Those were the days of organizing and consolidating among Jews and
Gentiles alike. At the time when Abraham Lincoln was proclaiming his
famous "United we stand, divided we fall," Julius Slovacki in Poland
pleaded the cause of the peasantry of his country, and the Alliance
Israelite Universelle issued a call to the entire house of Israel "to
defend the honor of the Jewish name wherever it is attacked; to
encourage, by all means at our disposal, the pursuit of useful
handicrafts; to combat, where necessary, the ignorance and vice
engendered by oppression; to work, by the power of persuasion and by all
the moral influences at our command, for the emancipation of our
brethren who still suffer under the burden of exceptional legislation;
to hasten and solidify complete enfranchisement by the intellectual and
moral regeneration of our brethren." A powerful movement for the
upliftment of the masses was also taking hold of the educated classes
among the Russians. Professor Kostomarov started a systematic campaign
for the education of the common people. A species of philanthropic
intoxication seized upon the more enlightened Russian youth. A society
of Narodniki, or Common People, so-called, was organized. Young men and
women renounced high rank, and students came out of their seclusion and
joined the people, dressed in their garb, spoke their dialect, led their
life, and, having won their confidence, gradually opened their minds to
value the blessings of education, and their hearts to desire them. These
examples from within and without resulted in a similar attempt among the
Russian Jews. An organization was perfected (December, 1863) which
exercised a great civilizing influence for almost half a century, the
Society for the Promotion of Haskalah among the Jews of Russia.

To the credit of the Jewish financiers be it said that they were always
the banner bearers of enlightenment. It had been so with German
Aufklaerung, when Ben-David, Itzig, Friedlaender, and Jacobson, laid the
corner-stone of the intellectual rebirth of their people. It was more
especially so in Russia during the "sixties." Odessa was the most
enlightened, because it was the wealthiest, of Jewish communities, as
the benumbing poverty of the Pale was largely to blame for the
unfriendly attitude towards whatever did not bear the stamp of
Jewishness on its surface. The Society for the Promotion of Haskalah,
too, owes its existence to some of the most prominent