e misfortune alluded
to."

[Footnote 1: Pronounce _Yutzhenka_.]

After the insurrection, the Polonization of the Jewish population
assumed menacing proportions. The upper layer of Polish Jewry consisted
exclusively of "Poles of the Mosaic Persuasion" who rejected all
elements of Jewish culture, while the broad masses, following blindly
the mandates of their Tzaddiks, rejected fanatically even the most
indispensable elements of European civilization. Riven between such
monstrous extremes, Polish Jewry was unable to attain even to a
semblance of normal development.

2. THE SOCIETY FOR THE DIFFUSION OF ENLIGHTENMENT

Though intensely engaged in this cultural movement, Russian Jewry did
not yet command sufficient resources for carrying on a well-ordered and
well-systematized activity. The only modern Jewish organization of that
period was the "Society for the Diffusion of Enlightenment amongst the
Jews," which had been founded in 1867 by a small coterie of Jewish
financiers and intellectuals of St. Petersburg. It would seem that the
Jewish colony of the Russian metropolis, consisting of big merchants and
university graduates, who, by virtue of the laws of 1859 and 1861,
enjoyed the right of residence outside the Pale, did not yet contain a
sufficient number of competent public workers. For during the first
decade of the Society its Executive Committee included, apart from its
Jewish founders--Baron Guenzburg, Leon Rosenthal, Rabbi Neuman--, two
apostates, Professor Daniel Chwolson and the court physician, I.
Berthenson.

The purpose of the Society was explained by one of the
founders, Leon Rosenthal, in the following unsophisticated manner:

We constantly hear men in high positions, with whom we come in
contact, complain about the separatism and fanaticism of the Jews
and about their aloofness from everything Russian, and we have
received assurances on all hands that, with, the removal of these
peculiarities, the condition of our brethren in Russia will be
improved, and we shall all become full-fledged citizens of this
country. Actuated by this motive, we have organized a league of
educated men for the purpose of eradicating our above-mentioned
shortcomings by disseminating among the Jews the knowledge of the
Russian language and other useful subjects.

What the Society evidently aimed at was to place itself at the head of
the Russian-Jewish _intelligenzia_, which had undertaken to act as
neg