The turn of the tide in favor of the Jewish martyr came with the appoint- ment in 1896 of the astute and honorable Colonel Picquart as head of the Intelligence Office in the place of the retiring Colonel Sandherr. We now r for the first time come across the name of the man who, from all appearances, and according to later disclosures, was the real perpetrator of the crime for which Dreyfus was convicted Major Ester- hazy. An adventurer, thoroughly unscrupulous and venal, a spendthrift reduced to the brink of privation and poverty, devoid of all principles of patriotism and honor, this was the man chosen by the German military attache, Schwarzkoppen, to NORTHERN, CENTRAL AXD WESTERN EUROPE 69 spy upon the French General Staff for military se- crets, the price being 2,000 marks a month. The clue to Esterhazy, a suspiciously worded letter, even as the famous bordereau itself, was stealthily ob- tained from the German embassy. Picquart set to work to unravel the mystery, compared the hand- writing in some letters Esterhazy had written with that of the bordereau, and came to the conclusion that all these letters were written by one and the same person, Esterhazy. He, however, met with discouragement from his superior officers who were afraid to re-open the Dreyfus case. By this time they knew that they had ruined the reputation and broken the life of a most innocent man. To give this man a chance of regaining his liberty and his honor would, however, have meant their own un- doing. And, besides, Dreyfus was only a Jew, after all. Colonel Picquart now became to them an object of dislike whose activity in the uncovering of the real traitor they feared and determined to check. Spies were placed in his office to watch and harass him in his work. Even persuasive argu- ments to dampen his ardor for righting a heinous wrong were not wanting. "What can it matter to you whether this Jew remains at Devil's Island or not?" was the query put to him by General Gonse, the deputy-chief of the General Staff. His dismiss- al was inevitable. But Picquart was undeterred in his determination to obtain justice for Dreyfus. Fortunately he was not alone in France to believe in the undoing of wrong once it came to light. The family of Dreyfus, his wife and more espe- cially his brother Matthew, had not in the mean- time remained inactive. They were constantly on the alert, looking for every possible clue to the iden- tity of the real culprit. They found greatest as- sistance in Bernard Lazare (1865-1903), a highly talented journalist connected with several leading 70 HISTORY OF THE JEWS French newspapers, and author of a number of works, notably one on the history and the causes of Antisemitism ("L'Antisemitisme, Son Histoire et.Ses Causes"). Both as a fellow-Jew and as a man of truth and justice, Lazare, after becoming convinced of the complete innocence of Dreyfus, undertook his defense in two books he published successively in 1896 and 1897 in which he en- deavored to show, from his knowledge of the facts of the case, that a grave judicial error had been committed and that an innocent man had been condemned. Nevertheless, howsoever ef- fective the writings of ' Lazare may have proven, they and all other efforts in behalf of Dreyfus would have been futile but for the interest the case had aroused in one of France's greatest leaders of the time, Scheurer-Kestner, then vice-president of the Senate. This honorable and justice-loving Alsatian, perceiving the entire fiend- ishness of the plot, swore not to rest until the entire truth was brought to light. But he was beset on all sides with insurmountable difficulties. His in- tentions soon became known to the members of the General Staff, who had every interest to endeavor to thwart his efforts. Again and again he was, through their machinations, put off the track, while Esterhazy himself was in the meantime apprised of his danger. There followed plots and counter- plots, with more forgeries and a hopeless maze of contradictory evidence. To check the activity of Picquart he had been ordered to resign his office and to enter the service with the expeditionary army in Africa. At the instance of Scheurer-Kest- ner he was now ordered to return to testify at the trial which Esterhazy, with a show of innocence, had himself requested that he may be cleared of the charge of treason, Matthew Dreyfus having now formally denounced him as the real author of the BERNARD LAZARE (1865-1903) NORTHERN, CENTRAL AND WESTERN EUROPE 7! bordereau. The court-martial took place at Cherche-Midi on January 10 and u, 1898, and was farcical throughout. The Dreyfus family was de- nied representation, Esterhazy was questioned in a most general way that afforded him all possible loopholes for evading answers and distorting facts, while Picquart, who alone, unlike Esterhazy and the othe"r witnesses, was heard in secret, was sub- jected to a severe cross-examination and his testi- mony was allowed by the judges to be twisted out of shape. As a result not unforeseen by those who watched the trend of things, Esterhazy was acquit- ted amidst the acclaim of the populace and the press, while Picquart was sentenced to sixty days' imprisonment for communicating military docu- ments to his lawyer, Leblois, his sentence being fol- lowed later by his dismissal from the army. But the climax in this comedy of judicial horrors was to come scon. Howsoever hard they tried to prevent it, this affair was now taken out of the hands of- the highly stationed men of the General Staff and became more than ever before the con- cern of the entire French nation which split into Dreyfusards and Anti-Dreyfusards, with the best intellectual forces of the land among the former. Upon the scene there now appears Emile Zola who had already evinced a great interest in the affair and was among those who clamored for a revision of the case. Two days after Esterhazy's acquitta 1 on January 13, Zola published in "L'Aurore" his famous "J' Accuse" (I Accuse) letter in which, in his wonted impassioned style, the great novelist laid bare all the deviltry of those who had staged both the Dreyfus trial and the Esterhazy court-martial. Drawing up a long list of accusations, he charged that Dreyfus's conviction was based upon a secret document which was not admitted in the evidence, and that Esterhazy was acquitted by the wilful or- 72 HISTORY OF THE JEWS der of the court which knew him to be the guilty person. Zola was arrested on the charge of libel and his trial (February 7-28, 1898) brought forth much sensational evidence, in which more forged documents played an important part. Notwith- standing all of the proof in favor of the defendant, skillfully played upon in their addresses to .the jury by his lawyers, Fernand Labori and Albert Clemen- ceau, he was declared guilty and sentenced to one year's imprisonment and the payment of a fine of three thousand francs. The appeal which was taken to the Court of Cassation (Supreme Court) result- ed in the setting aside of the verdict. The War Office, however, decided on further prosecution, and the second trial of Zola was set for the i8th of July. By this time Zola was convinced that it was useless to look for justice under a government so strongly controlled by the professional Anti- semites, themselves the tools of the clandestine in- fluence of the Church and the Monarchists. Rather than stand trial he fled to England. Though ab- sent, he was again convicted, the same sentence was pronounced and further disgrace was meted out to him in the removal of his name from the French Legion of Honor. But instead of settling the matter and disposing of the agitation for a revision of the Dreyfus case, the martyrdom of Zola was like putting a match to a powder magazine. Henceforth France was to have no peace. Throughout the country passion ran high, insults were heaped alike upon organiza- tions and individuals, duels were fought, blows were exchanged in the very Chamber of Deputies, and threats of anti-Jewish riots were frequently heard. The Socialists, headed by Jaures, now took a hand in the melee, and the government was ac- cused of being at the mercy of the militarists. In the national election of that year the Dreyfus NORTHERN, CENTRAL AND WESTERN EUROPE 73 scandal, though not openly referred to, played a decisive part, and again the Antisemites had their way. Picquart was again arrested and imprisoned while charges made against Esterhazy, his mistress and Du Paty du Clam, Dreyfus's chief accuser, were dismissed as groundless. Shortly after this, however, certain authentic revelations came to light, demonstrating the guilt of Colonel Henry, the accomplice of Du Paty du Clam in the Dreyfus con- spiracy, as the forger of documents bearing upon the affair subsequent to Dreyfus's conviction. The day following his arrest Henry cut his throat with a razor left in his cell for that purpose, doubtless, and the same day Esterhazy escaped to England (August 31, 1898). The head of the General Staff, General Boisdeffre, who had been in collusion with Henry, immediately resigned. It now became pat- ent that the conviction of Dreyfus was the result of a grave judicial error, if not of an intentional frame-up. Men in high official places found them- selves forced to resign. The revision of the case now seemed assured, though many were the diffi- culties still placed in its way. Almost a year since Henry's suicide was allowed to pass before the final decision of a revision was reached (June 3, 1899) during which time occurred the sudden death of the president of the republic, Felix Faure, and the election of Emile Loubet as his successor. It is noteworthy that in this presidential election no one was allowed as candidate who in any way had been involved in the Dreyfus affair. The Supreme Court now annulled the sentence of 1894 and ordered a new trial to take place in the city of Rennes. Dreyfus was immediately notified, and his return was ordered. "My joy," says the Devil's Island martyr in his book, "Five Years of My Life," "was boundless, unutterable. At last I was escaping from the cross to which I had been 74 HISTORY OF THE JEWS nailed for nearly five years, suffering as bitterly in the martyrdom of my dear ones as in my own. Happiness succeeded the horror of that inexpres- sible anguish. The day of justice was at last da-wn- ing for me. The Court's decision terminated every- thing, I thought, and I had not the slightest idea that there remained anything to do but go through some necessary legal formalities." Yet he was fated to bitterest disappointment. The manner of his reception in France was more that of an already condemned criminal than of a military officer whose conviction had been set aside and now was about to be cleared of a foul charge for which he had innocently sufTered v France was still impenitent and defiant toward the man she had wronged so grievously. In reality far from ex- tenuating as this circumstance be France, fearing for her safety, was now afraid to reverse her form- er verdict and restore Dreyfus to his liberty and his honorable standing in the army. The matter had gone too far and the passions aroused were too menacing, to permit this act of simple justice in the face of overwhelming opposition. The re- vision of the Dreyfus case, so stubbornly opposed by the military and clerical reactionaries, was an involuntary concession to the just demands of the liberal elements, and, indeed, was made imperative by the new developments. But now that Dreyfus was on trial again, his conviction a second time be- came necessary in the eyes of his judges as a means of saving the French army from disgrace and the republic itself from the danger of civil war. It is this probable attitude which explains the marked unfairness that attended the long trial at Rennes, the introduction and admission of irrelevant mat- ters for the sole purpose of thickening the mystery and making the confusion worse confounded. In vain did the two distinguished lawyers for the ac- NORTHERN. CENTRAL AND WESTERN ETROPE 75 cusecl, Demange and Labori, exert all the ingenuity of their legal minds to keep the trial to the channel of regularity and impartiality. Their endeavors were of no avail in the face of the high-handed tac- tics employed. If the result of the first Dreyfus trial was merely a grievous judicial mistake, the result of the second trial, even as the trial itself, was a veritable mockery of justice. Dreyfus was convicted a second time (September 9, 1899) though at least two of his seven judges voted "not guilty," and the verdict itself was qualified by the words "extenuating circumstances," a quite mean- ingless phrase in the case of a crime like treason. The sentence was ten years' imprisonment and mil- itary degradation. The play to the gallery thus ac- complished, the other card from up the sleeve was now produced. Dreyfus was offered a pardon on condition that he refrain from appealing to the Supreme Court for a revision of his trial, as he was contemplating doing. What he wanted was justice, not clemency, yet he knew that the state of his health, now quite undermined, would not have been equal to the strain of further incarceration. His heart also went out to his wife and children, who would have been the greatest sufferers by his renewed imprisonment. Then, too, he felt that with freedom once regained, there would soon also come the means and opportunities for obtaining full justice and an honorable reinstatement. Ac- cordingly he accepted the pardon extended to him by the president of the republic, not, however, without a public statement of his intentions. On the very day of his liberation (September 20) he wrote to the president the following: "The Gov- ernment of the Republic gives me back my liberty. It is nothing to me without honor. Beginning with to-day, I shall unremittingly strive for the repara- tion of the frightful judicial error of which I am 76 HISTORY OF THE JEWS still the victim. I want all France to know by a final judgment that I am innocent. My heart will never- be satisfied while there is a single French- man who imputes to me the abominable crime which another committed." It was well that he acted thus. A free though as yet unacquitted Dreyfus meant an ever-present reminder to France and the whole world of the baseness to which a great and strong government will occasionally stoop to gain its ends, sometimes not stopping even at committing a second and greater crime in order to cover up thereby a lesser crime. Time was working on the side of the great- ly wronged man and his friends. Cabinet changes continued to take place and in less than five years after his liberation, when Clemenceau was pre- mier, his case was once more taken up by the Su- preme Court. By that time the old prejudices had begun to die out, and the French nation was able to see more clearly and to judge more accurately. On July 12, 1906, the long-looked-for decision of- that court was finally reached. Dreyfus was for- mally cleared of all guilt, and his reinstatement in the army with full honors and the title of Major was ordered. At the same time full reparation was also made to the man to whom, above all others, Dreyfus owed his rescue, he who for the sake of truth willingly sacrificed his fortune, his career and even his freedom Colonel Picquart, who, like- wise, was reinstated in the army with the rank of Brigadier-General. Zola, too, though now dead, was officially restored to public favor and given due acknowledgment for his share in the unearth- ing of the fiendish plot, the government ordering that his remains be taken from Montmartre and buried with all possible honors among France's many distinguished dead, at the Pantheon. Before, however, the advent of this belated jus- NORTHERN, CENTRAL AND WESTERN EUROPE 77 tice there was a sad aftermath to this notorious af- fair. So long as Dreyfus was still held to be guilty Antisemitism remained in the saddle in the govern- ment and especially in the army, where Jewish of- ficers were constantly subjected to humiliation and Jewish soldiers were maltreated with no hope of redress. But the most disastrous consequences of the Dreyfus affair took place in the French North African colony of Algeria which for many cen- turies had harbored a considerable number of Jews. For many years following the French conquest of the colony the Jews of Algeria were treated in a step-motherly fashion by France, which restricted and annulled many of their century-old rights, though the Jews were fast assimilating the lan- guage and the culture of the home-land and prov- ing themselves valuable propagandists for every- thing French. This attitude of the government doubtless influenced the native Mussulmans and the colonizing French Christians. When, in 1870, the French government finally adopted the "Cre- mieux Decree" by which Algerian Jews were fully emancipated, instead of helping to remove the pre- vailing prejudices the measure only served to add to them by arousing a feeling of jealousy of the Jews. The Antisemitic incubus in France reached out its hand across the ocean to keep burning the fires of hate in Algeria and the Dreyfus affair served as an excellent pretext. Here, too, the Jews were denounced as the exploiters of the land and the cause of its economic difficulties. An Italian by the name of Max Regis, who settled in the capital city of Algiers, made use of the anti-Jewish feel- ing for his own political advancement. A shrewd and capable leader, he succeeded in thoroughly or- ganizing the Antisemitic forces of the land, and before long the Jews of Algeria found their situa- tion intolerable. The gospel of Jew-hatred was 78 HISTORY OF THE JEWS preached everywhere and through all available agencies. In May, 1897, occurred the first anti- Jewish riots at the town of Mostaganem, resulting in much material damage in which not even the synagogue was spared. This incident was a signal for a general uprising against the Jews in many places, the authorities, from Governor-General Le- pine down, finding themselves totally helpless in the face of the enraged mobs. The most violent of all these outbreaks took place in January, 1898, in the city of Algiers whither Drumont had come over from Paris to help Max Regis in his infamous cam- paign. Arrested and placed on trial, Regis was ac- quitted. In the coming elections only avowed An- tisemites were returned to office, Max Regis him- self becoming the Mayor of Algiers. The French government felt itself powerless against the Anti- semitic forces of the colony and capitulated to them by removing Lepine as Governor-General and ap- pointing in his place a man himself in sympathy with the anti-Jewish elements, Laferriere, whose first act of unfriendliness to the Jews was his en- deavor to obtain a general amnesty for all those against whom charges were pending for participa- tion in the disturbances. This encouragement of the Antisemites led to new excesses, and a move- ment was soon set on foot for the disfranchisement of the Jews of Algeria. By this time the central government must have realized the danger its mis- taken policy entailed, for in January, 1899, about the time that the revision of the Dreyfus case was ordered, it forced the removal of Max Regis from office and the dissolution of the Algiers city council. Regis was furthermore placed on trial for disor- derly conduct as an inciter to violence and, sen- tenced to four months' imprisonment, fled from Al- giers in time to avoid serving his term. He sought an asylum in Belgium only to be deported as an NORTHERN, CENTRAL AND WESTERN EUROPE 79 undesirable visitor, and some time later, when again caught in Algiers at his old occupation of Jew-bait- ing, was arrested and sentenced to three years' im- prisonment. He and his confreres also suffered defeat at the new elections, and thenceforward there was a subsiding in the Antisemitic propa- ganda in Algeria. While the Dreyfus agitation in France was at its height there was manifested a spirit of Antisemitic reaction also in a region where it was least expect- ed on the other side of the channel and in the very cradle and citadel of European democracy England. The closing years of the nineteenth cen- tury witnessed a feeling of uneasiness and depres- sion over the economic and industrial prospects of the British Empire. For a number of generations mistress of the world's commerce and unrivalled in her prosperity, England now felt that the sceptre of supremacy was about to be snatched from her hand by the other Powers which within a few dec- ades had managed to build up a great world-trade notably Germany, whose scientific and industrial progress, her people's unequalled sturdiness of character and frugality of living, made her a most formidable rival. This fear of being outdone and superseded by other nations resulted in an exag- gerated sense of nationalism which, in the light of its new interpretations, was a complete departure from the traditional English conceptions of free- dom and democracy. To retain her supreme posi- tion as a world-trader, Britain was ready to toler- ate a radical change of ethical and spiritual values; material considerations were placed above those of justice and truth. Essentially a people of humane ideals, humanitarianism now became with many Englishmen a mere luxurious ornament to be dispensed with in times of need. The country must be protected against the outside world at all 8O HISTORY OF THE JEWS costs, was the cry that rang throughout the land. This meant an increased naval armament on the seas, as an answer to the ambitious naval pro- gramme entered upon by Germany; it meant a tariff protection for home industries against for- eign products; but even more than that, it meant the locking of the country's gates against the for- eign immigrant who was being looked at askance and often denounced as a menace to Britain's la- boring classes. In this latter move it was the Jew who was meant and who was hit the hardest. Since the reintroduction of the mediaeval regime of Alexander III in Russia, and the outbreak there of the fierce anti-Jewish riots in 1881 and 1882, a large number of Russian Jewish refugees had found their way into England the ever- ready asylum of Europe's politically oppressed. While hundreds of thousands of Russian Jews merely passed through the English seaport cities on their way to America, the tens of thousands of them who remained to take up their permanent abode in the land soon presented a problem which the professional Antisemites were not slow to seize upon for their immoral propaganda. As in the large seaboard cities of America, so in Eng- land, and notably in London, these immigrants crowded into special sections of the city and built up huge ghettos which became noted for their ex- otic characteristics. The East End of London became a counterpart of the East Side of New York, only more thoroughly Jewish in sentiment and appearance, and also more strikingly and help- lessly poor. In their search for their daily bread the denizens of the English ghettos began to com- pete with the native laborers, rushing into all available occupations, and sometimes, by the force of necessity, agreeing to work at reduced pay. The alleged menace of this alien labor soon be- NORTHERN, CENTRAL AND WESTERN EUROPE 8l came the battle cry of the Antisemites, which was loudly echoed throughout the British Isles. It is the sad fate of the Jew that even in those lands where he is left undisturbed, and Jew-hatred is slow in coming to the surface, his peace is con- ditional upon the pronounced paucity of his num- bers. No sooner does he increase and multiply than, as in the days of old Egypt, his presence becomes a thorn in the flesh of his neighbors and measures are resorted to for his suppression. So with English Jewry, fully emancipated, cultured and prosperous, which until the arrival of the Russian immigration wave was of exceedingly small proportions and thus able to bask unper- turbed in the sunshine of its numerical insignifi- cance. The coming of the Russian immigrants in large numbers put an end to this happy state. The Antisemitic feeling hitherto dormant, though un- consciously kept alive by the agitation in Germany and France, now found something tangible to feed upon. The alien laborer, meaning the East End Jew, was denounced as the cause of all the economic unrest of the country. It mattered not that the Jew had rendered great services to the land of his birth or adoption in all of its trials and crises, that the great Jewish financiers had again and again come to its aid in its financial difficulties, that the very supremacy of Great Brit- ain as an empire was due to the genius of a Jew- ish statesman, or that in the Boer War Jewish men enlisted in the army far above their propor- tion. The world's memory is lamentably short where the Jew's merits and his services are con-, cerned. The dormant anti-Jewish sentiment now became fully aroused. It only needed an opportunity. For preachers of Antisemitism have not been lack- ing in England even in its best days. The sue- 2 HISTORY OF THE JEWS cess ful outcome of the struggle for Jewish eman- cipation and the subsequent rise of a number of Jews to high positions in government aroused a feeling of jealousy which not unseldom found ex- pression in the periodical literature. There came a time in England when a Jew did not have to possess a conversion certificate to enable him to secure a high office. Already in 1885 Nathaniel Rothschild was elevated to the dignity of Lord the first Jew to be so honored and took his seat in the House of Lords. Baron Worms, president of the Anglo-Jewish Association, later became Sec- retary of Commerce, while quite a number of Jews served as Lord Mayor of London, Liverpool, Portsmouth, Belfast and other cities. This rapid advance was not regarded with equanimity by many of the non-Jews, and every now and then the prophets of ill-will and racial antagonism would make themselves heard. Within the mem- ory of the generation of the beginning of the twentieth century there still lingered the impres- sion of the bigoted onslaughts upon Lord Bea- consfield and the entire Jewish race by Goldwin Smith, the English-Canadian Antisemite, then still living in Toronto. English journalists like Ed- mund Stead, and great dailies like the London "Times" which from a traditional friend of the Jews had, through the influence of the Russian government, turned into an uncompromising foe, now began in London an agitation not dissimilar to that of Drumont and his "La France Juive" in Paris. The "undesirable alien" was but a decep- tive term for "undesirable Jew." Arnold White, one of the bitterest of English Jew-baiters, in a series of articles denounced the presence of so many foreign Jews in England as a "national evil." Here again the old plaint is heard that the Jew is addicted to usury, that his extreme frugal- NORTHERN, CENTRAL AND WESTERN EUROPE 83 ity presents an element of dangerous competition which determines not the survival of the fittest but "the survival of the fittest to exist on a her- ring and a piece of black bread." The Jew is further decried as dirty and unsanitary in his habits and housing methods, as the cause of low wages and high rents, and as the back-bone of the sweating system. Nor is the Jew in high po- sition less of a menace. He is actuated by no motive of patriotism, his eyes are forever fas- tened upon his own gain, he is ostentatious and sensational, a pusher and a climber. English An- tisemitism, in short, showed itself a very apt pu- pil of the continental school and its effect was felt in the colonies no less than in the home-land. It was soon to find expression in special legislation which directed against aliens was really aimed at and affected the Jews. Early in January, 1902, a Royal Commission was appointed to investigate the "alien peril" and, after holding no less than forty-nine sessions and examining nearly two hundred witnesses, reported that while "it has not been proved that there is any serious direct displacement of skilled English labor," yet "the continuous stream of fresh ar- rivals produces a glut in the unskilled labor mar- ket," and recommended the exclusion of certain classes of immigrants for economic and moral reasons. The report and its recommendation was merely an echo of the popular sentiment of the country and more especially of the metropolis. All England seemed determined to get rid of this alien problem, and members of Parliament were entreated, urged and warned to enact drastic laws of exclusion. An "Immigration Reform Associa- tion" was formed in 1903 for the avowed purpose of waging war on immigration through a wide distribution of literature on the subject. On 84 HISTORY OF THE JEWS March 29, 1904, a bill was introduced by the Home Secretary, Mr. Aker-Douglas, "to make provision with respect to the immigration of aliens, and other matters incidental thereto." A long debate ensued in parliament over the pro- posed restrictions which, as was justly pointed out by the opponents of the bill, would affect princi- pally immigrants fleeing to England from the po- litical tyranny of the home government. The fore- most antagonist of the measure, Sir Charles Dilke, moved an amendment that parliament "desires to assure itself, before assenting to the Aliens Bill, that sufficient regard is had in the proposed meas- ure to the retention of the principle of asylum for the victims of persecution," and in defense of his motion candidly stated that, in his firm belief, the bill was the result of anti-Jewish feeling and was aimed chiefly at Jewish immigration. Though de- nied by Mr. Balfour, the Prime Minister, who stated that the bill was aimed at undesirable aliens irrespective of nationality or creed, and de- clared that he would "regard the rise and growth of any Antisemitic feeling in this country as a most serious national misfortune," it was never- theseless true that the country demanded the ex- clusion of the Jew and that the professional poli- ticians in parliament were merely carrying out the orders of their constituents. Popular passion against the Jews rose in all of the social strata and among the laboring classes even found vent in violent outbreaks such as England had not known for some centuries. In Limerick, Ireland, a Catholic priest by the name of Creagh deliv- ered many venomous harangues against the Jews, as a result of which a mob attacked the small colony of foreign Jews of the place, wrecking NORTHERN, CENTRAL AND WESTERN EUROPE 85 their shops and ruining- their merchandise.* An economic boycott was subsequently instituted which resulted in great hardship to the Jews. Much unrest and ill-will was manifested also among the mountaineers of Wales and the coal miners of Scotland. The agitation of the press continued unremittingly and even in the polite lit- erature of the day a strong anti-Jewish current was noticeable. A woman-writer, Violet Gut- tenberg, wrote a novel, "A Modern Exodus," in which she describes another expulsion of the Jews from England in the near future. The wish was assuredly father to the thought. To be sure, de- fenders of the Jews were not wanting in a coun- try of such liberal traditions and democratic ideals, some of the noblest Englishmen, notably * "Having endowed the Jew with the most diabolical character imaginable and traced to him the woes of the Catholic Church in France, the preacher concluded by exhorting his congregation to have no dealings with the people whom God had cursed. As a result of this atrocious sermon no Jew or Jewess could stir abroad without being insulted or assaulted, and, when the priest's exhorta- tion reached the open country, there also, as in Limerick, the Jews fell a prey to a series of brutal attacks, until the preacher, alarmed at his own success, urged his flock to desist from stoning the unbe- lievers but try to starve them. The good people readily obeyed. They not only ceased to deal with the Jewish peddlers, but, improv- ing on their pastor's precepts, refused even to pay what they owed to them for goods purchased in the past. And while Catholic cus- tomers shunned the Jewish tradesman. Catholic tradesmen in some cases refused to sell to the Jews the necessaries of life. With the exception of two or three families, the small Jewish colony of Lim- erick was reduced to utter penury. People hitherto in comfortable circumstances were forced to sell the very furniture of their houses in order to buy food, while the majority of them were saved from starvation only by the charity of some Protestant gentlemen, who, however, were obliged to observe the utmost secrecy in rendering assistance for fear of drawing down upon themselves the pious wrath of the Redemptorist Monks and of the six thousand brethren of the Confraternity of the Holy Family, whose fanaticism the prophet continued to inflame with his historic fictions. This state of things did not end until, public opinion being roused in England, the government was induced to take adequate measures for the protection of the Jews against violence, and philanthropists hast- ened to their relief. Such was the position of the Jews in a part of Ireland in the year of grace 1904." (G. F. Abbott, "Israel in Europe," London, 1907, p. 472.) 86 HISTORY OF THE JEWS many of the Episcopal clergy, doing their utmost to allay the popular unrest through speeches and articles in the press. The Jews, too, led by Mr. Zangwill, and others, were quick to assert their rights and endeavored in all possible w r ays to avert the contemplated injustice. A delegation, headed by Lord Rothschild, waited on the Under-Secre- tary for Home Affairs to protest against the pro- posed measure, and received his assurances that the bill would not affect the Jews as such a state- ment which, however, had but little meaning in view of the wording of the bill. Defeated the first time, the Aliens Bill, slightly changed in wording but not in substance, was re- introduced in the House of Commons on April 18, 1905, this time to meet with much greater favor. Many of those who had voted against the first bill refrained from doing so now, having in the mean- time become aware of the temper of their con- stituents. Thus the Aliens Act became a law on August n, 1905, its severity, however, being miti- gated by the adoption of an amendment favoring such immigrants as may come under the category of refugees from political or religious oppression. An oppressive measure of howsoever mild a form, nevertheless, it has become and has served the purpose of awakening English Jews to the reali- zation that, whether native or foreign born, what- ever their achievements and howsoever great their services, they cannot look for recognition and true friendship from the "real" Englishmen. Another sweet Jewish dream of peace and rest thus became shattered. Thus did Antisemitism permeate all classes, all trades and professions in nearly every country in Europe excepting those where the number of Jews was so infinitesimal as to make its existence im- possible because unnecessary. Devised and origi- NORTHERN, CENTRAL AND WESTERN EUROPE 87 nated by the Pope as an offset to the anti-Catholic campaign in Protestant lands, it found its greatest strength in German-speaking lands where it was resorted to by unscrupulous politicians for their personal advantage, and was aided and abetted by governments no less false and self-seeking. It found its expression in a form of the most refined cruelty in France which thus, unconsciously, played into the hands of intriguers and trouble- makers from Germany whose task it was to upset the peace and mental equilibrium of the historic and still strong enemy of the fatherland. Even democratic, humane and liberal England fell a prey to its wiles, while French-speaking Belgium with her less than 10,000 Jewish souls followed in the wake of France, even as Holland found it hard to withstand the influence of her powerful German cousin. It was in Russia, however, where the German example was followed to its utmost logic and, serving on the one hand as a justifica- tion for the harsh treatment that had always been meted out to the Jews, now became an incentive to still greater persecutions leading to the most horrible bloodshed and the blackest anti-Jewish crimes known to history. This hapless story of the millions of Jews of Russia, from the very time they came under the rule of the Czars, shall en- gage our attention in the following chapter. CHAPTER II RUSSIAN EMPIRE When we speak of Russia we necessarily in- clude all that portion of Poland which became part of the empire upon the former's partition in 1772, 1793 and again in 1795. What is known as "White Russia," consisting of the two govern- ments now known as Mohilev and Vitebsk, was taken by Russia in 1772. With the civil war which broke out in Poland over the Constitution of 1791, Russia, in 1793, again annexed the prov- inces of Volhynia, Podolia, Minsk, and a part of Kiev. The third and final partition of Poland, in 1795, brought to Russia the present governments of Vilna and Grodno, while at the Congress of Vienna of 1815 the Polish possessions of Russia were still further augmented with the transfer to her dominion of all the territory comprised within the short-lived "Duchy of Warsaw." Altogether, more than a million Jewish souls thus came- under the rule of the Czars, a number which, in the course of the next one hundred years was in- creased to more than six million souls, forming in 1918, prior to the peace with Ukraine and the So- viet Republic, extorted by a victorious Germany, approximately one-half of the entire Jewish people and the largest number of Jews to be concentrated within the boundary lines of any one country. What is known as the "Jewish Problem" of Russia dates from the very time of the partition of Poland. Until 1772 there were scarcely any RUSSIA 89 Jews in the empire. For a long time Russian rul- ers remained firm in their adherence to the tradi- tional policy of keeping the frontiers shut tight against a Jewish "invasion." Peter the Great spoke of the Jews as "rogues and cheats" whom he would not allow "either to live or to trade in Russia, whatever efforts they may make, and however much they may try to bribe those near me." The presence of a small colony of Jews in Little Russia was obnoxious to the government which, in 1727, issued an ukase for their expul- sion. In spite of this there were many thousands of Jews from Germany and Poland who succeed- ed in filtering through the legal barriers and to take up their homes in various sections, for in 1744 another decree is issued by Empress Eliza- beth expelling all the Jews of Little Russia, Li- vonia and other parts, unless they would submit to baptism. By this ukase about 35,000 Jews were driven across the border. Catherine II persisted in a like policy of exclusion, that shrewd and ever scheming German princess having originated the historic and infamous phrase Kromye Zhydov ("except Jews") in her manifesto of 1762 in which all other foreigners were permitted to travel and live in Russia. It was during the reign of this empress that Russia received her Jewish leg- acy of Poland with the first partition of that land. And no sooner was the Polish Jew transformed into a Russian subject than he began to experi- ence the full meaning of the change. Whatever autonomy the Jewish community of White Russia enjoyed under the Polish regime was now to be taken from them. The Kahal, or Jewish commu- nal administration, was to lose many of its long- established rights, preparatory to its being en- tirely abolished in a later reign. In a petition submitted to the empress in 1784, the Jews state 9O HISTORY OF THE JEWS their many grievances : they are deprived of their main sources of livelihood, they can no longer lease inns from the landed proprietors, they can get no redress from the courts in litigation cases against Christians, their rights in the municipal electorates are denied them. Their complaining helped them but little, for her Majesty had no in- terest in lightening their yoke, but rather in mak- ing it heavier. If Catherine had no choice other than to receive the Polish Jews under her domin- ion .along with the other inhabitants of that land, at least she could confine them to Poland and pre- vent their egress to the "pure" Russian provinces. The creation of the Cherta, or Jewish "Pale of Settlement" out of the provinces torn from Po- land, has its origin in the ukase of 1786 which declared the status of the Jew as that of being permanently attached to the Polish localities whence he originally came. What was at first held as a principle was later made into a law when, in the Imperial ukase of December 23, 1791, it was stated that "the Jews have no right to en- roll in the merchant corporations in the inner Russian cities or ports of entry, and are permit- ted to enjoy only the rights of townsmen and burghers of White Russia." The short-lived reign of Paul (1796-1801) saw no change for the better. A ray of hope, how- ever, appeared for the Jews with the accession of Alexander I (1801-1825). This ruler entered upon his reign with many good intentions for the improvement of the inner affairs of his vast realm, and his desire to ameliorate the hapless lot of his Jewish subjects seemed genuine. He came under the influence of Western European ideas more than any one of his predecessors, and prob- ably was 'affected by the high intellectual status attained by the Jews of Germany, as was illus- RUSSIA gi trated in Moses Mendelssohn, whom he greatly admired. The French Revolution had let loose a breeze of religious liberalism which spread all over Europe, greatly strengthening the prospects for political emancipation entertained by the West European Jews. In France Michel Berr, who had the distinction of being the first French Jewish privy-councillor, issued his famous appeal in the name of the "European Inhabitants Professing the Jewish Religion," asking for justice to the Jew at the hands of the nations and their sovereigns, which made a deep impression upon public opin- ion in Europe and could not have escaped the at- tention of the young emperor. In Russia, too, a gifted and energetic champion of his Jewish brethren arose in the person of Loeb (Lyev) Nevakhovich (1776-1831). Talmudist and lin- guist, an admirer and follower of Mendelssohn and his school, the possessor of much literary tal- ent as a prose writer and playwright, Nevakhov- ich was encouraged by the liberal attitude of Al- exander to raise his voice in behalf of his down- trodden people, and in 1803 published in both Russian and Hebrew his "Cry of the Daughter of Judah" in which he pleads for tolerance and jus- tice, pointing out the merits of Judaism as a re- ligion making for virtue and rightousness, and assuring the Russian people upon an oath "that the Jew who preserves his religion undefiled can be neither a bad man nor a bad citizen." This impassioned plea must doubtless have had some effect upon the legislators engaged in the task of framing laws in connection with the Jewish situ- ation, though Nevakhovich himself proved unequal to his own enthusiasm for Judaism, which he for- sook only six years after his appeal was given to the world. In 1802 Alexander issued an ukase summoning 92 HISTORY OF THE JEWS a special "Committee for Ameliorating the Condi- tion of the Jews," which body met for two years and ended in the drafting of the "Statute concern- ing the Organization of the Jews" (December 9, 1804). This new measure provided for an en- largement of the "Pale" by adding to it the two inner Russian Governments of Astrakhan and Caucasia, but at the same time also narrowed it down by the provision that Jews could no longer live in the rural settlements or villages, hold leases on land there, keep taverns, saloons or inns thus depriving hundreds of thousands of Jews of one of their chief means of earning a living under the existing conditions. On the other hand per- mission was granted them to buy and rent land in all the southern and western provinces for agri- cultural purposes, to send their children to the ele- mentary and higher schools, to establish factories in the provinces where they were allowed to live, and to travel in all the rest of the empire for busi- ness purposes on conditicyi that they adopt the West European style of dress. Manufacturers and artisans were exempted from the special tax- ation imposed upon Jewish merchants or burgh- ers dwelling in the cities. Full citizenship rights were promised them as a reward for diligence and skill in agriculture and the handicrafts. To show his good-will to the Jews the emperor in 1805 do- nated 3,000 roubles for the erection of a Jewish hospital in Vilna, and some time later granted an annual subvention of 2,500 roubles for the main- tenance of the same institution. To promote the carpet industry among them he, in 1808, caused a carpet factory to be established in Kremenchug, at the same time granting them permission to live in Kiev. Despite the economic hardships brought upon them by the statute of 1804, the Jews never- theless appreciated the apparently good intentions RUSSIA 93 of the sovereign and in the War of 1812 displayed much patriotism and rendered valuable services in the struggle against the French. The liberality of the emperor was further man- ifested in the encouragement he extended to lead- ing Jewish merchants to act as purveyors of food and other necessities for the Russian armies, two such Jews, Sundel Sonnenberg, of Grodno, and Eliezer Dillon, of Nesvizh, being found often at army headquarters where they had access to the leading government officials and sometimes even to the emperor himself. They made use of the opportunity thus thrown in their way of acquaint- ing the emperor with the sufferings endured by their co-religionists, and Alexander was not dis- inclined to help them, both from humanitarian motives and because the political situation, inci- dental to the Napoleonic Wars, made a liberal policy towards the Jews advisable. In June, 1814, he assured his Jewish subjects through these Jew- ish representatives that he would issue shortly "an ordinance concerning their wishes and requests for an immediate amelioration of their present condition," this promise being followed in 1815 by an order that a census be taken of all the Jews of Russia, and that surnames be given to all Jewish families. At about that time the emperor, evi- dently still remembering the Sanhedrin convoked by Napoleon eight years previously, conceived the plan of establishing in St. Petersburg a perma- nent advisory council of representatives of the Jews elected by the various Kahals, and the com- munities of the "Pale" were accordingly ordered, in the autumn of that year, to choose two electors from each of the eleven governments. This elec- toral college met in Vilna in August, 1818, to elect from amongst themselves the three deputies au- thorized by the government, together with three 94 HISTORY OF THE JEWS substitutes or alternates. Besides Sonnenberg and Dillon, the four other men elected were Mi- chael Eisenstadt, Benish Lapkovski and Marcus Veitelson all from Vitebsk, and Samuel Epstein of Vilna. The money requisite for the mainte- nance of these deputies at the capital was raised by the Jews through a self-imposed tax. In that same year, at the Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle, the Czar listened indulgently to a plea in behalf of the Jews made to him by the Englishman Louis Way an enthusiastic advocate of emancipation for the Jews as a means of their ultimate Chris- tianization and even agreed to have Nesselrode; his Minister of Foreign Affairs, present Way's memorandum for the consideration of the Con- gress. The inference might clearly be drawn that what he asked in behalf of the Jewish subjects of other sovereigns this Emperor would be glad to grant before long to his own Jews. The reaction which soon set in, however, was already then on its way. For by this time Alex- ander was fast coming under the spell of Greek- Catholic mysticism and his friendly attitude to- ward the Jews took a turn in the direction of Christianization. His willingness to lend assist- ance to Louis Way's proposal came doubtless from the same consideration. For their lasting politi- cal good, and as a condition of their complete emancipation, the Czar believed that efforts should be made for their conversion to the dominant faith, and, aided by Golitizin, his Minister of Ec- clesiastical Affairs and head of a Bible society for missionary purposes, entered upon a scheme of proselytism which had its beginning in the for- mation in 1817 of a "Society of Israelitish Chris- tians." Such Jews as would become Christians, either of the Greek-Catholic or the Lutheran de- nomination, were to receive portions of crown- RUSSIA 95 lands with full civil equality and a liberal meas- ure of communal self-government. Though this scheme proved abortive from the first, the mate- rialistic advantages and political privileges acting as no bait for the Jews, the emperor continued his efforts and in 1820 set aside a considerable tract of land in the Yekaterinoslav government for all prospective "Israelitish Christians." The failure of this pet scheme was the cause of much disappointment to the well-intentioned ruler and his chagrin was greatly increased by the discov- ery that there was a "Judaizing" movement in the interior of Russia among his supposedly faithful Christian subjects. These Russian proselytes to Judaism known as "Subbotniki" or Sabbath ob- servers, experienced a change of heart independ- ently of any outside influence, and their organi- zation dated from the year 1806. They observed a number of Jewish ceremonies, such as Sabbath rest on Saturday, circumcision, the prescribed marriage and divorce laws, the Jewish manner of burial, etc. In .the governments of Tula, Voro- nezh, Orlov and Saratov, thousands of such ne- ophytes were discovered and the disclosure of the startling fact that Christians were going over to Judaism at the risk of persecution and suffering while Jews could not be lured into Christianity no matter what the bait, was a severe blow to the vanity and self-confidence of the pious autocrat. Severe measures were soon adopted for the re- turn of the recalcitrants to their mother- faith. Their settlements were laid waste and many thou- sands of them were exiled to Siberia and the Cau- casus. This occurrence boded no good for the Jews of the empire, though they were clearly not to blame. Henceforth Alexander's policy toward them was to undergo a radical change; from "be- nevolent absolutism" it was to turn into an undis- g HISTORY OF THE JEWS guised despotism. Speransky, the one great and liberal Minister Russia had yet produced, whom Napoleon styled "the only clear head in Russia," was dismissed, and the Czar abandoned himself completely to the reactionary influences which now dominated his court. The "Jewish Deputa- tion" at the capital was abolished and the last years of the Czar's life were marred by a number of anti-Jewish enactments. On May 4, 1820, he promulgated his rescript prohibiting jews from employing Christian domestics on the ground of the Jews' tendency for proselytizing. In 1823 he issued a rigorous ukase ordering the expulsion of all Jews from the villages and hamlets of the Governments of Vitebsk and Mohilev. By the force of peculiar historic antecedents, going back to the economic conditions in old Poland when the Jew was the intermediary between the Pan, or nobleman, and his serfs, very many Polish Jews had taken up their homes in the villages and re- sorted to inn-keeping and liquor-selling as a means of livelihood. Whatever moral or economic evils to the peasantry there may have come from this traffic, the blame for it was plainly not that of the Jews. They were now to be deprived of this source without any provision being made for their maintenance in the towns and cities to which they were driven. This was followed in 1824 by the edict forbidding foreign Jews to settle permanent- ly in Russia. By that time a new "Committee for Ameliorating the Condition of the Jews" had been formed by royal decree, which, however, as was revealed several years later, had for its real object "the devising of ways and means looking generally toward the reduction of the number of Jews in the monarchy." Thus ended a reign the beginnings of which promised a most glorious era for the Jews and for all Russia and which, had RUSSIA 97 the Czar been possessed of a stronger character, might have justified the hopes of his Jewish sub- jects for their gradual and ultimate emancipation. The proselytizing measures adopted by Alex- ander, and the evil political and economic conse- quences which their failure brought to the Jews, resulted in putting them more than ever on their guard against whatever reforms the government was henceforth to undertake for the amelioration of their lot, the not ungrounded fear being in- stilled in their hearts that all such schemes were merely snares for their estrangement from Juda- ism. Never did the heart of Polish Jewry beat truer to the ancient faith than in those first two generations of Russian dominion with their end- less fears and anxieties, their hopes and disap- pointments and final lapse into a recrudescent medisevalism at the close of Alexander's reign. The two great parties of Polish Jewry, the Rab- binites called Mitnagdim, and the Hassidim were then at the height of their power and influence, the former receiving its inspiration from the saintly R. Elijah, Gaon of Yilna (1720-1797), the man who brought a complete transformation in the educational methods of the Jews by doing away with the hair-splitting scholasticism, or pilpul, in vogue until his time and substituting the method of direct textual analysis in the study of the Talmud and the latter deriving its impetus from Israel Baal Shem Tob (1700-1760), the re- puted wonderworker who secured hundreds of thousands of followers by teaching a religion of joy and enthusiasm in worship, and a life marked by freedom from care and \vorry. Both these sects had their strongholds, the Mitnagdim in Lithuania, and the Hassidim in South-Western Russia, Volhynia and Podolia. At times there arose bitter hostility between them, resulting in 98 HISTORY OF THE JEWS verbal attacks and sometimes leading to economic persecutions and even denunciation of each other before the government. At the bottom, all this strife and enmity emanated from a zeal for God and the Torah, and was therefore in reality a holy war which intensified rather than diminished their religious ardor. Political emancipation was desirable, and the need for full civic equality be- came greater with the passing of the years, yet not for a moment would those Jews consider the purchasing of their rights as men at the price of their religion as Jews. In this both the Hassidim and the Mitnagdim were a unit. They would rather be Jews in penury and humiliation than renegades in affluence. This was the opinion ex- pressed by Rabbi Shneor Zalman, the noted Has- sidic leader, on the occasion of the French inva- sion in 1812: "Should Bonaparte win, the wealth of the Jews will be increased, and their civic po- sition will be raised. At the same time their hearts will be estranged from our Heavenly Father. Should, however, our Czar Alexander \vin, the Jewish hearts will draw nearer to our Heavenly Father, though the poverty of Israel may become greater and his position lower." Fol- lowing in the spirit of the Vilna Gaon, his dis- ciple, Rabbi Hayim Volozhiner, founded the fa- mous Yeshiba or Rabbinical School at Volozhin (1803) which for fully a century kept aglow the light of the Torah by educating thousands of young men in Talmudical literature, some of whom became the great rabbinical celebrities of Russian Jewry in the last one hundred years, while others, contrary to the hopes and expecta- tions of the founders of the institution, won much distinction as leaders of their people in the move- ment for secular enlightenment known as Has- kalah. This latter movement, of which more RUSSIA 99 will be said here presently, meritorious in many of its phases and aiming- at the welfare of the Jews, became in the heyday of its glory a snare and a delusion to Russian Israel. Its evil effects, how- ever, were mitigated by the intense religiosity and the devotion to Jewish ideals of both the Rab- binites and the Hassidim who held spiritual sway in Russia down to the last two decades of the nineteenth century. The darkened horizon of Russian Jewry be- came even more overcast with the accession of Nicholas I (1825-1855). This relentless despot possessed all the failings and weaknesses of his brother, with none of his virtues. His one aim was to transform the entire fabric of Russia's national life after the military pattern where sub- ordination to the government was to be exacted through strictest discipline. Individuality was to be crushed and uniformity in all .things language, dress, and if possible religion rigidly enforced. Where Alexander was an admirer of West-Euro- pean life Nicholas loathed and dreaded all things Western, seeing across the border line the hot-bed of political liberalism which had made possible the French Revolution and had given vent to those free ideas of government which influenced his own subjects to rise in the Decembrist revolution with which his own reign was inaugurated. Alex- ander had sought to establish Russia's prestige abroad by giving it a semblance of Occidentalism; Nicholas ruthlessly brushed aside whatever veneer of Western progressivity Russia affected, believ- ing that "the greatness of Russia abroad depend- ed on tyranny at home." His guiding principles were Autocracy, Russian Nationalism, and Rus- sian Orthodoxy, and it was to enforce these three things that he set out immediately upon his suc- cession to the throne. Endowed with great en- IOO HISTORY OF THE JEWS ergy and an iron will, Nicholas was convinced of his ability to carry out his programme of Russifi- cation throughout the empire. Protestants, Ro- man Catholics and Jews alike were to be thrown into the autocratic melting-pot to become of one flesh and one spirit with "Holy Russia." Of all his non-conformist subjects, the Jews presented the greatest obstacle to the realization of his plans, and the Czar knew it. He, therefore, turned his attention to them with all the energy and powder at his command. Hating them for their ancestral belief and mistrusting them for their racial clannishness, Nicholas still appreci- ated their economic usefulness to the country, and while he was anxious to lose them as Jews he would yet retain them as Christians. He deter- mined "to diminish the number of Jews in the empire," to use the expression of an official docu- ment, by encouraging the baptism of as many of them as possible and by so utterly ruining the others economically as would ultimately lead to their physical extermination and render their few surviving numbers of negligible importance. Henceforth all Jews persistently loyal to their faith were to be proscribed and marked as special targets for legislative persecution and official abuse, while the renegades among them were to receive special consideration and be placed upon a level of equality with Christian subjects. In ad- dition, baptised Jews were exempted from all tax- ation for three years, and, in like manner, Jewish murderers and other criminals were to be treated with special leniency if converted. As these meas- ures failed to bring the desired results, Nicholas decided upon a more direct attack upon the Jews, the severity of which, he felt assured, would soon bring the stiff-necked tribe into the fold, namely conscription in the army. Hitherto the Jews, like RUSSIA IOI the Russian merchant class, were free from mili- tary service upon the payment of a specified an- nual sum. On September 7, 1827, Nicholas is- sued an ukase requiring the Jews to render per- sonal service in the army, though they were to continue paying the exemption tax as before. Moreover, where Christians had to furnish only seven recruits for every thousand of their popula- tion, the Jewish quota was fixed at ten per every thousand with none of the customary exemptions allowed to the Christians. The Karaites alone were excepted in this legislation on the alleged ground showing the pitiful ignorance of Jewish history of the heads of that government that they had no share in the crucifixion of Jesus, their forefathers having emigrated from Palestine be- fore that event. These anti-Jewish discrimina- tions were plainly devised as a proselytizing scheme. Service in the Russian army, at no time a pleasant task, was a most cruel and debasing ordeal at this time. The term of service was twenty-five years, and those conscripted were con- veyed to distant provinces in the interior of Rus- sia, or to Siberia where, detached from their Jew- ish environment, they could the more easily be brought under the influence of the Christian Church. The age of conscription was from twelve to twenty-five and, as many of the adult and able- bodied men fled for fear of enforced baptism, most of the recruits were children. Even so, the Kahals, or Jewish communities, were unable to fitrnish the required number of recruits, and things grew from bad to worse since for every unfurnished conscript the Government exacted two in his stead. For lack of recruiting material the Kahals found themselves constrained to recruit invalids, cripples and old men. As even this meas- ure failed to supply the required number, the gov- IO2 HISTORY OF THE JEWS eminent, in 1853, authorized the Kahals to seize within their precincts all Jews belonging to other communities and not having the necessary pass- ports, and to furnish them as their own recruits. In this manner brother was set against brother, and no man was safe against seizure even in his home-town. Passports were often stolen to the undoing of their owners, and men were condemned as "poimaniki" (the seized ones) on the least sus- picion or provocation. Yet even this reign of ter- ror did not suffice to satisfy the bigoted Nicholas. To add to the horror he ordered the seizure and abduction of children, boys of twelve or younger. These, known as "Cantonists," were snatched from the arms of their mothers and conveyed in large groups to distant Russian provinces like Perm and Nizhni-Novgorod, where they were placed in peasant families there to be baptized and grow up as members of the "true faith." Many of these conscripts held on to their Jewish beliefs despite their alien and Christian surround- ings, often at the risk of being flogged, tortured and starved. For thirty years this dreadful sys- tem remained in force, Alexander II abandoning it in 1857 only at the continued remonstrance and loathing of the more civilized countries of West- ern Europe, but not until it had done its worst in wrecking the Jewish household in Russia morally and physically, and leaving an open wound in the heart of the martyred people which would not heal for many years to come. Great as was the resistance of the Russian Jews against these conversionist methods, and futile as these methods proved as a ..whole in bringing about the results looked for by Nicholas, it is nev- ertheless true that a great many of them were not strong enough to withstand the sufferings thus heaped upon them, or to resist the allurements RUSSIA IO3 held out to them by way of material gain and po- litical advancement in case of their baptism. When Dr. Max Lilienthal came to Russia in 1839 he found that there were no less than forty thou- sand such converts in Petersburg and Moscow. He gives a graphic account of the moral suffer- ings endured by those people in the following words : "I made the acquaintance of a great many of them, and they feel inexpressible pangs and tor- tures of conscience. While on the one hand they try to appease their uneasiness by the fair pros- pect that is opened for their children, by the sat- isfaction that they are exempt from the continual reactions and exceptional laws to which their for- mer co-religionists are exposed, on the other hand, when in the company of Jews, they show them- selves so awkward and uneasy that we cannot help but pity them. They despise the heathen idolatry of the Russian Church, but do not dare, for fear of Siberia, to betray themselves by a sin- gle word. Their heart still clings with all the Jewish fervor to the holy Shema Yisrael, but nev- ertheless they feel attracted by the wealth and luxury that surround them. They try to conceal their Jewish jargon and do not wish to be re- minded of their Jewish origin, but nevertheless on the Jewish New Year's Day and Day of Atonement remorse pursues them like an evil spectre, and thus their life is one of uneasiness, repentance, luxury and apprehension. "The emperor appointed some of the converted Jews to high offices in the state, in order to al- lure others to follow the example of their treach- ery; thus one of his private secretaries and coun- selors of state, with whom he liked best to work, was the converted Jew Posen. Another, Feigin, was the right hand of the late Minister of IO4 HISTORY OF THE JEWS Finance, Count Kankrin, and in trade and busi- ness a great many acquired wealth and influence. There are but three Jewish families who as Jews and dentists were permitted to remain in St. Petersburg: Two brothers Wagenheim, of whom the elder one is the dentist of the emperor, and Wallerstein, all of them holding many appoint- ments in the different imperial, civil and military academies; and a widow, Mrs. Brown, lives there as midwife, attached to the imperial household." It was surely one of the many hoaxes history every now and then perpetrates upon those in high places, that none but the hated and despised Jews were found eligible and capable enough to attend to Nicholas' imperial teeth, and that the very members of his household, who later them- selves led in the attack on the Jewish race, were brought into the world through the skill and abil- ity of a contemned Jewish midwife. But the Jews persisted in their refusal to be "reduced" in number. Like the Children of Is- rael in Pharaoh's day, they rather kept on multi- plying and increasing despite all the oppressive governmental measures and their dire economic distress. In vain did Nicholas resort to new op- pressions, each of them more tyrannical and in- human than the foregoing. Applying to the Jews of the Grodno, Kiev and Podolia Governments the act of expulsion carried out by Alexander I in the Governments of Vitebsk and Mohilev, he caused thousands of them to be expelled from their rural homes and to be thrown into the al- ready overcrowded cities and towns. The osten- sible reason given, if any reason was necessary, was that the Jews through their dealings in liquor, * See "Max Lilienthal, American Rabbi, Life and Writings," by David Philipson, New York, 1915. RUSSIA IOS had been the cause of increasing drunkenness among the peasantry, and that by lending out money on usury they had brought about the lat- ter's economic ruin. To be sure, the expulsion of the Jews from the villages did not make the peas- ants drink any the less, nor did it improve their financial condition. The liquor trade did not di- minish by passing into the hands of Christians, and the Christian money-lender proved more grasping and rapacious than the Jew ever dared to be. Nicholas, however, was more concerned in the ruination of the Jews than in the improve- ment of the lot of his Christian subjects. The expulsions continued with ruthless severity. And to add to the haplessness of their lot, a scheme was devised whereby the Jew was to be branded not merely as the stepchild and outcast of the Russian nation but as its one source of danger in the most vital concern of the country, its safety against a foreign enemy. The Jews were namely accused as the one element in Russia that could not be relied upon in case of war. Accordingly, in 1843, the order was promulgated forbidding Jews to remain within fifty versts (about thirty- four miles) of the Prussian and Austrian fron- tiers, the immediate pretext being that they were carrying on a contraband trade with the Germans and Austrians. The pleadings of the Jews that they were entirely innocent of the accusation, added to the petitions" of their Christian neigh- bors and the protest of the Czar's own Ministers who pointed out that the enforcement of the order would involve an annual loss in customs duties of a million four hundred and sixty thousand rou- bles, were unavailing. The Jews had to go, and fully one hundred and fifty thousand souls in the affected zones were thrown out of their homes and made to swell the already dense city popula- IO6 HISTORY OF THE JEWS tions. Th cry of despair which arose from the wretched refugees as they were made to wander over the face of the earth in quest of shelter, stripped of their earthly possessions, with their old people and little children dying from expos- ure and starvation, reached across the boundary and raised a storm of indignation throughout civ- ilized Europe. In vain were mass meetings held, resolutions adopted, petitions forwarded; in vain did the leading Jews of France, Germany and England intercede in behalf of their unfortunate brethren ; in vain did Moses Montefiore go to Rus- sia (1846) to plead with the autocrat the cause of his co-religionists. Nicholas remained un- moved, the agitation of Western Europe, if any- thing, only confirming him in his resolve to deal with his Jewish sla.ves at his own pleasure. The one seemingly bright episode in the history of the Russian Jews under Nicholas which buoyed up the drooping spirits of the people for a time at least, was the attempt at colonization in South- ern Russia and Siberia. The idea of Jewish col- onization had originated with Alexander I who, acting upon the suggestion of the poet Derzhavin, himself an enemy of the Jewish race, that such colonies be formed "to check the selfish occupa- tions of the Jews" in White Russia, in 1802 ap- pointed a special commission to which Jewish del- egates were invited. As a result of its two years' labor a colonization programme was drawn up by which the government undertook to aid Jewish agriculturists to acquire land and implements upon the payment of four hundred roubles per family. The Jewish settlements, however, were to be sep- arated from those of the Christians, and Jews could not purchase land in a Christian colony. Following the adoption of this programme four colonies were established (1807) in the govern- RUSSIA IO7 ment of Kherson, by Jews of Vitebsk and Mohi- lev. But it was soon discovered that the land thus acquired was best suited for cattle raising and for agriculture on a large scale, rather than for small farming such as these colonists could carry on with their limited resources. There was a dearth of provisions and housing accommodations, and the climatic conditions of those regions brought sickness and death to many of the settlers. Of the ten thousand would-be colonists, great num- bers were compelled to return to White Russia, and a stop was put to the entire scheme by the ukase of April 6, 1810. Nicholas now determined upon a renewal of the scheme, not indeed from a desire to favor the Jews but as part of the programme for their ab- sorption in the Christian Church. The removal of many thousands of them to distant parts of Russia with the financial aid of the government, and under its protection, ought surely to create a sentiment among them more favorable to the Czar's plans for their religious salvation. Such is the only motive ascribable for this ostensibly merciful scheme of the ruler who on all other oc- casions showed himself in the role of a blood- thirsty tyrant. An elaborate plan was adopted in 1835 f r an extensive Jewish colonization in New Russia. Colonies were to consist each of a min- imum of forty persons and permission was grant- ed all such would-be farmers to buy or rent land from Christians or from the Crown. They were also to be freed from certain taxes, and were, be- sides, to have the right of sending their children to the government schools, academies and univer- sities. The Jews, however, remained indifferent to the plan, probably remembering the disastrous results of the colonization scheme of Alexander I. Nicholas then decided to try the experiment in IO8 HISTORY OF THE JEWS distant Siberia and, in the following year (1836), assigned for this purpose 15,141 dessiatines of land in the Governments of Tobolsk and Omsk. By this time the Russian Jews had experienced a change of feeling toward the plan. Siberian col- onization meant removal from their present crowded surroundings and the ever menacing proximity of their unfriendly Christian neighbors. It meant a new life under conditions making for physical well-being in the free atmosphere of those boundless Asiatic steppes. Spurred on by the enthusiastic approval of some of their intel- lectual leaders like Isaac Baer Levinsohn and B. Mandelstamm, and the encouragement of the Christian populace, many thousands of them made ready to join in the new exodus. From Courland Elias Mitauer and Meyer Mendelssohn headed a group of three hundred and fifty persons as the pioneers of the movement, to be followed soon by an army of about five thousand more. Count Kankrin, the Czar's Minister, who was charged with the execution of the enterprise, received the approval of the emperor in all of his plans. But just as the thousands of would-be agriculturists were on their way to the New Canaan Nicholas's mind was changed. "The abode of the criminals was thought too good for the Jews." On January 5, 1837, the autocrat ordered "the transfer of Jews to Siberia to be stopped," and at once the Minister of the Interior, Count Bludov, sent word to all the Governors and Governors-General of Siberia to seize the travellers wherever they might be found and send them under military convoy to Kherson. In true Muscovite fashion these hun- dreds of families were dragged on foot across the Siberian deserts, the knout ever ready to descend upon their fatigued bodies. Famished and at- tacked by disease, many of them succumbed to the RUSSIA IO9 hardships of the journey, and those who did final- ly arrive in Kherson were so worn out physically as to be unable for some time to take up any kind of manual work. There they languished for a long time awaiting their further disposal at the hands of the government, in the meantime falling a burden upon the local inhabitants. Not until 1840 was a final arrangement made to remove the unfortunates to several colonies within the prov- ince. But there their real misery was first to be- gin. Says Harold Frederic in his book, "The New Exodus": "The story of these [colonizing] attempts is one of the most melancholy in the whole unhappy record of the race at once melan- choly and grimly grotesque. . . . Great colonies of Jews, sometimes numbering hundreds of fam- ilies, were now gathered up promiscuously, trans- ported across to the desolate prairie lands of Nov- orossiysk (New Russia), and dumped down upon the unbroken soil to thrive by agriculture. In any case the experiment could have promised scant success. As it was managed, it became simply murderous. A staff of officials, almost as numerous as the colonists themselves, was ap- pointed to control things. Each family was sup- posed to be granted one hundred and fifty rou- bles, but of this the officials gave the family only thirty. The rest purported to have been expend- ed in buying land, farm machinery, building houses, etc. But seven-eights of it was really stolen, and such colonists as did not die on the road found only groups of shanties not fit for pigs, and implements which broke in their hands. Here, under the control of brutal officials who knouted the incapable and could not advise or in- struct the industrious, these unhappy town Jews died of epidemics or starvation. The chief dig- ging they did was digging of graves." HO HISTORY OF THE JEWS The magnitude of this scheme may be judged from the fact that, despite the failures which at- tended the experiment, the expulsions, deaths and desertions of many of the colonists, there were in 1845 no I GSS than fifteen colonies in the govern- ment of Kherson, containing more than twelve thousand persons. The colonies founded in the Yekaterinoslav government fared little better. In his report to the Czar in 1847, Baron Stempel, the superintendent of those colonies, stated that on their arrival in Yekaterinoslav the colonists found that no provision had been made for their hous- ing, the few old houses being altogether inade- quate for their number and, besides, unfit to live in. They were not allowed to repair these build- ings, or to seek shelter in the neighboring vil- lages until the Spring, as Stempel had suggested, the Cossacks driving back all those who attempted to do so. Nevertheless, even there the colonies began to thrive after a while, fifteen of them hav- ing been founded by 1856, with a population of 766 families. Since then the number of such set- tlements has greatly increased, though it had to be done largely through private initiative rather than by government aid or encouragement, and many of them were founded in Western Russia, in the very "Pale of Settlement," there being in 1870 no less than 216 of them with a population of 34,475 and a stretch of land covering 91,398 acres. Despite untold hardships and innumerable drawbacks, ukases and pogroms and the operation of the May-laws of 1882 which hindered the prog- ress of Jewish colonization considerably, there were in Russia, in 1900, fully one hundred thou- sand Jewish agriculturists, scattered within 170 colonies, besides many small farmers, many of them even tilling the soil of the Christian land- holders. No better argument than this is needed RUSSIA III to disprove the oft-repeated accusation that the Russian Jew is averse to manual labor and par- ticularly to farm work. In the meantime the expulsion of Jews went on relentlessly, and what was adopted as the standing policy of the government became the pastime and the perennial source of blackmail and extortion of the chinovniki or lower Russian officialdom. Driven from the villages into the cities, Nicholas yet decided that even the cities of the "Pale" were too good for the Jews, and accordingly went on with a plan, to himself unclear and uncertain, of keeping them out of certain great and important centres while permitting their stay in others. They were thus expelled from Kiev in 1827, from Nikolayev and Sevastopol in 1829, from Trok, Vilna (at the instigation of Karaites) in 1830, and in 1845 from Knyshin at the instance of the Christian guilds of the place. In nearly every in- stance such expulsions took place against the bet- ter judgment of the Czar's advisers and to the certain injury of the town thus affected. Nicho- las, however, was mainly interested in making the life of the Jews so miserable, and their economic position so untenable, as to force them to take refuge in baptism. Little did the despot realize that where Torquemada and the powerful Span- ish Inquisition failed he could never hope to suc- ceed. Just when their physical life was passing through its darkest hours, the lamp of their spir- itual life was burning brightest, a sublime mock- ery at the futility of human vanity and arrogance. The Czar, however, persisted in his course and failing in one plan his fertile brain was quick to decide upon another. What was probably the most ingenious and ambitious, though at the same time the most hopeless of his anti-Jewish activi- ties, was his programme for the secularization of 112 HISTORY OF THE JEWS Jewish education. Russian Jewry, then as now, was the most cultured element in the empire, their intellectual acumen and firm ethical character be- ing the result of generations of mental and spir- itual cultivation. True, their education was large- ly Talmudic and religious, the Heder (Hebrew School) and Yeshibah (rabbinical college) being the only mediums of instruction, yet compared with the millions of totally ignorant peasants within the empire the Jews were a delightful ex- ception, few of them being so illiterate as to be unable to read or even write Hebrew or at least the Judaeo-German dialect, and some of them were acquiring great proficiency in the Russian, Polish and German languages and literatures. The Mendelssohnian Aiifklaerung movement, known as Haskalah, which will be discussed here at greater length, had found its way into Russia and dazzled the eyes of many aspirants to higher education who saw in German culture and Ger- man ideals, as illustrated in the works of Goethe, Schiller and Lessing, the finest expression of an age noted for its rationalism and romanticism. The great mass of Russian Jewry, however, was de- void of all secular learning, steeped in fanaticism and given to superstitious practices. Their He- brew schools persisted in the educational methods that had been in vogue in Poland for many gen- erations, and while they satisfied the masses \vho knew no better, and the rabbis who were on prin- ciple opposed to all innovations, they were a thorn in the flesh of many of the aufgeklaerte or en- lightened ones who saw the salvation of the Jew and his eventual emancipation only in a Euro- pean education. Their hopes found expression in the agitation for school-reforms carried on by Dr. Frank as early as 1800, and by Isaac Baer Levin- sohn who in 1823, in his German letter to Grand RUSSIA 113 Duke Constantine, and in his Hebrew work "Teudah be-Yisrael" (published in Vilna in 1828), urged the advisability of founding schools where besides Hebrew and Talmud the Jewish youth might also be instructed in the Russian and other languages, taught a trade and preferably agricul- ture. This book was received with great enthusi- asm by the Jews of Western Russia where, espe- cially in Vilna, it found a ready sale, and under its influence many young Jews took up the study of Hebrew grammar which until then had been neglected in Russia, as well as modern languages and the sciences. On the other hand the book en- raged the ultra-religious among both the Rab- binites of Lithuania and the Hassidim in South- Russia who frowned upon Levinsohn as an athe- ist and declared his book as a danger to the re- ligious interests of the Jews. Nicholas perceived in this situation an oppor- tunity for the furtherance of his own plans. He 1 had reached the conclusion that the main stum- bling-block to the complete Russification of the Jews and their Christianization lay in the hold the Talmud had on them, and the Talmud was to the ignorant Czar the embodiment of all those iniquitous doctrines and evil practices which he believed obtained among the Jews. An entire literature had by this time been produced in Rus- sia to prove the corrupting influence of Talmud- ical Judaism and its menace to the welfare of the land. The Jew-hating writers ascribed to the Jews beliefs and customs that had never existed, some of them even going so far as to state in their ignorance that the Tephilin and Zisit were a sort of dish very delectable among the Jews. In 1830 appeared Bishop Chiarini's French work "La Theorie du Judaisme," in which he attacked the Talmud as a work of fanatical and immoral 114 HISTORY OF THE JEWS teachings, which sanctions wrong-doing against Christians and the use of Christian blood for the Passover. For this he was rewarded by the Czar with a substantial sum of money. A Jewish con- vert of Vitebsk, Asher Temkin, published in 1833 a Hebrew work "Derek Selulah" (The Paved Road) in which the Talmud is likewise grossly abused, and by order of the Czar it was trans- lated into Russian and distributed among the Rus- sian clergy. Again, in 1837, Alexander McCaul of London began the publication of his "Old Paths" with its bitter denunciations and falsifi- cations of the Talmud, which was soon translated into German and was circulated in Russia. To exterminate the evil at its base seemed to Nicho- las the only logical step: to diminsh, as much as possible, the study of the Talmud among the Jews and, better still, to exterminate the Talmud itself, and prevent its circulation. A censorship was set up (1836) composed of the Crown-rab- bis * who were to examine every section of the Talmud and strike out all objectionable and suspi- cious matter, thus crippling its usefulness. Other ancient works of the Talmudic literature were subjected to a like treatment, and many of them were annihilated by fire. At the same time the government ordered the closing of nearly all the Hebrew printing establishments, more than twenty of them being thus abolished with the exception of three, namely those in Warsaw, Vilna and Zhitomir. Levinsohn's plea for school-reforms in his "Teudah be-Yisrael" was thoroughly appreciated by the Czar as being in line with his own plans, * The rabbis appointed by the government, or elected by the people, to attend to purely governmental affairs, such as the regis- tration of births and deaths among the Jews, etc. RUSSIA 115 and he rewarded him with a gift of one thousand roubles. The idea of having separate schools for the Jews, under the supervision of Christians, where a Christological influence could be exerted over the tender youths, received his hearty appro- bation. He who looked upon all education for his Christian subjects as a danger to the State and who did his best to make illiteracy the outstand- ing feature of his empire, by limiting the educa- tional facilities of the country, assuredly would not have approved of an extensive school system for the much-hated Jews except as a useful in- strument for their ultimate conversion. Before long an occasion arose which convinced him that the Jews were themselves ready for such educa- tional reforms. The Jewish community of Riga had petitioned Count Uvarov, the Minister of Ed- ucation when the latter passed through their city in 1838, for permission to open a modern school for boys and girls in which, besides Jewish his- tory, the Bible and Hebrew, instruction shall also be given, under the direction of a Christian ped- agogue, in the Russian language. This unusual programme for a Hebrew school so impressed it- self upon the Minister that he consented to place the matter before the Czar, and the latter saw in this the long looked-for opportunity. The above- mentioned Dr. Max Lilienthal of Munich, a young man of but 23 years of age, had been elected as the principal of the school, and he fa- vorably impressed Uvarov on whom he called when passing through St. Petersburg (1839) on his way to Riga. When the school was dedicated in the following year, Lilienthal's German ad- dress, which was printed in pamphlet form, pleased the Czar so greatly that he presented him with a precious diamond ring. It was this same Lilienthal on whom the Czar's choice fell as the Il6 HISTORY OF THE JEWS tool for the carrying out of his designs upon the Jews. The plan was to have hundreds of schools, ele- mentary and high, opened throughout the "Pale." That the government's true motive was anything but the real welfare of the Jews can be seen from the report presented by Uvarov to the emperor in 1841, bearing on the "Commission for Finding Ways and Means for the Radical Transformation of the Jews of Russia" which had met by order of the Czar toward the end of 1840. In it the Min- ister plainly stated that the real and secret inten- tion of the government in its educational plans was to weaken the influence of the Talmud, the cause of the fanaticism and corrupt morals of the Jews, and to bring the Jews closer to the Russian people and the Greek Church." Lilienthal, to be sure, little suspected the true intentions of the gov- ernment. He was himself convinced of the need of the proposed school reforms, was confident that these reforms, if carried through, would lead to the ultimate emancipation of his brethren, and was happy at the thought that he had been found worthy to be the chosen instrument of so impor- tant and historic an occasion. Greatly encour- aged by Count Uvarov, and finding himself even more so by a number of the Maskilim like Nissen Rosenthal of Vilna and Benjamin Mandelstamm of Odessa, Lilienthal, the cultured German Jew, found it hard to believe that the bulk of Russian Jewry would reject a plan by which they were to benefit so greatly and which, even at its worst, as he saw it, could result in but scant injury to their spiritual interests. On his arrival in Vilna, in 1842, he was enthusiastically received by the lead- ers and the masses of the community, his proposal DR. MAX LILIENTHAL (1815-1882) RUSSIA was listened to with great deference, and upon his solemn assurance that he would abandon his office the moment he was convinced that the gov- ernment's intentions were to undermine the faith of the Jews, won them over completely. It, how- ever, took Lilienthal three more years before he could apprehend the real motive of the govern- ment. When the truth finally dawned on him, when the shameful proposition of conversion \vas even broached to him personally, he, true to his word, left his post and shook the dust of bloody Russia from his feet (1845) to nn d in the United States a place of honor and distinction as one of the foremost pioneers of Reform Judaism in America. His Vilna triumph was short-lived and soon Lilienthal was to come face to face with the bitter reality that, aside from the few overly-enthusi- astic and impracticable Maskilim, the millions of Russian Je\vs were averse to having the govern- ment interfere with their inner and spiritual ef- forts by foisting upon them its educational meas- ures. The soul of Russian Jewry sensed the dan- ger lurking in the imperial scheme. They clearly perceived that education without emancipation ivould lead to apostasy. As long as the Jew was discriminated against, excluded from the profes- sions, barred from the villages, shut out from the interior cities, forbidden to move about at will, overloaded with extra duties and burdens and de- prived even of the least of privileges enjoyed by the meanest of moujiks of what avail could be to him a liberal education, the possession of the knowledge of the good things of life without the ability to reach out for them? In their situation ignorance alone was bliss. Enlightenment with- out equality would make for despair and inevi- Il8 HISTORY OF THE JEWS tably lead to baptism.* Like true men they spurned the gift and retained their self-respect. And since Lilienthal was in the service of the em- peror, and close to the government, he was to them the personification of all the malice, hatred and hypocrisy they knew the Russian regime to stand for. Moreover, as a Jew himself, and en- gaged in a nefarious scheme for their dejudaiza- tion, he was in their eyes a traitor and informer, an object of loathing and summary revenge. Lil- ienthal realized this as soon as he arrived in Minsk. Unlike Vilna, no demonstrations greeted him on his arrival and no deputations came to see him. At the meeting which he succeeded in hold- ing after considerable difficulty, he was hooted and jeered at and called Okher Y Israel (trou- bler of Israel, or traitor). On his way from the meeting place stones \vere thrown at him, and murderous threats were openly made to him. The authorities had to intervene and many of his as- sailants were jailed. The failure of his Minsk mission immediately reacted upon Vilna, too, * That Lilienthal was himself not unconscious of the truth upon which these sentiments were based, can be gleaned from his fine plea to Count Uvaroy as reproduced in his highly interesting book, "My Travels in Russia." (See Philipson, "Max Lilienthal, American Rabbi, Life and Writings," New York, 1915, pp. 196-197) : "Every obstacle will be overcome readily if His Majesty will grant the Jews at once full and complete emancipation. This is the only solution of the riddle that puzzles so many eminent statesmen. . . . There is no reproach whatever to be made to the Jews, but now the gov- ernment assumes the title of a 'Christian State', and all the exer- tions made by the Jews have proved abortive and discouraged a great many parents from sending their children to universities, this being the sure path towards future apostasy. Let the emperor at once proclaim the emancipation of the Jews, and let him then issue any ukase whatever to begin the work of Jewish Reform in earnest, to cut short the exclusive study of the Talmud, and al- though totally unacquainted with the character of the Russian Jews, I dare to avouch that in ten years hence they will surpass the most sanguine expectations of the imperial government." See also Lilienthal's statement in his article in "Asmonean," X. 100, also quoted by Philipson (Ibid. p. 58), RUSSIA where a crowd of thousands of infuriated fanatics crowded into the court of the synagogue where a meeting was to be held. Bloodshed was prevented only by the arrest of the P amass (president) and the dispersion of the mob by the fire companies who, at the order of the chief of police, turned the water hoses of their engines upon the crowd. It was evident that, whatever favorable turns his future propaganda in the "Pale" might take, the plan, as a whole, was doomed to failure. Nor can it be denied that Lilienthal himself was largely re- sponsible for the ill-success of his mission. Try- ing to please all parties, he only succeeded in of- fending them all. His ostentatious piety when among the orthodox exposed him, a smooth-shaven German-speaking Jew, to the charge of hypocrisy, while his too great attention to the rich Jews and his neglect of the poor Maskilim alienated the only party in Russia which was entirely in sympathy with his views and plans, and from which alone he could expect valuable services. Even Benjamin Mandelstamm, his greatest admirer at first, later turned from him in disgust, while the noted He- braist, Mordecai Aaron Guenzburg, who at one time stood close to him, went so far as to merci- lessly attack him in a Hebrew pamphlet, "Maggid Emet" (Speaker of Truth), which appeared in Leipzig in 1843. The booklet is important in that it indicates the real cause of the diffidence with which his mission was met: the departure of the halo which the intellectual Russian Jew had been wont to place around the educated German Jew. In Lilienthal they expected to find a paragon of both Germanic culture and Hebraic learning, yet on coming in close touch with him they failed to discover the signs of greatness they were inclined to look for in a graduate from a German uni- versity, at the same time perceiving his in- I2O UlStOKY 1)1? THE JEWS adequacy as a Jewish preacher and, what to them was most important of all, his insufficiency as a Hebrew scholar. The former disappointed them, the latter repelled them. Henceforth the German- Jewish rabbi and scholar could meet with but scanty recognition in Russia. On the other hand, even had Lilienthal suc- ceeded among- the Jews, he doubtless would have met with his greatest obstacle from the Russian government itself. For to make possible the real- ization of his plan it was necessary to import sev- eral hundred capable Jewish pedagogues from Ger- many, since no such voluminous teaching material was at that time to be had in Russia, and, in- deed, Lilienthalhad already received hundreds of applications from men in Germany who were anxious to come to Russia. But here the govern- ment began to frown upon the entire scheme. Nicholas, who hated all things Western, began to fear that the influx into Russia of a small army of German Jewish pedagogues would result in the spread of Western, and mayhap, revolutionary ideas among his subjects something which he would under no circumstances permit. He there- fore decided to circumvent this plan and to exe- cute it instead in a way all his own. And now began the enforced "education" of the Russian Jew which constitutes one of the darkest periods in the history of that long-suffering people. By a decree issued in 1844, the Czar ordered the estab- lishment of elementary schools in all the cities of the "Pale" and of two rabbinical seminaries in the cities of Vilna and Zhitomir. In these lower schools, of which about two thousand were founded, the instruction of the Talmud was nom- inally on the programme, but w r as in reality a mere bait for the unwary. Christian principals and Christian teachers were in charge of most of RUSSIA 121 the instruction, endeavoring with might and main to create an anti-Jewish and pro-Christian at- mosphere. Jews were employed to teach Hebrew only, but their position was precarious and their pay niggardly. Since the Jews would not will- ingly send their children to these schools, the authorities had to resort to force, and there arose a struggle between the government and a people whom hundreds of years of oppression had made cunning and adepts in the art of evading an in- tolerant law. Children were dragged from their homes and driven to the schools by the police offi- cers; substitution was therefore practiced, bribery was resorted to, and thousands of pupils were en- rolled who never saw the inside of the government school. Again brother was set against brother in Israel, the poor and orphaned being made to take the place of the children of the rich. Bitterness and distrust, rather than gratitude, was the result- ant sentiment toward the government. As for the rabbinical seminaries their failure became mani- fest from the very start by their management, their methods and scope of instruction and, above all, the arrogant and decidedly un-Jewish attitude of teachers and students alike. An apostate Jew was made head of the Vilna seminary the insti- tution which was to send forth religious leaders in Israel, while many of the teachers in both schools were coarse and uneducated Christians. Since no congregation would employ "rabbis" trained in this fashion, the graduates of these seminaries had to look to the government for sup- port and employment, and not a few of them con- verted to Christianity. What Nicholas and Uvarov believed to be an act of royal grace to the lowly and benighted Jews, was turned into gall and wormwood. And to add to the hollow- ness of this mockery, the Jews themselves had to 122 HISTORY OF THE JEWS pay for this royal "favor" by the imposition of special taxes in addition to the general taxation of which they had to bear an equal share. Even the one or two acts of Nicholas seemingly favoring the Jews, such as his stand upholding the Jews in the ritual-murder trial of Velizh in 1835, and his friendly utterance in 1839 that "they [the Jews] are my children and my servants altogether," cannot be taken as an earnest of his desire to aid them. In the ritual-murder case in which forty-two leading Jews of the city were im- prisoned upon the accusation of an immoral woman that they had murdered her boy for the use of his blood on the Passover, the grounds were found to be so flimsy that the Council of State could take no other action than to acquit the ac- cused and even Nicholas had to fall in with their decision. That expressions of friendship should be made for the victims at the same time as more weapons were being forged for their destruction, was a policy quite of a piece with the entire hypo- critical record of that monarch. It served the purpose of putting the Jews off their guard, as was the case with the proposed educational re- forms when Lilienthal was inveigled into believ- ing in the good intentions of the government, and when the Jewish communities were led to put faith in the "Commission on Jewish Education" which met in St. Petersburg in 1843 an d to which they had been ordered to send four of their lead- ing representatives.* At no time was there an abatement of the persecutions, new measures being constantly devised to render the lot of the Jews increasingly miserable and more helpless. In 1844 the Czar abolished the Kahals, the last vestige of Jewish autonomous life under the old * The Jewish delegates elected were Rabbi Isaac, head of the Volozhin Yeshibah, Rabbi Mendel Schneersohn, head of the Has- sidim, Dr. Basilius (Bezalel) Stern and Israel Heilprin of Odessa. RUSSIA 123 Polish regime. Henceforth the government was to deal not with an organized representative body of Jews but with each of them individually which, under the prevailing circumstances, meant the opening up of new and endless sources of extor- tion for the petty officials. At the same time the government turned its attention to the melam- med'un, or Hebrew teachers, whom it regarded as the greatest stumbling-block to the programme of Russification and whom it accordingly forbade to carry on their educational work. The latter persisted in their task at the risk of martyrdom. Another oppressive measure was the prohibition to wear the traditional Jewish dress. A special tax was levied in 1844 on a ll wno would continue to wear the Yarmolka, or skull-cap, and in 1853 the men were enjoined from wearing their long coats as well as their peot (side-locks) while, in the following year, the women were forbidden to shave their heads on being married, as was the Jewish custom of those days. Numerous Jews were seized on the streets of the larger cities and relieved of their ear-locks or humiliated by hav- ing their coat-tails ripped off. Still the Jews persisted in their accustomed ways, preferring the martydrom that goes with constancy to the yield- ing of an iota of what to them was part of their sacred religion. In the end they prevailed even against the bloody rule of the "Iron Czar," who found himself baffled and impotent against their united will and purpose. In the midst of another ritual murder trial (Saratov) Nicholas died, in 1855, and with the accession of Alexander II the horizon of the Jews became all at once brightened and there began for them the unfoldment of a new life. The next quarter of a century was to see the darkened habitations of the Jewish "Pale" flooded with the sunshine of heightened hopes and glori- 124 HISTORY OF THE JEWS ous expectations coming in the wake of the com- paratively mild regime of the "Czar-Liberator." Alexander II (reigned 1855-1881) was the very antipode of his father in his tastes and inclina- tions, and in many important respects resembled his uncle, the emperor Alexander I. Like the lat- ter he was an admirer of Western life and thought, having been influenced in his liberal and altruistic attitude by his tutor, the poet Zhukov- sky. A man of open mind and warm sympathies, he was not blind to the many evils of his father's administration, and upon his succession to the throne was eager to undo them. His reign was inaugurated toward the close of the Crimean War, and the inglorious part played by Russia in that struggle was to the young emperor an indication of the futility of all Russian autocratic preten- sions when placed in opposition to the resistless sweep of Western progress. To save Russia for Europe she must herself follow in the footsteps of her great Western neighbors, and he was there- fore willing to grant many needed reforms, infuse a new spirit of liberalism and tolerance in religion and in government, and in every way possible broaden the horizon of a nation still fettered in body and soul. In the thousand-year old history of Russian darkness Alexander II stands out among the other Czars as the one heroic figure who, by a stroke of his pen, emancipated twenty- two millions of serfs, abolished capital punish- ment, curtailed the hereditary rights of the clergy, introduced a modern judicial sistem, minimized the evil of corporal punishment then in vogue in the army and the civil administration, inaugurated uni- versal conscription, and cut short the term of mili- tary service, which, under his predecessors, had been for twenty-five years and often for a life- time. Transportation facilities were increased. RUSSIA 125 mail and telegraph service was improved, educa- tional opportunities were multiplied, freedom of speech and of the press was granted in a liberal measure. A new, wonderful and hitherto un- dreamed of era began for the great Empire of the North, and the Jews, too, were to come in for a share of the manifold blessings. The first favorable measure of untold magni- tude for the Jews was the abolition, in 1857, of the Cantonists' school to which Jewish children were forcibly sent for military training and eventual Christianization. The next step taken was the throwing open of all elementary and high schools and the universities to the Jewish youth. Instead of setting up separate schools for the Jews and thus placing them in a class apart, widening the gulf between Jews and Christians, the new measure helped to place the Jews upon an equal footing with the non-Jews, thereby lending im- petus to the hope that the day of their complete emancipation was not far off. By the laws of 1859, 1861, and again 1865, freedom of travel and sojourn in the inner Russian provinces was granted to Jewish university graduates, profes- sional men, wholesale merchants, manufacturers and artisans. True, these were still "exceptional" measures, granted not as rights for the many but as privileges for the few, and affecting only an infinitesimal portion of the three million Jews then living in the empire. All the other discriminatory laws were still rigorously executed and there were added some new oppressive measures of a mild nature, such as the law of 1855, that after twenty years only seminary graduates could become rabbis, and the one of 1856 placing the Hebrew schools (Hedarim) and their teachers (melamme- dim) under strict governmental control. So, too, even the few privileges granted were not free 126 HISTORY OF THE JEWS from ambiguity, providing- many a loop-hole to the petty officials for the practice of abuse and extor- tion. Nevertheless, there is little reason to doubt the real benevolence of the emperor's motive. Progress in Russia necessarily had to be slow, and the transition from the reign of darkness and ter- ror of Nicholas to one of complete enlightenment could not be accomplished in a day, at least not under a bureaucratic regime where the forces of intolerance are ever on the alert and struggling for mastery. Alexander, too, may have cherished hopes for the gradual absorption of the Jews within the Christian population, what autocratic Christian ruler in Russia was ever free from such hopes and designs? For the Jews, at all events, the new spirit of tolerance was to result in a rad- ical transformation of their life both within and without. Where Nicholas* persecutions brought about only an increase of prejudice, enmity and hate among the Christians, Alexander's liberal policy reacted favorably upon the non-Jew, caus- ing him to regard this persecuted race with greater tolerance, and even a measure of sym- pathy. A number of leading publicists and high officials now took up the cudgels for the Jews against their traducers. Katkoff defended them in his newspaper, the "Russkiya Vyedomosti," while Pirogov, the eminent pedagogue and superintend- ent of education for the Odessa and Kiev districts, actively interested himself in their welfare, encour- aged poor Jewish students to enter the Kiev uni- versity by establishing a stipendiary fund for their benefit, and took a hand in the reorganization of the Jewish schools. Those established through the initiative of Uvarov and Lilienthal were to undergo a radical change. Jews took the place of Christians as principals, and the curriculum was so changed as to allow a wider programme of RUSSIA 127 studies with a view to the special needs of the Jewish pupils. Steps were also taken to estab- lish schools in the Jewish agricultural colonies in Southern Russia, where Marcus Gurovich elabo- rated a plan for graded schools in charge of Jew- ish teachers, having due regard for the religious sensibilities of the pupils. Ten such schools for both boys and girls were opened there in 1868. A prominent part in the development of these favorable changes was played by the "Learned Jew" ("Uchony Yevrei") attached to the gov- ernment, Moses Berlin (Shklov, 1821 -St. Peters- burg, 1888), who splendidly combined in his person the best of European culture acquired by him at the universities of Koenigsberg and Bonn with the thorough Hebraic and Tal- mudical training he received in his native city. An efficient pedagogue and a scholarly writer on a variety of subjects in both He- brew and Russian, Berlin was in 1856 called to St. Petersburg as an advisor to the government on matters Jewish, and his influence was greatly felt in much of the legislation enacted by Alex- ander II in favor of the Jews. His was the role of a Shtadlan, or "Court-Jew," of a superior order, one who exercised his influence over the St. Petersburg officialdom not through his wealth but by dint of a charming personality and authorita- tive schoralship. His pen was ever at the service of his people whenever attacks on the Jews and their faith appeared in the press, and he repeat- edly served on the delegation of Jewish repre- sentatives which appeared before both Alexander II and Alexander III to plead for the Jews. To him, too, was due in large measure the organiza- tion and upbuilding of the Imperial Public Library of the Russian Capital. There now came about voluntarily what pro- 128 HISTORY OF THE JEWS scription and cruel force could not accomplish in the preceding reign. Nicholas' harsh treatment of the Jews had only served to isolate them all the more and to make them a solid unit against the outside world. In their increased legal dis- abilities they saw the infinite and unabating hatred borne them by the Christian world, and even in the few attempts made for the ostensible amelioration of their lot they could only discern an indubitable design for their apostacy. Hence they barricaded themselves all the more against all outside influ- ences, and, completely withdrawing from non- Jewish and secular interests, sought within the rigid religious atmosphere of their orthodox life consolation for the happiness withheld from them by the larger world that had cast them out. The new and liberal regime, with its numerous re- forms affecting the welfare of Jew and non-Jew alike, now brought about a change of attitude on the part of the Jews themselves. The ice of their hearts began to melt under the warm rays of the new if limited freedom, and at the prospect of the still greater freedom to come. The more enlight- ened among them now not only placed implicit faith in the good intentions of the government, but relieved that for the Jews, too, the time had at last come to show themselves more worthy of the new life by emerging from their exclusive- ness and becoming a more integral part of the great Russian nation. Clearly and forcefully was this sentiment voiced by the literary men of the day, Judah Loeb Gordon, the eminent Hebrew poet, appealing: "Arise, my people, 't is time for waking ! Lo, the night is o'er, the day is breaking! Arise and see, where'er thou turn'st thy face, How changed are both our time and place. "* * From the translation by Jacob S. Raisin, in "The Haskalah Movement in Russia," Philadelphia, 1913, p. 232. RUSSIA 129 The impossible, because forcible and dread- inspiring, Russification of Nicholas I was now to find its happier counterpart in the peaceful Rus- sianization of Alexander II. The Jewish youth, especially those of the larger cities, threw them- selves upon secular studies with a zeal and enthu- siasm seldom before equaled among Jews; they rushed into the government schools and gradu- ated with distinction from the universities. In a surprisingly short time they mastered the Russian language and literature, many of them acquiring a style which for dignity and idiomatic purity was rare even among native Russian writers. A number of Jewish periodicals in the Russian made their appearance, three of them in Odessa, the "Razsvyet" (Dawn) by Osip Rabbinovich, in 1860, the "Sion" (Zion) by Soloveichik in 1861, and the "Den" (Day) by S. Ornstein in 1869, all weeklies, and three others in St. Petersburg, the "Yevrei- skaya Biblioteka" (Hebrew Library), an annual, by A. E. Landau, in 1871, the weekly "Russki Yev- rei" (Russian Hebrew) by L. J. Berman and G. M. Rabbinovitch in 1879, and the monthly and weekly "Voskhod" (Dawn) by Adolph Landau, in 1881. Jews soon made their appearance in the profes- sions, some of them attaining great distinction in their chosen fields, such as Ilya Orshanski (Yeka- terinoslav, 1846-1875), a jurist who, while yet a very young man, became one of the foremost au- thorities on Russian civil law, and also attained a place of prominence as a writer on Jewish scien- tific and literary topics and on the Jewish prob- lem in Russia; Menasseh Margolis (Berdichev, i837~Odessa 1912), and Max Mandelstamm (Zhagory, Kovno, i838-Kiev, 1912), the famous specialist for eye diseases, who, later, became one of the leaders of Zionism and Territorialism. From this period dates also the advent of the two I3O HISTORY OP THE JEWS greatest Orientalists Russian Jewry has produced, Daniel Chwolson (Vilna, iSiQ-St. Petersburg, 1911), at one time professor of Oriental lan- guages at the University of St. Petersburg and later at the Academy for the training of priests, an author of many scholarly works in Russian, German and Hebrew who, though a convert to Christianity, never abandoned his interest in the welfare of the Jews, and time and again defended them against all attacks in his learned disserta- tions, and Abraham Harkavy (b. Novogrudok, 1839) historian and eminent Semitic philologist, who, notwithstanding his refusal to abandon Juda- ism, was nevertheless appointed (1877) to the dis- tinguished position of librarian at the Imperial Library of St. Petersburg, a post he still holds. It was Harkavy who, probably more than any other scholar, exposed the literary forgeries of Abraham Firkovitch, the Russian Karaite author and traveller (Lutsk, Volhynia, 1786-Chufut-Kale, Crimea, 1874). The advent of this Russian Jew- ish renaissance gave rise also to a school of able and brilliant novelists, who made use of their talents for the portrayal of the Jew in a more sympathic light than had theretofore been in vogue among the Christian novelists. Until the time of Alexander, all treatment of the Jew in literature was marked by ignorance and deep intolerance. The inimical attitude of Nicholas re- acted upon the writers of his day who either vulgarly caricatured the Jew or presented him in the light of a monstrous excrescence upon the body social of Russia. Pushkin, Gogol, Lermon- toff and later even Turgenieff had nothing good and everything bad to say about him. In the lib- eral regime of Alexander this tendency at vilifica- tion received a set-back. Antisemitism as a na- tional policy, such as Germany saw in the last RUSSIA 13! decades of the nineteenth century, was not as yet known in Russia, where public opinion was still merely an echo of the attitude of the Court. It must be said to the credit of Russia's men of let- ters that, once the friendly disposition of the em- peror toward the Jews became known, they did not hesitate to come out openly as their friends and sympathisers. They protested against the use of the contemptuous Zhid in speaking of the Jew, and time and again expressed their hopes for his speedy emancipation. It was, however, left to the Jewish .writers themselves to fight their people's battles and remove the stigma that had so un- justly been placed upon it in the literature of the country. Such writers were found in Grigori Bo- grow (Poltava, i835-Derevki, Minsk, 1885), who enjoyed the distinction of being the first talented Jewish novelist to \vrite for the prominent Russian monthly "Otechestvenniya Zapiski," where, from 1871 to 1873, ne published a serial story "Zapiski Yevreya" (Reminiscences of a Jew) taken from Russian Jewish life. It was the first attempt to depict Jewish life before educated Russian classes, and his fine style and ability as an analytical nar- rator made a profound impression upon the Rus- sian world. Another eminent novelist was Lev Levanda (Minsk, 1835-81. Petersburg, 1888), the. Utchony Yevrei (learned Jew) of Yilna, who be- ginning as an assimilationist ended as a warm sympathizer with the movement for Palestinian colonization. But probably the most noted Rus- sian Jewish writer of this period was Osip Rab- binovich (Kobelyaki, Poltava, 1817- Meran, Tyrol, 1869), tne founder of the first Jewish journal in the Russian language, the "Razsvyet" (1860) and the author of numerous articles and novels advo- cating a more friendly attitude toward the Jew on the part of Christians. Beginning his literary 132 HISTORY OF THE JEWS career in 1847 with a fine Russian translation of the Hebrew poem "Ha-Kerav," by Eichenbaum, he at once became an object of admiration for Rus- sia's literary circles who marvelled at the mas- terly Russian diction of an obscure and despised Jew. This was followed by a great number of articles and stories dealing with Russian-Jewish questions. His greatest literary activity took place during the first six years of Alexander's reign, his most prominent work being "Shtrafnoi" (The Punished One) which had the distinction of being translated by the historian Marcus Jost (in "J anr D ucn fuer die Geshichte der Juden und des Judenthums") immediately after its appear- ance in 1860. The book enjoyed an unprecedented circulation for a Russian Jewish novel in those days, the entire first edition of 4,800 copies being sold out in the first two weeks. It was also trans- lated into Hebrew (1865). Unlike the other writers mentioned Rabbinovich was never a preacher of assimilation, but rather used his facile and gifted pen to stimulate the self-respect of his co-religionists and to heighten their interest in Jewish culture. Yet the greatest effect of Alexander's mild regime was felt among the Maskilim or intellect- uals, . who made use of the Hebrew language as the most useful and effective vehicle for dis- seminating their ideas of enlightment among the masses. Russian was as yet a foreign tongue to the great mass of the Jews and even the enlight- ened among them still applied themselves to ac- quiring the Polish and more especially the German language and literature rather than the vernacu- lar of the country they lived in. As late as 1865, ninety-three years after Polish Jewry passed under Russian dominion, members of the Odessa group of the "Society for the Promotion of En- RUSSIA 133 lightenment Among the Jews in Russia" still hesi- tated about extending the scope of instruction in the Russian language among the Jews of the "Pale," Dr. Schwabacher, the Odessa rabbi, firmly opposing the proposed plan of translating portions of the prayer book into the Russian for the bene- fit of the Jewish children, on the ground that it might interfere with their German studies. More than they cared for the Russian literature which was to many of them merely the expression of Muscovite barbarism, the Maskilim concerned themselves with German culture which they re- garded as the very acme of man's intellectual achievement. Even in later years, when the Rus- sianization of the Jew had become more general, the degree of culture one possessed depended upon his measure of adaptation of German ways and dress, the use of the German language at home in place of the then despised Yiddish, and, in the case of the man of letters, on his ability to employ the German in his writings. Even so prominent a scholar as Joshua Steinberg (Vilna, 1839-1909), distinguished alike as an educator and Hebrew grammarian and lexicographer, who was one of the most prolific of authors in both Hebrew and Russian, reverted from time to time to the Ger- man for his literary work, though in his day the reforms of Alexander II had already reconciled the Jew to all things Russian, including the language. A brief resume of this remarkable movement here becomes necessary. Haskalah, glowingly spoken of as the "Daughter of Heaven," was, in reality, the "Daughter of Germany," where it first received its impetus through Mendelssohn's cultural activities, his translation of the Penta- teuch into German (the German text being printed in Hebrew characters), accompanying it with his 134 HISTORY OF THE JEWS "Biur," or commentary, and the establishment of the "Ha-Meassef," (1784-1811), the first literary periodical in Hebrew, to which Mendelssohn at first was himself a contributor. To Germany many of Poland's Jews pilgrimed in their anxiety for a broader cultural horizon, among" them being Solo- mon Dubno (1738-1813), the noted Hebrew gram- marian and Bible exegete, who was tutor to the children of Mendelssohn and assisted the latter in his Bible translation, and Solomon Maimon (Niesvizh, Minsk, 1754-Niedersiegersdorf, Silesia, 1800), one of the noblest minds of his day, a pro- tege of Mendelssohn and of Kant, "the greatest Jewish philosopher since the time of Spinoza," "with whose depth of reasoning he combined an ease and straightforwardness of illustration char- acteristic of Benjamin Franklin."* And not only did Polish Jewish scholars travel to Germany whence they returned with a wealth of informa- tion and a deepened appreciation of the "Haskalah of Berlin," but many German and Galician Jews took up their homes in some of the great Polish and South-Russian cities, among them men like Pinsker, Eichenbaum, Feder, Rosen f eld and Perez, who became noted as scholars, financiers or diplo- matists, some of them, like Perez, attaining a posi- tion of distinction in the court circles of Paul and Alexander I, and all of them exercising a great cultural influence among the Russian Jews. With its progress arrested in Germany, where the Jews soon became so thoroughly "kulturized" as to abandon the Hebrew language and with it, as in the case of so many of them, even their Hebrew religion, Haskalah found a brief halting place in Galicia, where again the process of assimilation followed in the wake of enlightenment, thus * Bernfeld in "Dor Tahapukhot," Part Two, p. 66. RUSSIA 135 frightening away the religiously loyal Jewish masses who, apparently not without justification, came to regard all education as the foe of Juda- ism. But the short-lived Galician period was only introductory to the Russian period. The promi- nent Galician Hebraists like Nahman Krochmal, Dr. M. Letteris, S. L. Rapoport, Dr. Isaac Erter and Joseph Perl wielded a greater influence in Russia than they did in Galicia. For Russia was still the one great virgin soil for Germanic cul- ture, the very hatred of the Jews there for the comparatively poor and puerile language and literature of their Slavic persecutors causing them to turn with all the greater relish to the rich and captivating German literature which, unlike the Russian, abounded in liberal and humanitarian ideas. And this attitude continued for many de- cades, producing among the Russian Maskilim a state of mind where everything German was ex- alted and magnified, and all things Russian were belittled. "Till about the sixties," says Dr. Jacob S. Raisin in his book on "The Haskalah Movement in Russia," "the Russo-Jewish Maskilim were the recipients, and the German Jews the donors. The German Jews wrote, the Russian Jews read. Ger- many was to the Jewish world, during the early Haskalah movement what France, according to Guizot, was to Europe during the Renaissance: both received an impetus from the outside in the form of raw ideas, and modified them to suit their environment. Berlin was still, as it had been dur- ing the days of Mendelssohn and Wessely, the sanctuary of learning, the citadel of culture. In the highly cultivated German literature they found treasures of wisdom and science." The use of the Hebrew language was not then, as it is now, a sign of a particular nationalistic consciousness. Jewish nationalism as a question 136 HISTORY OF THE JEWS of world-wide importance was as yet unknown. The Jews were race-conscious as well as religion- conscious, but the question had not yet arisen among the Russian Jews as to what goes to make the Jewish race, and whether or not the racial in- tegrity of the Jew depended upon the integrity of his religion. It is a curious circumstance that the question of religious reforms, which in Germany was for many years storming the very citadel of Jewish life, had found scarcely an echo in Russia with the possible exception of M. L. Lilienblum's vigorous attacks on orthodoxy, which, however, led to no organized movement and is explainable by the fact that the economic distress and political oppression of the Jews left them no respite for re- flection upon the need of such reforms. The Mas- kilim regarded it as part of the educational prob- lem the solution of which would also solve the re- ligious question. In a measure, this surmise was quite true. But unfortunately the solution proved an adverse one, for, as a rule, the educated Jew became also the alienated Jew. The fears of the Jews who opposed the school reforms of Nicholas I were all justified in view of the numerous con- versions which followed the inauguration of Alex- ander's liberal regime and the peaceful Russian- ization of the Jews which came in its train. The apostasy of men like Chwolson, the Orientalist, Shapira, the noted Hebrew poet, Kowner, the lit- erary critic, and Bogrov, the brilliant novelist, was an unmistakable sign of the danger lurking for Judaism in a heedless rush for secular learn- ing so long as Russian Jewry remained in a state of political bondage, their rights still unestablished and their few privileges subject to momentary re- peal at the mere whim of the ruler. The Mas- kilim, however, failed to fathom the source of this danger and themselves not a little contributed RUSSIA 137 to its realization. Ridiculing the old religious cus- toms, +hey failed to see that rather than eradicate its objectionable features they were really under- mining the very foundation of Judaism. Their captious criticism of all that was old and obsolete in Judaism proved destructive rather than helpful, and many were the youths whose minds* became poisoned against their people as well as their re- ligion. The most fatal mistake of the Maskilim was the line they drew between the man and the religionist in the Jew, Judah Loeb Gordon, the poet, upholding it as one of the ideals of Has- kalah to be "A Jew at home, a man without." This unfortunate tendency among the Maskilim in the reign of Alexander II was the heritage of the days of Nicholas I, when, as already pointed out, the Jewish intellectuals, unlike the great masses in Jewry who perceived more clearly the true motives of the Czar, actually believed that the obstacle to Jewish emancipation lay in the ob- stinacy of the Jews themselves and their opposi- tion to all forms of modernism. To their credit be it said that those early Maskilim were not ac- tuated by any willful motive of religious destruc- tiveness. With the life and activity of some of them we shall here concern ourselves for a little while. Mention has already been made of Isaac Baer Levinsohn (1788-1860) of Kremenetz, Vol- hynia, the first and foremost of the Russian Mas- kilim, who by his great attainments earned the title of the "Russian Mendelssohn," and who for his educational endeavors among his co-religion- ists was signally favored by the Czar. A man of profound learning in Talmud, and well versed in a number of European languages and their litera- 138 HISTORY OF THE JEWS tures, a disciple and admirer of the renowned Maskilim of Galicia where, in his youth, he had spent a number of years, Levinsohn was emi- nently fitted for the role he was to play in the life of his- co-religionists in his native land. He tried his hand in poetry, some of which was pub- lished, and wrote the first grammar in Hebrew of the Russian language which, for lack of funds, never appeared in print. He, however, was des- tined for a more important work. - On his return to Russia in 1820 he began writing his magnum opus, the "Teudah be-Yisrael" which, when pub- lished in 1828, created a profound stir all through Russian Jewry and probably did more than any other work in bringing about the cultural regen- eration of his people. While yet in manuscript the contents of the book were brought to the atten- tion of the Czar, who, at the instance of his Minister Bludov, thanked the author and presented him with a gift of one thousand roubles "for a work in Hebrew having for its object the moral education of the Jewish people." The nature and aim of the book, as Levinsohn states in his preface, is to point out to his brethren "the true way of life," to tell them "what learning, aside from the Talmud and its commentaries, it is necessary for the Jew to acquire for the perfec- tion and refinement of his nature as a man and a Jew." In gentle, persuasive, though somewhat verbose and prolix language he pleads the cause of Haskalah from the rabbinic point of view, arguing that the great makers of the Talmud and many of the later luminaries were themselves pro- gressive spirits and not opposed to general learn- ing in which they were themselves well-versed. The Talmud itself, however, need not be taken as an authority on history and the natural sci- ences. For this recourse must be had to the RUSSIA 139 "learning of the Gentiles," which is not in itself incompatible with the enlightening spirit of Juda- ism. But if the "Teudah" is an epistle to the Jews, seeking on strictly religious grounds, to predispose them in favor of "the beauty of Japhet," his other great work, the "Bet Yehudah" (House of Judah), though written in Hebrew, is in reality an epistle to the Gentiles, with whom he pleads for a better understanding of their Jewish neigh- bors and of the supreme moral value of Judaism. In writing this book Levinsohn was doubtless in- fluenced by the questionaire submitted to him in 1827 by Prince Lieven, the Czar's Minister of Public Instruction, which included among its thirty-four items such questions as "What is the Talmud?" "Is there anything sensible in it?" "What is the object of the numerous [Jewish] rites that consume so much useful time?" "Is it true that the Talmud forbids the Jews the study of foreign languages and science, as well as the pursuit of agricultural occupations?" "What is Hassidism?" "What Messiah is it that the Jews are expecting?" "How can a Jew be admitted into Christian society and be accorded full civic rights when he keeps himself aloof from the Chris- tians and takes no interest in the welfare of the country where he resides?" Levinsohn gives a clear and convincing answer to all such queries, refutes on the authority of the Talmud and later rabbinic works all the malevolent imputations about the Jews and their faith, and makes a touch- ing appeal for reforms in their political and eco- nomic condition, pointing out also the need of secular and agricultural schools and of seminaries for the training of rabbis. The book was not pub- lished until 1838, but its leading ideas had already been communicated to Jewish and Christian circles and its effect upon the government can be seen I4O HISTORY OF THE JEWS from the fact that only about two years or less after the appearance of the "Bet Yehudah" the Czar entered upon his plan for Jewish school re- forms, invited Dr. Lilienthal to work out the de- tails and prepare the Jewish masses for the coming changes, and actually established the two rabbinical seminaries of Vilna and Zhitomir, as Levinsohn had advocated. Upon the Jews themselves the book had a profound impression and even among the Hassidim and the ultra-orthodox Rabbinites it brought about a more sympathetic disposition to- ward the author and helped remove the rather un- favorable sentiment created by the "Teudah." It was translated into Polish and its fame spread even to Germany, where Abraham Geiger brought the excellence of the work to the attention of his Breslau congregation. The favorite and protege of many prominent Russian officials, and enjoying the special friend- ship of Prince Wittgenstein, the Russian field- marshall, who was so fond of him as to entertain him at his residence and to go to him for advice on many important questions, Levinsohn neverthe- less passed his life in poverty and want. Attacked by a fatal malady which kept him bed-ridden, he still continued his studies and his literary activi- ties and, like Heine from his "mattress-grave," produced, while on his couch of sickness, several other works which added to his fame and to his usefulness as an educator and defender of his people. His "Efes Dammim" (No Blood!), pub- lished in 1837, was written in connection with the ritual-murder accusation of the Jews of Zaslav, Volhynia, and had a great effect on the outside world, it having been translated into Russian, Ger- man and English, the latter at the instance of Sir Moses Montefiore at the time of the Damascus blood accusation (1840). A far more ambitious SIR MOSES MONTEFIORE (1784-1885) RUSSIA 141 work is "Zerubbabel," which was also written at the request of Montefiore on the latter's visit to Russia in 1846, and which is in the main directed against the English missionary McCaul who had vilified and maligned the Jews and the Talmud in his "Old Paths." Several other minor works in Hebrew and Yiddish, some of them of posthu- mous publication, complete the literary activ- ity of this truly remarkable man who, after Elijah Gaon, was probably the greatest intellec- tual luminary of Russian Jewry, and whose influ- ence on the cultural development of his brethren was incalculable. Another prominent writer of this period in whom were summed up the hopes and plans of the Haskalah in its early stage, was Abraham Dob-Baer ("Adam ha-Kohen") Lebensohn (Vil- na, 1789-1878), poet, grammarian, and later pro- fessor at the rabbinical institute at Vilna, who was mainly known for his volume of poems "Shire Sefat Kodesh" (published in Leipzig, 1842), but who, like Levinsohn before him, illustrated the Richtung and aims of the Haskalah in his notable memorial to Sir Moses Montefiore on the latter's visit to Vilna in 1846, in which he pointed out the evils that obtained in the Jewish community, the widespread ignorance and superstition of the masses, the lack of secular education among the rabbis, and the perverted ideas of education then in vogue. As a poet Lebensohn was to be sur- passed by his young son, Micah Joseph, but as the teacher and inspiration of Judah Loeb Gordon and other young writers his influence upon the Haskalah of his day was considerable. But next in importance to Levinsohn only, among the fathers of Russian Haskalah, is his contemporary Mordecai Aaron Guenzburg (Sa- lanty, Kovno, 1795-Vilna, 1846) who enjoys the 142 HISTORY OF THE JEWS distinction of being the creator of the modern He- brew prose style. Not as thoroughgoing a stu- dent as Levinsohn, he was more prolific than the sage of Kremenetz, and his writings were of a more practical nature, having a direct bearing upon the educational needs of his people. A teach- er by profession, noted for his thoroughness and exactness, Guenzburg shows the same qualities of the skillful pedagogue in all of his writings. His one aim was to educate the people, therefore he had little patience with those who used a style weighted down with the obsolete orientalisms and conceits known as melizah. In all of his many books, consisting of fifteen volumes, he presents his subject matter in a clear and convincing man- ner, and he writes only on useful, informative topics, such as his history of the discovery of America, of the French invasion of Russia, his one volume of universal history, his description of the Damascus ritual-murder trial, his history of Russia, his history of Europe from 17/0 to 1812, and his translation of Philo's account of his mis- sion to Rome. In his "Debir" (Holy of Holies) he gives an essay on style of which he was himself a master, while in his autobiographical work "Abi- ezer" he presents a vivid and realistic picture of the educational shortcomings of Russian Jewry and of the gross superstitions to which they were still in bondage. It was Guenzburg who, after sup- porting Lilienthal, in the end turned against him and in his pamphlet "Maggid Emet" shattered the halo which the Russian Maskilim had been wont to place around the educated rabbi of German schooling. Such rabbis he thought unfit for their positions because of their lack of sufficient Jew- ish learning. On the other hand, he inveighed against the rabbis of the old school whose igno- rance of the language and the laws of the land RUSSIA 143 disqualified them as proper representatives of their people. To these fathers of Russian Haskalah must be added the two brothers Mandelstamm, Benjamin (Zhagory, died in Simferopol, 1886), the delight- ful author of "Hazon la-Moed," a book of poetic prose, touching mainly on the life of the Russian Jews in the first half of the nineteenth century, who, like M. A. Guenzburg, turned from Lilien- thal after first supporting him most enthusiasti- cally, and Leon (Zhagory, Kovno, iSog-St. Pe- tersburg, 1889), the distinguished educator and author of a number of works in poetry and prose, and of text-books in Hebrew, Russian and Ger- man. It was he who acted as secretary to the rabbinical commission which met in St. Peters- burg in 1843 to decide on the details of the pro- posed Jewish schools and who, after Lilienthal had left Russia for the United States, succeeded him in his position as educational reformer and continued as such for twelve years. The estab- lishment of the new schools as of the two rabbini- cal seminaries was carried out under his direction, and much of the blame for the un-Jewish spirit of those institutions was laid at his door, though in reality he was only an unwilling tool in the hands of the government. In opposition to the Maskilim of the radical type there were not lacking also a number of celebrities of more conservative tendencies who, though greatly outnumbered by the former, nev- ertheless acted as a check upon them and thus, in a measure, helped to hold Haskalah down to a more moderate course. Among these were the two distinguished Vilna scholars, Samuel Joseph Fuenn (1819-1891), author of many works among them "Kiryah Ne'emanah," a highly sym- pathetic history of the Jewish Community of Vilna, 144 HISTORY OF THE JEWS founder and editor of "Ha-Karmel," and one of the first to fill the post of professor in the newly- founded rabbinical seminary of Vilna (1848), and his life-long friend and admirer, Mathias Stra- shun (1817-1885), who contributed to most of the periodicals of his day, annotated Fuenn's "Kiryah Ne'emanah" and used his considerable fortune in amassing a valuable library, the posthu- mously printed catalogue of which he had himself prepared. Both these men, though votaries of German culture, and themselves highly versed in the classical as well as the modern languages and their literatures, nevertheless set an example of rigorous constancy in their orthodox life, preached a greater loyalty to Jewish ideals, and made use of their cultural attainments mainly in the fur- therance of Jewish learning. This was even more true of Eliezer Zebi Zweifel (Mohilev, 1815- Glukhov, 1888) who, though a teacher at the rab- binical seminary of Zhitomir, a radical institu- tion, attracted much attention as a defender of Hassidism and especially of its founder, Israel Baal Shem Tob in his "Shalom Al Yisrael" (Peace Upon Israel"), even as in a later work, "Sanegor," (The Pleader) he speaks apologetically of the Talmud and Orthodoxy in general. Because of his apologetic attitude Zweifel aroused the ire of the other Maskilim who for a long time made him the target of their attacks. He, however, per- sisted in his course and being a highly versatile and prolific writer, in Yiddish no less than in He- brew, using poetry with equal facility as prose, his impress upon his generation was profound. And now r , under the benevolent rule of the sec- ond Alexander, began the heyday of the Russian Haskalah, what has been denominated the "Gold- en Era" of Jewish history and Hebraic culture in that country. The entire magnitude of the moral RUSSIA 145 and spiritual vitality of the Russian Jew can be gauged from the circumstance that a slight change for the better in an otherwise intolerable situa- tion, his entrance upon a state of freedom in itself but of the meagerest and most precarious kind, was sufficient to radically transform his life, suf- fuse his horizon with golden hopes and noble as- pirations, and enable him to produce within a few short decades a virile and progressive press and literature in both Hebrew and Yiddish, many of whose masters have since been translated into the leading European tongues and have won recog- nition and fame in the outside world. The achievements of the Jew in Russian literature, of which mention has already been made, are poor indeed compared with his success in the domain of Hebrew. It should here be stated that there had been no premeditated intention on the part of the Maskilim of this or the preceding reign to perpetuate the Hebrew language as a literary medium. Hebrew was resorted to in the writing of books, as in business and personal correspond- ence, as the only natural vehicle for a people reared on the Talmud and the Bible and too con- temptuous of the barbaric Judaeo-German jargon to use it for literary purposes. Throughout the centuries of exile, Hebrew had been the main form of expression for the rabbis and scholars who wrote in it their rabbinical and philosophical treatises; as the language of prayer, of the Scrip- tures and of much of the Talmud literature, it was deemed too sacred for any other literary use. Now, however, a great secular literature was to arise in this tongue, and the Lashon ha-Kodesh was to be applied for writing on profane themes, Hebrew poems and Hebrew novels were to appear side by side with Hebrew treatises on historical, philological and other scientific sub- 146 HISTORY OF THE JEWS jects. Herein Russian Jewry was to be more for- tunate than German Jewry with whom the use of the Hebrew was discontinued early in the nine- teenth century, it serving merely as an aid to, and a means of, transition to German culture. The enforced isolation and voluntary seclusion of the Jews in Russia, their ignorance of and con- tempt for the language of their Slavic taskmas- ters, have made possible the retention of the He- brew not merely in the synagogue but in their everyday life. The persecutions of the Jews in Russia have resulted in some great good, after all. They have made possible this one great and distinct contribution to the spiritual treasure- house of Israel: the Modern Hebrew Literature. In the reign of Alexander II this literature was still in the main the natural and unconscious prod- uct of the Maskilim who resorted to the Hebrew as the best means for spreading enlightenment among the masses. Its history is closely related to that of the Hebrew press. Here, too, the Rus- sian Maskilim were, at first, only imitators of their German colleagues, since the first Hebrew periodical worthy the name was the Koenigsberg "Ha-Meassef," already referred to, and those fol- lowing it, like the "Bikkure ha-Ittim," "Kerem Hemed," "Ozar Nehmad," "He-Haluz," "Kokhebe Yizhak," etc., were all published either in Austria or Galicia. It was not -until 1856, more than sev- enty years after the founding of the "Ha-Meas- sef," that Eliezer Lipman Silberman (1819-1882), a German by birth though of Russian parentage and schooling, began the publication of the first regular Hebrew weekly, the "Ha-Maggid," in the Prussian city of Lyck, as such being the father of modern Hebrew journalism. While published in Germany, the "Ha-Maggid" was really intended for the now large and ever growing circle of He- HAYIM SELIG SLONIMSKI (1810-1904) RUSSIA 147 brew readers in Russia, German Jewry with very few exceptions no longer feeling a need for a He- brew publication. The Western Jewish He- braists, like Samuel David Luzzatto of Padua, Joseph Halevy of Paris, and more espe- cially the Galician masters, Rapoport, Er- ter, Schor and others, resorted to its col- umns occasionally, but it was the Russian Hebraists who made the greatest use of it for their literary training, some of them like Abramo- vich, Gordon and Lilienblum being destined to become the leading literateurs of their day. The Ha-Maggid was the first Hebrew paper to print articles on national and international politics and its Jewish and general news features lent it a more than ordinary interest and endeared it to its readers. Under the guidance of its literary ed- itor, David Gordon (Podmerecz, Vilna, i826-Lyck, Prussia, 1886), it in later years became the advo- cate of Palestinian colonization and thus the fore- runner of modern Zionism. With the relaxation of the rigorous press-laws, the Russian Hebraists were enabled to start journals of their own and before long many a large Jewish centre was to have its Hebrew organ. In 1860 Fuenn founded his "Ha-Karmel" in Vilna which from a weekly with supplements in Russian and German, be- came, eleven years later, a monthly, while Alex- ander Zederbaum (Samoscz, Lublin, i8i6-St Petersburg, 1893) ' m that same year started in Odessa his "Ha-Meliz," later removing it to St. Petersburg. In 1872 Hayim Selig Slonimsky (Byelostok, 1810- Warsaw, 1904), scientist, math- ematician and inventor, established his "Ha-Ze- firah" first in Berlin and shortly thereafter in War- saw. Both the "Ha-Meliz" and "Ha-Zefirah" be- came dailies in the reign of Alexander III, and in various ways exercised the greatest influence on HISTORY OF THE JEWS the Russian Hebraists. Abraham Bacr Gottlober (Starokonstantinov, Volhynia, i8n-Byelostok, 1899) transferred his Hebrew monthly "Ha-Boker Or" from Lemberg to Warsaw, while Smolenskin's "Ha-Shahar," though printed in Vienna (1868- 1884), found nearly all of its readers in Russia and did more than any other publication to de- velop the talents of most of the best known He- brew writers of the eighties and nineties. Grad- ually this Hebrew press developed a sense of re- sponsible public-opinion among its readers, the mere theoretical and academic discussion giving way before the utilitarian article on practical mat- ters. Haskalah was still the shibboleth of the in- itiated few but it was assuming more and more a decidedly Jewish and nationalistic aspect, prepar- ing the way for the great national reawakening which was to follow the anti-Jewish riots of 1881. It was, however, in the aid and impetus it gave to the upbuilding of a rich and many-sided He- brew literature that this press of the period in question attained its greatest usefulness. This literature, in its polite form, was strongly reflective of the life and tendencies of the Jews of the "Pale," and therein lies its greatest interest for the student of Russo-Jewish history. The au- tobiographical "Hatot Neurim" (Youthful Sins) of Moses Loeb Lilienblum (Kaidany, Kovno, i843-Odessa, 1910) is of transcending interest to us not so much on account of its literary form which is simple and unadorned, but as a most val- uable contribution to the Kulturgeschichte of Rus- sian Jewry, strongly reminding us of Rousseau's "Confessions." The author is himself a sad com- mentary on the aimlessness of the Haskalah in Russia, its disastrous results in removing the re- ligious prop from under a people suspended in the air and subject to the whim and fancy of every pet- RUSSIA 149 ty tyrant, at a time when a taste from the fruit of the tree of knowledge can only open his eyes to his deep-seated misery without furnishing the needed cure. "I am a Talmudist," he says in the introduction of his book, "once a believer but now a sceptic, rejecting all the sweet dreams and de- lightful hopes bequeathed to me by my fathers." There is an ever-present void in his heart which nothing can fill, not even his academic studies which he pursues at the cost of much want and hardship. In Odessa, the great Mecca of the Maskilim, he soon learns that Haskalah, too, is not flawless, that they who uphold it and speak grandiloquently in its name are no better than the fanatical orthodox and morally are even their inferiors. Materialism has with them been substi- tuted for the superstitions of their fathers, and where the latter were in many ways idealistic, with the former sentiment has all but departed from their lives. His secular studies fail to give him .the life-content he was seeking, and the bal- ance sheet of the more than thirty years of his life shows but a cipher. Unhappily for Russian Jewry, there were not many like Lilienblum to become aware in time of the futility and hope- lessness of the Haskalah in its Russian sphere, the great majority of them remaining quite con- tent with the vain glamour which it lent them and the few material husks it threw in their path. The full awakening was to come only with the de- parture of the delusion of an eventual Jewish emancipation inspired by the quasi-progressive regime of Alexander II. In a like vein are the writings of nearly all of the writers of this period, though most of them still behold the mote in the eyes of Orthodoxy before they perceive the beam in the eyes of the pseudo-enlightenment for which they were bat- I5O HISTORY OF THE JEWS tling. With the possible exception of Micah Jo- seph Lebensohn (1828-1852) the romantico-lyrical poet, probably the first truly great poet since Je- hudah Halevi, who cultivated poetry as an art in itself, and drew his inspiration from ancient Jew- ish and general history in his "Shire Bat Ziyyon" (The Songs of the Daughter of Zion), "Kinnor Bat-Ziyyon" (Tha Harp of the Daughter of Zion) and other works, and Abraham Mapu, the re- nowned novelist, all the other noteworthy writers of the day wrote either panegyrics on an abstract Haskalah, or attacks upon the homely customs and mannerisms, the bigotry and superstition of the Ghetto. Had the younger Lebensohn been permitted to live longer, he might have exercised a more healthy influence over his colleagues. Un- fortunately he died when but twenty-four years of age, his literary work scarcely begun, and leaving in the few poems he wrote but the promise of the wonderful talent then at the beginning of its un- foldment. Abraham Mapu (Kovno, i8o8-Koen- igsberg, 1867), the father of the modern Hebrew novel, began as a romanticist with his classically conceived and executed "Ahabat Ziyyon" (Love of Zion, published in 1853) and his more ambitious though less successful "Ashmat Shomeron" (The Guilt of Samaria, published in 1865), both of which are taken from ancient Hebrew life in Pal- estine though their plots are borrowed from French models. He, too, however, could not long resist the temptation of joining the firing line against the fanatical obscurants, and his most voluminous novel "Ayit Zabua" (The Hypocrite), in five parts, the first of which appeared in 1860, is a bitterly realistic presentation of the arrested [ewish life of the "Pale." A like attempt at real- ism in the fight against ultra-Orthodoxy, though greatly inferior to Mapu's work artistically, is the MICAH JOSEPH LEBENSOHN (1828-1852) RUSSIA 151 "Ha-Abot ve-ha-Banim" (Fathers and Sons, pub- lished 1868) by the then young but highly prom- ising Shalom Jacob Abramovich (Kopul, Minsk, l.835-Odessa, 1917) destined some years later to secure an immortal place as the greatest and most creative of Yiddish story writers. This novel, however, gives but a faint indication of the fu- ture prominence of its author, and even as a polemical work against Orthodoxy is of little con- sequence. So, too, were the short prose sketches of J. L. Gordon which pale into utter obscurity by the side of his great poems. The real great novel of the period was not to appear until 1876 when Reuben Asher Braudes (Vilna, 1851 -Vienna, 1902) began the serial publication of his "Ha-Dat ve-ha-Hayyim" (Religion and Life) and attempted in its three volumes to do in fiction what Lilien- blum, after whom the hero of his book is mod- elled, did in his scholarly treatise "Orhot ha-Tal- mud" (The Paths of the Talmud), namely, to plead for religious reforms. To the same class of writers belongs also Mordecai David Brandstad- ter (b. Brzesko, Galicia, 1844) who, though not a native Russian is nevertheless a distinct product of the Russian Haskalah, having come under the influence of Smolenskin in whose "Ha-Shahar" he first began to write his fine sketches of Hassidic life, made all the more impressive by their thinly- disguised humor. While their setting is Galicia, their arrows are really aimed at Russia where indeed they have had their greatest effect, as such reminding us of Joseph Perl's great satire "Megal- leh Temirin" (The Revealer of Hidden Things) which while written in and for Galicia produced its greatest impression in Russia. The most prominent writer of this period, how- ever, is Judah Loeb Gordon (Vilna, 1831-81. Pe- tersburg, 1892), like so many of Russia's He- 152 HISTORY OF THE JEWS braists a product of the Yilna school which he was to surpass in the ambition of his literary work as in the progressivity of his thoughts. An erudite Talmudist, possessing a scientific knowl- edge of Hebrew and kindred languages, he be- came an auto-didact in the modern as well as the classical languages under the incentive furnished him by his life-long friend and relative Wolf Kaplan, himself a noted Maskil and later the father-in-law of Gordon's daughter. His poetic vein revealed itself early and under the influence of his friend, the younger Lebensohn, Gordon, too, became inclined to romanticism, taking his themes from either the ancient Jewish world as in "Ahavat David u-Mikhal" (The Love of David and Mikhal), "Milhamot David ba-Pelishtim" (David's Wars Against the Philistines), his pas- toral "David u-Barzilai" (David and Barzilai), "Asenat Bat-Potipherah" (Asenat, the Daughter of Potipherah), "Zidkiyahu be-Bet ha-Pekudot" (Zedekiah In Prison), or from mediaeval Jewish history as in his "Bi-Mezulot Yam" (In the Depths of the Sea), describing a fearful epi- sode of the Jewish expulsion from Spain (1492). Most of his poems, however, es- pecially his cycle of "Present Day Epics," are devoted to mirroring Jewish life in Russia in his day, as in his "Kozo Shel Yod" (The Dot of a Yod), "Shomeret Yabam" (Waiting for a Brother-in-Law), "A-sakka de-Rispak" (Because of a Wagon's Axle), "Ve-Samahta be-Haggekha" (Rejoice on Thy Festival). Even his epics from ancient life are frequently directed against the evil conditions of the Jewry of his day, Gordon using the immediate theme from ancient history as but a peg upon which to hang his strictures on the customs and usages of the present. Stitching together many of his bitter utterances in a num- JUDAH LEIB GORDON (1830-1892) RUSSIA 153 ber of his poems, we obtain a most melancholy picture of the life led by the submerged of the Russian ghetto. The lack of worldliness and the demoralization within the Jewish camp he imputes to the old-fashioned rabbis who neglected to train their flocks in the useful and practical ways of life but instead taught: "Within thy walls to be immured, To row against life's vital stream ; Alive in Heaven, dead on earth ; In dream to talk awake to dream."* Jewish youths are immolating themselves upon the altar of Talmudic study, frittering their lives away without aim or purpose: "Upon the ways to Jewish schools that lead, Behold poor youngsters hastening with all speed "And what awaits them there? A life of need And misery, the cold, bare floor their bed S.uch is the Law and what if one fall dead!" 1 And as for the woman in Israel: "Eternal bondage is the Jewess's life: Her shop she tends incessant day by day; A mother she she nurses and she weans, And bakes and cooks and quickly fades away.'" It is all because of the spiritual bondage of the masses : * In "Ben Shinne Arayot" (Between the Lions' Teeth), transla- tion of A. B. Rhine. See his "Leon Gordon, An Appreciation," Phil- adelphia, 1910, p. 121. "'Shne Yosef Ben Shimon" (The Two Josephs Ben Simon), Rhine's translations, 1. c. p. 139. "Kozo Shel Yod," Rhine, 1. c. p. 124. 154 HISTORY OF THE JEWS "We have been slaves ? alas ! What are we now ? Do we not fall and sink, year in, year out? Are we not fettered still, are we not bound By superstition's shackles strong and stout?"* But like Lilienblum and many others Gordon, too, was destined to bitter disappointment. Has- kalah was bankrupt; it de-Judaized the Jew with- out securing for him the coveted and long-looked- for emancipation. After a period of comparative liberalism, a spirit of reaction was once again manifesting itself in government circles, and in- stead of enlarging their privileges the Jews had cause to fear for the few liberties they were en- joying. A melancholy note is henceforth to dom- inate his poems: "No more my joyous strains shall ring; Of freedom, light, I must despair Eternal servitude I sing, I dream disgrace, polluted air. The rhymes which from my pen-point flow Are tear-drops for my nation's woe." 4 And worst of all his fears is the one that the labors of himself and those like him are all for naught, that where the old and waning generation is too callous to be affected by the preachment, the new and budding generation cannot even be reached to preach to: With rapid strides they rush ahead, And who can tell how long, how far? Perchance whence there is no return. . . . Alas ! who can divine, who can assure That I am not the last of Zion's bards, That you who read are not the last to read?* * "Asakka de-Rispak," Rhine, 1. c. p. 130. 4 "Ba-alot ha-Shahar," Rhine's translation, 1. c. pp. 150, 151. *"Lemi Ani Amel?" Rhine's translation, 1. c. p. 148. RUSSIA 155 Gordon's pessimism was so overmastering 1 as to blind him from seeing what others of his contem- poraries beheld very clearly, the certain, if as yet faint, rays of hope and reassurance upon the Jew- ish horizon. The ideal of Jewish nationalism, as yet embryonic, was soon to strike deep root in the hearts of the masses and to grow to considerable proportions. Gordon, however, remained aloof from it and shared but little in the dream of a national rehabilitation in Zion. Nor was he alone among the Maskilim who were slow to appreciate the real merits of the lib- eralism of Alexander and its ultimate conse- quences for the Jews. The glamour of freedom and equality coming in the wake of a regime so auspiciously begun had cast a spell upon the now considerable number of enlightened ones not easily to be broken. If secular education was the key that would unlock the door to complete emanci- pation, the Jews were determined to secure it, and not only did it become the great objective of indi- viduals, but organized efforts were again and again put forth to spread enlightenment among the masses. Chief among all such organizations was the "Hebrat Marbe Haskalah," the "Society for the Promotion of Enlightenment in Russian Jewry," with headquarters at St. Petersburg, at the head of which stood the most prominent Jews of Russia, like the Barons Guenzburg of St. Pe- tersburg, and the Brodskys of Kiev, and the sec- retary and treasurer of which was the noted financier and philanthropist Leon Rosenthal (1817-1887). True to its purpose, this society spread culture by all available methods and means, it subventioned schools and periodicals, helped poor authors toward the publication of their works and gave stipends to indigent Jewish stu- dents at the universities. Many a prominent au- 156 HISTORY OF THE JEWS thor or scientist in Russia owes his start in life to the generosity of this organization. At its in- stance several parts of the Bible as well as por- tions of the prayer-book and the Haggadah were translated into Russian for the benefit of those unacquainted with the Hebrew. It endowed an agricultural school for Jewish boys (1880) and aided many a community in the "Pale" in the founding of libraries and evening schools for adults. By leaps and bounds the Russo-Jewish youth reached out for the tree of knowledge, by natural ability and unflagging diligence soon sur- passing their Christian fellow-students in all branches of learning. Russification grew apace, and before long these sons and daughters of ultra- orthodox parents many of whom were unable even to speak the Russian, felt themselves so complete- ly assimilated as to regard themselves as an inte- gral part of the Russian nation. Political equal- ity, however, failed to materialize, and disillusion- ment soon gave way to despair. Inasmuch as Ju- daism alone stood between them and emancipation, untold numbers rushed to the baptismal font as the only safe means of securing relief on earth be it even at the cost of salvation in heaven. Some of them indulged in all sorts of fads and vagaries to appease a spiritual hunger only whet- ted but never satisfied. Jacob Gordin, who later became the foremost Yiddish playwright in Amer- ica, founded in 1879, in Yelisavetgrad, the "Spir- itual Bible Brotherhood," which aimed at the cementing of the ties of brotherhood among men by a cultivation of the ethical spirit of the Bible and the abolition of all ritualistic forms which Gordin and his colleagues regarded as the great- est obstacle to a true understanding between races and nations. Deistic rationalism alone, they be- lieved, was to save the world for peace and fra- RUSSIA 157 tejnity. Others, again, went further still, and like Jacob Prelooker of Odessa and Joseph Rabbino- vich of Kishinev, organized societies which, while seeking to promote a spirit of mutual sympathy and fellow-feeling between Jews and Gentiles, in reality, if not intentionally, acted as intermedi- aries for Christianity and prepared the way for Jewish conversions en masse to either the Greek- Catholic or the Lutheran faith. Rabbinovich himself followed his teachings to their logical con- clusion, and the one-time Hassid, Talmudist and Hebrew writer, converted to Christianity in 1885. The greatest menace to the Jews, however, arose from the political unrest which, never quite sup- pressed in Russia since the Decembrist revolution (1825), seized hold of the Jewish youth who threw themselves into the Nihilist movement, were the most ardent supporters of the Narodnaya Volya (Freedom of the People) party, and be- came the active agents of revolutionary propa- ganda by mingling with the peasants and the la- borers, sharing their humble life and imparting to them forbidden doctrines through the spoken or written word. No one was more appreciative of the liberal teachings of Russia's great literary masters, Chernishevsky, Pisarev, and Bielinsky, nor more ready to act upon them, than the Russo- Jewish youth of this period, and in the great struggle against the autocracy, Jews furnished not only the brains but the martyrs of the movement. This was inevitable in view of the bitter disap- pointment of these enlightened young people in an imperial regime that began with so much promise for the liberation and occidentalization of Russia, including the emancipation of her Jews. For the Jewish race, however, this revolutionary activity was to result in untold suffering not only in the last decade of Alexander II, but throughout; 158 HISTORY OF THE JEWS the reigns of the two monarchs who succeeded him. Jacob S. Raisin, in his book on "The Has- kalah Movement in Russia," thus sums up this de-. nouement of the tragic situation in the closing years of Alexander II: . . . The gyves of tradition were at last removed. The Maskilim of the 'forties' and 'fifties' were antiquated in the 'sixties' and 'sev- enties.' They began to see that the fears of the orthodox and their denunciations of Haskalah were not altogether unfounded. A young gener- ation had grown up \vho had never experienced the strife and struggles of the fathers, and who lacked the submissive temper that had character- ized their ancestors. Faster and farther they rushed on their headlong way to destruction, while their parents sat and wept. . . . The foundations, of religion were undermined. Pa- rental authority was disregarded. Youths and maidens were lured by the enchanting voice of the siren of assimilation. The naive words which Turgenieff put into the mouth of Samuel Abra- ham, the Lithuanian Jew, might have been, indeed were, spoken by many others in actual life. 'Our children,' he complains, 'have no longer our be- liefs; they do not say our prayers, nor have they your beliefs; no more do they say your prayers; they do not pray at all, and they believe in nothing.' The struggle between Hassidim and Mitnaggedim ended with the conversionist policy of Nicholas I, which united them against the Maskilim. The struggle between those anti-Mas- kilim and the Maskilim had ceased in the golden days of Alexander II. But the clouds were gath- ering and overspreading the camp of Haskalah. The days in which the seekers after light united in one common aim were gone. Russification, as- RUSSIA 1 59 similation, universalism and nihilism rent asunder the ties that held them together." Frightened and bewildered by the growth of the revolutionary movement, Alexander II now rued even the modicum of liberty he had granted to his subjects, and sought to undo in his last years whatever good his reforms had effected in the first years of his reign. In tightening the screws of reaction upon the nation, the Jews were the first to feel the effect of his monarchical dis- pleasure. The educational work performed among the Jewish masses by the "Society for the pro- motion of Enlightenment" was repressed to the extent of abolishing the Sabbath- and evening- schools it had maintained in the various cities and towns of the "Pale." The Yilna and Zhitomir rabbinical seminaries were closed in 1873, abolish- ing with them whatever little influence for good there emanated from institutions which had proven, in the main, a snare and delusion to Jew- ish cultural aspirations. Sensing the new spirit of bigotry abroad in the land, the forces of dark- ness that neither slumbered nor slept in the em- pire now organized their strength for anti-Jewish demonstrations, and in 1871 Odessa saw the first massacres of Jews, a prelude to the many and more terrible pogroms that \vere to follow. Jews were denied the right to improve their condition by opening eleemosynary institutions and trade schools, while in 1879 the government ordered the famous Yeshibah at Yolozhin to be closed. Worst of all, the spectre of the ritual-blood accu- sation which in Russia is always conjured up when the anti-Jewish agitation is at its height, again made its appearance, this time at Kutais, Trans-Caucasia. In its designs against the Jews the government not infrequently sought and ob- tained the aid of the many Jewish renegades who, l6o HISTORY OF THE JEWS upon the expectation of material reward, were ready to turn informers against their former co- religionists. A striking illustration of such in- famy was furnished by Jacob Brafmann who em- braced Christianity as a commercial venture after having failed in every one of his numerous under- takings. As a reward for his baptism he was ap- pointed professor of Hebrew at the seminary of Minsk, the Holy Synod at the same time enlisting him among its agents for the propagation of Christianity among the Jews. Brafmann at once seized upon the occasion to render himself immor- tal by undertaking a series of attacks upon the Jews in the Russian press. In a number of slan- derous articles in the "Vilenski Vyestnik" during 1867 he claimed that the Jews of Western Russia were united into a guild with unlimited means at its disposal for the one purpose of exploiting their non-Jewish neighbors. Two years later he en- larged on these falsehoods in a book entitled "Kniga Kahala" (The Book of the Kahal) in which he purported to expose the secrets of the Kahal which he claimed was still clandestinely in existence despite its abolition by Nicholas I (1844), and by means of forged and fabricated documents "proved" that the Jews were practicing illegality and immorality upon the authority of Ju- daism (Vilna, 1869). The appearance of the work created a great sensation among Christians and much anxiety among the Jews. Lutostansky, des- tined to play an even more ignoble part a genera- tion later in the Beilis ritual-murder accusation, then made his debut pouring out a vial of abuse upon the Jews and their religion. Lending cred- ence to these accusations Governor-General Kauf- mann called together a conference of leading Jews and Gentiles in Vilna (1871) to probe at the bot- tom of these "mysteries" of the Jews, and Jacob RUSSIA l6l Barit of Vilna successfully defended his people by demonstrating the falsity of the charges. Sim- ilar defences were undertaken by Shershevski, Orshanski, and others. The impression, however, had already been formed in the leading spheres that the Jews were a menacing and, at best, an unreliable element in the empire, and the govern- ment did nothing to remove the stigma thus placed on them. At last, on March 13, 1881, Alexander II was felled by the hand of a nihilist assassin, a victim alike of the revolutionary movement he had sought to suppress and of the bureaucracy which thwart- ed all his efforts at reform and brought about the reaction of his later years. Like his uncle and predecessor of the same name he, too, began well but ended badly, his courage and will-power fail- ing him before yet he was half-way on the road to his people's liberation. "He had loosened its chains," says Professor Friedlaender, "but he re- fused to remove them, and the Russian giant, tan- talized by half-measures, brandished his fetters and felled the man who had loosened them." But the removal of Alexander II was only to let loose all of the hosts of religious bigotry and class-hatred which during his reign had been kept more or less in leash. The reign of the next two czars, down to March, 1917, is for Russia as a whole and for the Jews in particular, one endless- ly hideous nightmare of political oppression, civic outlawry, rioting and bloodshed. Whatever of liberalism had found its way into the empire dur- ing the regime of the "Czar-Liberator" was now to be rooted out with the sword of frightfulness. Occidentalism was thrown to the winds, the opin- ion of the cultured outside world was openly and shamelessly flaunted, or, if the Western world was in any way to be emulated, it was on the side l62 HISTORY OF THE JEWS of darkness and infamy. Again Germany became the land of inspiration to Russia, only now it was an inspiration to race-hatred rather than to hu- maneness and fellow-love. Prince Bismarck had by this time turned his back upon the liberal ideas he so frequently avowed in his younger days, and finding it convenient to forget the valuable serv- ices rendered to him and to his political aspira- tions by eminent Jews like Lasker and Bamberger, allied himself with the now powerful Conserva- tives and with the new "Christian Socialist" party of the Reichstag for utilitarian reasons. Court- Chaplain Stoecker was allowed a free hand in his Antisemitic agitation, and the learned but fanati- cal professor Treitschke's phrase, "Die Juden sind unser Unglueck" (The Jews are our misfor- tune), gained currency all through the German empire (1880). The ideas thus made popular in Berlin soon were loudly echoed in St. Petersburg, only the Russians were to better the instruction of their Prussian masters. The assassination of Alexander II served as a pretext for the govern- ment reactionaries to fan the popular ill-will against the Jews into a fury, and the new mon- arch was not the man to curb the passions of the masses but rather to stimulate them to a still higher pitch of unrighteous zeal. A pupil of Pobyedenostseff, Procurator of the Holy Synod, who fully merited the title of the "Russian Tor- quemada" given him by Turgenien* as well as by the German historian Mommsen, Alexander III (reigned 1881-1894) was in every way as fanati- cal and bigoted as his grandfather Nicholas I without the latter's energy or originality in devis- ing evil for the ostensible purpose of effecting ultimate good. A tool in the hands of unscrupu- lous advisers, this last Alexander entered upon his reign as the champion of Panslavism which RUSSIA 163 purported ruthlessly to repress all non-Russian sects and nationalities. Loris Melikov, his father's liberal Minister, was dismissed, absolutism was asserted as the only safe principle for the main- tenance of the autocracy, becoming a law by an imperial manifesto of May 14, 1881, and Jew- baiting was adopted as a standing policy, both for the suppression of the revolutionary movement and for diverting the people's attention from the government's oppressive measures. Soon after his accession anti-Jewish riots (Pogroms) broke out in Yelisavetgrad, Kiev, Shpola, Ananiev, Wasilkov, Konotop and a hundred and sixty other places, resulting in the sacking and burning of homes, the ravaging of women and the killing or maiming of thousands of men, women and chil- dren. As was subsequently shown, these disturb- ances were inspired and premeditated by the gov- ernment, which abetted the rioters in their work and hindered the Jews from defending themselves. In Kiev, Governor-General Drentelen refused to protect the Jews, stating that "he would not en- danger the lives of his soldiers for the sake of a few Jews," while in nearly every other place the authorities worked hand in hand with the rioters. Notwithstanding the revulsion of feeling these atrocities evoked all through the civilized world, resulting in large indignation meetings which were held simultaneously in London and New York (February i, 1882) the work of ruin and death was continued. Renewed rioting took place in Warsaw, Nyezhin, Kuzmintzy, Plitovich, Kli- mov, Okhrimotzy, Lubny and Balta. "The Black Hundreds of the Nineteenth Century put to shame the Haidamacks of the Eighteenth and the Cos- sacks of the Seventeenth." * *J. S, Raisin, op. cit. p. 269. 164 HISTORY OF THE JEWS Hypocrisy went hand in hand with this policy of Jewish extermination which, in the words of Pobyedonostseff, was "to force one-third of them to emigrate, another third to embrace Christian- ity, and the remainder to die of starvation." For while those fearful massacres, instigated and abetted by the government, were in progress, those highest in authority were inventing all sorts of excuses for the disturbances, placing an entirely false construction upon their origin or the motive behind them. To Baron Horace de Guenzburg the Czar's brother, Grand Duke Vladimir, de- clared that the anti-Jewish outbreaks were the result of the general tendency to lawlessness and violence rather than to a special animus against the Jews, while the emperor himself on May 23, 1 88 1, assured a Jewish deputation con- sisting of Baron Guenzburg, Sack, Passower, Bank and Berlin, that the riots were the work of anarchists and that the Jewish question would re- ceive his personal attention. In this the Czar spoke truly, the Jewish question did receive his personal attention, not, however, to solve it but only to aggravate it the more. On the same day (Sep- tember 3, 1881) on which an ukase was issued to all the Governors to appoint local commissions for the solution of the Jewish problem within their Governments, General Ignatieff sent circulars to these Governors informing them that the race riots were the result of the economic exploitation of the Christian masses at the hands of the Jews. Thus were the Governors put wise as to the real intentions of the government and their own part in the fiendish persecutions to be directed against the Jews. Henceforth no Jew could expect jus- tice in Russia. At the farcical trial of the riot- ers before the court-martial at Kiev, Attorney- General Stryelnikov took the part of the defend- RUSSIA 165 ants he was there to prosecute by throwing the entire blame upon the Jews. The Antisemitic press, headed by such papers as the "Novoye Vremya" of St. Petersburg and the "Kievlyanin" of Kiev kept up the agitation, and the endless anti-Jewish legislation which now became the al- most sole occupation of the government, came to be regarded as a most justifiable procedure against the alleged parasitical enemies of the coun- try. Here and there a faint voice could be heard in behalf of the proscribed and outlawed race, coming from the more intelligent classes who felt ashamed at the mediaeval barbarism into which their country had relapsed. Likewise, the com- mission appointed by the Czar with Count Pahlen as Chairman to investigate the causes of the great unrest was courteous enough to hand in a report favorable to the Jews, stating that the spread of the riots was made possible by "the inadequacy or weakness of the measures adopted by the police." The government, however, persisted in its policy. As if in answer to the demand for justice to the Jew heard from foreign capitals, Alexander de- creed the infamous "Temporary Measures" or "May Laws" (May 3, 1882) of which Ignatieff was the author and which aimed at curtailing whatever little freedom of movement the Jews still had within the "Pale," thus rendering their lot in- finitely worse and quite unbearable. By these "Measures" all Jews of the fifteen Governments of Western Russia were expelled from the villages and driven into the cities and towns. Leases and mortgages held by Jews on landed estates were cancelled. To restrict the area of the "Pale" it- self, it was decreed six years later to take the Ros- tov and Taganrog districts out of it and to in- clude them within the military Don district closed to the Jews. To add to the economic misery of 1 66 'HISTORY OF THE JEWS the Jews, a number of incendiary fires broke out throughout the Jewish settlements, recurring with persistent regularity every summer. The few privileges granted the Jews by Alexander II were little by little taken away from them and between 1888 and 1890 large numbers of Jewish mechanics were expelled from St. Petersburg where they had been allowed to remain in the former reign. In a similar manner were the rights of Jewish uni- versity graduates curtailed, and the number of Jewish students in the high schools and universi- ties was greatly restricted. In 1891, upon the ap- pointment of Grand Duke Sergius as Governor- General of Moscow, the expulsion of the Jews from that city began, about fourteen thousand Jews being expelled therefrom in a little more than a year. The Jews were given no notice of the intention of the administration, so that they could not collect their debts, nor, in many in- stances, even sell their household articles, most of which they had to leave behind. Other expul- sions took place in Novgorod, Riga, Yalta, Kaluga, Ryazan and Tula. At the same time a premium was placed upon conversion to the Greek Catholic Church. By the mere formula of the sprinkling of holy water, the hounded and outlawed Jew could become equal before the law with the Christian Russian, invested with all rights and even with special privileges, and given some monetary support. Even a Jewish criminal could escape the consequences of his misdeed by obtaining a certificate of conversion. Regardless of the demoralization which such a policy brought to a large portion of his empire, the Czar per- sisted in his course and remained indifferent to the protests of the outside world. Gladstone's suggestion "to rouse the conscience of Russia and Europe" remained but a pious wish, and the RUSSIA 167 memorial adopted by the Guildhall meeting in London (December 10, 1890), was not even re- ceived by the Czar but was returned to the Lord Mayor unopened. And now came about the terrible disillusion- ment of the Maskilim. It was left to the incen- diary and the murderer to drive wisdom into them that they might perceive the true meaning of the enlightenment they had courted. Their fathers saw more clearly than themselves when they opposed all steps that would lead to Russi- fication without emancipation. The Jews were far happier in Rusisa, if they could at all be happy there, before the light of modernity had penetrated into their humble dwellings, to rouse within them wants and desires they could never gratify, and to result in a disastrous alienation from their faith and their people. Moreover, the dire persecutions that have thus come upon them found them, unlike their ancestors, no longer able to endure. Where the old generations had at least the satisfaction of knowing that they were suffering for a sacred cause, their enlightened children and grand-children could not even grasp the meaning of the persecutions, nor understand why they should thus be singled out for suffering. In the midst of the rioting in Kiev and Odessa the young children of the aristocratic Jews would ask: "Are we, too, Jews?" But with the disil- lusionment came also a reawakening. As has been true all through the ages, their common suf- ferings now made the Jews feel their kinship all the more and caused them to unite as never be- fore in mutual sympathy and helpfulness. True, hundreds and thousands of Jews rushed to bap- tism as the only panacea for their civil and eco- nomic ills, but the falling off of the decayed limbs only left the tree itself stronger and more firmly 1 68 HISTORY OF THE JEWS intrenched in its Jewish soil. Instead of driving the mass of Jewry to Christianity it only made them more zealously Jewish, causing even many of the alienated sons to return to the fold. Re- ligion, however, was no longer to play the lead- ing role in this Jewish revival. The nugatory in- fluence of the Haskalah had done its work, and Russian Jewry could not now recede to the posi- tion it had occupied at the beginning of the nine- teenth century. Henceforth a heightened sense of race-consciousness takes the place formerly held by religion, and is soon to develop into a concrete nationalism with Zion as its goal. The history of the new Palestinian colonization, paving the way for modern Zionism, about which more will be said here in another chapter, dates from this Jew- ish reawakening coming in the train of the re- action with which Alexander III began his reign of blood and terror. Before, however, the national ideal could make much headway and produce any tangible results there was urgent need for immediate relief of the starved and famished millions for whom the "Pale," at all times overcrowded and degraded, now became a veritable inferno. The relief moneys raised in Russia and in foreign countries could only render temporary assistance, and that, too, very inadequately. Bread, shelter and oppor- tunities of earning a livelihood were needed im- mediately, and these were not to be had in Russia. Emigration to other lands was the only possible solution to the pressing problem, and there soon arose a migratory movement the like of which was unprecedented even in the history of so foot- loose a race as the Jewish. A number of leaders arose directing the steps of the emigrants, some of whom settled in Germany, Austria, France or England, while others of the more idealistic went RUSSIA 169 to Palestine, devoid of means though they were, there to cultivate the soil of the fathers and lay the foundation of the Yishub or new Jewish settle- ment. By far the greatest number, however, wended their way to the United States there to begin life anew under the happy conditions of American freedom, and to build up the great Jewish centres of New York, Chicago, Phila- delphia and other large cities, while some of them found an asylum in Argentina, in the colonies founded by Baron de Hirsch. Fully a million Jews left Russia before the close of the century, most of whom came to America. Here, too, how- ever, the foes of the Jews in Russia were doomed to disappointment. The removal of so many Jews, while measurably lightening the burden of those remaining behind, did not show a perceptible de- crease in their number. Emigration, like the con- versions, the massacres and the economic repres- sions, failed to deplete the land of its Jews. The Jewish problem in Russia, so long as the govern- ment chose to make it a problem, could be solved only in Russia and in a way far different from that contemplated by the Czar. Economically wretched and politically outlawed, yet it is during these very years of incomparable suffering that Israel in Russia reaches its great- est moral elevation. The delusion of a pseudo- Haskalah having worn off, the Jew in Russia at last found himself, and from a vain aspiration for a half-way assimilation in itself impossible of attainment as it could only lead to absorption within the Slavic nation, or, at the very best, to alienation from Judaism, involving the tragedy of a dual or marrano existence he now turned his thoughts inwardly toward his own racial require- ments. The Jew, he found, is worth saving in and for himself, and if he cannot become an I7O HISTORY OF THE JEWS integral part of the Russian or any other people, he can, as indeed he does, form a racial entity of his own, politically attached to the land of his birth or sojourn, but racially, no less than religi- ously, living his own life and cultivating those ideals through which the soul of his race has ever sought its expression. Even the years of Alex- ander II, whatever their deluding hopes and false expectations, were of some use to the Jews: they prepared them for the period of reawakened na- tional consciousness that was to follow. Unbe- known to themselves the Maskilim had served as the vanguard of the hosts of Jewish Nationalism, and their contribution lay in the literary labors they had performed which made possible the de- velopment of the rich and strongly nationalistic Hebrew literature of the reigns of Alexander III and Nicholas II. After 1881 Hebrew is not, as had been the case until then, largely a relic of the past, revered, loved and cultivated mainly for that reason, yet in reality serving as a medium of transition to the European languages and the cul- ture to which these were the key. Now it is as- siduously studied for its own sake, as the language the Jew should know because it is inalienably his, and because it is the key to his own vast treasure- house of the spirit. The work which Perez Smo- lenskin (Mohilev, i842-Meran, Tyrol, 1885) car ~ ried on -for so many years as the champion of a sane Haskalah with progress as its watchword and a Jewish rehabilitation in Palestine as its goal, using the Hebrew as both an end in itself and a means to the still greater end of fostering the national spirit, now began to bear fruit. As a leader in the Haskalah movement in Russia Smol- enskin was more fortunately situated than most of the other Maskilim in that his home was in Vienna, and by his extensive travels through the PEREZ SMOLEXSKIN (1842-1885) RUSSIA 171 western countries he was better able than most of his colleagues to observe the spiritual havoc which a pseudo-Haskalah had wrought in the Jew- ish communities of Germany, France and Eng- land. It was he who in a series of trenchant articles in his "Ha-Shahar" attacked the denation- alized Jewish Reform movement and pointed to the sad decadence of Judaism which followed the thesis laid down by the Mendelssohnian school that Judaism constituted a religion only. He also fore- saw the coming of the Russian persecutions as the inevitable outcome of the anomalous position of the Jews, which, however, he knew would result in the one great good of opening their eyes to the dangers of the situation and of directing their thoughts Zionward.* The preservation of the Jews as a people was to him even more important than the survival of Judaism as a religion, since the lat- ter was possible only through the former. And the survival of the Jews is largely dependent upon their retention of the Hebrew language which, he said, was "the only relic still remaining to us from the ruins of our ancient glory." He himself gave proof of his unwavering belief in the doctrine he proclaimed by giving himself and his talents to writing in Hebrew, even though it meant penury and want where, had he written in the Russian or the German language which he equally mastered, he might have derived much material benefit. In the making of modern Hebrew literature none oc- cupies a more renowned place than Smolenskin as one who himself largely contributed to its up- building by his many novels and nother writings and because of the influence he exerted over the Russian Jews to follow in his footsteps and culti- * Of Smolenskin's labors as a nationalist more will be told in this volume in the chapter on Zionism. 172 HISTORY OF THE JEWS vate the Hebrew language as the Jew's most treasured possession. From now on Hebrew is for the Russian Jew synonymous with nationalism, and every Hebrew writer, unless specifically known to be otherwise, is ipso facto regarded as an advocate and up- holder of the ideal of national regeneration. The death of Smolenskin in 1885 found many capable disciples of the great master ready to take up the work where he had left it. The extinction of the "Ha-Shahar" was followed by the birth of a con- siderable number of ambitious publications, the "Gan Perahim" (Flower Garden), in Vilna, by Mezah, "He-Asif" (The Gatherer), in Warsaw, by Sokolow, "Keneset Yisrael" (The Assembly of Israel), also in Warsaw, by S. P. Rabbinovich: The number of Hebrew readers grew apace, and soon many a Hebrew writer derived a living in- come from his pen and could therefore give him- self exclusively to literature as his life's career. The great demand for the printed Hebrew word stimulated competition, and in 1886 Dr. Judah Loeb Kantor (Vilna, i849-Riga, 1915) began the publication of "Ha-Yom" (The Day), the first Hebrew daily, which forced the other two periodicals, the "Ha-Meliz" of St. Petersburg and "Ha-Zefirah" of Warsaw to a like step, so that Russian Jewry now had three Hebrew daily news- papers, given to political intelligence, communal news items and literary articles, but primarily to the fostering of the national spirit, or as it was known by its Hebrew name, Hibbat Ziyyon (Love of'Zion).. Warsaw. now took the/place of Vilna as the Hebrew literary center, and there, in addition to the already existing private Hebrew publishers and book-sellers, were founded the two publishing houses of Ahiasaf and Tuschiah, both of them due to the energy of A. L. Shalkovitch, ELIEZER BEN-YEHUDA (b. 1858) RUSSIA 173 himself a highly capable sketch writer and liter- ary critic under the pen-name of "Ben Avigdor". These two firms placed the Hebrew literature upon a modern business basis, stimulated a demand for good and useful books, created markets for their productions throughout Russia, and encouraged the writers by offering a fair compensation for their work. The zeal and energy thus displayed in Russia reacted also on other countries, chiefly on Palestine where "Ben Yehudah," destined to fame as the great Hebrew lexicographer, began publishing a daily by the name of "Ha-Zebi" (The Deer, or The Glory), and in Galicia where Sam- uel J. Fuchs renewed the publication of the weekly "Ha-Maggid" (in Cracow), Yitzhak Fernhoff started issuing occasional belles-lettres pamphlets, while S. I. Graeber published his "Ozar Ha-Sifrut" and Dr. Israel Guenzig, .in collaboration with S. J. Fuchs, established a literary magazine by the name of "Ha-Eshkol." At the same time an attempt was made by Reuben Brainin (b. Ladi, Mohilev, 1863) then resident at Vienna, to re-establish a Hebrew literary center in the Austrian capital by founding the "Mi-Mizrah u-mi-Maarab (From East and West). Nearly all of these periodicals were short-lived. Their sporadic rise, however, in great number and in many new places, testified to the strength and vitality of the national ideal of which the Hebrew tongue was the natural and necessary vehicle. It was in Russia, however, where this litera- ture was to continue in growth and reach dimen- sions never before dreamed of or anticipated by even the most ardent lovers of the Hebrew word. In the early nineties we see Odessa, for many years the stronghold of assimilationist Haskalah, come to the fore as a rival centre of Hebrew literary activity to Warsaw and Vilna. Here was 174 HISTORY OF THE JEWS the home of Lilienblum, the fiery nationalist, Rab- nitzki the critic, Levinsky the humorist, S. J. Abramovich (Mendele Mokher Sepharim} the in- comparable novelist and stylist, S. M. Dubnow, the famous historian, Dr. Kaminer, the poet, David Kahana, the scholarly writer on historical themes and, chief of all, Asher Ginzberg, known as Ahad Haam (One of the People), who stands out foremost among all Hebrew writers and who, as a thinker and stylist, particularly as the pathfinder of the nationalist movement by his advocacy of Palestine as the cultural centre of the Jews if it could be nothing else, revolution- ized the Hebrew literary world and placed his im- press upon its progress as did no other writer since Smolenskin. With such a galaxy of talents it was possible to bring about notable literary achievements. In 1890 there appeared in that city the literary magazine "Kaveret" (The Bee- hive) which was supplanted in the next few years by the more ambitious "Ha-Pardes" (Pleasure Gar- den). In these publications Rabnitzky and Ahad Haam are the leading contributors, but are sup- ported by a host of other writers. Soon Odessa be- came a prominent centre for Hebrew publications, second only to Warsaw. A number of books by noted writers made their appearance in the early nineties, the most prominent of them being the first volume of Ahad Ha-Am's "Al Parashat Derak- him" (At the Parting of the Ways) which ap- peared in 1894. It was here, too, that Ahad Haam first mapped out the plan of an encyclopedia in Hebrew to be known as "Ozar Ha-Yahadut" (Ju- daism's Storehouse) which was shortly thereafter taken up by Dr. Isidore Singer, who elaborated upon the original idea and, after meeting with many obstacles in Europe finally succeeded in having it materialized in the "J ew i sri Encyclopedia" in New RUSSIA 175 York. It was in Odessa, too, where, next to Ahad Haam, there arose three of the foremost literary figures of the Hebrew literature of our day, Hayim Nahman Bialik and Saul Tshernikhovsky, the famous lyrical poets, and Dr. Joseph Klaus- ner, the critic and linguist, who ascribes his own literary development to the influence of Ahad Haam whom, in 1903, he succeeded as editor of the "Haschiloah." The progress of this literature during the nine- ties is phenomenal. As if by magic there arose throughout the "Pale" a host of writers, pub- licists, critics, poets and novelists whom any litera- ture would gladly and proudly claim as its own. The writers of the preceding two decades, even men like Dr. Solomon Mandelkern, historian, philologist and poet, Mordecai Zebi Mane, the lyric poet, Menahem Mendel Dolitzky and Isaac Rab- binovich, the romantic poets of the nationalist movement, Leon Rabbinovich, the publicist, and others are gradually pushed into the background by younger and more capable men. Of the older men David Frischman, poet and critic, Nahum Sokolow, the leading Hebrew journalist of his generation, Simon Bernfeld, the capable historian and writer on Jewish science, S. L. Zitron, the popular writer on literary topics, and J. H. Tav- yev, the clever feuilletonist and writer on educa- tional themes, still retain their places as guides and arbiters in the literary activities of the times and keep pace with the demands of the great liter- ary evolution they have helped to bring about. It is the younger writers, however, who are now rap- idly forging ahead and who display by far the greater promise. Besides the great luminaries Byalik and Tshernikhovsky, we see many lesser but none the less brilliant poetical lights, Jacob Cohen, David Fichman, Z. Shneor, Isaac Katzen- 176 HISTORY OF THE JEWS elson, David Shimoni, Simon Ginsberg, excelling older poets like S. L. Gordon, N. Pines, A. Lu- boshitzky, all of them lyrics of a high order, in large measure followers in the footsteps of Bya- lik though largely influenced also by the masters of the European literatures. Among the novel- ists, Judah Steinberg, "J. Bershadsky" (nom de plume for J. Domoshevitsky), and J. H. Brenner stand out among their colleagues as realists of highly descriptive powers, faithful narrators of the Jewish life of their day and, in consequence, portrayers of the gloomy conditions obtaining in the "Pale," the spiritual chaos and mental and moral confusion wrought among the six million souls of a race brought to the verge of ruin by an imperial policy of systematic proscription and out- lawry. H. D. Naumberg, G. Schofman, A. A. Kabak, and J. D. Berkovich who, in the main, are writers of short sketches, are next in im- portance to their above-mentioned colleagues. Un- der the impulse of the new revival we see several of the prominent writers of the preceding decades return to the Hebrew which they had left for the now rising Yiddish literature, among them Sha- lom Jacob Abramovich who, in the "Pardes", "Luah Ahiasaf" and other magazines, published several of his choicest works which, for their subtle humor as well as remarkable adaptation of the Talmudic style to modern expressions, have be- come veritable classics ("Bi-Yeshibah Shel Maalah u-bi-Yeshibah Shel Mattah," "Lo Nahat be-Yis- rael," "Mas'ot Binyamin ha-Shelishi," etc.), Isaac Loeb Perez ("Ha-Ugab" and a great number of stories from Hassidic Life, which he translated from their Yiddish original by himself), and Sha- lom Rabbinovich, better known as Shalom Aleikheni ("Don Kishot mi-Mazepevka" and other stories). At the same time we see the well-known veterans DR. ISIDOR SINGER (b. 1857) DAVID FRISCHMAN (b. 1865) RUSSIA 177 of the Haskalah period continue their scientific re- search work, mainly along lines of Jewish history and philology, while S. P. Rabbinovich under- takes the translation of Graetz's monumental his- tory into Hebrew, supplementing it with copious important notes by himself and other leading scholars of the day. Nearly all of the more im- portant belles-lettres works of the German, French and English literature, were made known to the Hebrew readers in translation. David Frisch- mann, in addition to his clever skits, his many poems and his critical articles, has also earned an honorable place in this literature by his trans- lations from the works of George Eliot, Spiel- hagen, and Nietzsche. Schiller and Heine, Byron and Shelley, Pushkin and Lermontov found their way into the Hebrew, while probably the ablest translation into any language of Longfellow's "Hiawatha" is to be found in Tshernikhovsky's Hebrew version of that great poem (1913). The man to whom greatest credit belongs for the literery activity of this period is doubtless Ahad Haam. After despairing of seeing his plan for an encyclopedia in Hebrew materialized, he, in 1897, established the "Haschlioah" which though edited in Odessa was published and printed in Berlin. At once this monthly magazine became the rallying place for all the litterateurs of the day not only of Russia but of the Western countries and America as well. The leading Jewish savants of the time, Isaac Hirsch Weiss and Meyer Friedman, David Kaufmann and Samuel Kraus, W. Bacher and Abraham Berliner, besides writers of note like S. Bern f eld and David Neumark, be- came frequent contributors. In its pages M. D. Brandstaedter returned to the Hebrew literary fold as a story-writer, while M. J. Berdichevsky and Hillel Zeitlin wrote their brilliant literary 178 HISTORY OF THE JEWS and philosophical studies and, along with I. L. Perez, exploited there the field of Hassidism, leaving a permanent impression of that great re- vival movement in Judaism. The real value of this noted periodical, however, lay in the fact that it not only encouraged the older and well-known writers but also brought to the fore a number of new talents many of whom have since attained a place of great eminence in this literature. It w r as in the "Haschiloah" that Byalik produced his great- est poems ("Akhen Hatzir ha- Am," "Ha-Matmid," "Mi-Shire ha-Horef," "Mete Midbar," "Megilat ha-Esh," etc.), Tshernikhovsky found himself in "Ani Ma'amin," "Ben ha-Metzarin," "Ben Har- im" and other poems in which he strikes a note hitherto new to the Hebrew verse, introducing in it the quest of aestheticism, the Greek spirit of beauty, love and the joy of living. Here, too, was discovered the great talent of Mordecai Zeeb Feierberg (1874- 1899), who though he produced but little, dying at the early age of twenty-five, reveals in the few writings he left a power for psychological an- alysis of impressions and emotions which easily places him in the front rank of contemporary writers. Probably no one else succeeded so well in depicting the deeply emotional and idealistically sentimental side of Jewish life than Feierberg, himself the very embodiment of the "Hafni the Dreamer" character he so skilfully and sym- pathetically drew in most of his sketches. But the "Haschiloah" was more than a mere school of lit- erature for the young Hebraists. In addition to acting as arbiter of good literary taste for writers and readers alike, it also became a lofty tribunal from which judgment was rendered upon any and all of the great Jewish problems of the day. It created a healthy unrest among the writers which RUSSIA 1 79 impelled them to recast their ideas and opinions even as it taught them to re-formulate their thoughts in a diction chaste and pure. All this was accomplished single-handed by its editor, him- self a rare combination of the occidental literary "Schoengeist" and the Russian devotee of He- braic idealism. Ahad Haam taught his genera- tion to be dissatisfield with things as they were or were about to become. His carping criticism struck alike at assimilationist and religious zealot. He attacked the Palestinian colonization scheme as impracticable, and with the same vim and deeply-cutting logic he also carried on a war against the political Zionism of Herzl's planning, demonstrating its futility in so clear-cut a man- ner as to compel Herzl and the other leaders to take cognizance of his strictures, and to call forth a spirited retort from the pen of Max Nordau.* When Ahad Haam retired from its editorship in 1903 the Haschiloah passed under the guidance of Dr. Joseph Klausner since which time that periodical has become, if not more literary, at least more European in its literary scope as well as more Zionistic in tone. Never since, however, has it reached the idealistic height and moral tone it had attained in the time of its founder and first editor which will always remain the most precious years of the Hebrew literary movement in Russia. Along with the Hebrew movement there now looms up the star of the Yiddish literature which, if less classical and more humble in its demands and pretensions, has resulted in greater immediate good to the large mass of Russian Jewry. A study of the rise and growth of this literature is most important to the understanding of Russo- * See also about Ahad Haam in the chapter on Zionism in this volume. l8o HISTORY OF THE JEWS Jewish life of the last few decades. Even in Rus- sia, where the Talmud and the Hebrew literature generally were so assiduously cultivated, the He- brew language could remain the acquired posses- sion of only a minority. The bulk of Russian Jewry, while revering it as the sacred tongue of their past in which the Bible and the prayer-book were written, could not obviously resort to it as readily as to their Judaeo-German vernacular. Doubtless, the slowness with which Russian Jewry responded to whatever attempts there had been made for their modernization was due to the absence for a long time of any literary me- diums in the only language in which the masses were fully at home the Yiddish. Because He- brew learning was limited to the comparative few it was regarded as the heritage of the lamdanim or learned aristocracy, and within reach of only the idlers or the rich. The humble working masses remained untouched by either the Russian or the Hebrew movements among the intellectuals and, aside from a few wonder-tales from either Jewish or Christian sources, like the "Baba-Buch" (Book of Prince Baba) "Ma'aseh-Buch" (Story Book), the tales about the miracle-working rab- bis, moralist books, the "Tehinot" or special prayers for the women, such Yiddish versions of the Bible as the "Tse'enah u-Re'enah" and "Nofet Tsufim," and the "Menorat ha-Maor" and similar devotional works, most of which were of German importation, those masses were left wholly unprovided as to their spiritual needs. Writing in the Judaeo-German or, as it was contemptuously called, Jargon was deemed a degradation for one of scholarly aspira- tion and could least of all enlist the sympathy of the early Maskilim with their programme of secu- larization and uplift by means of the German and RUSSIA l8l other European tongues. Such was the contempt entertained for the Yiddish in learned Jewish circles in Russia that as late as the second half of the nineteenth century the would-be leaders of the people, the students of the rabbinical semin- aries of Vilna and Zhitomir, instead of writing learned and useful works for the education of the masses would consent, for a mere pittance, to com- pose highly overdrawn and often absurd "Tehinot" for the women which was about the only form of literature for which the Yiddish publishers could then find a ready market. Nearly everywhere the Judaeo-German dialect with its lack of a fixed grammar and confusing mixture of words bor- rowed from many languages was regarded as one of the excrescences of the Galut (Jewish Exile), unfit and unworthy to be used as an instrument of instruction or literary entertainment. When Mendel Lefin (1741-1819), known as Satanover, published his Yiddish version of the Book of Proverbs in 1816, he was so utterly ridiculed by Tobias Feder in his book "Kol Mehazezim" that he became thoroughly discouraged from continuing his efforts in this direction, and his translation of the Book of Ecclesiastes was not published until more than half a century after his death, in 1873. Yet here and there a Maskil could be found who had freed himself from the general prejudice against the humble language of the people, justly regarding it as a most useful means of educating the masses. Even Isaac Baer Levinsohn, who thoroughly despised the Yiddish as "an ugly mix- ture of Biblical, Polish, German, Russian and other words," realized the helpfulness of this lan- guage in the furtherance of enlightenment, and in 1828 himself wrote a satirical work, "Die Hefkerwelt" (The Unbridled World), in which, more boldy than in his Hebrew works, he empties l82 HISTORY OF THE JEWS the quiver of his satire at the Hassidic rabbis and the communal leaders of his day, and makes propaganda for his favorite plans of reform in the educational and occupational affairs of the Jews. Men like Israel Aksenfeld (1789-1868), the learned Odessa lawyer, and Dr. Solomon Ett- inger (1799-1855), the genial physician of Sa- moscz, Lublin, even openly espoused the Yiddish as their favorite literary tongue in which they wrote their novels, dramas and poems, Aksenfeld writing no less than twenty-six books. None of the works of these authors, however, appeared in their lifetime, though they were largely circulated in manuscript, as there could be found no pub- lisher ambitious and daring enough to undertake their publication as a business venture. The ma- jority of the Maskilim, whether openly or tacitly, favored the discouragement and suppression of the Yiddish for the Hebrew and more especially the German and the Russian. As late as 1864 the "Society for the Promotion of Enlightenment" re- fused to award a stipend of four hundred roubles toward the publication of Aksenf eld's now acknowledged able writings, though urged to do so by such men as Ossip Rabbinovich, Dr. Schwa- bacher, Dr. Pinsker and others.* Mordecai Aaron Guenzburg, the noted Hebrew author, has the distinction also of being one of the pioneers of the Yiddish literature, having trans- lated and actually published in Yiddish, in 1824, his Hebrew version of Campe's "Discovery of America." A. B. Gottlober, the Hebrew poet, wrote * These two, Aksenfeld and Ettinger, are regarded as the fathers of the modern Yiddish literature in Russia. Of Aksenfeld's twen- ty-six books only five, a novel and four dramas, were ever pub- lished, and of these the most important is the drama entitled "The First Jewish Recruit." Ettinger's most prominent work published is "Serkele," a drama. His fables, epigrams and poems were published by his son, Wilhelm Ettinger, in St. Petersburg, in 1889. RUSSIA considerably in Yiddish also, but his works did not appear till late in the reign of Alexander II. This is also true of Isaac Meier Dick (1807-1893), probably the most prolific of all the Yiddish writ- ers of the last century, whose greatest activity as a writer of short humorous novels in a plain and sometimes crude style extend through the best part of Alexander II's reign till the last years of Alex- ander III. The real epoch-making event in the his- tory of this literature does not, however, take place till 1863 when Alexander Zederbaum, first to found a Hebrew weekly in Russia, made a like attempt in Yiddish and alongside of his "Ha-Meliz" began in Odessa the publication of the weekly "Kol Mebas- ser" (The Heralding Voice), a Yiddish periodical with a Hebrew name. It had an immediate moral and literary success. The scattered literary forces in Russian Jewry who might never have discovered their real powers, or having discovered them might have gone over to the Russian or Hebrew litera- ture, now found their opportunity in Yiddish. Soon the "Kol Mebasser" became the rallying place for a number of young writers, nearly each of whom in a short time acquired fame through his work for this paper. Shalom Jacob Abramovich, until then known only for his Hebrew writings, abandoned the holy tongue for the profane dia- lect of the masses and made his debut in this paper with his masterly work "The Mannikin." Here Isaac Joel Linetzky (1839-1915) published his "Polish Boy," the one work which was to render his name immortal to Russian Jewry. Here, too, Abraham Goldfaden (1840-1908) first began to publish his poems and developed those talents which fitted him for his life-work as the father of the Yiddish theatre which he founded in 1876. Had the "Kol Mebasser" done nothing more than to stimulate the Yiddish pen of Abramovich 184 HISTORY OF THE JEWS or, as he is better known to fame, Mendele Mokher Sefarim (Kapul, Minsk, i835-Odessa, 1917), it and its founder Zederbaum could lay no greater claim to the gratitude of the Yiddish reading pub- lic, nor boast of a more noteworthy achievement. For Abramovich was the first real great Yiddish writer to appear upon the Jewish horizon, incom- parable alike for the artistry of his creations and the moral end pursued in each of them. To the credit of all these Maskilim who wrote in Yiddish in the reign of Alexander II it must be said that they stood much closer to the humble Jewish folk and their vital interests than their colleagues who confined themselves to the Hebrew or the Russian as the sole propaganda means of enlightenment. The latter, generally speaking, cared mainly for the decorous side of Jewish life. The Ghetto with its filth and misery repelled and made them ashamed. They sought to remedy matters not by going to the root of the evils, but by superimpos- ing upon the uncultivated masses a foreign cul- ture which they blindly believed could in a day transform a pauper into a prince. The masses clamored for bread and the barest of chances to exist and these aristocratic illuminati replied by prescribing "German," "Science," "Literature." Little wonder, therefore, that their efforts largely remained unavailing and their polished and gran- diloquent appeals were but too often a mere voice in the desert. The Yiddish writers, on the other hand, in using the crude and as yet uncultivated dialect of the masses also succeeded better in fathoming the people's ills and in applying more certain remedies. They assumed no airs of su- periority and condescension, but, coming from the people and mingling freely with them, they diag- nosed the true nature of the disease, and gave themselves to its eradication. With them, too, as SHALOM JACOB ABRAMOVICH ("Mendele Mokher Sepharim") (1835-1917) RUSSIA 185 with the Maskilim, enlightenment was a most de- sirable end which, however, they felt could come about only after the removal of the many abuses which like a canker were eating away the vitals of the race. For the moment, therefore, they contented themselves with letting the question of occidental culture remain in the background, direct- ing their chief attention to the more pressing needs of the people. In this crusade Abramovich led the way. He was artist and revolutionary alike, and in his many stories from the Jewish life of his day, notably in his "Mannikin" and "The Meat Tax," he points out the gross abuses to which the people had been subjected at the hands of their unscrupulous and self-appointed leaders, who made use of the hapless political situation of the race to terrorize their brethren into submission to all sorts of extortions to escape the threatened reprisals of the government. In "The Travels of Benjamin the Third" he pictures the naivete and hopeless impracticability that had developed among the ever oppressed and unsophisticated denizens of the "Pale," reducing them to a state of fearful, if comical, utopianism and day-dreaming, while in "The Mare" his best-known work he de- scribes the complete hopelessness of the quest for higher culture under Russian conditions. Con- siderable as was Abramovich's achievement in the Hebrew literature to which, as to his first love, he returned after many years, it is with the Yid- dish that his name will forever remain linked as both its greatest literary genius and most influen- tial reformer. Long known as the "Grandfather" of the Yiddish literature, Abramovich has only just passed away (December 15, 1917) at the age of eighty-three after a literary activity which, for its length and volume of production, has been equalled by few of the world's noted writers. 1 86 HISTORY OF THE JEWS Along-side of Abramovich, of Moses Aaron Schatzkes (1825-1899) who, like Linetzky, has immortalized his name by the production of only one great work, "The Jewish Ante-Passover," a story of the ritualistic hardships connected with the Passover preparations, and of the already mentioned Eliezer Zebi Zweifel whose work in Yiddish almost equals his literary activity in He- brew there now arise upon the scene a great number of writers, many of them of considerable talent. In Eliakum Zunser (Vilna, i84O-New York, 1913) is revealed the first truly able and prominent folk-singer who was to serve as the forerunner of the more finished poets of the last three decades. Jacob Dienesohn is revealed as a novelist of great strength in his "Ha-Xeehabim veha-Neimim." With the establishment by Zeder- baum, in 1883, of the weekly "Volksblatt" a new impetus is given to writing in Yiddish, and there appear a number of new literary forces, Mordecai Spektor as a novelist of great power; Solomon Rabbinovich (Shalom Aleikhem), the incomparable humorist (Pereyaslav, Poltava, 1859- New York, 1916), and Simon Frug (Bobrovy, Kherson, i86o-Odessa, 1916) and David Frisch- man as poets. It is noteworthy in the case of the two last named that they both turned to the Yid- dish from other literatures, Frug from the Rus- sian in which, young though he was at the time, he had already won much recognition, and Frisch- man from the Hebrew, though he never pretend- ed to prefer the Yiddish to the sacred tongue. Judah Loeb Gordon, too, felt prompted to produce a few poems in the humble vernacular of the masses, while N. M. Sheikevich (Nesvizh, Minsk, i85O-New York, 1905) under the name of S homer was at the height of his popularity as the most productive story-teller of the time, howsoever lit- SHALOM RABBINOVICH ("Shalom Aleikhem") (1859-1916) RUSSIA 187 tie artistic merit his numerous works possess. The most promising of all these young writers of the eighties was the already mentioned Shalom Aleik- hem whose "Stempenyu" and "Yosele Solovey," written in those years, are idyls of contempora- neous Jewish life in Russia, and presage the great talent as a humorist the author was to develop within the next two decades. Nearly all those men, whether in their poetry or their prose writings, were largely actuated by the motive of enlighten- ing their people. The most prominent place as such, however, belongs to Isaac Loeb Perez (Sa- moscz, Lublin, 1851 -Warsaw, 1915) who very early in his career as a Yiddish litterateur pro- claimed the education of the Jewish masses as the chief task of himself and his literary col- leagues. "Our programme," he says in one of his articles, "is education. We wish to educate the people, to make wise the simple, enlighten the fanatical and turn the idlers into useful and hon- orable workers who, while laboring for their per- sonal advantage, shall benefit the community at large." To accomplish this end it is necessary to speak to the people in the language it understands best. "We wish to educate the people through the Jargon, because about three million souls among us understand no other language. Yet we do not sanctify the Jargon. Openly we sympa- thize with those who aim at exchanging it for the living vernacular of the country." Unlike the school of Yiddishists which arose in the first dec- ade of the twentieth century, Perez does not place the Yiddish in the role of rival to the Hebrew. Hebrew alone, he tells us, is the national tongue of the Jew, "the cord holding together the little wheels that they may not run apart." "To for- get the Hebrew language means to forget the Torah, the prophets, the history of the Jews, to l88 HISTORY OF THE JEWS break away, like the rotten twig which falls off the tree and disappears." Yet under the prevail- ing conditions Hebrew alone is inadequate for the educational needs of the people. For this the Jargon is indispensable "not indeed as a tutor for the higher or even the elementary branches, but as a nurse whose function is to train the child to sit right, to take its first steps, to utter its first sentences." An ingenious poet, sketch-writer and publicist, known particularly for his sympathetic descriptions of Hassidic life, Perez stands with Mendele Mokher Sefarim and Shalom Aleikhem as the three foremost literary figures in Yiddish, though from the point of practical usefulness to his people, as an educator and guide, he greatly surpasses his two distinguished colleagues.* There now ensued a great literary activity in Yiddish with Warsaw as its centre, followed closely by Vilna and Odessa. In these cities as well as in St. Petersburg daily papers began to ap- pear, notably the "Fraind," "Heint," "Weg" and "Moment" which for a time held the ascendancy over all similar publications in Russia. New talents steadily made their appearance: Abraham Raisin, poet and sketch-writer; H. D. Naumberg, Shalom Asch, Jonah Rosenfeld, P. Hirschbein among the novelists, and H. Tshemerinsky, Dr. Isidore Eliasoff, Samuel Tsharni (S. Niger), and Sam- uel Rosenfeld, among the publicists and critics. Many of these writers later emigrated to the United States there to continue their activities in the wider field of American Yiddish journalism. Under the impulse of serving their brethren there were swept into the Yiddish fold a number of the most noted Hebraists, so that we soon find Leon Rabbinovich, successor to Zederbaum as editor of * See the chapter on "America" in this volume for the rise and growth of Yiddish literature in the United States. ISAAC LEIB PEREZ (1851-1915) RUSSIA 189 "Hameliz," Hillel Zeitlin, philosopher and histo- rian, J. H. Rabnitsky, publicist, Nahum Sokolow, of the ^Ha-Zefirah," and even M. L. Lilienblum, H. N. Bialik, Dr. Joseph Klausner, David Frischman, Dr. M. J. Berditchevsky and Reuben Brainin, give much of their time to work in Yiddish. By this time the Yiddish had evolved into a more finished dialect, had been successfully compressed into an accepted uniformity betokening a culti- vated language with fixed rules as to orthography and spelling, a scientific study of the origin and development of the language already having suc- cessfully been made by Elazar Schulman of Kiev. The advent of many new writers and the growth of the Yiddish press reacted upon the intellectual development of the masses even as it betokened the awakening of a wide-spread interest in the language and its literature. The more than three million Yiddish-speaking Jews of Russia, having found their voice, now learned to think for them- selves, and Perez and his colleagues who set out to do the work of enlightenment, now found that their labors had been amply successful. The various Jewish movements of the day, Zionism, Territorialism, Socialism, Bundism, and the like all had their followings in the "Pale." The move- ments produced their leaders and these, by means of the Yiddish publications, safeguarded and strengthened the movements. Probably the most notable of these Russian-Jewish movements was the Socialist-Revolutionary party, one of whose initiators was Dr. Haym Zhitlovsky who wrote a number of works on sociological and economical themes and later, in America, published his noted work on the history of philosophy. Never was Russian Israel more awake to the haplessness of its position in the empire nor more conscious of its hopes of ultimate and final redemption, or I9O HISTORY OF THE JEWS more fearless in expressing its claims and de- mands, than during the twenty-three years of the dark reign of Nicholas II. This son of Alexander III was a true heir to his father's despotic character and particularly to his hatred for the Jews, but at the same time lacked whatever firmness of purpose and strength of will the latter could claim. The "Imbecile Czar" he has well been styled, having set out upon his career as a ruler without any precon- ceived ideas as to the nature and magnitude of his task and with none of the qualifications nec- essary to bring about an even moderately suc- cessful reign. Devoid of all will-power and with- out even a rudimentary knowledge of human na- ture, Nicholas soon fell a prey to the machina- tions of plotters and schemers, and became a tool in the hands of such of his counsellors as had both a firmer will and a desire to exercise it over the weakling emperor. Whatever good he may have sought to achieve cannot be laid to any sincere motive of altruism. His actions always belied his statements or whatever statements were ascribed to him. He originated the Hague Peace Tribunal; but shortly thereafter, under the influence of the German government and the German-born Czarina, he plunged his country into the disastrous Russo-Japanese War. He granted a iDuma (Parliament) to his people, but soon after provoked the terrible pogroms of 1905 by which Jewish blood ran in torrents in the streets of innumerable cities and towns. Held in the vise of a religious fanaticism such as even his father had not sunk down to, a hopeless slave to the superstitions of the Greek-Catholic Church, Nicholas II submitted to all sorts of questionable influences, which, because exercised in the name and under the aegis of religion, were in his eyes HAYIM NAIIMAN BYALIK (b. 1873) RUSSIA sublime and uplifting. Pobyedonostseff, the "re- suscitated Torquemada" of the nineteenth cen- tury, continued his baneful influence, but there were others. Nicholas' Court became a place of pilgrimage for pious mendicants and shabby-look- ing monks who flocked to Tsarskoye-Selo from all parts of the empire, the Czar receiving them all with friendly and pious mien and elevating some of them to the distinction of unofficial ad- visers in matters of state. One such "monk," an ignorant, unkempt and immoral but extremely shrewd peasant from Siberia by the name of Gregory Rasputin, succeeded in so ingratiating himself with the emperor and the empress that he was made an inmate of the imperial household and in a short time became the most influential and worst feared man in Russia, upon whose fa- vor depended the fate not only of individuals but of states and empires as well. In the end Nich- olas was himself destroyed, by the impossible con- ditions his darkling regime had fostered and en- couraged, but not until after well-nigh a quarter of a century of the utmost misrule and after Rus- sia had been dragged down into an abyss from which she may not rise again for years and dec- ades to come. As was only to be expected the Jews were the worst sufferers under this mediaeval regime. The old restrictions were all enforced while scarcely a week or a month passed without seeing some new disabilities added to the already intolerable burdens. The few privileges still remaining to Jewish artisans, merchants and professional men were one by one taken from them. Even Jewish soldiers serving their country, when on a leave of absence could not spend their furlough outside of the "Pale," while Jewish patients in search of health were barred from the water cure resorts HISTORY OF THE JEWS (1895). The police-hunt of all Jews not entitled to residence became continuous in the great cities of Kiev, Moscow and St. Petersburg, no Jewish home being safe against a midnight raid, and all roads leading to the "Pale" were clogged with the slowly-moving, mournful processions of men, women and children, driven back to the "Tcherta" by "Administrative Order," under a military convoy. In the entire history of Jewish expulsions the most memorable year is that of 1897 in the city of Moscow which was then un- der the rule of Grand Duke Sergius as Governor- General. Persons who merely looked like Jews were seized in the streets in broad day-light and deported; even merchants of the first Guild were not spared. The entire Jewish colony of Moscow was uprooted in a few short weeks, and syna- gogues and Talmud Torah schools alike had to close their doors. The taking over of the liquor trade monopoly by the government in 1896 was a blow aimed directly at the Jews, hundreds of thousands of them being thus deprived of their only chance of earning a livelihood. It was not done for the purpose of saving Christian peasants from the immorality of Jewish drinking places, but to afford the government an additional source of revenue. Jewish students were still further restricted in their percentage of admission to the universities, while in the case of Jewish wo- men who wished to attend some professional school outside of the "Pale," the conditions im- posed upon them were so revolting as to prove a stench in the nostrils of the entire community of civilized nations. A most diabolical scheme was devised to rob Jewish womanhood of its most precious asset, its traditional purity and chastity. A Jewish woman could take up her home every- where throughout the empire only upon one con- RUSSIA 193 dition that of a formal admission of immorality and the expression of willingness to lead a life of shame. Once she received the badge of shame in the shape of the "yellow ticket" her movements all through Russia remained unrestricted. The police, however, was not content with this self-im- posed degradation but kept a sharp look-out for all such women to make sure that they were ac- tually following their pretended calling, and many a pure Jewish girl was banished from St. Peters- burg and other cities upon the discovery that her "passport" was only a blind to enable her to re- main in the city for educational purposes. The tragedy of the Jewish woman-student in Russia is one of the most horrifying phases of this end- less story of inhuman oppression, even as it is a grewsome commentary upon the barbarous cyni- cism with which Russian officialdom scoffed at all human decency where the Jew was concerned. There, however, came moments in the life of this hounded people w r hich were worse even than their innumerable restrictions. These were the bloody pogroms which were revived in the reign of Nicholas and which in their severity and terrible- ness transcended even those of Alexander III. Beginning with the riots at Shpola, in the Kiev government, in 1897, they soon spread to South Russia which for a number of years was to be- come the hot-bed of the anti-Jewish agitation. Bloody outbreaks occurred in Kantakuzov, Gov- ernment of Kherson, in Nikolayev and other places, the climax of the inhuman crusade being reached in the Kishinev massacre of 1903. Kish- inev, the capital of the Government of Bessarabia, on the Roumanian Border, had been the seat of a fairly prosperous Jewish community of 50,000, out of a general population of about three times that number. Both because of its proximity to 194 HISTORY OF THE JEWS notoriously Antisemitic Roumania of which it was itself a part at one time, and because of the anti- Jewish policy of von Plehve, Minister of the In- terior, which centred on the South Russian prov- inces as the chief places for his infamous propa- ganda, Bessarabia had for some years been an unsafe place for the Jews. A government-sub- sidized newspaper, the "Bessarabetz," had been started in 1897 by Pavolachi Krushevan, a Molda- vian Jew-baiter, who kept inflaming the minds of the Christian populace wath fabricated tales of Jew- ish extortions, and accusing them of the ritual- murder practice. The murder of a Christian boy in a near-by village and the suicide of a Christian girl in the Jewish hospital at Kishinev served as the long-looked-for pretext for an outbreak of violence. The pogrom which lasted through April 19 and 20 came after much careful planning and with the connivance of the authorities who them- selves participated in it, and the mob was led to their work of destruction by disguised army offi- cers and students of the priesthood who received the blessing of the Church upon their murderous undertaking. Forty-seven Jews \vere killed, about six hundred were wounded, some of them very seriously, while hundreds of homes were sacked and burned, stores were looted and more than two thousand families were utterly ruined. A cry of horror \vent up all through the civilized world, and in America the leaders of the B'nai B'rith Order circulated a petition to the Czar in behalf of his Jewish subjects, obtaining many thousands of signatures from people representing all creeds, which President Roosevelt consented to forward to the Russian government but which the latter refused to receive. The indignation of the out- side world had no effect upon Russia's rulers, and when a number of the rioters were brought to RUSSIA 195 justice the trial proved a mere judicial farce, as indeed no fair trial was possible under the cir- cumstances. Many of the guilty persons were discharged, while others were given ludicrously light sentences. In summing up the causes of the massacre, the just and fearless Prince Urusov, who succeeded von Raaben as Governor of Bes- sarabia shortly after the Kishinev affair, and who was there during the trial, states in his "Memoirs" : "In my opinion, the central government cannot shake off its moral responsibility for the slaugh- ter and plunder that went on at Kishinev. I con- sider our government guilty of encouraging the narrow nationalistic tendencies. It inaugurated a short-sighted policy, coarse in its methods, with regard to the frontier country and the non-Slavic population a policy fostering among the several nationalities mutual distrust and hatred." A less guarded statement would have made the plain accusation that the Russian government had been directly implicated in the wholesale murder as was subsequently proven by the discovery of a confidential message from Plehve to governor von Raaben in which the massacre was suggested if not authorized outright. The reign of terror for Russian Jewry was to continue, with its now almost monotonous repeti- tions of legal restrictions, official extortions, in- cendiary propaganda in the press and from the pulpit, blood-accusations, riots and massacres. If the government of Nicholas II learned nothing new, it persisted in the old traditional course of the autocracy of making the Jews the scape-goat for all the ills of the country, the poverty and ignorance and general helplessness which resulted from its own tyranny, criminal negligence or stu- pidity. Continued persecution of the Jews through legal decrees and government orders was to the 196 HISTORY OF THE JEWS populace a confirmation of all the slanderous charges diligently circulated by government agents and was interpreted as meaning that the "Little Father" (the Czar) himself favored the resort to violence against them. Kishinev was followed by Homel (1904), and that in 1905 by Odessa, Zhit- omir, Yelisavetgrad and numerous other cities, the excesses there coming as an aftermath of the short-lived revolution of that year which, while leading to the establishment of a parliament, the Duma, served after a while to bring about an even greater reaction with the Jews as its chief victims. Previous to that von Plehve had forbid- den all Zionist activity in the empire, thus making necessary for Dr. Herzl to journey to St. Peters- burg to plead with him in behalf of the cause. An act of singular injustice was that perpetrated during the Russo-Japanese War (1904) when 30,000 Jewish soldiers, a number far out of pro- portion to that of non-Jews, were sent to the fir- ing line in the Far East and with them a vast number of Jewish physicians thus virtually de- pleting the Jewish settlements of their medical men. Driven to desperation at this outlawry, Jews throughout the "Pale" organized themselves into self-defense societies, and many cases of heroism were cited of young Jews who bravely defended their homes and the honor of their mothers and sisters during the repeatedly occur- ring pogroms, and while many of them perished in the struggle they sold their lives dearly by ex- acting a heavy toll of lives from their murderous aggressors. Many of these youths, as was but natural, joined the general revolutionary move- ment and became formidable factors in the clan- destine struggle against the autocracy, while the number of those who affiliated with the "Bund," RUSSIA 197 the Jewish revolutionary organization, grew as never before. The closing years of Nicholas' bloody reign were to remain still more infamously memorable by the ghastly Beilis affair, the ritual-murder ac- cusation which, in its brazen-faced assumption of the general practice of religious crimes on the part of the Jews, and in the thoroughgoing me- disevalism which attended all of its phases, be- came a source of horror to all the world including even such Christian countries as Germany, Aus- tria-Hungary and France where Antisemitism had been preaching its poisonous doctrines for many years. Because of the interest it aroused all through Europe and America, exposing as noth- ing else did the black heart of Russia and the complete savagery to which it had been reduced, it is necessary that the story of the Beilis martyr- dom be told here in greater detail. A twelve- year-old Christian boy, Andrey Yuschinsky by name, disappeared from his home near Kiev on the morning of March n, 1911, but no notice was taken of his absence until three days later when the police were notified and the newspapers were asked to report the matter. Thirteen days later the body was discovered by school boys in a cave in the Lukyanovka suburb, about five miles from the Yuschinsky home.- The autopsy which was performed three days later showed that Andrey's hands had been tied behind his back and that the body had been mutilated in several places. These circumstances were sufficient to raise the ritual- murder cry in a community where the legend had long been one of the prevailing superstitions. The charge launched at first against the Kiev Jews as a whole was later to narrow itself down to an individual Jew by the name of Mendel Beilis. Not that there was any specific evidence against 198 HISTORY OF THE JEWS Beilis but the now inflamed popular passion had to be gratified by the production of the culprit who in his person was to embody the criminality of the entire Jewish community. Liberalism had been making headway in Russia despite all gov- ernmental hindrances, and in the Duma the pro- gressive elements were advocating the abolition of the "Pale," even going to the extent of intro- ducing a bill to that effect. This was too much for the autocracy to whom the presence in the empire of an outlawed population like the Jewish on whom the pent-up fury of a politically oppressed- nation could vent itself, was a vital necessity for its own safety. The Jews had to be discredited, and the Yuschinsky murder offered a splendid opportu- nity toward this end. An Antisemitic member of the Duma by the name of Markoff II went to Kiev, studied the details of the case, urged that the body be disinterred and re-examined, and then returned to the capital to set in action the Black Hundred organizations, to avenge themselves upon the Jews for this alleged latest crime against the Christians. This assertion of the guilt of the Jews, coming from a Duma member, had the semblance of governmental authorization, serv- ing to discourage the officials in their search for the real murderers. The clue which at first led to the very mother and stepfather of the boy was abandoned, and they were released from custody. Instead attention was wholly directed to the Kiev Jews. On the eve of Easter there . appeared in "Zemschina," the Black Hundred organ of St. Petersburg, a letter from Kiev bearing on the Yuschinsky case, in which the statement was made that "all the facts in connection with this murder show without doubt that we have here a case of ritual-murder committed by the Jewish sect of the "Hassidim." The accusation was taken MENDEL BEILIS RUSSIA 199 up by other Antisemitic organs, and the efforts of Fenenko and Krasovsky, special investigators for the government in discovering the real crim- inal was blocked. When Krasovsky finally reached the conclusion that all the evidence in hand pointed to the house of Vera Cheberiak, a den of prostitution and a rendezvous of criminals, he was plainly told by the Department of Justice to "find a Jew," and this attitude of the govern- ment caused him, conscientious official that he was, to resign. The "search for the Jew" was be- gun by other officials who were willing to lend themselves as tools to the government. They soon found him in Beilis, a clerk in the Zaitseff brick- works which were near the place where Yuschin- sky's body was discovered. The investigation re- vealed nothing to lend plausibility to the sus- picion that Beilis had anything to do with the crime. Nevertheless he was arrested (July 22) and imprisoned on the technical charge of being a political offender. The charge of murder was not formally placed against him until two weeks later, when the authorities, now that the looked-for prey was in their hands, had had time to gather from questionable sources the "testimony" they needed for the implication of this wholly innocent man. With satanic ingenuity the dark forces of the gov- ernment gave themselves to the task of proving that Beilis was but an agent of the entire Jewish race which is still slaughtering Christian children for the Passover rite. The pusillanimous Czar kept in per- sonal touch with the situation as it developed from day to day, and his attitude encouraged the official malefactors in their deliberate perversion of jus- tice. Nicholas himself came to Kiev at the very time the agitation against Beilis and the Jews was at its highest, and was doubtless gratified to learn from Scheglovitoff, the then Minister of Justice, 2OO HISTORY OF THE JEWS that the Yuschinsky case was no ordinary crime, but a ritual murder. The murder by a Jewish nihilist of his Prime Minister Stolypin in his pres- ence, while attending a performance in the City Theatre of Kiev, could only aggravate his inimi- cal disposition toward the Jews, and he welcomed the Beilis case as an opportunity for justifying further repressions against the hated race. It mattered little to him that his own investigators could find no real evidence against Beilis, nor was he concerned at the possibility of dragging still further into the mire the already soiled repu- tation of Russian justice. To him this unusual affair presented an indictment against the people he hated most, and he ordered Beilis prosecuted despite the entire groundlessness of the accusa- tion. The Department of Justice, it need scarcely be stated, was only too glad to do the bidding of the autocrat. Beilis was ordered tried on Sep- tember 25, 1913, and the entire judicial machinery was now employed to prove the Jewish religious criminality of the case. Only such witnesses were admitted whose testimony was known to be ad- verse to the defendant while scientific "experts" were discovered in a notorious Antisemite, Prof. Sikorsky, and in Pranaitis, a discredited Catholic priest, who posed as an authority on Judaism from his knowledge of the Talmud and his ac- quaintance with Jewish religious customs. Against these criminal perverters of justice there was arrayed a galaxy of brilliant men from the legal profession, both Jews and Gentiles, who had the courage of their convictions and the fearlessness to espouse the cause of the Jews in the face of the certain displeasure and vindictive- ness of the Czar's government. Margolin, Gruzenberg, Zarudny, Karabtchevsky and Makla- koff led the fight for the defense assisted by the RABBI JACOB MAZEH RUSSIA 2O I expert testimony "of the noted Christian scholars, Professors Troitzky and Glagoleff, who proved upon the statements of the Talmud itself and as against the baseless assertions of Pranaitis, that Judaism forbade the use even of animal blood to its devotees. Another expert witness was Rabbi Jacob Mazeh, the learned rabbi of the Moscow community, who appeared before the jurors 'with a wealth of scholarly arguments to prove the hu- mane spirit with which Jewish doctrine was in- formed. One by one they refuted the testimony of all the witnesses called by the prosecution, as- sisted in this by the results obtained by the private investigations that had been made by the honest Krasovsky, the former Chief of Police for Kiev, and Brazul-Brushkofsky, which clearly pointed to Vera Cheberiak, the leading witness for the prose- cution, as the actual murderer of Yuschinsky. The case so laboriously built up against the Jews, the Hassidim, and the "man with a black beard" which was all the identification the authorities could cite for the implication of Beilis, collapsed like a house of cards, and even a Russian jury could see through the entire flimsiness of the accusation. After a trial lasting thirty-four days at which hundreds of witnesses and experts were heard, a verdict of not guilty was returned, to the great dismay of the Czar and his Ministers, and the evident sur- prise of the entire civilized world, which expected only a conviction from a Russian tribunal. In reality the scandal of the Beilis trial was so nefarious as. to prove too revolting even for Rus- sia where the national conscience had long be- come hardened against all appeals for justice where Jews were concerned. The better elements of the nation smarted under the indignity thus placed upon it and its hopeless degradation in the eyes of civilized Europe. Even Shulgin, the Anti- 2O2 HISTORY OF THE JEWS Semitic Editor of "Kievlyanin," the influential Kiev daily, felt constrained to protest against the disgraceful proceedings, while in St. Petersburg one hundred and twenty members of the local Bar Association affixed their names to a protest at the unfairness with which the trial was con- ducted. But Nicholas and his government were not con- tent to abide by the decision of the jurors. Beilis was indeed freed and allowed to be spirited out of the country by the aid of friends who pro- vided passage for himself and his family to the Holy Land. His defenders, however, were to feel the heavy hand of the autocracy. Many of the eminent lawyers who aided him were im- prisoned or at best disbarred, among the former being Alexander F. Kerensky, who later became the head of the Provisional Government when the Czar was overthrown, while Troitzky was forced to resign from his professorship at the St. Peters- burg Theological Seminary. Imprisonment was also the lot of Krasofsky, Brazul-Brushkofsky, Mistchuk, Shulgin and others. At the same time rewards in various forms were handed out to many who were active in the prosecution. Prana- itis was recommended, though without success, for a bishopric, and a large sum of money was raised for the erection of a church upon the grave of Yuschinsky as a Christian martyr at the hands of the fanatical and blood-thirsty Jews. At about the time the Beilis affair was claiming the attention of the world, there was one large section of Russian Jewry upon whom the heavy burden of Jewish rightlessness was weighing even more heavily than upon all the rest of their brethren. This was the Jewish community of Poland. For the plight of the Jews of Poland COLONEL BEREK JOSELOWICZ (d. 1809) RUSSIA 2O3 both the Russian autocracy and the native Polish population are responsible. For a long time Polish Jewry found itself rather more happily situated than the other Jews of the empire, owing to historic traditions which favored the Jews who had been living in the land since the thirteenth century, and to the oppression of the Poles by the Russians which brought them the active sym- pathy and help of their Jewish compatriots. Com- mon suffering served to bring the two elements closely together and in Polish literature the Jew was most favorably portrayed by Adam Mickie- vicz, Poland's greatest poet, and Eliza Orzeszko, the George Eliot of the Polish literature. That Jews were truly patriotic Poles could be seen from the active part they took in the various cam- paigns for Polish independence. They fought under Kosciuszko in 1794, when they organized a separate Jewish regiment, headed by that valiant Jew, Colonel Berek Joselowicz who, spared during the war, was fated to lose his life for Poland's cause in the campaign of 1809. In the uprisings against the Czar both of 1831 and 1863 Jews took a leading part, a Jew by the name of Wohl serv- ing as the treasurer of Poland's last Revolution- ary Government. That Christians and Jews in Poland felt themselves united in their common love for the fatherland was instanced in the streets of Warsaw in 1862, when the Polish na- tional anthem was sung by Jews in the Catholic churches and by Christians in the synagogues, a Jewish lad being the one to raise the cross that had fallen from the hands of a priest shot down by the Russian troops, and to lead the procession to the church. But this happy condition ulti- mately led to much evil. In the course of the de- cades many Jews in Poland became so thoroughly Polonized as to lose consciousness of all Jewish 2O4 HISTORY OF THE JEWS ties save those of a Jewish religion which itself sat very lightly upon their shoulders. The ugliest form of Jewish assimilation revealed itself among the native Jews of Warsaw, Lodz, and other large centres where, but for their interest in Jew- ish communal charities, they were no longer sen- tient members of a distinctive Jewish group, but regarded themselves as "Poles of the Mosaic faith," an inalienable part of the Polish nation, despite their knowledge that Roman Catholic Poles scorned and resented such a classification on the part of Jews. The gross ignorance of all matters Jewish on the part of the Polish Jews did its ut- most to deaden whatever attachment to their race as such there may have survived in their midst from the days of a pious, learned, and therefore more Jewishly conscious generation. During the reign of Alexander III Poland served as a territorial outlet for the congested and poverty-stricken cities of Lithuania. Hun- dreds of thousands of Lithuanian Jews wended their way to Poland, where conditions were more favorable, thus gradually increasing the Jewish population of the land to one-seventh of the to- tal inhabitants at the end of the first decade of the twentieth century, and augmenting the num- ber of the Jews in Warsaw to about one-third of the general population. These Jews brought with them considerable Jewish learning and a superla- tive degree of enthusiasm for all of the historic achievements of the Jewish race-genius. Due to them Warsaw became the chief seat of Hebrew literary activity in Russia, superseding in this re- spect Vilna, for many decades the stronghold of the Russian Haskalah movement, and long hold- ing out against Odessa which, since the nineties of the last century, had become its. formidable rival. The Lithuanian Jews were thus the leaven RUSSIA 205 that came to resuscitate the dying soul of Polish Jewry. But, as in the nature of the case was in- evitable, they also brought along with them a so- cial .and economic problem which affected the na- tive Jews of Poland as well as the Christian Poles. They crowded into huge ghettos and per- sisted in the manner of living in vogue in their home towns. Their courageous display of their Jewishness, as shown in religious rites and tra- ditional observances, offended the Christians and caused anxiety and fear to the native and assimi- lated Jewish element. In course of time the word Litvak (i. e., the man coming from Lithuania) became a term of abuse which, while applied by the Polish Jews only to their Lithuanian co-re- ligionists, was often indiscriminately used by the Christians for the stigmatization of the entire race. The Czar's government found it to its interest to widen the breach between the Poles and the Jews. On the one hand it encouraged the migra- tion of Lithuanian Jews into Poland, and, on the other hand, it instigated the Poles against these Jews by laying upon the latter the blame for all of Poland's economic troubles. Because of their intense hatred of Russia these Poles were blind enough to turn upon the Lithuanian Jews, many of whom spoke Russian more fluently than Polish, accusing them as agents in the Czar's scheme for the Russification of the land. Soon all other Jews of the land came under the ban of their displeasure. Themselves politically op- pressed the Poles, in a rage of impotence, turned to the Jews as to the cause of their misfortunes, though better judgment should have told them that the presence of many of these Jews in Poland, even as the very economic conditions they helped to create, were but the result of Rus- sia's despotism and misgovernment. So rabidly 2O6 HISTORY OF THE JEWS vindictive did the Polish Antisemites become, among these some of the most prominent intellec- tual leaders of the nation, that they would not stop to consider the injury their course was sure to bring to Poland itself, if only they could ruin the Jews. A well-known politician, Roman Dmow- ski, established in Warsaw a daily newspaper by the name of "Dwa Grosszy" (Two Grosz Paper), which became the cesspool of all the journalistic filth of Polish Antisemitism and be- fore long brought irreparable injury to the Jews of Poland. The crisis was precipitated in 1912 during the elections to the Fourth Duma. The three hun- dred thousand Jews of Warsaw had the majority of the electors of that great city and could there- fore elect their own candidate. They, however, hesitated to put up a Jewish candidate for fear of still further provoking the ire of the Christians, nor could they conscientiously support the candi- date of the Polish Nationalist party ("The Na- tional Democrats"), who was a pronounced Jew- baiter and ran on an Antisemitic platform. They settled on a Socialist candidate, an obscure and mediocre man by the name of Jagello who, be- cause a Roman Catholic and a Pole, was deemed by the Jews a fit man to compromise on. Jagello was elected, but the Jews were made to rue the day of their triumph. Impotent to strike at them politically, the Poles gnashed their teeth and de- cided upon an economic war. Since 1905 the Russian government had legalized the Co-opera- tive Consumers' Associations of Poland which were called into being for the avowed purpose of self-defense against the Jews. These associa- tions were now to be made use of to tighten the economic noose around the neck of the Jews. A boycott against Jewish merchants was proclaimed RUSSIA and most rigorously executed in every community of the land. Pickets were placed outside Jewish shops to prevent, by force if need be, any Chris- tians from going there. Jews were not safe in the streets and countless murders of defenseless Jews were perpetrated with impunity. In the town of Welun peasants set fire to the house of a Jew at night, the entire family perishing in the flames. The Russian police, even where willing, found itself impotent to stop the outrages, the Polish press and the clergy continuing to inflame the passions of the mobs. When Beilis was ac- quitted the Polish news organs lost no time in informing the public that the ritual-murder prac- tice of the Jews had been satisfactorily proved in spite of the verdict of the jury. In vain did Ladislaus Mickievicz, the worthy son of a great father, endeavor to make his countrymen see straight at a meeting he convened in Warsaw. The Polish newspapers of the city would not even report his address on that occasion. Polish Jewry soon found itself utterly ruined the vic- tim not exactly of Polish Christian malevolence which was only a tool in the hands of the St. Petersburg bureaucracy, but of the unremitting and inexorable Jew-hatred of Nicholas and his advisers, bent upon causing the discomfiture and extermination of the Jews no matter what the means. The Polish outrage and the Beilis affairs were, however, the last of the series of great crimes perpetrated by Nicholas against the Jews. Less than ten months after the acquittal of. the Jewish martyr at Kiev came the Great War itself in no small measure a result of the stupidity and mis- management of the ruler who will forever go down in history as the worst of autocrats Rus- sia was ever afflicted with. Russia was in no con- 2O8 HISTORY OF THE JEWS dition to wage war against so mighty an ad- versary as Germany, or even a weaker foe, and the outbreak of hostilities on August i, 1914* meant the beginning of the end of Nicholas' rule and of the Romanoff dynasty itself. One by one the great cities of Poland and Lithuania fell be- fore the resistless advance of the German hosts and after two years of fighting nearly all of the Polish territory annexed to Russia in the days of Catharine the Great and Alexander I, besides much of Courland and Livonia, was in the hands of the Germans. It is true that if the Jews of those occupied provinces at first rejoiced at the unexpected liberation from the yoke of Czardom, their joy was short-lived since the Ger- mans proved themselves no kinder in their treat- ment, and the harsh military rule they established was a burden of almost crushing weight. The Poles, too, still nursing their fierce anti-Jewish passion, saw in the German invasion an oppor- tunity for squaring accounts with the Jews. They denounced them successively to both Russians and Germans as spies and traitors, and had the grim satisfaction of seeing thousands of them executed or otherwise murdered in the gen- eral unrest and turmoil incidental to the war. Things were even worse in Russia where the Jews became the target of a drunken and mur- derous soldiery, the savage cossacks wreaking a fearful vengeance upon whole communities, spar- ing neither old nor young, desecrating syna- gogues and murdering rabbis and other com- munal dignitaries along with their humbler brethren. Tens of thousands of Jews from the "Pale" were driven from their homes and left to perish from hunger and cold on all of the high- ways leading to the interior of Russia. Starva- tion and disease began to stalk abroad, decimat- RUSSIA 2O9 ing the wretched populace by the thousands and leaving in their wake deserted and ruined homes where populous and industrious communities had existed before. It was the hour of thickest dark- ness before the oncoming dawn. The war which, as interpreted by all belligerents alike, came to give freedom to small and subdued nationalities, was to liberate also the Jews. If the Jews were to continue to suffer from the general economic hardships, at least they were henceforth to suffer as free men and not as slaves, and their suffering- was to be mitigated by the knowledge that it was a part of the general travail of the entire Rus- sian nation. The great hour of freedom struck on the I5th of March, 1917, a date which, whatever the out- come of the present struggle in Russia for a safe and stable government, will forever remain as memorable in the history of the world as was the day in 1/89 when the French people overthrew the despotism of the Bourbons and in the burning of the Bastille proclaimed a new era of liberty, equality and fraternity. On that day in March, Czar Nicholas's train was stopped near the Pskov station, and a committee from the Duma came to tell the erstwhile all-powerful despot that his rule was at an end, forcing him to put his signature to an edict of abdication. With a stroke of his pen Nicholas undid the thousand-year-old fet- ters of the Russian people and henceforth all races and nationalities of the vast empire were to remain free to live their own life in keeping with their cherished beliefs, traditions and ideals. Israel in Russia suddenly found itself lifted out of its oppression and degradation, and events hardly ever hoped for by the six million Jews of the empire now came to pass with astounding- rapidity. On March 30 all restrictions were re- 2IO HISTORY OF THE JEWS moved from Jews in the army and navy, while on April 5 was issued the general emancipation de- cree abolishing all limitations of race and religion, and granting to all inhabitants of the land free- dom of residence and movement, of property ownership, of commercial, industrial and profes- sional pursuits, of education, of the use of any language or dialect at choice, and of participation in the government. The terrible nightmare of unequalled political oppression for 180 millions of human beings was finally ended, and Jews, along with all other men, could at last breathe the air of freedom even in Russia. The great Russian revolution has not yet brought to Russia the national happiness which ordinarily forms part of political liberty. The state is still going through the throes of a new birth, and the Bolsheviki government of Lenine and Trotzky shows scarcely greater promise of stability than did the more conservative regime of Kerensky which preceded it. There are still, doubtless, many days of material suffering and moral anguish in store for that great land, and the Jews, too, will have their share of tribulation and of sacrifice with all the other component parts of the empire. Russia may fall apart into a great number of factions which may or may not federate into a union on the model of the United States, in which case the position of the Jews would be materially affected. Yet whatever the result of the present turmoil and chaos, there is no likelihood that the freedom already gained will ever be lost again. The historic rule that "Revolutions never go backwards" is one to which even Russia can prove no exception. Least of all is there any likelihood that Russian Jewry will ever again be put in bondage. The "Pale" will remain a mere memory as unpleasant as is that RUSSIA 211 of the ghetto in Frankfort or in Rome, but like them as buoyant a reminder of the steady and inevitable march of progress and justice. Polit- ical emancipation may not bring much of an abatement of Jew-hatred in Russia any more than it did in Germany or France, and we may even look forward to a renewal of anti-Jewish hostili- ties with all of their old-time excesses and hor- rors. To the Russian people, as to the world at large, the Jews will still remain an exotic plant in their midst, one, perhaps, to be admired and hon- ored but, at the same time, also to be suspected and feared. The prejudices of two thousand years will not be removed in a day. But these, too, will begin to wane once the Zionist ideal has be- come a reality and at least a portion of the Jews, be it ever so small, has been given the opportun- ity to repossess itself of a homeland of its own upon the soil of the fathers in Palestine an as- piration which, in the light of recent develop- ments, seems most likely of realization.* In the meanwhile the freedom now possessed by these six million Jews will make for a deepened and intensified Jewishness. Unlike their brethren in the west of Europe and in America emancipation with them, unless all signs fail, will not make for assimilation and de-judaization. Ten months of freedom have only served to make the Jew in Russia more loyal to his spiritual heritage, more anxious to uphold traditions revered and treas- ured by his forefathers for thousands of years, and more determined to make real and permanent the new life which is opening up to him in the light and spirit of Jewish nationalism. Hebraism with its manifold connotations will receive a new meaning and impetus under the new conditions, and Jewry the world over will be brought under its spell and lastingly benefit by it. * See the concluding chapter of this work. CHAPTER III THE BALKAN STATES A final, though not the least important, chap- ter of the history of the Jews in Europe is that of the Jews in the Balkan countries. Theirs is a story not dissimilar to that of the other lands in which the Jews suffered, strove and advanced. If, when compared with their brethren in other lands, the Balkan Jews have but little to show by way of scholarship, commercial prosperity, or political statesmanship, then is the reason for it not that of inferiority of stock but rather of paucity of numbers. To this day, though repre- senting a history stretching for many hundreds of years and, as in the case of Greece and Rou- mania, even going back to the very time of Roman dominion, the Jews of the Balkan States are but a very small portion of the entire popula- tion and the tendency among them in recent years, due to emigration and other causes, has been to decrease rather than to grow in numbers. The nineteenth century opens upon a Balkan Jewry agitated by indecision and fear because of the unrest against the Turkish rule. The Turks, it is true, were not the very best of masters; the Christians, however, were sure to be worse. If the Turks did not love the Jews, neither did they hate them, and as compared with their attitude toward their subject Christian nationalities the 212 THE BALKAN STATES 213 treatment of the Jews at their hands had been decidedly friendly. Jews can never forget that at the time of the Spanish expulsion in 1492, when they were driven from one Christian land only to find the doors of most other Christian lands barred against them, it was Turkey, then at the zenith of her military power and prestige, who opened her gates to the wandering and foot- sore tribe, and gave them a home within her do- main. It was of those Spanish and Portuguese exiles that the Jewish communities of Greece, Bul- garia, Serbia and Roumania were built up, their numerical preponderance causing most of the abo- riginal Jewish settlers of those - countries to be- come rapidly absorbed among them. When the power of the Islam began to wane just as that of Christendom grew in the ascendent, and it be- came certain that in the no distant future the cross would supersede the crescent, the Balkan Jews beheld the impending political changes with anxiety and trepidation. Fifteen hundred years of Christian cruelty and inhumanity had left an indelible impress upon their racial consciousness. The iron of Christian hate had entered their Jew- ish souls, and they could not but regard the com- ing years with the fear with which the long- hounded animal sees the approach of the merci- less and death-bringing hunter. That their fears were not unjustified a review of their story in the last one hundred years will show. Because of their small numbers and therefore scant importance in the modern life of Israel, the Jews of Greece, Serbia and Bulgaria, unlike those of Roumania, have claimed but little attention on the part of Jewish historians. Thus was Graeco-Jewish history allowed to rest largely upon the laurels achieved by the ancient Jewish communities of Alexandria in Egypt when it was 214 HISTORY OF THE JEWS a centre of Jewish culture at the opening of the Christian era, or of the communities of Corfu, Constantinople, Salonica and Adrianople. Don Joseph Nasi, the Duke of Naxos, is still the most prominent historic personality in the Grecian Jew- ish community of the last four hundred years, while in the religious life of modern Jewry Corfu, with its five thousand Jews, is of interest mainly for its extensive citron trade, through which Jew- ish communities are supplied with the etrog for the feast of Tabernacles. Yet these little Jewish communities of old Greece and the islands be- longing to it have played a highly important part in Jewish Histor.y. They have kept burning the fire of Jewish faith, have persistently held on to their traditions in the midst of hateful and op- pressive environments, have served as places of refuge for persecuted co-religionists from other lands, and have established the right of the Jew to call Greece his country in common with the older inhabitants. Greek Jews have furnished their martyrs during the revolt against Turkey in 1821, many of them perishing at the hands of the revolutionists, others fleeing for their lives and seeking refuge in cities still loyal to Turkey. But few were the Jews remaining in the ancient Greek cities after the establishment of Greek independ- ence, Athens itself not having any organized com- munity whatever until some fifty years ago. Sa- lonica, though still remaining under Turkish dominion, has continued to exercise a consider- able moral influence upon Greek Jewry, some of the rabbis in Corfu and other centres having come from there. When, at the end of the Second Balkan War, Salonica was ceded to Greece, its large Jewish community of nearly 100,000 souls, with its many synagogues and educational institu- tions, began to play a more prominent part in the THE BALKAN STATES 215 life of the whole of Greek Jewry, its influence being curtailed only through the ravages of the Great War and the military occupation of the city by the forces of the Allied nations. The traditional Greek hatred of the Jew in ancient Greece has survived to modern times, and the German Antisemitic influence, brought into the country with the German dynasty, has served to aggravate a situation which might have be- come more serious had the number of Jews in Greece been larger. Constitutionally, however, Jews are enjoying full rights of citizenship. Their political emancipation in Corfu came about largely through the efforts of Adolphe Cremieux, who, in 1864, interceded for them with the Ionian Senate. The last important event in that island was the blood-accusation of 1891, which was re- vived by Antisemites as a means of defeating Jewish candidates for public office. A Jewish girl was found murdered and the report was cir- culated that the Jews had slain a Christian child for ritualistic ends. To escape massacre, many of the Jews were compelled to flee. In conse- quence of this uprising a movement was started among the Jews of Europe to boycott the etrog trade of Corfu, which, until then, had been largely in the hands of the non-Jews. Bulgaria, with a Jewish colony dating back to the time of Emperor Trajan, has her own chron- icles of Jewish martyrdom. As long as the coun- try remained in bondage to Turkey, the Jews were the victims alike of the Turkish hordes and of the Greek and Bulgarian inhabitants, the lat- ter wreaking upon the helpless people the ven- geance they were impotent to exact from their cruel Mohammedan oppressors. The political un- rest of the country, which lasted through the greater part of the nineteenth century, and was 2l6 HISTORY OF THE JEWS only aggravated by the success which attended the Greek revolution, placed the Jews between the hammer and the anvil, causing them immense suf- fering at the hands of all of the striving factions. When finally Russia went to war with Turkey (1877-1878) for the liberation of Bulgaria, the Jews were the first to suffer from the invading Russian armies, many of them being killed, while thousands were expelled from the cities occupied by the Czar's forces, robbed of all their belong- ings and made to seek refuge in Constantinople and other Turkish cities. It was during this war, in 1877, that the Jewish men and women of Sofia saved that city from the conflagration started by the retreating Turks. They returned to their plundered homes at the end of the war and soon succeeded in rebuilding their ruined fortunes. The Treaty of Berlin (1878) gave them equal rights, and they were quick to avail themselves of the new conditions for the improvement of their educational and economic status. The Jewish settlements of Sofia, Rustchuk, Philipopolis, Dub- nitza and other places began to grow in numbers and in wealth, and Bulgarian Jewry could now look confidently to a happy future. Before long, however, they were again to feel the sting of op- pression. Open to the influence both of Russia, their co-religionist in the Greek Catholic Church, to whom they were grateful for their liberation, and of Germany, the Bulgarians took a page out of the histories of both these countries in their attitude toward the Jews. The reversal of the liberal policy of Alexander II at the close of his reign, and the rise of social and official Antisemit- ism in Germany were thus to find a loud echo in Bulgaria. Here, too, as in Germany, the Jews soon found the guarantees of their political rights but a mere scrap of paper. Ritual-murder charges THE BALKAN STATES 21 / were made against them successively in 1884 and 1885, and when one of their representative men, M. Gabbe, was in 1890 returned to the Chamber of Deputies, an attempt was made to invalidate his election. Following the example of Russia without going to the length of enacting legal re- strictions on education, the elementary and high schools were made hotbeds of religious prejudice and social ostracism against the Jewish pupils, while the ritual-murder charge against the Jews of Wratza in 1891 was but a fitting complement to the picture of Jew-hatred in its Bulgarian set- ting, the frame work of which was furnished by barbarous Russia to the north and so-called en- lightened Prussia to the west. Economically poor, and helpless in the face of the growing tide of Antisemitism, Bulgarian Jewry would have found itself in extreme straits but for the help given it by outside Jewish organ- izations, notably the Alliance of Paris which gave itself to the task of establishing schools in Bul- garia as in other Balkan States and in the Orient, no less than fifteen such schools having been founded by the end of the century, providing in- struction for nearly 4000 children. Despite these economic and political hardships, Bulgarian Jewry has produced a number of representative men while the religious interests of the community in the last generation have been loyally represented by men eminently worthy of the dignity of "Chief Rabbi" of the land, namely, Drs. Dankowitz, Gruenwald and Ehrenpreis, the latter having, shortly before the outbreak of the Great War, accepted the position of Chief Rabbi of Sweden. The history of the Jews of Serbia differs from that of their brethren in Greece and Bulgaria in one important respect: Serbia was the first of all the Balkan States to grant to the Jews full polit- 2l8 HISTORY OF THE JEWS ical equality, Prince Milosch Obrenovich having made a proclamation to that effect as early as 1817. Serbia, however, was then still in vassal- age to Turkey, and such a grant of equality could not be safeguarded by any guarantees other than the personal favor of a prince, himself not always free in the execution of his plans. But so long as Milosch remained in power he kept his promise and for a period of twenty-one years the Jews of his land enjoyed a large measure of peace and prosperity. When in 1842 Milosch abdicated in favor of Alexander Kara-Georgevich, a period of reaction set in. Jews were limited in their op- portunities for trading and were forbidden to settle in the interior of the country. Though, as a result of the Treaty of Paris at the end of the Crimean War, in 1856, Jews were granted free religious and civic equality, this provision was shortly thereafter nullified by a new law promul- gated in that same year, restricting them in their liberties. Milosch was again restored to power in 1858, and again he issued a decree abrogating all legal restrictions against the Jews. But his death, which occurred soon after, again changed the sit- uation, his successor, Prince Michel, renewing all former restrictions and ordering the expulsion of the Jews living in interior cities. Such expulsions took place in 1861, '62, '63 and again in 1864. The majority of Serbian Jews had been concen- trated in Belgrade, two thousand of them being found there in 1862 at the time of the Turkish bombardment of the city. In consequence of the legal and commercial restrictions their numbers in a few years dwindled down to nearly half, many of them emigrating. Here, too, the Alli- ance came to their assistance by interceding with the Serbian government in their behalf. Since they could get no redress in their own country, THE BALKAN STATES 219 the Jews of Serbia vainly endeavored to place themselves under the protection of England, the House of Commons having been duly memorial- ized about this, in 1867, by Sir Francis Gold- smid. All the pressure which was brought to bear upon Prince Milan by men like Cremieux and Montefiore to bring about a change in the status of his Jewish subjects was' futile, and the constitution which was proclaimed in 1869 reaf- firmed the old restrictions, adding to their many hardships the one of compulsory military service. Expulsions and voluntary emigration of the Jews continued, depleting their number still fur- ther. A change for the better took place in 1873 when the Jews of Belgrade were permitted to elect one of their number to the Skupshtina (Par- liament). This served to encourage the Jews and to bind them more firmly to a land they had hitherto looked upon as a cruel step-mother. When the last revolt against Turkey broke out in 1876, the Jews were fired with patriotism and many of them gave their life in defense of Ser- bian independence. Prince Milan himself became convinced of the utter loyalty of the Jews, and in 1880 selected six of them to serve as his body- guard. The constitution of 1889 finally abolished all existing restrictions and placed the Jews upon a footing of complete equality with non-Jews. The story of the Jews of Moldavia and Wal- lachia, known as Roumania, is as unlike that of the other Balkan states as, from the point of view of numbers, it is of greater importance to the general history of the Jews. Where the combined Jewish population of Greece, Bulgaria and Serbia probably does not to this day exceed fifty thou- sand souls, that of Roumania alone is more than four times that number. Again, the difference between Roumania and the other Balkan states 22O HISTORY OF THE JEWS is this, that while in each of the other states Jewish emancipation followed in the wake of general progress, and public opinion in the civ- ilized communities of Europe had a liberalizing effect upon the attitude of the state toward the Jews, Roumania alone remained immune to all the finer sensibilities of an enlightened age. Where the other Balkan states turned to Western Europe for guidance and inspiration, and formed their Jewish policy in accordance with the spirit and example of the West even their inconsist- ency in this regard being largely an echo of the voice of W r estern Europe on the Jewish question, Roumania had her eyes always turned to the East, choosing Russia alone as her mentor and guide. She, accordingly, became in all matters affecting the Jews but a duplicate of Russia on a small scale. She copied in every detail the duplicity and hypocrisy of her older sister, often even improv- ing upon the former's barbarity and inhumanity. Russia could at least claim the credit of original- ity in her anti-Jewish methods. Roumania re- mained as mediocre in her hatred of the Jew as she was' in all other matters. She has steadily proved her incapacity for learning anything new, and where in Europe, in Germany, France, and Austria, Antisemitism at least sought to hide its hideous nakedness under the fig-leaf of scientific calculation, political doctrine and economic thesis, in Roumania hatred for the Jew has remained the elemental and static hatred of the unreasoning brute for one not of its kind. If in the rest of Christendom not even Russia excluded dislike for the Jew may be regarded as an error of judg- ment, or as an heirloom of former ages based upon an ignoble tradition, the hatred of the Rou- manian for the Jew 7 is an ineradicable obsession, an inseparable part of the psychology of the na- THE BALKAN STATES 221 tion. And because of this, none who knows the character of the Roumanian people has ever in- dulged in the hope that the Roumanians would at any time grant real freedom and equality to the Jews unless forcibly made to do so by the rest of the world. It should not, perhaps, be difficult to account for this bitter feeling against the Jews if one re- members that the Roumanians had themselves been a much-wronged and long-suffering people which for a number of centuries writhed under the heel of the conquering Turk, and that because the Jews had received a more considerate treat- ment from their Mohammedan taskmasters the Roumanians, in their blind frenzy, identified the Jews with the Turks. The religious difference, too, was no small factor, while the century-old enmity felt for the Turk by Russia, the defender of the Greek Catholic faith and self-assumed pro- tector of the small Slavic nationalities, with her undying ambition to wrest Constantinople from the hands of her traditional foe and make it once again the seat of a revived Byzantine Empire these considerations, added to the historic feud between Judaism and Christianity, made for a deep-seated aversion for the Jew, become all the more aggravated in view of the large number of Jews always present in the country. In a large measure Roumanian Jewry formed a counterpart to that of many another land, and its misfortunes are traceable to like causes. The natural perspicacity and alertness of the Jew brought about by many well-known historic causes, has always set him off as a being greatly superior to the simple Roumanian peasant, while his cleaner ways of living due to the ritualistic and dietary requirements of his religion, coupled with the education which every Jew receives in 222 HISTORY OF THE JEWS his childhood, have lent him an aristocratic bear- ing which even the coarse and illiterate Rouman- ian could not pass by without envy. Here, too, as in Russia, the cry of exploitation was sooner or later to be raised, and the Jew was to be made a scapegoat for sins he was not guilty of, and for historic circumstances not of his making. No sooner did the Roumanians acquire a modicum of freedom than this anti-Jewish feeling was to crys- tallize into a policy of persecution the like of which has hardly been equalled even in a history so rich in adversity as that of the Jews. The nineteenth century opens quite prophetical- ly in Roumania amidst a number of harrowing incidents in which the Jew is made to pay the penalty of his birth. With the accession in 1799 of Alexander Moruzi to the throne of Wallachia the people saw another opportunity for a hostile outbreak against the Jews. A charge of ritual- murder was trumped up in Bucharest, riots were started in April, 1801, in the name of the prince, the Jewish quarter of the city was laid waste and twenty-eight persons lost their lives. A similar ritual-murder charge was also made in 1803 in Jassy, the capital of Moldavia, where the same Alexander Moruzi had become ruler shortly be- fore, and four Jews of the city were imprisoned and tortured. A press campaign was begun with the publication of a pamphlet, "The Insolence of the Jews," and both the Church and the nobility, aided and abetted by the government, conspired to ruin the Jews by circulating slanderous reports in justification of the imposition of higher taxes upon them and the further curtailment of their rights. War again broke out between Russia and Turkey, making Roumania the scene of the fight- ing, and the Jews, as in all former wars between those two powers, were again the principal suf- THE BALKAN STATES 223 ferers. Ypsilanti, ruler of Wallachia, left Bu- charest upon the approach of the Russians, and his going was a signal for the people to fall upon the Jews. Given the choice between baptism and death, these unfortunates were saved only upon the arrival of the Russians. The tale of agony was, however, to continue all through the Rus- sian occupation which lasted until the conclusion of peace in 1812. There is a continuation of ex- tortions, imprisonment and torture, and again the dreadful ritual-murder accusations with their con- sequent riots and attacks. Probably the most hor- rifying incident of this war was in connection with the invasion of Bucharest by the man-eating Kalmuks, a part of the Turkish army, who broke into the Jewish homes, spitted the little children on their lances, and roasted them alive, consum- ing them before the eyes of their parents. Only a large monetary offer by the Jews induced the savages to withdraw from the city. When Rou- mania was finally left at peace by both Russia and Turkey, the lot of the Jews was scarcely im- proved. The rulers of both principalities, Carad- ja in Wallachia and Kallimochos in Moldavia, vied with each other in making the burden of the Jew heavy. A plague broke out all over the coun- try, and the Jew was blamed for its ravages by both authorities and people. They were charged with being filthy in body and in their homes, and the officials used this charge as a source of extor- tion. In the laws framed by these two rulers Jews are not allowed to act as witnesses against Christians, and may not own estates or vine- yards. There now begins one long and endless series of persecutions and outrages against the Jews, the government framing oppressive laws, while the populace takes the law into its own hands. 224 HISTORY OF THE JEWS The Greek revolution of 1821 caused much un- rest in Roumania, where the lawless elements banded together and, under the guise of a revolu- tionary army, marched through the cities of Pi- atra, Neamtz, Folticheni, Hertza and Fokshani, in each of which they killed Jews and laid waste their homes. The entrance of the Turkish forces into Moldavia only meant a repetition of these horrors, one result being the destruction by fire of the City of Jassy and its large Jewish quarter (August, 1822). Again war breaks out between Russia and Turkey (1826-1834), the land is laid low by a plague, and the Jews are the chief suf- ferers. The fate of the Jews is dependent upon the passing mood of the reigning prince, and this mood is but seldom friendly. Special imposts are constantly levied on the hapless race to fill the coffers of the prince, while the attitude of Russia toward her own Jews is regarded as a worthy exemplar for Roumanian conduct. In Wallachia their situation improves somewhat under the in- different rule of Alexander Ghika (1834-1842) and George Bibescu (1842-1848), but in Molda- via, where Michael Sturdza (1834-1848) reigns, their lot continues from bad to worse. His "Or- ganic Law," a charter the provisions of which were inspired by Russia, with its clause on va- grancy, was used with doleful effect for the un- doing of the Jew. Jewish innkeepers are driven from the villages and they are not permitted to inhabit certain streets and localities in the cities. They are restricted in their commerce, are for- bidden to build their synagogues in certain places, while ritual-murder charges are repeatedly hurled at them and they are the victims of rioting, mur- der and abduction with no chance of redress at the hands of the government. Still, as one of their historians, Dr. E. Schwartzfeld observes, THE BALKAN STATES 225 "there was need of the Jews" even in Roumania. They are summoned by the boyars (nobles) to found and people market-towns, and some of the small towns established by them in Moldavia ex- ist and flourish to this day. There was apparently still greater need of the Jew for the establishment of Roumanian inde- pendence and her unification as a kingdom. Jews took a leading part in the revolution of 1848 which reached even Wallachia, and one of their number, Daniel Rosenthal, a noted painter, paid for his revolutionary activity with his life. Be- cause of this activity a tremendous toll of blood and treasure was exacted from them by the avenging Turks, when the latter entered Bu- charest. Their importance in the work of stab- ilizing the political situation of the land became even more apparent at the close of the Crimean War when the struggle for the union of Mol- davia and Wallachia under one government was ushered in. Each of the factions in the struggle pulled the Jews in its own direction, promising them full equality. The majority of them ranged themselves on the side of union which soon be- came a fact under John Alexander Cuza (1859- 1866), the first ruler of the united provinces. However, Der Mohr hat seine Schuldgigkeit gethan, der Mohr kann gehen. The promises held out to them of political equality were not kept and Cuza, the very prince in whom so many hopes had been centred, even went to the length of inserting in the constitution he was framing for the country the clause barring all non-Chris- tians from the franchise. The restrictions piled upon Roumanian Jewry since that time had their real origin in the legislative work of Cuza. His successor, Charles von Hohenzollern, who ascend- ed the throne in 1866, had no desire and no ambi- 226 HISTORY OF THE JEWS tion to ameliorate the condition of the Jews. His rule was inaugurated amidst serious rioting against the Jews of Bucharest, culminating in the desecration and demolition of the great synagogue. In the constitution then in the proc- ess of formation was inserted Article 7 distinctly barring Jews from citizenship, while the succes- sion to power of Bratianu, called by Charles to the premiership, meant the inauguration of a pol- icy of terror unknown even to Roumania. He ransacked the archives of Moldavia and Wal- lachia, unearthed all the old and obsolete laws against the Jews and endeavored to put them in force again. They were again expelled from the villages; their inns were closed and their mer- chandise plundered. A general hunt began for the Jews throughout the country, the law of va- grancy was invoked, and summary punishment dealt out. In one instance a number of Jews, Roumanian by birth, were seized and taken across the Danube to Turkey. When the Turks refused to receive them they were thrown into the river and drowned. Meanwhile enlightened public opinion in Eu- rope and America was revolting against these continued barbarities, openly flaunted by a people itself but semi-free and of a low national culture. Both the English and French governments were induced by their leading Jewish subjects to take up the Jewish problem of Roumania direct with the Bucharest government, while the Alliance of Paris exerted all her powerful efforts to secure justice for a quarter of a million of outlawed and outraged Jews. Adolphe Cremieux visited Rou- 'mania in 1866 to take up the matter with Prince Charles, and was followed the next year by Sir Moses Montefiore who went there despite his ad- vancing age and the threat of personal violence at THE BALKAN STATES the hands of the mob. Likewise the Emperor Napoleon III, in 1867, at the instance of Cre- mieux, telegraphed to Prince Charles a message of remonstrance. "I cannot believe," the imperial message read, "that the enlightened government of your Highness authorizes measures so opposed to humanity and civilization." The government of the United States was also willing to use her good offices in behalf of -the persecuted people, and the American Minister at Constantinople, Mr. Morris, was directed by Secretary of State Sew- ard to make representation on the Jewish perse- cutions in Serbia and Roumania. American Jew- ry, then still a numerically small body, was al- ready becoming awake to its importance in the international affairs of the Jews, owing to its growing prosperity and the liberties it was en- joying, and its leading organizations of those days, the Independent Order B'nai B'rith and the Board of Delegates of American Israelites, were keenly alive to the plight of the Roumanian Jews. It was for the purpose of helping those people to attain the full status of citizenship that Jesse Seligman and other leading American Jews urged upon the national administration the ap- pointment of Mr. Benjamin F. Peixotto, of San Francisco, as United States Consul to Roumania. It was the first direct step taken by a great gov- ernment, solely on humanitarian grounds, to bring to an end the shameful drama enacted in the petty Balkan States. Before leaving on his important mission Peixotte called at the White House to pay his respects to President Grant, and the in- terview between the two, in its bearing upon the Roumanian Jewish situation, will remain historic. The President said to him : * * Quoted by Peixotto in his articles on "The Story of the Rou- manian Mission" in the "Menorah." Vol. I, pp. 22 et seq. 228 HISTORY OF THE JEWS "Respect for human rights is the first duty of those set as rulers over nations, and the humbler, poorer, more abject and more miserable a people be, be they black or white, Jew or Christian, the greater should be the concern of those in author- ity, to extend protection, to rescue and redeem them and raise them up to equality with the most enlightened. The story of the sufferings of the Hebrews of Roumania profoundly touches every sensibility of our nature. It is one long series of outrage and wrong; and even if there be exag- geration in the accounts which have reached us, enough is evident to prove the imperative duty of all civilized nations in extending their moral aid in behalf of a people so unhappy. I trust Prince Charles and his Ministers and the public men of that country, may be brought to see that the fu- ture of their nation lies in a direction totally op- posite to those Draconic laws and persecutions, whether great or petty, which have hitherto so invidiously marked its character. It is not by Chinese walls or Spanish expatriations that na- tions, great or small, can hope to make progress in our day. I have no doubt your presence and influence, together with the efforts of your col- leagues of the Guaranteeing Powers, with whom in this matter you will always be prompt to act, will result in mitigating the evils complained of, and end in terminating them. The United States, knowing no distinction between her own citizens on account of religion or nationality, naturally believes in a civilization the world over, which will secure the same universal views." A vain hope this on the part of America's Chief Executive. The President had overlooked one most important item in his estimate of the Rou- manian situation, namely, that Roumania's na- tional psychology was wholly different from that THE BALKAN STATES 22Q of other peoples and that she could not therefore be judged by the same standards as other nations are judged. Howsoever faithful and meritorious the services performed by Peixotte, even he, with the great influence of America behind him, could not break through the stone wall of age-long in- tolerance for the Jew in that benighted country. There now ensued years of activity on the part of Peixotto who, as the spokesman and diplo- matic representative of the great American Re- public, was able to influence his "colleagues in the Diplomatic Corps at Bucharest to take similar action on behalf of their own governments. As a result of the renewed anti-Jewish rioting of 1872 the powers of Western Europe as well as Amer- ica were roused to vigorous action. In the Ger- man Reichstag the two Jewish deputies, Ludwig Bamberger and Eduard Lasker, succeeded in hav- ing a resolution of protest passed, while both in the House of -Commons and the Mansion House in London there were stirring speeches by some of the best known men of the English nation against Roumanian perfidy and barbarity. Eng- land, France and Italy were ready to co-operate in the holding of a conference of all the Great Powers under whose protection Roumania had been placed, for the purpose of solving the Jew- ish problem, Russia alone opposing the plan, while in the American Congress, in addition to a resolution of protest, both houses adopted reso- lutions requesting all information on the Jewish situation in the Balkans. Secretary of State Hamilton Fish's answer was to the effect that Consul Peixotto had already "in common with the representatives of the other powers addressed a note of remonstrance to the [Roumanian] Min- ister and more recently united with the represen- tatives of those powers (Italy being included), in 230 HISTORY OF THE JEWS a collective note to the Roumanian government, bearing date of April 18, 1872, on the subject of those recent occurrences, and pointing out, with marked but just severity, the impunity which had been enjoyed by the perpetrators of the vio- lence, which it characterized appropriately as un- worthy of a civilized country." The extent of the interest shown by the United States government in this matter was demonstrated in the many let- ters addressed to Peixotto by Secretary Fish, and by the instructions issued by him, on July 22, 1872, to the United States Ministers at Vienna, London, Paris, Berlin, Rome, St. Petersburg and Constantinople to communicate to the govern- ments to which each of them was accredited the sympathy felt in the United States for the Jewish victims of Roumania, so that "it might quicken and encourage the efforts of that government to discharge its duty as a protecting power, pursu- ant to the obligations of the treaty between cer- tain European states," in view of the fact that "the grievance adverted to is so enormous as to impart to it, as it were, a cosmopolitan character, in the redress of which all countries, govern- ments, and creeds are alike interested." Ameri- ca's sympathy did indeed stir Europe to action while Peixotto's unceasing propaganda in behalf of his co-religionists emboldened the well-known Jewish leaders of England, France, Germany and Austria-Hungary to continue their own share of "the agitation. "I have set all Europe ablaze," writes Peixotto to Mr. Simon Wolf, "with the cause of our Roumanian brethren. All the great journals of England, Germany, Austria, France and Italy teem with articles on the persecutions and oppression of our people, and not only have parliaments been moved, but cabinets, and, if I mistake not, some great results must follow." THE BALKAN STATES 23! Peixotto's work did not immediately lead to the desired results, but it doubtless prepared the way for the action taken at the Berlin Congress of 1878 as was testified to by Lord Beaconsfield, aside from the fact that his propaganda, if it did not improve the situation of the Jews, at least had the benevolent effect of keeping it from be- coming worse. Indeed, Peixotto's real position was more that of an emissary to and for the Jews than of a diplomatic agent for a great trans- atlantic power, though his strength and influence emanated from the latter circumstance. It was also largely due to his initiative that the Anglo- Jewish Association and the Alliance Israelite en- tered upon the educational work which did so much to raise the intellectual status of Rou- manian Jewry. He travelled extensively through both Moldavia and Wallachia, helped the unfor- tunate Jews with both counsel and deed, and took a leading part in the organization of their benev- olent work through the founding of the Zion Order, which affiliated with the B'nai B'rith. The question of the Jewish disabilities in Rou- mania now became of international moment, rec- ognized as such not merely by the great powers but by the Jews themselves who, as a rule, were slow in realizing their mutual interests and the wisdom of their standing together. The need of greater solidarity between Jews of the various countries now became apparent, and led to the holding of three international conferences, in Brussels in 1872 and in Paris in 1876 and 1878, the last of these conferences taking place after the Russo-Turkish War. At these conferences, first of their kind in the history of the Jewish dispersion, came together the most prominent Jews of the time, among them Cremieux, Chief Rabbi Isidor, M. Leven, Joseph Derenbourg and 232 HISTORY OF THE JEWS Arthur Levy of France, Chief Rabbi Astruc of Brussels, Baron Henry de Worms and Sir Fran- cis Goldsmid of England, Moritz Lazarus and Julius Bleichroeder of Germany, Dr. Leopold Kompert of Austria, and Mr. Peixotto, Myer Stern and Isaac and William Seligman of Amer- ica. They led to an international organization of the Jews for the solution of the Roumanian prob- lem with headquarters in Vienna, and steps were taken for the carrying out of a number of pro- posed educational and moral reforms among the Roumanian Jews. At the instance of this organ- ization a memorial was framed for submission by the Jews of Roumania to the Roumanian Cham- ber of Deputies stating their grievances and ask- ing for complete civil and political rights (1872). For various reasons, chiefly those of the objec- tion of the Roumanian premier and the timidity of the Roumanian Jews themselves, the petition was not presented. The first Paris Conference (1876) resulted in the drafting of a petition to the Conference of the Powers, then about to meet in Constantinople for deliberation on the Eastern European question, asking for the emancipation of the Jews in the Balkan provinces, the project having received the support of the American and English governments, and the encouragement of the emissaries of Italy, France, Germany and even Russia. Nothing came of this and the situ- ation of the Roumanian Jews was still further aggravated by the outbreak soon after of the Russo-Turkish War, causing much suffering among them so that financial aid from America and other countries had to be secured. The turning point of that intolerable situation was, however, near at hand with the adoption of the Treaty of Berlin in 1878, by which Roumania was given her full independence of Turkey on THE BALKAN STATES 233 the condition, among others, of the complete en- franchisement of her Jews, a condition which, as it is now known, Roumania never kept even as she never had the intention of keeping. The time for 'such a demand had long been ripe, and the opportunity now presented itself, one perhaps never to come again, of making the Jewish emancipation in Roumania an ironclad provision, fenced around and sustained by all the majesty and strength which an international treaty was supposed to possess before the "scrap of paper" era was to set in in our own time. Considering the great interest aroused in Europe and America in the Roumanian Jewish problem, one could almost believe that the notable Berlin Congress had been called primarily to solve that problem, and that other and, from the interna- tional view-point, more important matters were in reality but side-issues. America was keenly alive to the question of justice to the Jew and instructed its representatves at the European cap- itals to be on the alert for the developments of the Congress. Even before the convening of that historic gathering, the United States Minister at Vienna, Mr. John A. Kasson, in a despatch dated June 5, suggested that the United States indicate its sympathy with the movement to have the Con- gress of Berlin decree equal rights for the Jews of Roumania, while Bayard Taylor, who was then American Minister in Berlin, actually interceded for this purpose with several members of that Congress, and he describes the proposed treaty with its provisions for religious liberty as "per- haps the most important historical act since that of Vienna in 1815." Prince Bismarck, who pre- sided at the Congress, declared to Jewish repre- sentatives that "he did not consider any settle- ment of the Eastern question satisfactory which 234 HISTORY OF THE JEWS did not place the Jews of Roumania upon a foot- ing of perfect equality with their fellow citizens," while Lord Beaconsfield whose attendance at the Congress, though a British Prime Minister, was regarded as an unusual procedure, had been known as a most enthusiastic champion of the rights of the Jews his own brethren. The tim- idity shown by some Jewish organizations out of fear of prejudicing rather than influencing the Congress, was discarded by the French Alliance which appointed a delegation consisting of MM. Netter, Kann and Veneziani to go- to Berlin and intercede with individual members of the Con- gress. Co-operating with them was Baron Ger- son von Bleichroeder who, as a personal friend of Bismarck, made use of his influence over the Iron Chancellor and other members of the Congress in favor of the Balkan Jews. The Congress opened on June 13, after the stage had been set for one of the greatest of all international dramas. There were now brought into play intrigues and counter-intrigues, lobby- ing and wire pulling, with diplomats of great and powerful governments acting like school boys, each of them seeking to foil the designs of the others and to enrich himself, or rather the coun- try he represented, by a slice of territory or a province. Between victorious Russia and van- quished Turkey, it was easy to see on whose side the advantage lay. But England and Austria, for selfish reasons of their own were determined to rob Russia of the fruits of her victory and to save the "Sick Man of Europe," come what may, and they won the day against whatever designs there may have been harbored by the other pow- ers. It was clear to all, however, that though Turkey may be saved from further dismember- ment, the Balkan States would now become per- THE BALKAN STATES 235 manently severed from her, it merely remaining a question as to the size these states shall be per- mitted to retain and the conditions upon which their independence shall be granted to them. It was here where the political intriguing was at its highest. Bulgaria, Serbia and Roumania all wanted freedom and regarded each other as ri- vals, each of them seeking its own profit at the expense of its neighbor. The seeds of future hatred were sown when Bulgaria was to b.e shorn of part of her territory while Serbia was to be enlarged in size at -the same time that Roumania was to lose to Russia the fertile province of Bes- sarabia. The future position of the Jews of these provinces could be foreseen by the attitude of the representatives of the Balkan States, who were approached by the members of the Alliance. Ris- titch, the Serbian, was not unfavorable to the proposition of full rights for the Jews, while Co- galniceanu and Bratianu, the Roumanians, were ill at ease about the prospect, Bratianu not hesi- tating to express the hope of the Jews re-estab- lishing their kingdom in Palestine so as to rid Roumania of them. The question of freedom and equality in Bulgaria for all creeds and nationali- ties introduced by Wm. Henry Waddington, the French Plenipotentiary, precipitated a discussion in the course of which Count Gortschakoff, the Russian emissary, delivered himself of abusive statements about the Jews of Serbia, Roumania and his own country, who, he declared, had to be treated by exceptional laws to safeguard the in- terests of the population. He distinguished be- tween Jews and Israelites. "The former were a plague; the latter might be excellent people, as could be seen in Berlin and London." His words, however, fell wide of the mark, his own fellow- delegate, Count Shouvaloff, voting with the pleni- 2^ HISTORY OF THE JEWS potentiaries of Germany,* Italy, Austria and Tur- key in favor of the principle of religious liberty. When the question of Roumanian independence came up (July i), the Congress could now act upon the precedent established for Serbia and Bulgaria. The principle held out for the last named provinces was essential also as a condition for the independence of the former. Bratianu and Cogalniceanu appeared in behalf of their country's freedom but had not a word to say about the Jewish problem. Again the representa- tive of France, M. Waddington, demanded of the Congress not to swerve from the grand rule of "equality of rights and liberty of worship," and he was seconded in his statements by the other plenipotentiaries. Lord Beaconsfield declared that "he could not suppose, for a moment, that the Congress could recognize the independence of Roumania apart from this condition," while Prince Gortschakoff, nursing the rebuff his words on the Serbian Jewish question had called forth, now sought to remove a bad impression by falling in with his French colleague's proposition "which gave the greatest latitude to religious liberty." The final text of the treaty, as given in the Brit- ish Blue-Book, contained the following provision bearing upon Roumania and known as Article 44: "In Roumania, difference in religious beliefs and confessions shall not be brought against any one as a ground for exclusion or unfitness as re- gards the enjoyment of civil and political rights, admission to public offices, functions, and honors, or the exercise of various professions and indus- tries in any place whatever. Freedom in outward observance of all creeds will be assured to all subjects of the Roumanian state, as \vell as to strangers, and no obstacle will be raised either to THE BALKAN STATES 237 the ecclesiastical organization of different bodies, or to their intercourse with their spiritual heads. "The citizens in all states, whether merchants or others, shall be dealt with, in Roumania, with- out distinction of religion, on the basis of perfect equality." This plain statement safeguarded the rights of the Jews as could any formal treaty honestly meant to be kept and adhered to. But this was furthest from the mind of Roumania's rulers and statesmen, and no sooner was the Berlin Congress adjourned and the delegates went home, than Roumania applied herself to the task of circum- venting the treaty and nullifying its provisions. The placing of the Jews upon a footing of equal- ity was most distasteful to all classes of the popu- lation, and not the least so to King Charles who, a true Hohenzollern, was completely under the influence of his Imperial kinsman in Berlin whose attitude toward the Jews had been outspokenly unfriendly. Emperor William I himself stated that he had "from the outset most strongly dis- approved of the resolution of the Congress con- cerning the Jewish question," and Prince Karl Anton, the father of King Charles, in a letter dated July 26, 1878, consoles his son that the provisions of the treaty bearing on the Jews were mere humane generalities. "It is left for the leg- islative body alone to phrase them, and I am convinced that later on, with the exception of the Alliance Israelite, no rooster will crow over the forms in which these provisions will be phrased." Charles and his underlings were docile followers of this sage advice. Lord Salisbury had suggest- ed that Article 44 of the treaty be inserted bodily in the Roumanian Constitution, but this did not suit the purpose of Bratianu and his colleagues. Instead a constitutional convention was sum- 238 HISTORY OF THE JEWS moned which substituted for the clause in the Berlin treaty the following: "Article 7: Difference in religious beliefs and confessions does not constitute, in Roumania, an obstacle to the obtainment of civil and political rights- and to the exercise of these rights: 1. A foreigner, without distinction of religion, and whether a subject or not of a foreign gov- ernment, can become naturalized under the fol- lowing conditions: (a) He shall address to the government an ap- plication for naturalization, in which he shall in- dicate the capital he possesses, the profession or craft which he follows, and his abode in Rou- mania. (b) He shall reside, after his application, ten years in the country, and prove, by action, that he is of service to it. 2. The following may be exempted from the intermediary stages: (a) Those who have brought into the country industries, useful inventions, or talent, or who have founded large establishments of commerce or industry. (b) Those who, born or bred in Roumania, of parents established in the country, have never been subjected, either themselves or their parents, to any protection by a foreign power. (c) Those who have served under the colors during the war of independence; these may be naturalized collectively by government decree, by a single resolution, and without any further for- mality. 3. Naturalization cannot be given except by law, and individually. 4. A special law shall determine the manner in which foreigners may establish their homes on Roumanian territory. THE BALKAN STATES 239 5. Only Roumanians, and those who have been naturalized Roumanians, can buy real estate in Roumania. Rights already acquired shall remain in force. International agreements at present existing shall remain in force in all the clauses and terms therein contained." In this manner did Roumania succeed in cir- cumventing the Treaty of Berlin. She did not go counter to the principle of religious liberty, but she made it practically impossible for any foreign- ers to secure naturalization, and the Jews were always foreigners in Roumania with the addi- tional hardship of not having any other govern- ment to look to for protection. To throw sand in the eyes of the world, 883 Jews were natural- ized in a body, on the strength of their partici- pation in the war, by a special vote of the Cham- ber, the rest of their brethren, numbering 250,000, remaining an outlawed community to this day. Yet Roumania, with a show" of self- justification, approached Europe in 1879 for an agreement on this infamous constitutional provision, and Eu- rope agreed. She trusted to Roumania's promise to live up to the spirit of the Berlin treaty as soon as her internal affairs permitted it, and in 1880 formally declared Roumania as an independent state on the strength of Article 7, itself a mere subterfuge for evading the treaty. Where Ser- bia and Bulgaria have honestly striven to comply with the conditions of their independence, Rou- mania has brazenly defied all public opinion and not only failed to improve the lot of her Jews but has steadily and fiendishly contrived to make it worse. From 1878 to this day the story of the Rou- manian Jews has been one long agony with scarce- ly any intervals of relief. Taking Russia as her 24O HISTORY OF THE JEWS model, Roumania has enacted a number of laws similar to those of her northern neighbor, ex- cluding Jews from the professions and the trades, driving them from the villages and barring their children from the public schools, high schools and universities. The oath More Judaico was not abolished until 1904 under pressure from West- ern Europe. Declared as aliens by law, Jews be- came subject to expulsion at the least whim of the authorities, and the latter have not failed to avail themselves of the weapon thus placed in their hands for weeding out all such "objection- able foreigners," in reality using it as a pretense for extortion. Some of the most noted Jews of the land were thus driven across the frontier, among them men like Dr. Moses Caster, the great Zionist leader, Hakham of the Spanish and Por- tuguese community of London, and probably the most renowned rabbi in English Jewry to-day, the historian Dr. E. Schwartzfeld, and other men of note. But many of these victims of an inhu- man government did not wait to be expelled, but voluntarily took up the wanderer's staff and emi- grated to England, Palestine and more especially America whither a steady stream of immigration has been flowing all through the past generation. It was this latter circumstance, the large influx of immigrants from Roumania as the result of persecution, which in 1902 furnished the United States government with the desired opportunity for intervention on behalf of these Jews. The show of selfish interest on the part of America was only a pretext, the real motive being humani- tarian. Always a friend of the Jews as of all other oppressed races and nationalities, America, while not a signatory to the Berlin Treaty, was ready to act in behalf of Roumania's Jewish vic- tims when the time seemed opportune, and at the DR. MOSES CASTER (b. 1856) THE BALKAN STATES 24! instance of several leading American Jews like Jacob H. Schiff, Oscar S. Straus, Simon Wolf, and Lucius L. Littauer, notwithstanding the dip- lomatic difficulties that presented themselves, Sec- retary of State John Hay, with the advice and approval of President Theodore Roosevelt, des- patched on August n, 1902, his famous "Rou- manian Note" to the American Ambassadors to the signatory powers, Germany, France, Great Britain, Italy, Russia and Turkey, with instruc- tions that it be transmitted to the governments to which they were accredited. It was a great state paper, truly representative of the splendid qualifi- cations and lofty humanitarianism of the illus- trious statesman who penned it. Starting out with the premise that forced immigration to the United States, such as Roumania's anti-Jewish policy led to, was detrimental to American inter- ests, Hay reminded the Roumanian government that the full equality of all religious creeds and confessions had been made an indispensable con- dition of Roumanian independence, that by pur- suing her policy of oppression, and by constantly adding to the already too heavy burdens, she. was rendering the Jews of her domain "incapable of lifting themselves from the enforced degradation they endure." Citing one by one the disabilities under which they were laboring, and the evils they have led to among both the Jews themselves and the countries to which they are being forced to emigrate, the Secretary concludes with the fol- lowing humane and withal significant statements: "This government cannot be a tacit party to such an international wrong. It is constrained to pro- test against the treatment to which the Jews of Roumania are subjected, not alone because it has unimpeachable right to remonstrate against the resultant injury to itself, but in the name of hu- 242 HISTORY OF THE JEWS manity. The United States may not authori- tatively appeal to the stipulations of the Treaty of Berlin, to 'which it was not and cannot become a signatory, but it does earnestly appeal to the principles consigned therein, because they are the principles of international law and eternal justice, advocating the broad toleration which that sol- emn compact enjoins and standing ready to lend its moral support to the fulfilment thereof by its co-signatories, for the act of Roumania itself has effectively joined the United States to them as an interested party in this regard." As was only to be expected this protest led to no practical results, the European powers being too preoccupied with their own domestic and dip- lomatic difficulties to take up anew the Roumanian Jewish question, with the exception of England alone, whose foreign office set itself in communi- cation with the other powers on the subject, with- out, however, being able to accomplish anything. Roumania herself made a feeble show of self- excuse through the issuing of a number of pamphlets in French in which she repeated all ac- cusations against the Jews in justification of her treatment of them. The Hay note, however, had one decided effect. It branded Roumania before the High Court of Civilization as the perfidious and immoral nation she was, and coming from a government so powerful in the councils of the na- tions, the moral blow thus dealt could not be re- ceived without wincing even by the brazen-faced government of Bucharest. European nations now were convinced that the Jews had a loyal friend in America, and the ef- fect of Hay's message could not have been lost even on Russia at whom, indirectly, the note was likewise aimed. The position of the Roumanian Jews, however, was in no way improved by Amer- THE BALKAN STATES 243 ica's stand, and the oppressive measures contin- ued to be enacted and executed with the utmost rigor. During the Balkan wars when Roumania showed her bad faith by failing to naturalize, as she had promised, Jews who were fighting in her armies, many of the Jewish soldiers expressed their protest and resentment by marching on foot to the frontier and making their way to ports of embarkation for America. Leading American Jews again utilized the opportunity offered by the Peace Conference at the conclusion of the Second Balkan War (1913) by urging American inter- vention on behalf of Roumanian Jewry. An extensive correspondence with the State Department was carried on to this effect by Louis Marshall, Cyrus Adler and Herbert Friedenwald, the object being not merely to help the Jews na- tive to Roumania but also to safeguard the rights of the Jews in the territories that were to pass under the Roumanian rule. Similar action was taken on October 13, 1913, by the London Board of Deputies and the Anglo-Jewish Association in a joint memorial they addressed to Sir Edward Grey, the British Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. Despite, however, the resolutions passed by the American Congress, the action taken by the United States government in addressing the Balkan Peace Conference, and the assurances given by Sir Edward Grey, nothing was accom- plished, Roumania persisting in her infamous course as before. There is a glimmer of hope, however, that the misfortunes that have befallen that land in the course of the Great War, when most of her terri- tory was invaded and is now occupied by the armies of the Central- European Powers, will have a sobering effect even upon Roumania. In no country in Europe will things remain as they 244 HISTORY OF THE JEWS were before the war, and the change will be for the better. Roumania will indeed be rehabili- tated in most of her possessions and allowed to continue as a sovereign state after the war, but her freedom and integrity this time will be wholly dependent upon the irrevocable provision of the complete and unequivocal enfranchisement and liberation of her Jews. This will assuredly be one of the results of the present war which is a struggle for democracy and freedom in their noblest connotations. Then will Roumania be- come rehabilitated not only politically but morally as well and if in the past, notwithstanding their unequalled sufferings, her Jews contributed to the sum total of Jewish culture by giving to universal Jewry men like Israel Baal Shem, the founder of Hassidism, scholars and scientists like Solomon Schechter, Moses Caster, Eli Schwarz- feld, C. Lippe, men of letters like Ronetti Roman, the poet, and Hebraists of distinction like M. Braunstein and M. Brandstadter, then in the fu- ture, under happier conditions, will their share in Israel's spiritual life doubtless be even more con- siderable. PROF. SOLOMON SCHECHTER (1847-1915) CHAPTER IV AMERICAN CONTINENT A. THE SEPHARDIC AND GERMAN PERIODS Though Jews were among the first to reach and settle in America, Jewish financiers having furnished the money with which the expedition of discovery was made possible, and Jewish sail- ors having accompanied Columbus on his most eventful voyage the number of Jews living in North and South America was very small even when the nineteenth century was veering toward its decline. Not until the early eighties of the last century did Jews settle in the United States in considerable numbers. The persecutions and massacres of the Jews with which Czar Alexan- der III inaugurated his reign were the immedi- ate cause of the birth of the large American Jew- ish community. Nevertheless, the foundation of what was des- tined to become one of the strongest and richest of Jewish centres had been laid. The Spanish and Portuguese Jews who found their way to Canada and the present United States in the sev- enteenth and eighteenth centuries, coming from Holland, England and Brazil, soon became part of the new life that was budding upon the virgin soil. These Jews were the pioneers of Sephardic 245 246 HISTORY OF THE JEWS Orthodoxy in America. \Yith them came the romanticism of religion, the reverence and vener- ation for the higher spiritual values which was so beautifully and heroically mirrored in the life of their forefathers. Jewish scholarship was indeed rare among them, but instead they were possessed of an extraordinary degree of enthusiasm for their faith, and of pride in their racial origin. The little cemetery in Chatham Square in New York, obtained in 1656, the first visible sign of Jewish communal life in the New World, was the forerunner of the little synagogue that was soon to take up its place and function in the tiny Jew- ish community on the Hudson. For well-nigh two hundred years these Jews maintained their re- ligious life as best they could, and with whatever spiritual aid from the European world they could obtain. And though their numbers had not in- creased greatly, they nevertheless produced a few men who came to occupy places of distinction in the larger community, such as Aaron Hart (Lon- don, 1724-Three Rivers, Quebec, 1800), Colonel Isaac Franks (New York, 1759- Philadelphia, 1822), \vho served in various capacities in the Revolutionary War, Rabbi Gershom Mendes Seixas (New York, 1745-1816), minister of the Shearith Israel Congregation in New York who took part in the inauguration ceremonies of Pres- ident Washington in 1789, and Mordecai Manuel Noah (Philadelphia, 1785-New York, 1851), jour- nalist and politician, playwright and statesman, visionary and warm-hearted Jew, who earned for himself a special place of honor as a forerunner of modern Zionism as will be told here more fully in a subsequent chapter. Beginning with the less eventful record of the Jews of Canada as a more convenient starting point, our first impression is the similarity which AMERICA 247 the story of the Jews of the Dominion bears in many important respects to that of their brethren in the States, though it begins about a century later. Here, too, Jews of Spanish and Portu- guese origin were the first to settle, and the first signs of organized Jewish religious life were seen in Montreal where, in 1768, the "Shearith Israel" congregation was formed. The most prominent of these Canadian Jewish pioneers was Lazarus David (Swansea, Wales, 1734-Montreal, 1776), who was a large land-owner and who with his family became noted for many benefactions to the community. His eldest son, David David (Mon- treal, 1764-1824), was a founder and director of the Bank of Montreal, and gave to the Jews of that city the plot of land for the erection of their first synagogue. A grandson of Lazarus, Aaron Hart David (Montreal, 1812-1882), attained prominence as a physician, becoming dean of the medical faculty and professor of the practice of medicine at the University of Bishop's College, and governor of the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Lower Canada. In the French and Indian War (1754-1763), in which England was to acquire Canada from the French, a number of Jews served with distinction in the English armies, some of them, like Aaron Hart, Emanuel de Cordova, Hananiel Garcia and Isaac Miranda, becoming officers. With the outbreak of the Rev- olutionary War, Canadian Jews were divided in their sentiments, several of them becoming mar- tyrs to the cause of American independence. One of them, David Salisbury Franks, was thrown in prison in Montreal as a rebel and, when released, joined the revolutionary forces. Levy Solomons, at the time Parnas of the Montreal Congregation, also showed his preference for the cause of free- dom. Like his brother in faith, Hyam Solomon 248 HISTORY OF THE JEWS of Philadelphia, he supplied the revolutionary army, which in 1775 invaded Montreal, with money and provisions, never to be reimbursed for it. With the departure of the Americans, Solomons at once became an object of persecution to the British, who expelled him from the city, only to allow him to return later. These Jews also had to carry on a struggle for the establish- ment of their civil rights. This first centred about the person of Ezekiel Hart who, in 1807, upon his election to the Legislature from the city of Three Rivers, refused to be sworn in in the usual form "on the faith of a Christian," but in- sisted on taking the oath of office in accordance with Jewish tradition. His political opponents saw in this incident an opportunity for depriving him of his seat and at once raised the issue of the legality of his representation, succeeding in having him expelled in the following year. Hart continued his protests, persistently came to the Legislature and insisted on his right to vote and participate in the deliberations. The acrimonious debates and stormy sessions which attended this course finally resulted in the dissolution of the Chamber (1809) by the Governor. The Jews, seeing in this a case of vital importance to their status as citizens, kept up the agitation in behalf of their complete legal emancipation, and at their instance a bill was introduced in Parliament (1829) authorizing them to keep a register of births, marriages and deaths, which became a law by royal sanction on January 13, 1831. Encour- aged by this victory, they, in that same year, pe- titioned the Legislature for the recognition of their full civil riglits and, on March 16 of that year, a bill to that effect was passed in the As- sembly and later in the Council, becoming a law on June 5, 1832. The Canadian Parliament was AMERICA 249 thus thrown open to Jewish representatives some twenty-six years before the same privilege was accorded to their co-religionists in England. Not until 1845 wa s there any communal Jewish life outside of Montreal. In that year the Jews of Toronto found themselves strong enough nu- merically to organize a congregation, this being followed in 1852 by the acquisition of a cemetery. In 1846 Montreal saw the organization of a Ger- man-Polish congregation which, however, proved abortive, a more successful attempt being fol- lowed in 1858. Gradually a number of Jewish settlements sprang up in different parts of the Dominion, resulting in the formation of congrega- tions in Victoria, B. C. (1862), in Hamilton, On- tario (1882), in Winnipeg (1884), Halifax, St. John, Ottawa and New London, while in Quebec the beginnings of the Jewish community go back to 1853. After the Russian riots of 1881 a num- ber of the victims found their way into Canada and added considerably to the Jewish population, not, however, in as great a proportion as in the States. With them came an enlargement of Jew- ish communal activity. New congregations were formed, benevolent and educational institutions were founded, agricultural colonies, aided by the Baron de Hirsch Fund and, later, by the Jewish Colonization Association, were started with vary- ing degrees of success, while Reform Judaism, Zionism and other great movements of later years found a following. As in the United States so in Canada the descendants of the pioneer Jews of Spanish and Portuguese stock are now over- whelmingly outnumbered by the later settlers though a few of them are still prominent socially and politically, the family names of Hart, Ascher, de Sola and Samuel still being among the more notable in Canadian Jewry. 250 HISTORY OF THE JEWS It is to the United States that we must turn for what was destined to be a most glorious chapter in Jewish annals. Within the territory compris- ing- the vast stretches of land bordering on the two great oceans and extending from the Cana- dian border-line in the north to the Mexican fron- tier in the south, the descendants of the ancient race were to build up a community which, for ma- terial wealth and spiritual potentiality, has never been surpassed. The time in which our period begins saw the genesis of German-Jewish migration to the United States. Until 1848 the number of Jews who came from Western Europe was very small. So long as the prospects for complete political eman- cipation were good in Germany and Austria-Hun- gary, there was no particular desire on the part of the Jews of those countries to seek refuge and freedom in the far-off land across the sea. Then came the year 1848 with its revolutions and the political reactions which followed, and many Ger- man and Austrian Jews who had taken a prom- inent part in the uprisings found themselves com- pelled to flee from their native lands. They made their way to America and took up their homes in New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Cincinnati and the other large centres where a number of their countrymen had preceded them. Soon they were to make themselves felt in the Jewish and the general life of the land economically as well as politically. In 1849 when gold was discovered in California many of those immigrants sought out the mining camps of that far-western state, en- riched themselves by trading and mining, and on their return laid the foundations of the large Jew- ish banking and mercantile houses which were destined to play a not insignificant part in the AMERICA 251 development of American industry and com- merce. This, however, was the less important role the German Jew was to play in the United States. In the religious life of the community his was to be a more prominent share. It was due to him that American Judaism assumed a certain definite aspect, and developed along lines unknown there- tofore. What is known as "American Reform Judaism" is the product of the German-American Jew, imported, it is true, from the old world yet in the free environment of the New World al- lowed so wide and* unlimited a scope as to enable it to undergo many fundamental changes and to become a movement greatly varying in doctrine and ceremonial from the Reform which had its inception in Germany. It is this phase of Ger- man-Jewish achievement which must here claim our greatest attention. The American Jewish Reform movement of the present day seems indigenous to the soil, a dis- tinctively American way of preaching and prac- ticing the Jewish religion. This was not the case when the Reform movement first made its appear- ance in America which may be said to have been superimposed upon the American Jews by a few German-born and German-preaching Rabbis, who came to the United States immediately preceding or along with the immigration wave of 1848 and the years following.* It is true, the first Ameri- * "America," says Dr. E. Schreiber in his "Reformed Judaism and Its Pioneers" (p. 381), "has entered upon the heritage of German Reform Judaism. In fact Reform Judaism in this country (Amer- ica) is nothing more and nothing less than German Reform Juda- ism." He also quotes Geiger as saying of the Philadelphia Rab- binical Conference of 1869: "Here we meet with flesh of our flesh, spirit of our spirit. The men who controlled this Conference are Germans who crossed the ocean, who brought to America their knowledge and theological point of view, who still are intellectually nurtured from the sources of its (Germany's) spiritual life, but who in free America are enabled to a more consistent and more ener- getic activity. Here are names of sterling characters in their former homes in the fatherland, very dear, brave old friends." (p. 369.) 252 HISTORY OF THE JEWS can Jewish Congregation to adopt a Reform plat- form as early as 1824 was the "Reformed So- ciety of Israelites" of Charleston, S. C. But, aside from the fact that that congregation was the only one in its day as such and remained so until the Reform labors of Wise and Lilienthal were beginning to be felt, it is not improbable that the Charleston community was itself, in some way, influenced by the Reform agitation that had been going on in Europe in those years, the declarations made by the Jewish leaders who participated in the Sanhedrin convoked by Napo- 1 Icon (1807), the reforms introduced by Israel Jacobson at Seesen and Berlin, and, finally, the famous controversy which centred about the Ham- burg Reform Temple founded by Kley and Salo- mon (1818). The bulk of American Jewry to- ward the middle of the last century had remained steadfast in their orthodox beliefs and practices, this being the rule not only with the native Ameri- can Jews of Spanish-Portuguese descent, but also with the immigrant Jews from Germany. When Isaac Mayer Wise (Steingrub, Bohemia, iSiQ-Cincinnati, 1900) landed in New York in 1846, there was not a single congregation of pro- gressive tendencies in that city. Of the seven congregations he found there, he tells us in his "Reminiscences," the Portuguese employed a ritual "just as antiquated and tedious as the German and the Polish although more decorous, dignified and classical." Orthodoxy in America in those days was not synonymous with Talmudic schol- arship, and when Wise, on a visit to the English- Polish synagogue on Elm Street, asked the Sha- mash (sexton) for a volume of the "Mishnah," "that individual laughed so mockingly that I read- ily perceived what a sign of greenness it was on my part to ask for an ancient Hebrew book in ISAAC MAYER WISE (1819-1900) AMERICA 253 the New World, and that too in an orthodox synagogue." Dr. Max Lilienthal, who had preced- ed Wise in America by a short time after his un- fortunate educational experiments in Russia, and who was later to play an important part in the American Jewish Reform movement, was himself strictly orthodox at the time Wise first met him, and as such occupied the position of rabbi of the three leading German orthodox congregations of the city. He would not go with uncovered head even in his own home, and closely adhered to all the minutiae of the Shulhan Arukh. Tem- ple Emanuel, which later became one of the strongholds of Reform in America, was but little different. It still observed Tisha b'Ab, the wo- men were partitioned off from the men, and the music was furnished by a boys' choir. Dr. Merz- bacher, its Rabbi, was possessed of progressive ideas which, however, he dared not put into prac- tice. He looked discouragingly upon the religious future of American Jewry, and spoke pityingly to Wise when the latter disclosed to him his deter- mination to devote himself to the task of bringing the Jewish household in America in order. In large measure this movement was the work of one man with whose life and activities it is inextricably interwoven. To Isaac Mayer Wise belongs the credit for reshaping the destinies of American Judaism. A man of attractive person- ality and strong convictions, a visionary and ideal- ist, a forceful preacher and a trenchant writer, he soon after his arrival foresaw the wonderful possibilities for religious work in the New World. He was facing a struggling and stormy career, but the difficulties of the task only attracted him to it all the more. All around him he saw chaos and confusion, disorganization and dissension, ig- norance of religion and deep-seated contempt for 254 HISTORY OF THE JEWS everything connected with Jews and Judaism. It was under such disheartening conditions that Wise chose to throw in his lot with his people and to labor for their spiritual uplift. He concluded, after familiarizing himself with conditions as they obtained in many of the Jewish communities, that the salvation of Judaism would arise not from New York or any of the large eastern cen- tres, but from the smaller communities and princi- pally from those in the South and the West. "My experiences," he says in his "Reminiscences," "in New Haven, Albany and Syracuse were of the most signal importance. These German Jew- ish immigrants, mused I, have not lost their love for Judaism under the influence of their new po- litical and social conditions. Hence desire for organization. They form congregations, build synagogues, and feel a longing for the living word. . . . There are life and energy in this new Judaism whether it now be conscious or uncon- scious. The people lack culture; they do not pos- sess a true appreciation of the conditions among which they live. 'Tis well I have found my voca- tion and my mission." He began his rabbinical work in America as minister of Beth El Congregation of Albany in 1846 where he soon set about introducing many reforms such as the organization of a choir, the preaching of a sermon regularly every week, and the abolition of certain Hebrew prayers deemed unnecessary and cumbersome to the service. He also modified the custom of the sale of Mizvot on the Sabbath and the holidays. In our day such reforms are regarded as essential even in the most conservative of congregations. But in Wise's time in Albany these moderate measures met with the displeasure of a large number of the congregation who, under the leadership of Louis AMERICA 255 Spanier, president of the synagogue, endeavored in many ways to block his efforts. The gifted and eloquent rabbi, however, was still very popu- lar with his people. Finally, after several years of friction, the opposition became stronger and bolder. When in 1850 the Reform Congregation Beth Elohim of Charleston, S. C., extended a call to Wise, which he declined, the incident, instead of arousing the pride of his people in their rabbi, was made use of by his enemies for his undoing. Charges were preferred against him, instigated by president Spanier, that he had denied the com- ing of the Messiah and the bodily resurrection of the dead, that he had declared prayers in Hebrew a mere superstitious performance and the Tephi- lin and Zizit ceremonies as superfluous and meaningless, that he wrote on Rosh Hashanah, indulged in physical exercise on the Sabbath day, and ridiculed the woman's ritual bath. Wise of- fered to defend himself but was refused a hear- ing, in consequence of which his friends, headed by vice-president Sporberg, withdrew from the meeting. His enemies then declared the contract with the rabbi void, refusing even to pay him his back-salary. When Wise was informed of this action he refused to abide by it, declared that it was contrary to law and that he would continue to perform the duties of his office. On the New Year, which occurred two days later, though re- fused a seat on the pulpit, Wise made his way to the Ark to recite the customary prayer before the reading from the Scroll, when Spanier stepped up and struck at him with his fist. A great uproar ensued among the worshippers, Wise made his way home amidst pain and anguish, and later was arrested by a constable as a disturber of the peace and of a public worship. His useful- ness in Albany seemed at an end. His friends, 256 HISTORY OF THE JEWS however, stood by him, and seceding from Beth El organized a new congregation under the name of "Anshe Emet," where free play was allowed him to carry out his cherished reform ideas. Meanwhile Wise had become a national even more than a local celebrity. A man of studious habits and talented as a writer, he made use of his spare time to add to his knowledge of Jewish literature, and to write a number of learned trea- tises for the Jewish periodicals then in existence, the "Occident," edited by the Reverend Isaac Leeser of Philadelphia, and the "Asmonean," edited by Robert Lyon of New York. He also wrote a "History of the Israelitish Nation from Abraham to the Present Time, Vol. I," which was published prior to the close of his Albany career. In all of his writings he fearlessly spoke his mind upon the needed reforms in the synagogue, and sought to convince his readers of the futility of many of the customs and beliefs that have accumu- lated in Judaism in the course of the ages. His essay on "Principles of Judaism," published in the "Occident" in 1851, shows the advance his views had made since he first entered upon his career as a Reformer. He denies that the Bible is opposed to ritualistic reform and that the Prophets teach bodily resurrection and the coming of a personal Messiah. "Though I have found many doctrines and opinions in the works of antiquity to which I am opposed, I nevertheless venerate these incom- parable treasures for their great value as a whole. But when the Talmud comes into conflict with the facts of natural philosophy, or with events as expressed in history, and their natural results, I am fearless on the side of truth." Yet Wise's advocacy of Reform emanated from a positive rather than a negative attitude toward Judaism, making him the constructive rather than AMERICA 257 the destructive proponent of what in course of time became the leading ideas of Reform Judaism. To Judaism he ascribes four main principles, namely: (i) One God; (2) Man the image of God; (3) Man accountable to God; (4) Israel the chosen servant of God for the promulgation of these truths to mankind at large. "These four truths are plainly announced in the Pentateuch, re-echoed by the Psalmist and by each of the Prophets. Nature and history do not contradict them, but they are the living witnesses, they bear the strongest evidence to the verity of all these four dogmas, and every Jew believes them and defends them with his life, liberty and property; and if he ceases to do so he has ceased to be a Jew." But the purport of this need and urgency of reforms is not merely for academic discussion, but because the very future of Judaism is staked upon their acceptance or rejection: "Doctrines which are opposed by sound common sense, by the very facts of nature, by the Bible itself, aroused the suspicion of rational .men, and they rejected not doctrines alone but the whole system of which they form a part, made hundreds of indifferent spectators to our sacred cause, caused others to overthrow the whole structure of Juda- ism. The time of a blind and uninquiring faith is gone indeed now with rational and reasoning man. Lay your hand on your heart, be calm and honest, and ask yourselves whether you can jus- tify your cause before God, if coming generations of Israel will be lost to our sacred cause, because you imposed on them doctrines which caused them to reject the whole system? I could not. Or do you think a generation grown up in a free and enlightened country will not do so? I do not, and therefore I think it my sacred mission to teach an enlightened and pure Judaism, to remove as much 258 HISTORY OF THE JEWS mysticism as possible from the system of our faith, to give as much rational evidence for it as I can bring forward, and if I am wrong I am honest, and God will not judge me too severely." On its practical side, Reform has for its object the dissemination of the knowledge of Judaism among both Jews and non-Jews, the former, that they may the more clearly perceive the beauty and moral worth of Judaism ; the latter, that they may lose their prejudice and hatred for all things Jew- ish. Wise realized that the greatest drawback in the religious life of the American Jew was the lack of educated rabbis, men well versed in both Hebrew and secular learning, who could influence the Jewish masses by their leadership and elo- quence. Since the rabbi is the all-important func- tionary of the synagogue, Wise believed that the Hazzan, or Cantor, was a useless luxury for the small and impecunious congregation, whose office should therefore be abolished, leaving it to the rabbi to read the prayers as well as preach, and to the choir to chant the hymns and responses. To make this practicable, it is imperative that the rit- ualistic part of a service be shortened, thus bring- ing it within proper limits and avoiding the risk of fatiguing the worshippers. As far as possible the English language should be employed for the benefit of the young and rising generation. But in order to secure English-preaching rabbis there was need for the establishment of a rabbinical seminary in America, and this could not be done except through a union of all the congregations of the land. Again and again he reverts to this plea for union and for an American-educated rab- binate in his numerous articles in the "Occident" and "Asmonean." The unsuccessful attempts of both himself and Lilienthal to bring about a union of rabbis he greatly deplored, but he never aban- AMERICA 259 doned hope of seeing his pet plans realized. Time justified his expectations, and many years before his death Wise saw the "Union of American He- brew Congregations," the "Hebrew Union Col- lege" for the training of rabbis, and the "Central conference of American Rabbis" as active and potent forces in the life of American Israel. But these hopes were not to materialize while Wise remained in Albany. Fortunately for him and for the cause he espoused, he was destined early in his Reform career to see his lot thrown in with a leading Western community where recog- nition was freely given to his ability and earnest- ness and where he could secure all the needed moral and financial support for the realization of his ambitious plans. In 1854 Wise was called to Congregation Bene Yeshurum of Cincinnati, a young and progressive body, which elected him for life and where the conditions for work and achievement w r ere pleasant and stimulating. Short- ly after taking up his work there Wise estab- lished the two weekly organs, the "Israelite" in English and the "Deborah" in German, both of which he continued to edit until his death in igoo. The year following he was joined in Cincinnati by his colleague and life-long friend Dr. Max Lilien- thal who accepted the rabbinate of Bene Israel, the other Reform congregation of the city. The rela- tions of the two eminent rabbis were always ami- cable, the two working side by side in the local affairs of the community and in the larger work for a united American Israel which soon was to assume national proportions. From the day of his arrival in Cincinnati Wise looms upon the American Jewish horizon as the great leader and organizer, the fearless champion of truth and the man who takes his work too seri- ously to be content with small and local achieve- 260 HISTORY OF THE JEWS ments. The two organs he called into being became a powerful weapon in his hands which he used with full effect whenever the occasion de- manded. Lilienthal was only next to Wise in his fighting qualities, in his firm adherence to a pur- pose, and in the persuasiveness of his logic as an exponent of Reform. The two soon became the Jakhin and the Boas by which the sanctuary of Reform Judaism was supported. Wise established his claim to national leadership by first setting his own house in order and effectively introducing in his community those reforms which he wanted to see prevail throughout the land. He beautified the worship, making it an aesthetic and spiritual delight by the fine singing, the eloquent and in- structive preaching and the dignity and decorum with which the entire service was permeated. He carried out his idea of a ritual by compiling the new prayer book named by him the "Minhag America," which was soon adopted by many other congregations of the land. In addition to the Saturday morning service he introduced the late Friday night lecture which became very popular in Cincinnati and was eagerly taken up by other cities. When in the course of time several ultra- Reform rabbis began the advocacy of more radi- cal innovations and proceeded to introduce Sun- day services to the detriment of the historical Sabbath, Wise opposed their efforts as ill-advised, pointing to his Friday night services as aiming to furnish spiritual help to those who are compelled to work on the Sabbath. He made a model school out of the "Talmud Yelodim Institute" for the re- ligious education of the congregation's youth. In the larger Jewish world Wise made himself felt as the ever alert watchman of his people's inter- ests, using the editorial columns of the ''Israelite" to ward off whatever blows of anti-Jewish preju- AMERICA 26l dice there were here and there aimed at the Jews. His remonstrance against the disabilities experi- enced by American Jews in Switzerland and Rus- sia, as well as his successful campaign against General Grant's drastic and uncalled-for order of expulsion against all Jews within the territory comprised by his department, of which more will be said here later, and the quick results he ob- tained, is illustrative of the fearlessness and ef- fectiveness of his work as a Jewish leader. And all this time he did not cease advocating his favorite idea of a college for the education of rabbis. As early as 1855 an attempt was made by him to open such an institution in Cincinnati under the name of "Zion College" which had fourteen students, two of them Christians, and three paid teachers besides Wise and Lilienthal who gave their services gratis. The college was short-lived for lack of support. The greatest difficulty Wise experienced was in getting the con- gregations of the East to second his plans and support his efforts. Those congregations, their rabbis and leaders, pioneers among Jewish insti- tutions in America, were forever jealous of the young and ambitious West and looked askance at all plans for Jewish work that did not originate in New York or Philadelphia. This was clearly evidenced by the failure of the conference called at the instance of Wise in 1855, in the City of Cleveland, for the purpose of establishing a union of Hebrew congregations, whether Reform or orthodox, of organizing a "Regular Synod Com- posed of Delegates of Congregations," of discus- sing plans for a "Minhag America" prayer book, adapted to the needs of American congregations, a plan which Wise carried out later as already stated, and of deciding upon "A Plan for Scho- lastic Education" by which was understood a 262 HISTORY OF THE JEWS rabbinical college. Laymen were invited as well as rabbis, and there were present representa- tives from congregations in Albany, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore and Boston in the East, Cincinnati, Chicago, Cleveland and Detroit in the West, and Richmond and Louisville in the South. Probably the weak point of that conference was its attempt to consolidate the orthodox and the Reform elements, something which has at no time since proven successful. Yet in those days the line of demarcation between the two factions had not yet been drawn as sharply as in later years. Reform was still in the making and was still trail- ing after its orthodox parent. There was a semblance of harmony at the sessions. Wise was elected president, Conn of Albany vice-president, while Lilienthal acted as secretary. Isaac Leeser, known to fame as the foremost orthodox leader of his day in America, was also there, and lent his assent to the proceedings. A declaration of principles was adopted which stated that (i) the Bible is of immediate Divine Origin; (2) the Tal- mud contains the Traditional, Legal and Logical Exposition of the Biblical Laws which must be expounded and practised according to the Com- ments of the Talmud; (3) the Resolutions of the Synod in accordance with the above Principles are Legally Valid; (4) Statutes and Ordinances Contrary to the Laws of the Land are Invalid. Committees were also appointed to draw up plans for the proposed "Minhag America," the Synod,* the Rabbinical College, etc. But these committees never reported, for there was no further meeting of this conference. No sooner had the delegates returned to their home than the storm broke loose which upset all of the plans. Leeser of Phila- delphia underwent a change of heart and from friend turned foe; Dr. David Einhorn, who had AMERICA 263 just arrived in Baltimore as rabbi of Har Sinai Congregation, found the proceedings of the con- ference too conciliatory and reactionary to suit his own reform ideas, and let loose a torrent of bit- ter criticism in his German monthly, the "Sinai," The congregations Beth Elohim of Charleston, S. C, and Emanuel of N. Y., were also dissatisfied with its platform and protested against it. The project of a united American Israel had once again to be deferred to a more propitious day. Other eastern leaders followed the example of Leeser the extreme orthodox, and of Einhorn the radical Reformer, and joined the forces of opposi- tion to Wise and his colleagues. A policy of diffi- dence toward all things western was entered upon, from which the eastern leaders would not swerve. Wise was regarded as a rabbinical upstart who sought to establish for himself a position of su- premacy in American Jewish life to which neither his learning nor his past achievements had en- titled him. Jealousy at his own success doubtless had not a little to do in prejudicing against him those Reform leaders who should have been the first to proffer their services and help. Gradually Wise was forced to the conclusion that the West must learn to get along without the East. In condemning the pettiness and selfishness of east- ern Jewry in a matter which imperatively called for a union of forces, he writes: "In the East Reform is an object per se, with us it is second- ary; we want reforms in order to endear and pre- serve our religion, therefore we ask the question, what benefit is this or that reform to our sacred cause ? They want Reform per se, and ask only the question, how will this or that reform be liked? Here is a difference of principles of which prac- tical results speak. The eastern Reformers are theoretical, we are practical; they are negative, 264 HISTORY OF THE JEWS we are positive; they consider themselves wiser and more learned and more respectable than we are, that is, the bulk of the people, and keep aloof; we are democratic in our religious feel- ings. Nothing can be more desirable than a union of synagogues. The future greatness of Judaism in America depends upon the union of congrega- tions. We must be united in form of worship in order to have no element of discord among us. . . Hitherto all attempts at union were frustrated by the Reform leaders of the East." After some more attempts at conciliation last- ing for a number of years, during which many conferences were held in various cities, all of them resulting in failure, the first step toward the realization of the rabbinical seminary plan was taken by Henry Adler, a merchant of In- diana, who in 1870 donated the first substantial gift of $10,000 toward the project. With this sum as a basis, Wise with greater vigor than ever continued his advocacy of a union of con- gregations. With the active assistance of his own congregation, a "General Committee" was formed in Cincinnati on March 30, 1873, with Julius Frei- berg as Chairman, and Lipman Levy as Secretary, which, on May 18 of that year, issued a call to all congregations of the West and the South for a convention to form "a Union of Congregations, under whose auspices a Jewish Theological Insti- tute shall be established, and other measures adopted which will advance the prosperity of our religion." The convention took place in Cincin- nati on July 8, 1873, with representatives from thirty-four congregations, who at once proceeded to organize the Union of American Hebrew Con- gregations for the avowed .purpose, as they rather crudely put it, of establishing "a Hebrew Theo- logical College to preserve Judaism intact, to be- AMERICA 265 queath it in its purity and sublimity to posterity, to Israel united and fraternized, to establish, sus- tain and govern a seat-of-learning for Israel's re- legion and learning." Two years later the semi- nary, under the name of "Hebrew Union College," was opened in Cincinnati. A dream of more than a quarter of a century at last became a reality in the institution which was to become the most im- portant factor in the development of Reform Judaism in America. The beginnings of the College were very small. Without a building of its own, it met in the ves- try rooms of Dr. Lilienthal's temple. Of the seventeen young men who enrolled only four clung to their purpose of becoming Jewish min- isters, and eight years later were ordained as rabbis. The faculty at first consisted of only two professors, Isaac M. Wise and Solomon Eppinger, but the following year Lilienthal joined the teach- ing force. An academic college education was made obligatory upon the students. Poor as was the equipment of the seminary it nevertheless held on to its ambitious programme, and each year saw a marked growth in its efficiency and in the means for carrying on its work. It has since graduated about one hundred and seventy rabbis \vho are to-day teaching and preaching Judaism throughout the United States, in Canada and in England. To-day the Hebrew Union College oc- cupies several luxurious buildings in one of the choicest residential sections of Cincinnati, has a great library stocked with more than forty thou- sand volumes and precious manuscripts, and among its large faculty, headed by Dr. Kaufman Kohler, are numbered some of the best known Jewish scholars of the day. With the successful founding of the College was made possible the coming true of another fond 266 HISTORY OF THE JEWS hope of Wise, that of seeing a united American rabbinate. The successive attempts at such a union made by him and Lilienthal failed, as was inevitable, owing to the prevailing suspicion and jealousy among the foreign-born rabbis. Coming from different schools, and not finding a basis of harmonious co-operation, it was difficult for them to agree upon the leadership of any one in their midst, and the idea of union was perforce sacri- ficed to self-interest. But once the College began to graduate rabbis the problem became simple. All Wise needed to do was to organize his own former pupils, now the occupants of prominent pulpits and steadily gaining in power and influ- ence, into a rabbinical conference. The other rabbis, he felt certain, would then join the organ- ization if only from a motive of self-protection. Accordingly, in 1889, six years after the first class of rabbis was graduated from the Hebrew Union College, the "Central Conference of Amer- ican Rabbis" was organized in the city of Detroit for the purpose of maintaining and perpetuating a union of all American rabbis, the publishing of a year-book of its proceedings and the maintain- ing of a fund for the support of superannuated rab- bis. Ninety rabbis joined the Conference, electing as honorary president Dr. Samuel Adler of Temple Emanuel, New York, then the only living Ameri- can rabbi besides Wise who attended the famous rabbinical conferences in Germany in the forties. Isaac Mayer Wise was chosen the first president, and he continued to hold this office until his death in 1900. While the Union, the College and the rabbinical Conference thus became the representatives and exponents of organized Reform Jewry in America, thus testifying to the insight and foresight, the patience and perseverance of Dr. Wise, due cog- AMERICA 267 nizance should be taken of the many other con- tributory forces that have helped not a little in the moulding of this new growth of Jewish re- ligious life. Conditions in America have served to place Reform if not exactly as a necessity then, at least, as a pleasant and welcome phase of re- ligious life and thought before the more progres- sive Jews. Reference has already been made to the "Reformed Society of Israelites" of Charles- ton, S. C, which as early as 1824 proclaimed itself as favoring the "making of such alterations in the customs and ceremonies of the Jewish religion as would comport with the present enlightened state of the World." That society placed itself on record as subscribing "to nothing of rabbinical interpretation or rabbinical doctrines." The mem- bers "are their own teachers, drawing their knowl- edge from the Bible and following only the laws of Moses, and those only as far as they can be adapted to the institutions of the society in which they live and enjoy the blessings of liberty. They do nothing against the laws of Moses, but omit everything belonging to the former independent condition of their ancestors. They have simplified the worship of God and brought the great objects of public meeting piety, morals and sense so as to be perfectly comprehensible to the understand- ing of the humblest capacity." Whatever influ- ence the Reform agitation in Germany may have exercised upon the Jews of Charleston, it is cer- tain that the native freedom enjoyed by the Jews of the city in religious matters was a deciding factor in the realization of the proposed innova- tions. Due to the same cause Reform everywhere else in America could advance with far greater ease than was possible for it in Europe. And it was this very promise for the future which at- tracted to the United States a select band of Re- 268 HISTORY OF THE JEWS form champions from Germany who crossed the seas in quest of the freedom denied them in their native land. Not all of the same mind on ques- tions of doctrine and observance, they neverthe- less were in agreement on a number of essentials. By the sheer accident of the location of the largest number of Jews, they were all to be found in the great Eastern centres, as the heads of large and important congregations^ \vhich circumstance, added to the prevailing prejudice they found among their congregants against all plans and ac- tivities emanating from Cincinnati, helped not a little in the shaping of their views. They came to America after having won their spurs in Europe, men of acknowledged ability and superior learning, distinguished authors and forceful preachers, who had played no mean part in the Reform movement in Germany and in the noted Reform conferences of Braunschweig, Frankfort and Breslau. Adorned with academic laurels obtained in some of Germany's best known univer- sities, and friends and co-laborers of Geiger and Holdheim, it was natural that they should enter- tain a none-too-exalted opinion of whatever intel- lectual and spiritual forces America then con- tained. Wise was to them a rabbinical free-lance and interloper, unworthy of the good luck which attended his efforts, and their common antipathy caused them to solidly array themselves against him and do all they could to thwart his plans. Wise survived them all, and at the close of his long life had the satisfaction of seeing the stub- born and recalcitrant East pay homage to his greatness and acknowledge the true merits of his unselfish labors. Yet the opposition of those noted eastern leaders had a powerful effect upon the course of American Reform: if it interfered with its growth in the East, it caused it to grow all the AMERICA 269 stronger wherever its hindering influence could not reach it. It resulted in the East becoming and remaining the stronghold of conservatism and, as such, the favored field of the Counter-Reforma- tion which was to come after many years. Upon \Yise, too, it may have exercised a restraining influence unknown, perhaps, to himself. The most forceful and dauntless of these east- ern leaders was David Einhorn (Dispeck, Ba- varia, iSog-New York, 1879), a Reformer by the grace of God who, prior to his coming to Amer- ica, had already established a reputation as an ex- treme liberal in the congregations he had served, and whose reform views often exposed him to the hatred of the forces of conservatism, resulting, in the end, in the closing by the Austrian govern- ment of his Reform temple in Budapest (1852), as we have already had occasion to relate in a pre- ceding chapter. Einhorn attempted to do in Europe what the most outspoken Reformers for many years hesitated to do in America, namely, conducting a divine service on Sunday, and wor- shipping with uncovered head to the accompany- ing strains of the organ. A preacher as Dr. Kohler characterizes him of "the fire of an Elijah and the tongue of an Isaiah," he had the advantage of profound rabbinical scholarship which he used with great skill and force in sup- port of his ideas. Assuming an attitude of rever- ence and affection for the Talmud and its lead- ing spirits, he regarded the ceremonial laws of Moses as only of a symbolic character. So, too, were to him the miracles of the Bible, to be re- garded only in the light of ethical allegories. The sacrificial cult was a beautiful symbol which, how- ever, was not essential to human salvation. Man, he tells us, is the child of God in the spirit, and as such is capable of holiness, which is his natural 270 HISTORY OF THE JEWS state, by repentance and contrition without resort to ritualistic performance. The function of re- ligion is to establish man in his full stature as the child of God, and all undue ceremonialism de- tracts from, rather than adds to, the real purport of worship. So uncompromising a spirit as his could not very readily find itself in agreement with a Reform policy which employed patience and gradual evolution as its chief instruments. When Einhorn arrived in Baltimore in 1855 as the rabbi of Har Sinai Temple he scanned the forces of liberalism in America and found them too temporizing and conciliatory. To go with them would be to vitiate the exalted platform he had erected. The call of battle came shortly after his installation as rabbi when news reached him of the declaration of principles adopted at the rab- binical conference then being held in Cleveland which, as already stated, declared the Bible to be of immediate divine origin and the Talmud to contain "the traditional, legal and logical exposi- tion of the Biblical laws, which must be expounded and practiced according to the comments of the Talmud." Einhorn saw in this declaration a sign of reaction, and he at once proceeded to attack it with all his accustomed vigor and zeal, first in a circular letter and later in a more elaborate article in his German monthly "Sinai." Isaac Mayer Wise retorted in the "American Israelite" of the following week,, where he calls Einhorn an enemy of Jews and of Judaism. The eastern Re- formers, headed by Temple Emanu-El of New York, whose rabbi, Dr. Merzbacher, was himself a participant in the Cleveland conference, soon ar- rayed themselves on the side of Einhorn, as a re- sult of which the breach between the East and West became wider than before. If Wise was the more practical, Einhorn was DAVID EINHORN (1809-1879) AMERICA 271 the more forceful agitator of Reform, and the two served as a check upon each other. In later years Wise indorsed the principles of Einhorn which became the leading ideas of the young rab- bis whom the Hebrew Union College had begun to send out. Einhorn's constructive work in Amer- ican Reform is seen in his "Olat Tamid," the prayer book for Reform congregations which he prepared in the German language and which later was rendered into English by his son-in-law, Dr. E. G. Hirsch of Chicago. This was in its day the leading prayer book for the more prominent eastern congregations, and is still used by Temple Sinai of Chicago. Many of its prayers were later on embodied in the Union Prayer Book which is to-day the ritual in use by the majority of Amer- ican Reform congregations. A man of less aggressiveness but of superior scholarly attainments was Dr. Samuel Hirsch (Thalfang, Rhenish-Prussia, i8i5-Chicago, 1889), who before coming to America was for twenty- three years Chief Rabbi of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, and whose work, "Religionphiloso- phie der Juden," besides other notable writings, se- cured for him an enviable reputation as a profound thinker, who successfully built up a Jewish the- ology along the lines of the Hegelian philosophical system. Hirsch came to America in 1866, where he succeeded David Einhorn as rabbi of the Kene- seth Israel congregation of Philadelphia. With Einhorn, Hirsch from the very first placed him- self on a platform of uncompromising radicalism, and headed the forces of antagonism against Wise and Lilienthal. To them was joined Samuel Ad- ler (Worms, iSoQ-New York, 1891), the noted rabbi of Temple Emanu-El of New York, a gentle and refined spirit, and a quiet student and scholar. Not as aggressive as his two famous 272 HISTORY OF THE JEWS . colleagues, he upheld the honor and dignity of Re- form by his personal life, his erudite discourses and his interest in the moral and economic prob- lems of the general community. A founder of the New York Hebrew Orphan Asylum, Adler exercised a potent influence for good in the large and steadily growing Jewry of America's greatest city, and his thirty-four years' connection with Temple Emanu-El is among the most cherished traditions of that prominent congregation. To these men of light and leading who made the second half of the nineteenth century a memorable one in the life of American Israel should be added the names of Bernard Felsenthal (Muenchweiler, i822-Chicago, 1908), Liebman Adler (Lengsfeld, Saxe-Weimar, i8i2-Chicago, 1892), Marcus Jastrow (Rogasen, Poland, 1829- Philadelphia, 1903), the noted scholar and com- piler of the well-known Talmudical dictionary, Benjamin Szold (Nemiskert, Hungary, 1829- Berkeley Springs, W. Va., 1902), the renowned rabbi of Baltimore and author of a fine com- mentary on the Book of Job, Adolph Huebsch (Lipto-Szent-Miklos, i83O-New York, 1884), El- kan Cohn of San Francisco, James K. Gutheim and Isidore Leucht of New Orleans, Gustav Gott- heil (Pinne, Prussian-Posen, i827-New. York, I 93)> an d the two sons-in-law of David Einhorn, Emil G. Hirsch (b. Luxembourg, 1852), still the foremost Reform rabbi and preacher in America, and Kaufman Kohler (b. Fuerth, Bavaria, 1843), once the opponent of Wise and now his successor as president of the Hebrew Union College. With all the disagreements which every now and then arose among them, often dividing them into hos- tile camps, these men were a unit in their deep- seated concern for the moral and spiritual welfare of their people which alone must be said to have AMERICA 273 been the chief cause of whatever intolerance they bore to each other. If Germany was the land to give to America its great Reform leaders, she did no less for Amer- ican Orthodoxy, at least, in so far as she fur- nished American Jewry with its foremost ortho- dox leader in the nineteenth century, the above- mentioned Reverend Isaac Leeser (Neuenkirchen, Prussia, 1806- Philadelphia, 1868). Largely an autodidact, and coming to the United States at the age of seventeen, Leeser at first launched out upon a business career in Richmond, Va. His in- terest in Jewish learning and his love for Juda- ism, however, soon led to his identification with the religious work of his community and after teaching for several years in the religious school he became assistant to the minister of the Rich- mond congregation, Reverend Isaac B. Seixas. In 1829 he was called to Philadelphia as minister of the Portuguese congregation Mikveh Israel, bringing with him the manuscript of his book on "The Jews and the Mosaic Law." It was his first attempt as an author, though he had already ap- peared in print as a contributor on Jewish topics to the "Richmond Whig." Philadelphia opened up for Leeser a field of activity commensurate with his abilities and his ambitious plans for the upbuilding of Judaism in America. Of a scholar- ly turn of mind, a facile writer and an indus- trious worker, Leeser ere long came to occupy a dominant position in American Jewish life. He was the first Jewish minister in America to intro- duce the regular weekly sermon on the Sabbath in English at first much against the wishes of his congregation. He also became the first Amer- ican Jewish publisher, in 1830, beginning with Johlson's "Instruction in the Mosaic Religion," which he translated, and following it up with a 274 HISTORY OF THE JEWS number of volumes of sermons, text-books of He- brew and of Judaism, prayer-books, several of Grace Aguilar's writings, etc. He is probably best remembered for his translation of the Bible, though his greatest service to the cause of his people and their faith was rendered in the monthly (later a weekly) "Occident," which he established in 1843, thus becoming the father of Jewish religious jour- nalism in the United States. His was a progres- sive Orthodoxy, though he was uncompromising on what" he considered essential matters. He at first encouraged Dr. Wise in his plans, opening wide to him the columns of his paper, and there is little doubt but that he furnished the latter with many of the ideas and plans which Wise later car- ried out in his career as a Reformer. Many of the prominent Jewish institutions of Philadelphia owe their existence to his efforts, as did also some of the national Jewish organizations of America in his day, notably the "Board of Delegates of American Israelites" and the first "American Jewish Publication Society." By the time Leeser and Wise were at the height of their activity and prestige as religious leaders in American Israel, the Jews of the United States had attained a more prominent place in the eco- nomic and political life of the nation, warranted by their steadily growing numbers and wealth. When in 1840 the infamous Damascus affair oc- curred, when the charge of ritual-murder was launched against the Jews of that city, resulting in the imprisonment and torture of thirteen Jews, American Israel, in common with their brethren in Europe, took steps to enlist the sympathy and intervention of their government in behalf of the unfortunates. Meetings of protest were held in New York, in Philadelphia, where Isaac Leeser was the chief spokesman for the Jews at a gath- AMERICA 275 ering participated in by many Gentiles, and in Richmond, though President Van Buren and his Secretary of State John Forsyth had already an- ticipated their action by instructing John Gliddon, United States Consul at Alexandria, Egypt, "to employ, should the occasion arise, all those good offices and efforts which are compatible with dis- cretion and your official character, to the end that justice and humanity may be extended to these persecuted people, whose cry of distress has reached our shores." This action showed that the American republic had begun to emerge from its provincialism and self-imposed exclusiveness and to enter upon a policy of participation in world- affairs even where its own interests were not di- rectly affected. It was illustrated in an even more emphatic manner in the matter of the disabilities of the Jews in the Swiss Confederation, which in- volved a violation of the treaty rights of Amer- ican Jews travelling in that country, as was al- ready dwelt on in the first chapter of this work in connection with the story of the Jews of Switzerland. Even when they were but few in number their position in the general community had been one of importance. In the war of 1812, as in the Revolutionary War, the Jews, despite their small number, took a most prominent part, giving at least thirteen officers to the nation's cause, among them one colonel and two captains. The State of Maryland which long held out against the advancing liberalism of the times in withholding equal rights from the Jews, finally fell in line with the rest of the states by adopt- ing (February 26, 1825) an act "for the relief of the Jews of Maryland." In the Mexican War (1846-47), which has ever been looked at askance by all justice-loving Americans as an unwarranted and unjustified attack upon a small and weak state 276 HISTORY OF THE JEWS by the now powerful republic, the Jews shared in the general unpopularity of the contest and did not enlist in large numbers, though even here some of them served with great distinction, notably, Lieutenant-Colonel Israel Moses, and Major David C. de Leon, of South Carolina, the hero of Chapultepec, who twice received the thanks of the American Congress for his bravery. It was, however, during the Civil War (1861-65) that the Jews, by this time grown to a commun- ity of about 150,000 souls, rendered invaluable services in the Union as well as the Confederate armies, both as privates and officers. In this most memorable struggle for human liberty it was only natural that the Jews, like their Christian fellow-citizens, should be a house divided against itself on the question of slavery. Many Jews living in the Southern States were owners of plantations, who had grown wealthy by means of the labor of their negro slaves. The best that can be said about the slave-owning Jews is that, probably owing to the natural tenderness which has ever been a marked characteristic of the race, they treated their slaves with greater consideration than did the non-Jews, as was in- stanced in the case of Judah Touro, the distin- guished merchant and philanthropist, who treated the only negro he owned with the utmost kindness, trained him for a business career and eventually gave him his freedom. In principle many Southern Jews were stanch believers in the slavery institu- tion, and even among the Jews north of the Mason and Dixon line could be found a number of sym- pathizers with the Southern planters. A New York rabbi, very prominent in his day, the Rev- erend Morris J. Raphall, even preached in behalf of slavery from his pulpit (1860), basing his arguments upon the authority of the Bible, in this AMERICA 277 being upheld by no less a man than Isaac Leeser. It is also known that Dr. Isaac M. Wise was not enthusiastic about the war and until the outbreak of hostilities hoped and labored for a compromise between the contending factions. On the other hand, the majority of Jews then, as now, lived in the Eastern and Northern States and from them came the greatest champions of the anti-slavery cause. Rabbis like Sabato Morais of Philadelphia and Liebman Adler of Chicago were tireless in behalf of the emancipation movement, while Dr. David Einhorn was compelled to leave Baltimore on account of the resentment his fiery denuncia- tions of slavery had aroused. Active in this propaganda which led to the war was also Michael Heilprin, who effectively answered Raphall in the New York Tribune, and of whom more will be told here later in connection with his work in be- half of the Russian Jewish immigrants. In the Na- tional Republican Convention which nominated Abraham Lincoln for the Presidency (Chicago, May, 1860), there were three Jews, Sigismund Kaufman of New York, Moritz Pinner of Mis- souri, and Lewis Naphtali Dembitz (Zirke, Posen, i833-Louisville, Ky., 1907), who later won fame as a lawyer and Jewish scholar and author. Lin- coln counted numerous personal friends among the Jews. When he left for Washington in 1861 to take the oath of office, a Jew by the name of Abraham Kohn, who was City Clerk of Chicago, presented him with a silk flag upon which were embroidered in black letters the third and ninth verses of Joshua i : "Have I not commanded thee? Be strong and of good courage; be not afraid neither be thou dismayed; for the Lord thy God is with thee withersoever thou goest." The war which broke out with the firing on Fort Sumter saw many thousands of Jews on 2/8 HISTORY OF THE JEWS both sides rush to the colors, the number of these volunteers being from fifteen to twenty thousand, it being impossible to ascertain the exact figures owing to the circumstance that no record as to the religion of the soldiers was kept by either side. It is only of the Jewish officers that any- thing is known with relative certainty, and of these there was a considerable number, twenty- three of them serving as staff officers in the Con- federate army, and about a dozen in the Con- federate navy, Captain Levy M. Harby, being in command of the harbor of Galveston at the time the war was drawing to a close. But is was not alone .on the battlefield that Southern Jews dis- tinguished themselves. High in the government of the rebel republic, and as the right hand of President Jefferson Davis, sat a Jew to whom was attributed the distinction of being "the brains of the Confederacy," Judah Philip Benjamin (St. Croix, West Indies, i8n-Paris, 1884). A son of English Jewish immigrants who, after a brief so- journ in the West Indies, settled in Charleston, S. C. Benjamin started life under adverse cir- cumstances. Unable to finish his studies at Yale, he, in 1828, came to New Orleans, where he studied law as a notary's clerk, being admitted to the Louisiana bar in 1832. His success as a law- yer was rapid and phenomenal. Possessed of an unusually grasping mind and retentive memory, his rise to prominence was due also, in the words of a London Times article on the occasion of his death, "to the inheritance of that elastic resist- ance to evil fortune which preserved Mr. Benjamin's ancestors through a succession of exiles and plundering, and reappeared in the Min- ister of the Confederate Cause, together with the same refined apprehension of logical problems which informed the subtleties of the Talmud." JUDAH PHILIP LiENJAMIN (I8II-I884} AMERICA 279 Coming to a State which had but a few years before been made part of the Union, he found Louisiana an uncultivated field awaiting- the un- tangling of" the many legal problems that arose through the passing of this Spanish-French colony under United States control. Circumstances thus favored his becoming a pioneer in the definition of Louisiana's laws. He first gained prominence as the author of a "Digest of the Reported Pro- ceedings of the Supreme Court of the Late Ter- ritory of Orleans and of the Supreme Court of Louisiana" the first legal summary of its kind (1834). His wealth grew with his fame and soon he found himself rich enough to abandon the law and acquire a sugar plantation near New Or- leans, where he gave himself to the pursuit of scientific experiments of the best methods of ex- tracting saccharine from the sugar-cane. He never, however, lost sight of the politics of his State and of the country. A member of the Louisiana Constitutional Conventions of 1844 and 1852 and a Presidential elector in 1849, he became a prominent leader in the then existing Whig party. The loss of his fortune through the inun- dation of his plantation caused him to return to the practice of law and he soon became the fore- most Southern lawyer of his day. He rejected the offer of President Pierce to become an Asso- ciate Justice of the United States Supreme Court, but accepted the nomination for United States Senator from his State in 1852, being re-elected to that office in 1858. To him, among others, Buchanan owed his nomination and election to the Presidency of the United States (1856). As an orator, Benjamin was regarded as a worthy successor to Daniel Webster whom, however, he surpassed in many ways. This was the man whom Jefferson Davis now 280 HISTORY OF THE JEWS invited to help him in the government of the new Southern republic and in the conduct of the war. As such the President could not have chosen a more loyal, as he could not have found a more able lieutenant. Benjamin was almost fanatical in his Southern patriotism which many years be- fore the war even caused him to oppose the grant- ing of suffrage in Louisiana not only to foreign- ers but even to native Northerners whom he re- garded as inimical to Southern interests. His views on the right of a State to secede from the Union he boldly made known as early as 1856, in his first great speech in the Senate on the Kansas Bill. He began his work in the Davis Cabinet as Attorney-General but soon was entrusted also with the portfolio of Secretary of War when he planned and schemed many of the operations on the battlefield, and later was promoted to the highest place in the Cabinet, that of Secretary of State. In this office he remained "until the bitter end sanguine and serene in bearing, through all mutations of fortune and misfortune." Upon his shoulders fell the onus of safeguarding and strengthening the Confederacy by means of diplomacy, by securing the recognition, assistance and intervention of foreign powers. In this he succeeded but little, and his enemies were not slow in placing upon him the burden of the dip- lomatic failures of the Confederacy, even as dur- ing his tenure of office as Secretary of War they blamed him, without the least justification, for the failures of the armies in the field. His Jewish origin was repeatedly attacked, and his personal integrity assailed. Benjamin, unperturbed by it all, retained his poise and calm, and never for a moment lost the confidence of the President who, more than upon any other member of his official family, leaned upon him in all of the weightiest AMERICA 28l of problems. The cause of the rebellion was, however, doomed to failure; Richmond fell early in April, 1865, blasting whatever hopes the lead- ers of the Confederacy were still nursing, and both Jefferson Davis and his Prime Minister were compelled to flee for their safety. Benjamin, after a perilous and adventuresome journey, fi- nally reached England (July 22, 1865). Not in the least discouraged by his impecunious condi- tion and his advancing age, he commenced the study of English law at Lincoln's Inn, and within a few months was admitted to the bar, he having meanwhile become a naturalized English subject. Again the genius of the man as a lawyer revealed itself in a short time and Benjamin soon ranked as the leading barrister of England. Here, too, he blazed a new path in the history and literature of British law by publishing, in 1868, his book on "The Law of Sale of Personal Property," which immediately established the fame and success of its author. Attaining the rank of Queen's Coun- sel, and amassing a vast fortune, Benjamin, in 1883, withdrew from all public and legal work and retired to Paris there to find the following year a grave in the Catholic Cemetery, though he had never publicly abjured Judaism. With him passed away the glory and the strength of the ill-fated revolution in the Southland he had so truly and deeply loved. On the Union side there were no Jews in high office in the Washington government, but, in the nature of things, there were more Jews serving in the ranks than was the case in the South, and the number of Jewish officers was also much larger. Some of these were officers of high rank, such as Leopold Blumenberg of Baltimore, a vet- eran of the Prussian-Danish War (1848-49), who 282 HISTORY OF THE JEWS was severely wounded at Antietam, where he served as colonel, and was later made Provost- Marshal of the third Maryland district; Philip J. Joachimsen, who was brevetted a Brigadier-Gen- eral, after being injured at New Orleans; Fred- erick Knefler, who distinguished himself at Chickamauga and was made Brevet Major-Gen- eral, besides many others who were generals and colonels of various ranks. It is not known how large was the number of Jews serving in the navy, and still less do we know about Jewish naval officers. Uriah Phillips Levy (Philadelphia, i7Q2-New York, 1862), the man who abolished the barbarous practice of corporal punishment in the United States Navy, was the only Jew to at- tain the highest rank in the American Navy up to that time, that of Commodore, but he was too old to render any effective service in the Civil War. He died a year after the outbreak of hostilities after a life spent nearly all in the service of a country which recognized his great merits and was unstinting in the honors it bestowed on him. The one regrettable incident of the war in which Jews were greatly concerned was the now historic order of General Ulysses S. Grant for the expulsion, within twenty-four hours, of all Jews from the country occupied by his troops. Grant, who was then Department Commander, with headquarters at Oxford, Mississippi, was annoyed by the mercantile activity of the Jews within his territory, and probably was influenced by slanderous rumors that had been circulated about them. The order, issued on December 17, 1862, and known as "General Order No. u," con- tained as a reason the alleged misconduct of the Jews who were "violating every regulation of trade established by the Treasury Department, also department orders." President Lincoln was AMERICA 283 quick to respond to the protests of a number of leading Jews and caused the order to be rescinded. To Drs. Wise and Lilienthal, who, with other representative Jews, went to Washington to in- tercede with the President, Lincoln stated that Grant's order was a ridiculous one, and that "to condemn a class is, to say the least, to wrong the good with the bad." General Grant himself re- gretted the course he had pursued, and when, in 1868, he was spoken of as a probable candidate for the Presidency, he was anxious to secure the favorable opinion and goodwill of the Jews, and in a letter to J. N. Morris, dated September 14 of that year, he explains the reason for that order: "At the time of its publication I was incensed by a reprimand received from Washington for permitting acts which Jews within my lines were engaged in. ... This order was issued and sent out without thinking of the Jews as a sect or a race to themselves. ... It never would have been issued if it had not been telegraphed the moment it was penned and without reflec- tion." German Jews were now in the ascendant in the United States in every phase of life, superseding their brethren of Spanish-Portuguese origin and, with the increase of their numbers and wealth, steadily gaining in prestige and influence in every community where they were to be found in suffi- ciently large numbers. Aside from his Reform leanings the German Jew brought with him also a genius for organization which served him in good stead during the early days of his settle- ment when his communal life in America was first being created. The American Jewish fraternal order is a creation of the German Jew. As far back as 1843 a body of these Jews in New York, headed by Henry Jones, banded together and or- 284 HISTORY OF THE JEWS ganized the "B'nai B'rith" (Sons of the Cove- nant), the first and still the foremost Jewish fra- ternal organization in the world which antedated by many years the Alliance Israelite and similar oranizations. It grew slowly at first, even in 1857 having less than three thousand members. But ten years later it boasted of a membership of twenty thousand, with several grand lodges, and in 1873 the Order had lodges in nearly every community of importance in the country. The international character of the B'nai B'rith was first established in 1882 when Moritz Ellinger or- ganized the lodge at Berlin, Germany, which was later followed by many other lodges in Austria, Roumania, England and Palestine. It had its monthly organ, "The Menorah," besides a number of minor publications, it established orphanages at Cleveland, Atlanta and San Francisco, a home for aged and infirm at Yonkers, and an asylum for widows and orphans at New Orleans. To it was also due the founding of the Maimonides Li- brary of New York, the Manual Training School of Philadelphia, the Touro Infirmary of New Or- leans, and, later, the National Jewish Hospital for Consumptives of Denver. It exercised great influ- ence in national American affairs, due to which several of its leading members were honored with appointments to high governmental offices, such as the appointment of Benjamin F. Peixotto (New York, 1834-1890) as Consul-General to Roumania (1870), of Simon Wolf (b. Hinzweiler, Bavaria, 1836) of Washington, as Consul-General to Egypt (1881), and of Solomon Hirsch (Wuertemberg, i839-Portland, Ore., 1902) and Oscar Straus (b. Otterberg, 1850), both of whom served as United States Ministers to Turkey. It gave rise to such prominent leaders as Moritz Ellinger, Julius Bien and Leo N. Levi and in many and various ways, AMERICA 285 proved itself a great power for good in American Jewish life. The success of the B'nai B'rith soon stimulated and encouraged the creation of new Orders, such organizations coming to life with the Free Sons of Israel (1849), B'rith Abraham (1859), Kesher Shel Barzel (1860), Free Sons of Benjamin (1879), and Independent Order B'rith Abraham (1887). These, in later years, became the strong- holds of Russian and Roumanian immigrants when the latter had arrived in the land in suf- ficiently large numbers. While some of them have since greatly surpassed the B'nai B'rith in numbers, they have never attained to its im- portance as a benevolent and cultural organiza- tion. The old Spanish-Portuguese stock of Jews, how- ever, though largely forced into the background by the German Jewish immigrants, was still not so completely outnumbered as to make its pres- ence wholly unfelt in American Jewish life. In- deed, some of the best and noblest men and women of the period in question came from that element. We have already made casual mention here of Judah Touro (Newport, R. L, 1775-New Orleans, 1854), hero of the War of 1812, merchant-prince and eminent philanthropist, whose long and eventful life embraced memories of the noblest and most thrilling occurrences in the history of the young and vigorous republic, going back to the very beginning of the war for American in- dependence. A true and sincere altruist, Touro's benefactions were unlimited in scope and knew no distinctions of race or creed. To him and to his Christian friend, Amos Lawrence, belongs the credit of supplying the last twenty thousand dol- lars needed for the completion of the Bunker Hill monument (1843), eac ^ f them giving half of 286 HISTORY OF THE JEWS that amount. The tablet placed upon the monu- ment bears testimony to his liberality. With his name is forever linked the Jewish community of his native city, Newport, which he repeatedly aided in the maintenance of its institutions, and in whose historic cemetery, which became the subject of one of Longfellow's inspiring songs, his body lies at rest. Another noble character of that age was Rebecca Gratz (Philadelphia, 1781-1869) whose beauty and attainments were the inspira- tion of Walter Scott in the creation of his Rebecca in "Ivanhoe," and who, a most loyal and enthusiastic Jewess, was a pioneer of Jewish re- ligious education in America, having, in 1835, founded the first American Jewish Sabbath School, in Philadelphia. The Jewish Foster Home of that city also owes its establishment to the un- tiring zeal and energy of this true daughter of Israel. Again, there was that embodiment of saintly womanhood with whose name the Jewish com- munity of Charleston, S. C, will forever be linked, Penina Moise (Charleston, 1797-1880). A member of a distinguished family of Alsatian- French antecedents, and growing up within an atmosphere of culture and refinement, Penina Moise's kindly and deeply religious nature re- vealed itself in a life of heroic self-sacrifice de- voted to nursing the sick of her city, but found its noblest expression in her numerous poems, hymns and anthems which are replete with the fervor and rapture of deep-seated faith. Her liter- ary gift, testified to by her many contributions to the periodicals of her day, is never shown to greater advantage than when employed in the chan- nel of the religious song. An illness of many years rendered her faith all the more potent, and the blindness \vhich finally overtook her made her, REBECCA n GRATZ (1781-1869) AMERICA 287 like Milton, see even more clearly through the beauties and mysteries of creation. To this day her hymns are used by the Charleston Jews, in common with other communities, with the rever- ence due to the master-work of a master-soul, from her beautiful and stirring songs they per- ceiving that glow and ecstasy of religion, that pride of race and love and appreciation of life which abided with their great townswoman. We can find space here for but a few random selec- tions of the hundreds of hymns penned by this remarkable woman who was a nineteenth cen- tury incarnation of the ancient Payyetanim. Thus she sings of "Man's Dignity": "O God! within Thy temple-walls, Light my spirit seems, and free, Regardless of those worldly calls, That withdraw it oft from Thee. Faith to the proudest whispers: Here Riches are but righteous deeds, And he who dries a human tear, Ne'er to mercy vainly pleads. Can sorrow at Thy altar raise The voice of lamentation ? Oh, no! its plaint is changed to praise, Regret, to resignation, To naught all human evil shrinks, Where revelation showeth That God each soul to heaven links, Which ne'er in trust foregoeth. Oh ! brightest, most benignant boon, Above all others rated; With Thee, Creator to commune, In temples consecrated ; That when life's boundary is past, More glorious still appears; Since sanctuary, we at last, Find in celestial spheres 288 HISTORY OF THE JEWS Where no distinction shall be found, Between immortals heav'n born, And spirits that, by virtue crowned, Once the chains of earth have worn. Merciful Father! may Thy child Claim this privilege divine? Shall I, by sinful thoughts defiled, Call a boon so precious mine? My courage fails not, since Thy grace Exceeds in boundless measure, The guilt of that transgressive race Who kindle Thy displeasure. Therefore to the house of pray'r E'er will I my steps address, All Thy mercies to declare, While my errors I confess." She paraphrases Psalm XXXVIII in the follow- ing stirring verses : "Rebuke me not nor chasten me, In Thy displeasure, Lord! But let a frail transgressor be To virtue's path restored. My heart like grass is withered up, Sorrow my strength destroys ; Sin's bitter drop within my cup, Life's sparkling draught alloys. In vain my spirit seeks repose From all its worldly cares; Mine adversaries round me close, They compass me with snares. My friends and kinsmen stand aloof, And mock me from afar ; My soul, untouched by their reproof, Turns to its guiding Star. For with unbroken trust will I In Thee, my God ! confide, Who deigns the meek to dignify, The arrogant to chide." AMERICA 28g She piously meditates on the Jewish New Year : "Into the tomb of ages past Another year hath now been cast: Shall time, unheeded, take its flight, Nor leave one ray of moral light, That on man's pilgrimage may shine, And lead his soul to spheres divine? Ah, which of us, if self-reviewed, Can boast unfailing rectitude? Who can declare his wayward will More prone to righteous deeds than ill? Or, in his retrospect of life, No traces find of passion's strife? A 'still small voice' as time departs, Bids us inspect our secret hearts, Whose hidden depths too oft contain Some spot which, suffered to remain, Will (slight at first) by sad neglect The hue of vice at last reflect. With firm resolve your bosoms nerve The God of truth alone to serve, Speech, thought, and act to regulate, By what His perfect laws dictate; Nor from His sanctuary stray, By worldly idols lured away. Peace to the house of Israel! May joy within it ever dwell! May sorrow on the opening year, Forgetting its accustomed tear, With smiles again fond kindred meet, With homes revived the festal greet!" But by far the noblest Jewish figure of the age, likewise of Sephardic origin, was Emma Lazarus (New York, 1849-1887), literary protege of Wil- liam Cullen Bryant and friend and disciple of Ralph Walo Emerson. Her poetic talent revealed itself in her early youth, received greater impetus by the heroisms and tragedies of the Civil War, and finally showed itself in its entire greatness and beauty with the horrors attendant upon the Russian pogroms of 1881 and the influx of the Russian Jewish refugees into the United States. 29 HISTORY OF THE JEWS For Emma Lazarus was pre-eminently a Jewish poet, all her other poems on secular and general themes paling into insignificance by the side of her Jewish songs, pulsating with the pathos and grandeur of her people's tragedy. It was the Russian persecutions which brought to the sur- face the hidden wealth of her soul and gave her the one fit theme to make her verse immortal. Lazarus's return to her people and her renewed interest in Hebrew and Biblical studies date from the time the ports of America began to fill with the hapless immigrants. In their misfortune she saw the recrudescence of the Jew's eternal fate. Yet their humiliation and anguish was no cause- for despair, for God was still with his people: "Oh, deem not dead that martial fire, Say not the mystic flame is spent! With Moses' Law and David's lyre, Your ancient strength remains unbent. Let but an Ezra rise anew, To lift the Banner of the Jew !" (The Banner of the Jew, 1881.) And the shame of the Jew's suffering recoils upon his Christian tormentor: "When the long roll of Christian guilt Against his sires and kin is known, The flood of tears, the life-blood spilt, The agony of ages shown. What oceans can the stain remove, From Christian law and Christian love?" (The Crowing of the Red Cock, 1881.) But as for the Jew: "Even as we die in honor, from our death Shall bloom a myriad heroic lives, Brave through our bright example, virtuous Lest our great memory fall in disrepute. Is one among us, brothers, would exchange His doom against our tyrants lot for lot? Let him go forth aoid live he is no Jew. Is one who would not die in Israel AMERICA 291 Rather than live in Christ their Christ who smiles On such a deed as this? Let him go forth He may die full of years upon his bed. Ye who nurse rancor haply in your hearts, Fear ye we perish unavenged ? Not so ! To-day, no ! nor to-morrow, but in God's time. Our witnesses arise. Ours is truth, Ours is the power, the gift of Heaven. We hold His Law, His lamp, His covenant, His pledge. Wherever in the ages shall arise Jew-priest, Jew-poet, Jew-singer or Jew-saint And everywhere I see them star the gloom In each of these the martyrs are avenged!" (The Dance to Death, 1882.) Like nearly all true and loyal souls in Israel, Emma Lazarus, too, indulged in the dream of a Jewish restoration in Palestine and with her older sister, Josephine, wrote a number of articles to the leading Jewish and secular magazines of her time, advocating the plans which, less than ten years after her untimely death, were to lend in- spiration to Theodore Herzl's "Judenstaat." It was Emma Lazarus who, on the occasion of the arrival of the Bartholdi Statue of Liberty for erection in the New York Harbor, wrote her fine sonnet, 'The Colossus," which has since been af- fixed to the great monument: "Not like the brazen, giant of Greek fame, With conquering limbs astride from land to land, Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand Glows world-wide welcome ; her mild eyes command The air-bridged harbor that twin-cities frame. 'Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!' Cries she With silent lips. 'Give me your tired, your poor Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore, Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me. I lift my lamp beside the golden door !' " HISTORY OF THE JEWS Yet these few scions of the noble Sephardic stock were the last great spirits in a history cov- ering more than two centuries of pioneer and colo- nial Judaism. The Spanish and Portuguese Jew was now submerged under the mighty wave of German-Jewish migration which inundated all of the original Jewish settlements and soon lent its own color to all phases of American Jewish life. Under the valiant captaincy of the prominent Re- form rabbis American Judaism began to show signs of its marvellous possibilties and, though still strongly provincial, was undergoing its preparation for the role it was later to be called on to play in the world problems of the Jew. To them Judaism was still only the religious expres- sion of the Jew, having none of its present-day implications. The question of religious reforms alone assumed for them serious proportions, though even this was to reveal its real meaning- fulness and importance only in later years. Theirs was a world small and circumscribed yet great in the potentiality of its promise. From 1848 to 1880 the German Jew is supreme in Amer- ican Jewish life by the force of his greater num- bers, his intellectuality, his material wealth and his public spirit. He, too, however, was soon to share a fate like unto that meted out by him to his Sephardic co-religionist. Already the Russian Jew was at the door, ready, ere long, to transform American Jewish life into one of his own making. AMERICA 293 B. THE RUSSIAN PERIOD The wording of the above title needs qualifying 1 . For within what is styled the "Russian" period there have entered a number of non-Russian ele- ments, notably those from Roumania and Galicia which, down to the end of the first decade of the twentieth century, formed a considerable percent- age of Jewish immigration to the United States, their number being augmented only within the last few years by a new wave of Sephardic immigra- tion, coming this time from Turkey and the Orient. The Russian Jews, however, forming, as they do, an overwhelming majority of the entire East-Euro- pean migration to the western world, it is but nat- ural that they should have placed their own impress upon the whole period in question, rendering the other elements a more or less negligible quantity. Besides, the immigrants coming from Roumania and Galicia were so like their Russian co-religion- ists in many essential details, all of them speaking the same Yiddish dialect with only slight variations -of accent and vocabulary, all of them cherishing the same orthodox beliefs, many of them having come under the same Cabbalistic and Hassidic influ- ences, that it were futile to attempt to classify them as separate and distinct migratory streams. Being numerically inferior, the Roumanian and Galician Jews were for a time absorbed among their Rus- 294 HISTORY OF THE JEWS sian brethren with whom they formed a unit in re- ligious and communal work. It was only with the growth of their numbers that these Jews were able to assert themselves more fully, organizing their own congregations and charities, federating their numerous activities, and exerting a limited influ- ence upon the trend of Jewish life in America. To be sure, there were Russian and Polish Jews in the United States long before the eighties of the last century. The story of Hayim Salomon, a na- tive of Lissa, Poland, who financed Robert Morris, shows that Jewish immigrants from Poland wended their way to America even before the American Revolution. It is known that a considerable num- ber of Russian Jews landed in America during the forties of the nineteenth century, and several of the largest and oldest orthodox congregations or- ganized by Russian Jews in New York City, the Shaari Zedek congregation of Henry Street, and the Bet ha-Midrash ha-Gadol of Norfolk Street, date from those days. Almost every time the Rus- sian Czars put the thumb-screws of persecution upon their Jewish subjects, the act would be fol- lowed by an exodus to Germany, England and America. None the less, it was the pogroms and inhuman persecutions at the beginning of the reign of Alexander III which made possible the creation of the large and powerful Russian-Jewish colony in the United States. It is estimated that prior to 1870 the number of these Jews did not exceed seven thousand of a total Jewish population of about two hundred thousand souls. The heavier migration between 1871-1880 may have increased this num- ber to fifty thousand, while from 1881 to 1890 the Russian Jews averaged more than twenty thou- sand immigrants yearly. The decade of 1891-1900 saw these figures double. The late Dr. Joseph Ja- cobs gives the number of immigrants arriving from AMERICA 295 1 88 1 to 1910 as 1,572,936, which, together with the natural increase for that period, brings the total up to 2,349,754 in July, 1910. The present number of Russian Jews living in all parts of the country may therefore conservatively be estimated at about two millions out of a total Jewish population of more than three million souls. The American Jew to-day is preeminently a city dweller, and the Russian Jew is, by the force of historic circumstances, instinctively so. His flock- ing to the large seaboard cities in the Eastern and Middle Atlantic States is explainable on the ground of habit no less than on that of economic or social necessity. Yet if those who looked after the in- terests of the Russian immigrants to America in the early eighties had had their way, those immi- grants might have become farmers instead of sweat-shop workers and merchants in the city ghettos, and a different chapter would have been written in the annals of American Jewry. The original intention of the committees in charge of immigrant work in America was to direct the course of settlement from the city to the farm. The motives behind the scheme varied from the selfish fear of seeing too many of theSe Jews inundate the big American cities and thus give rise to a "Jewish Problem" in a land where it had hitherto been non- existent, to the laudable altruistic desire of amelio- rating the dire condition of these refugees. The idea of immigrant colonization, however, was not altogether of American origin. It had, indeed, found its birth with the immigrants themselves and prior to their emigration from Russia, where a great movement had been set on foot to place the Jew on the soil in the new land of his destination. This colonization movement was the direct result of the riots and massacres of Yelisavetgrad and Kiev. A society of prospective immigrants was 296 HISTORY OF THE JEWS organized under the name of "Am Olam" (The Eternal People) with branches in many cities and, headed by Herman Rosenthal (Friedrichstadt, Courland, i843-New York, 1917), poet and author of many works both serious and humorous in Ger- man, Russian and Hebrew, a printer by trade and an active participant in the economic and cultural movements of his day several hundred of them sailed for the United States in October, 1881. In New York the Hebrew Emigrant Aid Society had been formed and another organization, the Mon- tefiore Agricultural Aid Society, was called into life by Michael Heilprin (Piotrkow, Russian-Po- land, i823-Summit, N. J., 1888), the eminent lit- terateur and distinguished Jew of his day. Unfor- tunately for the enterprise, Rosenthal chose to work independently, and without the guidance of any- one set out upon the ill-starred attempt to found a colony on Sicily Island, Catahoula Parish, near Bayou Louis, Louisiana. He had no funds, but a committee from New York, consisting of Myer S. Isaacs, M. Ellinger, Dr. Julius Goldman, Charles L. Bernheim and Henry S. Henry, acting for the Alliance Israelite Universelle, advanced him the I * sum of $2,800, and with this pitifully small amount Rosenthal proceeded to Louisiana with the 173 men and women of whom the colony was to consist. It was soon discovered that the 5,000 acres thus purchased had been largely overpaid. The housing conditions, too, were very bad, the immi- grants being forced to temporarily occupy three old and abandoned buildings that had been left over from slavery days. Undaunted by this, the col- onists entered upon their labors with much zeal, and were greatly helped by the New Orleans branch of the Alliance Israelite which, through Julius Weiss, furnished them with lumber for building purposes, horses, cattle, farm implements, etc. The MICHAEL HEILPRIN (1823-1888) AMERICA 297 land soon underwent much improvement, and hope for ultimate success was high when, in the Spring of 1882, the Mississippi River overflowed the en- tire region, sweeping away everything even the crops and the houses and causing a damage of about $20,000. The colony was broken up, its mem- bers scattering in all directions, and Rosenthal re- turned to New York, there to begin planning anew for a like venture in another and more favorable locality. His next enterprise was in the southeastern part of the present South Dakota, where in the summer of 1882 he and twenty families founded the "Cre- mieux" colony. Among the settlers were some from the ill-fated Louisiana colony, but the Dakota at- tempt looked more promising. Most of the colo- nists had independent means, and during the first year the crops were good. Oats, wheat, rye, and barley were sown, and special attention was paid to the raising of flax. The second year, however, saw the frustration of their hopes. The wheat-bug made its appearance, destroying a large portion of the crops, and a fierce drought set in killing most of the cattle. The third year was even worse ow- ing to the destructive thunderstorms, and the little colony soon dwindled away. The great distance of the colony from the railway and the county-seat was also a great handicap. Toward the end of 1885 the colony was completely abandoned. Michael Heilprin took a great interest in the South Dakota colony, and encouraged the colonists to persist in their work. The Montefiore Agricul- tural Aid Society with which he was connected and which included among its members many of the prominent Jews of the day, actively helped in the enterprise and in others of a like nature. Among its ventures were the New Odessa colony, in Doug- las. County, Oregon ; the Bethlehem- Yehudah, in 298 HISTORY OF THE JEWS South Dakota; the Carmel, in New Jersey; the Montefiore, Lasker, Hebron, Gilead, Touro and Leeser, in Kansas. Other colonizing attempts were made in Michigan (Palestine), in Virginia (Wash- ington, Waterview), in Connecticut (Chester- field), in New Jersey (Alliance, Rosenhayn, Wood- bine, Montefiore, May's Landing, Halberton, Malaga, Hightstown). Of these only some of the New Jersey colonies, like Alliance, Carmel, Rosen- hayn and Woodbine, are still eking out a precari- ous existence, and even they would have dissolved but for the aid frequently given them by the Baron de Hirsch Fund and the Alliance Israelite Univer- selle. But few of the colonists can to this day sub- sist exclusively on farming, and most of them are compelled to engage in other industries for a living. Heilprin gives an interesting account of the re- ception accorded in New York to the first Russian Jewish refugees by their more fortunate German- American brethren and of the development of the colonization plan, in the appeal issued by him and his colleagues of the Montefiore Agricultural Aid Society in 1883. He writes: "We devoted our first attention to an organized association of ca- pable and well-educated young men from South Russia, chiefly from Odessa and its environs. We formed a small committee for the foundation of a colony to be called New Odessa. It was no light task to collect means for this object, at a time when every day brought into our port vessels thronged with refugees, whose hunger and want of shelter pressed every other claim upon public charity into the background. We had also to contend with an anti-Russian prejudice, an outgrowth of ignorance and self-over-estimation kindred to Antisemitism. But few understood the language, the sentiments, the aims and inclinations of the strangers. But few would believe that among the wrecks of dis- HERMAN ROSENTHAL (1843-1917) AMERICA 299 tant communities which a storm of persecution had driven to our shores, there was material for con- struction which might become an honor to this country, and to all Israel. The misery which made its appearance in our thoroughfares offered an as- pect far from attractive. Its cries of impatience were disturbing sounds. The resignation and self- helping efforts of the most modest and patient suf- ferers escaped attention. The offences of the few were charged upon the multitude. Prejudice bred prejudice; an unbrotherly treatment produced ran- cor and spite, together with despondency. Many a small gift was offered with rudeness, some gen- erous help was requited with ingratitude. The first attempts to found an agricultural colony (in Louisiana) failed in consequence of hasty action and an improper choice of the locality. Public benevolence limited itself to offering sustenance and occasional aid, which required immense sums. Only when dire necessity demanded the removal of many of the unfortunates from the overcrowd- ed city districts, were colonizing attempts on a larger scale made by the Hebrew Emigrant Aid Society in the States of New Jersey and Col- orado partly with means obtained from Europe. A great deal was sacrificed, with little faith." It was evident that the Russian Jew, for no fault of his own, was not to make his mark in the New World as a farmer, that, despite all ef- forts to prevent it, he was to be a city dweller in America even as he was in Europe, and that in- dependently of what the German Jew thought of him or planned for him, he was to walk his own way and develop his life along lines that best suited his temperament and his inborn spiritual and cultural inclinations. It is perhaps well that it was so. Yet the attempts at colonization en masse, abor- 3OO HISTORY OF THE JEWS tive as they were and precarious as are their re- sults to this day, have nevertheless had a vastly beneficent effect upon the newcomers. It made them accustomed to the soil and to rural life, so that even those who were compelled to return to the cities continued to long for the country, and many of them did return to it as soon as they could save up enough money to invest in a farm- ing; enterprise, starting this time as independent farmers, not subject to the good will of any of the charity funds and colonization agencies, and with all the vim and enthusiasm and glow of pride which such independence brings. This, too, will account for their success as individuals where they had failed as "colonists." Many hundreds of Jewish families are to-day deriving a comfort- able livelihood from farming in various parts of New York and in the Western States, some hav- ing even accumulated wealth through it. They are organized into Jewish Farmers' Associations in the states of New York, New Jersey, Connecti- cut, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, North Dakota and Washington, whose number in 1916 was fifty-nine with an aggregate individual member- ship of about two thousand. They also have their own Yiddish organ, and the "Federation of Jew- ish Farmers of America" has since its organiza- tion appropriated for loans to farmers sums ag- gregating more than a million and a half dollars. Another beneficent outcome of the colonization plan was the establishment of the agricultural schools for scientific farming, the one in Wood- bine, N. J. (1895) by the Baron de Hirsch Fund, and the other at Doylestown, Bucks County, Penn- sylvania (1896), which was founded by Dr. Jo- seph Krauskopf as the "National Farm School." Henceforth the errors of the hasty colonization of the past were to be avoided by means of a BARON MOSES DE HIRSCU (1831-1896) AMERICA 3OI systematic and orderly training as farmers of hundreds of Russian-Jewish youths in America. In the meantime, another, larger and more suc- cessful attempt at colonization was being carried out in the Argentine Republic by Baron de Hirsch. Having concluded that the salvation of the Russian Jew lay in agricultural pursuits, and obtaining the sanction of the Russian government for his colonization scheme, Hirsch, in 1891, se- cured sixty-two thousand acres of land in the province of Buenos Ayres, upon which he found- ed the colony of Mauricio. To this, under the direction of the St. Petersburg central committee which was headed by Baron Horace Guenzburg, more than two thousand persons were despatched during the first year. The direction of the col- onies was placed in the hands of Colonel Albert Goldsmith of the British army. Soon thereafter more land was purchased in the provinces of Santa Fe, Entre-Rios and Pampa, and other col- onies were established, the Moiseville, Clara, San Antonio, Santa Isabel, Lucienville, Baron de Hirsch, and Bernassoni. In the face of many discouraging incidents, the failure of some of the immigrants to adjust themselves to the new con- ditions, and the return of many of them to Rus- sia, the Baron continued his efforts along care- fully laid plans. Gradually the colonies began to prosper and the number of colonists increased. In 1917 more than twenty-three thousand Jews were to be found in these colonies, most of them self-supporting and on the road to wealth. By the end of 1910 these colonists had paid back their indebtedness to the amount of more than half a million dollars, while their land had nearly doubled in value. In the wake of this coloniza- tion Jewish communities were established also in the larger cities: Buenos Ayres, Cordova, Santa 3O2 HISTORY OF THE JEWS Fe, Rosario and Mendoza. Of these Buenos Ayres has the largest centre, numbering about sixty-five thousand Jews, who have one large synagogue, a number of smaller houses of wor- ship, and a Spanish and Yiddish press. The present Jewish population of Argentina is esti- mated at about one hundred and ten thousand souls. However, the history of the Russian Jew in America, especially in the United States, is insep- arably bound up with the big city settlements rather than with the agricultural colonies or the towns and the villages. Due to his concentration in large numbers in the great cities of North America, it was possible for him to retain the chief characteristics of his individuality, this at the same time not hindering him from coming under the cultural and economic influences of the native American life. As a result, he soon pro- duced a new type of Jew, interesting in its pe- culiarity, sometimes repelling but more often fas- cinating by the originality and multiplicity of its phases. From an economic standpoint the Russian Jew has proved himself the wonder of the age. Com- ing to America the hounded and fear-haunted creature of the centuries, broken in body and spirit, .with hardly enough money to secure his first meal on American soil, an object of pity and charity from the very first, he has had to face an economic struggle unknown to either his Por- tuguese or German co-religionists who had pre- ceded him in the United States. Yet he showed himself most equal to the task. There was not a trade he would not tackle, not an occupation, be it even the very humblest, he would not enter upon. The hardships of the peddler's trade failed to deter him, and the tediousness and unsanitari- AMERICA 303 ness of the sweat-shop toil could not discourage him in his quest for a living-. In the end he came out victorious. The one-time peddlers are now department-store proprietors and the erst- while sweat-shop toilers are to-day among the leading manufacturers and factory owners. A Russian Jew in New York is at the head of the largest construction and building firm in the world. Another Russian immigrant is to-day the most prominent merchant of Baltimore. A third is the leading spirit in the vast mining interests controlled by the Lewisohns. He cuts a promi- nent figure in Wall Street and on the Exchange, while Broadway would be a desert without the thousands of Russian-Jewish firms which are ten- anting its big emporiums and office buildings. By sheer accident the first Russian Jews took to tailoring on their arrival in America, and many of those who followed them adopted that trade by the force of example. This industry did not originate with them. It existed there before their arrival in large numbers, and had been the source of enrichment of many a German Jew. The Rus- sian Jew only enlarged the scope of the trade, de- veloped all of its possibilities and made it one of the leading industries of the land. This led to the sweating evil, resulting from the fact that temperamentally the Jew dislikes to be an em- ployee, preferring to work independently if he can help it. The manufacturer was not averse to having part of his orders filled for him by con- tractors who, in their turn, allowed a portion of the work to be done by sub-contractors. The number of these latter grew in amazing propor- tion, working in small and dingy shops and often in their homes where, besides one or two hired men and women, the wife and the children also were enlisted in the work. At the same time 304 HISTORY OF THE JEWS sweating was also carried on on a large scale, in huge buildings not always provided with safety measures against fires, and sometimes resulting in serious accidents with the loss of many lives. These conditions presented a serious situation for the immigrants, especially for those living in New York, three-fourths of whose Jewish workers are still engaged in the various branches of the cloth- ing trade. It led to the establishment of the Trade-Unions. Strikes soon ensued which in most instances brought victory to the toilers. In the great cloak-maker strike of 1890, in which the Jewish workers persisted for eight weeks, they scored a big triumph, enabling them to earn dur- ing the busy season from $25 to $30 a week, which for those years was an unusual compensa- tion. Another great strike won by the cloak- makers was the one of 1892, though by this time the employers had formed a strong protective as- sociation with great means at its command to wage the fight against the strikers. That strike produced a leader in the person of Joseph Baron- dess, then the secretary of the cloak-makers' union and for many years later destined to play a leading part in many American Jewish activi- ties as well as in the civic and educational affairs of New York. The success of the cloak-makers' union embold- ened the workers in the other clothing industries to unite and go on strike for better living and working conditions. Soon trade-unionism spread to most other industries, in course of time lead- ing to the formation in New York of a federa- tion of unions under the name of "The United Hebrew Trades." With the growth of the Yid- dish press, the Hebrew-American Typographical Union came into existence, soon becoming a part of the International Typographical Union. Even AMERICA 305 the Yiddish theatre actors, from the stars to the minor stage workers, combined into a union. The Jewish masses became aware of the strength and benefit which organization spells, and exerted their energies in that direction to the fullest extent. The leaders that arose from their midst skillfully manoeuvred this prevailing passion, steering it in the channel of Socialism. In Russia Socialism had been the favorite doctrine of the intellectuals, and when many of these settled in America they made it the rallying-cry of the masses. A number of Yiddish periodicals made their appearance, be- ginning with the weekly "Arbeiter-Zeitung" and the daily "Abendblatt" which ceased publication after a while, and continuing with the monthly "Zukunft" and the daily "Forwaerts" which are still in existence. While doing much to educate the people the partisan spirit of these publications of- ten outran their discretion from the standpoint of both their Jewishness and their Americanism. M. Winchevsky, an able poet and prose writer, Abraham Cahan, a clever journalist and novelist, who writes successfully in English as in Yiddish, Morris Hillquit, a noted lawyer, author of "The History of Socialism in the United States" (1903), and Myer London, who is now the only Socialist representative in the United States Congress, be- came the leading exponents of the movement among the Yiddish-speaking masses in America. From New York Jewish propagandists of Social- ism soon spread to other industrial centres where they kept up the agitation often succeeding in in- fluencing the results of municipal elections by the votes of their followers. The extent of Socialism's influences upon the Yiddish-speaking masses of New York and other cities is evidenced by the large vote given to Myer London when he ran for- Congress in 1914 and 1916, and by the enormous 306 HISTORY OF THE JEWS circulation enjoyed by the daily "Forwaerts," which is said to exceed 200,000. An even greater measure of success attended the Russian Jew in the professional world, and in the domain of science and education. An intel- lectualist by nature, as the result of many cen- turies of physical repression in which his mind alone was allowed the free exercise of its powers, the Jew who in Russia was excluded from all educational opportunities, found in America all the avenues of higher learning free and open to him, and he was quick to avail himself of the new con- ditions. Soon his boys and girls thronged the high schools, colleges and universities, showing unusual aptitude for learning and graduating with distinguished honors. At a considerable self-de- nial, only too often bordering on the impossible, the poorest of Jewish fathers and mothers stinted themselves in every imaginable way in order to afford their children those chances in life of which they had themselves, by the exigencies of a cruel order of things, been deprived. Of the ef- fect of the new American order upon the Russo- Jewish child Mary Antin gives a touching account in her "Promised Land." She says : "Before books came into my life, I was given to star-gazing and day-dreaming. When books were given me, I fell upon them as a glutton pounces on his meat after a period of enforced starvation. I lived with my nose in a book, and took no notice of the alternations of the sun and the stars." Many of these boys and girls are now filling professorships at the leading American universities, or are lead- ers in the professions they have entered upon. Jewish young men and women constitute the greater number of the teachers in the public schools of New York. They are quickly making their way into politics and many municipal, State AMERICA 307 or Federal offices, elective and appointive, are held by them. A young Russian Jewish scholar, Dr. Schaefer, has succeeded the noted Professor Royce as head of the philosophical department at Harvard where another Russian Jew, Leo Wien- er, has for many years been the occupant of the chair of Slavonic languages and literatures and where his son, Norman Wiener, is now profes- sor of mathematics. Dr. Max Margolis (b. Me- retz, Gov. of Vilna, 1866), now of Dropsic Col- lege at Philadelphia, has for many years filled the chair of Semitics at the University of California, and a similar position is now held by Prof. Israel Shapiro at the university at Washington, D. C. In the medical profession, too, the Russian Jew has made rapid headway. Dr. Max Einhorn, a native of Grodno (b. 1862) and at one time as- sistant to Professor Ewald in Berlin, became an authority on diseases of the stomach and intes- tines for which subject he was appointed profes- sor at the New York Post Graduate Medical School. He invented many of the new instru- ments and apparatus now in use throughout the medical world, while his published writings cover nearly the entire range of stomach pathology. In the very domain of Reform Judaism which was the exclusive concern of the German Jew before 1 88 1, the Russian Jew is fast gaining recognition, and the two most prominent pulpits in New York, those of Beth El and Emanu-El, are occupied by Samuel Schulman (b. Kalvarie, 1865) and Hyman G. Enelow (b. 1876), respectively. The extent of the intellectual progress made by the Russian Jew in the United States may be gauged from his very considerable contribution to the American literature of the last three decades. Mention has already been made of Michael Heil- prin's literary activities. He was a valuable con- 308 HISTORY OF THE JEWS tributor to "The Nation," a collaborator in "Ap- pleton's New American Cyclopedia," and is the author of "The Historical Poetry of the Ancient Hebrews" (2 vols., New York, 1879-1880) and of a posthumous publication in German, "Bibelkri- tische Notizen" (Baltimore, 1893, with a preface by Rabbi B. Szold). Abraham Cahan (b. Podbe- rezhye, Vilna, 1860), who ranks foremost as a So- cialistic labor leader in America, was for a num- ber of years connected with several of the leading dailies of New York, and has also written a num- ber of forceful descriptive novels, dealing with Russian Jewish immigrant life in America and with the revolutionary movement in Russia, no- tably his "Yekl" (New York, 1896) which won the praise of Wm. D. Howells; "The Imported Bride- groom, and Other Stories" (Boston, 1898), "The White Terror and the Red" (New York, 1905) and "The Rise of David Levinsky" (New York, 1917). Ezra Brudno (b. 1877) is the author of three novels dealing with Jewish life in Russia and America, "The Fugitive" (New York, 1904), "The Little Conscript" (1905), and "The Tether" (Philadelphia, 1908). Bernard G. Richards won recognition by his "Discourses of Keidansky." Eze- kiel Leavitt, the polyglot poet, who in Russia wrote in both Russian and Hebrew, in America quickly adapted his muse to English verse, and attracted attention by his collection of poems under the title "Songs of Grief and Gladness." A number of forceful short stories were written by Mary Finn Scott, while Rose Strunsky Walling has writ- ten on serious topics and collaborated with Jack London in one of his books. Herman Bern- stein, the present editor of "The American Hebrew," at one time attempted fiction, but proved more successful as a journalist and as a travelling correspondent for a few of New York's leading AMERICA 309 newspapers. Montague Glass, while representing the second generation of immigrant Israel in America, is decidedly a product of the ghetto. He gained lasting fame as the creator of the "Potash and Perlmutter" stories. But by far the most bril- liant of literary gifts among these immigrants is that possessed by Mary Antin (b. Polotsk, 1885) who, as she herself states it, "was born with a pen in my hand." While yet a child of twelve she showed the promise of her later and maturer years by writing a delightful account in Yiddish of her experiences while on her way, with her mother, to America. This she two years later translated into English and under the title of "From Polotsk to Boston" it was published in book form with an introduction by Zangwill (Boston, 1898). In Boston she received all the advantages of an American education, was befriended by Dr. Edward Everett Hale, and acquired a clear and forceful style in the language she was to employ as the vehicle of her writings. She became a con- tributor to the "Atlantic Monthly" and other mag- azines, and in 1912 published her autobiography, "The Promised Land" (Boston), which was re- ceived with great favor by the literary critics and the general public and established her place among the leading American writers of the present day. The homely yet fascinating aspects of Russian- Jewish life in America have furnished inspira- tion also to several writers of German-Jewish stock for a number of stories from the life of the ghetto. Emma Wolf, Isaac K. Friedman, and more especially Martha Wolfenstein, have writ- ten sympathetically of the humble denizens of the Jewish quarter. Even Christian writers were in- fluenced by the new migration to go to the ghetto for their themes, Hutchins Hapgood in his "Spirit of the Ghetto," "Myra Kelly" in her clever 3IO HISTORY OF THE JEWS sketches of Jewish child-life as she saw it through her work as a New York school-teacher, while Harold Frederick was moved to write his "New Exodus" and the Reverend Madison C. Peters, a Christian minister, owing to the same influence, found the American Jews of sufficient interest and importance to write several volumes on the history of the Jews in America and on the Tal- mud. Yet more important than all this was the im- petus the presence of the large Russian Jewish colony lent toward the conservation and extension of Jewish learning in America. Until the coming of these immigrants, Jewish, and more especially Hebraic knowledge, had been confined to a small group of rabbis and a very few erudite laymen like Lewis N. Dembitz. The German-American rabbis of the Reform school could boast more of worldly culture than of Hebrew learning. They were orators, organizers and communal workers who rendered splendid service in the work of up- building the new Jewish life in its American set- ting; in their totality they represented very little Jewish scholarship. Men like Marcus Jastrow, Alexander Kohut and Benjamin Szold, who could scarcely be accounted "Reformers," were the ex- ception rather than the rule. The establishment of the rabbinical schools at Cincinnati and New York did not hold out any promise of improve- ment in this respect, the rabbis of American schooling, whether Reform or orthodox, being on the whole greatly inferior in learning to those of European training. The Russian-Jewish migra- tion changed the entire aspect of things, bringing along in its sweep a host of ready-made Talmud- ists and Hebraists of note, many a poverty-pinched and sorry-looking fruit peddler or old-clothes huckster being but a disguised Ben Tor ah (man AMERICA 311 of learning) who under more felicitous circum- stances might have been a shining intellectual lu- minary in his community. It was not long before some of these submerged scholars attempted to assert themselves, despite their material handi- caps. Abraham H. Rosenberg, at one time rabbi in the large Jewish community of Nikolayev, while working at his printing press in a dingy cellar on Canal Street, New York, found time to write many a learned dissertation and to materialize his long-cherished plan of preparing, in Hebrew, a highly informative encyclopedia of the Bible ("Ozar ha-Shemot"), while Michael L. Rodkinson, who at one time edited a Hebrew paper in New York, actually realized his far-flung ambition of translating the Talmud into English. The presence and activity of many such men in the United States was bound to react upon the entire Jewish community. Men of wealth could now more easily be interested in cultural projects, and the creation of a number of im- portant agencies for the furtherance of Jewish learning was thus made possible. Most of these agencies have been called into being within the last thirty years. The present "Jewish Pub- lication Society" was organized in Philadelphia in 1888 and has since published more than a hundred volumes, among them such famous works as Zangwill's ghetto stories, Schechter's "Studies in Judaism," and Dubnow's "History of the Jews in Russia and Poland." The "American Jewish Historical Society" was found- ed in 1892, headed by Oscar S. Straus as its first president, while in the following year the Rever- end Henry Berkowitz of Philadelphia organized the "Jewish Chautauqua Society" with an ambi- tious educational scheme patterned largely after the Christian society by the same name. In that same year, at the "World's Parliament of Re- 312 HISTORY OF THE JEWS ligions" which was held in Chicago in connection with the "World's Columbian Exposition," and where Judaism was ably represented by Rabbis Isaac Mayer Wise and Emil G. Hirsch, among others, the Jewish women made use of the oppor- tunity to hold a congress of their own which re- sulted in the formation of a permanent organiza- tion known as the "National Council of Jewish Women," later to be supplemented by the "Fed- eration of Temple Sisterhoods," and which in- cluded in its programme a plan for home-study of Jewish history and religion. The greatest event in Jewish intellectual life in America occurred in 1901 when the first of the twelve volumes of the "Jewish Encyclopedia" made its appearance in New York (Funk & Wagnalls). This monumental work, the project of which was first born in the creative brain of Dr. Isidore Singer (b. Weiss- kirchen, Moravia, 1859) who probably was influ- enced by Ahad Haam's advocacy in 1894 of the publication of a similar work in Hebrew, is doubt- less the most ambitious intellectual enterprise ever undertaken by Jews in many a century, though the publishers of the work were Christians and though Christian scholarship was liberally repre- sented among its hundreds of contributors. An- other event of great intellectual moment was the publication, in 1917, of a new English translation of the Bible prepared by a number of American Jewish scholars representing both the orthodox and Reform wings. This work, the only standard American Jewish Bible translation since the pub- lication of Leeser's version, was made possible through the generosity of Jacob H. Schiff who do- nated to the "Jewish Publication Society" fifty thousand dollars for this purpose. This same prince of benefactors has since given a like amount for the publication of a standard transla- JACOB H. SCHIFF (b. 1847) JEWISH THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY, NEW YORK AMERICA 313 tion of all of the leading works in Hebrew, an- cient, mediaeval and modern, which is shortly to appear under the general title of "Library of He- brew Classics." His coming over in great numbers enabled the Russian Jew to transplant upon the soil of Amer- ica the many features of his organized religious and social life in the old world. The ghetto be- gan to bristle with synagogues large and small and with Hebrahs primarily organized for wor- ship and burial purposes but in reality answering the social and fraternal cravings of men and women cast out from their native climes and not yet inured to the life of their new surroundings. If the Reform movement in America was a Ger- man creation, and the work of German-Jewish pioneers, the Orthodoxy which since 1881 began to assert itself in America and to continue with ever louder voice to claim the attention of the world, was Russian not merely in its mode of worship but in the scope and method of its or- ganization and in the spirit which showed its con- ception of the fitness of things. Both of them erred on the side of overestimation of their worth for Judaism. The Reform of the German Jew was, largely, a concession to the demands of the new conditions and a deference for the opinion of the world. The Orthodoxy of the Russian Jew was, per se, an emphatic denial of all such con- siderations. Not understanding, or caring to un- derstand, the general tendencies of the day, not foresighted enough to realize the pressing reli- gious needs of his children, more pressing in the free environment of America than in the restrict- ed atmosphere of old Russia, he was contented to begin his religious life in the New World where he had left it off in the old, with a mini- mum of effort in the direction of improvement, 314 HISTORY OF THE JEWS and he accordingly set himself to the task of duplicating Russian Orthodoxy in America. To him method and doctrine were synonymous, and to infringe upon the one meant to undermine the other. His Shule and his Talmud Torah were little different in America from similar institu- tions in Russia, only too often being marked by a disorderliness which was the result of ignorance rather than willful indifference. It was not long, however, before even the Russian immigrant be- gan to feel the urgent need of adaptation to the new and changed environment. Gradually, may- hap unconsciously, the leaven of Americanism be- gan to work in the souls of the newcomers, and as their children grew older it became evident that the old order of things must give way before the inroads of a new and better or at least more naturally American system. There is no more striking contrast than that presented by the Rus- sian Orthodoxy of 1917 in many of the old es- tablished congregations to that of the first im- migrant religious organizations of the early eighties. But before reaching its present phase of devel- opment American-Russian Orthodoxy has had to pass through a number of experimental stages. Doubtless it was to a considerable degree influenced by the greater orderliness and decorum which pre- vailed in a few of the German and Hungarian orthodox congregations whose organization an- tedated their coming, if not by the old and aristo- cratic Portuguese temples whose atmosphere of exclusiveness and super-refinement was rather re- pellant to the thoroughly and perhaps overly- democratic Russian Jew. The spirit of rebellion against Reform which continued to manifest itself with ever greater vehemence since the organiza- tion of the Union of American Hebrew con- RABBI JACOB JOSEPH (1848-1902) AMERICA 315 gregations and the founding of the Hebrew Union College, was beginning to assume a more definite phase in the early eighties: In 1883, in connection with the gradua- tion of the first class of rabbis from the Hebrew Union College, when food forbidden by the dietary laws was served at the banquet given on that occasion, a final break between the Reform and the more pronounced orthodox elements of the country became inevitable and, under the lead- ership of the late Sabato Morais (Leghorn, Italy, i823-Philadelphia, 1897) steps were taken to es- tablish a theological school for the training of rabbis in the spirit of traditional Judaism. The realization of this plan took place in 1886 when the Jewish Theological Seminary was opened in the city of New York with Dr. Morais as presi- dent of the faculty and Professor of Bible, and Dr. Alexander Kohut (Felegyhaza, Hungary, i842-New York, 1894) as professor of Talmud. This occurrence w r as not without its effect upon the Russian immigrants who were further encour- aged to greater progress and a more firmly or- ganized religious life by the Yiddish press, led by the "Jewish Gazette" and the "Volksadvokat." In 1888 a number of congregations in New York united for the purpose of securing a prominent Russian rabbi for the newly created office of "Chief Rabbi" of the Russian-orthodox commu- nities. Their choice fell upon Rabbi Jacob Jo- seph (Krozhe, Kovno, i848-New York, 1902), of Vilna who filled this position for fourteen years, until his death. The coming to New York of Rabbi Bernard Drachman (b. New York, 1861) in 1887 and of Rabbi Philip Klein (b. Baraczka, Hungary, 1848) in 1890, as well as the highly meritorious activities among the immigrants of Dr. Adolph M. Radin (Neustadt-Schirwindt, HISTORY OF THE JEWS i848-New York, 1909) and of Harris Masliansky (b. Slutsk, 1856), did much to place Russian Orthodoxy in America under more favorable con- ditions. It was many years, however, before this Orthodoxy was to become as firmly intrenched as it is now, when it boasts of a number of paro- chial Hebrew schools, both elementary and high, and of a special institute for the training of ortho- dox rabbis, located in New York under the name of "The Rabbinical College of America." To-day the Russian Jews are in possession of a number of stately synagogues which for costliness and beauty are in no way inferior to the Reform tem- ples of the German Jews; their services are more orderly though not less traditional, with English prayers and English sermons more and more crowding the Hebrew and the Yiddish; their Talmud Torahs are housed in large and airy buildings with a systematic curriculum and efficient teaching staffs; while many of their charitable institutions are admirable for their methods of administration and the liberality with which they are supported. In every way the Rus- sian Jew is proving that he has not lived in the United States for four decades in vain, but that he has been an apt pupil in acquiring an Amer- icanism of a higher and nobler order. With the improvement of his material condi- tion, the Russian Jew was enabled to pay greater attention to his Jewish intellectual needs. From the old world he brought with him the notion that Jewish culture is synonymous with Hebrew thought and is best expressed through the medium of Hebrew. Hence he set himself early to the work of reviving the Hebrew language as a liter- ary vehicle and thus follow in the foot-steps of the European intellectuals (Maskilim). As early as 1871 Hirsch Bernstein (died in 1907) began RABBI ADOLPH M. RADIN (1848-1909) AMERICA 317 the publication in New York of his weekly "Hazophe b'Erez ha-Hadasha," assisted by M. Jalomstein, a noted Hebrew journalist, which con- tinued with a few interruptions until 1877. I n 1880 a society of accomplished Hebraists and Tal- mudic scholars attempted the publication of a magazine called "Ha-Measeph b'Erez ha- Hadasha," of which only one number appeared. Occasionally books on a variety of subjects, writ- ten in Biblical or modern Hebrew, would leave the printing press, such as the book on "Jews and Judaism" in New York, by Moses Weinberger, Joseph S. Silberstein's theologico-philosophical studies, "Ha-Dat v'ha-Torah, M. Rabbinovich's strictures of Jewish Reform in "Ha-Mahanayim," and Dr. Szold's interesting and scholarly commen- tary on the book of Job. Wolf Schur (Outian, i844-Chicago, 1910) began the publication of his weekly "Ha-Pisgah" in 1888 in Baltimore, and the year following Ephraim Deinard (b. Shossmaken, Courland, 1846) started his weekly "Ha-Leomi" in New York. The same year also saw the ap- pearance in Chicago of a new Hebrew monthly "Keren Or" (A Ray of Light) which did not sur- vive its second number. The American atmos- phere was not propitious for the growth of He- brew literature and these periodicals were all short-lived. Not discouraged by their failures these Russian intellectuals continued their efforts in behalf of their favorite literature. In 1892 Gerson Rosenzweig (Byelostok, i86i-New York, 1914) supported by K. H. Sarasohn, began his weekly "Ha-Ibri," assisted, among others, by G. Selikovitsch, a fine Hebrew stylist, who writes mainly for the Yiddish press, while three years later a society of scholars, headed by A. D. Dobsevage, A. H. Rosenberg, J. D. Eisenstein, and Herman Rosenthal began issuing the "Ner 3l8 HISTORY OF THE JEWS ha-Maarabi" (Western Light) which appeared with great irregularity and subsequently passed into the hands of S. B. Schwarzberg, who published only four numbers of it. Again, and with no better success, Rosenzweig attempted the publication of a monthly, "Kadimah," and Herman Rosenthal that of "Ha-Modiya le-Hadashim" (The Monthly Intelligencer). At the same time there appeared several large works in Hebrew, like M. Jalomstein's attempt at a history of the United States, W. Schur's historico-theological studies entitled "Nezah Yisroel" and A. H. Rosen- berg's Biblical encyclopedia "Ozar ha-Shemot." Isaac Rabbinovich (Kovno, i846-New York, 1900), and Menahem M. Dolitsky (b. Byelostok, 1856) published their volumes of national He- brew poems, while J. D. Eisenstein was already planning his Hebrew Encyclopedia "Ozar Yis- roel." To this period belongs also Joseph Gabrie- low, who at one time edited in New York a weekly, "Ha-Z'man," and many years later pub- lished a popular encyclopedia of Jewish ethics under the name "Ozar ha-Midot." The Hebrew language in America was, however, to continue reaping a harvest of failure until the second decade of the twentieth century, when new and unexpected conditions caused the situation to change for the better. The reason for the repeated failure of the He- brew language and literature to secure a foot- hold in America is furnished in the fact that a thorough training in Hebrew is accessible to only a comparatively small class of Jews, remaining out of the reach of the masses, to whom, as in Russia, it perforce remained a prohibitive luxury. And this very circumstance will explain the won- derful growth and prosperity of the Yiddish litera- ture and the Yiddish theatre in America. It was AMERICA 319 only natural that the language used by millions of men and women as their daily medium of expres- sion should find unlimited support among these people for its literary and histrionic productions. Yiddish journalism made its appearance in the United States even before the influx en masse of the Russian Jews began, when K. H. Sarasohn of New York (1837-1905) began in 1874 the publi- cation of his weekly "Juedische Gazetten," which is still in existence. This was followed by another weekly in Chicago, the "Israelitische Presse," which was started in 1876 together with a Hebrew sup- plement called "Hekhal ha-Ibriyah." With the ar- rival of large numbers of immigrants a Yiddish daily press was made possible, and there sprang up in New York a number of dailies, the fore- most among which were the "Juedisches Tageblatt" and the "Taeglicher Herold" (since 1891), later to be followed by the "Wahrheit" and the "Tag" while other dailies appeared also in other cities, notably in Chicago, where the "Courier" and the "Record" began to appear. We have already mentioned the Yiddish Socialistic press which headed by the "For- waerts" in New York is probably the most widely read of the Jewish masses. There is also an an- archistic organ, the"FreieArbeiter Stimme." There has been a large crop of weeklies and monthlies, both serious and humorous, many of which are still being published, the most notable of these being the "Illustrierte Juedische Zeitung" founded by Abraham Goldfaden, "Zukunft" (Socialistic), and "Der Juedischer Puck," by N. M. Schaikewitz. For the past twenty years H. Minikes of New York has been publishing "Yom-Tob Blaetter," in which appeared many choice articles from the pen of the best Yiddish writers of Europe and America. Alongside of the periodical press there grew up 32O HISTORY OF THE JEWS a voluminous scientific and polite literature, the work of men whose talent was developed in America or had matured while yet in Europe. To the latter class belong the veterans of Yiddish literature in Europe: N. M. Scheikevitsch, the prolific novelist, who scored his greatest literary success in America by the comedies he wrote for the Yiddish stage, M. Seifert, who is a very fac- ile writer, and at the age of 71 is to-day still supplying the Yiddish papers with lengthy ro- mances; Eliakim Zunser (Vilna, i845-New York, I 9 I 3)? the one-time wedding bard who blossomed out into a very popular author of folk-songs, and Abraham Goldfaden (Starokonstantinov, 1840- New York, 1908), the noted playwright and father of the Yiddish stage, who .was the first to attempt the publication of an illustrated Yiddish weekly in America. But by far greater was the number of writers who sprang up on American soil whether their hankering for a literary career came to them in Europe or in America. While Abner Tannenbaum (Schirwind, E. Prussia, 1848- New York, 1913) gave himself to acquainting the public with the best French and German novels and was popularizing science by means of trans- lations of standard works, while "Philip Krantz," which is the nom de plume of Jacob Rombro, au- thor of many works on science and history, notably his "Kulturgeschichte" and "Gantz Amerika," was successfully spreading enlighten- ment in like manner, and Alexander Harkavy wrote a number of educational works, there came upon the scene a class of short-story writers who early gave promise of unusual talent, headed by J. Goido, writing under the pseudonym of "B. Gorin," Leon Kobrin and Israel Hurewitz, whose pen name is "Z. Libin." Though possessed of much intrinsic merit, their sketches are often ABRAHAM GOLDFADEN (1840-1908) AMERICA 321 over-realistic and only too frequently border on the decadent. While writing of Jewish life they plainly show the influence of the realistic French and Russian schools. A notable place in this literature is that of M. Winchevsky (b. Yanovo, Kovno, 1856), "The Crazy Philosopher," popu- larly referred to as the "Grandfather of Jewish Socialism," who is the author of much noble verse and of still finer prose, and who has been very productive as a writer of stories and sketches and as a translator of several standard novels from the French and the Russian. In passing judg- ment on the work of these and other writers in America, Prof. Wiener, in his history of the Yiddish literature, as far back as 1898 pointed out their inferiority, as a class, to their Yiddish contemporaries in Russia. "There has not," says he, "arisen in America any author who has shown the same degree of originality as those of the mother country, even though they frequently sur- pass them in regularity of structure, and in the fund of information they possess. Among the large number of writers in New York who have contributed to the literature, it can hardly be said that any individual style has been developed. They resemble each other very much, both in the manner of their composition, and the subjects they treat. Nor could it be otherwise. They nearly all are busy popularizing science in one way or other, or they write novels from the life of the Jewish community which, in the less than two decades of its existence, has not developed, as yet, many new characteristics. They imitate Russian models for their stories and novels, mainly Chekhow. They are all of them realists, and some have carried their realism to the utmost extent." Yet if this stricture is justly applicable to the 322 HISTORY OF THE JEWS prose writers, it falls beyond the mark in the case of the Yiddish poets of whom America has pro- duced a considerable number. Prose, when worked at as a profession and for gain, as is the case with nearly every Yiddish writer in America, is subject to the pitfalls of haste when little oppor- tunity is afforded for the development of diction or of originality in creation. This is only to a less degree true of "Tashrak" (I. Zevin), who is possessed of considerable talent as a Jewish hu- morist. Poetry, at least when written in Yiddish, is unavailable as a means of earning a livelihood, and they who still resort to it in spite of this, do so because driven to it by the force of an inborn gift. Hence we find that the American Ghetto has produced better poets than prose writers. These poets, too, are more natural and self- true and less given to adaptation and imitation. Of the lesser lights, A. M. Sharkansky (died in New York in 1905) stands out prominently with his "Yiddishe Melodien," which created a considerable stir in the Yiddish world at the time of its pub- lication. In Cincinnati, D. Greenberg (died in 1917), under the name of "Ben Yishai," wrote for many years simple yet touching verse on Jew- ish national themes. Among the singers on more radical themes are David Edelstadt (1866-1892) and the aforementioned Morris Winchevsky, though the latter writes in a more conservative strain even as his poetry is of a superior order. Both of them, however, are moved to sing, or, rather, to weep, on the social inequalities and the economic injustice of the world, and to breathe the hope oi" a world transformed through the coming of the social revolution. Winchevsky has also produced a fine translation of Thomas Hood's "Song of the Shirt." Much superior to any of these is Morris Rosen- MORRIS ROSENFELD AMERICA 323 feld (b. Boksha, Suwalki, 1862), who is the first American Yiddish poet whose works have been translated into other languages by prominent men of letters (English by Leo Wiener and German by Berthold Feiwel, besides translations into Rou- manian, Polish, Hungarian and Bohemian). A poet of the masses and himself a product and a victim of the sweating system, Rosenfeld, too, is revolutionary in the theme and tenor of his song, at the same time he is also nationalistically Jew- ish and his attendance at one of the Zionist con- gresses shows him to be at least passively inter- ested in that movement. Reared in the Jewish traditional spirit, Rosenfeld draws much of his inspiration from the old literary sources, but for form and versification he is indebted to the Eng- lish and German masters, especially to Heine and Schiller. At the same time he is uniquely orig- inal in the treatment of his subjects and in the pathos and imagery with which his writings abound. His "Liederbuch" (New York, 1897) was the sensation of the day in Yiddish literary circles, and its translation into English by Pro- fessor Wiener ("Songs from the Ghetto/' Boston, 1899), introduced him to the large non-Jewish world, several of the more prominent American universities inviting him to give readings of his poems. Rosenfeld has probably done more than any other Yiddish writer to bring home to the American reading world the economic tragedy as well as the spiritual beauty of the lowly and dingy ghetto. Yet even Rosenfeld, though for some years su- preme in American Yiddish literature, has found his master and superior in "Yehoash" (Solomon Bloomgarden, b. ' Wirballen, 1870). Less well- known to the outside world, "Yehoash" has for the last ten years come forward as a most force- 324 HISTORY OF THE JEWS ful exponent in verse of much that is best in Jewish thought and feeling, and may well be con- sidered the greatest lyric poet the Yiddish has yet produced. His is a more Jewishly saturated muse than Rosenfeld's, and where the latter is moved to sing by the mere exigencies of fate, by the political tragedies or the economic distress of his people, "Yehoash" sings more readily on Jewish themes, and his song flows freely and fully, often reaching the highest pitch of poetic fervor. His art needs no special coaxing, and shows itself at its best where it is the least influenced from the outside. Probably no finer love-songs have come from the pen of any other Yiddish poet, but it is in his Jewish national themes that "Yehoash" reveals his truly great art. In the Bible and the rabbinical legends he has found a perennial source of inspiration, while nature and the saga of all nations are voluminously echoed in his writings. His "Gasammelte Lieder" (New York, 1910), as well as the later volume entitled "In Sun un Nebel ("Through Mist and Sunshine"), 1913, are the finest collection of Yiddish verse of the last decade. "Yehoash" is also noted for his cutting and piercing humor, and his prose is as limpid and true as his verse is sublime. He has translated into Yiddish Longfellow's "Hiawatha" as well as several books of the Bible, including Isaiah and Job, has collaborated with Dr. C. D. Spivak in the preparation of a Yiddish lexicon, and, on his return in 1915 from Palestine, where he had sojourned for many months, has written for the Yiddish press a series of impressions of the new Jewish life in the Holy Land which were received with great favor and have also appeared sepa- rately in three volumes under the name of "From New York to Rehobbot" (New York, 1917-1918). If the Yiddish press has performed much SOLOMON BI.OOMGARI-EX (JEHOASH) (b. 1870) AMERICA 325 praiseworthy service in educating the immigrant and helping him to adapt himself to his new sur- roundings, and if the literature this immigrant has produced is resplendent with great spiritual and artistic achievement and with the promise of still greater glory to be won, but little can be said about another important creation of the Russian Jew in America: the Yiddish theatre. It, too, was brought over from Russia with the immigration tide of the early eighties, and doubt- less would have served the highly useful pur- pose of cultivating the artistic nature of the Jew and of bringing into play the finer susceptibilities of his soul had it from the very start fallen into more responsible hands. Unfortunately the men who are to be credited with the creation of the Yiddish stage in America were actuated by mo- tives of pecuniary gain for themselves rather than of service to the higher interests of their people. Accordingly, instead of responding to the more cultural cravings of the masses the stage in their hands became a medium of cheap and oft- times degrading amusement. Instead of copying the ways of the better sort of English theatres they aped the methods pursued in the variety and music halls, with the result that the taste of the Yiddish theatre-goers rapidly deteriorated and grew unappreciative of performances of greater artistic merit. Where in Russia and Roumania the managers of the Yiddish stage sought to give it a Jew r ish religious or national coloring by large- ly offering plays from ancient Jewish life in Pales- tine or from modern life within the Russian "Pale," their colleagues in America permitted their business interests to dictate to them a policy of de- generation. Goldfaden, who transferred his liter- ary activities from Russia to America and who might have helped in the building up of a con- 326 HISTORY OF THE JEWS structively Jewish stage, was soon allowed to fall into disuse as a dramaturge, the New York man- agers preferring the decadent productions of Hur- witz, Lateiner and Seifert. The plays of a better sort, written by the more modern writers, Libin and Kobrin, were given to indifferent audiences, and even the arrival in America in recent years of men like Shalom Ash, Osip Dymov and Perez Hirschbein, who had already achieved fame as dramatists in Europe, failed to save the Yiddish theatre from the decay into which it had fallen from its incipiency. Jacob Gordin (Mirogorod, Poltava, i853,-New York, 1909), who was the most forceful and prolific of all American Jewish dramatists, exercised in his day a more healthy influence upon the stage which to-day still glories in his achievements. He wrote about seventy plays and playlets, the majority of which are worthless, but some of which show true literary merit, notably his "Gott, Mensch und Teufel" (God, Man and Devil), a Yiddish adaptation of "Faust," "Mirele Efros," "Die Yesome" (The Orphan), "Die Shehita" -(The Slaughter), "The Jewish Priest" and "The Russian Jew in America." While his plays are all more or less adaptations from the French, German and Russian masters, Gordin is most successful when dealing with sub- jects taken from Jewish life in Russia. It is plain, however, that whatever power Gordin pos- sessed as a dramatist was in no small measure tethered and dwarfed by the demands of the the- atrical managers and the general public taste which are the real literary arbiters in the Amer- ican Yiddish theatre. It should at the same time be stated that, apart from this deplorable policy, this theatre has had the good fortune of develop- ing and calling into deserved fame several ex- ceedingly able artists, notably, Jacob P. Adler, JACOB GORDIN (1853-1909) AMERICA 327 Sigmund Mogulesco, Bertha Kalisch and Kenia Liptzin. Of these Adler and Kalisch have in re- cent years won prominence on the English stage as well. Considered as a whole, however, the Yiddish theatre is an achievement the Russian Jew in America has the least reason to be proud of. The immigrants soon grew conscious of the latent strength their rapidly increasing numbers spelt for American Jewish life and, following the example set for them by the German Jews, organized themselves into a number of fraternal orders. As an impelling force toward the crea- tion of these separate orders were the rather ir- reconcilable differences which at an early stage arose between the German and Russian immi- grants. The attitude of the German Jew toward his Russian co-religionist often proved to be one of pity not unmingled with contempt for his out- landish \vays and habits, and while at all times willing to alleviate his distress he was not always ready to welcome him into the circle of his friends, nor to encourage him to become one with himself in the public activities in which he was engaged. The Russian Jew, in turn, resented this con- descending attitude, and his gratitude for the pecuniary relief so readily granted him by his German brother was not sufficiently strong to off- set the bitterness he felt and the contempt he bore the former for what he regarded as his un-Jewish manner and his seeming lack of Jewish learning. The gulf separating Reform from Orthodoxy was also a factor in dividing the Germans and Rus- sians into two antagonistic camps, a circum- stance which in after years had a deplorabe effect upon Jewish affairs in nearly all American cities and towns, causing an unnecessary duplica- tion and overlapping in Jewish charitable and 328 HISTORY OF THE JEWS educational activities, and largely hindering the cause of real and complete union. The fraternal orders which arose among the newly arrived immigrants in opposition to the B'nai B'rith was in very large measure the result of this unfriendly relationship. Of these orders the most prominent is the already mentioned Independent Order B'rith Abraham, which was founded in 1887 and which to-day has a membership of more than 200,000. The w r orkingmen, too, have their own order, the "Arbeiter Ring," with a membership of about 60,000. Unlike the B'nai B'rith these orders are largely protective organizations with sick benefit, free burial and insurance as their leading fea- tures. They are not actively interested in charity or educational work, have founded no institutions for any such purposes though they often con- tribute toward charitable objects, and, in conse- quence, do not occupy as important a place in the larger Jewish affairs of the country as they otherwise might in view of their numerical strength. With the passing of the years the Russian Jew became more self-assertive in another direction. The activities of the German-American Jew had been directed largely toward the goal of the Amer- icanization of the immigrant, for which pur- pose special institutions, patterned after the familiar American settlement-house, were called into being, such as the Educational Alliance and the Henry Street Settlement of New York, the Hebrew Educational Society of Brooklyn, the Hebrew Institute of Chicago, and the numerous Young Men's and Young Women's Hebrew As- sociations which are to be found in every large American Jewish centre. The prosperity now enjoyed by the Russian immigrants brought with it the spirit of independence; they who at one AMERICA 329 time were recipients now themselves became con- tributors and, on finding that the institutions they were called on to help maintain were not conducted in the Jewish traditional spirit, began to demand the introduction of a policy of greater Jewishness. They asserted, with a show of much plausibility, that the process of Americanization was spontaneous and automatic, needing no special outside aid, while there was urgent need of using all efforts in the work of Judaizing the young who were steadily becoming alienated from the tenets and practices of their fathers. The Yiddish press kept up the propaganda, rousing the communal consciousness of the conservative and orthodox elements to the need of making the existing char- itable institutions, founded and maintained by the Reform Jews, more observant of the traditional Jewish practices in view of the fact that the bene- ficiaries of these institutions were, in nearly every case, orthodox. The influence of Dr. Solomon Schechter (Fokshani, Roumania, i848-New York, 1915), who in 1902 came to New York as head of the reorganized Jewish Theological Seminary, and of the many disciples that rallied around him, was also exerted in the same direction, and there arose a Counter-Reformation movement which soon found its leader in the Rev. Dr. Judah Leon Magnes (b. San Francisco, 1877) who, in 1911, resigned his rabbinical position in Temple Emanu- El of New York to accept the rabbinate of a con- servative and to him more congenial congregation. In opposition to the large and influential Union of American Hebrew Congregations, the leading organization of Reform Jews, there was called into being the United Synagogue of America (1913) with Dr. Schechter as its president. How- ever limited the success of the new movement may have proved, it largely attained its purpose by caus- 33 HISTORY OF THE JEWS ing the wave of religious conservatism to spread all through the land and by influencing even the more radical of Reform centres to change their attitude toward Jewish traditionalism, and to adopt- a more conservative policy in many things essential to the religious life of the American Jew. In this religious revival a prominent part was played also by the Zionist movement which was introduced in the United States at the very time Theodore Herzl was convening the first congress at Bazel, and which soon found many adherents not only among the recently arrived immigrants, but among native Jews as well.* There had been a few societies of the "Hibbat Ziyyon" (Love of Zion) type in the United States before 1897, without, however, forming into a united and con- certed movement. With the publication of Herzl's "Judenstaat" (1896) the doctrine of Jewish Na- tionalism began to assert itself more fully in America, spurred on by the prominent Hebrew publicists of the day, Wolf Schur in his "Ha-Pis- gah," Gerson Rosenzweig, in his "Ha-Ibri," A. H. Rosenberg and Herman Rosenthal in the Ner ha- "Maarabi," and aided by the Yiddish "Daily News" of New York and Courier of Chicago. Shortly after the first Zionist Congress a number of lead- ing Zionists from several cities met in New York and there laid the foundation of the present "Federation of American Zionists" in. the organ- ization of which a leading part was taken by Her- man Rosenthal, Richard Gottheil, S. Schaffer, Bernard Drachman, K. H. Sarahson, Adam Ros- enberg, David Liknaitz, I. I. Morrison, Stephen S. Wise, Abner Tannenbaum and Max Raisin. Pro- fessor Gottheil was elected as its first president. * For a more detailed account of the Zionist movement as a whole see the last chapter of this volume. AMERICA 331 The following year the Federation convened in Baltimore when a considerable expansion of the movement was reported. Annual Zionist conven- tions have been held ever since in various cities, each year showing a marked growth in the ranks of Zionist sympathizers. Meantime great opposi- tion to the movement had developed among the Reform Jews, led by several of their more promi- nent rabbis. At the seventh annual gathering of the Central Conference of American Rabbis, held in Montreal in 1897, Dr. Isaac Mayer Wise vehemently attacked the new movement in his presidential message, spoke of its leaders as those "who revive among certain classes of people the political national sentiment of olden times, and turn the mission of Israel from the province of religion and humanity to the narrow political and national field, where Judaism loses its universal and sanctified ground and its historical significa- tion," and of Zionism as "a fata morgana, a mo- mentary inclination of morbid minds, and a pros- titution of Israel's holy cause to a madman's dance of unsound politicians." At his instance a committee consisting of Drs. Landsberg, Miel- ziner and Samfield, presented the following reso- lution which the conference adopted: "Resolved, That we totally disapprove of any attempt for the establishment of a Jewish State. Such attempts show a misunderstanding of Israel's mission, which from the narrow political and national field has been extended to the promotion among the whole human race of the broad and universalistic religion first proclaimed by Israel's prophets. Such attempts do not benefit, but infinitely harm our Jewish brethren where they are still persecuted, by confirming the assertion of their enemies that the Jews are foreigners in the countries in which they are at home, and of which they are every- 332 HISTORY OF THE JEWS where the most loyal and patriotic citizens. We reaffirm that the object of Judaism is not political nor national, but spiritual, and addresses itself to the continuous growth of peace, justice and love in the human race, to a Messianic time when all men will recognize that they form one great brotherhood for the establishment of God's king- dom on earth." Again, at the Biennial Council of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, which took place at Richmond, Va., in 1899, the following resolution introduced by Rabbi David Philipson was adopted: "While we are aware of and deplore the abject conditions to which many of our brethren are subjected in foreign lands, and which have naturally, but unfortunately, aroused in some of them a yearning for a re- establishment in Zion, yet we, delegates of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations in convention assembled, in view of the active propa- ganda being made at present for the so-called Zionistic movement, deem it proper and necessary to put ourselves on record as follows: We are unalteraby opposed to political Zionism. The Jews are not a nation, but a religious community. Zion was a precious possession of the past, the early home of our faith, where our prophets ut- tered their world-enduring thoughts, and our psalmists sang their world-enchanting hymns. As such, it is a holy memory, but it is not our hope of the future. America is our Zion. Here, in the home of religious liberty, we have aided in founding this new Zion, the fruition of the begin- ning laid in the old. The mission of Judaism is spiritual, not political. Its aim is not to establish a State, but to spread the truths of religion and humanity throughout the world." These repeated attacks on the cherished ideals of the Zionists only served to widen the breach AMERICA 333 between Orthodoxy and Reform, despite the fact that many orthodox rabbis and laymen were, on religious grounds, themselves opposed to Zionism, and that a number of the Zionist leaders, such as Dr. Gustav Gottheil and his son, Richard, Dr. Marcus Jastrow, Dr. Stephen S. Wise and Rabbi Max Heller came from the Reform camp. Re- form became synonymous with anti-nationalism, while Zionism in its religious implications came to stand for conservatism. The leaders of the movement began a publicity campaign by means of a number of brochures and books and the establishment of two Zionist organs, the "Mac- cabaean," a monthly in English, and "Dos Yid- dishe Folk," a weekly in Yiddish. The Zionist propaganda in America was further enhanced by the visit to the United States of Dr. Schmaryahu Levin and Nahum Sokolow, members of the smaller "Actions Committee," and of Dr. Benzion Mossinsohn, the director of the Hebrew High School at Jaffa. The leadership of the movement, passed into the hands of Dr. Harry Friedenwald of Baltimore and Louis Lipsky of New York, who introduced a new system and enlarged the scope of Zionist activity. New parties soon sprang up within the movement, the "Poale Zion," a Socialistic group, and the "Mizrahi," a group of ultra-orthodox Zionists. A women's branch of the movement was established in the "Hadassah," and a young people's organization in "Young Judaea." An insurance and fraternal Zionist Order was also called into life in the "Order Sons of Zion," while the young men and women at the colleges and universities organized themselves into an "Intercollegiate Zionist Association." Finally, when the Great War broke out in 1914, and all Zionist activity in Europe was largely suspended, a new organization was formed, through the in- 334 HISTORY OF THE JEWS strumentality of Dr. Schmaryahu Levin, under the name of "The Provisional Committee for General Zionist Affairs" (1914), for the purpose of caring for the Zionist institutions in Palestine during the crisis and of maintaining, so far as possible and practicable, international Zionist re- lations. This latest organization soon proved itself the leading force in Zionist activity in Amer- ica, it raises annually hundreds of thousands of dollars for relief work in Palestine and for propa- ganda, subsidizes a number of Zionist agencies and publications and is, furthermore, to be cred- ited with having called forth into active Zionist work the man who was to prove the most valiant and capable leader of the movement in America, the United States Supreme Court Justice, Louis Dembitz Brandeis. Yet, despite his separatist and nationalistic as- pirations, the Russian Jew has repeatedly demon- strated that he loves America with a supreme passion, and he probably appreciates the blessings of the great democracy he is privileged to live in even more than many a native son. Instinctively he is grateful for obtaining here the very condi- tions for living his own Jewish life, for the lack of which he had martyrized himself in Russia. And if he still indulges the historic passion of his race for the ancient homeland it is not out of a divided allegiance but because he recognizes that even in a land of freedom Jewish life cannot be complete, that the very liberty which is his often makes for the disintegration of both his race and his faith. He also understands that the genius of American democracy is of a nature to make Zion- ism fully compatible with Americanism. The right of the Russian Jew to consider himself an American of Americans has never been more clearly proven than during the Spanish-American Louis DEMBITZ BRANDEIS (b. 1857) AMERICA 335 War (1898) when about four thousand immi- grants, most of them from Russia, volunteered for the service, many of them serving with Colonel Theodore Roosevelt in his "Rough Rider" Regiment. It is now again being shown with the entrance of America into the Great War on the side of the Allies. Of the fifty thousand Jews that have already enlisted or were drafted (Janu- ary, 1918), the majority come from among these immigrants. It was to satisfy the religious needs and cultural wants of these Jewish soldiers that it was found necessary to organize a special "Welfare Board" and to raise an initial sum of one million dollars for the purpose. For even in the army and on the firing line the Jew insists on his right, which is the common right of all Amer- ican soldiers, to lead his own religious life wherever compatible with military duty. These American Jewish boys at the front will doubtless add another noble page to the story of Jewish valor which has already been recorded in the blood of the one hundred thousand Jewish heroes that have fallen during the many sanguinary battles since the beginning of the war. Essentially Zionism is a revolutionary move- ment, implying an organized protest not merely against the actual oppression and persecution of the Jew, but against all forms and expressions of ill-will shown him in public and in private life. That it should have its greatest appeal for the immigrant Jews is easily explainable on the ground of their maltreatment in their native lands. That these immigrants should persist in their na- tional aspirations even after finding themselves on the soil of political freedom and equality is due to the fact that, owing to their unhappy experi- ences, they can more readily sense the enonomic ill- will and the social ostracism, to which even the 336 HISTORY OF THE JEWS American Jew is subjected, than their less sensi- tive German co-religionists. Because of this sensitiveness on the part of the Russian Jew there was made possible the enactment of certain legis- lative measures and the creation of several protec- tive organizations which without him would prob- ably never have taken place. When, in 1908, the then Police Commissioner of New York City, General Theodore Bingham, made an onslaught on the character and reputation of the New York Jews, declaring that fully 60 per cent, of the criminals of the city was furnished by them, the storm of indignant protest that arose led in that year to the formation of the New York Com- munity (Kehillah) which is an attempt, not as yet wholly successful, to federate all the Jewish organizations of the metropolis for mutually pro- tective and for educational purposes. A far more important achievement, due in large measure to this same sensitiveness to discrimination was the abrogation, in 1911, of the treaty of commerce and navigation made in 1832 between the United States and Russia. In violation of the terms of that treaty the Russian Government for many years persisted in disregarding the passport held by Jewish Americans who visited Russia, subject- ing them to many cruel humiliations because of their religious belief. Unless such citizens first obtained the special permission of the Russian Government through its representatives in Amer- ica they, whether naturalized or native-born citi- zens of the United States, whether former sub- jects of the Czar or of any other government, were likely to be barred from entering Russia or, in case of entry, to be seized and jailed or de- ported. The continued ^protests of many promi- nent Jews to the State Department in Washing- ton, extending for many years, were often AMERICA 337 unavailing, and whatever protests the State De- partment did make to the Russian Government, notably that of Secretary of State James G. Elaine, in 1881, and later, in the Cleveland Ad- ministration, of Secretary Olney, went unheeded. The immense growth of the Russian-Jewish colony in the United States since 1881, and the great need which many of these settlers found for travel and sojourn in Russia for business or other reasons, however, soon made the existing passport situation intolerable. It reached a crisis in 1907 when Elihu Root, the Secretary oi State in the Roosevelt Administration, issued a circular warning all former Russian subjects against going to Russia without first obtaining the permission of the Russian Government. "Jews," the circular read, "whether they were formerly Russian sub- jects or not, are not admitted to Russia unless they obtain special permission in advance from the Russian Government, and this Department will not issue passports to former Russian sub- jects or to Jews who intend going to Russian ter- ritory, unless it has assurance that the Russian Government will consent to their admission." This meant nothing more nor less than that the United States Government, if it did not exactly approve the Russian policy of discrimination against American citizens, was willing to counte- nance it and abide by it, irrespective of all treaty obligations. It soon called into action the "Amer- ican Jewish Committee," founded in 1906 for the safeguarding of Jewish interests at home and abroad, which, through two of its representatives, Louis Marshall and Edward Lauterbach, made a dignified but forceful remonstrance against the action of the Secretary, with the result that the wording of the objectionable circular was modi- fied. This half-measure was, however, far from 33$ HISTORY OF THE JEWS satisfactory. The evil had to be eliminated at its root. Meyer Sulzberger, as President of the American Jewish Committee, addressed himself to President Roosevelt and again to Secretary Root, but failed to obtain tangible results. The opportunity for favorable action presented itself soon in the national elections of 1908, when, through the efforts of the "Committee," each of the great national parties, the Republican, the Democratic and the Independent, adopted -a plank in its platform looking to the removal of the" pass- port evil. William Howard Taft, the Republican candidate for the Presidency, placed himself squarely on record as upholding the treaty rights of all American citizens, regardless of, race or creed. Mr. Taft's election augured well for the outcome of the agitation. A new stumbling block presented itself in the attitude assumed toward the question by the new Secretary of State, Phil- ander C. Knox. The appointment of Mr. W. W. Rockhill as Ambassador to Russia, however, was an encouragement that the matter would not be left in abeyance. In the meantime a concerted movement was organized by the American Jewish Committee throughout the land to rouse the Amer- ican public conscience against this indignity to American citizenship. Meetings of protest were arranged in many cities, and members of Con- gress were urged to act on this question in a legislative way. On February 10, 1911, Con- gressman Herbert Parsons, of New York City, introduced a joint resolution "Providing for the termination of the treaty between the United States of America and Russia concluded at Saint Petersburg, December eighteen, eighteen hundred and thirty-two." This was referred to the Com- mittee on Foreign Affairs and ordered to be printed. Before this Committee appeared, on AMERICA 339 February 16 and 22, Louis Marshall, together with Representatives Parsons, Harrison, Graham and Gold f ogle, and eloquently pleaded for the ab- rogation of the treaty. On February 26 Senator Culberson of Texas introduced another resolu- tion of a like nature, but owing to the lateness of the session neither resolution could be acted on. Congress adjourned, but was soon reconvened in extra session, and on April 6, 1911, Mr. Wil- liam Sulzer, Representative in Congress from New York, introduced another joint resolution \which' declared, among other things, "That the Government of the United States will not be a party to any treaty which discriminates, or which by one of the parties thereto is so construed as to discriminate between American citizens on the ground of race and religion." Again Congress adjourned without action, to reassemble in Decem- ber of that year, when Sulzer reintroduced his resolution. A hearing took place on December 11-12 before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs to which it was referred and which unani- mously reported it without amendment. It came to a vote on the following day, December 13, and was carried in the House by a vote of three hun- dred to one. In the Senate action was taken on a similar resolution on December 19, resulting in a unanimous vote in its favor by all of the seventy- two Senators present. But four days before the senate action, on December 15, the President had already instructed Curtis Guild, Jr., the American Ambassador to Russia, to notify the Russian gov- ernment of the intention of the American govern- ment to abrogate the treaty of 1832. For once Jews of all sections and shades of be- lief, German and Russian, orthodox and Reform, found themselves a unit in a matter so vitally im- portant to the Jewish cause in Russia no less than 340 HISTORY OF THE JEWS to America, the successful outcome of which re- acted upon the dignity and honor of the Jewish people everywhere. The victorious termination of a campaign conducted so strenuously and for so many years was a source of indescribable joy to the Jews. Divine services of prayer and thanksgiving 1 were held in many a synagogue and appropriate exhortations were delivered by the rabbis. Before long, however, a still weightier and farther reaching event was to act as a unifying factor for American Israel. It came with the lowering of the war-clouds in 1914, and the ap- proach of the terrible cataclysm which was to devastate half of the habitable world and leave the marks of its fiercest ravages among the lowly habitations of the Jews of Eastern Europe, more especially those of Lithuania, Poland, Galicia and Roumania. Caught in the path of invading armies, and exposed to all the ruthlessness of warfare carried on by a brutalized soldiery on either side, victimized by Russian Cossacks in Galicia and informed against as spies and traitors to the German authorities by unscrupulous agi- tators in Poland and Lithuania, robbed, massacred and exiled on the least pretext it was not long before millions of Jews were facing ruin and star- vation. American Jewry alone was in a position to extend aid to the unfortunates, nor did it fail in its duty. Early in the crisis the various sec- tions of the community organized themselves into great relief committees with branches all over the land, the Reform elements forming them- selves into the "Jewish Relief Committee/' the orthodox into the "Central Relief Committee," and the laboring classes into the "People's Relief Committee," thus endeavoring to reach all groups and factions into which American Israel is di- vided. Later, all these organizations consolidated AMERICA 341 into a "Jint Distribution Committee," forming a clearing house for all funds to be sent to the afflicted regions. Representing these organiza- tions Dr. Judah Leon Magnes went to Europe to obtain accurate information of the existing situa- tion and to place the distribution of relief funds in the hands of competent local committees. The response of American Israel to the cry of distress from across the ocean proved so liberal and en- heartening that the leaders of the relief move- ment decided, in 1917, to raise an additional sum for that year of ten million dollars, and Julius Rosenwald, the eminent philanthropist of Chicago, was the first to help make this sum realizable by his munificent contribution of one million dollars. The entire amount with a surplus of about half a million dollars, was duly raised in the closing weeks of 1917. This great work of relief helped to bring Ger- man and Russian Jews in America as close to each other as never before. United in the com- mon purpose of aiding their suffering fellow- Jews, the hope could now be entertained that the day was at hand when the prejudices harbored by each of these factions toward the other would disappear, leaving naught but harmony and good will in their stead. The great humanitarian services performed by Julius Rosenwald, Nathan Straus and Jacob H. Schiff as well as by the two Jewish Ambassadors who successively represented America at Constantinople during the war, Henry Morgenthau and Abram I. Elkus* in aiding the cause of Jewish relief in Europe and in Palestine, and the splendid showing in the same direction made by many wealthy and prominent leaders of * Mr. Morgenthau was the Ambassador to Turkey during the first Wilson administration, Mr. Elkus during both the first and second administrations. 34 2 HISTORY OF THE JEWS the erstwhile immigrant Jews, was an earnest of the desire of all elements in Jewry to come together in all matters affecting the common wel- fare of the Jews. Unhappily, before long the ship of Jewish unity was again threatened with foundering upon the rock of disharmony arising from the "Jewish Congress" question. This ques- tion, coming to the fore during the early months of the war, and increasing in importance with the continuance of the great struggle, was that of having a congress of representatives of all groups and factions of American Jewry for the purpose of deliberating upon the Jewish situation in Europe and in Palestine and of formulating plans whereby, at the forthcoming peace conference of the belligerent nations, whenever it should as- semble, the voice of American Israel might clear- ly and forcefully be heard in behalf of full Jew- ish emancipation wherever such emancipation has not yet taken place. For nearly two years Jew- ish leaders in America found it difficult to agree on the advisability of holding the Congress dur- ing the war, and, when that was finally agreed upon, on the scope of its work and the methods of representation. On several occasions the dis- cussion led to acrimonious verbal warfare among the opponents, and at the conference of the na- tional Jewish organizations held on June 20, 1916, in New York, Supreme Court Justice Brandeis was so bitterly attacked that he found himself constrained to resign from all active participation in the work of the proposed Congress. When, fi- nally, all arrangements had been completed for the holding of congressional elections on a purely dem- ocratic basis, the suffrage by secret ballot being open to Jews everywhere, and to women as well as to men, a number of organizations suddenly decided to withdraw from the movement, begin- AMERICA 343 ning with the Socialist group of the "National Jewish Workers' Association," and followed by the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, the Hebrew Union College and the Central Con- ference of American Rabbis. Nevertheless, the movement was but little affected by these with- drawals, more than three hundred thousand voters participating in the elections which were held on June 12 and 13, 1917. The blame for this eleventh-hour attempt at disunion was, with a cer- tain degree of plausibility, laid at the doors of the Reform leaders and a few of the representa- tives of the Neo-Orthodox group, who, having long enjoyed a self-assumed ascendency in Ameri- can Jewish affairs, sensed in this new movement the danger of having the reins of leadership taken from their hands. Despite all efforts to thwart the plans of the "American Jewish Congress Committee," and prevent the holding of the Congress, that gather- ing, though temporarily and indefinitely post- poned, will most likely convene, as per resolution adopted, just as soon as the end of the war is sighted, and the belligerent nations are ready to assemble in conference to arrange for a lasting peace when, it is confidently expected, the voice of Israel will effectively be heard with that of other small and oppressed nationalities for the righting of their historic wrongs. What has the coming of the Russian Jew meant to American Israel ? To answer this question best one need but consider what might have happened had the Russian Jewish migration never wended its way to the western hemisphere. Clearly, Amer- ican Jewry would in that case have remained a dwarfed and petrified organism, culturally and spiritually as well as numerically an inferior body. It might have enjoyed a happier existence, might 344 HISTORY OF THE JEWS have been spared much disagreeable notoriety incidental to numbers, might have preserved a more dignified exterior, and might even have at- tained an enviable place in the economy of the larger American life. Jewishly, however, it would have been infinitely the poorer, the ties binding it to the rest of the Jewish world would, in course of time, have become weakened, its Jewish com- plexion would have grown paler, until, with the passing of the years, it would have dwindled down to the insignificant position now held by the Jews of Scandinavia. The Russian Jew has brought with him much that is homely and unlovable, but also much that has enriched American Jewish life beyond all estimation. He has brought with him the healthy unrest which makes for progress and enlargement, a limitless courage and an un- flagging determination to succeed despite all ob- stacles and handicaps. From the lowest depths of obscurity he has steadily risen until to-day he ranks as a power to be reckoned with in the pro- fessions, the industries, and the political parties. But above and beyond all estimate is his contribu- tion to the spiritual life of the American Jew. Here his love and enthusiasm for the old faith and for the literary treasures it has given rise to, have created possibilities for the upbuilding and development of a Judaism dignified, virile and ennobling, whose effect is certain to be felt in the ranks of both the ultra-orthodox and the radical Reformers. His is still the transitory stage from the old to the new life, but, whatever the short- comings of the present generation, his children will show themselves worthy of the "Land of Promise" upon the heritage of which they have already besrun to enter. This historical review will not b complete with- out at least touching upon the new Jewish life which in the last two or three generations has begun to sprout in places hitherto unkown, name- ly, in the far-away English colonies of Australia, Africa and other continents. These settlements are still as limited in the number of their in- habitants as they are young in age, nor is there much likelihood that they will ever develop into very large communities, far removed as they are* from the great centres of Europe and America to make a general migration there desirable for the Jews. Yet with the limitations thus imposed upon them these new settlements have been highly suc- cessful from every consideration, and they bid fair to remain the standard-bearers of a healthy, progressive and withal traditionally loyal Judaism for many generations to come. The fortunate circumstance, that these new Jewish settlements are placed within territory under English dominion, has greatly favored the newcomers in enabling them to obtain a secure economic foothold and at the same time in en- couraging their Jewish loyalty. England's un- paralleled success as a colonizer reacted also upon the Jews who were willing to leave their native 345 346 HISTORY OF THE JEWS homes in Europe and to follow the British flag 1 to far-away climes. Wherever they went they re- ceived brotherly treatment and were afforded all industrial and political opportunities, w r ith the result that many of them soon grew wealthy and not a few rose in the political scale and attained to the very highest offices. The Antisemitism which late in the nineteenth century was making itself felt in the British Isles found but a faint echo in these distant colonies for the obvious rea- son that the number of Jewish settlers \vas at all times very limited, and the sparseness of the gen- eral population tended to raise the value of all man-material of whatever origin, aside front the fact that English-speaking people evej^where have always evinced a greater friendliness for the Jew than other Christian nations, and have made his stay in their midst a welcome one. Beginning the story of English colonial Jewry with Australia we find that the Jewish settlement of the continent is scarcely more than a hundred years old, in 1817 there being but a handful of Jews in Sydney, New South Wales. As in so many other Jewish com- munities the beginnings of the Sydney congre- gation centered about the cemetery which the Jews acquired there in 1820, it being a part of the Christian cemetery. Divine services, how- ever, were not held till 1828, when the members of the already enlarged congregation assembled for worship in the home of one of their number. The spiritual growth of the community followed the numerical increase of the Jews and was at- tended by the building of synagogues and the founding of charitable institutions, under the guid- ance of several able and devoted ministers who were sent there by the Chief Rabbi of England. The Jews of Sydney to-day are still scarcely more than five thousand in number out of a general COLONIAL JEWRY 347 population of pearly half a million, yet they boast of a synagogue which, architecturally, is said to be the handsomest structure on the Australian continent. In Melbourne, the capital of the Victoria prov- ince, a congregation was not formed till 1844, and the first synagogue was built three years later upon land granted for the purpose by the government. It had as its first rabbi the Rev- erend Moses Rintel, who was evidently a man of strong personality, as may be judged by the fact that, when a difference of opinion arose betweeii himself and the administrators of the congrega- tion, in 1858, he resigned his office and founded an independent congregation where he continued to minister until his death in 1880. It was one exceptional case where division made for strength, for the rivalry thus engendered between the two congregations led to an increased interest in Jew- ish matters on the part of the laymen, and Mel- bourne in course of time became the strongest and most active Jewish centre in Australia. As a part of this community is also the settlement of St. Kilda, a suburb of Melbourne, where a con- gregation was organized some fifty years ago and a synagogue was built in 1872, and where are located the charitable institutions of the greater Jewish community. Melbourne, too, is supposedly under the spiritual jurisdiction of the London Chief Rabbinate. The problem of intermarriage, an object of concern and worry to most of modern Jewish communities in Europe and America, has evidently reached an acute stage in Melbourne, having necessitated the formation of a special federated board, representing all of the existing congregations, to grapple with it. Other Australian congregations to be formed, not all of which have continued to exist, were 348 HISTORY OF THE JEWS those of Geelong, Bendigo and IJallarat, in the Victoria province (1853), in Adelaide, South Aus- tralia (1781), Brisbane, Queensland (1865), Mait- land, New South Wales (1879), and Perth, West Australia (1892). Notwithstanding the smallness of their number, only about twenty thousand out of a population of nearly four million, the Jews of Australia have made great headway in com- merce and many of them have attained to high offices in the municipal and continental govern- ments. The first Mayor of Narrabi was a Jew from Sydney, Charles Collins, who later also sat in the Australian Parliament. L. \Y. Levy was a member of the Legislative Council in 1882, as was also J. G. Raphael, after whom several streets in Sydney are named, and J. J. Cohen. Samuel Cohen was the first Jew to sit in the New South Wales Parliament, Sir Saul Samuel, Bart., was agent-general for Australia, Sir Julian Salomons, K. C, was for a time chief justice of the colony, and H. E. Cohen served as a justice of the New South Wales Supreme Court. Edward Cohen was thrice elected Mayor of Melbourne, while I. A. Isaacs was Attorney-General of Victoria from 1894-1899 at the same time as his brother, J. I. Isaacs, was a member of Parliament. Other Jews prominent in public life in various capacities in Australia were H. Steinfeld, Joseph Steinberg, F. J. Levien, Theo. Fink, B. J. Fink and D. B. Lazarus. The Premiership of Australia, the high- est office attainable, was in 1899 likewise held by a Jew, V. L. Solomon. Indeed, the very founding of the colony is traced, among others, to Jacob Montefiore, a cousin of Sir Moses Montefiore, he having been selected by the British Government in 1835 to administer its affairs as a member of the first Board of Commissioners. Another Aus- tralian pioneer was Barnett Levy who, in 1833, COLONIAL JEWRY 349 opened the first theatre to be established on the continent. In New Zealand, too, the Jews, though less than two thousand in number, and though of but very recent origin, have come to occupy places of distinction in the government of the islands. With a settlement whose foundation dates back only to the seventies of the last century, New Zealand Jewry has none the less produced a number of prominent leaders in Jewish and general com- munal affairs. The most prominent of these was Sir Julius Yogel who was Premier of New Zea- land from 1874 to 1876 and at other times served as colonial treasurer, commissioner for stamps and customs, and postmaster-general. Many pub- lic improvements and innovations in the colony were due to his enterprise and energy. When the renewal of the persecutions of the Jews of Rus- sia took place in 1891, the New Zealand Parlia- ment sent a petition to Czar Alexander III in be- half of the victims. But the lustre of this praise- worthy act was dimmed two years later when, fearful of the diversion of a large Jewish immi- gration from Russia to New Zealand, and acting under the influence of the anti-immigration propa- ganda which was then agitating England, the New Zealanders took steps to bar the gates of their country against the rumored invasion. It is evidently much easier to be humane and charitable at a distance than at home. It took the earnest assurance of Dr. Adler, the Chief Rabbi of Eng- land, that no such wholesale immigration had been contemplated, to calm the easily-aroused but other- wise good-natured islanders, and the ghost of a Jewish "invasion" of New Zealand was laid pre- sumably for all time to come. Of far greater importance in Jewish life both industrially and politically than the combined 350 HISTORY OF THE JEWS settlements of Australia and New Zealand, is the extensive Jewish colony of South Africa which dates back to the first quarter of the nineteenth century, and to-day numbers about fifty thousand souls in all of the various provinces. No organized Jewish life was known in South Africa until 1841 when a congregation was founded in Cape Town, holding its first serv- ices at the home of Benjamin Norden. The growth of the Jewish population keeping pace with that of the general community, more congrega- tions sprang up and more synagogues were built, totalling four synagogues for Cape Town in 1905, with A. P. Bender as the leading rabbi of the community. Synagogues to-day exist also in Worcester Road, Robertson, Steytlersville, Oudt- shorn, Port Elizabeth, Kimberley; in Natal, where congregations have been formed in Moritsburg, Durban, and Vreyheid; in the Orange Free State with a congregation at Bloemfontein; and in the Transvaal, where the largest South African Jew- ish settlement exists with the principal Jewish community located at Johannesburg, numbering more than ten thousand souls. Jews came to Johannesburg immediately upon the discovery of the gold-fields of Witwatersrand in 1885, and two years later organized the first congregation of the city which has been successfully ministered to by Rabbis Mark L. Harris and Joseph H. Hertz, now the Chief Rabbi of the Ashkenazic community in London. A new congregation was formed in 1891, called the "J onannes kurg Hebrew Congre- gation," which was favored by the Transvaal government with a grant of land for a synagogue. When completed the building was dedicated by Oom Paul Kruger, the president of the Republic. The present incumbent of this congregation is Dr. J. L. Landau, who, before coming to South COLONIAL JEWRY 351 Africa, had won fame as a Hebrew poet and prose writer in Austria. Jewish religious life assumed an organized form also in Pretoria, where there is a population of more than a thousand souls, in Heidelberg, Volks- rust, Krugersdorp, Klerksdorp, Germiston, Roode- poort, and in several places in Rhodesia. The in- flux of many Jews from Eastern Europe has, as in other countries, brought new life and activity in Jewish affairs, resulting in the formation of Zionist groups and in the introduction of a more vigorous pursuit of the study of Hebrew. Jews are spoken of as among the leading factors in the industrial development of the Cape Colony. The mohair industry was introduced in 1856 by the three Mosenthals, Julius, Adolph and James. Namaqualand was opened up by Aaron and Daniel de Pass who, from 1849 to 1886, were the largest shipowners of Cape Town and con- trolled the sealing, whaling and fishing indus- tries, while ostrich-farming was introduced in the Aberdeen District by Joel Myers. In the diamond mining industry, too, Jews have taken a most prominent part. An almost romantic history is that of "Barney Barnato" (Barnett Isaacs), a poor boy from London's East End ghetto, who emigrated to Cape Town in 1873, became a suc- cessful actor, engaged in diamond mining, and in a short time was a leading diamond mining oper- ator in the Kimberley district, for a time even rivalling Cecil Rhodes w^ho operated the De Beers mining fields until the two amalgamated their in- terests in the Kimberley Central Company. Un- fortunately for himself, Barnato did not know how to conserve his wealth when in possession of it; he became a reckless speculator in numerous enterprises with the result that his wealth soon melted away and from a fortune reputed at one 35 2 HISTORY OF THE JEWS time to be $85,000,000, he was reduced to the comparatively small amount of $3,000,000 at the time of his death at the age of forty-five. Suc- cumbing to the terrific mental strain under which he was laboring, Barnato, in June of 1897, jumped overboard from the steamer on which he was returning to England, the victim of his own colossal achievements. His body was re- covered and conveyed to London for burial. South African Jews also took a prominent part m the political events of the country, fighting in all of the wars, and sharing in the administration of the various provinces. We see them as mem- bers of parliament, judges of the supreme court and mayors of municipalities. Many years before Natal was annexed by the British it was, in 1828, penetrated by a Jew, Nathaniel Isaacs, who was received kindly by Tchaka, the ruler of the land, who honored him with the designation of "Prin- cipal Chief." A rather gloomy chapter of Jewish history in South Africa was the period of reaction in the Transvaal in the last decade of the nine- teenth century when Jews as well as Catholics were debarred from military commissions, and from nearly all of the higher offices in govern- ment. Public schools were likewise closed to Jew- ish and Catholic children and teachers, and when, in 1899, the franchise was extended to all the in- habitants of the country, Jews from Russia and Roumania were singled out for exclusion from its benefits. For daring to protest at a public meet- ing against this injustice, the Rev. Dr. Joseph H. Hertz, then rabbi of Johannesburg, was expelled from the country (December, 1899). When the Boer War broke out (1899) Jews were found fighting on both sides, nearly 2800 of them being in the ranks of the British. The cessation of hos- tilities came about in no small measure through COLONIAL JEWRY 353 the influence of one of the leading merchants and wealthiest men of the Traansvaal, Samuel Marks, a one-time Russian immigrant, who used his friendship with President Kruger and his influ- ence with the leaders of both the English and Boer forces to bring about the peace of 1902. Reference must here be made also to the ab- original Jews of other African colonies, about whom clusters the tradition of having descended from the ten lost tribes, the ten to fifteen thou- sand Jews of Morocco still pining under the yoke of Mohammedan intolerance and misrule, of the Jews of Yemen (Teman) in Arabia, some of whom early in the present century fled from the tyranny of their native land and went to Palestine where they became a sturdy and valuable peas- antry, and the several thousand Falashas in Abys- sinia who were on the verge of being lost entirely to Judaism but for the splendid services of Dr. Jacob Faitlovich in the last ten years, he having visited their settlements on several occasions and having procured the necessary funds for their education in Jewish and secular branches. A brighter picture is that presented by the Jews of India where, under the fostering care alike of the British government and the distinguished Sassoon family in the past seventy years, they have been enabled to emerge from the poverty and igno- rance which had been their lot for many centuries. There has not been much of a Jewish migration to India from Europe in the last century, and of the more than twenty thousand Jews of mixed origins about seven thousand belong to the Beni-Israel sec- tion, the majority of whose members live in Bombay and vicinity. These Jews, claiming a his- tory of about eighteen hundred years in India, have produced at least one prominent leader in the per- son of Joseph Ezekiel, a noted author and educator, 354 HISTORY OF THE JEWS principal of the David Sassoon Bene\olent Institu- tion in Bombay, who in 1871 was made examiner in Hebrew at the university of that city. There are a number of charitable institutions and stately- looking synagogues in Bombay, Calcutta and other places, most of which are maintained through the munificence of the Sassoons. CHAPTER VI PALESTINE, THE NATIONALIST REVIVAL, AND THE ZIONIST HOPE We have now reached the last chapter in the re- markable story of a remarkable and peculiar peo- ple. Last in point of time in the period under dis- cussion, it in reality constitutes the first and intro- ductory page in the new volume of history upon the making of which Israel has already entered. Without writing Finis to his tragic and melodra- matic life in the Dispersion, he has already started the Genesis of his new and renewed life in the land that once cradled him as a national unit and a re- ligious community. The nightmare of fiendish per- secution and of mental and moral anguish, lasting for nineteen hundred years, is about to be forgot- ten in the history of the rejuvenation and rebirth of this ancient people, a narrative as thrilling as it is unique in the story-book of the nations. "Thy dead shall live," are words that must in- evitably recur to the writer on historical themes whenever he turns his gaze Eastward, to the land long dominated Erez Yisroel, the land of Israel.. When the legions of Titus overran Judea in the year 70 C. E., laying Jerusalem waste, burning the Temple, and driving the Jews before the tyrant's war-chariot as he returned to Imperial Rome crowned with a victor's laurels, little did the Ro- 355 356 HISTORY OF THE JEWS mans dream that the small people whose national- ity they had just crushed would live to see a better day, surviving- even their own proud and all-pow- erful empire that from the banks of the Tiber had cast her rule over nations and races in the remotest parts of the world. Israel was indeed uprooted from his native soil, and the peoples among- whom his sons and daughters were thrown tried their ut- most to slay the soul along with the body of the Jew. In this they failed, and mere separation from his father's soil did not cause the Jew to forget Jerusalem but rather made him long for Zion all the more. In the heated furnace of persecution and suffering Israel was not destroyed and, as if by miracle, the land he once called his own also remained intact and safe, the temporary possession of many nations but the permanent heritage of none. Throughout the centuries Palestine contin- ued as the land without a people while exiled Israel was ever conscious of being a people without a land, and across the oceans and deserts which sep- arated them these two, the land which once was Israel's and the people long expatriated, kept cast- ing longing glances at each other, ever hopeful of the final coming of the day of reunion. At last, when faith grew weakest and hope was all but in its last nicker, The Day arrived in the wake of the greatest and bloodiest of all recorded wars. To the generation of our day, to whom the doubts of the present are sweeter than were to its fathers the loyalty and the faith of the past, it has strange- ly been vouchsafed to behold the dawn of the re- demption for which countless generations of the past had prayed and pleaded in vain. The return of Israel to Palestine as an independent, self-gov- erning nation, now made possible by the solemn promise of the powerful British government, the reunion of body (the land) and soul (the people) NATIONALIST REVIVAL AND ZIONISM 357 whose separation for nearly two thousand years had made both alike dead to themselves and to the world, is one of the miracles which comes to us in the wake of the nations' bloody contest strangely chosen by God as the instrument of His will in the world. Both gentiles and Jews have willed it that Pal- estine shall never pass out of Jewish memory as the one land in the world to which the Jew may look as inalienably his own. The former brought this about by their inhuman persecution of the Jews, which had the effect of constantly reminding the latter of the precariousness of their lot, and strengthened their solidarity as a people forced to "dwell apart"; and a Jewish restoration in Pales- tine was always within the realm of possibility so long as Israel remained a political or a social pa- riah among the nations of the earth. It meant that Jews, many of them, would go back to the ancient land, first as unwelcome guests but ultimately with the approval of its temporary masters and the other nations, thus laying the foundation of a new and extensive Jewish settlement to be reckoned with in course of time. Indeed, it was persecution which brought to the ancient land its repeated waves oi Jewish immigration, small as these waves were at any and all times prior to the latest colonization movement. It is not improbable that, but for the great political and economic distress of the Jews of Russia and Roumania and for the festering sore of Antisemitism in Central and Western Europe, there might have been no Palestinian colonization in our day, Theodore Herzl might never have written his "Judenstaat," and modern Zionism might never have seen the light of day. As a romantic dream, however, aside from the pressing problems of the times which drove the Jews to thinking of Palestine as a last asylum, the 358 HISTORY OF THE JEWS ideal of a Jewish restoration in the Holy Land, whether by miraculous divine intervention, or through self-help, has always enlivened the hearts of the Jews and sometimes those of non-Jews as well. In Jewish theological thought this hope of a restoration became a dogma, centering about the belief of the "Coming of the Messiah," and finding its expression in the prayer book and in innumer- able works by rabbis and lay-scholars. It fired the imagination and stimulated the "love of Zion" in the hearts of the great Jewish dreamers of the centuries, as illustrated by the passionate poetical outpourings of Jehuda Halevi, and the journey to Palestine in the thirteenth century of the famous Rabbi Moses Ben Nahman (Nahmanides) result- ing in the re-establishment of Jewish communities in Jerusalem and other places. It gave rise to pseudo-Messiahs like Sabbathai-Zevi and to an in- tensified study of cabalistic mysticism which in the seventeenth century found its stronghold in Safed. Without assuming any shape of practicality, the hope of an ultimate Jewish return to the land of the fathers long burned bright in the hearts of Is- rael and for many centuries was probably the great- est factor in keeping alive the sense of union among the Jews of all lands. Again and again it proved an irresistible drawing force to the scattered rem- nants of the race, rich and prominent Jews like the Englishman Montefiore and the Frenchman Cre- mieux gratifying their deep-seated affection by vis- iting the waste cities and contributing to their re- building, while their poorer co-religionists went there to pray, to study and to await the day of death when they would find eternal rest in Zion's sacred soil. So long as orthodox Judaism retained its undisputed sway, Zion, too, the love and the as- piration for it, was supreme in the consciousness of the Jew, remaining the one bright constellation NATIONALIST REVIVAL AND ZIONISM 359 on his darkened horizon. When finally modern- ism began to make inroads upon the old faith, here and there shaking its very foundations, Zion was still to retain its hold upon the soul of the Jew, the sentiment for it remaining the same though the means and methods of attaining it changed in scope and form. Theology gave way to practical consid- erations, the expectation of divine intervention to an appreciation of the value of self-help. Coloni- zation took the place of philanthropy, and where formerly Jews went to Palestine to pray and to die they now went there to live, to labor and to recon- vert the two-thousand-year-old desert into a flour- ishing garden. Soon this, too, was to assume a broader aspect. Statesmanship supplanted back- door politics, the narrow programme of agricul- tural settlements was replaced by that of a legally recognized Jewish home-land. Political Zionism finally appears as the clear and finite goal of what for two thousand years had been but an undefined, though fervent and unquenchable, hope. For now it is Jewish Nationalism which comes to the fore as chief among the factors justifying and making possible the existence of the Jew as such. The idea of a Jewish race and nation had never, during eighteen hundred years of the Dis- persion, been called into question. It was taken for granted by the Christian and Mohammedan worlds alike, and remained unquestioned by the Jews themselves. They felt that they were dis- tinct from others, both by religious tradition and racial aspiration, mere sojourners, if not strangers, in the lands of their habitation to which they were politically subject but in which they formed a separate and homogeneous part. The persecutions heaped upon them by the gentiles only served to intensify this feeling. Europe remained but a land of Galut (exile) to the Jews, their po- 360 HISTORY OF THE JEWS litical bondage being a galling yoke from which the Almighty in his own good time would assuredly deliver them. Under the prevailing conditions there had been no need and there could be no de- sire for a definition of this all-pervading sense of nationality. The turning point of this question came for the Jew with the French Revolution which resulted in the initial emancipation of the Jews in France and other lands. Placed upon an almost equal political footing with their non-Jewish fel- lows, the question of their exact status at once presented itself to the Jews. The partial lightening of the yoke -inspired the hope of an ultimate com- plete removal of disabilities when the Jew would be made the peer of the gentile. But to make this attainable the Jew must cease feeling and acting the exotic. Religion alone must determine his dis- tinctiveness in the community, race and nationality with all their corollaries and implications must go by the board. This new attitude of many Jews first became evident in the answer given by the French Jews in the Sanhedrin convened by Napoleon in 1807. Called upon to defend the Jewish religion and knowing that their political status in the world depended upon their declarations, those Jews nat- urally were constrained to extreme guardedness in their statements. They, however, had let a great historic moment pass by without making it clear once and for all time that the Jews, though loyal subjects and citizens of the land of their sojourn, are nevertheless a race with national hopes of their own such as indeed Judaism has never ceased to inspire. This stand of the French Jews of more than one hundred years ago is one of the moral tragedies of the Jewish people as it has since then determined the attitude of all Jews who, for the mess of pottage of personal advantage, are ready to throw aside their nationalism as something an- NATIONALIST REVIVAL AND ZIONISM 361 achronistic and hindering to Jewish material wel- fare. However, this disparity between religious doc- trine and worldly advantage, distasteful as it really was to the inherent honesty of the true and loyal Jew, took time in maturing and becoming the pre- vailing policy of a considerable number of the peo- ple. For a long time the old and deeply indwell- ing race sentiment held forth despite the new doc- trine of the political utilitarians, and every now r and then it cropped up in some new preachment or act calculated to give body to the century-old hope. In 1825 it found expression in the chimerical plan of a prominent if impractical American Jew, Mor- decai Manuel Noah, sheriff, surveyor of the port of New York, ex-consul to Tunis, editor, play- wright and author of a book of travels. A native of Philadelphia, a truly free-born American with- out ever having borne the brunt of Jewish suffer- ing, Noah nevertheless experienced the responsibil- ity which was his toward his persecuted brethren. Was it a case of atavism, the springing up afresh of an old Jewish sentiment in a distant corner of the earth where it could least be expected? Most likely the orthodox faith which clung to Noah as a member of the Portuguese congregation in New York was responsible for the stirring of the old memories and the revival of ancient hopes. In the course of his travels in Europe and Africa Noah was made an eye-witness to the tragedy of his peo- ple. The anomalous position of the Jews struck him, the free and liberal-minded American Jew, as the greatest injustice of the ages, and he took upon himself the task of saving his race from the de- struction for which he saw it headed. He realized that Palestine was the one hope of the Jew, yet he knew that because of both its political and economic condition, that land was not yet ready to receive 362 HISTORY OF THE JEWS its exiled children. A temporary refuge, a sort of Nachtasyl (night asylum) was therefore impera- tive, and for this no country could serve the pur- pose better than America. He accordingly went to work to establish a "Jewish State" at Grand Island, near the city of Buffalo, in the State of New York. The work of but one man, be he ever so great and capable, without the consultation of the people at whose welfare he was aiming, with no basis of practicality upon which to build, Noah's scheme was doomed to failure from its birth. "Ararat" was a thing of monumental folly and a natural re- sult of a temperament given to hazy planning and day-dreaming. From the romantic standpoint, how- ever, it was one more illustration of the deathless- ness of a noble hope which for Israel contained the very elixir of life from the time the oath not to forget Jerusalem had been taken at Babylon's rivers by the exiles of Judea. His failure as "Judge" and governor of the new Jewish "State" did not, however, dampen his ardor, but rather served to place him in the more logical path of di- rect advocacy of a Jewish return to Palestine with the sanction and even assistance of the Christian powers. It was in 1844 that Noah delivered in New York his memorable "Discourse on the Restora- tion of the Jews" which he later published in pam- phlet form, and in which he makes a fervent appeal to the nations of the world to undo the wrong the Jew had suffered at their hands, by assisting in his political restoration. Speaking as a statesman and basing his arguments on the international situa- tion of his day, he says: "The political events in Syria, Egypt, Turkey and Russia indicate the ap- proach of great' and important revolutions, which may facilitate the return of the Je\vs to Jerusalem, and the organization of a powerful government in Judea, and lead to that millennium which we all NATIONALIST REVIVAL AND ZIONISM 363 look for, all hope for, all pray for." He also re- minds the Christians that it is in the interest of their religion to have Palestine, the birthplace of Jesus and the Apostles, become a Jewish state again. In France, too, as early as 1798, an anonymous Jewish writer makes a stirring appeal to his co-re- ligionists the world over to unite in a petition to the French government to secure Palestine for its rightful historic owners, an argument which seems to have produced some effect on Napoleon who, in the following year, issued a proclamation to the Jews of Asia and Africa to place themselves under his banner for a campaign to retake Jerusalem and re-establish it as a Jewish political centre. Shrewd and clear-eyed Napoleon w r as quick to perceive the political effect such a proclamation was bound to have, if not on the Jews of the Orient then, at least, on the Jews of the various European states, with beneficial results to the vast schemes of the con- quest he was planning. A like appeal is made about thirty years later by the eminent French Jew- ish savant, Joseph Salvador, while, under the influ- ence of the same idea, Benjamin Disraeli, whose heart ever remained true to the "rock whence he was hewn," also puts expressions of the wish for restoration in the mouths of a number of his heroes in his "Tancred," "Alroy," arid "Coningsby." The leaven of a conscious nationalism was, how- ever, at work even among those Jews with whom theology as such was beginning to play a minor part. The nineteenth century is pre-eminently the century of nationalistic revival in all lands and the Jew, too, could not escape the effect of this move- ment. The breaking up of the Turkish empire had long been the fervent wish of Christian Europe, and even in England, despite her role as the tradi- tional defender of "the Sick Man of Europe," when 364 HISTORY OF THE JEWS the Greeks revolted against their barbarous Mo- hammedan task masters (1821), none had been more ardent in their support, both morally and actively, than many of the best sons of the Island Kingdom, some of whom, as instanced by Lord Byron, even gave their life for the cause. Not only was Greece made independent (1829) but the foun- dation was laid for the eventual liberation of the other Balkan states. Whatever the real plans of the European statesmen with regard to Turkey, it was inevitable that many Jews, still under the in- fluence of the old teachings though not always fol- lowers of orthodox theology, should harbor the thought that, with the fall of that empire the Jew might once more come into his own in the ancestral land. The continuance of Turkey on the sick-list kept feeding this hope, and the wish became all the more father to the thought with the renewal in a more virulent form of the persecutions of the Jews of Russia and Roumania, when millions of them were suddenly faced with the problem of emigra- tion, the choice being left them of going either West, to free and prosperity-laden America, or East, to the as yet poor and deserted but spiritually rich and even economically promising "Erez Yis- roel." Many of them, in the face of certain pen- ury and privation, chose the latter. Nor did the Christian world remain wholly in- different to this hope of the Jew for rehabilitation in Palestine. Motives both political and theologi- cal played their part in the Christian espousal of the Jewish cause in Palestine. And of all lands in Europe it is England which furnishes the largest number of such Christian Zionist advocates, fore- most among them being Rollings worth who (1852) regarded a Jewish Palestine as the best means of safeguarding the interests of England in India, Sir Laurence Oliphant who, probably from a clan- GEORGE ELIOT NATIONALIST REVIVAL AM) ZIONISM 365 destine hope of proselytism among the Jews, plead- ed for their return to Palestine, himself even going to the length of settling in the Holy Land in order to personally direct the colonization plan he had conceived (1879), and Cazalet, a British Imperial- ist, who, like Hollingsworth, looked upon a Jewish settlement in Palestine as invaluable to the British interests in Syria (1879). Neither Oliphant's nor Cazalet's schemes, though supported by many of their prominent countrymen, could secure the friendly support of the Turkish government, with- out which they could accomplish nothing. Nor was the moral and active support of the Jews them- selves readily forthcoming. The poorer among them, indeed, were ready to emigrate to Palestine despite their want of means wherewith to begin life under the new conditions, but the rich and influen- tial kept aloof from the movement, and the great national and international Jewish bodies were im- movably antagonistic to it. The Christian "Lovers of Zion," baffled by this indifference of the Jews, time and again sought to overcome it, and many of their ablest and noblest writers and philanthro- pists applied themselves to the task of converting the Jew to Zionism with all the skill and ingenuity at their command. Both Alexander Dumas fils, in his play "La Femme de Claude," and George Eliot in her great novel "Daniel Deronda" (published 1876), place in the mouths of their Jewish heroes sentiments calculated to rouse the sympathy and love of the Jew for his own lost heritage. George Eliot's insight into the psychology of the Jew who, for fear of being accused of disloyalty to the land of his birth and political affiliation, is ready to dis- claim any desire for a revival of his great past, thus remaining untrue to himself and to the teach- ings of his faith, is wonderfully portrayed in the words of Mordecai, the most sympathetic charac- 366 HISTORY OF THE JEWS ter of her book. She clearly perceives that in the absence of a national existence it was Judaism alone that kept the Jewish race alive throughout the ages of oppression, but that with the removal of political disability and the weakening of the ties of religion, the continuance and survival of the Jews as a people has become greatly imperilled. The world, however, she tells us, cannot look on with indifference at the death-throes of a people that from time immemorial has leavened and fruc- tified the soil of humanity, and the Jews themselves should not want to disappear as the great moral force they have ever proved. It is in Palestine where, of all lands, the Jew can survive and retain his old ethnic character, bearing out the Talmudic dictum that Israel, his Torah and his land are one and inseparable. It was left to a brilliant Chris- tian woman to remind the Jews of their real place in the world, and to chide the backsliders among them who would flee from their non-escapable duty. The reasoned and impassioned arguments of George Eliot's hero are as unanswerable as they are appealing. Says Mordecai: "I, too, claim to be a rational Jew. But what is it to be rational what is it to feel the light of the divine reason growing stronger within and with- out? It is to see more and more of the hidden bonds that bind and consecrate change as a de- pendent growth yea, consecrate it with kinship; the past becomes my parent and the future stretches toward me the appealing arms of chil- dren. Is it rational to drain away the sap of spe- cial kindred that makes the families of men rich in interchanged wealth, and various as the forests are various with the glory of the cedar and the palm? When it is rational to say, 'I know not my father or my mother, let my children be aliens to me, that no prayer of mine may touch them/ then it will be NATIONALIST REVIVAL AND ZIONISM 367 rational for the Jew to say, 'I will seek to know no difference between me and the gentile, I will not cherish the prophetic consciousness of our nation- ality let the Hebrew cease to be, and let all his memorials be antiquarian trifles, dead as the wall- paintings of a conjectured race/ Yet let his child learn by rote the speech of the Greek, where he adjures his fellow-citizens by the bravery of those who fought foremost at Marathon let him learn to say that was noble in the Greek, that is the spirit of an immortal nation ! But the Jew has no memories that bind him to action; let him laugh that his nation is degraded from a nation; let him hold the monuments of his law which carried with- in its frame the breath of social justice, of charity, and of household sanctities let him hold the en- ergy of the prophets, the patient care of the Mas- ters, the fortitude of martyred generations, as mere stuff for a professorship. The business of the Jew in all things is to be even as the rich gentile." But it is only ignorance that keeps the Jew from a full appreciation of his past glories : "What wonder? The night is unto them, that they have no vision ; in their darkness they are un- able to divine; the sun is gone down over the prophets, and the day is dark about them ; their ob- servances are as nameless relics. But which among the chief of the gentile nations has not an igno- rant multitude? They scorn our people's ignorant observance ; but the most accursed ignorance is that which has no observance sunk to the cunning greed of the fox, to which all law is no more than a trap or the cry of the worrying hound. There is a degradation deep down below the memory that has withered into superstition. In the multitude of the ignorant on three continents who observe our rites and make the confession of the divine Unity, the soul of Judaism is not dead. Revive the or- 368 HISTORY OF THE JEWS game centre : let the unity of Israel which has made the growth and form of its religion be an outward reality. Looking toward a land and a polity, our dispersed people in all the ends of the earth may share the dignity of a national life which has a voice among the peoples of the East and the West which will plant the wisdom and skill of our race so that it may be, as of old, a medium of transmis- sion and understanding. Let that come to pass, and the living warmth will spread to the weak ex- tremities of Israel, and superstition will vanish, not in the lawlessness of the renegade, but in the illu- mination of great facts which widen feeling and make all knowledge alive as the young offspring of beloved memories." The fulfillment of the Jew's real destiny in the world will come only through his national resurrec- tion which the Jews must themselves bring about: "I say that the effect of our separateness will not be completed and have its highest transforma- tion unless our race takes on again the character of a nationality. That is the fulfillment of the re- ligious trust that moulded them into a people, whose life has made half the inspiration of the world. What is it to me that the ten tribes are lost un- traceably, or that multitudes of the children of Judah have mixed themselves with the gentile pop- ulations as a river with rivers? Behold our people still! Their skirts are spread afar; they are torn and soiled and trodden on; but there is a jewelled breastplate. Let the wealthy men, the monarchs of commerce, the learned in all knowledge, the skilful in all arts, the speakers, the political counselors, who carry in their veins the Hebrew blood which has maintained its vigor in all climates, and the pliancy of the Hebrew genius for which difficulty means new device let them say, 'we will lift up a standard, we will unite in a labor hard but glorious NATIONALIST REVIVAL AND ZIONISM 369 like that of Moses and Ezra, a labor which shall be a worthy fruit of the long anguish whereby our fathers maintained their separateness, refusing the ease of falsehood/ They have wealth enough to redeem the soil from debauched and paupered con- querors ; they have the skill of the statesman to de- vise, the tongue of the orator to persuade. And is there no prophet or poet among us to make the ears of Christian Europe tingle with shame at the hideous obloquy of Christian strife which the Turk gazes at as at the fighting of beasts to which he has lent an arena? There is store of wisdom among us to found a new Jewish polity, grand, sim- ple, just, like the old a republic where there is equality of protection, an equality which shone like a star on the forehead of our ancient community, and gave it more than the brightness of Western freedom and the despotisms of the East. Then our race shall have an organic centre, a heart and brain to watch and guide and execute; the out- raged Jew shall have a defense in the court of na- tions, as the outraged Englishman of America. And the world will gain as Israel gains. For there will be a community in the van of the East which carries the culture and the sympathies of every great nation in its bosom : there will be a land set for a halting place of enmities, a neutral ground for the East as Belgium is for the West. Diffi- culties? I know there are difficulties. But let the spirit of sublime achievement move in the great among our people, and the work will begin." Yet even this wonderful appeal of England's greatest woman writer fell on deaf ears among the smug and self-seeking Jews of England as of other Western lands who remained too deeply engrossed with their newly-acquired emancipation, and too short-sighted to see the coming of the fast-moving storm. Here and there some noble Jewish soul 37O HISTORY OF THE JEWS would be stirred to thinking. "Are the Jews still a people," asks Professor David Kaufmann (in his essay on "George Eliot and Judaism"), "a sickly body, indeed, but one to whom youth and health may return, or a bleached and scattered heap of bones? Are these bones destined ever again to live and move ?" Upon the mass of Western Jew- ry, however, her words had no immediate effect, and George Eliot died (1880) without the satisfac- tion of seeing her preachment take root in the hearts of her Jewish countrymen. A time there came, however, but a few years after her remark- able diagnosis and prognostication, when her words stood out in a new light even before many of the Jews of the West. The change came in the wake of the disastrous anti-Jewish riots in Russia of 1881-1882. We shall here consider one by one the several heroic figures to whose teaching and activity Zion- ism is indebted for its progress, unfoldment and final success as the greatest of all movements in Jewish history. If the army of the Jewish nation- alists was to come mostly from the East, its leader- ship was in nearly every instance a product of the West. From the general apathy which obsessed Western Jewry in the matter of a Jewish restora- tion in Palestine there remained immune a few choice spirits, some of whom were destined to be- come the fathers and pioneers of the movement in its various and successive stages. Standing out foremost among these were Samuel David Luz- zatto, the renowned scholar and professor at the rabbinical school at Padua who, in 1854, stated that "Palestine must be peopled by Jews and tilled by them, so that it may flourish economically and agriculturally, and take on beauty and glory"; Rabbi Judah Alkalai (died 18/8) of Semlin, Croa- tia, who wrote "Goral la-Adonoy" ("A Lot for the NATIONALIST REVIVAL AND ZIONISM Lord," Vienna, 1857) and other works, containing several practical suggestions for the resettlement of Palestine; Zebi Hirsch Kalischer (1795-1874), the eminent rabbi of Thorn, Prussia, who, amidst his arduous rabbinical duties and profound Tal- mudical studies, found time to write a little book in Hebrew, "Derishat Ziyyon" (Lyck, 1862), which became the elementary text-book of the Zionist ideal; and Moses Hess (1812-1875), the noted Ger- man editor and Social-Democrat, of whom more will be said here presently. Of the men thus men- tioned Alkalai was the first among orthodox rabbis to regard the Jewish return to Palestine as a prac- tical thing subject only to the will of the Jews them- selves. The Jews should, namely, unite into a sort of stock-company, like a steamship or railroad trust, thereby acquiring the means to induce the Sultan to cede Palestine as a tributary land like other lands similarly controlled by him. But where Alkalai's plan never emerged from the theoretical stage, Kalischer's suggestion proved more prac- tical and enlisted the support of many prominent Jews. His plan was, namely, the colonization of Palestine on a vast scale by sending there the poor Jews of Eastern Europe to engage in agriculture along with the indigent Jews already resident there, thus saving the latter from the indignity of living on the halukkah charity and at the same time re- deeming the waste land from its enforced idleness. Already in a previous work, "Emunah Yesharah" (A Straight Faith), published in 1860, Kalischer expresses ideas which, coming from a strictly or- thodox rabbi, were startling for their modernity and their radical departure from the accepted views on the Messiah and God's plans for Israel. The "Derishat Ziyyon" is a logical complement to the other work, insisting as it does on self-help not 37 2 HISTORY OF THE JEWS merely as the only hope of the Jew but as being even mandatory and imperative from the religious point of view. True to his convictions, Kalischer, despite his advanced age, visited many cities in Germany where he advocated his pet scheme, and under the influence of his eloquent pleading many colonization societies were founded, the first being the one formed in 1861 in Frankfort-on-the-Main. One result of his agitation was the establishment of a colony near the Sea of Tiberias which, how- ever, was short-lived. But a far more important result of his work was to ensue. For it was under the influence of his ideas that the leaders of the Alliance Israelite Universelle, notably Charles Net- ter and Albert Cohn, began to show a greater in- terest in the condition of the Jews of the Orient and, in 1870, founded near the city of Jaffa the "Mikveh Israel Agricultural School" which, for a time at least, performed noble services to the cause of colonization, though it did not, on the whole, fulfill the hopes placed in it by the Jewish commu- nity of Eastern Europe. Yet the greatest service performed by Kalischer to the nationalist cause was in the impetus his preachment gave to Moses Hess for the inculcation of his own ideas on the same question. Hess was himself a romantic figure in Jewish life, an adven- turer in international problems, a rolling-stone in idealism, in turn Liberal, Social-Democrat and Anarchist in politics, an opponent of religious re- forms though himself a non-conformist to the Or- thodoxy he defended, a man of irregular education yet a profound student of philosophy and political economy, a trenchant writer and, in his day, one of the ablest of editors and journalists in Germany. Though possessed of a good rabbinical education he, for a time, remained aloof from his people and religion until brought back to the Jewish fold both NATIONALIST REVIVAL AND ZIONISM 373 from the recognition of his people's part in the up- building of the moral world and from a profound sense of justice for all the oppressed races of the earth. It was the latter which turned Hess, the cosmopolitan and world-citizen, into the ardent Jewish Nationalist whose "Rome and Jerusalem" ("Rom und Jerusalem," Leipsic, 1862), written under the influence of Kalischer's works, has be- come the great classic of Zionist literature. Writ- ten in the form of letters, the book produced in the camp of the nationalists an impression not unlike that of Samson Raphael Hirsch's "Nineteen Let- ters" amon^" the orthodox Jews. Hess's book, too, is poetical in thought, if not in form, and the ideas it expresses and advocates are supported by a vast store of historical, theological and philosophical in- formation. A follower of Spinoza, whom he quotes, he applies the latter's teachings on the im- mortality of the soul to the Jews as a nation. Be- fore the annihilation of Israel's national existence, he tells us, Jewish teaching is silent on the question of eschatology. It is only with the dispersion that the rabbis began to inculcate their doctrine of life after death which, however, became intertwined and identical with the teaching on the coming of the Messiah and its implication of a Jewish na- tional resurrection. The Jews, in other words, can be destroyed as a race neither by suicide nor through outside agencies. With bitter and poign- ant humor Hess ridicules those so-called "progres- sive" German Jews who deny that the Jews still form a racial entity, and are eager to obliterate all traces of their physiological Jewish type. Unfor- tunately for them, this Jewish type is indestructible and naught will avail to smoothen the curly hair of the Jew or to straighten his nose. These Jewish assimilationists have turned their back upon their people, and have gone to the length of outdoing 374 HISTORY OF THE JEWS the Christian Germans in their Teutomania mere- ly out of the selfish hope of safeguarding thereby their political emancipation. They have aban- doned their ancient fatherland for the new one from the viewpoint of the old Roman proverb: "Ubi bene, ibi patria" (my fatherland is there where I fare well). Their reptilian attitude, how- ever, has not helped them any, for still the Ger- mans condemn them and their race, and the cry of "Hep, Hep," is still heard in the streets of Ger- man cities as before. To gain the respect of their gentile neighbors the Jews must first learn to re- spect themselves by cherishing their past national glories. Reform in Judaism, that Reform which, in its German pattern, was merely a bid for civil and political emancipation, is for Hess a special ob- ject of scorn and derision. The Jewish Reform- ers have converted Judaism into a humanistic cult scarcely distinguishable from Free Masonry. Na- tionalism properly conceived and construed is not inimical to humanity but rather an aid to it, for it gives every racial and nationalistic entity its one supreme chance to contribute to the perfection of the human race as a whole. What England is in the domain of commerce and industry, France in the world of social sympathies, Ger- many in the sphere of philosophy, America in the realm of universal peace as the great refuge of various races living harmoniously side by side- that Israel must once again accomplish in its own peculiar domain, that of the spirit, provided it is once more rehabilitated in its national life in Pal- estine. Nationalism is therefore preferable to political emancipation which, at its best, is none too secure for the Jew and between the two the Jew can have but one choice. The decline of the Ottoman empire and the weakening of the po- MOSES HESS (1812-1875) NATIONALIST REVIVAL AND ZIONISM 375 litical influence of the Pope make the chances of the Jew for the fulfillment of his ancient hopes the brightest in all his history. Touching and rhapsodical as were the argu- ments of Hess and his plea for an organized col- onization in Palestine, his book in its day in- fluenced neither the great multitudes of the East- ern Jews, probably because of its highly idiomatic German style, nor even the German Jews, who, as was not unexpected, betook themselves sceptically to his preachment. It did, however, lend encour- agement to a small band of idealists already in sympathy with the cause, men like David Gordon, editor of "Ha-Maggid" in Lyck, and Elijah Gutt- macher, even as it spurred Hirsch Kalischer him- self to an active propaganda of the plans he had advocated before the advent of Hess. Its greatest usefulness, however, was attained in the effect it produced upon the great Jewish historian, Hein- rich Graetz who, in 1864, wrote an essay on "The Rejuvenation of the Jewish Race," comparing the position of the Jews in Europe with that of the dry bones in the vision of Ezekiel. It was still many years before the Zionist ideal could emerge from its theoretical stage to assume tangible pro- portions. So long as Israel in Western Europe continued to hug the dream of political equality and economic security not only for themselves but even for their Russian and Roumanian co- religionists, there was little likelihood of the Zion- ist hope becoming the possession of any except the visionaries of whom Israel always had not a few but who, for the most part, were without in- fluence and the far-sighted leaders, who, while able and accurate diagnosticians of their people's malady, were still too few in number to be able to sway the Jewish multitudes. Zionism 'could 376 HISTORY OF THE JEWS become an actuality in Jewish life only by external pressure. The new blood-covenant by which Israel was once again to renew his allegiance to his national ideal was not long in coming. The shattering of the hope of equality and full emancipation came with the formation of the Christian Socialist party in Germany, which, as already pointed out in a preceding chapter, with the backing of Bismarck and the Imperial government, was a movement di- rected in the main against the liberal movement where the Jews had been very active, and which seized upon the ever latent anti-Jewish feeling as a means to further its own ends. A wave of reaction against the Jews struck the Western part of the continent, and soon made itself felt in Eastern Europe. In Roumania the government failed to live up to the promise exacted from her by Dis- raeli to enfranchise her Jews as part of the con- dition by which she was to receive her full inde- pendence, and the replacement of Lord Beacons- field by Gladstone as Premier of England (1880) resulted in the Treaty of Berlin becoming a dead letter in so far as the Jews were concerned. The ever precarious situation of the Jews of Russia grew worse toward the close of the reign of Alexander II, and the accession to the throne of Alexander III unleashed the evil forces of the em- pire for their work of horror. Soon Jewish blood flowed freely in the streets of many large Rus- sian cities and hundreds of thousands of men and women, driven from their homes, destitute and starving, were forced to take to the wanderer's staff. To the majority of these unfortunates America became the great goal, and thither they hied as to the one place of refuge where security and freedom were still to be found. On their way to the New World these refugees passed through NATIONALIST REVIVAL AND ZIONISM 377 German and Austrian cities, many of them going also by way of French, Belgian, Dutch and Eng- lish ports of embarkation. The Jews of Western Europe were thus made eye-witnesses to the misery of their brethren; perhaps not a few of them felt that the sorely-afflicted Russian Jews were but the vicarious atonement for their own comparative safety and peace, and the fear must have stolen into their hearts that what was pos- sible in Russia might not, after all, be impossible in their own countries. It was a rude awakening from a most pleasant dream, yet it was a shock necessary for the restoration of the Jew's sense of equilibrium and his recovery from the opiate of a pseudo-freedom of which he had partaken al- together too freely. Commiseration with their hapless co-religionists meant also the strengthen- ing of Jewish solidarity, and perhaps for the first time in many an age Jews of many lands felt themselves truly united. The philanthropic aid so liberally given to the pogrom-hunted Jews by German and other co-religionists reacted upon the givers in bringing to them the realization of the historic responsibility of all Jews toward one an- other. In inward feeling, if not exactly in pro- fessed sentiment, these Jews experienced the sense of their common racialism. Mere brothers in faith living in different lands could not have felt to- ward each other the sense of pity and the broth- erly concern which was felt by the Western Jews in the crisis of 1881 and 1882. Nationalism, how- ever, still remained dormant with most of them who lacked the courage to renounce their favorite theory of national unity and homogeneity with the people in whose midst they dwelt. The large na- tionalistic revival was to come mainly from among the stricken Jews themselves who knew that even as their sufferings were inflicted upon them as 3/8 IlfSTORY OF TTITC JEWS members of a certain national group, so their sal- vation and ultimate redemption could come only through national unity and solidarity. The very immigrants going to America in search of a new home carried this conviction with them across the ocean; with those who remained behind it became the leaning staff for their continued existence as Jews. In sentiment, all that was loyal in Russian Jewry was now facing Zionward; in practice this revived nationalism was soon to result in a coloni- zation experiment such as had never before been seen among the Jews throughout their long and eventful history. The story of this colonization is as inspiring in its romantic features as it is important in the his- tory of a great economic and political movement. The first attempt for colonization in Palestine had already been made, in 1878, with the founding of the "Petah Tikvah" colony, in the vicinity of Jaffa, which met with varying degrees of success and for some years had a precarious existence. Ul- timately things took a more favorable turn and to-day it is the largest of all Palestinian colonies. Yet Petah Tikvah was not founded by new-com- ers but by Jews from Jerusalem and other places who had lived in the Holy Land for some years, and it is not therefore included among the re- sults achieved by the new nationalist revival. It is possible that the meagre success of Petah Tikvah in its first years would have discouraged any fur- ther efforts in that direction. The new enthusiasm for Zion and Jerusalem which followed the bloody Russian pogroms, however, heeded no obstacles and disregarded all signs of failure. The major- ity of the Russian "Hobebe Ziyyon" (Lovers of Zion), as they were called, were young men, mostly university students, who organized them- selves into several immigrant groups under the EDMO.ND DE ROTHSCHILD (b. 1845) NATIONALIST REVIVAL AND ZIONISM 379 organization name of B. Y. L. U. (V.) the initials of the Biblical verse Bet Ya'akob Lekhu ve-Nelkho (House of Jacob, Come and Let Us Go). Of these the Kharkov group was the first to get to Palestine and through its efforts the "Rishon le-Ziyyon" (First in Zion) colony was established in 1882. Without any funds, with no proper implements or tools of any sort for their work, these young en- thusiasts threw themselves upon the sacred soil which they broke loose with their bare hands, en- dured all possible hardships, for a long time going without the most elementary necessities of modern life, and displayed a most heroic spirit of the zeal- ous and determined pioneer. In the end they suc- ceeded, though only after a number of them had succumbed to the ravages of disease due to the un- healthy surroundings and. to under-nourishment. To-day this colony is the pride of the entire new Yishub (settlement), and from it have come many of the founders of other colonies. At about the same time other immigrants, like- wise without means, but endowed with unquench- able zeal for the cause, limitless patience and su- preme confidence in their ultimate success, laid the foundation of "Rosh Pinah" (The Chief Cor- ner Stone) in Galilee, "Wadi el-Hanin" or "Nes Ziyyonah" (The Banner Zion ward) in Judea, and "Zikron Ya'akob" (The Memorial of Jacob) colony in Samaria. The latter, named after the father of Baron Edmund de Rothschild of Paris, who now appears on the scene as the Nadib (bene- factor) of the entire colonization enterprise, was settled by refugees from Roumania. Rapidly the number of these colonies grew, scarcely a year passing without seeing one or more founded. Thus was "Yesod ha-Ma'alah" (The Upper Foundation) established in 1883, and "Ekron, or "Mazkeret Bit- ya" and "Ghederah" in 1884. That year also saw 30 HISTORY OF THE JEWS the beginnings of the "Mishmar ha-Yarden" (The Watch on the Jordan). Beer-Tobiyah (The Well of Tobias) was started in 1888, "Rehobot" in 1890, "Ain Zeitun" and "Mozah" in 1891, "Metullah" and "Hartuf" in 1896 and "Mahanayim" in 1899 (by Jews from Galicia). From these colonies mi- nor settlements soon branched out under different names and with separate administrations. Here and there, too, individual settlements were formed by private persons, some of which gradually grew into townlets. Most of these had to go through a period of hard struggle before they could become self-supporting, though nearly all of them were in a nourishing condition at the time of the outbreak of the Great War, the most prosperous of them being Zikron Ya'akob, the favorite colony of Baron Rothschild. It was the latter who insured the success of the Yishub by his unstinted gen- erosity, and to Lawrence Oliphant, the English Christian dreamer and Palestinian pioneer, the credit belongs of having been the first to interest the great philanthropist in the colonization scheme. It is estimated that the sum expended by the Baron in support of the colonies amounted to no less than twenty million dollars. While financial aid was constantly sent to Palestine from "Hobebe Ziyyon" societies and from individuals in many parts of the globe, it is clear that without the support of Rothschild the new colonization, un- dertaken by men without means and mostly lack- ing in all agricultural experience, could not have succeeded. Rothschild not only advanced money to the colonists on the installment payment plan, and at very small interest, but built houses, erected synagogues and other public buildings, secured the latest models of machinery, and built up the wine industry of the country by installing the great wine presses in the large Yekeb (wine store) NATIONALIST REVIVAL AND ZIONISM 381 of Zikron. Other industries, too, were made pos- sible by the initiative of the Baron. Even this boon of Rothschild's favoritism, however, proved a not unmixed blessing, for it served to make the colonists less self-reliant. This, in the end, led the Nadib to transfer his interests in the colonies to the Jewish Colonization Association (the I. C. A.) which introduced new methods and adminis- tered the various settlements in a more scientific manner, thereby greatly enhancing their pros- perity. To these two main factors, the liberality of Baron Rothschild, and the administrative efficiency of the I. C. A. is due the phenomenal success which, despite all the discouragement consequent upon the many difficulties of the earlier years, at- tended the Palestinian colonization in the last dec- ade prior to the outbreak of the war. At the same time one should not lose sight of the very con- siderable material help, and the even greater moral assistance rendered to the cause by the Jewish people at large, principally through the "Hobebe Ziyyon" societies which sprang up through- out Russia, Germany, Galicia, England and the United States. The Syrian colonization fund which had been founded in England by Christians with Lord Shaftesbury at its head, did much to encourage the industrial and agricultural devel- opment among the Jews of Palestine. It was from Russia, how r ever, that the greatest assistance came in the shape both of money and, w r hat is of greater importance, of human material. For of the one hundred thousand Jews who migrated to Palestine in the last forty years, the greatest num- ber came from that country. It was in Russia, too, that the movement Palestineward, far from abating, kept on growing with the passing of the years, thus exercising a moral effect upon the 382 HISTORY OF THE JEWS "Lovers of Zion" in all other lands. The vision- aries and dreamers there were the inspiration of many men of wealth and of practical affairs in the empire, and there were not wanting among them keen-eyed prophets, who could read the signs of the times aright in their prognostication of the Jewish future by means of the Palestinian revival. Two such prominent Russian Jews, each of them occupying a niche of his own in the his- tory of the Zionist movement which both alike in their own various ways helped to foster and en- hance, shall occupy our attention here for a while. One of these was Dr. Leo Pinsker, the first great nationalist leader to come from among the Rus- sian Jews. Leo Pinsker (Tomashev, Piotrkow Government, i82i-Odessa, 1891) was the first Russian Jew to duly appreciate the Palestinian movement for its political value, rather than for the mere religious or race sentimentality it represented. Like Moses Hess before him, and Theodore Herzl after him, Pinsker came back to his people as a confirmed Jewish nationalist only after spending many years as a "watcher of the vineyards" of others, in- dulging in dreams of ultimate Jewish emancipa- tion in all lands with the growth of the ideal of cosmopolitanism. With Hess he had the ad- vantage over Herzl in his acquaintance with Jew- ish literature which he obtained at the hands of his learned father, Simha Pinsker, the renowned Semitic scholar and archaeologist (died Odessa, 1869). Nevertheless, his Jewish learning did not for many years avail to make Leo Pinsker the con- vinced nationalist he subsequently became until after the riots of 1881. Distinguished physician and noted humanitarian, acknowledged as an in- tellectual leader not only in Odessa but through- out Russia, his enlistment in the cause of the NATIONALIST REVIVAL AXD ZIONISM 383 "Hobebe Ziyyon" was the greatest moral aid the movement could have received, giving it the very impetus it was in need of in those years of un- certainty and hazy sentimentality. But the im- portance of Pinsker lies not in his mere advent in the ranks of the workers for the "return" to Palestine, but in the theories advanced by him in his famous German brochure "Autoemancipation" (1883), published anonymously under the name of "A Russian Jew." \Yhether Pinsker had ever read Perez Smolenskin's "Am Olam" (The Eternal Peo- ple) published ten years previously, or whether the ideas advocated by Hess and George Eliot had ever influenced him, the conclusions he arrives at are surprisingly similar to those of the first-men- tioned authors, his method of argumentation alone being peculiarly his own. The misfortune of the Jews, he says, has been that throughout the ages the outside world, and even they themselves, re- garded them not as a people with definite na- tional claims but as scattered atoms of a dead nation with whom every land and government could do as it pleased. In this wrongful attitude towards the Jew the Jews were themselves to blame since they have not sought to change it, and by their indifference to and even denial of their na- tional character have even justified it. The Jews' hope lies not in political emancipation, which is but a charitable concession on the part of the na- tions, but in self-emancipation, by their once again proclaiming their national homogeneity and by placing it upon the basis of territorial acquisition, preferably in Palestine but, if need be, elsewhere. Pinsker places the security and preservation of the Jewish people above the desire of acquiring Palestine which to him is but a means to the greater end. To him Palestine is not a "Holy Land" in any other except the religious sense, and 384 HISTORY OF THE JEWS since those things which made Palestine holy, the idea of monotheism, and the Bible, were still in- tact with the Jew, they could serve to make any other land just as holy if brought and preserved there as part of the national culture of the Jew. The main thing is the acquisition of a suitable land as the Jew's permanent national abode. In this Pinsker anticipated by about twenty years the Territorialist movement of some fifteen years ago. Despite his non-insistence upon Palestine as the prime goal of Jewish nationalism, Pinsker imme- diately became the chief inspiration of the Pales- tinian movement, around whom rallied the best in- tellectual forces of Russian Jewry, like Moses Loeb Lilienblum, trenchant literary critic and fear- less advocate of religious reforms in both Hebrew and Russian, Dr. Max Mandelstamm, famous ocu- list of Kiev, S. P. Rabbinovich, Hebrew publicist and historian, and Prof. H. Schapiro who, though a Russian Jew, was occupying the chair in higher mathematics at the university of Heidelberg. Lit- erary men like the Hebrew editor Alexander Zederbaum of St. Petersburg and the Russian nov- elist and publicist Lev Levanda, of Vilna, support- ed Pinsker in their publications while others like S. J. Fuenn of Vilna and K. W. Wissotzky of Moscow were actively enlisted in the cause. In foreign lands, too, Pinsker's ideas found an echo, the most important utterance on the subject com- ing from Dr. Isaac Ruelf, the genial rabbi and well-known author of Memel, in Prussia, who shortly after the appearance of Pinsker's pamph- let, and obviously under its influence, published his booklet "Arukat Bat Ammi" (The Healing of My People), warmly advocating the colonization of Palestine as the surest remedy for all the racial ills of the Jews. While not avowedly committed NATIONALIST REVIVAL AND ZIONISM 385 to Palestine Pinsker yet realized that the "Hobebe Ziyyon" constituted the only enthusiastic and con- siderable group for the furtherance of his plans and he accordingly yielded to the importunity of his friends and admirers to become the head of the movement in Russia. A petition was ad- dressed to the government for permission to es- tablish a society for the support of Palestinian colonization, and Zederbaum, as a resident of St. Petersburg and one close to government cir- cles, undertook to use all of his influence with department officials to secure the desired permit, an object which was attained only after many years of painstaking endeavor. Lilienblum became the secretary of the organization under Pinsker and it was indeed he who performed the greatest part of its work, often influencing and directing its policies. Lilienblum was himself the most zealous spokesman of the aims of the movement in Rus- sia, which were the settlement of Palestine to the exclusion of every other land. He writes to his friend, the poet J. L. Gordon: "Under no con- dition can I agree w r ith you that the Jews should go to Palestine by way of America. For our pur- pose, one Zealot in Jerusalem is preferable to a hundred Edisons in America." Pinsker was con- tent to remain the head of the movement without strongly asserting his own views or seeking to en- force any special policies of his own. He visited Berlin, Paris and other great centres where he interested leading Jews in the work. It was soon found necessary to have a conference of the va- rious colonization societies in order to unify the work and to decide upon the best methods to be employed. The government of Russia not having yet sanctioned the existence of the organization, the holding of the meeting was impossible with- in the empire, and the representatives of the move- 386 HISTORY OF THE JEWS nient accordingly assembled in Kattowitz, Prussia, on the one hundredth birthday of Moses Monte- fiore in 1884 (November 6), at least fifty organ- izations sending representatives. It was the first of the international Zionist conferences to be held and anticipated by thirteen years the first Zionist Congress of Bazel. But while the work of colonization, notwith- standing all hindrances, was progressing satisfac- torily, while the nationalist ideal was steadily gaining in strength, new r organizations forming in various parts of the world and new prophets every now and then arising to sound the trumpet of the great revival, while in America Emma Lazarus was writing her soul-stirring poems on the tragedy of the Russian Jew, and her impas- sioned articles on the Jewish national revival in Palestine in both Jewish and general periodicals, and while in Heidelberg Prof. Herman Schapiro was indulging the dream of the founding of a Jewish university in Jerusalem, and Dr. Joseph Chazanowicz, of Byelostok, was even then laying the foundation of the Jewish National Library at Jerusalem, there was one man in Russia living a more or less secluded life in a little village in the Government of Kiev, of whom little was heard in all this nationalist activity but who in a very short time was to make himself known as the enfant terrible of the Zionist Movement in all of its phases, the severe though at the same time wholesome critic of both the colonization scheme and the po- litical aims of Zionism. This man was Asher Ginzberg, already spoken of in connection with the progress of Hebrew literature in Russia, and best known to fame as Ahad Haam, the one man' in Russia destined to outlive most of the heads of the movements who had incurred his displeas- ure and felt the keen edge of his criticism, the NATIONALIST REVIVAL AND ZIONISM 387 man who came into the ranks of the "Hobebe Ziyyon," both as a sympathizer and as an op- ponent, and who gradually succeeded in winning over the opposition to his way of thinking so that the one-time private in the ranks soon be- came a general and the leader of a mighty host. Reared in a wealthy. Hasidic household, thor- oughly versed in Hebrew, the Talmudical and philosophical writings, self-taught in a number of European languages and their literatures, pos- sessed of an analytical mind, and by nature en- dowed with the gift of a clever and skillful ar- gumentator, Ginzberg loomed upon the horizon as a latter-day incarnation of a Solomon Maimon or a Vilna Gaon, and he soon became recognized as the greatest intellectual force in that portion of Russian Jewry which had made itself vocal through its periodical press and in its number included even several representative pulpiteers, in other words, the progressive nationalists, the immediate product of the Haskalah generation. He came into the Palestinian movement as a novice but before long became one of the dominating personalities in its councils. At first a follower of Pinsker, the pupil soon proved himself stronger in every way than his master, even as he was by natural ability and greater mental acumen more worthily a leader of men than was the gentle and unassuming Pinsker. The year 1886, when Asher Ginzberg removed from his quiet home in the vil- lage of Gopishitza to Odessa, may be looked upon as a turning point in the history of the national- ist movement in Russia. For the accession to the ranks of the "Odessa Committee" of so capable and fearless a critic meant the production by Russia of the one really great intellectual leader who, throughout his activity of more than a gen- eration as a leader of men and of thought, never 388 HISTORY OF THE JEWS wavering in his opinion once his judgment was formed, had the rare good fortune of seeing his plans mature and his hopes shared by a vast mul- titude of his contemporaries the world over. Ahad Haam's successful leadership within Rus- sian Jewry has been attributed mainly to his rare attainments as a writer^ and only secondarily to his perspicacity about the sorrowful state of the Jews in all lands, his intuition into the psychology of his people and his correct diagnosis of the ail- ments obsessing it. Trained for many genera- tions to revere a superior mentality wherever found, to admire learning above all else, and to pay homage to the one possessed of a leshon lim- mudim, a learned tongue, the Russian Jews were quick to perceive the unusual merits of the young writer who, until his thirty-third year had not published anything and was scarcely known for his latent gifts to any except a few T close friends. Alexander Zederbaum, the Nestor of the Hebrew periodical literature in Russia, who did more than any other man to produce writers of talent and force, was the immediate cause of Ginzberg's lit- erary revelation, for it was he who importuned him to contribute to his Ha-Meliz, and succeeded in obtaining from him in 1889 his first article, entitled "Lo Zeh ha-Derek" (Not This Is the Way). As a pure literary venture the article was found to be so unusually superior to the general output of even the oldest and best known writers of the day, its diction, clear and forceful and richly em- broidered with expression from the philosophical and cabalistical writings of the preceding cen- turies, was so thoroughly charming in contrast to the publicistic style, until then in vogue, of either a purely-Biblical or a Talmudical Hebrew, and, withal, its logic was so keen-cutting and irrefut- able it took the Hebrew-reading world by sur- ASIIER GINZBERG '.Iliad Haain" (b. 1857) NATIONALIST REVIVAL AND ZIONISM 389 prise. Henceforth the batlanut or stylistic sloven- liness by which the Hebrew press had been marked, was to flee before the new standard set by the master stylist of Odessa. But Ahad Haam proved that he was more than just a skilled fencer with words and a clever manipulator of phrases. His real fame rests upon his ideas, though it was his lucidity and charm of expression which first recom- mended him to the public and made his ideas so popular with Russian Jewry. To think deeply and at the same time write clearly and fascinatingly was too rare a combination in modern Hebrew literature not to make the deepest impression. Ahad Haam was different from others both as a stylist and as a logician, hence the sensation he caused by his first appearance in the literary arena. And the difference lay more especially in his at- titude toward accepted and conventionalized things. In him the Jewish world beheld a new iconoclast, but not one whose sole object was to destroy the given structure of Jewish nationalist aspirations in order to erect upon its ruins an en- tirely new building, but rather to so change its architecture as to make it conform with the greater and more imperative needs and requirements of the Jewish people. Thus, in the face of- all the frenzied activity for Palestinian colonization and notwithstanding the influence of Pinsker and his hold upon the mass of nationalist workers, Ahad Haam dared express the bitter truth that, useful as the work in itself seemed from many a stand- point, and desirable as it unquestionably was, the entire project and the manner of its execution was altogether too inadequate to meet the require- ments of the national ideal. The colonization work was taking away from the people energies indispensable in other and more important direc- tions. For Israel still was not a people in the 39 - HISTORY OF THE JEWS true sense of the word, whose only need was a ter- ritory to live on, houses to be sheltered in and farms and gardens to subsist on. The two thou- sand years of exile in various lands and the inces- sant persecutions heaped upon him have so dis- torted his national soul as to make him unfit for the task of nation-building without first under- going a period of preparation. "Of what avail," he asks, "is a land ready for us if we are not ready for the land?" Colonization in Palestine as then carried on, was but an answer to the egotistic and materialistic cravings of the Jewish masses. The people were persecuted, were driven from their homes, were destitute and hungry, and to supply their immediate needs the colonization scheme is offered, attractively pictured in order to lure on would-be pioneers to go to the Holy Land. Not thus is a nation built. Its desire for national existence must come from within, and must be sufficiently strong to remain unflinching in the face of peril, suffering and sacrifice. Self- interest and personal ambition in the individual must give \vay before the interests of the nation as a whole, and the people must be prepared to labor and endure in the present for a goal which may not be reached save in a distant future and in the life of later generations. The article was an explosive hurled into the camp of the nationalists which did not fail to go off with loud report. What Ahad Haam did was nothing less than the begging of the entire ques- tion of colonization. Yet, in effect, it was the placing of the ideal of Jewish nationalism upon so lofty a plane as to be out of reach of the bulk of the people. If the galut, or life in the Dis- persion, made for the distortion of the Jew's na- tional soul, it is clear that this soul could best be normalized and straightened out to its natural NATIONALIST REVIVAL AND ZIONISM 39 1 shape not by continuing in the galitt but by first settling in the land of the fathers, and to this end colonization was the best and most practical means. A babel of discussions, learned and otherwise, now arose in the Hebrew press, attacks were levelled at the intrepid critic from all sides which he skill- fully parried in his own coldly logical and analyt- ical manner. He stubbornly held on to his doctrine that the Jews should look to Palestine as a place of permanent habitation only after they fully grasped the sublime meaning of nationalism and the duties it imposed upon them for the safeguard- ing of the Jewish future. With religion losing its hold upon the masses, the national ideal must now step in to take its place as the life-principle of the Jewish race. Unlike Lilienblum and others with him, Ahad Haam did not disparage the large emigration to America instead of to Palestine. Since Palestine was not economically able to re- ceive a considerable immigration, it were best that all Jews in immediate need of succor and of finan- cial returns for their labor should go to America. Palestine is an ideal which must wait for its real- ization, or if it must be settled in our time and through agricultural colonies, then let it be done through organized and concerted action and let only such Jews migrate there as are idealistically inclined, and endowed with the necessary patience for the fulfillment of their hopes. A haphazard way of settlement by persons who expect imme- diate prosperity, would only endanger the entire plan and indefinitely postpone its realization. In order to acquaint himself more fully and at first- hand with conditions in Palestine, Ginzberg thrice journeyed there, each time returning with a mes- sage ("Emet M'erez Yisroel," The Truth About Palestine) bearing out his contention that the colonization movement was in need of a radical 39 2 HISTORY OF THE JEWS reorganization, and that Jewish hopes in Pal- estine were being- injured rather than helped by the undue optimism and the exaggerated reports which the zealots were circulating among the people. After ten years of agricultural experi- mentation he found that the colonies were still far from self-supporting and still dependent upon the aid of Rothschild and other philan- thropists, that they were still tyros in the work, preferring to have the soil tilled by the Arabs rather than themselves. Worse still, he found that the settlers were still in the state of- de- moralization they had brought with them from Europe, that they were notoriously disunited, jealous of and inimical to each other, and that they were abusing the freedom made possible by the governmental lassitude of the Turks by tak- ing advantage of the ignorant Arab population native to the land, thus making them the mortal enemies of the Jews for all future times. On visiting the ancient and crumbling "Western Wall" in Jerusalem in 1891 and seeing there the motley crowd of Jews from all lands and climes loudly wailing and moaning in their prayers, the thought came to him: "These stones symbolize the hurban (ruin) of our land, and these per- sons that of our people. Which of these two ruins is the greater? And for which of them should we weep the more ? A land may get ruined, yet if the people still retain their life and strength there will arise a Zerubbabel, an Ezra or a Nehe- miah, and their followers, to restore and build it anew; but if a people becomes ruined who will rise for it and whence is its help to come?" And these words give us the very kernel of the nationalistic philosophy evolved and elaborated by Ahad Haam in the many essays contained in the four volumes of his writings which appeared un- der the title of "Al Parashat Derakhim" (At the DR. JOSEPH CHAZANOWICZ (1844) NATIONALIST REVIVAL AND ZIONISM 3Q3 Parting of the "Ways, Berlin, 1902-1913). Be- tween the two, the land and the people, the latter comes first, though, unlike Pinsker and other leaders, Ahad Haam realizes that, since the con- tinuance of Jewish life is dependent upon terri- torial acquisition, such a land can be no other than Palestine. Yet and herein lies the real im- portance of Ahad Haam as the new interpreter of the Jewish nationalist ideal even Palestine is of value only in so far as it is best adapted for the preservation of the national culture of the Jews. The real tragedy here is not that of the Jewish people but of the Jewish national spirit which can never thrive in any other land outside of Pales- tine. Palestine will never solve the economic or social problems of the Jews, the majority of whom, owing to their numbers, will always remain in other lands. It will, however, solve the problem of the Jewish soul, by being a safe refuge and a cen- tre of Jewish cultural growth which, in its purely Jewish environment such as Palestine alone can offer, will not be hindered by such obstacles as the Jew meets with on every step in Europe and America. Because of this new definition of an old ideal Ahad Haam will always occupy a place of his own in the history of the Zionist movement. "Cultural Zionism" is the term by which his phil- osophy is denominated, and it is the only phase of the nationalist movement which has made the greatest strides forward and bids fair to win out in the end, it being now recognized that neither the colonization nor the political phase of Zionism can be worth much to the Jew, be they crowned with ever so great a success, unless and until they subserve the cultural aspirations of the people. That Ahad Haam was more than a mere theorist can be seen from his attempt to crystallize the sentiment aroused by his preachment into an or- 394 HISTORY OF THE JEWS ganized movement. Acclaimed as leader by many of the more prominent Jews of Russia, he, in 1890, organized a secret order by the name of "B'ne Moshe" (The Sons of Moses) whose motto was Tehiyat Yisroel al Admat Yisroel (Israel's Revival upon Israel's Soil). In the programme of this, society, which was drawn up by Ahad Haam himself in a remarkable article entitled "Derekh ha-Hayyim" (The Way of Life), he lays down the principles of spiritual Zionism which "aims at a reclamation not only of the land but also of the people" whose object is "not only to build (for the present) but also to plant (for the future)/'' and not only "by means of the hands but also through the spirit." The term nationalism is here lifted above its material connotation to one of moral worth which only men of proved convic- tions can truly value. The same thought has since dominated all of the public and literary ac- tivities of Ginzberg, his part in the upbuilding of Hebrew publishing houses in Russia, his founding, in 1896, of the "Haschiloah," the great literary monthly, and his co-operation in the work of the Odessa Committee which, in partnership with the Alliance Israelite has established the Hebrew Gymnasium at Jaffa. The B'ne Moshe, while last- ing only eight years, and probably never having a membership of more than two hundred, was nevertheless most effective in leavening Zionist thought with that spiritual element which made it of more enduring worth. At least a handful of leading men in Russia was determined that the new Jewish national life in process of construction shall not be vitiated through petty and inadequate plans and undertakings wholly incommensurate with its lofty historic meaning. But whatever the enthusiasm aroused in Rus- sia, Roumania and Galicia through the practical NATIONALIST REVIVAL AND ZIONISM 395 work of Pinsker and the cultural idealism of Ahad Haam, the movement in these countries could make but little headway without the co-operation of the great Jewish communities of Western Europe. And Western Jewry was still indifferent and even hostile to the plan. Russian Jewry with its five to six millions of souls did indeed possess the enthusiasm and the moral courage to flock around the banner of a resurrected Jewish na- tionalism, but owing to its political disabilities and the social ostracism it was laboring under it largely remained but an impotent mass. "Hibbat Ziyyon" (Love for Zion), as the pre-Herzlian phase of Zionism was styled, was largely an underground movement in the reign of Alexander III as in that of Nicholas II, it had constantly to cope with great and often insurmountable difficulties, and if it could accomplish anything at all it was only by means of back-door politics, through the century- old yet ever necessary policy of Shtadlamit or in- tercession with government officials. As has been stated, the permission to establish the Odessa Com- mittee, which was the official name for the Zion- ist organization in Russia, was obtained by Ze- derbaum only after many years of personal en- deavor. Dr. Pinsker himself was ever in fear that the government would assume an unfriendly attitude and nullify all the work of himself and his colleagues, and his anxiety reacted upon his activity which necessarily had to limit itself to the very narrowest of programs. On one occasion, when several young Zionist students were arrested in Odessa as political suspects, he caused Lilien- blum to burn all the books and archives of the Zionist organization (1887) and even asked that he be allowed to retire from its leadership. Be- sides, there was too much dissension among the workers as to plans and methods, and the cutting 396 HISTORY OF THE JEWS criticism of Ahad Haam only aggravated an al- ready bad enough situation. For many years the only comfort Zionists could derive was in the moral effect of their ideal; the very work in Pal- estine was but an outlet for a long pent-up hope, without however being an adequate fulfillment of the expectations that had been raised. To bring the movement out of its narrow sphere into the arena of large world-movements, to give it an in- ternational character by calling to it the attention of the great world powers, above all, to make it a movement shared in by Jews of all lands instead of but a minority of the Jews of Eastern Europe, required a statesmanlike leadership such as only Western Jewry could supply, and such leadership had not been forthcoming. The bulk of the Jews of Germany, France, England and other countries were still nursing the pleasant dream of the ul- timate removal of all social and political barriers, woefully failing to benefit by the lesson of Anti- semitism. Even where these Jews assumed a friendly attitude towards the Palestinian work and aided it with their money, it was only as outsiders and from a purely philanthropic motive. Baron de Hirsch preferred to spend his millions for a Jewish colonial settlement in distant Argentina, and it is doubtful whether even Baron Rothschild, whose munificent generosity was the greatest fac- tor in making possible the progress of the agri- cultural settlements of Palestine was, at least in the opening years of his beneficent activity, more than a humanitarian and philanthropist with spe- cific Jewish interests. Zionism, however, is any- thing but a charitable undertaking, and it is clear that no nationalist revival can be permanent which is reared upon a basis of charity and is thus subject to the good-will of a few well-dis- posed individuals. Russian Jewry was looking NATIONALIST REVIVAL AND ZIONISM 397 forward to the day when the nationalist sentiment it knew to be latent in* the hearts of Western Jews would break through the hard shell of social am- bition and political self-deception and produce the man or the men capable of making the Jewish cause of world-wide concern to Jews and non- Jews alike. Such a man finally made his appear- ance at the very time when the "Hibbat Ziyyon" cause was at the lowest ebb of its fortunes, despite the encouraging reports that kept coming from Palestine. This man was Theodore Herzl. When we say that Theodore Herzl was a West- ern leader we sum up in one word the chief rea- sons for his phenomenal success as the organizer and head of the greatest Jewish movement of our day. For, notwithstanding the charm and mag- netism of his personality, his astute statesman- ship and his inborn and acquired qualifications of leadership, Herzl could never have acquired the place of international Jewish leader had he been a Russian or Roumanian Jew, even as it is true that the prominent Jews of Russia, not excepting those of them who had been educated in foreign universities and possessed a high degree of West- ern culture, like Pinsker, Mandelstamm, Ussysch- kin, Tschlenow and others, could not attain to such leadership, owing to their surroundings, the po- litical disadvantages of their race and the conse- quent limitation of their influence abroad. It was necessary that the leadership come from the W r est, both because of its political advantages and its ef- fect upon the Western Jews themselves. And it was most fortunate for the nationalist cause that when the leader finally appeared, it was in the person of Theodore Herzl, a man "from his shoulder and upward" towering above the people both by his intellectual acumen, his political sa- gacity, his genius as an organizer and, withal, his 39^ HISTORY OF THE JEWS fervent devotion to his people. Indeed, but for these qualities and the magic influence exhaled by his remarkable personality, even his work might have proved abortive from the beginning. After Kalischer, Hess, Smolenskin and Pinsker, the time was ripe for the acclaim of the truly great leader, and Herzl's unusual advantage lay in the fact that he came only after the preparatory work had already been accomplished. Herzl's success was not due to his originality, for in his ideas on the "Jewish State" as embodied in his German work by that name ("Der Judenstaat"), he only repeats facts and conclusions enunciated by the above-mentioned prophets of nationalism. As the historian of the Zionist movement, Professor Gottheil, justly remarks, the Herzlian doctrines "had been set forth quite as translucently by Pinsker in his Autoemancipation, perhaps even with warmer feeling, and certainly with a more intimate acquaintance with Jewish history and Jewish life. They had been preached with the fervor of a prophet by Ruelf ; they were the foun- dation stones with which Lilienblum and Levanda had worked. Even the practical measures enounced by Herzl, by means of which the Jewish State was to be built up, are all to be found in Pinsker's pamphlet. The results are all the more strange when we consider that Pinsker intended to call forth a practical realization of his theories, while Herzl's pages were conceived and written as a sort of self-communing, not even destined for a large circle of friends. The "Judenstaat" is the cool reasoning of the philosopher; "Auto- emancipation," the cry of the hunted stag that pants after some haven of refuge. The one is the ex- pression of noble sentiments touched by poetic fancy and of a keen sense of injustice done to others; the second, the prescription of the physi- THEODOR HERZL (1860-1904) NATIONALIST REVIVAL AND ZIONISM 399 cian who has studied his own disease, and is ready to plunge the scalpel into his own flesh." Like nearly all great political saviors of the Jewish race, beginning with Moses, Herzl came to his lofty position in the Jewish world from the outside, after spending nearly all his life in non- Jewish, maybe even anti-Jewish circles. A na- tive of Budapest, a lawyer by training, a journal- ist by profession and occupation, a valuable mem- ber of the editorial staff of Vienna's leading pa- per, the "Neue Freie Presse," there was little like- lihood that the strikingly handsome young man, with the manners and bearing of a nobleman, as eloquent of tongue as he was facile of pen, ad- mired and encouraged in the best non-Jewish cir- cles, should ever have occasion to come close to his brethren in race. Yet it was the very occupation which brought him social and professional success that also furnished the opportunity for Herzl's revelation to his people. Commissioned by his paper to go as its correspondent to Paris, his stay in the French capital synchronized with the noto- rious and sensational Dreyfus affair in 1894. The infamous accusation against an innocent and hon- orable man solely on account of his Jewish origin was to Herzl's noble and justice-loving soul a rev- elation of the tragedy of a whole race his race. Whether he had known of this tragedy before but like so many other young Jews blinked at it, it was now, in the midst of all the rottenness of French political life brought out by the Dreyfus trial, that he began to feel it. He set himself to thinking on the anomalous position of the Jew in all lands, his helplessness in the face of a deep- seated prejudice and hatred, the ease and im- punity with which nations small and great trample upon his human rights and kick him about in foot- ball fashion, and the result was the "Judenstaat." 4OO HISTORY OF THE JEWS Though he may not have been familiar with the theses of the other nationalist leaders on the same subject, and though his own work is a more dis- passionate and coldly logical dissertation, it is at the same time a more thorough-going analysis of the Jewish tragedy, and from the point of view of practical politics a more statesmanlike pro- nouncement than the similar efforts of his prede- cessors. Like them, too, Herzl goes to the root of the evil. Centuries of oppression have made the Jew the outcast, but also the irreducible and ineradicable competitor of the nations, both eco- nomically and politically. "We are," he says, "what the Ghetto has made us. We have doubtless at- tained pre-eminence in finance, because mediaeval conditions drove us to it. The same process is now being repeated. Modern conditions force us again into finance, now the stock-exchange, by keeping us out of all other branches of industry. Being on the stock-exchange, we are therefore again considered contemptible. At the same time we continue to produce an abundance of mediocre intellects which finds no outlet, and this endangers our social position as much as does our increasing wealth. Educated Jews without wealth are now fast becoming Socialists. Hence we are certain to suffer very severely in the struggle between classes, because we stand in the most exposed po- sition in the camps of both Socialists and capital- ists." Nor will this ever change so long as the conditions remain unchanged. The Jewish ques- tion, he says in his introduction to his work, "is a remnant of the Middle Ages, which civilized nations do not even yet seem able to shake off, try as they will. They certainly showed a gen- erous desire to do so when they emancipated us. The Jewish question exists wherever Jews live in perceptible numbers. Where it does not exist, MENAHEM MENDEL USSYSCHKIN (b. 1863) NATIONALIST REVIVAL AND ZIONISM 4OI it is carried by the Jews in the course of their migrations. We naturally move to those places where we are not persecuted, and there our pres- ence produces persecution. This is the case in every country, and will remain so, even in those most highly civilized France itself being no ex- ception till the Jewish question finds a solution on a political basis. The unfortunate Jews are now carrying Antisemitism into England; they have already introduced it into America." The political basis alone can and will solve the Jewish problem. You cannot solve this question by artificial means such as agricultural settlements in the lands where Jews live for here again they come in competition with the native peasantry. The very districts in Germany and Russia where the Jews have taken to agriculture have become hotbeds of Antisemitism. Will "assimilation" solve it? But complete assimilation, that is ab- sorption, can only come through intermarriage, and here social prejudice rises as an insurmount- able barrier. Rich Jews have succeeded in break- ing through this barrier by means of their wealth, but the vast majority of the Jews belong to the bourgeois, and pitted against the Christian middle classes they will always remain a contemptible and ostracized minority. But the most formidable fac- tor against assimilation is the Jewish people it- self. For since assimilation implies not only "ex- ternal conformity in dress, habits, customs and lan- guage" but also "identity of feeling and manner," the Jew-consciousness of the people will always act as a hindrance. It is but the few who assimi- late, howsoever prominent such individuals may be, but their going cannot affect the people as a whole. Such assimilators are but the unfit among us as Jews, and "whatever is unfit to survive can, will and must be destroyed. But the distinctive na- 4O2 HISTORY OF THE JEWS tionality of Jews neither can, will, nor must be destroyed. It cannot be destroyed, because ex- ternal enemies consolidate it. It will not be de- stroyed; this it has shown during 2,000 years of appalling suffering. It must not be destroyed. . . . Whole branches of Judaism may wither and fall, but the trunk remains." And the plan? It is that of a political state in either Argentina or Palestine formed by Jews, by special grant of the rulers of the land, and with the sanction and under the protection of the European powers. The execution of the plan shall be accom- plished through the medium of two agencies: the "Society of Jews" and the "Jewish Company." The first will map out the plan upon a scientific and po- litical basis, while the other, by means of a large fund of a quarter of a billion dollars, will bring it into realizaton. It will control the orderly and gradual transfer of the Jews who work to settle in the land thus acquired, organize commerce and industry, construct roads, bridges, railways and telegraphs, regulate rivers and build houses. The land shall first be settled by the poorer elements who are in immediate need of refuge and succor. "Their labor will create trade, trade will create markets, and markets will attract new settlers; for every man will go voluntarily, at his own ex- pense and his own risk." Then will come emi- grants of a higher economic grade. "The labor expended on the land will enhance its value, and the Jews will soon perceive that a new and per- manent sphere of operation is opening here for that spirit of enterprise which has heretofore met only with hatred and obloquy." Though Herzl mentions both Argentina and Palestine as territorial possibilities for his pro- posed State, yet it is clear that, even at the ear- liest stage of his plan, it is the latter land which NATIONALIST REVIVAL AND ZIONISM 403 would receive his preference were he allowed to choose between the two: Argentina is favored solely for its material benefits as "one of the most fertile countries in the world, which extends over a vast area, has a sparse population and a mild climate." On the other hand, "Palestine is our ever-memorable historic home. The very name of Palestine would attract our people with a force of marvellous potency. Supposing His Majesty the Sultan were to give us Palestine, we could in return pledge ourselves to regulate the whole finances of Turkey. We should there form a por- tion of the rampart of Europe against Asia, an outpost of civilization as opposed to barbarism. The sanctuaries of Christendom would be safe- guarded by assigning to them an extra-territorial status, such as is well-known to the law of nations. We should form a guard of honor about these sanctuaries, answering for the fulfillment of this duty with our existence. This guard of honor would be the great symbol of the solution of the Jewish question after eighteen centuries of Jew- ish suffering." He was but anticipating here the difficulties and objections which might be raised on the part of both Turkey and the Christian powers. Little did Herzl realize that the greatest obstacle to his plan would come from among the Jews themselves and not exactly from the mere "assimilationists" whom he was prepared to discount. For a long time the remarkable plan he outlined with such fine detail becomes an object of criticism, censure and even derision on the part of those very ele- ments which should have been first to rally around his banner. Nevertheless, the very discussion it gave rise to was promise of an awakening in- terest. On its moral side, at least, the project was assured of success, even where its materialization 404 HISTORY OF THE JEWS remained much of an uncertainty. To the West- ern Jews the "Judenstaat," if it was read by them at all, was unconvincing for the simple reason that their immediate interests, and the peculiar Welt- anschaung which had been bred into them from their childhood days, militated against the accept- ance of its premises and conclusions. Eastern Jewry, on the other hand, saw in the work a con- firmation of its own views, acquired by it through actual contact with the acutest phases of Jew- hatred. To them it was the authoritative enounce- ment of a great intellect, which while corroborat- ing the ideas of their own prominent leaders, Smolenskin in the seventies, and Pinsker in the eighties, was now, in the nineties, prepared to un- dertake the task of Jewish political salvation upon a vast scale and in keeping with methods in vogue in the cultured West. The long looked- for West- ern leader now at last arrived, and whatever the expectations of the mass of Russian and Rouman- ian Jews about the personality of the new Moses, the reality by far exceeded their very fondest hopes and wishes. For Herzl the theorist was soon to surprise the world by his revelation of himself as the man of practical deeds who, having formulated a great plan, was now ready and able to act upon it and carry it to its most logical conclusion. Conceived largely as a mere tentative programme, not whol- ly without a Utopian flavor, though written by him in the supreme earnestness of a soul writhing in the accumulated pain and anguish of the cen- turies, the Jewish state now became an insep- arable part of himself. Presenting it at first as a timid portrayal to his own soul of a happier state of being for his brethren, and branded by his closest friends as the work of an unbalanced in- tellect, the project, once he placed it before the NATIONALIST REVIVAL AND ZIONISM 405 world, grew for him in the breadth and depth of its meaningfulness and the grandeur of the hopes it touched upon. Published in 1896 in Vienna whither Herzl had removed but a short time pre- viously, the "Judenstaat" at once seized upon the latent sympathies of the large Jewish masses of the East to whom the report of its contents was immediately conveyed by means of the Hebrew and Yiddish newspapers and through pamphlets, even as it evoked a heated discussion among the Jewish litterateurs of the large Western cities. In Vienna, his home city, where Smolenskin and, later, Nathan Birnbaum, Herzl's university friend, had for many years kept fostering the national ideal, Herzl was at once acclaimed as the new leader of the racial- ly-conscious Jews, the local Kadimah society offer- ing him its services for the realization of his plans in an address sent him by Drs. Schnirer and Kokesch and signed by several thousand names. So wide-spread was the discussion aroused by the pamphlet that as rumor, based upon authoritative statements, has it, the Sultan of Turkey, Abdul Hammid, interested himself in the subject and in May of that year despatched a secret messenger to Herzl, the Chevalier de Newlinsky, with the offer of a charter for Palestine to the Jews if they would use the powerful influence over the Euro- pean press which the Sultan believed they pos- sessed, to stop all further attacks upon him because of his cruel policy towards the Armenians. Whether true or not, the mere circulation of the rumor is evidence of the importance the idea was assuming. When, in July of that year, Herzl ap- peared before the Maccabeans of London, at the instance of Israel Zangwill, there stood before the vast audience no longer a "solitary writer," as lie had referred to himself in his epoch-making work, 4O6 HISTORY OF THE JEWS but a popular hero whose influence reached out to every part of the globe, to whose leadership hun- dreds of thousands of human beings were attach- ing the deepest faith. The great Western Jew did indeed fulfill the hopes of his Eastern breth- ren: He succeeded in arousing a considerable portion of Western Jewry from its lethargy and in enlisting many of their prominent men in the cause. Passive support was lent to his plan by such men as Prof. M. Friedlander of London, Dr. M. Guedemann of Vienna, and Dr. J. H. Duenner, of Holland, while active and enthusiastic co-opera- tion was promised by men like Max Nordau and the brothers Marmorek of Paris, Dr. Boden- heimer of Cologne, Dr. Kaminka of Vienna, be- sides a number of the more celebrated among the "Hobebe Ziyyon" of Russia and Roumania. Herzl now set his face in the direction of organ- izing Jewish public opinion. Publicity on a wide scale was most necessary, and though supported in many places by the existing periodicals, some of which had been faithful and ardent spokesmen of the old "Hibbat Ziyyon" movement, there was yet an urgent need for a special organ for what now be- came known as Political Zionism. At considerable expense to himself, and with the aid of a number of sympathizers he, in 1897, founded "Die Welt" (The World) which at once became the authori- tative mouthpiece of the movement, enlisting the services of the best literary talents among the Zionists, Herzl himself at first acting as its editor. A Congress of representatives of all Zionist groups was decided on as the first actual step toward the consummation of the great project. In the open, frankly and fully to take the world into its con- fidence by reciting its many grievances and lay- ing bare its true nationalist hopes and plans, the Jewish people was to make the initial move of self- MAX XORDAU (b. 1849) NATIONALIST REVIVAL AND ZIONISM 407 help and "autoemancipation." The Congress was to take place in the city of Munich, Bavaria, dur- ing the summer of 1897. By this time the oppo- sition aroused to the plan in many Jewish quar- ters became so formidable as to be commensurate only with the progress it had made, the adherents it had won and the enthusiasm it had awakened. As long as Zionism was only a theory, its oppo- nents could well content themselves with an atti- tude of indifference or, at best, of mild reproach. The prospect of its crystallization into an active and world-wide organization, however, served to put the anti-Zionists on their mettle. Open hos- tility both before and after the Congress came not only from among the assimilationists who saw in the movement a most dangerous attempt at un- dermining a position they had held for many a year, but from the more loyal Jewish camps as well, from the ultra-orthodox who denounced it as a revolt against the Messianic hopes of the Jew, and from the radical Reform wing which branded it as a reactionary movement hurtful not only to the best civic interests of the Jews but also to their religious idealism as a people with a univer- salistic mission. Zionism was denounced as a movement of disloyalty to all lands in which Jews live, Prof. Ludwig Geiger, of Berlin, threatening the adherents of the movement in Germany with the loss of their German citizenship should they persist in their course, while Dr. Emil G. Hirsch of Chicago was but echoing the sentiments of many of his European colleagues when he de- nounced the Zionists as being on a level with the Antisemites, and accused Herzl and Nordau as seeking to enrich themselves at the expense of their credulous and misled brethren. At the Mon- treal meeting of the Central conference of Amer- ican Rabbis which met in 1897, Dr. Isaac M. Wise, 408 HISTORY OF THE JEWS its president, attacked the movement in bitter terms, adding to his denunciations in subsequent articles in the "American Israelite" and the "He- brew Union College Journal," where he called Zion- ists "traitors, hypocrites, or fantastic fools." More drastic action was resorted to in various places in Europe, when hostility to the upholders of the cause was preached from many a pulpit, and Zionist publications were placed under the ban. In his own analytical and philosophical manner, Ahad Haam, in his monthly "Haschiloah," summed up the first Congress as an attempt to mislead the masses with false and unrealizable hopes. "The salvation of Israel," said he, "will come not from diplomats, but from prophets." The German op- ponents of Zionism, however, were determined that the Congress shall not take place at all, fear- ful as they were that any public avowal by Jews of their nationalist hopes would only react unfa- vorably upon the position of the Jews in all lands. The Association of Jewish Rabbis of Germany, headed by Drs. S. Maybaum of Berlin and H. Yogelstein of Stettin, published a vigorous pro- test, calling the promoters of the movement "fa- natics from Russia and hot-headed young stu- dents." When this protest failed to bring the de- sired results, the officials of the Jewish commu- nity of Munich were stirred to action, and so great was their remonstrance against the holding of the Congress in their city that Herzl and his advisers deemed it best not to come to a place where they were not wanted, and the meeting place was ac- cordingly changed for the city of Bazel, in Switz- erland. It met in August, 1897, and from a moral standpoint was a most signal victory for the na- tionalist ideal. For the first time in nineteen hun- dred years Jews from all parts of the world came NATIONALIST REVIVAL AND ZIONISM 409 together as representatives of a Jewish nation, for the first time since the downfall of Judaea Jews loudly proclaimed their right to live their own life in the historic land of their fathers. For the nonce factionalism was forgotten, and the fact that the gathering comprised men of all shades of religious belief and political opinion, orthodox, Reformers, atheists, Socialists was proof con- clusive that Zionism had indeed touched the heart of the entire Jewish people, and that the 204 dele- gates in the Basel- Casino in themselves consti- tuted the Jewish nation in miniature. The Con- gress adopted w T hat has since become known as the Basel Program, which in its very first para- graph makes plain the aim and purpose of Zion- ism when it declares that "the object of Zionism is to establish for the Jewish people a publicly and legally assured home in Palestine." It mattered little that the great Jewish philanthropic bodies like the Alliance Israelite, the Jewish Coloniza- tion Association and the Vienna Allianz, kept aloof from it, that if some prominent Jews were on principle opposed to the cause a great many more were indifferent to it or mayhap were even unaware of its existence. In the principles it enunciated, the hopes it aroused, and the sympa- thetic response it now received Zionism, alone of all Jewish movements in the last nineteen hun- dred years, gave the one satisfactory answer to Jewish yearning and aspiration: The Jews are, and never will cease being, a nation; their na- tional goal can be reached only in the one land they can historically call their own; and the na- tions of the world, both as a matter of right to the Jews and of benefit to themselves, must aid in the' work of Jewish rehabilitation in Palestine. Steps were now taken to call into life the agen- cies Herzl had suggested in his "Judenstaat." The 4IO HISTORY OF THE JEWS "Society of Jews" became the Zionist organiza- tion as a whole with the Congress as its gov- erning body, while the "Jewish Company" as- sumed the form of the "Jewish Colonial Trust" which was established in London with a capitali- zation of ten million pounds subscribed to by Jews from all over the world, this being supplemented by the Jewish National Fund established for the exclusive object of redeeming the soil of Pales- tine and turning it over to Jews. The direction of Zionist affairs was placed in the hands of an Actions Committee. London, Berlin and Con- stantinople were the three capitals in which Zion- ist effort was mainly concentrated. The securing of the "Charter" from the Sultan, w T ith the sanction of the European government, became the chief task of the heads of the movement. Already in 1896, about a month after the rumored visit of Chevalier de Newdinsky to Vienna, Herzl jour- neyed to Constantinople, for what purpose and with what results for the time being, it being un- known. After the first Congress, and through nearly all subsequent years until Herzl's death, the leader of the movement worked with this goal ever in mind. Sultan Abdul Hammid was then still the autocrat of Turkey, and the granting of a charter for the proposed w r ork in Palestine \vas still wholly within his power. Even Abdul Ham- mid, however, it was known, was anxious for the good will of Christian Europe, and it was cer- tain that he would do nothing for the Jews ex- cept with the connivance and sanction of Europe's two foremost powers, England, the traditional friend of Turkey, and Germany whose ruler, for political reasons of his own, had repeatedly shown his friendliness for Turkey and his concern in its welfare. It therefore became necessary to have both in London and in Berlin representative NATIONALIST REVIVAL AND ZIONISM 4! I Zionists whose function was to influence public opinion in favor of the Zionist ideal, and, wherever possible, to come in direct touch with the govern- ment. In 1898, on the occasion of Emperor Wil- liam's visit to Jerusalem, Dr. Herzl with other prominent Zionists went to Palestine and, in No- vember of that year, was received by the Kaiser outside the gates of the Holy City. He was re- ceived in audience by the Sultan in 1901 and twice again in 1902. His visit to Von Plehve, the Rus- sian Minister of the Interior, in 1903, and to the Pope and King Victor Immanuel in 1904, was ap- parently for the same purpose of predisposing the rulers of Europe in favor of his project. So, too, though in an indirect way, was his appear- ance in August, 1902, before the British Royal Commission on Alien Immigration, when he gave his famous definition of the term "nation," in answer to the question put to him by Major Evans Gordon: "I will give you my definition of a na- tion, and you can add the adjective 'Jewish/ A nation is, in my mind, a historical group of men of a recognizable cohesion held together by a com- mon enemy. That is in my view a nation. Then if you add to that the word 'Jewish' you have what I understand to be the Jewish nation." Herzl's plan which was endorsed by the entire Zionist organization, was to give the widest pos- sible circulation to the Zionist hope and to make it the intimate concern of every great European power. In no other way, he knew, could the pro- gram of oeffentlich-rechtlich, a publicly -leg ally as- sured home in Palestine, become a reality. He was destined to die without seeing the real- ization of his hopes. With the exception of Eng- land, nearly always kindly disposed to the Jews and evidently sincere in its desire to help them, none of the Great Powers took the Zionist project 412 HISTORY OF THE JEWS seriously. France, Germany and Russia had each a selfish policy of its own regarding Palestine. Each of them had plans laid for the establishment of a claim to the political domination of the land when the hour of Turkey's dismemberment which to them seemed imminent had at last struck: France, by obtaining valuable concessions for the building of railroads, and establishing schools through which the French language and culture were disseminated in the land, using for this pur- pose even the schools established by the Jewish "Alliance;" Germany, by an extensive colonization project which resulted in the settling in Palestine of tens of thousands of Germans; and Russia by the establishment of many monastaries and churches of the Greek Catholic faith which at- tracted every year vast hosts of pious pilgrims. It was quite natural for each of these nations to look askance at the Jewish colonization scheme and more particularly at the political phase of Zionism. The extensive propaganda carried on by men like Nordau, York-Steiner and Bernard Lazare, the friendly support of the movement by eminent Christians like the Austrian Baron Man- teuffel, Baroness von Suttner and Professor Mas- aryk, the Norwegian Bjornstjerne Bjornson, the English Rider Haggard and Hall Caine, the Amer- ican Thomas Davidson and the Russian Maxim Gorky, failed in its desired effect upon the gov- ernments, while for the Jews this postponement of the fulfillment of a hope upon which the hearts of hundreds of thousands of men had been set brought inevitable discouragement. Every one of the congresses that were held after the one of 1897 served to emphasize the fact that the Zion- ist goal was far from immediate attainment and, indeed, might be reached only after the most stren- uous efforts and heroic sacrifices of many dec- NATIONALIST REVIVAL AND ZIONISM 4 X 3 ades, if not generations. A large portion of the blame for the failure of the negotiations for a charter attached to the Jews themselves, the ma- jority of whom still failed to appreciate the im- , portance of such negotiations, and withheld from their great leader the funds of which he was so greatly in need. To-day it is clear that during the early years of political Zionism, when Abdul Hammid was still firmly entrenched in his auto- cratic power, money might have obtained from him the charter he was unwilling to grant through moral suasion or political pressure* if any such pressure could at all be brought to bear upon him. After his audience with the Sultan in 1901, on which occasion that ruler decorated him with the Order of Mejidie, Herzl was quite confident of the favorable outcome of his efforts. On his return from Constantinople he spoke optimistically before a large gathering of the Maccabeans, in London, stating that the charter might be secured if a sum like one and one-half million pounds sterling could be raised in addition to the funds of the Jewish Colonial Trust. His plea was in vain. The wealthy Jews kept aloof and even frowned upon the entire scheme, while the poorer Jews though willing were unable to raise the re- quired amount. All these years Herzl remained faithful to the Palestinian plank of the Zionist program, not- withstanding the fact that the original thesis of his "Judenstaat" provided for a choice of either the ancient Jewish homeland or Argentina, it all de- pending upon which of the two territories proved more available and easier of acquisition. Coming into Jewish life from the outside, and judging the Jewish situation at first from the angle of an outside observer, it was natural that he should at first formulate his plans upon the basis of prac- 414 HISTORY OF THE JEWS ticality alone. The hold of Palestine upon him grew stronger with the passing of the years and with his ever deepening realization of the larger and more spiritual meaning which that land held for the Jew. Contact with the leaders and the masses of Eastern Jewry furnished him with the needed orientation, the overwhelming sentiment in favor of the Holy Land as the only territory acceptable to the Jew reacted upon himself, and Herzl may be said to have found himself again as a Palestinian Zionist. The sentimentalist in him told him that, in the case of the Jews at least, national happiness and stability was indis- solubly bound up with the one historic spot which the Jew has never ceased calling his own. Herzl, however, was a statesman even more than a sen- timentalist, and statesmanship often finds itself at cross-purposes with mere sentiment. After several years of increasing effort to obtain the guarantees of a publicly-le gaily assured home in Palestine, there finally came a time when Herzl and his close advisers were forced to admit that, from the political standpoint, their work was a failure. It was felt that the tricky Abdul Hammid was only playing a game of his own in which he used the Zionist movement as a mere pawn. No reliance could be placed upon the ambiguous half-promises of that despot, and all Zionist plans in Palestine had to be put in abeyance until the arrival of a happier day. The restrictions upon Jewish immigration into Palestine, which were renewed in 1900, showed the utter precariousness of all Jewish undertakings in that land under the existing conditions. At the same time, with the situation of the Jews grown steadily worse in Russia and Roumania, instant relief was impera- tive, while in Western Jewry, too, the pent-up nationalistic hope demanded an outlet through NATIONALIST REVIVAL AND ZIONISM 415 some practical undertaking. A change of pro- gram, if only temporarily, was deemed neces- sary. Palestine must never be abandoned as the final goal of the Jews, but how about the present moment? The wonderful thousand-year-old pa- tience exhibited by the Jew in awaiting the day of divine redemption was fast breaking down with the weakening of the religious hold and under the stress of changed social conditions. Herzl felt that the Jewish people could not go through an- other century as the social and political outcast of the nations and still retain its religious identity and racial homogeneity. If not Palestine, will not another territory answer the purpose of Jewish nationhood, if only as a Nachtasyl (Night Asy- lum) pending the dawn of the happy day in the Jews' own land? It was a counsel born of de- spair, but then Herzl was only falling back upon his own initial program of the "Judenstaat," even as he was reverting to the mode of reasoning em- ployed by Mordecai Manuel Noah and Dr. Leo Pinsker. But here, as was inevitable, Herzl clashed with the Zionists of Eastern Europe, to whom Jewish nationalism was wholly interwoven with Palestin- ianism, and who later assumed the proud designa- tion of Ziyyone Ziyyon (i. e. simon-pure Zion- ists, with emphasis upon Zion} in contradistinc- tion to the pure nationalists who wanted Jewish national integrity rescued in any territory at all that would lend itself to the materialization of Jewish hopes. These Zionists were headed by Menahem Mendel Ussyschkin of Yekaterinoslav, probably the most powerful personality produced by Russian Israel, a man whom the broad Western culture he had acquired did not hinder from ac- cepting the Zionist program upon its exclu- sively traditional basis. Unlike Herzl, Ussyschkin HISTORY OF THE JEWS and his followers believed that the substitution of any other territory for Palestine, even if only as a temporary makeshift, was treason to the national ideal and not to be tolerated by the faithful. Rather a slow and meagerly fruitful colonization in Pales- tine, thereby enabling- a considerable number of Jews to gradually settle on the soil in prepara- tion for the day of political rehabilitation, than a ready-made politico-national home in any other part of the globe. It is needless to state that this attitude of the majority of Russian Zionists was a more logical interpretation of the Zionist ideal which had its origin in the three-thousand-year old attachment of the Jew for that ancient land. Herzl's statesmanship, however, was seeking a more practical and more immediate solution. In the Zionist administration circles the counsels of the Territorialist nationalists were sure to prevail. As early as 1899 the suggestion of a Jewish colo- nization enterprise on the island of Cyprus had been made by Davis Trietsch, only to be met with the disapproval of the delegates to the third Congress which met shortly thereafter. In 1901 the Ger- man Zionists, with the approval of Herzl, con- ceived the plan of a settlement in El-Arish, in the Sinai Peninsula, situated between Egypt and Pal- estine. The English Zionists fell in with the idea, and with the sanction of the Anglo-Egyptian gov- ernment, which declared its readiness to grant the Jewish colony, should one be formed there, the right of self-administration, a commission of prom- inent Jews from Germany, England and Pales- tine, went there in 1903 to explore the region. The British government evinced its interest in the plan by sending its own representatives along with the party. No satisfactory results came from this, evidently on account of the unfavorable physical conditions of the land. The Territorialists now NATIONALIST REVIVAL AND ZIONISM turned their eyes towards East-Africa where the English government, through Joseph Chamberlain, had made a spontaneous offer to the Zionists (August, 1903) for the establishment there of "a Jewish colony or settlement on conditions which will enable the members to observe their na- tional customs ...... the details of the scheme comprising as its main features the grant of a considerable area of land, the appointment of a Jewish official as the chief of the local adminis- tration, and permission to the colony to have a free hand in regard to municipal legislation as to the management of religious and purely domestic matters, such local autonomy being conditional upon the right of His Majesty's government to exercise general control." The proposal met with approval from the Western Zionists, but with un- qualified opposition from the majority of the Rus- sians, among whom feeling ran high against the policy of the Zionist administration which neg- lected the cultural work of the movement and was lukewarm towards the colonization work in Pal- estine. In September of 1902 these Zionists held a congress of their own in Minsk at which 500 delegates were present and which adopted resolu- tions calling for the use of National Fund moneys for the exclusive purpose of Palestinian coloniza- tion. No sooner did the East-African offer of the British government become known, than an agita- tion was set on foot for its rejection. When the question came up before the Sixth Congress which met in 1903 in Bazel, the storm broke loose. In vain was Herzl's plea that "East Africa is indeed not Zion and can never become it/' nor Max Nor- dau's in his defense of the plan as that of a mere Nachtasyl The Russian Zionists would not coun- tenance the scheme, and when after a heated dis- cussion, lasting several days, and largely out of 4l8 HISTORY OF THE JEWS sheer deference to the friendly disposition of Eng- land, a majority of the delegates voted in favor of sending a commission to Uganda, the proposed East African territory, many of the Russian dele- gation, among them their representatives on the Actions Committee, withdrew from the Congress amid bitter tears at what they considered the bank- ruptcy of their ideal. The incident furnished Ahad Haam with the pretext for writing one of his most brilliant, and at the same time one of his bitterest, attacks on Political Zionism, under the heading "The Weepers." After demonstrating that those who opposed the Uganda scheme were themselves at fault for placing too great faith in the loyalty of the Western leaders to Pales- tine, he says: "We are asked: 'What is now to become of Zionism?' Which Zionism? If by this is meant Bazelian Zionism that no longer ex- ists. That Zionism was born in Bazel in August, 1897, and died in Bazel in August, 1903, nothing more remaining of it than 'a name devoid of its content,' and a program with a new sermonic commentary. Is it, then, historic Zionism? For that have no fear. That can wait. Some time will elapse and then the' African dream, like all political dreams that have preceded it, will become but a matter of the past, only that it will add one more drop into the sea of travail and anguish known as Jewish history. Then new men will arise who will once again raise the eternal Zionist banner and will carry it aloft with all their strength, with all the warmth of their hearts, even as you (the weepers) have at one time done. And should then arise a new statesman with the offer to lead them to Zion through a political short-cut, they will open for him the book of history and point to the chapter on Political Zionism including the Uganda affair. 'Read it, wise one,' they will NATIONALIST REVIVAL AND ZIONISM 419 tell him, 'and use your wisdom for the restoration of the negroes to Africa, even as was the dream indulged in by your predecessor when he decided to bring us there. As for ourselves we shall go slowly through the long way, and shall not again rush the end/ ' The Uganda proposition brought Zionism to a crisis. It drove a wedge between Eastern and Western Zionists and for a time threatened to subvert the movement as a whole. In Paris a Rus- sian Jewish student by the name of Luban was driven mad by the agitation and made an attempt on the life of Nordau. Ussyschkin rallied around him the forces of the faithful and convened in Palestine in the Zikron Ya'akob colony, an oppo- sition congress at about the time the Sixth Con- gress was in session. It however never met again. By far more drastic was the action taken by the Russian delegates who had bolted the Sixth Con- gress. Several months after their return home they assembled in secret conference in Kharkov, deciding to send a delegation to Herzl with a de- mand for a written promise that he would abandon the Uganda or any other territorial project until the convening of the Seventh Congress, also that he would use the moneys of the National Fund for purchasing and cultivating land in Palestine and Syria. They threatened, in case of a refusal, to withhold from the administration all Russian con- tributions. Those chosen to convey this message of rebellion were A. A. Belkowsky, S. J. Rosen- .baum and W. J. Temkin who went to Vienna and presented their ultimatum at a session of the Larger Actions Committee (April n, 1904). That body, however, could not legitimately enter into ne- gotiations with a rebellious faction, the action on the East African plan having been decided by the Congress in due parliamentary order. The 42O HISTORY OF THE JEWS demands of the Russian Zionists could not there- fore be granted, and no action was taken. The Zionist administration, however, and Herzl him- self for a long time remained storm centres, the objects of bitter attack on the part of critics great and small. Slandered by his foes, and misunder- stood by his friends, even Herzl, accustomed to criticism and hardened to attack, found the bur- den too heavy for his shoulders. Less than three months after the Russian ultimatum he passed out of life, dying more of a broken heart than of the physical malady which overtook him (July 3, 1904). Herzl's death, while causing many of the rash spirited Zionists to repent of their unwarranted criticism, did not end the opposition to the Ugan- da project. The agitation continued all the while and when the Seventh Congress convened on July 30, 1905, a majority of delegates was found to be opposed to the plan which was then declared as not in conformity with the Bazel programme. And now came the turn of the friends of the project to bolt the Congress and form an organ- ization of their own. The Jewish Territorial Or- ganization, known as the I. T. O., was formed soon thereafter, and was joined by the Socialistic wing of the Zionists known as the Poale Ziyyon. At its head was placed Israel Zangwill, the brilliant writer, while among the prominent men who joined him was Prof. Mandelstamm of Kiev. The plat- form adopted by the new organization was, among other things, "to procure a territory upon an autonomous basis for the Jews who cannot or who will not remain in the lands in which they already live." The movement was doomed to failure from its birth, not because of Zangwill's proven incapacity for leadership of a great po- litical or economic movement, but because the movement was lacking in the zest which idealism ISRAEL ZANGWILL (b. 1864) NATIONALIST REVIVAL AND ZIONISM 421 alone can beget. From a historic yearning with its roots deeply set in the racial consciousness of the Jew, such as Zionism is, Territorialism became a coward's refuge for all who found themselves drained of the historic patience of their people, and ready to compromise with their conscience for the material husks of a temporary shelter, itself uncertain and improbable. Had Itoism been but another form of relief measure, like the Argen- tinian colonization plan, one could find little to criticize in it; indeed, in that case its sponsors would only be deserving of the lasting gratitude of the Jewish people for attempting to alleviate and diminish its distress, be the scale of its operations large or small. The Ito movement, however, at- tempted more than that: It aspired to take the place of the historic Zionist hope in the hearts of the people. It vitiated the national cause of the Jew by reducing it to a movement of sheer materialism. And because it lacked a soul it was, like all life- less tasks, foredoomed to failure. Itoism repre- sents the Peter Schlemihl of the Zionist movement, the man without a shadow who yet wears the sev- en-league boots for a rapid move in whichever di- rection he may hope to find gratification for his heart's desire. It set out to find a territory for the Jews and in rapid succession it considered countries like Cyrenaica, Canada, parts of Aus- tralia, Mesopotamia and Angola. Finding no land suitable or available for its purpose, it finally settled down to regulating immigration to the United States by directing Jewish emigrants to go to America by way of Galveston, in Texas, rather than* through the large Eastern ports, thereby hop- ing to reduce the frightful over-crowding of the large Jewish quarters of New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore and other cities. Yet even in this well- intentioned plan it was but moderately success- 422 HISTORY OF THE JEWS ful, the great Jewish centres of the east proving too great an attraction for many of the Galveston arrivals to make them contented with the quiet and uneventful life of the South. The death of Dr. Mandelstamm, in 1912, removed one of the chief pillars of the movement, and precipitated its downward course, while the outbreak of the Great War dealt it the death blow from which it has never rallied, even the Galveston immigration bu- reau being finally compelled to close its doors. There is no likelihood that Itoism will ever again be revived when the War is ended, it being highly significant for the complete failure of the move- ment that Zangwill himself should of late have begun to look more sympathetically towards his first love Zionism. Unlike Territorialism the Zionist ideal was not to be affected by the external pressure of world affairs. Impeded in its work, it could not be ar- rested in its growth. The death of Herzl was a serious loss to the cause, but it did not check its development and, in a sense, even added to its strength by causing Zionists everywhere to dedi- cate themselves anew and with greater zeal to the realization of the plans of the great leader. No man could be found capable of taking Herzl's place, even Max Nordau refusing the proffered leadership, while David Wolffsohn consented to take his place at the helm only after much im- portunity and assurance of support from other prominent chieftains. The years following Herzl's death are years of consolidation of forces and of intensive propaganda. The political goal is not lost sight of, but its immediate realizability is discounted, and the historic patience of the Jew is once more called into service. On the other hand attention is given to Palestinian problems, and a helping hand is lent to a number of enter- PROF. MAX MANDELSTAMM (1838-1912) NATIONALIST REVIVAL AND ZIONISM 423 prises through a special Palestine Commission created for that purpose. The cultural work, neg- lect of which in the first years of Herzl's leader- ship had evoked such bitter criticism on the part of the Eastern Zionists, now receives greater at- tention than ever, thus showing the effect of Ahad Haam-'s wholesome preachment. A splendid edu- cational system is rapidly developed having its origin in the Gymnasium and the Girls' School at Jaffa in which, as in the other schools throughout the colonies -and cities, all subjects are taught in the Hebrew language. Indeed, the most remarkable development of Jewish life in Palestine in the last twenty-five years is the resurrection of He- brew as a spoken language, used by mothers when lulling their babies to sleep, by children when at play, and by adults in their everyday tasks. A vigorous periodical press is called into being, sup- plementing the work of such journalistic pioneers as M. Frumkin, founder of "Ha-Habazelet" (The Lily) and A. Ben Yehuda, editor of "Ha-Zebi" (The Glory) later called "Ha-Or" (The Light). The Mizrahists, as the ultra-orthodox faction of Zionists is called, are close followers in the foot- steps of their more progressive brethren in edu- cational work, having founded in Jaffa and Je- rusalem schools of their own under the name of Tahkemoni. Jerusalem is still the largest Jewish settlement in Palestine, with a population of more than sixty thousand Jews; its cultural growth is, however, impeded by the religious fanaticism of many of its denizens. On the other hand Jaffa becomes the seat pf liberal ideas and methods, in religion as in education, and to it flock many of the intellectual forces of the new Yishub, through whose efforts a new suburb is added to the city, under the name of Tel Aviv, noted all over the land for its beautiful residences and wide thor- 424 HISTORY OF THE JEWS oughfares. It is evident that Israel's national life needs but the healthful influences of the Pales- tinian atmosphere to strike deep root even with- out official guarantees and special charters from the government in control of the land. There, indeed, came a time in the history of Zionism when the idea of a charter was altogether abandoned, not because the leaders of the move- ment had despaired of securing it, but rather because of its needlessness. Momentous political changes had taken place in the Turkish Empire beginning with the Constitution of 1908 extorted by the Young Turk party from the unwilling hands of Abdul Hammid, and followed the next year by the dethronement of that despot and his imprisonment at Saloniki. A Committee of Union and Progress was formed which, as the name in- dicated, looked to the strengthening of the land through the unification of all elements upon the basis of liberty and progress. This Committee, it is true, made it its chief aim to solidify all the component nationalities of the empire into a com- mon Ottomanism, in this sense working to the detriment of Zionist hopes in Palestine. On the other hand the Zionists had long been convinced that nothing helpful could be expected from the wily and treacherous Abdul Hammid, and the ad- vantage lost in the opportunity of dealing with an autocrat who might, if inclined, grant the coveted charter, was more than offset by the greater ad- vantage now opened to them in the freedom to carry on their cultural and colonizing work in the land as provided under the Constitution. Under the autocracy the autonomy longed for by the Zionists might well have been insisted upon as a condition indispensable for the safety of the pro- posed work; under a constitutional regime such an autonomy, while desirable, was not essential NATIONALIST REVIVAL AND ZIONISM 425 to the interests of the movement as a whole. Given a majority of Jewish inhabitants in Palestine and local autonomy would come of itself. Complete political independence, though cherished as a pos- sibility for the "latter days," was something- not contemplated by any save the ill-informed and those Zionists whose enthusiasm outran their po- litical discretion. Time and again Herzl, Nordau and Wolfsohn were emphatic in their declaration that the Zionist program was not antagonistic to the imperialistic interests of Turkey. The het- erogeneous aspect of the empire made a policy of centralization in government impossible, requiring each of the provinces to be ruled according to its special needs and the conditions peculiar to it. Such a situation greatly favored the Zionist plans. And, in truth, never did the Jewish community of Pal- estine enjoy greater freedom and more prosperity than during the six years of constitutional .govern- ment in Turkey, from 1908 down to the beginning of the Great War in 1914. An instance of the rapid rise of the Jewish na- tional spirit under the new freedom was given in the language controversy of 1913 which centred about the Polytechnicum in Haifa. Nominally the work x of the Hilfsverein of Berlin under whose auspices it was being built, this institution was in reality made possible largely through the mone- tary gifts of non-German Jews and especially through the generosity of American donors. As Hebrew was increasingly becoming the dominant language of Jewish educational institutions in Palestine, it had been taken for granted that such would be the case also with the Polytechnicum. The leaders of the Hilfsverein in Berlin, however, looked askance at this prospect. If they did not love the Hebrew less they favored their own Ger- man language more, and their Teutomaniac procliv- HISTORY OF THE JEWS ities made it possible for them to lend themselves as tools in the hands of their government for the spread of German influence in the land by means of the German language. Germany had long deplored the prevalence of the French cul- tural spirit in Palestine and was altogether too glad to avail herself of the ultra-patriotism of her Jewish citizens to combat the influence of her ri- val. Thus it came about that at one of the ses- sions of the Kuratorium, or Board of Directors, 3 of the Polytechnicum in Berlin during the sum- mer of 1913, despite the vigorous opposition of several of its members, the language question was decided in favor of the German. This led to the resignation of the Zionist members of the Kura- torium, and created a considerable controversy in the Jewish press of all lands, the American mem- bers of the Directorate, including Professor Solo- mon Schechter, and Jacob H. Schiff opposing the action of their Berlin colleagues. The greatest ex- citement, however, took place in Palestine where the populace as a whole rose in protest against the action of the Hilfsverein leaders, and where the teachers in all of the schools maintained by that organization went on strike and organized new schools, the little pupils joining in the demonstra- tion and refusing to attend the old schools. The pleading of the head of the Hilfsverein, Dr. Paul Nathan, of Berlin and the threats of his hench- man, Mr. Ephraim Cohn, in Jerusalem, who even went to the length of using the Turkish police force against teachers and pupils alike, were un- availing. The Jews of Palestine fought for the maintenance of their national tongue with a zeal equaled only by that of their Maccabean an- cestors. On their side were ranged the choicest elements of European and American Israel who held indignation meetings, passed resolutions of NATIONALIST REVIVAL AND ZIONISM 427 condemnation against the German-Jewish assimila- tionists, and raised large funds for the support of the striking teachers and their newly-opened schools. It was a trial of strength for the suprem- acy not merely of the Hebrew language but of the Jewish national ideal of which that language was the symbol, with the inevitably resultant triumph of both. Thus in a very large measure did the age-long dream of a Jewish national resurrection come true in Palestine even without the longed-for autonomy and political guarantees from the Turkish and the other governments. It is a repetition of the legend of Antaeus come true in the life of a whole peo- ple. The Jew has touched the soil forever in- alienably his, and contact with it caused him to grow strong and to rise once again in racial self- dignity and in the respectful estimation of his Christian and Mohammedan neighbors. In less than four decades he has proved himself master of his own destinies and a source of economic and cultural strength to the land he came to redeem from her centuried waste and to upbuild by his energy and thrift. The drawing power of the country for Jews from all lands can be seen in their great variety of color, language, custom and dress, including as they do not only Jews from all over Europe and America, but from the Levant, Mesopotamia, Persia, Kurdistan, Morocco, a col- ony of wealthy Jews from Bokhara, and a sturdy peasantry class from Yemen, in Southern Arabia. Alongside of the agricultural activity of the col- onies there has developed a considerable retail and wholesale trade. The Anglo-Palestine Company, a branch of the Jewish Colonial Trust, has been the pioneer banking institution of the country, in- troducing a credit system, financing many an in- dustrial enterprise, and extending its business op- 428 HISTORY OF THE JEWS erations not only to the Jews but to the Christian and Moslem populations as well. The Bezalel School of Arts and Crafts, under the remarkable leadership of Professor Boris Schatz, has given birth to a new Jewish art, the excellent products of which have many times been exhibited in the great cities of Europe and the United States where they found a large sale. The development of a large clothing industry in Jerusalem was under contemplation by a few wealthy American Jews when the Great War arrived to frustrate their plans. With the entrance of Turkey into the war on the side of the Central Powers Palestine was at once made to feel the entire misery which the world-conflict was to bring to nations far and near. The land was immediately cut off from the great world markets and economic distress began to pre- vail in a country not plentifully supplied with gold and largely dependent upon foreign lands for many of the necessaries of life. The Turkish govern- ment whose Jewish policy in time of peace had nearly always been liberal and conciliatory, now seized hold of the land with all the desperate tyr- anny of a despot who sees his power slipping from his grasp. Aside from conscripting many of the Jewish young men into the army, it commandeered and confiscated for its war-purposes everything it could lay its hands on, expelled a great many of the non-Ottomanized Jews from the land and caused nearly the entire Jewish population of Jaffa to evacuate the city. Djemal Pas^a, to whom the task was entrusted of placing the corntry on a war- footing, carried out his mission with a rigor fully in keeping with the inhuman methods and tactics of the German war lords into whose hands Turkey had been handed over. Thousands of Jews were forcibly placed on American boats and NATIONALIST REVIVAL AND ZIONISM 429 sent to Alexandria, in Egypt, there to fall a bur- den upon the local community until help could arrive from the United States to enable them to start on a circuitous journey to America. In the melee of this forcible deportation parents became separated from their children, husbands from their wives, and not a few were killed in the scrim- mage. Zionist activity was declared illegal and seditious, some of its leaders were imprisoned, while many others, including the heads of the ed- ucational institutions of Jaffa and Jerusalem, fled the country and made their way to Allied coun- tries and to America. But now a great event happened, great notwith- standing that it was limited in scope and in the measure of its actual performance. On its moral side it served, as nothing else could, to bring the Zionist hope and the Jew's historic claim to the land of his fathers in the clear and commanding view of the world and especially of the Allied bel- ligerents arrayed against Turkey and her Ger- manic allies. Among the Palestinian refugees in Alexandria there were several hundred young men upon whom the idea dawned that a rare op- portunity was there presenting itself to the Jews as a nation to join in the great world struggle for democracy and freedom and thereby establish their claim to Palestine on the strength of their actual participancy in the war. England was then pre- paring what proved to be the ill-fated Gallipoli expedition for the purpose of wresting the Dar- danelles and Constantinople itself from the Turk, and Egypt was the great base for British military operations. Under the direction of Vladimir J. Zhabotinsky, the noted Russian Jewish journalist and radical Zionist leader, who was in Egypt with the refugees and to whom belongs most of the credit for the enterprise, the Zionist youths made 43 HISTORY OF THE JEWS their will known to General Sir John Maxwell, the British Commander-in-Chief, and asked to be organized into a Zionist regiment, under British command, in the campaign against Turkey. In helping in the defeat of Turkey, they believed, and in the consequent liberation of Palestine, their services would be laid to the credit of the Jewish people as a whole whose claim to the Holy Land would thus be incalculably strengthened. The of- fer was accepted and as commander of this unit was appointed Lieutenant-Colonel J. H. Patterson, a man of much military experience despite his comparative youth, and of warm sympathy for the Jewish race. There were about 500 men in this unit, which became known as the "Zion Mule Corps." Early in the Spring of 1915 these men were administered the oath of allegiance to the Allied cause by the Grand Rabbi of Alexandria, Professor Raphael della Pergola, and on the 2nd of April they were already in camp undergoing training. They adopted the Mag en David as their insignium and the drilling was done under words of command in Hebrew. The Corps, however, while exposed to all the dangers of the battle front, was not intended or expected to do much actual fighting, its special duty being to supply water and other necessaries to the troops in the trenches. They made their way to the foot of Achi Baba hill, in the southern part of the Gal- lipoli peninsula, where for several months they faithfully carried out the duties assigned to them during the fiercest battles of the period, many of their number being killed and wounded. Their valor is attested to by Colonel Patterson himself in his book "With the Zionists in Gallipoli" (1916) where he speaks most enthusiastically of the men and their officers, Captain Trumpledor, Corporal Yahuda, Corporal Grushkovsky who was awarded VLADIMIR J. ZHABOTINSKY NATIONALIST REVIVAL AND ZIONISM 431 a D. C. M. (Distinguished Conduct Medal) for bravery, as well as Private Nissel Rosenberg who in addition to the medal was promoted to the rank of sergeant. He refers touchingly to his orderly, Corporal Yorish, to Lieutenant Gorodisky, who died in the service, and to the devotion of the members of the Corps to each other, as shown at the funeral of those of their number who were killed in action, and on the occasion of any of them being wounded when "his friends would lit- erally fall on his neck, weep and embrace him most tenderly." But late in the fall of that year, the Gallipoli venture was pronounced a failure and Britain and France decided to withdraw their forces. The Zion Mule Corps returned to Egypt where it was disbanded, amid the praise and grat- itude of the British government. Those 500 Jews were the first of their race, since the days of Bar Kokhba, in the second century, to- take up arms against the usurpers of their ancestral soil. Was it instinct rather than political foresight which caused these Jewish youths to throw in their lot with the great British Empire in her strug- gle against Turkey? Most likely it was both. The governing circles of England, and most of the English nation, have always shown them- selves as sincere friends of the Jewish race. The political emancipation of the Jews in the Island Kingdom has been carried out in the letter as in the spirit, and Jews were allowed to occupy the highest political offices, from Lord Mayor in Lon- don and other cities to Lord Chief Justice of the Empire. The appointment by England of Lord Reading (Sir Rufus Isaacs) as "High Commis- sioner and Special Ambassador" to the United States is the first instance of the appointment of a Jew for such an exalted mission to a Christian power by another such power (January 7, 1918), 432 HISTORY OF THE JEWS English admiration and reverence for the Old Testament, had made possible a kinship of spirit and sympathy between the two races unequaled in any other Christian land. Leading Jews, in- cluding Herzl and other prominent Zionists, have felt all along that they could trust English prom- ises where they could place but little faith in those made by other governments, and the loca- tion of the Jewish Colonial Trust, the strong pil- lar of the Zionist cause, in London was done out of consideration for this essential fact. But as long as England remained the reputed friend of Turkey little could be expected from her as an aid toward the effectual realization of the Zionist hope in Palestine. The Great War changed the entire political aspect and brought within the ken of possibility what had been apparently impos- sible. England not only declared war on Turkey but actually entered upon the task of wresting by force of arms the Holy Land from the Turk's grasp. Her armies invaded Palestine and after a brilliant campaign successively took the historic cities of Beer Sheba, Gaza, Askalon, Jaffa and other places, capturing many thousands of enemy troops and supplies and heading for Jerusalem where the Turks made feeble resistance against the conquering Britishers. In Zionist circles it had been taken for granted that a British Pales- tine would mean eventually a Jewish Palestine. Whatever misgivings there were still entertained on the subject were finally dispelled by the Brit- ish government itself in its now historic declara- tion of November 2, 1917. It was made in a letter addressed by the Hon. Arthur J. Balfour, British Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, to Lord Rothschild, and its exact statement read: "His Majesty's Government mews with favor the es- tablishment in Palestine of a national home for COL. J. H. PATTERSON Commander of the "Zion Mule Corps" NATIONALIST REVIVAL AND ZIONISM 433 the Jewish people, and will use its best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object, it be- ing clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country." Except for the initiated few, this report of Eng- land's professed attitude toward the Zionist am- bition in Palestine was so sudden and unexpected as to sound almost incredible. Yet here it in all truth was, this authenticated and corroborated statement on behalf of the powerful English gov- ernment. Herzl's memorable words in "Altneu- land," "if you wish it, it is no myth," have now in- deed come true. The foremost of all the belliger- ent Allies, the one formidable power against whom Germany's military weight is especially di- rected, has recognized the will of the Jewish peo- ple to restoration into the community of nation- hood, and has acted accordingly both from a sense of historic justice and from the pardonably selfish desire of seeing the one land of strategical im- portance for the protection of the Suez Canal and of the road to India, in the hands of a people she knows she can trust the most, the Jews. As it subsequently developed, this English declaration was no spontaneous matter but was decided on by the British government only after considerable ac- tivity on the part of the English Zionists who since the beginning of the War found themselves in an advantageous position owing to the accretion to their ranks of a number of leading Zionists from Russia, notably Nahum Sokolow, the brilliant Hebrew editor and publicist, and Dr. Tschlenow of Moscow. Anterior to the war England had already become the home of Ahad Haam and of Dr. Chaim (Hayim) Weizmann. It is the latter 434 HISTORY OF THE JEWS to whom is ascribed most of the credit for the Zionist diplomatic victory. Unlike most of the other great leaders of Zionism who came to it as novices from the outside, Weizmann is himself a product of the movement. A Talmudist and He- braist from Russia, he early in life went to Swit- zerland in whose universities he studied chemistry and after a time received an appointment as profes- sor in that branch of science at the Manchester uni- versity. He first won fame in the Zionist move- ment by his persistent advocacy of the project to found a Jewish university in Jerusalem. With the coming 1 of the war Weizmann met with the op- portunity of his life to render his favorite move- ment the greatest possible service. By dint of his invention of certain chemical explosives he had made himself invaluable to the British Government in its prosecution of the war. He is said to have refused all remuneration for his work but re- quested, instead, the good- will of England to- wards the Zionist cause. England thus became more than ever predisposed in favor of the Jewish home-land idea. In the meantime the other lead- ers of the movement left no stone unturned in their labors at furthering the materialization of their plans. Even Ahad Haam, perceiving the ad- vent of the crucial and psychological moment, for the nonce laid aside his objections to the po- litical scheme and exerted his moral influence among the English Zionists in favor of the ne- gotiations with the British government, while Nahum Sokolow undertook a journey to France and Italy there to intercede with leading states- men in behalf of a Jewish Palestine. In London a Zionist Political Committee was formed, com- posed of Dr. Weizmann, Nahum Sokolow, Lord Rothschild, Joseph Cowen, Dr. Moses Caster and Leon Simon aided by Dr. Tschlenow for the Rus- DB. CHAYM (HAYIM) WEIZMANN (b. 1874) NATIONALIST REVIVAL AND ZIONISM 435 sian Zionists and by the heads of the Provisional Zionist Committee of the United States, Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandies, Dr. Stephen S. Wise, Dr. Harry Friedenwald, E. W. Lewin- Epstein and Jacob De Haas. When Mr. Balfour visited Canada in the Spring of 1917, he sent for Mr. Clarence I. de Sola, the president of the Canadian Zionist Federation who on the 2Qth of May waited on him, at Ottawa, at the palace of the Duke of Devonshire, Governor-General of Canada. The two went into a lengthy and thor- ough discussion of the Zionist programme and of the future of the Jews in Palestine, and the Brit- ish Secretary for Foreign Affairs even then au- thorized Mr. De Sola to state for him that he was in entire sympathy with the Zionist move- ment. The British government's declaration of November was an aftermath of that historic in- terview, and had been looked forward to by the Zionist leaders of both England and America. There now followed a number of momentous events in rapid succession. The assimilationist faction of both English and American Jewry found itself with its back against the wall facing a most unusual and never dreamed-of situation. They who had been clamoring all along that they alone were the loyalists of their country among the Jews, that to be a Zionist was nothing less than to harbor a divided allegiance whereby the good name of the Jew was being compromised, now that the British government itself recognized the validity of Zion- ism and that President Wilson himself is known to be kindly disposed to the movement, saw them- selves in the clumsy position of appearing more patriotic Englishmen or Americans than the very governments, allegiance to which they have loudly and repeatedly acclaimed from the house-tops. The reptilian press of this element on both sides 436 HISTORY OF THE JEWS of the Atlantic is even now still showing some fight, while several of the rabid anti-nationalists in America have not overlooked the opportunity of once again courting the publicity of the daily press by repeating their now trite enouncement that Zionism is incompatible with real Americanism. In England the leaders of this element have or- ganized "The League of British Jews" which aims to supplant the notoriously anti-Zionist "Board of Deputies," though it curiously enough seeks "to facilitate the settlement in Palestine of such Jews as may desire to make Palestine their home" at the same time as it declares one of its main objects to be "to resist the allegation that Jews constitute a separate political nationality." It is clear that it is but the last stand made by the Jewish anti-nationalists in what has become for them a hopeless fight. The accession to the ranks of the Zionists of Lord Walter Lionel Rothschild in England and the sympathetic attitude toward the movement assumed latterly by Jacob H. Schiff in America, is eloquent testimony to the resist- less sweep of the Zionist ideal in quarters hither- to deemed impenetrable. The fall of Jerusalem in the Hannukkah week of 5678 (December 10, 1917), before General Al- lenby's forces, five weeks after the publication of Lord Balfour's letter to Rothschild, thus placing in the possession of the British most of the Pales- tinian territory, has served to add to the jubila- tion of the nationalists and to make England's declaration even more certain of fulfillment. What- ever the outcome of the Great War, it is extremely unlikely, were it even possible for Germany to win, that the united Christian conscience of the world would suffer the return of the Holy Land to the Turks. England will not let go of the land now that she has it, and England will never go Copyright by Undeitvood 6 Undeiivood GENERAL ALLF.NBY ENTERING JERUSALEM (See page 436) NATIONALIST REVIVAL AND ZIONISM 437 back on her promise to the Jews. "We rejoice," said Dr. S. S. Wise at the Carnegie Hall celebra- tion in New York (December 23, 1917), "over nothing more than 'a scrap of paper/ but that scrap of paper is written in English. It is signed by the British Government and therefore is sacred and inviolable." But it is no longer a question of the English making good this promise but of the Jews proving equal to the responsibility which is now theirs. "Men, Money and Discipline" were the three factors cited by Justice Brandeis before the Baltimore conference of the Provisional Zion- ist Committee (December 16) as the great pre- requisite for the final realization of Jewish hopes in the New Zion, and they who know the strength of the Zionist sentiment among all classes of Jews will find no cause for doubt that these conditions will be fully met, and that the Jewish conquest of the land by the peaceful means of commerce and agriculture will speedily follow its military con- quest by English arms. The final stage of the Auto emancipation has come, and none but the wavering and the backsliders can fail in the su- preme duty of a great historic hour. THE END BIBLIOGRAPHY Abbott, G. F., "Israel in Europe," London, 1907. Ahad Haam, "Al Parashat Derakhim," 4 vols., Berlin, 1902-1913. , "Selected Essays," translation of Leon Simon, Philadelphia, 1912. American Jewish Committee, "The Jews in the Eastern War Zone," New York, 1916. Bernfeld, S., Toldot ha-Reformazion ha-Datit be-Yisroel," Krakau, 1900. Bernheimer, Charles S., "The Russian Jews in the United States," Philadelphia, 1905. Bernstein, Herman, "The Beilis Affair," in "American Jewish Year Book," 5675. Brainin, Reuben, "Perez ben Moshe Smolenskin," Warsaw, 1896. , "Zikronot," Krakau, 1899. Brandes, Georg, "Fate of the Jews in Poland," in "Current History Monthly Magazine of the New York Times," Vol. I. Cohen, Israel, "Zionist \Vork in Palestine," London, 1911. Daly, Chas. P., "The Settlemen of the Jews in North America," edited by Max J. Kohler, New York, 1893. Davitt, Michael, "Within the Pale," New York, 1903. Dreyfus, Alfred, "Five Years of My Life," New York, 1901. Dubnow, S. M., "History of the Jews in Russia and Poland," trans- lated by Israel Friedlaender, Volume I., Philadelphia, 1916. Einhorn, David, "David Einhorn Memorial Volume," edited by Kaufmann Kohler, New York, 1911. Elzas, Barnett A., "The Jews of South Carolina," Philadelphia, 1905. Friedlaender, Israel, "The Jews of Rusia and Poland," New York, 1915. Gordon, J. L., "Iggerot," edited by I. J. Weissberg, Warsaw, 1904. Gottheil, Richard J. H., "Zionism," Philadelphia, 1914. Heilprin, Michael, "Michael Heilprin and His Sons," a biography by Gustav Pollak, New York, 1912. Herzl, Theodor, "A Jewish State," edited by J. De Haas, New York, 1904. Hyamson, Albert M., "Palestine: The Rebirth of an Ancient Na- tion," New York, 1917. "Jewish Encyclopedia," New York, 1901-1906, 12 vols. Kahana, David, "Lilienthal ve-Haskalat ha-Yehudim be-Russiya," in "Haschiloah," Vol. 27. Kohler, Max J., and Wolf, Simon, "Jewish Disabilities in the Balkan States," in "Publications of the American Jewish His- torical Society," No. 24, 1916. Kowner, Abraham Uri, "Heker Dabar," Warsaw, 1865. , "Zeror Perahim," Odessa, 1868. BIBLIOGRAPHY Letteris, M., "Zikkaron ba-Sefer," Wien, 1869. Lewinski-Corwin, Edward H., "The Political History of Poland," Xew York, 1917. Lilienblum, M. L., "Derekh la-Abor Golim," Warsaw, 1899. Mandelstamm, Benjamin, "Hazon la-Moed," Wien, 1877. May, Max B., "Isaac Mayer Wise," New York, 1916. Philippson, Martin, "Neueste Geschichte des juedischen Volkes," Leipzig, 3 vols., 1907-1911. Philipson, David, "Max Lilienthal, American Rabbi, Life and W r rit- ings," Xew York, 1915. , "The Reform Movement in Judaism," New York, 1907. Raisin, Jacob S., "The Hasfcalah Movement in Russia," Philadel- phia, 1913. Rhine, Abraham B., "Leon Gordon, an Appreciation," Philadelphia, 1910. Rosenthal, Leon, "Toldot Hebrat Marbe Haskalah be-Yisroel," St. Petersburg, 1885. Ruppin, Arthur, "The Jews of To-day," translated by Margery Bentwich, London, 1913. Sandberg, Harry O., "The Jews of Latin America," in "American Jewish Year Book," 5678. Schreiber, Emanuel, "Reformed Judaism and Its Pioneers," Spo- kane, 1892. Schulman, Elazar, "Imke Safah," in "Haschiloah," Vol. 4, 1898. Schwarzfeld, Eli, "The Jews of Roumania," in "American Jewish Year Book," 5673. Slouschz, Nahum, "The Renascence of Hebrew Literature," trans- lated by Henriettta Szold, Philadelphia, 1909. Steevens, G. W., "The Tragedy of Dreyfus," New York, 1899. Szold, Henrietta, "Recent Jewish Progress in Palestine," in "Ameri- can Jewish Year Book," 5676. ?> "The Passport Question," in "American Jewish Year Book, o67Z and 5673. Theilhaber, Felix A., "Der Untergang der deutschen Juden, Ber- lin, 1911. Urusov, Prince Serge Dmitriyevich, "Memoirs of a Russian Gov- ernor" translated by Herman Rosenthal. London, 1908. Waldstein, Abraham S., "The Evolution of Modern Hebrew Liter- ature," New York, 1916. Wiernik, Peter, "History of the Jews in America, Xew York. iyi^. Wise, Isaac Mayer, "Remimiscences," translated by David Philipson, Cincinnati, 1901. .. ; "Selected Writings of Isaac Mayer Wise," edited by David Philipson and Louis Grossman, Cincinnati, 1900. INDEX A Aargau Swiss Canton grant- ing equality to Jews, 1862..31, 32 Abbott, G. F., author of "Is- rael in Europe" 85 Abdul Hamid, 405, 410, 413, 414, 424 Abendblatt 305 Aberdeen District 351 Abiezer 142 Abraham as a source of bless- edness 64 Abraham, Samuel 158 Abramovitch, Shalom Jacob (Mendele Mokher Seforim) 151, 176, 183-5 Abyssinia 353 Achi Baba Hill 430 Actions Committee 410, 418 Adelaide, Congregation of ...348 Adler, Dr 349 Adler, Cyrus 243 Adler, Henry 264 Adler, Jacob P 326 Adler, Liebman 272,277 Adler, Dr. Nathan 16 Adler, Samuel 266, 271-2 Adrianople 214 Africa 70, 345 Aguilar, Grace 274 "Ahabath Ziyyon" 150 Ahad Haam ....174, 177, 312, 408 418, 423, 433-4 Ahasuerus 35 "Ahavat David u Mikhal" 152 Ahiasaf, publishing house 172 Ahlwardt, Herman 48-9 Ain Zeitun, colony of 380 Aix La Chapelle, Congress of. 94 Aksenfeld, Israel 182 Albany 30, 254-5, 259, 262 Alexander I (1801-1825) attitude towards the Jews 90-9 idea of Jewish colonies, 106, 208 Alexander II abandons cantonist sys- tem of conscription. . .102 accession to throne. ...123 character and work... 124-5 murder of ....161, 216. 376 Alexander III 80, 162-5 190, 193, 204 245, 294, 376, 395 Alexandria, Egypt ..213, 275, 429 Algeria Allegiance of Jews in 26 results of Dreyfus af- fair in 77 subsiding of antisemit- ic propaganda in 79 Algiers agitation of Max Regis in 77 dissolution of the city council 78 arrest of Regis 79 Aliens Bill (1904) 84 reintroduced in Parliament.. 86 Mkalai, Rabbi Judah 370 Allenbv, General E. H. H. . . .436 4Ugemcine Zeitung des Jud- cntlnincs Supporter of lib- eral Judaism 16, 44 Alliance Israelite Universelle founding 19 influence 56 schools in Orient 217 intercession in Serbia.. 218 intercession in Rouma- nia 226 educational work 231 at Congress of Berlin. . .234 colonization in U. S., 296, 298, 372, 394, 409 440 INDEX 441 Alliance, N. J "Al Parashat Derakhim".. 174 Alsace-Lorraine 57 Alt Ofen, Hungary 21 America 9, 14, 21, 46, 49, 80, 117, 245, 250, 251, 261, 267, 274, 286, 294-5, 429, 436 American Hebrew Congrega- tions, Union of 315 American Israelite. 30, 259-60, 27(J American Jew 336, 344, 361 American Jewish Committee.337-8 American Jewish Congress ..343 American Jewry 340, 342- American Judaism . . . American Russian Orthodoxy. 314 Am Olam society Amsterdam Jews of Sephar- dic origin in 4 Ananiev Anglo-Jewish Association, 82, 231, 243 Anglo-Palestine Co 427 Angola 421 Anshe Emet Congregation of Albany 256 Antaeus 427 Antietam .' 282 Antin, Mary 306, 309 Antisemites, use Rohling's "Talmud Jew" 39 Antisemites playing upon French fear of German inva- sion 65 in control of French government 72- Polish, combine against Jews Antisemites r e t u r n to of- fice in Algiers 78 use Russian immigration as propaganda 80-1 Antisemitism political and scientific 34-35 German, political phase of 40, 44 decrying of, by German Crown Prince 45 German, extent of 45 Lueger's work 5C Clerical party's share in. 52 French 55-57 Leroy Beaulieu's opinion Of . 59 298 Antisemitism Dreyfus affair, as ex- pression of 65-6 work on history and causes of by Lazare. 70 Governmental influence during time of sup- posed guilt of Drey- fus 71, 81-83 preachers of, in England 86 extent of, in Europe, 346, 357 Antonio Jew as playing part of, in Dreyfus affair 66 3 Apion 35 250-68 Arabia, southern 427 Arabs 392 296 Ararat 362 Arbeiter Ring 328 Arbeiter Zeitung .- 305 163 Argentina, Jews of 302 Argentine Republic, 301, 396, 402-3, 413 Armenians 405 Artom, Isaac 29 'Asaka de-Rispak" 152 Asch, Shalom 188 Ascher family in Canada 249 'Asenat Bat-Potipherah" 152 'Ashmat Shomeron" 150 Asia 403 Askalon 432 Asmonean 256, 258 Association of Jewish Rabbis. 408 Astrakhan added to "Pale".. 92 Astruc Chief Rabbi of Brus- sels 232 3 Athens, Jewish Community. . .214 Atlanta 284 206 Augsburg 16 Australia.... 345, 346-348, 350, 421 Austria 284, 351 Austria-Hungary lull in religious contro- versies in 9-10 defeat of, at hands of Italians 19, 21 success of Reform in... 23 treatment of Reform in. 24 influence of Clericalism in 25 success of Italian arms against 26 ceding of Venice by 27 Antisemitism in 50 most formidable Anti- 442 INDEX Austria H.ungary Semite of 5] interest in Roumanian Jewish situation in... 230 Austrians supposed contraband trade of Russian Jews with 105 "Ayit Zabua" 150 B Baal Shem, Israel 97, 244 "Baba Buch" 180 Bacher, W 177 Balfour, Hon. A. J., 84, 432, 436 Balkan Peace Conference 243 Balkan States severed from Turkey... 234 at Congress of Berlin, 235, 264 Balkan Wars 243 Ballarat, Congregation of 348 Baltimore, 31, 250, 262-3, 270, 303, 421 Bamberger, Ludwig in Reichstag 37 aid to Bismarck.. 41, 168, 229 Barit, Jacob 161 BarKokba 431 Barnato, Barney 351-352 Barondess, Joseph 304 Bartholdi's Statue of Liberty. 291 Bastille Basel 33,330,386,408, 417 Beaconsfield, Lord .82, 231, 234, 236, 376 Beer Sheba 432 Beer Tobiyah 380 Beilis, Mendel 197-202, 207 Belfast 82 Belgium 87, 369 Belerade 218-19 Belkowsky 419 Ben Avigdor Bender, A. P 350 Pendis-o 34 Ben Nahman. Rabbi Moses... 358 "Ben Shinne Arayot" 153 Bene Israel, Congregation of, Cincinnati 25? Beni Israel 353 Bene Yeshurun Congregation, of Cincinnati 259 Benjamin, Judah P 278, 279 "Ben Uziel," Letters of 1 Ben Yehudah, E 173, 423 Berditchefsky, M. J 177, 189 Bergen 1 Berkovich, D 176 Berkowitz 311 Berlin, Cultural Work in, by Wessely 6 first Reform Temple in 10 schools in 11 activity of Orthodox Party at 13 activity of Reform Party at 14 Senior Sachs in 15 home of Michael Sachs 16 home of Prof. M. Laza- rus .- 1 ?. 31 estimated conversions in 1899-1903 50 anti-Jewish measures, 60-135, 252, 284, 385, 410, 425 Berlin, Moses . .' 127 Berliner, Abraham 10, 177 Bernassoni, Colony of 301 Bernays, Jacob 11 Berne American Minister at . . 30 Jewish Professors at University of 31 Bernfeld, S 175, 177 Bernheim, Chas. L 296 Bernstein, Aaron 37 209 Bernstein, Edward 37 Bernstein, Herman 308 Bernstein, Hirsh 316 Berr, Michael 91 Bershadsky, J 176 Bessarabets 194 Bet ha-Midrash ha-Godol Con- gregation of New York 294 Beth-El Congregation of Al- bany 254 Beth-El, Pulpit of 307 Beth Elohim, Congregation of Charleston, S. C 255, 263 Bethlehem Yehudah 297 "Bet-Yehudah." by Levinsohn.139 Rezalel School 428 P.ialik, H. N 175. 189 Bibescu, George, ruler of Wal- lachia 224 Bible, cited in support of slav- ery 276 Bible. Leeser's translation 274 Bielinsky 157 INDEX 443 Bien, Julius 284 Bijur, M 31 Bikkure ha-Ittim 146 "Bi-mezulot Yam" 152 Bingham, General Theodore ..336 Birnbaum, Nathan 405 Bismarck anti -Jewish activity of 34, 40, 41 his alliance with the Lib- erals 38, 42, 43, 46 his half-hearted meas- ures against Antisem- ites, '47, 162, 233-234, 376 "Biur" of Mendelssohn 134 "Bi-Yeshibbah Shel Maalah ubi - Yeshibbah Shel Mat- tah" 176 Bjornson, Bjornstjerne 412 Elaine, James G 337 Bleichroeder, Baron Gerson von 234 Bleichroeder, Julius 232 Bloemfontein, Synagogue of.. 350 Bloomgarden, Solomon ..323, 324 Bludov, Count, Russian Min- ister of the Interior 108 "Blue Book," British 236 Blumenberg, Provost Marshal Leopold 281 Bnai Brith, Order, 227, 231, 284-5 Bne Moshe, Order of.... 328, 394 Board of Delegates of Ameri- can Israelites 227-74 Board of Deputies 436 Bodenheimer, Dr 406 Boer War 81, 352 Bogrow, Grigori 131, 136 Boisdeffre his part in the Dreyfus Affair 73 Bokhara, Jews of 427 Bolsheviki 210 Bombay 353-354 Bonaparte, Napoleon 363 Bonn 363 Boston 262 Boulanger, General attempts to overthrow French Government . . 58 Bourbons, overthrow of 209 Bradford, England, synagogue at 14 Brafmann, Jacob his attacks on Jews 160 Brainin, Reuben 173, 189 Brandeis, Louis Demebitz, 334, 342, 435, 437 Brandes, Eduard 8 Brandes, Georg Morris Cohen 8-9 Braudes, Reuben Asher 151 Brandstadter, M 151, 244 Bratianu Premier of Rou- mania 226, 235-7 Braunschweig Reform Confer- ence 268 Braunstein, M 244 Brazil Jewish emigration from 245 Brazul Brushkowsky, investigator in Beilis af- fair 201-2 Brenner, J. H 176 Breslau home of first rabbini- cal seminary in Germany . . 11 Conference at 268 Brisbane Congregation of ...348 Brith Abraham Order 285 British Empire industrial and Economic prospects in closing year of 19th century.. 79 British Isles 81, 346 British Proclamation 432 British Royal Commission on Alien Immigration 411 Brown, Mrs. Jewish midwife to Czar's household 104 Bruck, Moses, officer in Hun- garian revolutionary move- ment 20 ^rudno, Ezra 308 Brussels Exile home of Ig- natz Einhorn 21 Jewish Congress at 231 Buber, Solomon 11 Buchanan, United States Presi- dent 31, 279 Bucharest Anti-Jewish riots in 222-3, 226 Budapest opposition to the Reform movement in 10 rabbinical seminary in. . . 11 special Jewish divisions against Croatians in 1848 20 suffering of Jews in.... 21 Government suppression of Reform 22 Congress of Jews in 1864 . .22 444 INDEX Budapest Dr. Kayserling, rabbi of 32 Anti- Jewish riots (1882) 53 Buedinger, Max 269 professor in University of Zurich 31 Buenos Ayres 301-302 Bulgaria, Jews of sufferers in revolution against Turkey 216 given equal rights 216 ritual murder charge against 216-7 population of 219 Bulgarian Antisemites influenced by Russia and Germany 216 Bunker Hill Monument 285 Buschoff, Adolph German Jewish victim of ritual mur- der charge 47, 48 B. Y. L. U. (V.) Byzantine Empire 221 Byron, Lord Cahan, Abraham 305, Caine, Hall 412 Calcutta, Synagogue in 354 Chath California, discovery of gold in Canada Jewish immigration into, Jewish pioneers in parliament of 248 later Jewish settlers in 249, 265, 421 Canadian Zionist Federation. .435 Cantonists child recruits un- der Nicholas 1 102 Cape Colony, Jews in 351 Cape Town 350-1 Carmel, N. J ....29* Caradja, ruler of Wallachia . . 223 Cassel, David 10 Cassel, Paulus, in Defense of ^the Jews 45 Catharine IT of Russia, discriminates against the Jews 90 expels the Jews . . . Catharine the Great 208 Catholic Church counter reformation in.. 12 reactionaries as cause of anti-semitism in... 33 waning influence of, in France 55 attitude of Nicholas I toward 100 Catholics as objectors to state in- fluence over Jewish affairs in Germany 13 legislation for, in Aus- tria 25 Caucasia added to "Pale", 38, 40, 56, 92 Caucasus exile of recalci- trant Christians to 95 Cavour, Count 29 Cazalet '.365 Central Conference of Ameri- can Rabb.is 266, 343, 407 379 Central European Powers 243 .Central Relief Committee 340 364 Chamberlain 417 Chapultepec 276 Charles XII (of Sweden) influence of Jewish fin- anciers upon 2 308 Charleston, S. C. 252, 255, 267, 286-7 am Square Cemetery 246 Chazanowicz, Dr. Joseph 386 321 Cherche Midi, scene of the Esterhazy court martial 71 245-6 Cheberiak, Vera 199, 201 247 Chernishewsky 157 "Cherta" ("Pale" of Settle- ment) 90 Chesterfield 298 Chiarini, Bishop, attacks the Talmud 113 Chicago 262, 271, 277 rhickamauga, Battle of 282 Christ Jews as alleged ene- mies of 39, 43 Christian IV, King of Den- mark 4 Christians. Jewish intermar- riage with 3 participate in Germany in movement against Antisemitism 40 89 Christians transfer of Jewish trade to, by Nicholas 1 105 INDEX 445 Christians separation of Jewish settlements from those of, in Siberian col- onization 106 given permission to rent land from Jewish col- onists of New Russia.107 Chiarini's assertions for Talmudic sanction for Jewish wrongdoing to- ward supervisors of Jewish schools 115 Christianity proselytism of Jews to, in Denmark conversion of Jews to, for removal of disabil- ities 34 Jews as enemies of 39 cause of embracing of, by Jews 50 Failure of conversion of Jews to 95 Christian Socialist Party 376 Chwolson, Daniel, apostacy of 130, 136 Cincinnati German Jewish settlers 9, 11, 19, 250 Drs. Wise and Lillien- thal in. 259-261, 264-5, 268 Civil War 276,282,289 Clara colony of 301 Clemenceau, Albert lawyer for Zola 72 as premier 76 Cleveland, Conference of, 261, 262, 270, 284 Cogalniceanu, Roumanian dele- gate to Congress of Ber- lin 235-6 Cohen, Edward 348 Cohen, H. E 348 Cohen, Jacob 175 Cohen, J. J 348 Cohen, M. J." 31 Cohen, Samuel 34 Colin, Albert 16, 372 Cohn, Ephraim 426 Cohn, Dr. Elkan 262,272 College of Physicians and Sur- geons of Lower Canada 247 Collins, Charles 348 Colorado 299 Columbus 245 Commission of Jewish Educa- tion in Russia 122 "Commission for Finding Ways and Means for the Radical Transformation of the Jews of Russia" 116 Committee of Union and Prog- ress 424 Confederate Army 276-8 'onfederation North Ger- man, grants full emancipa- tion of Jews 37, 41 bngress, American 30,47 protests against Rou- manian injustice to Jews ... v ...229, 243, 305 thanks Major de Leon for bravery 276, 305 Congress of Berlin 231-4 Congress, General Jewish, of Hungary 22 Conquest of World by Jews" 56 'onstantine, Grand Duke let- ler to by Isaac Baer Levin- sohn 113 Constantinople 214 flight of Bulgarian Jews to 216 Russia's desire for 221 meeting place of confer- ence of European powers.. 232, 410, 413, 429 ooper Union, Ahlwardt's anti- semitic lectures in 49 Copenhagen permission to hold Jewish worship in 4 ritual murder case 5 Wessely family in 6 destruction of syna- gogue of 7 ministers of 9 brdova, Jewish Communities in 301 brfu, emancipation of Jews of 214-5 blood accusations against Jews 215 boycott against Etrog trade of 215 "orriere Israelitico 27 Cossacks their attitude to- ward Jewish colonists of Ekaterinoslav 110 ourland pioneer Jewish col- onists for Siberia from 108 conquered by Germany. .208 owen, Joseph 434 446 INDEX Courier, Yiddish daily 319 de Court of Cassation Zola's ap- peal to 72 annuls Dreyfus sentence of 1894 73 reopens Dreyfus case.75, 76 Cracow Jewish liberalism in. 23 home of Rabbi Dob Berush Meisels 24 Creagh anti-Jewish speeches of Cremieux, Adolphe intercedes with Ionian Senate 215 intercedes with Prince Milan 219 intercedes with Prince Charles 226, 227 Attends International Jewish Conference, 231 358 Crimean War 18, 218', 225 Croatians special Hungarian Jewish division against .... 20 "Cry of the Daughter of Ju- dah" 91 Culberson, Senator 339 Cultural Zionism 393 Curia 39 Cuza, John Alexander 225 Cyrenaica 421 D Dardanelles Damascus, blood accusation of 140, 274 Dankovitz, Dr., Chief Rabbi of Bulgaria 217 Darmstetter, Arsene 110 Darmstetter, James David, Aaron Hart 247 David, David 247 David, Lazarus 247 David Sasoon Benevolent In- stitution 354 "David u-Barzilai" 152 Davidson, Thomas 412 Davis, President Jefferson, 278-81 "Debir" 142 Deborah 259 de Cordova 24! de Freycinet 5 de Guenzburg, Baron Horace. 16 Hirsch, Baron, fund in Can- ada 249 'Derek Selulah" (The Paved Road) 114 de Haas, Jacob 435 in U. S 298, 300 de Leon, Major David C 276 Lima, family of 4 Demange Dreyfus' lawyer in trial at Rennes 75 84Dembitz, Lewis Naphtali..277, 310 Denmark Beginnings of Jews in 4 responsiveness to reforms 7 Antisemitism in 8 rabbis succeeding Mann- heimer in 9 Denver 284 Den (Day) 129 de Pass, Daniel 351 Deputation, Jewish, abolition of 95 Deputies, House of (Hungary) members' attempt to de- prive Jews of Consti- tutional rights 53 Chamber of Deputies (France) 57 excitement in, due to Dreyfus affair 72 Derenbourg, Hartwig 10 Derenbourg, Joseph 10, 231 Derzhavin, poet, suggests to Alexander I idea of Jewish colonization 106 de Sola family in Canada 249 Sola, Clarence 1 435 Dessau home of Ludwig Philippson U Detroit 262 Devils' Island '.'.'. 67 de Worms, Baron Henry 232 ) Dick, Isaac Meir 183 Deinard, Ephraim 317 Dienesohn, Jacob 186 Diet, of Hungary, discusses question o f Jewish rights 21 dissolution of 22 Diet, of Prussia, for state control of schools 39 "Digest of Reported Proceed- ings of Supreme Court of Late Territoryof Orleans and of the Supreme Court of Louisiana 279 429 de INDEX 447 Dilke, Sir Charles opponent to Aliens' Bill 84 Dillon, Eliezer purveyor of food to Russian army elected Deputy to elec- toral college 9' "Discovery of America" by Campe, Hebrew version of Disraeli, Benjamin 363, 376 Disraeli, as interpreted by Georg Brandes 8 Dmowski, Roman, Polish Anti- semite 206 Dolitzky, Menahem M....175, 318 Domoshevitzky 176 "Don Kishot mi Mazepevka".l7( "Dor Tahapukhot' ' Douglas, Mr. Aker Doylestown, Pa 300 Drachman, Rabbi Bernard.315, 330 Dreyfus, Alfred defended by Leroy-Beaulieu 65 conditions against 66 German attitude to-.. ward 67-8 Picquart's activity for.. 6$ Defense of, by Lazare.70-3 France's fear of grant- ing justice to 74 second conviction of, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79 Dreyfus, family of, denied rep- resentation at Esterhazy trial 71 Dreyfus, Matthew, his activity in Dreyfus affair 69, 70 Dropsie College 307 Drumont, Edouard Adolphe, 35, 57-8 aid to Max Regis 78-82 Dubnitza growth of Jewish community in 216 Dubno, Solomon 134 Dunbnow, S. M 174, 311 Dubs, Zuerich Jewish repre- sentative in Federal Council, Switzerland 31 Dubsevage, A. D 317 Duenner, Dr. J. H 406 Duma, Russian 190, 198, 206 Dumas, Alexander 365 Du Paty de Clam, chief ac- cuser of Dreyfus 73 Durban, Synagogue in 350 Dwa Groschi 20f Dymov, Osip 326 E East Africa ..417 Eastern Jewry 404 Edelstadt, David 322 Eden 64 "Efes Dammim" (no blood).. 140 Egypt 362, 429, 431 Ehrenpreis, Dr. M 41, 217 Eichenbaum 134 Einhorn, Dr. David. . . .10, 21, 262, 263, 269, 272, 277 Einhorn, Ignatz founder of Jewish Re- form Ass'n of Buda- pest 10 participates in Hunga- r i a n revolutionary movement 20 Result of his participa- tion in Hungarian revolution 21 Einhorn, Dr. Max 307 Eisenstadt, Michael deputy to Jewish electoral college 94 Eisenstein, J. D 317, 318 Ekron Colony 379 El-Arish 416 Elijah, Gaon of Vilna 97-8 Hot, George 365, 383 Elizabeth, Empress, expels Jews from Little Russia ... 89 ilkus, Abraham 1 341 Ellinger, Moritz 284-296 manu-El, pulpit of 307 indinger Jewish Community of 31 Inelow, Hyman G 307 ingland progress of Relig- ious Liberalism in 14 removal of Jewish Dis- abilities in 18 safety from invasion by Polish Jews of 44 Antisemitism in 55-87 home of Zola after trial 72 Antisemitic feeling in, during Dreyfus affair 79 Antisemitic preachers in 81 immigration of Russian Jews to 80 Jews in office in 82, 83 Jews as national evil in ..82-83 448 INDEX English-Jewish immigrants to America 24, English-Polish synagogue in New York ...25; Entre Rios, Province of 30' Eotvos, Baron Joseph 2't Eppinger, Dr. Solomon 26! Epstein, Samuel 9- Erez Yisroel Erter, Dr. Isaac 23, 135, 147 Esterhazy, Major 68-7; Etrog trade of Corfu 214 Ettinger, Dr. Solomon 182 Ettinger, Wilhelm 182 Euchel, Isaac 6 Europe, Georg Brandes among men of letters in 8 Jewish Reform in, 1856 14, 18 Rome as center of anti- Jewish prejudice in . . 28 promising outlook for Jews of 33 advance of Reason in, after French Revolu- tion 34 Antisemitic standpoint of Jews as menace to ... 36 Jewish insecurity in, 55, 345, 346-7, 359, 403. 427-8 Ewald, Prof 307 Ezekiel, Joseph 353 Ezra 369, 392 Faitlovitch, Dr. Jacob 353 Falashas 353 Faure, Felix President of France 73 Fay, Dr. Theodore, American Minister at Berne 30, 31 Feder, Tobias 134, 181 Federation of American Zion- ists 330 Federation of Jewish Farmers.300 Feierberg, Mordecai Zeeb 178 Feigin Converted Jew in of- fice under Nicholas I 103 Felsenthal, Rabbi Bernard. .. .272 Fenenko gov't investigator in Beilis affair 199 Fernhoff, Yitzhak 173 [Fink, Theodore 348 Finland, defense of, by Georg Brandes 8 Firkowitch, Abraham 130 Fish, Hamilton. United States Secretary of State 229 "Five Years of My Life" 73 Florence conference of Italian Jews in (1867) 27 transfer of Rabbinical Seminary to 28 Fokshani 224 Folticheni 224 Forsyth, John 275 Fort Sumter 277 Fo'rwaerts 305, 319 Fould, Achille French Jewish Minister of Finance 25 Frain d 18S, 189 France exponents of Jewish science in 10 existence of Rabbinical Seminary in 12 liberalism of government towards Jews of 25 condition of Jews in, after 1870 26 treaties with Switzerland favoring Jews 32 Bismarck's personal tri- umph against 33 removal of Jews from government positions in 39 Antisemitism in 55, 59 Jewish self expatriation for love of 57 Leroy Beauliett's opinion of 67 effect on, of Dreyfus affair 68, 72 reception of Dreyfus in, at time of new trial.. 74 treatment of Jews in Algeria by 77 influences England in anti-Jewish opinion... 81 refined cruelty of Anti- semitism in 87 Home of M. Berr, 91. 229-30 (See also pp. 106, 363, 396, 412, 434) Fiqaro Antisemitic agitation in S6,Francis Joseph, Emperor, Fink, B. J 348' 21, 24, 25 INDEX 449 Franco-Prussian War liberal tendencies in Ger- many after 37 French hatred of Ger- many after 57 Frank, Dr. agitation for school reforms by (Russia, 1800) 112 Frankel, Zacharias 11 Frankfort Ghetto of 211 Reform conference of.. 268 Frankfort-on-Aiain 13, 16 rival of Berlin in Or- thodoxy 17, 372 Franks, Colonel Isaac 246 Franks, David Salisbury 247 Frederic, Harold 109, 310 Frederick III, of Denmark.... 4 Free Sons of Benjamin 285 Free Sons of Israel 285 Freiberg, Julius 264 Freie Arbeitcr Stimme 319 French Revolution beginning of liberties for Swiss Jews after 29 enlightening influence on Western Europe of... 35 91, 99 Friedenwald, Dr. Harry ..333, 435 Friedenwald, Herbert 243 Friedman, Myer 11, 177 Friedlaender, Prof. M 406 Friedman, Isaac K 309 Frischman, David 175, 386 Frug, Simon 186 Frumkin, M 423 Fuchs, Samuel J 173 Fuenn, S. J 143, 284 Fuerst, Julius 10 Furrer, Swiss President 31 Gabbe, M., elected to Bulgar- ian Chamber of Deputies. . .217 Gabrielow, Joseph 318 Galicia, Jewish immigrants from to U. S 293 Galicia obstacle to progress of Reform in 23, 293, 394 Galilee 64 Gallipoli expedition 42S Gallipoli Peninsula 430 Galveston 278, 421-2 Gambetta 56 Gan Perahim 172 Gaon, Elijah, of Vilna 141. 387 Garcia, Hananiel 247 Garibaldi Jewish soldiers with 26 Caster, Dr. Moses . .240, 244, 434 Gaza 432 Geiger, Abraham 10, 16, 17, 18, 140, 251, 268 Geiger, Prof. Ludwig 407 General Staff, French... 69, 70, 73 German Jewish immigrants to the United States 250-3 fraternal orders among 283 supersede Spanish Jews. 292 German Jews in revolution of 1848 250 German Reformers in the United States 267-268 Germans, enmity of French to as cause of Dreyfus affair.. 65 supposed contraband trade of Russian Jews with 105 Germany Haskalah movement in 6 religious controversies in 9 leaders of Jewish science in 10 first Rabbinical Seminary in 11 first home of Reform ... 12 S. R. Hirsch as leader of orthodox forces in 13 Wilhelm, first Emperor of :.:. 19 Rise of Antisemitism in. 34 Catholic view of Jewish aggressiveness in 37 results of anti-Jewish agitation of Pius IX in 39, 40, 58 progress of Socialism in 41 Jew baiting in 42-3 Government control of education in 44 treatment of Russo-Jew- ish immigrants, in 46 barbarous attitude to- ward Jews of 47 return to, of Ahlwardt. 49 defections from Juda- ism in (1880) 50 Antisemitic movement in, as compared with that of Austria - Hun- gary 51 legal emancipation of Jews in 54 450 INDEX Germany ritual murder charge in 55 denunciation of Jews as aliens in 57 source of Antisemitism in 59 rivals England in com- merce and prosperity, influences English anti- semitic feeling 81 Jews from, in Little Russia high intellectual status of Jews in 90 intercession by Jews of, on behalf of Russian Jews under Nicholas I importation into Russia of Jewish pedagogues from 120 (see also pp. 230, 273, 401, 407, 416, 433, 436) Germiston 351 Ghederah 379 Ghetto of Rome 27-28 Ghika, Alexander, ruler of Wallachia 224 Gielong 348 Gilead colony 298 Ginzberg. Asher ("Ahad Haam") 174, 386, 391. 408, 418, 423, 433-4 Ginzberg, Simon 176 Girls' School at Jaffa 423 Gladstone 376 Glagoleff, Professor, at Beilis' trial 201 Glass, Montague 309 Gliddon, John Glueckstadt (Schleswig Hoi- stein) 6 Godefroi, M. H., Minister of Justice in Holland Goethe 112 Gogol 130 Goido 320 Goldfaden, Abraham, 183, 319-20, 325 Goldfogle, Congressman 339 Goldman, Dr. Julius Goldsmid. Sir Francis memorializes, House of Commons attends International Jewish Conference ...2 Goldsmith, Colonel Albert 301 Golitizin, Minister of Ecclesi- astical Affairs under Alex- ander 1 94 Gonse, General, Deputy Chief of French General Staff at time of Dreyfus affair 69 79 Gordin, Jacob 156, 326 Gordon, David 147, 375 Gordon, Judah Loeb, 128, 137, 151-2-3-4, 186, 385 89 Gordon, Major Evans 411 Gorky, Maxim 412 Gorodisky, Lieutenant 431 Gortschakoff, Count 235-6 Gothenberg 2 Gottheil, Dr. Gustav 272,333 106Gottheil, Richard ...330,333,398 Gottlober, A. B 182 Goudchaux, Michel 26 Graeber, S. 1 173 396Graetz, Heinrich 7, 10-11, 375 Graham, Representative 339 Grand Island, Jewish State project at 362 Grant, Ulysses S..227-8, 261, 282-3 Gratz, Rebecca 286 Great Britain, Jewish aid in supremacy of 81 Great War.". 207, 214, 217, 243, 335 Greece German Antisemitic in- fluence in 215 Jewish sufferers of the revolution of 1821.... 214 political emancipation of Jews in 215 population of Jews in, 219, 364 275 Greenberg, D 322 Greek revolution, cause of un- rest in Roumania 224 Grey, Sir Edward 243 26 Grodno, annexation to Russia. 88 home of Sundel Son- nenberg 93 expulsion of Jews from. 104 Grosswardein, Dr. Leopold Rockenstein as rabbi of tem- ple of 20 296 Gruenwald, Dr., Chief Rabbi of Bulgaria 217 Grushkofskv. Corporal 430 219Guedeman, Dr. M 406 Guenzburg, Baron Horace 301 232 Guenzburg, Mordecai Aaron. . .119 INDEX 451 Guenzig, Dr. Israel 182 Guild, Jr., Curtis 3.39 Guildhall meeting in London. 167 Guizot 135 Gurovich, Marcus 127 Gutheim, James K 272 Guttenberg, Violet 85 Guttmacher, Elijah 375 H "Ha-Abot veha-Banim" 151 Ha-Boker Or 148 Hadassah 333 Ha-Eshkol 173 Haggard, Rider Hague Peace Tribunal 190 Ha-Ibri Haifa 425 Ha-Karmel 144, 147 "Ha-Kerav" Halberstadt, Germany.... Halberstamm 11 Halberton 298 Hale, Dr. Edward Everett .... 709 Halifax ....249 Hamburg, \\cssely family in.. 6 Ha-Meliz 147, 183, 189, 388 Ha-Leomi 317 Ha-Maggid 15, 146 Haman 35 Ha-Meassef 134 Ha - Measseph b'Erez ha - Ha- dasha 317 Hamilton, Ontario Ha-Modiya le-Hadashim 318 "Ha-Neehabim veha-Xeimim" . 186 Hanotaux, head of French For- eign office at time of Dreyfus affair 68 Hanover 32 Ha-Pardes 174 Hapgood, Hutchins Ha-Pisgah 317 Hapke, Pastor 46 Halevy, Joseph 10, 147 Harkavy, Alexander 320 Harris, Rabbi Mark L. 350 Harrison, Representative 339 Har Sinai Congregation of Baltimore 263, 270 Hart, Aaron 246-47 Hart, Ezekiel 248 Haskalah in Galicia 23 Haskalah its Russian Jewish lead- ers 98, 99 its influence on Russian Jewry 112 the impetus given to it by Mendelssohn . . 133, 34 the heyday of 144, 145 Haskalah Movement in Rus- sia 128, 135, 158 Ha-Shahar 148, 171 Hassidism in Galicia 23 Ha-Tehiyah 15 "Hatot Neurim" 148 Hay, John 241 Ha-Yonah 15 4l2Ha-sebi 173 Ha-zefirah 147, 189 317 Ha-zman 318 "Hazon la-Moed" 143 Hartuf, Colony of 380 132 Haschiloah 175, 394 17 Hasophe b'Erez ha- Had as ha. ..317 Ha-asif 172 "Hebrat Marbe Haskalah" ...155 Hebrew American Typograph- ical Union 304 Hebrew Emigrant Aid So- ciety 296, 299 Hebrew Gymnasium of Jaffa.. 394 Hebrew Union College, 9, 11, 259, 264-266, 271-2, 315 Hebron Colony 298 "Hefkerwelt, Die" 181 Hegeman, John 47 -Halus 146 Heidelberg 351 Heidelberg University 384 Heilprin, Michael ..277, 286-8, 307 Heine, Heinrich 323 Heint 188 Hekhal ha-Ibriyah 319 Heller, Rabbi Max 333 309 Helvetia, Council of 29 Henry, Colonel, accomplice of Du Paty du Clam in Drey- fus affair 73 Henry, Henry S 296 Hertz, Chief Rabbi Joseph H. 350, 352 Hertza 224 Herzl, Theodore, 33, 196, 330, 357, 382, 397, 402-8. 410, 413-15, 419, 420, 422-3, 425, 432-3 Hess, Moses ....371-5, 382-3, 398 249 He 452 INDEX Hibbat Ziyyon..330, 395, 397, 406 Hightstown 298 Hildesheimer, Dr. Israel. .. .17, 18 Hilfsverein der deutschen Ju- den 425-6 Hillquit, Morris 305 Hilsner, Leopold 52-3 Hirsch, Baron de, colonies in Argentina 301, 396 Hirsch, Dr. Emil G. 271-2, 312, 407 Levi 4 Samson Raphael ...12, 373 Samuel 10, 271 Solomon 284 Hirschbein, Perez 188, 326 "History of the Israelitisch Nation" 256 "Hobebe Ziyyon," 378, 385, 387. 406, 480, 383 Hochschule fuer die Wissen- schaft des Judenthums 18 Hohenzollern, Charles von, first King of Rou- mania 225, 237 Holdheim, Samuel .268 Holland, Jewish responsibility for prosperity in capital of. 4 liberalism toward Jews of 26 Antisemitism in 87, 245 Holleschau (Austria), anti- Jewish riots in 52 Hollingsworth 364-5 Homel, anti-Jewish riots in ..196 Hood, Thomas House Committee on Foreign Affairs House of Commons House of Lords election of Baron Anselm von Roths- child to 25 election of Nathaniel Rothschild to 82 Howells, William D Hruza, Agnes Hudson River 246 Huebsch, Dr. Adolph 20, Hugues, Clovis 58 Hungary Dr. Hildesheimer as rabbi in 17-18 struggle between Re- form and Orthodoxy in 20 cessation of era of ab- solutism in 21 Central Organization of Orthodox Jews in .... 22 severity of Aus rian government toward Jews of 24 Antisemitic agitation in 53-4 Hurewitz, Israel 320 Hurwitz, M 326 I Iberian Peninsula 2 Ignatieff, General 164 lies de Salut 67 Illustrirte Juedische Zeitung...3l9 Immigration Reform Ass'n... 83 Independent Order Brith Ab- raham 285 India 433 "Instruction in the Mosaic Re- ligion" 273 Institute for the Promotion of Israelitish Literature, 11, 15, 16, 24 Intercollegiate Zionist Asso- ciation 333 International Typographical Union 304 Ionian Senate, appealed to by Cre- mieux 215 Ireland position of Jews in.. 85 Isaacs, Barnet (Barney Bar- nato) 351 Isaacs, J. 1 348 322 Isaacs, Myer S 296 Isaacs, Nathaniel 352 339 Isaacs, Sir Rufus 431 229lsidor, Dr., Chief Rabbi of France 231 Israel Baal Shem Tob (Besht)144 "Israel chez les Nations" (Le- roy Beaulieu) 59 Israel in Europe 85 of Mainz 18 52 Israelitsche Presse 319 Israelitish Religious Society ...12 272 i ta i v founding of Padua Rab- binical School 12 emancipation of Jews of 26 number of Jews in 27 Rome becomes capital of 28 liberality towards un- converted Jews in ... 29 anti-Jewish agitation in 39 INDEX 453 Italy- exile home of Louis Kossuth 54, 434 favors solution of Rou- manian Jewish prob- lem 229-30 Itoism 421-2 "Ivanhoe" . .286 Jacobs, Dr. Joseph 294 Jacobsohn, Israel 252 Jaffa 423, 428-9, 432 Jalomstein, M 317-18 Jargon 180 Jassy, anti-Jewish riots in 222 destroyed by fire 224 Jastrow, Dr. Marcus. 272, 310, 333 Jaures 72 Jehuda Halevi '358 Jellinek, Adolph 10, 11 Jerusalem, 355, 358, 363, 392, 423, 429, 432, 436 Jcschurun Jesuit orders, persecution of.. Jesus 101 Jewish Alliance 412 Jewish Colonial Trust, 410, 413, 427, 432 Jewish Colonization Ass'n.381, 409 "Jewish Encyclopedia" 174 Jewish Farmers Ass'n... Jewish Gazette 315 Jewish National Fund.410, 417, Jewish National Library Jewish Publication Society. .. .274 Jewish Relief Committee 340 Jewish . Territorial Organiza- tion Jewish Theological Seminary. 315 Jewish Women in Russia, their enforced prostitution 192 Joachimsen, Brigadier General.282 Job, Book of 272 Joel, Manuel 11, 44 Johannesburg Community ....350 Johannesburg Hebrew Congre- gation 350 Joint Distribution Committee. 341 Jones, Henry 283 Joscelowicz, Colonel Berek. . . .203 Joseph, Micah 141 Joseph, Rabbi Jacob 315 Jost, Marcus 10, 11 Judah, prophets of 64 "Judaism Revealed" 38 Judaea 355, 409 - 'J udenflinten" 48 Jucdische Gazetten 319 Juedischcs Tageblatt 319 K Kabak, A. A 176 Kadimah Society 318, 405 Kahal deprived of rights of.. 89 representatives at St. Petersburg 93 furnishes recruits to army 101-2 abolished by Nicholas I (1844) 122 Kahana, David 174 72Kalisch, Bertha 327 Kalischer, Zebi Hirsch, 371. 375, 398 Kallirnachos, ruler of Mol- davia 223 Kalmucks 223 13Kaminer, Dr 174 56Kaminka, Dr 406 Kankrin, Count, minister of Russian finance 104 aids in colonization schemes 108 Kann 234 300 Kansas 298 Kansas Bill 280 419 Kant, Immanuel 6 386 Kantakuzov 193 Kantor, Dr. Judah Loeb 172 Kaplan, Wolf 152 Karageorgevitch, Alexander . .218 420 Karabtchewsky 200 Karaites exempted from fur- nishing recruits under Nich- olas I 101 instigate expulsion of Jews from Vilna ....111 Karl Anton, Prince 237 Kasson, John A 233 Katkoff 126 Kattowitz 286 Katzenelson, Isaac 175 Kaufmann, Governor General.. 160 Kaufmann, Professor David, 177, 370 Kaufman, Sigismund 277 Kavcrct 174 Kayserling, Dr. Meyer 32 454 INDEX Kehillah (New York Com- munity) 336 Kelly, Myra 309 Keneset Yisroel 172 Keneseth Israel Congregation of Philadelphia 271 Kerem, Hemed 15, 146 Keren Or 317 Kerensky, Alexander F...202, 210 Kesher Shel Barzel Order.... 285 Kharkov 379, 419 Kherson, Jewish settlement, 107, 108, 110 Kiev, expulsions from 192 Beilis affair at, 53, 197, 199, 200. 295 annexed to Russia 88 Jews permitted to live in 92 expulsion of Jews from 104, 111 anti-Jewish riots in 163 Kievlyanin 165, 202 Kimberley, Synagogue in 350 "Kozoh shel Yod" 152 Krasovsky, government inves- tigator 199 in Beilis affair 201, 202 Krauskopf, Dr. Joseph 300 Kremenchug 92 Krochmal, Nachman 23, 135 Kruger, Oom Paul 350, 353 Krushevan, Pavolachi 194 Kuranda elected to Austrian Reichsrath 25 Kuratorium 430 Kurdistan 427 Kutais ritual blood accusation at ..159 Labori, Fernand 72, 75 "Kinnor Bat Ziyyon" ISOLasker, Edward "Kiriyah Ne'emanah" 143 Kishinev, massacre of Jews in 193-6 Klausner, Dr. Joseph. 175, 179, 189 Klein, Rabbi Philip 315 Klerksdorp Kley, Dr 252 Klima, Maria 52 Knyshin expulsion of Jews from 111 Knox, Philander C 338 Lateiner, Joseph Kohler, Dr. Kaufman.265, 269, 272 " T " rru : ~ ' Kohn, Abraham 277 Kohn, Rabbi Abraham 23 Kobrin, Leon 320, 326 Kohut, Dr. Alexander ...310, 315 Kokesch, Dr. Kol Mebasser 183 Kokebe Yizhak 146 "Kol Mehazezim" 181 Kompert. Dr. Leopoid ".'.'.'.'.'. '-232 Lazarus, Emma, Konitz ritual murder charge at 55 Konotop anti-Jewish riots in. 163 Kossuth, Louis champions removal of Jewish disabilities. .20, 54 Kovno . .... 15 Baer Laferriere 78 'La France Juive" 57, 82 La Libre Parole 58 Landsberg, Dr 331 protagonist of Liberal- ism 37 aid to Bismarck 41 resolutions of sympathy on death of 47, 162 351 L'Antijuif 56 'L'Antisemitisme," by Bernard Lazare 70 Lapkovsko, Benish 94 Knefler, Brevet- Major General Frederick 282 Larger Actions Committee ... 419 "Kniga Kahala" 160 Lasker settlement 298 Lassalle, interpreted by Georg Brandes 8, 37 .326 La Theorie du Judaisme," Chiarini 113 L'Aurore 71 'Law of Sale of Personal Property" 281 405 Lawrence, Amos 285 Lauterbach, Edward 337 Lazare, Bernard 69, 70, 412 Lazarus, D. B 348 "?, 290, 386 Lazarus, Josephine 291 Lazarus, Prof. M..17, 18, 31, 45, 232 League of British Jews 436 Leavitt. Ezekiel 30! Lebensohn, Abraham Dob .141 Kowner . 136Lebensohn, Micah Joseph 150 INDEX 455 Leblois 7 L'Educatore Israelita 21 Leeser colony 29; Leeser, Isaac, .256, 262-3, 273-4 Lefin, Mendel (Satanover) 18 Legion of Honor 72 Lehman, Rabbi 11 Leipzig one time home of Jost and Jellinek 1 synod of 1 home of Ignatz Einhorn 2 Lemberg 21 Lengenau 3 Lenine 21( Lepine, Governor General 7- 464 INDEX Titus 355 United States Tisza Eslar 54, 55 Tobolsk 108 Todt 43 Toronto 82 Torquemada Ill Torre, Lelio della 27 Touro colony 293 Touro Infirmary of New Or- leans 284 Touro, Judah 276, 285 Trades Unions 304 Transvaal 350 "Travels of Benjamin the Third" 185 Treaty of Berlin, 216, 232, 236, 238, 239, 240, 376 Treaty of Paris (1856) 218 Treaty with Russia (United Treitschke 40, 44, 162 Trieste 27 Trietsch, Davis 416 Troitzky, Professor 201-2 Trok Ill Trondhjem 1 Trotzky, Leon 210 Tsarskoye Selo 191 commercial treaties fa- vorable to Jews 29 I. M. Wise as champion of Swiss Jews 30 memorial for Swiss Jew- ish rights presented to President 31 position of Jew in 36 Ahlwardt's attempt at Antisemitic p r o p a- ganda 49 interested in Roumanian Jews 227, 230 sends Roumanian note.. 240 (See also pp. 245, 249, 251, 265, 267, 274, 279, 233, 289, 294, 296, 237, 428-9.) United Synagogue of America.329 States) 336 University of Bishops' College.247 .195 Tsharni, Samuel 188 Vatican, sponsors anti-Jewish Trumpledor, Captain 43f Tschlenow, Doctor. .397, 433, 434 Veitelson, Marcus 94 "Tse-enah u-Re-enah" 180 Velizh 122 Tshemerinsky, H. 188Veneziani . '.'.234 Tshernihovsky, Saul 175 Venice, ceded by Austria Tula : 95 Turgenieff 130, 158 Turin Turkey 293.362, 364, 392, 403, 410. 424-5, 428-9, 430-1 Tuschiah 172 U Uganda ....418, 419-20 Union Army, Jews in 276, 281 Union of American Hebrew Congregations 259, 264. 266, 332, 343 Union Prayer Book 271 United Hebrew Trades 304 United States Einhorn as Reform lead- er 10 high water mark of Re- form in . .... 14 29Vercilli 27 Jrusov, Prince Ussyschkin, Menahem Mendel, 397, 415, 419 Uvarov, Count 115, 116, 118 Van Buren, President 275 agitation 40 26 Memorial Tablet to I. P. Maurogonato in 29 Verein fuer die Allgemeinen Religioesen Tnteressen des Judenthums 16 'Ve-Samahta be-Haggeka" ...152 Victor Immanuel, King.... 28, 411 Victoria, B. C 249, 347 Vienna Mannheimer as builder of Jewish community in 7 discouragement of radi- cal Reform in 10. 14 Lehranstalt 11 Auxiliary Branch of Al- liance Israelite Uni- verselle 19 anti-Jewish aguation in 39 Lueger 52 anti-Jewish measures in 60 headquarters for inter- INDEX 465 Vienna national Jewish or- ganization 232,419 Vienna Allianz 409 Vilenski Vyestnik 16C Villafranca, Peace of 25 Vilna home of Matthias Stra- Wales 85 Wallachia, Jews of 219 improvement in situation of 224 affected by revolutions of 1848 225 Wallerstein 104 Walling, Rose Strunsky 308 schun 16 War of 1812 93 annexed to Russia 88 Warsaw..24, 88, 114, 188, 204, 206-7 erection of Jewish hos- Washington colony 298 pital 92 Washington, D. C 277 meeting of electoral col- Washington, George 246 lege 93 Washington, State of 300 R. Elijah Gaon 97 Wassilkov 163 Waterview 298 Way, Louis 94 expulsion of Jews Ill home of Nissen Rosen- thai 116 Webster, Daniel short lived triumph of Lillienthal \\7Weg 188 Lillienthal's reception ..119 Weiss, I. H 11, 177 establishment of Rabbini- cal Seminary .... 120, 140 W^elun 207 closing of Rabbinical Weinberger, Moses 317 Seminary, 159, 160, 1 ol, 188 Weizmann, Dr. Chayim. .. .433-34 Virchow, Professor 45 Wessely, Naphtali Herz 6 Virginia 298 West Indies 278 Vitebsk Ukase for expulsion of Jews from 94, 96, 104 establishment of Jewish settlements 107 Vladimir, Grand Duke 164 Vogel, Sir Julius 349 Vogelstein, H. .408 Volhynia annexed to Russia. Volksadvokat 315 Volksblatt . ..186 Volkszcitung 37 Wise, Stephen S.330, 333, 435, 437 Volozhin 98, 159 Volozhiner, Rabbi Hayim 98 Von Plehve ..411 Voronezh 95 Vreyheid, Synagogue in. W Waddington, William Henry, Wadi-el-Hanin Colony 235, 236 Wagener 13 Wagenheim Brothers 104 .279 Weiss, Julius 296 Welfare Board . ..335 White, Arnold 82 Wiener, Professor L..307, 320, 323 Wiener, Norman 307 Wilhelm, first Emperor of Ger- many 19 William I, Emperor 237 William II, Emperor 47, 411 Wilson. President Woodrow..435 Voskhod 129 Winchevsky, Morris . .307, 320, 322 Winnipeg 249 88 Winter-stein 25 home of Hassidism 97 Wise, Dr. Isaac Mayer 30, 31, 252, 274, 277, 283, 312, 331, 407 Wisscnschaftlichc Zeitschrift fttcr Jucdischc Thcologie... 16 Wissotsky, K. W 384 Wittgenstein, Prince 140 350 Witwatersrand 350 Wohl, Treasurer of Poland's Revolutionary government. .203 Wolf, Emma 309 Wolf, Simon 230, 241, 284 Wolfenstein, Martha 309 379 Wolff, A. A 9 Wolfson, Isaac 41 Wolff sohn, David 422, 425 IVahrheit 319 Wollenberg, Leone 29 466 IXDEX Woodbine, N. J 298, 300 Worcester of Road, Synagogue .350 Worms, Baron 82 Wratza 217 Xanten 47, 55 Yahuda, Corporal 43C Yale College 278 Yehoash (Solomon Bloom- garden) 322 Yekaterinoslav 95, 11C Yelisavetgrad 163, 295 Zederbaum, Alexander. . .147, 183, 184, 186, 384-5, 388-395 iedner, Joseph 16 Zeitlin, Hillcl 177, 189 Zemstchina 198 Zerubabel" 141, 392 Zevin, 1 322 Zhabotinsky, Vladimir J 429 Zhagory, Russia 15 Zhitlowsky, Hyam, Dr 189 Zhitomir... 114, 120, 140, 159, 196 Zhukowsky 124 Yemen, Jews of 353, 427 Yesod ha-Maalah colony Yevreiskaya Biblioteka 129 Yiddish dialect in America. . .29, Yiddishists 180, 181, 187 Yonkers Yorish, Corporal 43 York-Steiner 412 "Yosele Solovey" 18/ Young Judea 33 Ypsilanti 22 Yuschinsky, Andrey, 197, 198, 200, 202 'Zidkiyahu dot" be-Bet ha-Peku- .152 Zikron Ya'akob Colony, 379, 380, 419 ion 356, 359 7i Zion College 261 Zionism 246, 332, 335, 357, 365, 370, 375, 395-6, 407-9, 412, 418-19, 421-2 Zion Mule Corps 430, 431 Zion Order in Roumania 231 Zionist Congress 330 Zionist Political Committee. . .434 Zionists' Convention in Switz- erland 33 Zionists, English 416 German 416 Russian 417 Western 417 Zitron, S. L 175 Zola, Emile 58, 71, 72, 76 Zaitseff Brick Works 199 Zuckerman, Benedict 11 Zangwill, Israel, Zuerich 31, 32 86, 309, 311, 405, 421, 422Zukunft 305, 309 ''Zapiski Yevreya" 131 Zunz, Leopold 10, 15 Zarudny / . . 200 Zunser, Eliakum 186, 320 Zaslav 140 Zweifel, Eliezer Zebi 144, 186 UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY A 000 376 047 7