formation.

4. THE RISE OF NEO-HEBRAIC CULTURE

The Volhynian soil proved unfavorable for the seeds of enlightenment.
The Haskalah pioneers were looked upon as dangerous enemies in this
hot-bed of Tzaddikism. They were held in disgrace and were often the
victims of cruel persecutions, from which some saved themselves by
conversion. A more favorable soil for cultural endeavors was found in
the extreme south of the Pale of Settlement as well as in its northern
section: Odessa, the youthful capital of New Russia, and Vilna, the old
capital of Lithuania, both became centers of the Haskalah movement.

As far as Odessa was concerned, the seeds of enlightenment had been
carried hither from neighboring Galicia by the Jews of Brody, who formed
a wealthy merchant colony in that city. As early as 1826 Odessa saw the
opening of the first Jewish school for secular education, which was
managed at first by Sittenfeld and later on by the well-known public
worker Bezalel Stern. Among the teachers of the new school was Simha
Pinsker, who subsequently became the historian of Karaism. This school,
the only educational establishment of its kind during that period,
served in Odessa as a center for the "Friends of Enlightenment." Being a
new city, unfettered by traditions, and at the same time a large
sea-port, with a checkered international population, Odessa outran other
Jewish centers in the process of modernization, though it must be
confessed that it never went beyond the externalities of civilization.
As far as the period under discussion is concerned, the Jewish center of
the South can claim no share in the production of new Jewish values.

While yielding to Odessa in point of external civilization, Vilna
surpassed the capital of the South by her store of mental energy. The
circle of the Vilna Maskilim, which came into being during the fourth
decade of the nineteenth century, gave rise to the two founders of the
Neo-Hebraic literary style: the prose writer Mordecai Aaron Ginzburg
(1796-1846) and the poet Abraham Baer Lebensohn (1794-1878).

Ginzburg, born in the townlet Salant, in the Zhmud region, [1] lived for
some time in Courland, and finally settled in Vilna. He managed to
familiarize himself with German literature, and was so fascinated by it
that he started his literary career by translating and adapting German
works into Hebrew. His translation of Campe's "Discovery of America" and
Politz' Universal History, as well as hi