wodzinski good maskilim and bad assimilationists, or toward a new historiography of the haskalah in...

Good Maskilim and Bad Assimilationists, or Toward a New Historiography of the Haskalah in Poland

Marcin Wodziski

he Jewish Enlightenment movement in the territories of Cen-tral Polandthat is, in the Kingdom of Poland and its prede-cessor, the Duchy of Warsaw, as distinct from Russia or

Galiciais a phenomenon notable for its virtual absence from con-temporary studies of the Haskalah and the history of Jewish society innineteenth-century Poland.1 A mere cursory examination of most ofthe works devoted to the Haskalah in recent years shows that, in theminds of Haskalah historians, the territories of the Kingdom of Polandwere an undifferentiated part of the Russian empire.2 The last to writeabout Polish maskilim were in fact historians from pre-war Jewishschool of historiography in Poland, most notably Ignacy Schiper,Jacob Shatzky, and Raphael Mahler.3 The lack of attention paid toCentral Poland for the past half-century is even more peculiar, giventhat, numerically, the Jewish population in these territories consti-tuted the second greatest concentration (after Ukraine) of Jews innineteenth-century Europe and exceeded the Jewish populations ofLithuania, Belarus, and Galicia not only in actual numbers but also interms of proportional representation in the countrys general popula-tion and in their particularly high urban concentration. In 1830, the390,400 Jews living in the Kingdom of Poland constituted 10 percentof the general population. They constituted 35.3 percent of the urbanpopulation in 1827, and this would increase to 46.5 percent by 1865.

T

www.judaistyka.uni.wroc.pl

[88]

JewishSocial

Studies

Historians have noted that the first maskilim who functioned in Pol-ish territories came from these areas or were active in the central prov-inces of the old Polish Commonwealth (mainly in Warsaw) in the1780s and 1790s.4 Did such forerunners of the Haskalah in EasternEurope as Jacques Calmanson, Israel Zamo, Zalkind Hourwitz, andIssachar Ber Falkensohn really leave no successors? When they de-parted, did the Haskalah cease to exist on Polish soil? Quite the con-trary. The Haskalah movement, as I will show, flourished in CentralPoland from the 1790s until the early 1860s, and the disciples of themovement (among them Chaim Zelig Sonimski) were active as late as1890s.5 However, even if it were the case that the Haskalah, in itsmarch eastward, did bypass the territories of the Kingdom of Poland,an understanding of such an unusual development would provide uswith important information both about the nature of the Jewish En-lightenment movement and about Jewish society in Central Poland. Ifthe processes of emancipation and modernization assumed a differentform in Central Poland from those in Galicia or Imperial Russia, thefundamental issue will then be to define these differences and to makea detailed analysis of those factors that gave rise to the differences andthe consequences thereof.

Irrespective of the above-mentioned issues, the question of the pos-sible existence and character of a specifically Polish (as opposed to Rus-sian or Galician) Haskalah has been almost completely overlooked inrecent decades. This found expression in the frequently occurring andvery telling phrase in publications devoted to the East European factionof the Haskalah movement: the Haskalah in Eastern Europe, that is, inRussia and Galicia.6 An expression such as this, whether stated or im-plicit in the texts of the most eminent contemporary Haskalah histori-ans, would be justifiable only if Imperial Russia and Galicia were thesole political entities in nineteenth-century Eastern Europe or if therewere no Jewish Enlightenment movement outside their borders.

However, commonsense and a knowledge of Polish history (formore about this, see further) convince us that both of the above pre-mises are incorrect. Naturally, not all representatives of the Jewishprogressive (as they called themselves) camp in Poland weremaskilim. But an analysis of the letters and activities of a variety ofthose persons active in the Haskalah, and particularly an analysis of thepremises that convinced early historians to deny them the honorificappellation maskilim, prove that the maskilic group in Poland wasgreater and more influential than traditional historiography was wontto recognize. An understanding of the ideological biases, stereotypes,and interpretative errors leading to the exclusion of the Polish


[89]

The Haskalah in Poland

Marcin Wodziski

Haskalah from the scope of virtually all those researching thenineteenth-century Jewish Enlightenment seems significant, and notonly because it allows one to view in a truer light the history of theHaskalah in Eastern and Central Europe. The issue is all the more fas-cinating because, in this single example, we have a classic illustrationof the way in which the ideologies of twentieth-century historians haveobfuscated and to date are misinterpreting the historiography of Eu-ropean Jews in the era of emancipation and modernization. Althoughthe ideological implications of twentieth-century Jewish historiogra-phy have been acknowledged appropriately, and although numerousstudies in recent years have corrected the misapprehensions that havelong-since dominated the historical picture,7 the example of the Pol-ish Haskalah proves that we still have far to go to come to grips with allthe consequences of early, nationally oriented historiography.

What Was the Kingdom of Poland?

As noted above, it appears that the first reason for the omission of thePolish Haskalah from the research of contemporary historians intothe Jewish enlightenment is the misinformed conviction that the King-dom of Poland was an integral part of the Russian Pale of Settlementand that, apart from the relatively insignificant differences in thestructure of society and the legal situation, it did not differ greatlyfrom the remaining provinces in the western part of Imperial Russia.This is a heritage of old Russian Jewish historiography of the Dubnow-ian school, which quite imperialistically viewed all of Eastern EuropesJews as Russian. Although the political agendas of this view have beenlong gone, the same stubborn attitude can be found among contem-porary historians researching nineteenth-century Jewish society.Either they do not mention the existence of the Kingdom of Poland atall,8 or they quote facts from Central Poland with no explanation thatthey do not originate from the Russian Pale of Settlement but from adifferent political entity,9 or, having pointed out the separate nature ofthe kingdomor even having devoted significant attention to ittheytreat its past as if, in effect, it were a part of the history of the Jews ofRussia.10 Naturally, all of these attitudes occur equally among those re-searching the Jewish Enlightenment.11

Such attitudes find certain justification in the fact that East Euro-pean Haskalah historians have been dealing mainly with facts and pub-lications that derive from the last decades of that century, when theactual degree of independence of the Kingdom of Poland was mini-


[90]

JewishSocial

Studies

mal. In addition, from the 1860s, along with the commencement bythe tsarist authorities of the politics of Russification, the existence of apro-Russian stance was more evident among the Warsaw maskilim. Itsbest-known, though very moderate, representative was Chaim ZeligSonimski and his Hebrew-language weekly Ha-tsefirah. However, oneshould not forget that the group moving toward Russian identity nevergained widespread influence among the progressive Jewish popula-tion in Poland. Also, the anti-Polish pronouncements of AbrahamPaperna or Feivel Schiffer were an exception on Polish soil, and thepredominating tendency in Jewish intellectual circles right up to theend of the nineteenth century was that represented by the pro-Polish,Polish-language weeklies Jutrzenka (186163) and Izraelita (18661915) as well as the circles connected with these publications. Themost significant identifying features of this relatively large group at theend of the nineteenth century were its use of the Polish language, itsstrong integration with Polish culture, and, above all, its frequentlyemphasized Polish national identity.12 This distinguished Polish en-lightened Jews from the Jewish progressives of Belarus, Lithuania,and Ukraine; hence the treatment of Jewish society in Poland as an in-tegral part of Russian Jewry lacks a solid foundation.

Also, in purely political terms, the Congress Kingdom was indeed aseparate and distinct entity. The new Kingdom of Poland, also knownas the Congress Kingdom, was created on the basis of the decision ofthe Vienna Congress in 1815 and effectively perpetuated the foundingprinciples of the constitutional Napoleonic Duchy of Warsaw, on theruins of which it arose. Admittedly, there was a personal connectionbetween the kingdom and Imperial Russia, but the autocratic ruler ofRussia was a mere king in Poland (official documents never referred tohim as tsar), and his authority was limited by the constitution. Thepowers of the king were limited also by certain prerogatives of the par-liament (Sejm) and government (the Administrative Council) and theviceroy as well as by the independent nature of the justice system. TheSejms legislative powers were limited (for example, it had no right oflegislative initiative), but it did monitor the functioning of the govern-ment and bestowed immunity on members of parliament, which inEurope at the time was a new and important prerogative. The govern-ment was appointed by the king and was accountable to him, but theconstitution also introduced the principle of legal responsibility of theministers: for royal decrees to become law, they had to be counter-signed by the minister responsible for that portfolio. Thus, the King-dom of Poland was, as is often written, a semi-independent entity,ruled by independent organs of state, with its own territory, its own em-


[91]


Marcin Wodziski

blems and borders, in which its inhabitants had Polish, not Russian,citizenship as well as wide civic freedoms. A separate and independentschool system, judiciary, legislature (also applying to the Jews), mone-tary system, and even army meant that the kingdom had an entirelyPolish character. Polish was the sole official language (correspon-dence with St. Petersburg was in French), and state functionaries hadto be citizens of the kingdom. Although there were exceptions to thisrule (for example, Grand Duke Constantine was the head of the Polisharmy, and Senator Nikolai Novosiltzoff was the tsars special envoy),such exceptions occurred only in individual cases and had no connec-tion with the subordination of the state apparatus by Russian func-tionaries. The existence of a legal liberal opposition, somethingunprecedented in the Russian Empire, is evidence of the indepen-dence of the Congress Kingdom, as is the independence of the judica-tory powers, which was most evident during the parliamentary court of1827, when, despite the pressure brought to bear by Grand Duke Con-stantine and Tsar Nicholas I, the court found the leaders of the con-spiratorial Society of Patriots not guilty.13

The wide-ranging independence of the Kingdom of Poland was notlong-lived. The first attempts to limit constitutional freedoms weremade almost at the moment when the kingdom came into being (forexample, with the introduction of censorship that was in conflict withthe constitution), but the general withdrawal from the liberal experi-ment occurred after 1831. After the suppression of the November up-rising (1831), Tsar Nicholas withdrew the constitution and began theprocess of circumscribing autonomy, gradually limiting the autonomyof the central organs in Warsaw and transferring part of their func-tions to St. Petersburg. Despite it, until the collapse in 1864 of the sub-sequent uprising of 186364, the kingdom remained a state with aconsiderable degree of independence and fairly broad powers in in-ternal matters.

It is particularly significant here that the Kingdom of Poland alsodemonstrated a considerable degree of independence in policies con-cerning the Jewish population. The best-known instances of this inde-pendence are the rejection of a liberal project to manage the Jews inPoland (which was the work of Novosiltzoff on the personal recommen-dation of Tsar Alexander I), the rejection of a project for Jewish con-scription (introduced several years later during the period of limitedPolish autonomy following the uprising in 1831), and the fiasco of laterattempts to standardize Polish and Russian legislation concerning Jews.14

Until World War I, the political situation of Jews in the Congress King-dom remained significantly different from that in the Russian Empire.


[92]

JewishSocial

Studies

All this had a tremendous influence on the situation of all segments ofJewish society in Poland. The differences in the conscription system be-tween Russia, where the draft started in 1827, and Poland, where a muchless oppressive system was introduced only in 1843, greatly influencedthe mentality and political conceptions of both societies.15 The same canbe said about the influence of an act of emancipation issued for Polish(but not Russian) Jews in 1862 or the failure to implement in Poland theso-called May Laws limiting the rights of the Russian Jews after 1881.

Who Were the Maskilim of the Congress Kingdom?

Side by side with the above-mentioned tendency to ignore the autono-mous nature of the Congress Kingdom is a still earlier tradition, accord-ing to which the lands of Central Poland were a region in which themaskilic ideology was not accepted. This certitude, though not ex-pressed outright, emerged among Galician and Russian maskilim, who,describing the migration of the ideas of the Jewish Enlightenment,maintained that it came from Germany to Galicia and from there to thesouthern provinces of the Russian Empire, to Volhynia and to Lithua-nia.16 As one can easily see, this scheme by-passed Central Poland.

This thesis found the most classical expression in the writings ofRaphael Mahler; he was the most articulate spokesman of the long tra-dition of Jewish historiography of the nationalistic tradition.17 Mahlerclaimed that the Duchy of Warsaw and the Congress Kingdom were anarea in which the Jewish Enlightenment movement did not develop,because its place was taken by cultural, national, and religious assimi-lation.18 This was the most extreme expression of the thesis dividingthe Jewish modernization into two factions of good maskilim and badassimilationists. Some of the factors that Mahler cited as acting as adeterrent to the Haskalah were: the lack of a central metropolis thatwould normally constitute a natural maskilic center; the unattractive-ness of Polish aristocratic culture; antisemitism; the low intellectuallevel and incompetence of Polish officials at all levels; the enmityshown Jews by the Polish state itself; the backwardness of the Polisheconomy and the associated lack of a broadly based bourgeoisie (a nat-ural ally of Enlightenment ideas); and a high percentage of conver-sions in circles that had been traditional supporters of the Haskalah.All this was supposed to mean that the insignificant number ofmaskilim who remained in the Kingdom of Poland were not interestedin Polish culture and gravitated toward the German language and cul-ture. However, those drawn to Polish language and culture did so for


[93]


Marcin Wodziski

their own advantage, and this was in itself a conspicuous indication ofa tendency to extreme assimilation, which was a far cry from the aimsof the Haskalah movement.19 Among these suspect assimilationists,Mahler named Jakub Tugendhold, Abraham Buchner, EzechielHoge, Antoni Eisenbaum, and Abraham Paprocki.

Although many of Mahlers claims have found their critics amongcontemporary historians,20 it is still crucial for the understanding ofthe Polish Haskalah to examine who Mahlers assimilationists andtheir associates really where, what their ideology was, and whether ornot they really belonged to the Haskalah movement (whatever itmeant). The very term assimilation was obviously anachronistic, as itwas never used before the second half of the nineteenth centuryneither by nor in reference to the Polish-Jewish progressives. Theysimply did not define themselves in this way, and in the later part of thecentury, when the term started to appear, it had a meaning very differ-ent from its English or Hebrew (hitbolelut) translation. The startingpoint for my analysis should be, therefore, the ideological program ofthe above-mentioned assimilationists, especially the most prolific:Tugendhold, Buchner, and Hoge, and Abraham Jakub Stern.

The Program

The program put forward by the maskilim of the Congress Kingdom,both in Polish and in Hebrew writings, was not original, nor did it fun-damentally differ from similar programs put forward by Jewish adher-ents of the Enlightenment in Prussia, Russia, or Galicia. Its main pointscan be summarized as follows: the dissemination among Jews of univer-sal values and a disdain for separatism; the battle with some institutionsof traditional Jewish life and with manifestations of separateness; a sec-ular education program and a productivization program; and an ideol-ogy based on loyalty to the state and to the monarch. Alongside theseproposals, which were directed at the transformation and moderniza-tion of Jewish society, the protection of Jewish identity (via the promo-tion of the Hebrew language, the Bible, and historical consciousness)and a battle with pseudo-Enlightenment and religious indifferenceplayed important roles in the ideology of the Polish maskilim.

Education

As was the case with all the Central and East European Haskalah, themaskilim of the Kingdom of Poland were convinced of the inability of


[94]

JewishSocial

Studies

Jewish society to adapt to the demands of the modern world, of the nu-merous morbid conditions pervading Jewish society, and of the flawspresent in many of its fundamental institutions. They were also awareof the need for a deep-seated transformation of all aspects of Jewish so-ciety both in the religious and moral sphere and in the sphere of secu-lar relations. And, as in the case of other maskilim, the Polishadherents of the Haskalah recognized the fact that education, under-stood as the entire educational process, was a basic tool for change.Tugendhold wrote of education that

[I]t leads us out of a degraded bestial state, it revives and it disseminatesthose elevated and excellent strengths buried within us; it stifles and oustsbad habits, encourages us to embark upon the roads of virtue which leadus to our genuine destiny; in a word, it is . . . the torch of uprightness,light and learning for the entire human race.21

Its ultimate aim was the transformation of Jewish youth into righteousand useful members of society.22 The Polish maskilim did not intro-duce new content into the Haskalahs program of education. Follow-ing Naftali Herz Wesselys theories, they distinguished two trends ineducation: religious knowledge and secular knowledge (torat ha-adam), simultaneously emphasizing the need for the harmonious ac-quisition of both spheres.23 Religious knowledge was understood asthe study of morality, complemented by the basics of Hebrew languageand grammar, and a knowledge of Jewish history and of classical reli-gious literature, particularly of the Bible and Hebrew poets. The studyof secular subjects was to focus on Polish and German, astronomy, ge-ography, and history. A familiarity with these subjects, particularly withastronomy, was presented not only as a vital preparation for life in themodern world but also as a religious obligation, testified to by the mosteminent of talmudic authorities.24

Productivization

Equally important in the program of the Polish maskilim was their in-terest in agriculture and crafts. It formed one of the canonic elementsof the program of the East European Haskalah, though this interest wasgreater among Jewish progressives in the Kingdom of Poland thanamong Haskalah adherents in neighboring countries. Poets composedpastorals extolling the delights of rural life, and the authors of religiouscompilations testified that work on the land was the most importantcalling of the Jewish people and the one occupation approved by thepatriarchs and the divine lawgiver, Moses. Long lists of biblical figures


[95]


Marcin Wodziski

and talmudic scholars daily laboring on the land or at a craft were sup-posed to provide evidence that such occupations were not only open toJews but were also sanctified by religious tradition.25 Jewish agriculturalcolonies in the Cherson region were described with delight, and, just asthe joys of rural life were praised, so too was agriculture presented asthe ultimate solution to the social problems of Jews in Poland.26 JanGlcksberg, the author of a treatise on the state of the Jews in the King-dom of Poland, actually devoted his greatest attention to unsuccessfulcolonization plans and saw the governments mistaken agricultural pol-itics as one of the main reasons for the poor state of Jewish society.27

Agricultural colonization projects were also revived in many of theprojects submitted by the supposed assimilators to the authorities ofthe Kingdom of Poland. In 1830, Tugendhold and Hoge, the ex-maskiland convert (and ultimate penitent), respectively, went to the govern-ment with a proposal to establish an artisans school for middle-class andpoor Jewish youths and a fund for Jewish students in an agronomicalschool.28 In 1836, the same Tugendhold stressed that the success of anagricultural colonization was solely dependent on the exemption ofJewish settlers from special Jewish taxes (the kosher and conscriptiontaxes). This is the only example in Tugendholds rich legacy in whichhe allowed himself to criticize the governments policies in relation tothe Jews.29 Tugendhold even stated that the chances of success for anyprograms aiming at the moral reform of the Jewish people dependedexclusively on progress made in turning Jews toward agriculture andsome crafts, which in turn depended on the creation of favorable legalconditions.30

The Battle with Separatism

Besides the dysfunctional socio-occupational structure, the othersource of misfortune for Polish Jewry was, according to the maskilim,the separatism of Jewish society itself. This view was shared by adherentsof modernization in the whole of Eastern Europe. The external mani-festations of this separateness were the differences in attire, language,and customs with which representatives of the Haskalah consequentlybattled. However, what they recognized as being most dangerous werethose deeply entrenched beliefs that fueled a belief in the inferiority ofthe Christian world and the religious sanctioning of Jewish separatism.It was emphasized that cutting themselves off from Christians wouldlessen the opportunities for present and future generations to solvefundamental social problems connected both with non-adjustment tothe changing conditions of the outside world and with the untenable


[96]

JewishSocial

Studies

socio-occupational structure. These ills could only be solved by integra-tion and participation in economic, cultural, and social life in non-Jewish society. It was also indicated that the antipathy shown Christiansby Jews created reciprocal antipathy on the part of the Christians to-ward Jews and that this made the position of Jewish people even worse.Religiously oriented writers also noted that this discredited Judaism,and they went to great lengths to convince Jews and Christians alike thata hostile stance toward Christians had no religious justification andthat, if anything, it ran counter to the precepts of Judaism. Tugendholdpublished in three languages (first in Polish and Hebrew, then in Yid-dish) a treatise in which he stated that the expression akum (idolater) aswell as any religious notations connected with that expression were notreferences to Christians but only to pagans. He also acknowledged thathis work was aimed at two groups of readers: Christians and Jews.31 Itwas intended to convince Christians that the negative stance of someJews toward them had no religious sanction and that such a stance didnot emanate from the nature of Judaism but only from the fanaticism ofsome of its less enlightened followers. Thus, it was an apologetic work.For Jews, the text testified to the immorality of such anti-Christian atti-tudes and to the way they were in conflict with religious precepts. Thetext was also intended to bring about a change in such reprehensiblebehavior. Thus, it was a moralistic work. To broaden the social influ-ence of the text, the author sought two rabbinical approvals (haskamot),such as were traditionally used to support Jewish religious texts and totestify to the righteousness of the authors work. In this case, the ap-provals were dispensed by the eminent scholars (both Mitnagdim)Hayim Davidsohn and Jehudah Bachrach.

Other authors used similar strategies. Buchner testified that Godscommandments applied to Jews and non-Jews alike. What is more, it wasnecessary to behave with even greater integrity in relation to people ofother faiths than with Jews, because a sin committed toward a co-adherentwould be attributed by the injured party to the perpetrator, whereas asin committed against one of another faith would be attributed to the re-ligion of the perpetrator, so that it would become a transgression notonly against ones fellow man but also against the name of God. Thechosen nature of Israel does not hinge upon a right to rule over othersbut merely upon the duty of paying special tribute to God; hence, this isnot being chosen to rule, but to serve.32 Buchner also stated that eventhe idolater is a fellow human and that a Jew is obliged to show himbrotherly love. Brotherly love of a non-Jewish person is actually one ofthe main themes of the writings of Buchner, who frequently detailed dif-ferent aspects of it, such as the bans on receiving stolen goods, on swin-


[97]


Marcin Wodziski

dling, and particularly on stealing from those of another faith, thedictate of love of ones homeland, the obligation of loyalty to ones mon-arch, and the necessity of undertaking productive activities.33

Monarchism

Of all the obligations to the outside world, it was monarchism in partic-ular that occupied a prominent place in the ideological program ofboth the East European Haskalah and those in the Kingdom of Poland.The principle of fidelity to the monarch was taken from the talmudicmaxim The law of the country is the law (Bava kama 113), which re-ceived, contrary to rabbinical tradition, absolute sanction.34 Other tal-mudic sayings, such as royal authority on earth is akin to royalauthority in heaven (Berakhot 58a) were equally popular. Of course,there can be no doubt that the frequently emphasized loyalty to themonarch that the maskilim of the Kingdom of Poland exhibited was asstrong as that exhibited by their counterparts in Galicia and Russia. Thehonor accorded the monarch sometimes went so far that he was attrib-uted semi-divine qualitiesthe supreme father of the land spoke: letthe unfortunate be cared for, and so it came to pass.35 Abraham Gross-glck, the author of a theological treatise on the religious obligation oflove for the monarch, even testified that earthly rulers are proof of theexistence of God: Monarchs are appointed by decree of God Himself,they are endowed with but a particle of His greatness, and the ap-pointed are Gods Representatives here on earth and as such are visibleevidence of the Holiest Ruler of all time.36 Due to their being imbuedwith a particle of divine majesty, monarchs were superhuman creationsand the nature of their spirit far more elevated than the spirit whichbreathes life into each man created in the image and likeness of God.37

In this sense, the program of the maskilim in the Congress Kingdomwas an ideal reflection of similar views of the Haskalah in Eastern andCentral Europe, adapting the old political principle of the royal alli-ance with the monarch.38 It is even more striking when one notes thatthe monarchism of the Polish maskilim emerged in political conditionsvery different from those in absolutist Galicia or Russia: throughout theearly period under consideration, the kingdom was constitutional, andafter 1831 it was a semi-constitutional monarchy.

Preservation of Jewish Identity

The postulate of rapprochement with the surrounding non-Jewishpopulation, which was so important to the maskilim of the Congress


[98]

JewishSocial

Studies

Kingdom, was not identical to the assimilationist tendencies of whichthey would later be accused, which were interpreted as the aspirationto totally reject Jewish values. In reality, it was quite the opposite.Alongside programs fighting against the outward manifestations ofseparateness, promoting mental and occupational adaptation to ex-ternal conditions, and opposing negative attitudes toward Christians,an equally important element was the protection of Jewish identity bystrengthening the status of religion and religious values in the lives ofthe Jewish population in Poland. According to the maskilim, this was acampaign to be fought on two fronts, because the hardened fanaticswho poisoned Judaism with their calamitous prejudices and fallacieswere as great a threat to the religion as were the free-thinkers whocompletely eliminated religion from their own lives and from society.The campaign against the religiously corrupt pseudo-maskilim wasthe obsession of Tugendhold, whose many works defended the statusof religion and its significance to social order and testified to the im-mortality of the spirit and the socioreligious obligations stemmingfrom this fact, such as the sacred nature of the traditions of Judaism.Similar pronouncements warning against the disastrous consequencesof a superficial education and the weakening of religious ties can be at-tributed to many other maskilim.39

Publication of numerous works of Hebrew classical literature, collec-tions of ethical sayings from Jewish religious literature, and support forknowledge of the Hebrew language, the Bible, and the history of theJewish people constituted activities designed to strengthen religioustradition. The Polish maskilim published the original versions of classi-cal Hebrew texts of rabbinic tradition as well as their Polish translations.In addition, the publication of the Mendelssohn Bible, the most signif-icant work of the Berlin Haskalah, was a major undertaking. On themodel of the Berlin Haskalah, the basic means of popularization of a pu-rified version of Judaism was the catechisms, whose task was the preser-vation of authentic Mosaic faith, according to the maskilim; this battlewas waged as much against the degeneracy of fanaticism as against reli-gious indifference and assimilation. Thus, the catechisms were in-tended to teach the main principles of our religion and to save it, if notfrom decline, at least from corruption.40 True, there was no consensuson the very idea of main principles of religion. Some, like Eisenbaum,advocated a fundamental transformation of rabbinic Judaism. The vastmajority, however, defended traditional rabbinic forms of Judaism,with Talmud and Oral Law as their principles. In numerous reports forthe Polish government, Tugendhold, Stern, and even Hoge (before hisconversion) defended rulings of halakhah, Jewish religious law, and de-


[99]


Marcin Wodziski

clared it absolutely binding for the Jewish people.41 Attempts by Sternand, later, by Tugendhold to implement traditional religious trainingwith an emphasis on Talmud and rabbinical supervision in the WarsawRabbinical School attested to the conservative attitude that prevailedamong Polish maskilim toward religious matters.42

Historical awareness was supported by various stories and poemsbased on accounts of well-known figures from rabbinical literature.From a literary viewpoint, such works have no value whatsoever. Anumber of characters, symbolizing that aspect of Jewish religious tradi-tion that the maskilim recognized as the depository of authenticJudaismsuch as the great medieval rationalist Maimonides and thefather of the Jewish enlightenment, Moses Mendelssohnenjoyedconsiderable popularity. The popularization of the thoughts of Mai-monides was the work of Buchner,43 himself a fervent rationalist; Men-delssohn found his greatest adherent in the person of Tugendhold.44

Few works were devoted to more recent history. Of those that were, themost popular was the Hebrew adaptation of Marcus Josts work byShalom Hakohen, which was widely distributed in the Kingdom of Po-land, thanks to the efforts of Tugendhold.45 Paprocki, the author ofthe first textbook in Poland on the history of the Jews, wrote of the sig-nificance of history to Jewish identity:

If, in general, every person should have a knowledge of history, it is indeedvital that the Israelites gain a knowledge of the history of their ancestors.In historical accounts, one finds examples not only of a specific exercisingof ones obligations and of social virtues, of loyalty and obedience to themonarch, but one also becomes convinced that all this flows from reli-gious principles and that it is upon this that human happiness depends.46

Maskilim as a Social Group

An important feature of the Haskalah, emphasized in both older andmore recent research, is its structure as a social group. It should benoted therefore that Polish maskilim constituted a typical socialgroup, one whose members were interrelated on objective (commongoals and means), subjective (self-consciousness of being part of agroup), and behavioral (contacts within the group) levels. Tugend-hold, Stern, Buchner, and others defined themselves as members ofmaskilic society, thus proving a strong collective identity. They alsomaintained lively social contacts, undertook numerous collective initi-atives, cooperated on a number of projects, and established quite a fewformal or semi-formal bodies institutionalizing their interrelations.


[100]

JewishSocial

Studies

One of the most important institutions was the German synagogueon Daniowiczowska Street in Warsaw. After its establishment in 1802,it was a central meeting ground for nearly all of Warsaws modernizedJews, not only those from Germanydespite its name.47 For more thanhalf a century, it was the informal headquarters of Polish Haskalah,where numerous initiatives were mastered and conducted. The wealthof quite a few members of this congregation, such as Isaac and MathiasRosen, Jakub Epstein, and Samuel Kronenberg, was also an importantinstrument of the social influence and support for other representa-tives of the group. Another similar synagogue was established in Lodzonly in the 1840s.

Of the bodies institutionalizing maskilim as a social group, oneshould also note institutions established by the government in order tocivilize the Jewish people in Poland. These included the Committeefor Censorship of Hebrew Books, the Advisory Council for the Com-mittee on Jewish Affairs, and educational institutions, such as the ele-mentary schools established in 1820 by Jakub Tugendhold, the Jewishschools for girls, and the Warsaw Rabbinical School established in1826. Their importance for maskilim working in these institutions wastwo-fold. First, it enabled them to influence and cooperate on govern-ment projects of reforming Jewish society. (In this optimistic period, itwas believed their primal aim was to improve the social conditions ofthe Jewish people.) Second, it made them independent both finan-cially and socially from the still dominant traditional Jewish society,which often viewed maskilic activities with fear, if not contempt. TheRabbinical School played a particularly important role as a center ofpropagation of integrationist (though not always maskilic) ideologyand as an institutional basis for most of the above-mentioned maskilim(Eisenbaum, Buchner, Paprocki, Tugendhold). Over twelve hundredgraduates of this school established a strong social basis for theHaskalah in the Kingdom of Poland.48

Apart from this, Polish maskilim, like their colleagues in the rest ofEastern Europe, maintained contacts through a network of informalclubs, salons, cultural assemblies, and, above all, correspondence,which was the most important means of propagating maskilic ideologyand maintaining personal relations. The very term literary republic ofwriters, often employed to describe these informal relations,49 mightseem a bit improper in the case of Polish maskilim, because few ofthem were real writers. Most reduced their activity to journalism, trans-lations, or compilations of textbooks. But even if they were not realwriters, they participated in the same literary republic, and for themcorrespondence constituted the basic form of relations with other


[101]


Marcin Wodziski

maskilim in Poland and with representatives of Jewish Enlightenmentthroughout Eastern and Central Europe. Again, Tugendhold can bepresented as an example. He maintained contact with almost allmaskilim in Warsaw and numerous enlightened personalities in Po-land, Germany, and Russia (especially Vilna), such as Isaac BeerLevinson (Ribal), Isaac Marcus Jost, Leopold Zunz, Shalom Hakohen,Feivel Shiffer, his brother Wolf Tugendhold, Solomon Ettinger, MosesFrankfurt Mendelssohn, Alexander Zederbaum, and Samuel JosephFinn.50 The correspondence with Ribal shows especially close contactand mutual respect.

Does the Language Make the Maskil?

Surprisingly enough, none of the historians of Jewish assimilation inPoland denied the proximity of the above-characterized ideologiesand programs of the alleged Polish-Jewish assimilationists with theprinciples of Haskalah. It must be emphasized that the ideologicalfoundations of the Polish-Jewish modernization camp really wereidentifiable with mainstream ideological principles of the Haskalah.51

In addition, nobody denied close contacts between Polish assimila-tionists and East European maskilim. What made many historians ne-gate the similarities of these two camps were arguments of a ratherconfusing and ideological, and not always historical, nature.

For Shatzky, Mahler, and others, the crowning argument regardingthe affiliation of the Polish-Jewish modernizers with the assimilationcamp, and not the Haskalah, was their use of Polish. The linguistic ar-gument was of singular importance to Mahler; an analysis of the writ-ings of the bad assimilationists and the good maskilim led him toconclude that the ideological programs of both groups, even thoughendowed with diametrically opposite epithets, were in effect identical.However, this statement challenged Mahlers basic thesis of the exist-ence of two competing trends of Jewish modernization in Poland andforced him to search for a criterion that would ultimately prove theirdissimilarity. What is more, Mahler accurately established the identicalnature of the declared programs and noted that the maskilic camp asconceived by him was so weak that it backed off from putting into actionits own standard slogans and thereby left this activity to the assimila-tionists. Thus, it was not the maskilim but the assimilationists whocarried out the program of the Haskalah, and, therefore, denying themthe honorific title maskilim was all the more incomprehensible.52 ForShatzky, another prominent historian of Polish Jewry, the situation was


[102]

JewishSocial

Studies

simple, as the title of maskil was based purely on moral judgment.Tugendhold could not be a maskil, according to Shatzky, because hewas a careerist and cynical opportunist, who in his naivete created aninstitution and in addition was a great coward and taker of bribes, andEisenbaum was a two-faced collaborator with the tsarist secret police.53

Mahler made a bit more sophisticated argument by introducing onefinal criterion that permitted a clear classification and the distinctionbetween the assimilationists and the true maskilim: language.

From the epithets Mahlers attributed to assimilationists, it is clearthat the language criterion was only a sorry excuse for his value judg-ments. Still, the argument that love for and popularization of the He-brew language is one of the chief identifying characteristics of theHaskalah program is extremely significant, because historians of thismovement have traditionally treated literary works written predomi-nantly (although not exclusively) in Hebrew as maskilic literature. In ef-fect, the linguistic argument is a strong one because even a cursoryglance at the literary works of the progressive Polish Jews in the nine-teenth century shows that they were predominantly written in Polish,though a number of them appeared in Hebrew, Yiddish, German, andeven French. In fact, the very use of Polish has played a significant rolein the exclusion of these works from the research of modern historiansof the Jewish Enlightenment, even among those who have recognizedthe traps inherent in modern historiography with regard to nationalis-tic provenance and in some measure have contributed to its verifica-tion. In this vein, items of marginal importance to the Enlightenment inthe Kingdom of Poland in the first half of the nineteenth century have fig-ured prominently in research into the Haskalah (Moses Tannenbaum,Eleazar Tahlgrin, Feivel Schiffer) as have later Hebrew publicationsfrom the circle of Chaim Zelig Sonimski and Ha-tsefirah. Therefore, it ishardly surprising that, with the exclusion of such prolific and influentialwriters and activists as Tugendhold, Buchner, Hoge, and even Stern, aconviction arose among many historians regarding the weakness andshallowness of the Haskalah in Central Poland.

However, by making the language criterion an absolute measure,the historians of the Haskalah in Poland have fallen into a certain trap.The significance of Hebrew does not mean, after all, that Hebrew wasthe sole language of communication in the maskilic literary republicof writers. Israel Bartal emphasized the existence of bilingualism asan identifying characteristic of the East European maskilim.54 In ana-lyzing the attitudes of Polish-Jewish assimilationists toward the He-brew language, one must pay attention not only to the statisticaldominance of the Polish language but also to the place of Hebrew in


[103]


Marcin Wodziski

education programs advocated by Tugendhold and other assimila-tionists, and to their overall attitude toward that language.

First, despite the statistical dominance of Polish-language texts, theHebrew-language literary output of the authors mentioned above is, infact, relatively extensive and interesting. The joint appearance of Polishand numerous Hebrew texts in the legacy of these writers should be suf-ficient evidence of their proximity to the Haskalah. Buchner and Sternpublished the majority of their works in Hebrew, and only a limited num-ber in Polish and in German. Tugendhold, who specialized in transla-tions and compilations, regularly published both in Polish and inHebrew, and this applied not only to textbooks, prayer books, and cate-chisms but also to works with literary aspirationsfor instance, the bibli-cal poem of the maskilic poet Shalom Hakohen or Bhinat olam by themedieval poet and philosopher Jedaia ben Abraham Bedersi.55 Polishtranslations of classical Hebrew works featured prominently in the liter-ary output of other Warsaw maskilim, such as Stern. Hebrew verses, usu-ally of a circumstantial nature, were written by Tugendhold and Stern,but also by less prominent figures such as the scribes of provincial com-munities, Herman Sephirstein, Samual Berson, and Loewy S. Feilchen-feld.56 Some of the less important Polish maskilim contributed to theHebrew maskilic periodicals in Vienna;57 others, including Tugendhold,planned to establish such a Hebrew maskilic periodical in Warsaw.58

In addition, Stern, Tugendhold, Buchner, and their associates ex-pressed more than once their attachment to the Hebrew language.They emphasized its beauty and its significance to the religious iden-tity of adherents to Judaism (who had, after all, rejected a national Jew-ish identity), for the understanding of religious principles and thepersonal development of each adherent of Judaism. For example,Buchner stated that the importance of Hebrew lay in the fact that itwas in this language that God created the world, conveyed His proph-esies and commandments, and related the history of the Jewish peopleto the adherents of Judaism. Thus, a good knowledge of the languageis necessary for the maintenance of Jewish tradition and for intellec-tual development, as a good knowledge of the rules of the languageengenders rational thought in a person.59 Henryk Liebkind precededhis Polish translation of prayers with a defense of the beauty and signif-icance of the Hebrew language.60 Equally characteristic is the 110-pagereview of the Hebrew dictionary by Luigi Chiarini, which Stern andTugendhold wrote in a defense of the purity of the language and of itsfuture students, who might use the dictionary.61 Tugendhold also pub-lished a history of the Hebrew language and literature. In this, along-side some strange ideas concerning the similarities between the


[104]

JewishSocial

Studies

Semitic and Slavic languages, he extolled Hebrew as the mother of alllanguages and the depository of divine revelations, praising its beautyand divine wisdom:

There is no element that the Hebrew language lacks to render it the adorn-ment of eloquence. Naturally, it abounds in all manner of forms and ele-gant procedures of syntax, and it is when something does not belong to theearthly realm that this language is singularly rich in treasure, those partic-ular adornments of inspiration by which it outclasses all other tongues.62

This piece finishes by praising the maskilic revival of the Hebrew lan-guage and literature, and Tugendhold names Moses Mendelssohn,Moses Chaim Luzatto, Naftali Herz Wessely, Salomon Dubno,Salomon Maimon, and others among the restorationists.

Even more eloquent are the words in praise of the Hebrew lan-guage directed by Tugendhold to Feivel Schiffer:63

Would that all the Lords people would know their sacred tongue, wouldthat they should understand it perfectly, for the worth of every nation liesin its language and its writing. . . . Hebrew language is the heritage fromour forefathers to us. Into it, all the unique treasures of our sacred faithare absorbed; all the bonds of brotherly love are fastened by means of it;within it are stored the treasures of solace for our souls which are boweddown and our spirits which are sorrow laden; and by it our exalted hopeis engraved with the finger of God.

In summation, Hebrew maskilic writings were not a rarity amongthe authors under discussion (and many others), and the attitude to-ward the Hebrew language was overwhelmingly positive. If one were tolabel them on the basis of their Hebrew output only, it would go with-out saying they were full-fledged maskilim, perfectly in tune with otherfollowers of this ideology in Eastern Europe. This cannot be done,however, because the Hebrew writings constituted only a part of theirliterary activity; the Polish portion is also predominant. Does this ne-gate their membership in the elitist club of the maskilim, even thoughthe ideology expressed in these texts was purely maskilic?

Why in Polish?

In order to answer this question, we must look for the reasons that ledthem to write in Polish. Without such a context, very little can beunderstood.


[105]


Marcin Wodziski

The first factor we must take into account is that of the differencesbetween the Congress Kingdom and the territories of Galicia or theRussian Empire, which provide us with a model of the HebrewHaskalah. Having considered the different legal, social, and economicsystems, both from the perspective of the Polish Christian majority andfrom the perspective of the Jewish minority, we should find it difficultto expect that the Haskalah in Poland would assume a form similartoparticularly with regard to languagetheir counterparts in Gali-cia, the Ukraine, Belarus, or Lithuania. As Mark Baker has rightly ob-served, multiethnic states and cultures (such as those in Eastern andCentral Europe, like Austria and the western provinces of the RussianEmpire) tended to seek a universal language in order to create equalground in terms of cultural communication and to allow the develop-ment of cultural partnerships that would override particular ethnic di-visions. For the maskilim living in western Russia and Galicia, thatlanguage was, of course, Hebrewand, in part, German. However,wherever a mono-ethnic national culture predominated, moderniza-tion processes in Jewish society led to linguistic assimilation with thenative population. Examples of such linguistic assimilation in mono-ethnic states include eighteenth-century Germany, Holland, and Eng-land and the Kingdom of Poland in the nineteenth century.64

The second factor was the unique political and social situation in theDuchy of Warsaw and the Kingdom of Poland mentioned above. Con-trary to the negative opinions of a number of historians already cited,the Congress Kingdom was a relatively modern (on an East Europeanscale), efficiently ruled state, which gradually put an end to its eco-nomic backwardness. Until at least 1832that is, up until the period inwhich the Polish Haskalah developedit was a state led by well-knownliberals, or, rather, ex-liberals, former Polish Jacobins (members of aradical revolutionary group modeled on the French Jacobins), leadersof the patriotic progressive party from the period of the Four Year Sejm,prominent figures in the Enlightenment movement, and freemasons.Creating himself in this period as leader of a liberal Europe, Tsar Alex-ander I appointed to the position of viceroy a former Jacobin and Na-poleonic general, Jzef Zajczek. One of the leaders of the patrioticparty, a well-known mason and anti-cleric, Stanisaw Potocki, was ap-pointed minister of education, and various functions in the upper ech-elons of power were carried out by the radical Enlightenment writersand commentators Stanisaw Staszic and Julian Ursyn Niemcewicz. Theinfluence of freemasonry was extremely strong, particularly in relationto what was then a widespread belief that Aleksander I and his brother,Grand Duke Constantine (head of the Polish Army), supported free-


[106]

JewishSocial

Studies

masonry. Of the 16 ministers serving in the kingdom in the period181530, at least 10 were members of Masonic lodges. Numerous sena-tors and high state officials (for example, all the higher presidents ofvoivodeship commissions, or provincial representatives of government,between 1818 and 1821) also served in the lodges. For the entire pe-riod, the head of the Great Polish East was Potocki.65

These facts gave the Kingdom of Poland a modern, liberal profile.In truth, the very same Kingdom of Poland proved that these distin-guishing characteristics were actually a far cry from authentic moder-nity and liberalism. Viceroy Zajczek, the former Jacobin, proved to bea conservative and weak politician; the majority of the liberal politi-cians soon renounced their former views, and those few who remainedfaithful to them were forced to step down. It soon turned out that thiswas not a state that was particularly well disposed toward the Jewishpeople. The first signal of this was the withdrawal from the constitu-tion of the kingdom of civil rights granted Jews by the constitution ofthe Duchy of Warsaw (which were equally suspended). Historians haverightly pointed to the stability of the former class structure and the in-fluence of the conservative land-owning nobility as the forces that ledto the impediment of both the development of liberal ideas and the at-tempts to emancipate the Jewish people. Despite this, the traits of a lib-eral, anti-clerical, legally governed state with modernizing andsecularizing tendencies were definitely close to the ideals of themaskilim and raised the attractiveness of the state, particularly as eventhose acts most distressing to the Jews (such as the removal of theirright to sell alcohol) were not necessarily viewed by the maskilim as theactions of an enemy. Likewise, radical arguments and suggestions indebates on the Jewish question in Poland did not in any way frightenoff Jewish advocates of modernization. One must remember that eventhe very critical attitudes addressed to traditional Jewish society at thistime were consistent with the general principles of the Enlightenmenttradition,66 of which the maskilim considered themselves to be theheirs, and that the radical suggestions of Polish politicians and jour-nalists such as Wincenty Krasiski, Stanisaw Staszic, and Walerianukasiski (enforced productivization, radical changes in the educa-tion system, the overthrowing of the authority of the Kahal, limitationsto the destructive influence of the Talmud, the battle with separat-ism in dress and language, and so forth) were in step with the pro-grams of many Haskalah ideologists. Thus, with relatively fewexceptions, such as the well-known suggestion that the Jews be drivento the borders of Great Tartary, the criticisms leveled by Polish writ-ers and commentators against traditional Jewish society were not nec-


[107]


Marcin Wodziski

essarily taken by the maskilim to be unambiguously hostile. This isclearly borne out by Jewish statements made in the dispute of 181820(of which more will be said below), which emphasized the good inten-tions of most of the Polish polemists coming forward, even those withhighly restrictive proposals. That Jewish support for such radical planswas by no means of a transitory nature is borne out by the fact that,even 70 years after the debate, the well-known integrationist HilaryNussbaum defined the projects of these Polish writers and politiciansas redolent of civilizing tendencies and civic aspirations.67

The fact that the young Kingdom of Poland included in its structurea relatively broad cross-section of educated Jews and that integrationalso followed on other levels must have been a significant factor in thelinguistic assimilation of the Polish maskilim. The Masonic lodgesbroke down religious barriers by accepting a certain number of adher-ents of the Mosaic faith; Jews participated more frequently in literary sa-lons, and their participation in professional corporations and the localstock exchange increased.68 Well-known activists and patrons of theHaskalah, including Samuel Mchheimer, Natan Glcksberg, Jakuband Jzef Epstein, and Eisenbaum,69 were freemasons. Actually, all theabove-mentioned maskilim were officials in various government institu-tions, particularly in their Jewish sections. Tugendhold worked in theElementary Schools Inspectorate, the Censorship Committee for He-brew Books, the Rabbinical School, and many other state commissions.He also managed the inter-denominational cholera hospital, sat on theCitizens Committee of the municipal council, and was involved in nu-merous charitable organizations. Buchner was a teacher of Hebrew andthe Bible at the Rabbinical School and consultant for the educationalauthorities. Paprocki and Eisenbaum taught at the same school, the lat-ter also being a translator for the state secret police. Hoge was a consult-ant for the Commission for Religious Denominations and PublicEnlightenment (the Ministry of Education) and, after his baptism, be-came secretary of the Jewish Committee. The Warsaw maskil JanGlcksberg became secretary of the Advisory Chamber of the JewishCommittee and the state attorney for Jewish divorce proceedings in theSupreme Court. His brother, Natan Glcksberg, was an official typogra-pher at the Royal University of Warsaw and the publisher of many gov-ernment publications. Stern, who worked in the Elementary SchoolsInspectorate, the Censorship Committee for Hebrew Books, and theAdvisory Chamber of the Jewish Committee but who resigned from hisposition as director of the Rabbinical School, was particularly active ingovernment circles. In addition, a number of lesser-known maskilim,such as the city doctor in Warsaw, Beniamin Rosenblum, the voivode-


[108]

JewishSocial

Studies

ship surgeon in Kalisz, M. Schnfeld, and the correspondent to the Ad-visory Chamber of the Jewish Committee in Posk, Joseph Frenkel,were associated with various government offices. Naturally, the partici-pation of educated East European Jews in state administration, or,more precisely, in those branches responsible for the civilizing of theJewish people, was nothing exceptional. The same occurred in Galiciaand also, albeit somewhat later, in Russia. However, the Austrian au-thorities withdrew very early from an alliance with the Galicianmaskilim, and friendly relations between the Russian government andrepresentatives of the Russian Haskalah came about only in the 1840s.What is interesting is that the result of this alliance was the birth in the1860s of a Russian-Jewish intelligentsia with a very similar profile to thatof the maskilic circles in Poland some half-century earlier. One of thesimilarities lay in their attitude toward language.70

This same association of the most active representatives of themaskilic camp with state institutions would have certainly inducedthem to use the language of the state and to participate in that coun-trys public life. However, in the case of the Kingdom of Poland, suchpressure was still more intense in that the Duchy of Warsaw and theCongress Kingdom were states far more protective of their Polish na-tional character than might have been expected, given the extent oftheir independence (ironically referred to at the time as semi-independence). This distanced the Kingdom of Poland still furtherfrom Russia and Austria, which for obvious reasons rejected the idea ofnational statehood and built the state within the confines of monarchi-cal ideas. Polish education and national symbols, and the official use ofthe Polish language, were promoted by the new government becausethey were acutely aware of the threat to the nations existence, whichwas a consequence of the trauma of the partitions. Such programswere extremely compatible with the integrationist ideals of theHaskalah and encouraged their participation in Polish public lifealthough, of course, for Polish functionaries it was not the Jewishpeople who were the most important object of their politics.

With regard to the dynamic Enlightenment traditions in the admin-istration of the Kingdom of Poland, this state was later than other Cen-tral and East European states to experience the conservative reaction sotypical of the period following the Vienna Congress. As opposed to Rus-sia, and particularly Galicia, the Polish official apparatus from the firstyears of the kingdoms existence sought allies above all in the upper,educated echelons of Jewish society and perceived the maskilim, or atleast enlightened Jews, as their potential allies. In Galicia, support forthe maskilim in their struggle with Hasidism was withdrawn as early as


[109]


Marcin Wodziski

1806; the same occurred only in the 1840s in the Kingdom of Poland.Equally, on a local level, officials resorted to using the advice and ser-vices of the provincial Jewish intelligentsia, particularly in matters con-cerning the civilizing of the Jewish people and thus matters of centralsignificance to the Haskalah. A rather intriguing Jewish consultant isDr. M. Schnfeld, adviser to the voivodeship commission in Kalisz inthe 1810s and 1820s. He was a member of the Mineral Society in Jena,Germany, a contributor to the German-Jewish publication Sulamith, theauthor of educational projects and surgeon for the Kalisz voivodeship.He was approached by the voivodeship committee for his opinions onprivate Jewish prayer houses, school reforms, the scope of rabbinicalauthority, and the nature of Hasidism.71 Similar functions (those of anunofficial learned Jew) were performed on other occasions by War-saw maskilim. Similar conclusions concerning the relatively close linksbetween the learned Jews and the official apparatus can be drawnfrom subscription lists of Polish-language works of the maskilim, partic-ularly those of the very well connected Tugendhold. Of 480 subscribersto the bilingual Polish-Hebrew edition of a poem by Shalom Hakohen,only 170 were Jews (they were mainly members of the Warsaw bourgeoi-sie in addition to a number of well-known maskilim such as Adolf Bern-hard, Pinchas Lipszyc of Opoczno, Mathias Rosen, and Stern), whereas282 surnames were those of high governmental officials. Several Catho-lic bishops appear on the list as well as representatives of the Polish ar-istocracy, the well-known writer of childrens literature, StanisawJachowicz, the outstanding scholar and lexicographer Samuel BogumiLinde, and others. Similar ratios and namesamong them ViceroyZajczek, Senator Novosiltzoff, and the eminent writer Julian UrsynNiemcewiczare to be found on subscription lists for the translation ofHerz Hombergs Ben Jakir (106 officials out of 169 subscribers), thetranslation of Moses Mendelssohns Fedon (153 officials out of 382 sub-scribers), and Bhinat olam by Bedersi (69 officials out of 184 subscrib-ers).72 This would appear to be evidence not only of the close personallinks Tugendhold had with high state officials and their predispositionto the charitable works, which such subscriptions were supposed to sup-port, but also of a more general atmosphere of goodwill toward the Jew-ish civilizing endeavors that gave rise to such initiatives.

These factors must have brought the Polish maskilim closer to thestate, but above all to the Polish language. However, the ultimate incen-tive that played a prominent role in such a high proportion of Polish-language literary output in maskilic works during the CongressKingdom was certainly the phenomenon of public and, above all, politi-cal life, which forced maskilic writers to resort to polemic and apolo-


[110]

JewishSocial

Studies

getic forms of journalism. As is widely known, the Haskalah took fromearlier Jewish literary activity the principle that writings for internal Jew-ish use were to be published either in Hebrew or Yiddish, whereas apol-ogetic and polemic writings, whose potential readership was primarilyChristian, were to be in a world languagethat is, one comprehensibleto the surrounding society.73 Finn, the well-known maskil from Vilna,praised Tugendhold for saving the glory of Israel, precisely becausehe defended the Jews in the language of the surrounding society.74

Hence, whereas the overwhelming majority of publications by the Pol-ish maskilim were didactic, apologetic, or polemic works, or simply po-litical brochures, it would be difficult to justify why such texts would bein a language incomprehensible to the polemicists. The publication ofPolish-language publications connected with successive stages of thedebate on the Jewish question, with antisemitic statements and withgovernment educational campaigns, provides a model illustrating theconnection between the language of publication and the nature of itssocial function. Thus, we can see that the first wave of publications ap-peared in 1818, during the interval in the sitting of the First Sejm of theKingdom of Poland, when Jewish reforms were to be debated. An ani-mated debate on the social position of Jews in the Kingdom of Polandhad waged since 1815 and now gathered even greater momentum, anda series of brochures devoted to the matter appeared. Two works by Pol-ish maskilim appeared at this time: Tugendholds Jerobaa, and PinkusElias Lipszycs Proba czyli usprawiedliwienie si ludu wyznania Starego Tes-tamentu (Petition or Self-Justification of the People of the Old Testa-ment Faith). They were direct reactions to criticisms of Jewish societyleveled by writers and commentators taking part in the discussion and,in particular, to the virulently anti-Jewish ideas put forward by an anon-ymous author (Gerard M. Witowski), who advocated sending the Jewishpeople to the Tatarstan steppe. Replies to these and other accusationsby Polish antisemites were in the same language in which the originalaccusations had been made, Polish.75 The Jewish declarations were metwith an animated reaction and were commented on in almost all thepublications covering the great debate, which lasted until 1820.76

The following Polish-language publications by the maskilim in theKingdom of Poland appeared in the first half of the 1820s and werecommissioned by government agents. They were predominantly text-books and catechisms of the Mosaic religion that were printed eithersimultaneously in Polish and Hebrew (less frequently in Yiddish) orcompletely in Polish. Examples included Tugendholds Siedm modlitwna siedm dni w tygodniu z hebrajskiego (Seven Prayers) (Warsaw, 1823),his translation of Hombergs Ben Jakir (Warsaw, 1824), Hoges Nauka


[111]


Marcin Wodziski

religii dla modziey Izraelitw (Religious Studies for Israelite Youth)(Warsaw, 1822), and Modlitwy Izraelitw (Prayers of the Israelites)(Warsaw, 1822) as well as a dictionary and history textbook by NatanRosenfeld.77 The appearance of these and similar texts was, of course,directly linked to the activities of the Polish educational authoritiesand their plans for the education of the Jewish population, particularlywith the establishing of government elementary schools for childrenof the Mosaic faith in Warsaw in 1820. An important aspect of thesegovernment plans was also the sponsorship of the Polish-Jewish weeklyDostrzegacz Nadwilaski (Beobachter an der Weichsel), published byEisenbaum simultaneously in Polish and in Germanized Yiddish, andthe establishment of the Warsaw Rabbinical School.

A series of polemic and apologetic works from the end of the 1820swas also a reaction to the activities and publications of Luigi Chiarini.The best known opinions in this argument appeared in the above-mentioned review of Chiarinis dictionary published by Stern andTugendhold, in the press articles of these and other authors, and inthe translation of Vindiciae Judaeorum by Manasse ben Israel, which wasaccompanied by an extensive introduction by Tugendhold himself.The introduction addressed the accusation of Jewish use of Christianblood in religious ceremonies, and it was a direct reaction to Chiarinispublication, which had resurrected that accusation.78

Texts from the time of the November Uprising of 183031 weremainly voices in the renewed debate about reform of the Jewish popu-lation and the Jews patriotic obligations toward the Polish state; theyincluded Dumania Izraelity na warcie w pierwszych dniach grudnia 1830(Reflections of an Israelite Standing Guard) by the indefatigableTugendhold and another polemic publication attributed to Jan Glcks-berg as well as a whole series of articles printed in the insurgent press.79

The collapse of the Uprising in 1831 paralyzed Polish-Jewish publiclife for many years and the journalism associated with it. The next waveof publications by the Polish maskilim appeared only at the beginningof the 1840s, but even then it did not recapture the dynamics of thepre-Uprising era. The next period of great momentum came duringthe great Polish-Jewish fraternity from 1861 to 1863, but that lies out-side the framework of this article.

Conclusion

Inevitably, the history of the Haskalah in the Kingdom of Poland is notthe only research theme to have fallen prey to nationalistic ideology


[112]

JewishSocial

Studies

and the historiography that has been influenced by it. However, thisdoes not in any way facilitate the development of a new historiographyunencumbered by ideological considerations, particularly as the his-tory of the Haskalah is in itself a difficult subject and one susceptible tovarious interpretations. Above all, its overwhelmingly Polish nature andPolish-language character create a genuine problem in terms of inter-pretation and in terms of the practical linguistic difficulties involved inintegrating such writings into studies of the Haskalah in EasternEurope.

In addition, having rejected the ideologically motivated former di-visions into good maskilim and bad assimilationists, we are facedwith the necessity of comprehensively defining the place and role ofan entire range of influential figures of the Jewish emancipation in theKingdom of Poland. Questioning the former categories of divisiondoes not mean that we automatically have to class all nineteenth-century progressives as maskilim. The reality of the situation was def-initely more complex, because in this group were disseminators ofmaskilic ideals as well as representatives of other options in the mod-ernization process, including assimilationists. All of this requires thatnew studies be undertaken. However, having concluding that, despitelocal differences, the opinions of the most important Polish-JewishprogressivesTugendhold, Stern, Hoge, and Buchner (Eisenbaumis an important exception here)reflected an unequivocally maskilicoutlook, it seems necessary to reconsider their position within the gen-eral framework of the Jewish version of modernization.

Statements as to the political, legal, social, cultural, and even eco-nomic context differing from that of Russia and Galicia, and particu-larly that of Prussia, is evidence that the Haskalah in Poland cannot bedescribed by using the same comparative measures applied to theHaskalah in Brody, Vilna, Odessa, or Berlin. The mono-ethnic na-tional culture, the significant degree of the Polish states indepen-dence, the dynamic educational traditions, and the high level ofparticipation of educated representatives of the Jewish community instate institutions distinguished Poland from the other centers of East-ern Europe. Poland differed from the countries of so-called CentralEurope (for which Prussia was always a model) as a result of her de-layed economic development, the legal status of the Jewish popula-tion, and, more significantly, the existence of a dense concentration oftraditional Jews who fought the emancipation process. This must havemeant that the Jewish Enlightenment movement in the Kingdom ofPoland assumed its own characteristics and proves that there were nu-merous dissimilarities and distinguishing characteristics. So were they


[113]


Marcin Wodziski

maskilim, or not? If we limit the definition of Haskalah to those fullycommitted to spreading Hebraism, Polish assimilationists must becertainly excluded. The advantage of such a definition is that it is verysharp and precise. Furthermore, emphasizing differences between re-gional forms of Jewish Enlightenment is perfectly in tune with the ten-dency of regionalization in historical studies. And, after all, if the titleof maskil is not an honorary one any more, why should we insist on ap-plying it to anybody? However useful and reasonable, this approachdoes not seem to be very profitable for understanding East EuropeanJewish modernization because it negates the striking ideological prox-imity of Polish progressives with other maskilim in Eastern Europe.Moreover, it negates both the self-identity of Tugendhold, Stern, orBuchner, who persistently defined themselves as maskilim, and the ex-plicit and implicit definitions of other East European maskilim whorecognized them as members of the same group. Is the dubious ques-tion of Hebrew versus general non-Jewish language strong enough tojustify the separation of Polish-Jewish modernizers from German, Gali-cia, Russian, Romanian, Czech, or Hungarian maskilim? Are the ideo-logical differences between, say, the German and the HungarianHaskalah greater than those between the Polish and the Russian one?

The other possible approach is to expand the definition of Haskalahbeyond the borders accepted in the current historiographical litera-ture. The main disadvantage of such an approach is that it goes againstwell-established historiographical tradition, going back to the late-nineteenth-century Russian maskilim and Dubnowian school of EastEuropean Jewish historiography. Moreover, this new definition is farless precise, disposed to far-reaching contextualization, and radicallyredefines Haskalah (or perhaps the East European Haskalot, in the plu-ral form of the word). However, if we recognize that the ideological pro-file of Polish and other East European maskilim were very close andthat they participated in the same social group called the maskilic re-public of writers, then there is no good reason to refuse them the samename, be it Haskalah, Haskalot, or anything else. Recognition of theirbelonging to the same ideological and social formation seems to be im-portant for a proper understanding of the history of that movement inPoland and, more generally, for the history of the Jewish Enlighten-ment in Central and Eastern Europe. Polish-Jewish modernizers viewedthemselves as representatives of the Haskalah and traced their ideolog-ical lineage back to the circles of Moses Mendelssohn. This awarenessfound expression on several occasions in facts and activities that wouldbe incomprehensible if taken out of a maskilic context. This also ap-plies to almost the entire, relatively extensive Polish-Jewish literary out-


[114]

JewishSocial

Studies

put from the first half of the nineteenth century. However, if we acceptthe proximity of the Polish and Russian or Galician case, the Polish ex-ample might help us reassess many of the ideas about the Jewish En-lightenment in Russia and Galicia that have been taken on faith. Anexample is the place of the Hebrew language in maskilic literary out-put, which, as it happens, was far more dependent on the generalcultural-linguistic conditions of the surrounding Jewish society thantraditional historiography has admitted. The languages of theHaskalah in Poland are the most telling proof of this. Similarly, the Pol-ish example may cast new light on the connections of the RussianHaskalah with the state authorities or the development of the Russian-Jewish intelligentsia in the 1860s.

A reinterpretation of Jewish modernizers from the first half of thenineteenth century might also shed new light on the moderate inte-grationist current from the second half of that century. The fact thatthey were the direct descendants of the so-called assimilationistsfrom the first half of the centurythus, in effect, the direct perpetua-tors of maskilic ideologydemands a new examination of the mean-ing of the leading ideas of this group. The major role of educationprograms and of religious solidarity, the meaning of religious disputesand the zealous attitude toward tradition, the battle with shallow formsof progress (which is a literal equivalent of the Haskalahs strugglewith the pseudo-maskilim), and the ties with the Hebrew language ortheir specific type of elitism are factors that are comprehensible solelywhen we look at this group as one straddling maskilic ideals and thepost-maskilic world.

Translated by Sarah Cozens

Notes

I would like to thank Professor Moshe Rosman, Scott Ury, and two anonymous readers for their thought-provoking comments on the earlier drafts of this ar-ticle. Thanks to Sarah Cozens for her language assistance.

1 In this work, the term Poland has been reserved for the politi-cal entities of the Duchy of War-saw and the Kingdom of Poland, which reflects both objective political divisions and an estab-lished tradition in the self-

definitions of the period, com-mon for both Poles and Polish Jews. For a broader treatment of the meanings of the terms Poland and Polish Jews in the period of the partitions (17951918) and their implica-


[115]


Marcin Wodziski

tions, see Scott Ury, Who, What, When, Where, and Why Is Polish Jewry? Envisioning, Con-structing, and Possessing Polish Jewry, Jewish Social Studies n.s. 6, no. 3 (2000): 20528.

2 See, e.g., Jacob Katz, ed., Toward Modernity: The European Jewish Model (New Brunswick, N.J., 1987); Immanuel Etkes, ed., Ha-dat veha-hayim: Tnuat ha-haskalah ha-yehudit be-mizrah eropah (Jerus-alem, 1993), esp. the introduc-tion by Etkes (924) and the bibliographical essay by Shmuel Feiner (45675); Shmuel Feiner, Haskalah and History: The Emergence of a Modern Jewish His-torical Consciousness (Oxford, 2002); Shmuel Werses: Mehka-rim hadashim ve-gam yeshanim be-sifrut ha-haskalah u-tkufatah (19902000), in his Ha-kitsa ami: Sifrut ha-haskala be-idan ha-modernizatsyah (Jerusalem, 2001), 43372; and Shmuel Feiner and David Sorkin, eds., New Perspectives on the Haskalah (London, 2001). Two recently published texts on the Jewish Enlightenment in Central Po-land and Krakw provide a com-mendable exception to this; see Mordecai Zalkin, Ha-haskalah ha-yehudit be-krakov ba-meah ha-tsha-esreh, in Kraka, kazimi-erz, krakov. Mehkarim be-toldot yehudei krakov, Elchanan Reiner, ed. (Tel Aviv, 2001), 13153, and Mordecai Zalkin, Ha-haskalah ha-yehudit be-polin: Kavim le-diyun, in Kiyum va-shever: Yehudei polin le-dorotehem, vol. 2, Israel Baral and Israel Gutman, eds. (Jerusalem, 2001), 391413.

3 Ignacy Schiper, ydzi Krlestwa Polskiego w dobie powstania listopa-dowego (Warsaw, 1932), 3345; Jacob Shatzky, Yidn un der poylisher oyfshtand fun 1831, Historishe shriftn fun YIVO 2 (1937): 36264; Raphael Mahler, Hasidism and the Jewish Enlightenment: Their Confronta-tion in Galicia and Poland in the First Half of the Nineteenth Century (Philadelphia, 1985), 20312. See also Raphael Mahler, Divrei yemei yisrael. Dorot aharonim, 6 vols. (Merhavia, 195276), 6: 9293, and Raphael Mahler, A History of Modern Jewry, 17801815 (New York, 1971), 36368. I will discuss their writings in more detail later in this article.

4 On the forerunners of the Haskalah in Eastern Europe and those from Central Poland, see Immanuel Etkes, Li-shelat mevasrei ha-haskalah be-mizrah eropah, in Etkes, ed., Ha-dat veha-hayim, 2544.

5 In this article I will discuss only the period up to the 1860s. For a comprehensive discussion of the changes in the 1860s (both emerging integrationist move-ment and later generations of Haskalah), see my book, Owiece-nie ydowskie w Krlestwie Polskim wobec chasydyzmu (Warsaw, 2003), chap. 5.

6 See, e.g., Etkes, ed., Ha-dat veha-hayim, 11, and Feiner, Haskalah and History, 20, 317. Such a pre-sumption is implicit in most of the works mentioned in note 2.

7 See Jonathan Frankel, Assimila-tion and the Jews in Nineteenth-Century Europe: Towards a New Historiography? in Assimilation


[116]

JewishSocial

Studies

and Community: The Jews in Nineteenth-Century Europe, Jonathan Frankel and Steven J. Zipperstein, eds. (Cambridge, Engl., 1992), 137.

8 One example is the cursory treat-ment of these themes in the otherwise excellent study by Michael Stanislawski, Tsar Nicho-las I and the Jews: The Transforma-tion of Jewish Society in Russia, 18251855 (Philadelphia, 1983).

9 See, e.g., Eli Lederhendler, The Road to Modern Jewish Politics: Po-litical Tradition and Political Re-construction in the Jewish Community of Tsarist Russia (New York, 1989), 59, 102, 118.

10 See, e.g., John D. Klier, Russia Gathers Her Jews: The Origins of the Jewish Question in Russia, 17721825 (De Kalb, Ill., 1985), 17081, and John D. Klier, Imperial Russias Jewish Question, 18551881 (Cambridge, Engl., 1995), 14558.

11 See David Patterson, The Hebrew Novel in Czarist Russia: A Portrait of Jewish Life in the Nineteenth Cen-tury, 2nd ed. (Lanham, Md., 1999), and, more recently, Mor-dechai Zalkin, Ba-alot ha-shahar: Ha-haskalah ha-yehudit ba-imperiah ha-rusit ba-meah ha-tshah esreh (Jerusalem, 2000), and Feiner, Haskalah and History.

12 See, e.g., Alina Caa, Asymilacja ydw w Krlestwie Polskim (18641897). PostawyKonfliktyStereotypy (Warsaw, 1989), esp. 4986. Despite the title, Caa deals with a broad spectrum of ideological positions from the moderate Haskalah to radical as-similation.

13 For a brief introduction to this

subject, see Stefan Kieniewicz, Historia Polski, 17951918 (War-saw, 1976), and Stefan Kien-iewicz, ed., Polska XIX wieku: Pastwo, spoeczestwo, kultura (Warsaw, 1982). For a good ex-ample of the modern state of re-search and attitudes, see Andrzej Chwalba, Historia Polski, 17951918 (Krakw, 2000), 25787, 31984.

14 A complete collection of reports on the Novosiltzoff project can be found in Archiwum Gwne Akt Dawnych (henceforth: AGAD), I Rada Stanu Krlestwa Polskiego 283. For a critical analysis of this project and the Polish politics involved, see Artur Eisenbach, Emancypacja ydw na ziemiach polskich 17851870 na tle europejskim (Warsaw, 1989), 17996. On attempts to unify Polish and Russian laws covering Jews in the 1840s, see ibid., 31622.

15 For a comprehensive account of the influence of conscription on the Jews in Russia, see Stanislaw-ski, Tsar Nicholas, 1334, and Olga Litwak, The Literary Response to Conscription: Individuality and Authority in the Russian-Jewish Enlightenment (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1999).

16 There are some examples in Is-rael Bartal, The Heavenly City of Germany and Absolutism la mode dAutriche: The Rise of the Haskalah in Galicia, in Katz, ed., Toward Modernity, 33, and Feiner, Haskalah and His-tory, 158, 22728.

17 For other prominent writings of this type, see Simon Dubnow, His-tory of the Jews in Russia and Poland,


[117]


Marcin Wodziski

vol. 1 (Philadelphia, 1916), 38489, and S. Hirszhorn, Historia ydw w Polsce od Sejmu Czterolet-niego do Wojny Europejskiej (17881914) (Warsaw, 1921). On the parallels in ignoring Polish Jews in the historiography of the Haskalah and Poland in the his-toriography of general Enlight-enment, see Nancy Sinkoff, Benjamin Franklin in Jewish Eastern Europe: Cultural Appro-priation in the Age of the Enlight-enment, Journal of the History of Ideas 61, no. 1 (2000): 135.

18 Mahler, Hasidism, 20312. See also Mahler, Divrei yemei yisrael, 6: 9293, and Mahler, History of Modern Jewry, 36368.

19 Mahler, Hasidism, 204.20 For innovative criticism of

Mahler, see Zalkin, Ha-haskalah ha-yehudit be-polin, 391413; Nancy Sinkoff, Strat-egy and Ruse in the Haskalah of Mendel Lefin of Satanow, in Feiner and Sorkin, eds., Perspec-tives on the Haskalah, 8788; and Glenn Dynner, Men of Silk: The Hasidic Conquest of Polish Jewry, 17541830 (Ph.D. diss., Brandeis University, 2002).

21 Jakub Tugendhold, Mody, krt-kie rozpamitywania religijno-moralne dla modziey szkolnej wyznania mojeszowego (Warsaw, 1837), 6.

22 Jakub Tugendhold, Sowo w swoim czasie czyli Rzecz na uczczenie dnia, w ktrym zaoony zosta ka-mie wgielny nowej budowli rozprz-estrzeniajcej Dom Przytuku Sierot i Ubogich Wyznania Mojeszowego w Warszawie (Warsaw, 1847), 11.

23 See, e.g., Abraham Buchner, Katechizm religijno-moralny dla

IzraelitwYesode ha-dat u-musar haskel (Warsaw, 1836), 121. On educational programs of the Pol-ish maskilim, see Jacob Shatzky, Yidishe bildungs-politik in poyln fun 1806 biz 1866 (New York, 1943); Zofia Borzymiska, Szkolnictwo ydowskie w Warszawie 18311870 (Warsaw, 1994), 5457; and Sab-ina Lewin, Batei ha-sefer ha-elementariyim ha-rishonim li-yladim bnei dat moshe be-varshah 18181830, Gal-Ed 1 (1973): 63100.

24 The religious significance of sec-ular education was highlighted in the Berlin Haskalah; see Isaac Eisenstein-Barzilay, The Ideol-ogy of the Berlin Haskalah, Pro-ceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research 25 (1956): 4.

25 Moses did not want to make Israelites merchants, but he wanted to turn them into peas-ants (Abraham Buchner, Prawdziwy Judaizm czyli zbir religijno-moralnych zasad Izrael-itw, czerpany z klasycznych dzie rabinw [Warsaw, 1846], xxiii). See also Buchner, Katechizm, 11920; Tugendhold, Mody, 6777; and Jakub Tugendhold, Ska-zwki prawdy i zgody pod wzgldem rnicy wyzna, ze staroytnych dzie hebrajskich, powag religijn majcychKoszet imre emet . . . (Warsaw, 1844), 7694.

26 Antoni Eisenbaum, Roz-maitoci, Dostrzegacz Nadwilaski 2, nos. 3132 (1824): 24548, 25456.

27 Jan Glcksberg, Rzut oka na stan Izraelitw w Polsce, czyli Wykrycie bdnego z nimi postpowania, na aktach rzdowych oparte (Warsaw, 1831).


[118]

JewishSocial

Studies

28 AGAD, Centralne Wadze Wyznaniowe 1416, pp. 3743.

29 Tugendhold, Mody, 7677.30 Jakub Tugendhold, Odpow-

ied na artyku w Nrze 174 Kuri-era Warszawskiego z dnia 25 Lipca, Gazeta Warszawska 131 (1821): 188788.

31 Tugendhold, Skazwki.32 Abraham Buchner, Doresh tov:

Kolel musar haskel ha-meyusad al divrei ha-torah u-maamrei hazal le-horot et bahurei yisrael (Warsaw, 1822), 12ab.

33 Ibid., 3a, 24b25a; Buchner, Katechizm, 13, 32, 8081, 92; Buchner, Prawdziwy Judaizm, ixx; Abraham Buchner, Kwiaty wschodnie: Zbir zasad moralnych, teologicznych, przysw, regu to-warzyskich, allegoryi i powieci, wyjte z Talmudu i pism wczesnych (Warsaw, 1842), xxxxi.

34 On the limits of this law, see Lederhendler, The Road to Mod-ern Jewish Politics, 6168.

35 Tugendhold, Sowo, 1.36 Abraham Grossglck, O powadze

majestatu: Sefer godel yikrat ha-malkhut (Warsaw, 1856), 3.

37 Ibid., 35.38 On the political ideology of the

Haskalah, see David Biale, Power and Powerlessness in Jewish History (New York, 1986), 1039, and David Sorkin, The Transformation of German Jewry, 17801840 (New York, 1987), 6378. On the royal alliance, see Yosef H. Yerushalmi, The Lisbon Massacre of 1506 and the Royal Image in the Shebet Yehuda (Cincinnati, Ohio, 1976), 3566. For more on maskilic loyalty, see Mahler, Ha-sidism, 5358.

39 Steven M. Lowenstein, The Berlin

Jewish Community: Enlightenment, Family, and Crisis, 17701830 (New York, 1994), 95103; Shmuel Feiner, The Pseudo-Enlightenment and the Ques-tion of Jewish Modernization, Jewish Social Studies n.s. 3, no. 1 (1996): 6288.

40 [Herz Homberg,] Ben Jakir czyli Syn ulubiony: O prawdach re-ligijnych i nauce obyczajw dla modziey Izraelskiej przez zapytania i odpowiedzi, trans. Jakub Tugendhold (Warsaw, 1824), introduction.

41 See, e.g., AGAD, Centralne Wadze Wyznaniowe 1408, pp. 823; 1409, pp. 24244, 26264; 1411, pp. 35861; 1420, pp. 10413; 1448, pp. 39699; 1675, pp. 214.

42 Dawid Kandel, Abraham Stern a Szkoa Rabinw w Warszawie, Kwartalnik powicony badaniu przeszoci ydw w Polsce 1, no. 1 (1912): 12025; Aron Rawicki, Szkoa Rabinw w Warszawie (18261862) (na podstawie rde archiwalnych), Miesicz-nik ydowski (1933): 45, 1930.

43 See Abraham Buchner, Ha-moreh li-tsedakah: Kolel pirkei sefer ha-moreh ha-mlamdim tuv taam al ha-mitsvot (Warsaw, 1838).

44 See Moses Mendelssohn, Fedon: O niemiertelnoci duszy z Platona w trzech rozmowach, trans. Jakub Tugendhold (Warsaw, 1829), Mendelssohns biography, and Jakub Tugendhold, Obrona Izra-elitw, czyli odpowied dana przez Rabbi Manasse ben Izrael uczonemu i dostojnemu Anglikowi na kilka jego zapyta wzgldem niektrych zarzutw Izraelitom czynionych (Warsaw, 1831), introduction.


[119]


Marcin Wodziski

45 See Shalom Hakohen, Kore ha-d

wodzinski good maskilim and bad assimilationists, or toward a new historiography of the haskalah in...

Documents