nd Gentile
wider than ever.[5]

Now all this was changed. Christians championed the cause of Jews. The
Government, too, appeared to be sincerely anxious for the welfare of its
Jewish subjects. It not only promised, but frequently also performed.
The Jews were allowed to follow their religious predilections
unhindered. The schools were reorganized with rabbinical graduates as
their teachers and principals. The Rabbinical Assembly, which, though
established by Nicholas (May 26, 1848), had rarely been called together,
was summoned to St. Petersburg, and there spent six months in 1857 and
five in 1861 in deliberating on means of improving the intellectual and
material standing of the Jews. The "learned Jew" (uchony Yevrey) Moses
Berlin was invited to become an adviser in the Department of Public
Worship (1856), to be consulted concerning the Jewish religion whenever
occasion required. Permission was granted to publish Jewish periodicals
in Russian, Polish, Hebrew, and Yiddish (1860), and on April 26, 1862,
the restriction was removed that limited Jewish publishing houses and
printing-presses to Vilna and Zhitomir. The Russia Montefiore saw on his
visit in 1872, how different from the Russia he had left in 1846!

These auspicious signs renewed the hope of the Maskilim and intensified
their zeal. They were convinced of the noble intentions of the Liberator
Czar; they were confident that the emperor who emancipated the muzhiks,
and expunged many a _kromye Yevreyev_ ("except the Jews") which his
father was wont to add to the few privileges he granted his Christian
subjects, would ultimately remove the civil disabilities of the Jews
altogether. In a very popular song, written by Eliakum Zunser (Vilna,
1836-New York, 1913), then a rising and beloved Badhan (bard) writing in
Yiddish and Hebrew, Alexander II was likened to an angel of God who
finds the flower of Judah soiled by dirt and trampled in the dust. He
rescues it, and revives it with living water, and plants it in his
garden, where it flourishes once more.[6] The poets hailed him as the
savior and redeemer of Israel. All that the Jews needed was to make
themselves deserving of his kindness, and worthy of the citizenship they
saw in store for them. In Russian, in Hebrew, and in Yiddish, in prose
and in poetry, the one theme uppermost in the mind of all was
enlightenment, or rather Russification. From all quarters the reveille
was sounded. Abraham Baer Gottlober (1811-1899)