ertain towns, or in certain parts of
towns, disabilities in acquiring property, and others. But the highest
Polish administration in Warsaw was obstructing in every possible way
the liberal attempts of the Russian Government. Prior to the
insurrection of 1863, the attitude of Polish society towards the Jews
was one of habitual animosity, and this notwithstanding the fact that by
that time Warsaw harbored already a group of Jewish intellectuals who
were eager to assimilate with the Poles and were imbued with Polish
patriotism. When, in 1859, the _Warsaw Gazette_ published an
anti-Semitic article in which the Jews were branded as foreigners, the
Polish-Jewish patriots, including the banker Kronenberg, a convert, were
stung to the quick, and they came forward with violent protests. This
led to passionate debates in the Polish press, generally unfriendly to
the Jews. The radical Polish organs, published abroad by political
exiles, took occasion to denounce bitterly the anti-Semitic trend of
Polish society. The veteran historian Lelevel, who had not yet forgotten
Poland's historic injustice of 1831, [1] issued a pamphlet in Brussels,
calling upon the Poles to live in harmony with the race with which it
had existed side by side for eight hundred years.

[Footnote 1: See above, p. 105.]

Lelevel's kindly words would scarcely have brought the anti-Semites to
reason, had not the Poles at that moment embarked upon an enterprise for
the success of which they sorely needed the sympathy and co-operation of
their Jewish neighbors. The revolutionary movement which engulfed
Russian Poland in 1860-1863 required the utmost exertion of effort on
the part of the entire population, in which the half-million Jews played
no small part. All of a sudden Polish society opened its arms to those
whom it had but recently branded as foreigners, and out of the ranks of
Warsaw Jewry came a hearty response, expressing itself not only in
patriotic manifestations but also in sacrifices and achievements for the
sake of the common fatherland.

At the head of the Warsaw community during this stormy period stood a
man who combined Polish patriotism with rabbinic orthodoxy. Formerly
rabbi in Cracow, Berush [1] Meisels had as far back as 1848 been sent as
deputy to the parliament at Kremsier, [2] and stood in the forefront of
the Polish patriots of Galicia. In 1856 he accepted the post of rabbi in
Warsaw. When the revolutionary movement had broken out, Meise