Rebbe." [2] Many Hasidim lost themselves
completely in this idle revelry and neglected their business affairs and
their starving families, looking forward in their blind fatalism to the
blessings which were to be showered upon them through the intercession
of the Tzaddik.

[Footnote 1: The word, which is a diminutive of German _Stube_, "room,"
denotes, like the word _Klaus_, the room, or set of rooms, in which the
Hasidim assemble for prayer, study, and recreation.]

[Footnote 2: See above, p, 120, n. 1.]

It would be manifestly unjust to view the hasidic indulgence in alcohol
in the same light as the senseless drunkenness of the Russian peasant,
transforming man into a beast. The Hasid drank, and in moderate doses at
that, "for the soul," "to banish the grief which blunteth the heart," to
arouse religious exultation and enliven his social intercourse with his
fellow believers. Yet the consequences were equally sad. For the habit
resulted in drowsiness of thought, idleness and economic ruin,
insensibility to the outside world and to the social movements of the
age, as well as in stolid opposition to cultural progress in general. It
must be borne in mind that during the era of external oppression and
military inquisition the reactionary force of Hasidism acted as the only
antidote against the reactionary force from the outside. Hasidism and
Tzaddikism were, so to speak, a sleeping draught which dulled the pain
of the blows dealt out to the unfortunate Jewish populace by the Russian
Government. But in the long run the popular organism was injuriously
affected by this mystic opium. The poison rendered its consumers
insensible to every progressive movement, and planted them firmly at the
extreme pole of obscurantism, at a time when the Russian ghetto
resounded with the first appeals calling its inmates toward the light,
toward the regeneration and the uplift of inner Jewish life.

3. THE RUSSIAN MENDELSSOHN (ISAAC BAER LEVINSOHN)

It was in the hot-bed of the most fanatical species of Hasidism that the
first blossoms of Haskalah [1] timidly raised their heads. Isaac Baer
Levinsohn, from Kremenetz in Podolia (1788-1860), had associated in his
younger days with the champions of enlightenment in adjacent Galicia,
such as Joseph Perl, [2] Nahman Krochmal, [3] and their followers. When
he came back to his native land, it was with the firm resolve to devote
his energies to the task of civilizing the secluded masses of Russi