lle (October 11, 1818) and his
visit to Russia resulted in an imperial ukase (March 25, 1817)
organizing a Committee of Guardians for Israelitish Christians
(Izrailskiye Christyanye). The members of this association were to be
granted land in the northern or southern provinces of Russia and to
enjoy special privileges. The bait proved tempting, and, as a
consequence, some prominent Maskilim, too weak to resist the
allurements, precipitated themselves into the Greek Catholic fold.
Abraham Peretz, financier and champion of Jews' rights, consented to be
converted, as also Loeb Nebakhovich, the dramatist, whose plays were
produced in the Imperial theatre of St. Petersburg and performed in the
presence of the emperor.[30] Equally bad, if not worse, for the cause of
Haskalah was the conduct of those who, disdaining, or unable, to profess
the new religion, discarded every vestige of traditional Judaism, and
deemed it their duty to set an example of infidelity and sometimes
immorality to their less enlightened coreligionists. What Leroy-Beaulieu
says of Maimon, "that type of the most cultured Jew to be found before
the French Revolution," might more justly be applied to many a less
prominent Maskil after him: "Despite his learning and philosophy he sank
deeper than the most degraded of his fellow-men, because in repudiating
his ancestral faith he had lost the staff which, through all their
humiliations, served as a prop even to the most debased of ancient
Jews."[31]

Haskalah thus having become synonymous with apostasy or licentiousness,
we can easily understand why the unsophisticated among the Russian Jews
were so bitterly opposed to it from the time the sad truth dawned upon
them, until, under Alexander II, their suspicions were somewhat
dissipated. Previous to the latter part of the reign of Alexander I the
"struggle groups" in Russian Jewry were at first Frankists and
anti-Frankists, and afterwards Hasidim and Mitnaggedim. It was a
conflict, not between religion and science, but between religion and
what was regarded as superstition. Secular instruction, far from being
opposed, was, as we have seen, sought and disseminated. Long after the
pious element in Germany had been aroused to the dangers that lurked in
the wake of their "Aufklaerung," and had begun to endeavor to check its
further progress by excommunication and other methods, the Russian Jews
remained "seekers after light." They might have condemned a Maskil, they