ON, REFORMATION, AND ASSIMILATION 222

CHAPTER VI. THE AWAKENING 268

NOTES 305

BIBLIOGRAPHY 331

INDEX 339

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

TOBIAS COHN (1652-1759) Frontispiece

ISAAC BAeR LEVINSOHN (1788-1860) facing page 64

MAX LILIENTHAL (1815-1882) " " 120

ALEXANDER ZEDERBAUM (1816-1893) " " 175

PEREZ BEN MOSHEH SMOLENSKIN (1842-1885) " " 220

MOSES LOeB LILIENBLUM (1843-1910) " " 280

PREFACE

To the lover of mankind the history of the Russo-Jewish renaissance is
an encouraging and inspiring phenomenon. Seldom has a people made such
rapid strides forward as the Russian Jews. From the melancholy
regularity that marked their existence a little more than two
generations ago, from the darkness of the Middle Ages in which they were
steeped until the time of Alexander II, they emerged suddenly into the
life and light of the West, and some of the most intrepid devotees of
latter-day culture, both in Europe and in America, have come from among
them. Destitute of everything that makes for enlightenment, and under
the dominion of a Government which sought to extinguish the few
rushlights that scattered the shadows around them, they nevertheless
snatched victory from defeat, sloughed off medieval superstition, and,
disregarding the Dejanira shirt of modern disabilities, compelled their
countrymen to admit more than once that

Tho' I've belted you and flayed you,
By the livin' Gawd that made you,
You're a better man than I am!

Similar movements were started in Germany during the latter part of the
eighteenth century, and in Austria, notably Galicia, at the beginning of
the nineteenth, but none stirred the mind of the Jews to the same degree
as the Haskalah movement in Russia during the last fifty years. In the
former, the removal of restrictions soon rendered attempts toward
self-emancipation unnecessary on the part of Jews, and the few Maskilim
among them, satisfied with the present, devoted themselves to
investigating and elucidating the past of their people's history. In
Russia the past was all but forgotten on account of the immediate duties
of the present. The energy and acquisitiveness that made the Jews of
happ