MISING ATTITUDE OF RABBINISM

The Russian Government had left nothing undone to shatter the old Jewish
mode of life. Despotic Tzardom, whose ignorance of Jewish life was only
equalled by its hostility to it, lifted its hand to strike not merely at
the obsolete forms but also at the sound historic foundations of
Judaism. The system of conscription which annually wrenched thousands of
youths and lads from the bosom of their families, the barracks which
served as mission houses, the method of stimulating and even forcing the
conversion of recruits, the establishment of Crown schools for the same
covert purpose, the abolition of communal autonomy, civil
disfranchisement, persecution and oppression, all were set in motion
against the citadel of Judaism. And the ancient citadel, which had held
out for thousands of years, stood firm again, while the defenders within
her walls, in their endeavor to ward off the enemies' blows, had not
only succeeded in covering up the breaches, but also in barring the
entrance of fresh air from without. If it be true that, in pursuing its
system of tutelage and oppression, the Russian Government was genuinely
actuated by the desire to graft the modicum of European culture, to
which the Russia of Nicholas I. could lay claim, upon the Jews, it
certainly achieved the reverse of what it aimed at. The hand which dealt
out blows could not disseminate enlightenment; the hammer which was
lifted to shatter Jewish separatism had only the effect of hardening it.
The persecuted Jews clutched eagerly at their old mode of life, the
target of their enemies' attacks; they clung not only to its permanent
foundations but also to its obsolete superstructure. The despotism of
extermination from without was counterbalanced by a despotism of
conservation from within, by that rigid discipline of conduct to which
the masses submitted without a murmur, though its yoke must have weighed
heavily upon the few, the stray harbingers of a new order of things.

The Government had managed to disrupt the Jewish communal organization
and rob the Kahal of all its authority by degrading it to a kind of
posse for the capture of recruits and extortion of taxes. But while the
Jewish masses hated the Kahal elders, they retained their faith in their
spiritual leaders, the rabbis and Tzaddiks. [1] Heeding the command of
these leaders, they closed their ranks, and offered stubborn resistance
to the dangerous cultural influences threateni