 Section 9 of History of the Jews in Russia and Poland, Volume 2, From the Death of Alexander I until the Death of Alexander III, 1825-1894, by Shimon Dubnov, translated by Israel Friedlander. Chapter 16, The Inner Life of Russian Jewry During the Period of Military Despotism, Part 1, The Uncompromising Attitude of Rebinism. The Russian government had left nothing undone to shatter the old Jewish mode of life. Despotik Zardem, whose ignorance of Jewish life was only equaled by its hostility to it, lifted its hand to strike not merely at the obsolete forms but also at the sound historic foundations of Judaism. The system of conscription, which annually wrenched thousands of youth and lads from the bosom of their families, the barracks, which served as mission houses, the method of stimulating and even forcing the conversion of recruits, the establishment of crown schools for the same covert purpose, the abolition of communal autonomy, civil disfranchisement, persecution and oppression all was set in motion against the citadel of Judaism. And the ancient citadel, which had held out for thousands of years, stood firm again while the defenders within her walls in the endeavor to ward off the enemy's blows had not only succeeded in covering up the bridges but also in barring the entrance of fresh air from without. If it be true that in pursuing its system of tutelage and oppression, the Russian government was genuinely actuated by the desire to craft the modicum of European culture to which the Russia of Nicholas I could lay claim upon the Jews, it certainly achieved the reverse of what it aimed at. The hand which dealt out blows could not disseminate enlightenment. The hammer which was lifted to shatter Jewish separatism had only the effect of hardening it. The persecuted Jews clutched eagerly at the old mode of life, the target of their enemy's attacks. They clung not only to its prominent foundations but also to its obsolete superstructure. The despotism of extermination from without was counterbalanced by a despotism of conservation from within by the rigid discipline of conduct which the message submitted without a murmur. Though its yoke must have weighed heavily upon the few, the stray hybingers of new order of things. The government had managed to disrupt the Jewish communal organization and drop the kahl of all its authority by degrading it to a kind of policy for the capture of recruits and extortion of taxes. But while the Jewish masses hated the kahl elders, they retained their faith in their spiritual leaders, the rabbis and zealots. Heeding the command of these leaders, they closed their ranks and offered stubborn resistance to the dangerous cultural influences threatening them from without. Life was dominated by rigidly conservative principles. The old scheme of family life with all its patriarchal survivors remained in force. In spite of the law embodied in the Statute of 1835, which fixed the minimum age of the bridegroom at 18 and that of the bride at 16, the practice of only marriages continued as due to fall. Parents arranged marriages between children of 13 and 15. Boys of school age often became husbands and fathers and continued to attend the head or Yehshua after their marriage weighed down by the triple tutelage of father, father-in-law and teacher. The growing generation knew not the sweetness of being young. Their youth withered under the weight of family chains, the pressure of want or material dependence. The spirit of protest, the striving for rejuvenation, which asserted itself in some youthful souls, was crushed in the vice of time under discipline, the product of long ages. The slightest deviation from a custom, right or all the habits of thought, met with severe punishment. A short jacket or a trimmed beard was looked upon as a token of dangerous free thinking. The reading of books written in foreign languages were even written in Hebrew when treating of secular subjects brought upon the culprit's untold hardships. The scholastic education resulted in producing men entirely unfit for the battle of life so that in many families, energetic women took charge of the business and became the wage owners while their husbands were losing themselves in the mazes of speculation, somewhere in the recesses of the rabbinic Balthar Midrash or the Hasidic Klaus. In Lithuania, the whole mental energy of the Jewish youth was absorbed by Talmudism. The synagogue served as a house of study outside the hours fixed for prayers. There, the local rabbi or a private scholar gave lectures on the Talmud, which were listened to by a host of Yehshba Pahuls. The great Yehshbas of Balazin, Meir and other towns sent forth thousands of rabbis and Talmudists. Mentality, erudition, dialectic subtlety were valued here almost all else. Yet, as soon as the mind wetted by Talmudic dialectics would point its edge against the existing order of things or turn in the direction of living knowledge of extraneous sciences, it was checked by threats of excommunication and persecution. Many were the victims of this petrified milieu, whose protest against the old order of things and whose striving for or newer life were nipped in the bud. Instructive in this respect is the fate of one of the most remarkable Talmudists of his time, read by Menashe Ilia. Ilia spent most of his life in the townlets of Smorogoni and Ilia, when his surname, in the government of Vilna, and died of cholera in 1831. While keeping strictly within the bounds of rabbinical orthodoxy, whose depth respected him for his enormous erudition and strict piety, Menashe was seriously endeavored to widen the range of thought and render them more amenable to moderate freedom of research and more sober outlook on the life. But his path was strewn with stones, when on one occasion he expounded before his pupils the conclusion which he had reached after a profound scientific investigation that the text of the Mishnah had in many cases been wrongly interpreted by the Gamera. He was taken to task by a conference of Lithuanian rabbis and barely escaped its communication. Having conceived a liking for mathematics, astronomy and philosophy, Menashe decided to go to Berlin to devote himself to these studies. But on his way to the German capital, while temporarily surging in Königsberg, he was halted by his countrymen who visited Prussia on business and was caught by all kinds of threats into returning home. By persistent private study, this native of Russia out of the way Talmud managed to acquire a fair amount of general culture which with all its limitations yielded a rich literary harvest. In 1807, he made his debut with the Treaty Peshir and Daba, the solution of the problem in which he gave vent to his grief over the fact that the spiritual leaders of the Jewish people kept aloof from concrete reality and living knowledge. While the book was passing through the press in Vilna, Lithuanian fanatics threatened the author with severe reprisals. Their threats failed to intimidate him. When the book appeared, many rabbis threw it into the flames and made every possible effort to arrest his circulation with the result that the voice of the heretic was stifled. Ten years later, while residing temporarily in Volinia, the hotbed of Hasidism, Menace began to print his religious philosophical treatise Alfe Menace, the teaching of Menace. But the first proof sheets suffice to impress the printer with the heretical character of the book and he drew them together with the whole manuscript into the fire. The helpless author managed with difficulty to restore the text of his executed work and published it at Vilna in 1822. Here, the rabbinical censorship pounced upon him. The book had not yet left the press when the rabbi of Vilna, Sauer Katzen Ellenbogen, learned that in one passage, the writer deduced from a verse in Deuteronomy, Chapter 17, verse 9, the right of the judges or spiritual leaders which generation to modify many religious laws and customs in accordance with the requirements of the time. The rabbi gave our author fair warning that unless this heretical argument was withdrawn, he would have the book burned publicly in the synagogue yard. Menace was forced to submit and, contrary to his conviction, weakened his heretical argument by a number of circumlocutions. These persecutions, however, did not smother the fire of protest in the breast of the excommunicated Ural philosopher. In the last years of his life, he published two pamphlets in which he severely lashed the shortcomings of Jewish life, the early marriages, the one-sided school training, the refinance to living knowledge and physical labor. However, the champions of orthodoxy took good care to prevent these books from reaching the masses. Exhausted by his fruitless struggle, Menace died, unappreciated and almost unnoticed by his contemporaries. Two, the stagnation of Hasidism. A critical attitude towards the existing order of things could, on occasion, assert itself in the environment of rabbinism, where the mind, though forced into the mold of scholasticism, was yet working at high speed. But such heretical thinking was utterly inconceivable in the dominant circles of Hasidism, where the intellect was robbed to sleep by mystical lullabies and fascinating stories of the miraculous exploits of the Tzadiks. The era of political and civil disfranchisement was a time of luxuriant growth for Hasidism, not in its creative, but rather in its stationary, not to say stagnant phase. The old struggle between Hasidism and rabbinism had long been fought out, and the Tzadiks rested on their laurels as teachers and miracle workers. The Tzadik dynasties were now firmly entrenched. In white Russia, the scepter lay in the hands of the Shnyozion dynasty, the successors of the old rabbi Shnyozalman, the progenitor of the northern Hasidism. The son of the old rabbi bear, nicknamed the middle rabbi, 1813-1828, and the latter son-in-law, Mendel Lubabisha, 1828-1866, succeeded one another on the Hasidic throne during this period with the change in their place of residence. Under Rabbi Zalman, the townlets of Rosno and Ladi served as capitals. Under his successors, they were Ladi and Lubabish. The three localities are all situated on the borderline of the government of Vitebsk and Mogilev, in which the Hasidism of Habad's persuasion formed, either a majority, as was the case in the former government, or a substantial minority, as was the case in the latter. Rabbi Bear, the son and successor of the old rabbi, did not inherit the creative genius of his father. He published many books, made mostly of his sabbat discourses, but they lack originality. His method is that of the Talmudic people, transplanted upon the soul of Kabbalah and Hasidism, or it consists in expiating upon the ideas contained in the Tanya. The last years of rabbi bear were darkened by the white Russian catastrophes, the expulsion from the villages in 1823, and the ominous turn in the ritual murder trial of Valiz. On his deathbed, he spoke to those around him about the burning topic of the day, the conscription U.K.'s of 1827. His successor, Rabbi Mendel Lubabish, proved an energetic organizer of the Hasidic masses. He was highly esteemed, not only as a learned Talmudist, he wrote rabbinical novelli and response, and as a preacher of Hasidism, but also as a man of great practical wisdom, whose advice was sought by thousands of people in family matters, known as then in communal and commercial affairs. This did not present him from being a decided opponent of the new enlightenment. In the course of Lilienter's educational propaganda in 1843, Rabbi Mendel was summoned by the government to participate in the deliberation of the rabbinical committee at St. Petersburg. There, he found himself in a tragic situation. He was compelled to give his sanction to the crown schools, although he firmly believed that they were subversive of Judaism, not only because they were originated by Russian officials, but also because they were intended to impart secular knowledge. The Hasidic legend narrates that Tzadik pleaded before the committee passionately and often with tears in his eyes, not only to retain in the new schools the traditional methods of Bible and Talmud instruction, but also to make room in the curriculum for the teaching of the Kabbalah. Nevertheless, Rabbi Mendel was compelled to endorse against his will the godless plan of school reform, and a little later to prefix his appropriation to a Russian edition of Mendelssohn's German Bible translation. His attitude toward contemporary pedagogy methods may be gauged from the epistle addressed by him in 1848 to Leon Mandelstam, Lilienter's successor in the task of organizing the Jewish crown schools. In this epistle, Rabbi Mendel categorically rejects all innovations in the training of the young, in reply to a question concerning the edition of an abbreviated Bible text for children, he trenchantically quotes the famous medieval aphorism. The Pentateuch was written by Moses at the dictation of God. Hence, every word in it is sacred. There is no difference whatsoever between the verse and Timna was the concubine. Genesis chapter 36 verse 12. And here, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Deuteronomy chapter 6 verse 4. With all, the leaders of the northern Hasidim were comparatively speaking men of the world and were already here and there to make concessions to the demands of the age. Quite different were the Tzadiks of the southwest. They were horrified by the mere thought of such concessions. They were surrounded by immense thrones of Hasidim, unenlightened, ecstatic, worshipping saints during their lifetime. The most honored among these Hasidic dynasties were dead of Chernobyl. It was founded in the Ukraine toward the end of the 18th century by an itinerant preacher or market called Nahum. His son Mordecai, known under the endearing name Rabbi Motele, died in 1837 attracted to Chernobyl in almost numbers of pilgrims who brought with them ransom money or pedions. Mordecai's empire fell asunder after his death. His eight sons divided among themselves the whole territory of the Kiev and Volinia province. Aside from the original center in Chernobyl, seats of Tzadiks were established in the townlets of Koroztychev, Cherkasy, Makarov, Turisk, Talno, Skivir and Lakhmystrovka. This resulted in disgraceful rivalry among the brothers and still more so among the Hasidic adherents. Every Hasid was convinced that reverence was due only to his own rebel and he brushed aside the claims of the other Tzadiks. Whenever the adherents of the various Tzadiks met, they invariably engaged in passionate patty quarrels, which on occasions, especially after the customary Hasidic drinking bouts, ended in physical violence. The whole Chernobyl dynasty found the dangerous rival in the person of the Tzadiks, Israel Ruzin, the great grandson of Rabbi Baer, the Apostle of Hasidim known as the Maserich Magid. Rabbi Israel settled in Ruzin, a townlet in the government of Kiev, about 1815 and rapidly gained fame as a saint and miracle worker. His magnificent court at Ruzin was always crowded with throngs of Hasidim. The onrush was checked by special gentlemen in waiting, the so-called Gabaim, who were very fastidious in admitting the people into the presence of the Tzadiks, dependent upon the size of the proper gifts. Israel drove out in a gorgeous carriage surrounded by a guard of honor. The gubernatorial administration of Kiev, presided over by the fetishist governor-general Bibi Korp, received intimations to the effect that the Tzadiks of Ruzin wielded almost the power of a Tzar among his adherents, who did not stir without his advice. The police began to watch the Tzadiks at lengths, found an occasion for a frame-up. When in 1838, the Kahal of Ushitsa in the government of Podolia was implicated in the murder of an informer, Rabbi Israel of Ruzin was arrested on the charge of abetting the murder. The Hasidic Tzar languished in prison for 22 months. He was finally set free and placed on the police surveillance, but he soon escaped to Austria and settled in 1841 in the Bukovina, in the townlet of Sadagora near Chernovitz, where he established his new court. Many Hasidim in Russia now made their pilgrimage abroad to their beloved Tzadiks. In addition, new partisans were won among the Hasidic messengers of Galicia and Bukovina. Rabbi Israel died in 1850, but the Sadagora dynasty branched out rapidly and proved a serious handicap to modern progress during the stormy epoch of emancipation, which followed in Austria soon afterwards. Another hotbed of the Tzadik court was Podolia, the cradle of Hasidism, and the old residence of Beshid in Metziborz. The scepter was held by Rabbi Josiah Hesel after, who succeeded the Beshid's grandson, Rabbi Boruk of Turzin. For a number of years, between 1810 to 1830, the aged Josiah Hesel was revered as the Nestor of Tzadikism. The hotty Israel of Ruzin being the only one who refused to acknowledge his supremacy. Hesel's successor was Rabbi Moshe Sapranski, who established a regular Hasidic court after the pattern of Chernobyl and Ruzin. The only Tzadik to whom it was not given to be the founder of the dynasty was the somewhat eccentric Rabbi Naaman of Bratslav, a great grandson of Beshid. After his death, the Bratslav Hasidim, who followed the lead of his disciple Rabbi Nathan, suffered cruel persecutions at the hands of the other Hasidic factions. The Bratslavers adopted the custom of visiting once a year during the high holidays, the grave of their founder in the city of Uman in the government of Kiev and subsequently erected a house of prayer near his tomb. During these pilgrimages, they were often the target of the local Hasidim who revived and often maltreated them. The Bratslavers were the Cinderella among the Hasidim, lacking the powerful patronage of living Tzadik. The heavenly patron, Rabbi Naaman, could not hold his own against his living rivals, the earthly Tzadiks, all too earthly perhaps in spite of their saintliness. The Tzadik cult was equally diffused in the Kingdom of Poland, the place of Rabbi Israel of Kozenitz and Rabbi Jacob Isaac of Lublin, who together marshaled the Hasidic forces during the time of the Varsovian Dutch was taken by founders and representatives of new Tzadik dynasties. The most popular among these were the dynasty of Kotsk, established by Rabbi Mendel Kotsk, 1827 to 1859 and that of Gora Calvaria or Gere, founded by Rabbi Isaac Meijer Alter, about 1830 to 1866. The former reign supreme in the provinces, the latter in the capital of Poland in Warsaw, which down to this day has remained loyal to the Gere dynasty. The Polish rebels resembled by the character of their activity the type of the northern or harbored Tzadiks rather than those of the Ukraine. They did not keep luxurious courts, did not hanker so greatly after donations and laid greater emphasis on Talmudic scholarship. Hasidism produced not only leaders but also martyrs, victims of the Russian police regime. About the time when the Tzadik of Luzin fell on the suspicion, the Russian government began to watch the Jewish printing press in the Volinian townlet of Slaveta. The owners of the press were two brothers, Samuel Abba and Phineas Shapiro, sons of Besheet companion Rabbi Phineas of Kredz. The two brothers were denounced to the authorities as persons issuing dangerous mystical books from their press without the permission of the censor. Their denunciation was linked up with the criminal case, the discovery in the house of the prayer which was attached to the printing press of the body of one of the compositors who it was alleged had intended to lay bare the activities of the criminal press before the government. After a protracted imprisonment of the two Slaveta printers in Kiev, their case was submitted to Nikolas I who sentenced them to Spitzruten and deportation to Siberia. During the procedure of running the gunlet while passing through the lines of whipping soldiers, one of the brothers had his cap knocked off his head. Unconcerned by the hail of lashes from which he was bleeding, he stopped to pick up his cap so as to avoid going bareheaded and then resumed his march between the two rows of executioners. The unfortunate brothers were released from their Siberian exile during the reign of Alexander II. Hasidic life exhibited no doubt many examples of locked idealism and moral purity but hand in hand with it went an impenetrable spiritual gloom, boundless credibility, a passion for defying men of Mediocre and even inferior type and the unwholesome hypnotizing influence of the Zadiks. Spiritual self-intoxication was accompanied by physical. The Hasidic rank and file, particularly in the southwest, began to develop an ugly passion for alcohol. Originally tolerated as a means of producing cheerfulness and religious ecstasy, drinking gradually became the standing feature of every Hasidic gathering. It was involved at the court of the Zadiks during the Russia pilgrims. It was indulged in after prayers in the Hasidic shitti plaha or houses of prayer and was accompanied by dancing and by the ecstatic narration of the miraculous exploits of the rabbi. Many Hasidim lost themselves completely in this ideal level and neglected their business affairs and their starving families looking forward in their blind fatalism to the blessings which were to be showered upon them through the intercession of the Zadiks. It would be manifestly unjust to view the Hasidic indulges in alcohol in the same light as the senseless drunkenness of the Russian peasant, transforming men into a beast. The Hasid drank and in moderate doses at that for the soul to banish the grief which blunted the heart to arouse religious exhortation and enliven his social intercourse with his fellow believers. Yet the consequences were equally sad for the habits resulted in drowsiness of thought, idleness and economic growing, insensibility to the outside world and to the social movement of age as well as in solid opposition to cultural progress in general. It must be borne in mind that during the era of external oppression and military inquisition the reactionary forces of Hasidism acted as the only antidote against the reactionary force from the outside. Hasidism and Zadikism were, so to speak, a sleeping droat which dulled the pain of the blows dealt out to the unfortunate Jewish populace and government. But in the long run, the popular organism was injuriously affected by this mystic opium. The poison rendered its consumers insensible to every progressive movement and planted them firmly at the extreme pole of obscurantism at a time when the Russians get resounded with the first appeals calling its inmates toward the light, toward the regeneration and the uplift of energy's life. End of Section 9. Section 10 of History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume 2. From the death of Alexander I until the death of Alexander III. 1825 to 1894 by Szymon Dubnup. Translated by Israel Friedlander. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by SS Kim. Manicked by issue. Portugal. Chapter 16. The Inner Life of Russian Jewry during the period of military despotism. Part 2. 3. The Russian Mendelssohn. Isaac Bear Levinson. It was in the hotbed of the most fanatical species of Hasidism that the first blossoms of Haskala timidly raised their heads. Isaac Bear Levinson from Kremlinets in Podolia 1788 to 1860 had associated in his younger days with the champions of enlightenment in adjacent Galicia such as Joseph Perl, Naman Kruchman and their followers. When he came back to his native land it was with the firm resolve to devote his energies to the task of civilizing the secluded masses of Russian Jewry and learn some quietude carefully guarding his designs from the outside world which was exclusively Hasidic. He worked at his book Tehude Be Israel Instruction in Israel which after many difficulties he managed to publish in Vilna in 1828. In this book, our author endeavored without trespassing the boundaries of Orthodox religious tradition to demonstrate the following elementary truths by citing examples from Jewish history and sayings of great Jewish authorities. One, the Jew is obliged to study the Bible as well as Hebrew grammar and to interpret the biblical text in accordance with the plain grammatical sense. Two, the Jewish religion does not condemn the knowledge of foreign language and literature especially of the language of the country such knowledge being required both in the personal interest of the individual Jew and in common interest of the Jewish people. Three, the study of secular sciences is not attended by any danger for Judaism but of the type of Maimonides having remained loyal Jews in spite of the extensive general culture. Four, it is necessary from the economic point of view to strengthen productive labor such as handicrafts and agriculture at the expense of commerce and brokerage also to discourage early marriages between persons who are unprovided for and have no definite occupation. These common places sounded to their generation like epoch-making revelations. They were condemned as rank heresies by all the powerful obscurantists and hailed as a gospel of the approaching Renaissance by the handful progressives who dreamt of a new Jewish life and cowed by the fear of persecution hit these thoughts deep down in their breasts. A similar fear compelled Levinson to exercise the utmost reserved and caution in criticizing the existing order of things. The same consideration forced him to shield himself behind the pseudonym in publishing his anti-hacitic setire Dibre Tzadikum, the words of the Tzadiks Vienna, 1830 a rather feeble imitation of Megaleh Temirin the Hebrew counterpart of the Epistles of Obscurant by Joseph Perle. His principal work entitled Beth Yehuda, the House of Judah or semi-philosophic, semi-publicistic review of the history of Judaism remained for a long time in manuscript. Levinson was unable to publish it for the reason that even the printing press of Vilna the only one to ish publications of a non-religious writer was afraid of bringing out a book which had failed to receive the approbation of the local rabbis. Several years later in 1839 the volume finally came out clothed in the form of a reply to inquiries addressed to the author by a high Russian official. From the point of view of Jewish learning Beth Yehuda can claim but scanty merits. It lacks the depth of philosophic historic insight which distinguishes so brilliantly the guide of the publicist of our time of the Galician thinker Krokhman. The writer's principal task is to prove from history his rather trite doctrine that Judaism had at no time shunned secular culture and philosophy. For the rest, the author is quite shy of the difficult problems of religious philosophy and is always on the lookout for compromises. Even with reference to the Kabbalah which Levinson had but little sympathy he says timidly it is not for us to judge these lofty matters. Chapter 135 Fear of the orthodox environment compares him to observe almost complete silence with reference to Hasidism although in his private correspondence and in his anonymous writings he denounces it severely. Levinson concludes his historic review of Judaism with the eulogy upon the Russian government for its kindness towards the Jews. Chapter 151 and with the following plan of reform suggested to it for execution. Chapter 146 To open elementary schools for the teaching of Hebrew and the tenets of Jewish religion as well as of Russian and charismatic and to establish institutions of higher rabbinical learning in the larger cities to institute the office of chief rabbi with the supreme council under him which should be in charge of Jewish spiritual and communal affairs in Russia to allot to a third of the Russian Jewish population parcels of land for agricultural purposes to prohibit luxuries in dress and furniture in which even the imponitious classes are prone to indulge. Levinson was not satisfied to propagate his ideas by purely literary means. He anticipated meager results from a literary propaganda among the broad Jewish masses in which the mere reading of such licentious books were considered a criminal offence. He had greater faith in his ability to carry out the regeneration of Jewish life with the powerful help of the government. As a matter of fact, Levinson had long before this began to knock at the doors of the Russian government offices. Far back in 1823 he had presented to the heir apparent Konstantin Pavlovich a memorandum concerning Jewish sex and a project looking to the establishment of a system of Jewish schools and seminaries. Moreover, before publishing his first work, Tehude, he had submitted the manuscript to Shishko the reactionary minister of public instruction applying for a government society towards the publication of a work which demonstrates the useless of enlightenment and agriculture instilled love for the Tsar as well as for the people which share our life and recounts the innumerable favors which they have bestowed upon us. These words were penned on December 2, 1827 three months after the promulgation of the baneful conscription new case ordering the compulsory enlistment of underage Cantonists. The request was complied with. A year later, the humble Indian literature received by imperial command an award of 1,000 rubles $500 for a work having for its object the moral transformation of the Jews. This award came when the volume had already appeared in print in the terrible year 1828 which was marked by the first conscription of Jewish recruits the ominous turn in the ritual model trial of families and constant tightening of the knots of disabilities but these events failed to cure the political naivety of Levinson in 1831 he laid before leaving the new minister of public instruction a memorandum advocating the necessity of modifications in Jewish religious life again in 1833 he came forward with the dangerous proposal to close all Jewish printing presses except those situated in towns in which there was a censorship the project was accompanied by a list of ancient and modern Hebrew books indicating those that may be considered useful and those that are harmful the Hasidic works were declared to belong to the latter category Levinson's project was partly instrumental in prompting the previous law of 1836 which raised a cry of despair in the paid-off settlement ordering a revision of the entire Hebrew literature by Russian censors Levinson's action would have been ignoble had it not been naivety the recourse of criminals passionately devoted to his people foresight was calling Russian officialdom to aid in his fight against the bigotry of the Jewish masses in the childish conviction that Russian authorities had the welfare of the Jews truly at heart and that compulsory measures would do away with the hostility of the Jewish populace toward enlightenment he failed to perceive as did also some of his like-minded contemporaries that the culture which the Russian government of his time was trying to foist upon the Jews was only apt to accentuate their distrust that so long as they were the target of persecution the Jews could not possibly accept the gift of enlightenment from the hands of those who lured them to the baptismal font pushed their children on the path of religious religion and were ruthless in breaking and disfiguring their whole mode of life in his literary works Levinson was fond of emphasizing his relations with high government officials this probably saved him from a great deal of unpleasantness on the path of the fanatic Hasidim but it also had the effect of increasing his unpopularity among the Orthodox the only merit the letter were willing to concede to Levinson was that of an apologist who defended Judaism against the attacks of non-Jews during the epidemic of ritual mother trials the revise of Rituania and Volinia addressed to Levinson to write a book against his hurried rival at their suggestion he published his work Ephes Damim No Blood Vilna 1837 in the form of dialogue between a Jewish sage and a Greek Orthodox patriarch in Jerusalem so much later Levinson wrote another apologetic treatises defending the Talmud against the attacks contained in the book Netibod Olam published in 1839 by the London missionary McCall Levinson's great apologetic work Jerubabel which appeared several years after his death was equally dedicated to the defense of the Talmud it has moreover considerable scientific merit being one of the first research works in the domain of Talmudic theology a number of other publications by Levinson deal with Hebrew philosophy and lexicography all these efforts support Levinson's claim to the title of founder of Jewish science in Russia though his scholarly achievements cannot be clashed with those of his German and Galician fellow writers such as Rappaport, Zunz, Yost and Geiger Levinson stood entirely aloof from the propaganda of bureaucratic enlightenment which was carried on by Lilienter in the name of Ubarov the Volinian hermit was completely overshadowed by the energetic young German even when Lilienter after realizing that a union between Jewish culture and Russian officialdom was altogether unnatural had disappeared from the stage Levinson still persisted in cultivating his relations with the government but by the time the bureaucrats of St. Petersburg had no more use for the Jewish friends of enlightenment broken in health chained to his bed for half a lifetime without means of subsistence lowly administered a hostile orthodox environment Levinson's timing again addressed to St. Petersburg humiliating appeals for monetary assistance occasionally receiving small penances which were booked under the heading Relief in Distress accepted subventions from various Jewish messengers and remained the pauper till the end of his life the pioneer of modern culture among Russian Jews the founder of neo-Hebrewic literature spent his life in the midst of a realm of darkness shone like an outcast appreciated by a mere handful of sympathizers it was only after his death that he was crowned with darkness when the intellectuals of Russian Jewry were beginning to press forward in close formation 4. the rise of neo-Hebrewic culture the Volinian soil proved unfavorable for the seeds of enlightenment the Haskala pioneers were looked upon as dangerous enemies in this hotbed of sadicism they were held in disgrace and were often the victims of cruel prosecutions from which some saved themselves by conversion a more favorable soil for cultural endeavors was found in the extreme south of the pale of settlement as well as in its northern section Odessa the useful capital of new Russia and Vilna the old capital of Lithuania both became centers of the Haskala movement as far as Odessa was concerned the seeds of enlightenment had been carried hither from neighboring Galicia by the Jews of Brody who formed the wealthy merchant colony in the city as early as 1826 Odessa saw the opening of the first Jewish school for secular education which was managed at first by Sittenfeld and later on Besarrel Stone among the teachers of the new school was Simha Pinsko who subsequently became the historian of charism this school the only educational establishment of its kind during that period served in Odessa as a center for the friends of enlightenment being a new city unfettered by traditions and at the same time a large seaport with a checkered international population Odessa outlined other Jewish centers in the process of modernization though it must be confessed that it never went beyond the externalities of civilization as far as the period under discussion is concerned the Jewish center of south can claim no share in the production of new Jewish values while yielding to Odessa in point of external civilization Vilna surpassed the capital of the south by a store of mental energy the circle of the Vilna Maskelim which came into being during the fourth decades of the 19th century gave rise to the two founders of neo-Hebraic literary style the prose writer Mordecai Aaron Ginsberg 1796 to 1846 and the poet Abraham Bayer Levenson 1794 to 1878 Ginsberg born in town that silent in the smooth region lived for some time in cool land and finally settled in Vilna he managed to familiarize himself with German literature and was so fascinated by that he started his literary career by translating and adapting German works into Hebrew his translation of campus discovery of America and police universal history as well as his own history of the Franco-Russian war of 1812 compiled from various sources as far as Russia is concerned the first specimens of secular literature in pure Hebrew which boldly claimed that they are placed side by side with rabbinic and Hasidic writings in that juvenile stage of the Hebrew Renaissance when the mere treatment of language and style was considered an achievement even the appearance of such elementary books was hailed as epoch-making the profoundest influence on the formation of the neo-Hebraic style must be ascribed to other works by the same author Kidai Sefer an epistolary manual containing specimens of personal commercial and other forms of correspondence Vilna 1835 and many later editions and Debir Miscellaneous collection of essays consisting for the most part of translations and compilations Vilna 1844 Ginzburg's premature death in 1846 was mourned by the Vilna Masculine as the loss of a leader in the struggles for neo-Hebraic Renaissance and they gave expression to these sentiments in verse and prose Ginzburg's autobiography as 1863 and his letters debuted volume 2 1861 portrayed the milieu in each of our older grew-up and developed Abrambeo Levinson a native of Vilna awakened the dominant Hebrew liar by the sonorous rhymes of his songs in the sacred tongue Shire Sefer Kodesh Volume 1, Leipzig 1842 In this volume, solemn oars celebrating events of all kinds alternate with lyrical poems of philosophical content the unaccustomed ear of the Jew of that period was struck by these powerful sounds of rhymed biblical speech which exhibited great elegance and harmony than the monstite of Wesley the Jewish club stock his compositions which are marked by thought rather than by feeling suited to perfection of the contemporary Jewish reader who was ever on the lookout for intellectuality even when poetry was concerned philosophic and moralizing lyrics are a characteristic feature of Levinson's pen the general human sorrow common to all individuals stirs him more deeply than national grief his only composition of a nationalistic character the wailing of the daughter of Judah seems strangely out of harmony with the accompanying oars which celebrate the coronation of Nicholas I and similar patriotic occasions although the wailing is shrewdly prefaced by a note evidently meant for the censor to the effect that the poem refers to the middle ages at any rate the principal merits of the songs in the sacred tongue is not to be sold in their poetry but rather in their style for it was this style which became the basis of neo-Hebraic poetic diction perfected more and more by the poets of the succeeding generations Ginzburg and Levinson were the central pillars of the Vilna masculine circle which also included men of the type of Samuel Joseph Fune historian Metataya Strasun the Talmudist the censor Tuggenhold the bibliographer Ben Jacob and Rosenthal the radicals of that era were the mere striving for the restoration of biblical Hebrew and for elementary secular education was looked upon as bold radicalism the same circle made an attempt to create a scientific periodical after the pattern of similar publications in Galicia and Germany in 1841 and 1843 two issues of the magazine Peter Zafan Flowers of the North appeared in Vilna under Fune's editorship the volume contains scientific and publicistic articles as well as poems contributed by the feeble literary talents which were then active in the Hebrew literary and educational revival in Russia all of them efforts of not very high merit but even these poor hothouse flowers were waited to be nipped in the northern chill the ruthless Russian censorship sent in the unassuming magazine of the Vilna masculine criminal attempt to publish the Hebrew periodical such an undertaking required an official license from the central government in St. Petersburg and the letter was not in the habit of granting licenses for such purposes in Vilna as in Odessa the coterie of local masculine formed the mainstay of Lilienta the apostle of enlightenment in his struggle with the orthodox in the year 1840 prior to Lilienta's arrival when the first intimation of Ubalov's plans reached the city of Vilna the local masculine responded to the call of the government in a circular letter in which the following four cardinal reforms were emphasized one the transformation of the Revenate through the establishment of Revenical Seminaries the appointment of graduate from German universities as Revis and the formation of consistencies after the pattern of western Europe two the reform of school education through the opening of secular schools after the model of Odessa and Riga and the training of new teachers from among the masculine three the struggle with the fins of obscurantism who strived for every endeavor of secular enlightenment four the improvement of Jewish economic life by intensifying agricultural colonization the establishment of technical and arts and craft schools and similar measures several years later the authors of this circular had reason to share Lilienta's disillusionment over the benevolent intentions of the government however was not strong enough to uproot the original sin of the Haskellah its constant readiness to lean for support upon enlightened absolutism the despotism of the Orthodox and the intolerance of the unenlightened message forced the handful of masculine to fall back upon those who in the eyes of the Jewish populace were the souls of its people and tears there was a profound tragedy in this incongruity the cultural movement in Russia of the second quarter of the 19th century corresponds in its complexion to the early stage of the Mendelssohnian enlightenment in Germany the period of the Measefim but there were also essential differences between the two the beginning of a German enlightenment accompanied by a strong drift toward assimilation which led to the elimination of the national language from literature in Russia the initial period of Haskellah was not marked by any social and cultural upheavals on the contrary it laid the foundations for a national literary renaissance which in the following period was destined to become an important social factor to revive the Jews and the Russian people as for the Russian people an impenetrable world continued as their two four to keep it apart from the Jewish population to the inhabitants of the two Russian capitals and of the interior of the empire the pale of settlement seemed as distant as China while among the Russians living within the pale global history conflagration the prejudices of the ages and the unenlightened notions of days gone by were still glimmering beneath the ashes the ignorance of some and the vicious prejudices of others could not very well manifest themselves in periodical literature for the simple reason that in pre-reformatory Russia throttled by the hand of the censorship known was in existence only in Russian fiction one might see the shadow of the Jew moving across in the imagination of the great Russian poet Pushkin this shadow waved between the despised Jew of the street in the black shore 1820 and the figure of the venerable old man reading the bible under the shelter of the night in the beginning of a novel 1832 on the other hand in Gogol's Taras Bulba 1835 to 1842 the Jew bears the well-defined features of an inhuman fiend in the delineation of the hideous figure of Zid Yanker a mercenary soulless dastardly creature Gogol the descendant of the Haydamax gave vent to his inherited hatred of the Jew the victim of Khmelitsky and the Haydamax in these small historic tragedies in the figures of the Jewish matters of old Ukraine Gogol can only discern miserable, terror-stricken creatures thus one of the principal founders of Russian fiction at the very center the repelling scarecrow of a Jew an abomination of desolation which poured the poison of hatred into the hearts of the Russian readers and determined to a certain extent the literary types of later writers in the backyards of Russian literature which were then most of all patronized by the reading public the literary slenderer Tadeusz Bulgarin delianated in his novel Ivan Visigin 1829 the type of literary Jew by the name of Moshe Moses who appears as the embodiment of all mortal sins the product of an untalented and tainted pen Bulgarin's novel was soon forgotten yet it contributed its share towards instilling Jew hatred to the minds of the Russian people End of section 10 section 11 of History of the Jews in Russia and Poland Volume 2 from the death of Alexander I until the death of Alexander III 1825 to 1894 by Szymon Duvenup translated by Israel Fridlenda this library box recording is in the public domain recording by SS Kim Manik Dvysho Portugal Chapter 17 The Last Years of Nicholas I 1. The Assortment of the Jews The beginning of the second emancipation of 1848 in Western Europe synchronized with the last phase of the Europe operation in Russia that phase representing the concluding 7 years of pre-reform of Russia in the life of the country at large doubly dark in the life of the Jews the power of absolutism banished by the March Revolution from the European West asserted itself with intensified fury in the land of the North which had about that time earned the unenviable reputation of gender of Europe thrown back on its last stronghold absolutism concentrated its energy upon the suppression of all kinds of revolutionary movements in default of such movement in Russia itself this energy broke through the frontier line and found an outlet in the punitive expedition sent to support the Austrians in the pacification of mutinous Hungary the triumphant passwords of political freedom which were given out on the other side of the southern frontier only intensified the reactionary rage on this side since it was impossible to punish action for under the vigilant eye of the terrible third section revolutionary endeavors were a matter of impossibility were then thought were subject to punishment censorship ran riot in the subdued literature of Russia tearing out by the roots anything that did not fit into the mold of the bureaucratic way of thinking the quiet precincts of the Russian intelligentsia who in the retirement of their homes ventured to dream of better political and social order were invaded by political detectives who snatched dense numerous victims with a scapegoat the galleys and conscription such were the contrivances employed during the last years of pre-reform of Russia to hold together the old order of things in the land of officialdom and selfdom in that Russia which the poet Koimacope though patriotic and sliverfile branded does blackened in court with falsehoods blackness and stained by the yoke of slavery full of godless flatly of vicious lying and every possible neighbor but the full weight of the yoke of slavery and falsehoods blackness by which pre-reform of Russia was marked fell upon the shoulders of the most helpless section of Russian subjects the Jews the tragic loom of the end of Nicholas reign finds is only parallel in Jewish annals in the beginning of the same reign pre-reforms proposed in the interval in the beginning of the forties did not deceive the popular instinct the Jews of the pale so not only the hand which was holding forth the charter of enlightenment but also the other hand which hid a stone in the form of nuclear restrictions soon the government drew off the mask of enlightenment and set out to realize the potential program that of correcting the Jews by police methods it will be remembered that the principal item in this program was the assortment of the Jews i.e. the segregation from among them of all persons without a certain status as to property or without definite occupation for the purpose of proceeding against them as criminal members but as 1846 the government forewarned the Jews of the imminent bloody operation over a whole class against which Governor General Wonsow had very protested all Jews were ordered to register at the earliest past moment among the guilds and estates assigned to them with the understanding that in case this measure should fail the government would of itself lay out the assortment with a set of part the Jews who are not engaged in productive labor and will subject them as burdensome to society to various restrictions the threat fell flat for it was rather too much to expect that fully a half of the Jewish population doomed by civil disabilities and general economic conditions to a life of wanton distress could obtain at a stroke the necessary property status or definite occupations accordingly on November 23, 1851 the Tsar gave his sanction to the temporary rules concerning the assortment of the Jews all Jews were divided into five categories merchants, agriculturalist artisans, settled bogus and unsettled bogus the first three categories were to be made of those who were enrolled among the corresponding guilds and estates settled bogus were to be those engaged in burger trade with business licenses also the clergy and the learned class the remaining huge mess of the proletariat was placed in the category of unsettled bogus who were liable to increased conscription and to higher legal restrictions as compared with the first four tolerated classes of Jews this hapless proletariat either out of work or only occasionally at work was to bear a double measure of oppression and persecution and was to be branded as despised barriers by April 1, 1852 the Jews belonging to the four tolerated categories were required to produce the certificates of enrollment before the local authorities those who had failed to do so were to be entered into the fifth category the criminal class of unsettled bogus within the brief space allotted to them the Jews found themselves unable to obtain the necessary documents and thanks to the representations of the governor's general of the western governments the term was extended till the autumn of 1852 but even then the assortment had not yet been accomplished the government was fully prepared to launch a series of draconian laws against the parasites including police inspection and compulsory labor but while engaged in these charitable projects the law givers were taken by the Crimean War which with its disastrous consequences for Russia devoted their attention from their war against the Jews yet for successive numbers of years the law concerning the assortment was as as it was popularly styled by the Jews hung like the sword of democracy over the heads of hundreds of thousands of Jews and the anxiety of the suffering masses were poured out in said popular ditties ah, that's all I'm sorry, I'm sorry I'm sorry alas, what misfortune and persecution there is in the assortment two, compulsory assimilation as for the measures of compulsory assimilation long ago foreshadowed by the government such as the substitution of the German style of dress for the traditional Jewish attire the long coats of the men they were without any effect on Jewish life and merely resulted in confusion and consternation a court imperial UK ish on May the 1st 1850 prohibited all over the empire the use of distinct Jewish form of dress beginning with January the 1st 1851 though the governor's general were given the right of permitting aged Jews to wear out the old garments on the payment of definite tax the prohibition extended to the earlobs or payers of the men a year later in April 51 the government made the further step in advance and proceeded to deal with the female attire his imperial majesty was graciously pleased to command that Jewish women be forbidden to shave their heads upon entering into marriage in October 1852 this UK's was supplemented by regulation that married Jewish guilty of shaving her head was liable to a fine of five rubles two and a half dollars and thereby abetting the crime was to be prosecuted neither the Jews nor the Jewish were willing to submit to imperial orders the former from habit the latter from religious croppers the provincial authorities entered upon a regular warfare against these rebels both the governor's general and the governor's subordinate to them displayed extraordinary enthusiasm in this direction the officials tracked with the zeal not only the women culprits but also their accomplices the rebels who attended the wedding ceremony even including the barbers who were called in to shave the heads of the Jewish ladies Jewish women were examined at the police stations to find out whether they still wore their own hair beneath their cut ships or wigs frequently the struggle manifested itself in tragic comic and even repulsive forms in some places the police adopted the practice of cutting the payers or shortening the long court of the Jews by force the opposition to the authorities was particularly vigorous in the kingdom of Poland where the ranks and file of Hasidim were ready to suffer martyrdom for any Jewish custom however obsolete was drawn out for a long time even reached into the following reign but the victory remained with the obstreperous masses though at a later period as the result of general cultural tendencies the traditional Jewish costume made way in certain sections of Jewry for the European form of dress it was not in obedience to police majors but in spite of them compulsory assimilation was as little successful now as had been compulsory isolation in the Middle Ages the medieval rulers had imposed upon the Jews a distinct form of garment and a yellow badge to keep them apart from the Christians Nicholas I employed forcible means to make the Jews by their style of dress appear similar to the Christians the violence resulted to in both cases though different in form sprang from the same motive three new conscription harrows there was yet one domain in each the squeezing and pressing power of Zathim could fully employ in its destructive energy we refer to military conscription this genuine creation of the imperial brain became more and more intolerable serving in Jewish life as a panel and correctional agency with its capture of old and young its inquisitorial regime of Cantonists its deportation for a quarter of a century and longer into far up regions even the Russian peasants were shaken with terror at the thought of Nicholas conscription which in the reminiscence of the portrayals of that period is pictured as lifelong deportation frequently served military duty by fleeing from the landowners and hiding themselves in the woods how much more terrible most than conscription have been for the Jews whose family was robbed both of a young father and a tender son no means were left unused to evade this atrocious obligation the reports of the governor's report to the immeasurable difficulties in carrying out the conscription on the Jews apart from innumerable cases of self mutilation to quote the words of one of these reports written in 1850 the disappearance without exception of all able-bodied Jews has become so general that in some communities outside of those unfit for military service because of age or physical defects that a single person can be found during conscription who might be trapped into the army some flee abroad whilst others hide in adjacent governments those in hiding were hunted down like wild beasts their life as a contemporary witness testifies was worse than dead of galley slaves for the slightest indiscretion brought ruin upon them many resorted to self mutilation to render themselves unfit for military service they chopped off their fingers or toes damaged their eyesight and perpetrated every possible form of maiming to evade military service which was in effect penal servitude the most tender hearted mother to quote a contemporary would place the finger of her beloved son the knife of a homebred quark surgeon this evasion resulted in immense shortages which pressed heavily upon the Jewish communities since the letter was held collectively responsible for supplying the full quarter of recruits the reports about the unsatisfactory conscription results among the Jews filled the government in St. Petersburg with rage the persistent reluctance of human beings reparted almost for life from those near and dear to them or to see their little ones carried off to an early grave or to the baptismal fund was regarded as manifestation of criminal self-will accordingly the formal measures of cutting short and curving this self-will were improved upon by new ones in December 1850 Bazar gave orders that for every missing Jewish recruits in a given community three men of the minimum age of 20 from the same community and one more recruit for every 2,000 rubles $1,000 of tax or years should be impressed into service a year later the following atrecious measures were issued for the purpose of cutting short the concealment of Jews from military service the fugitives were captured flocked and drafted into the army over and above the required quarter of recruits the communities in which they were hidden were to be fined the relatives of recruits who failed to present himself in proper time were to be taken instead even if these relatives happened to be heads of families the official representatives of the communities were equally liable to being sent into the army if found convicted of any innocuous in carrying out the conscription the reign of terror followed in the Jewish communities upon the promulgation of these laws the Kahal elders it will be remembered that they continued to exist after the abrogation of the Kahals acting as the fiscal agents of the government now faced a terrible alternative to become in the world or contemporary either murderers or martyrs i.e. either to capture and sent into the army any youth or boy without discrimination were themselves to don the gray uniform and be impressed into military services as penalty recruits in consequence a fiendish hunt after human beings was set at foot in the pale of settlement adults were sieged regardless of their being the only mainstay of their families were taken captive and children of 8 were captured and presented to the recruiting authorities as being of the obligatory age of 12 but despite all these hunting many communities were not able to furnish their quarter of soldiers and the number of penalty recruits from among the Kahal elders was very considerable weeping and mourning resounded in the neighborhood of the recruiting stations in the Jewish towns where parents and relatives took leave from their dear ones who were doomed to a perpetual better life and yet the fury of the government was not satisfied in 1853 new temporary rules were issued by way of experiment whereby not only communities but also individuals among Jews were granted the right of offering as their substitutes any fellow Jew from another city than his own who was caught without the passport any Jew who happened to absent himself from his place of residence without the passport could be sieged and draft into service as a substitute for a regular recruits due from the family of the captor the captive regardless of age was made a soldier and the captor was given a receipt for one recruit a new ferocious hunt began the official captors employed by the Kahals were no longer the only ones to parole after living prey the chase was now taken up by every private individual who wished to find a substitute member of his family or who simply wanted to turn a penny by selling his recruiting receipt hold of Jewish bandits sprang up who infested the road and the inns and by trickery or force made the treblors part with the passports and then dragged them to the recruiting stations as captives to be sent into the army never before had the Jewish masses yielding to pressure from above sunk to such depth of degradation the Jew became a beast of prey to his fellow Jew Jews were afraid of butching an inch from their native cities every passerby was suspected of being a captor or a bandit the recruiting inquisition of Nicholas inflicted upon the Jews the utmost limit of martyrdom it said Jew against Jew called forth a war of all against all through the tortured and the torturer into one heap and solid the Jewish soul all this took place while the Crimean war was going on the Russian army on the altar of which so many human sacrifices had been offered in the course of 30 years matched to save the honor of Russia in truth to save the old regime squadron upon squadron each from the inner recesses of Russia and marched towards the battlefield of the south marched to the slaughter into the mouth of the cannons of the English and French who knew how to conquer without penalty conscriptions and without inflicting tortures upon tender aged Cantonist the gendarm of Europe who armed to his teeth had contemptuously threatened to finish the enemy with his soldier caps could not hold out against the army of the Rotten West hundreds of thousands of Russian soldiers were beneath the walls of Sevastopol upon the heights of Incomon thousands of Jewish soldiers were laid among them in brotherly graves the Jews enslaved by pre-deformatory Russia died for a fatherland which treated them as carriers which had bestowed upon them a monstrous conscription the unexampled institutions of Cantonist penal recruits and captives however it soon became clear that those who had fallen under the walls of Sevastopol had sealed by their death not the honor but the discerner of the old regime of blood and iron beneath the rotting corpse of an obsolete statecraft built upon softdom and maintained by soldiers and police the germs of new and better Russia began to stir four the ritual model trial of Saratov one more detail was lacking to complete the dismal picture and to bring out the full symmetry between the end of Nikolas reign and its ominous beginning a medieval ritual model trial after the pattern of the Valiz case and the trial of this nature did not fail to come in December 1852 and in January 1853 two Russian boys from among the lower classes disappeared in the city of Saratov in central Russia their bodies were found two or three months later in the Volga covered with wounds and bearing the traces of circumcision the circumstances led the coroners to believe that the crime had been perpetrated by Jews Saratov, a city situated outside the pale of settlement Harvard at the time a small Jewish settlement consisting of some 40 soldiers of the local Galician and several civilian Jewish tracemen and artisans who lived in the prohibited Volga town by the grace of the police there were also a few converts the vigilant eyes of the coroners were evaded on this settlement unofficial by the name of Durnovo who had been dispatched from St. Petersburg to take charge of the case began at once to direct the inquiry into the channel of a ritual model case needless to say there was soon found material witness from among the ignorant or criminal class who were under the hypnotic influence of the ritual murder myth a private called Bogdanov who had been convicted of vagrancy and an intoxicated gubernatorial official by the name of Grigor testified that they were present at the time when the Jews squeezed out the blood from the bodies of the murdered boys they also mentioned by name the principal perpetrators of the murder the circumcision expert in the local Jewish settlement or soldier called Shlifuman and the furrier named Yankel Yushkevich or devout Jew the incriminated Jews were drawn into prison but despite excruciating cross examinations they and the other defendants indignantly denied not only the complicity in the murder but also the trial model accusation as a whole the investigation became more and more involved drawing into its net a constantly growing number of persons until in July 1854 a special judicial commission was appointed by order of Nicholas I for the purpose of disclosing not only the particular crime but also of investigating the dogmas of the religious fanaticism of the Jews the latter task being of a theoretic nature was entrusted in 1855 to a special commission under the auspices of the ministry of the interior among the theologian and hebraist who were members of that commission was also the baptized professor Daniel Shorson who had scientifically disproved the ritual legend in 1856 after a protracted inquiry of two years the judicial commission having failed to discover evidence against the accused decided to set them at liberty but to leave them under strong suspicion in the meantime Alexander II had ascended the throne of the Tsars and the dawn of Russian renaissance began to disperse the nightmares of the past era yet so deeply ingrained were the old prejudices in many bureaucratic minds that when the conclusion reached by the judicial commission was submitted to the senate the vote were divided the case was transferred to the council of state the high dignitaries managed to effect the compromise between the medieval prejudices and their involuntary concessions to the spirit of the age they refused to enter into a discussion of the still unsolved question as the use of Christian blood by the Jews but they unhesitatingly recognized the existence of the crime itself which had been perpetrated as Saratov this in spite of the fact that the only ground on which the crime was ascribed to alleged fanatical practices and laid at the door of the Jews were the traces of circumcision on the dead bodies ignoring this inner contradiction and setting aside the weighty objections of the liberal minister of justice Jamiatin the council of state brought in a verdict of guilty alleged Jews the soldier Schliefermann and the two Yishkeviches senior and junior sentencing them to penal servitude the sentence was confirmed by Alexander II in May 1860 the representatives of the St. Petersburg community Baron Joseph Ginzburg and others petitioned the Tsar to postpone the verdict until the scholarly commission of experts have rendered its decision with regard to the compatibility of ritual mother with the teachings of Judaism but the president of the council of state Count Olaf presented the method to the Tsar in a different light asserting that all that the Jews intended by their petition was to keep off for an indefinite period the decision on a case in which the coalitionists are involved he therefore insist on the immediate execution of the sentence and the Tsar yielded after eight long years of incarceration in the course of which two of the impeached Jews committed suicide the principal perpetrator were found to be physical wrecks and no longer able to discharge their penal servitude the innocent sufferer old Yishkeviches was imprisoned for seven more years and was finally liberated in 1867 by order of Alexander II who had been petitioned by Adolf Cremier the president of the alliance Israelite to pardon the unhappy man in this way the heritage of the dark past protruded into the increasing brightness of the new Russia which in the beginning of the 60s was passing through the era of great reforms and of section 11