The Maccabaean

WHEN we follow up the literary and national activity of M. L. Lilienblum, we find ourselves traversing two well-defined periods in Jewish history, or rather in the history of Russian Jewry, namely: The so-called Haskalah period, in its later growth, which extended over the third quarter of last century, and that of the national revival, which began with the eighties. The first period was one of negation. It was a time when French nationalism of the 18th century, filtered through sources of the German-Illuminati, began to be welded together in Russian Jewry with Russian Nihilistic influences. This was in a marked degree different from the earlier part of the Haskalah period, where Russian influence was hardly perceptible in Jewish life and literature. Then Haskalah (enlightenment) meant for the Russian Jew the mere struggling out of Ghetto, the belief that enlightenment was the sole conciliation between Jew and non-Jew.

Now, in the later part of the period, the Maskilim believed that it was Jewish customs, the religious beliefs or misbe- licefs which stood as a barrier between the Jew and his neighbor, the Jew and his happiness. Hence the onslaught of the Maskilim on religious superstitions and beliefs, on Jewish customs. And as no sharp line was yet drawn between Jewish religion and Jewish nationality, and as there was no redeeming, positive national ideal to check the onward march of those tendencies, the result was a leaning towards assimilation both in Russo-Jewish and in Hebrew literature, in the former

conscious and direct, in the latter unconscious and indirect.

It was only the Maskilim, the intellectuals, however, who were carried away by these tendencies. The bulk of the people, the masses, were not touched by them; they remained loyal to ancestral tradition. The tendencies and the strivings of the Maskilim were of too negative a nature to be attractive to the masses. And though these tendencies did a good turn to Judaism by curbing 'superstition and' making a breach in the Ghetto wall to admit fresh air, yet they did not toych the heart of Jewish misery, as they pretended to do. The Maskilim, therefore, aid not get a large following from among the people.

Asa consequence, Jewish society was differentiated at that time into two distinct groups. On the one hand, there were the Maskilim, who formed the Jewish aristocracy, ‘distinguished from the Jewish masses both in appearance and in psychology, vain, superficial, rationalistie in ideas and loose in morals, idealistic and with missionary zeal in {heir youthful days but cynical, selfish, indifferent to Jewish affairs—an indifference which degenerated at times into actual Jew-hatred— when youthful idealism had exploded. On the other hand, there was the bulk of Jewish people, clinging to the ancient traditions, fanatic, superstitious, opposed to any innovation, looking at the Maskilim with suspicion and persecuting them wherever possible. .

In an atmosphere such as this, Lilien-