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Page 40
Nicholas was paid measure for measure, and the cunning of his ministers
was made of no avail by the shrewdness of his Jewish subjects. The
report of the Minister of Education, at the end of 1845, shows
incredible progress. It states that since the ukase of November 13,
1844, i.e. in the course of a single year, more than two thousand
schools of different grades were established in various cities of the
Pale, with more than one hundred and eighty thousand pupils, not
including the technical schools in Odessa, Riga, Kishinev, Vilna, and
Uman, with their hundreds of students! The truth was that, instead of
the reported Russification, there had set in a vigorous reaction, which
rendered the position more critical. Both sides had become
desperate.[18] Some Maskilim, emboldened by the interest the Government
evinced in their efforts, had resorted to all manner of means to
accomplish their object, and frequently allied themselves with the
oppressors. The Slavuta publishing house, it is claimed, was closed, and
the Schapiras met with their tragic end, because "as printers they
scrupulously abstained from publishing Haskalah literature." Maskilim
were employed by the authorities as tax collectors, and these, as is
ever the case with rapacious farmers of taxes, besides executing the
harsh laws of the tyrant, looked also to their own aggrandizement, and
harassed their pious coreligionists in all ways conceivable. Many of
them even hindered the colonization movement, because, if allowed to
mature, it would deprive them of their income.[19] In addition to this,
the Jews were now burdened, through the instrumentality of the Maskilim,
with a tax on the candles lighted on Sabbath eve, yielding annually over
one million rubles, the greater part of which went into the coffers of
greedy officials. Another tax, also for the maintenance of the
newly-organized Government schools, was levied--one kopeck and a half
per page!--on text-books, whether imported from abroad or published in
Vilna or Zhitomir, and the text-books were published with unnecessarily
large type and wide margins to increase the number of pages. The
abridgment and translation of Maimuni's _Mishneh Torah_ (St. Petersburg,
1851), superintended by Leon Mandelstamm, cost the Russian Jews tens of
thousands of rubles, notwithstanding the expenditure of two or three
millions on their own educational institutions, and at a time when every
kopeck was needed for the support of the host of victims of fire,
famine, and cholera, which ravaged many a city. Hence the reaction
became more and more formidable. The cry grew louder and louder, _Znaty
nye znayem, shkolles nye zhelayem!_ ("We want no schools!"). The
opposition, which began in the latter years of Alexander I, reached its
culmination in the last decade of the reign of Nicholas I. "Israel,"
laments Mandelstamm, "seems to be even worse than formerly; he is like a
sick person who has convalesced only to relapse, and the physicians are
beginning to despair." It was a struggle not unlike that all over Europe
at the beginning of the Renaissance, a struggle between liberty and
authority, between this world and other-worldliness, between the spirit
of the nineteenth century and that of the millenniums which preceded it.
Here is a description, by Morgulis, of the struggles and conquests of
the new, small, but zealous, group of Maskilim in Russia at about that
time:[20]
Those upon whom the sun of civilization and freedom happened to
cast a ray of light, showing them the path leading to a new
life, were compelled to study the European literatures and
sciences in garrets, in cellars, in any nook where they felt
themselves secure from interference. Neither unaffiliated Jews
nor the outer world knew anything about them. Like rebels they
kept their secrets unto themselves, stealthily assembling from
time to time, to consider how they might realize their ideal,
and disclose to their brethren the fountainhead of the living
waters out of which they drank and drew new youth and life.
Whatever was novel was accepted with delight. They looked with
envy upon the great intellectual progress of their western
brethren. Fain would they have had their Jewish countrymen
recognize the times and their requirements, but they could not
give free utterance to their thoughts. On the contrary, they
found it expedient to assume the mask of religion in order to
escape the suspicion of alert zealots, and gain, if possible,
new recruits. In many places societies were founded under the
name of Lovers of the New Haskalah, the members of which
observed such secrecy that even their kinsmen and those among
whom they dwelt were unaware of their existence. If through the
discovery of some forbidden book any of them happened to be
detected, he never betrayed his friends. Such a one was usually
compelled to marry, so that, being burdened with family cares,
he might desist from his unpopular pursuits.
From which it would appear that though the opposition to Haskalah in
Russia was by no means as violent as had been the opposition to
enlightenment in France, for instance, or even among the Jews of Germany
and Austria,[21] it was a bitter and stubborn conflict between parents
and children in the adjustment of old ideals to a new environment.
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