sso-Jewish
youths, it was the centre in which grew science and culture, and whence
they were disseminated far and wide over the Pale. Hebrew, German, and
Russian were surreptitiously studied and taught. Buckle and Spencer,
Turgenief and Tolstoi were secretly passed from hand to hand, and read
and studied with avidity. Some students advocated openly the
transformation of the yeshibah into a rabbinical seminary on the order
of the Berlin Hochschule. The new learning found an ardent supporter in
Zebi Hirsh Dainov, "the Slutsker Maggid" (1832-1877), who preached
Russification and Reformation from the pulpits of the synagogues, and
whom the Society for the Promotion of Haskalah employed as its
mouthpiece among the less advanced.[17] In the existing reform
synagogues, in Riga, Odessa, Warsaw, and Vilna, and even in more
conservative communities, sermons began to be preached in Russian.
Solomon Zalkind Minor, who lectured in German, acquired a reputation as
a preacher in Russian since his election to the rabbinate of Minsk
(1860). He was called "the Jellinek of Russia" by the Maskilim.[18]
Aaron Elijah Pumpyansky began to preach in Russian at Ponevezh, in Kovno
(1861). Germanization at last gave way to Russification. Even in Odessa,
where German culture predominated during the reign of Nicholas I, it was
found necessary, for the sake of the younger generation, to elect, as
associate to the German Doctor Schwabacher, Doctor Solomon Mandelkern to
preach in Russian. Similar changes were made in other communities. In
the Polish provinces the Reformation was making even greater strides.
There the Jews, whether reform, like Doctor Marcus Jastrow, or orthodox
like Rabbi Berish Meisels, identified themselves with the Poles, and
participated in their cultural and political aspirations, which were
frequently antagonistic to Russification. A society which called itself
Poles of the Mosaic Persuasion was organized in Warsaw, an organ of
extreme liberalism was founded in the weekly Israelita, and, with the
election of Isaac Kramsztyk to the rabbinate, German was replaced (1852)
by the native Polish as the language of the pulpit.

Some champions of reform did not rest satisfied with mere innovations
and improvements. They went so far as to discard Judaism altogether and
improvise religions of their own. Moses Rosensohn of Vilna was the
first, in his works _Advice and Help_ (_'Ezrah we-Tushiah_, Vilna, 1870)
and _The Peace of Brothers_ (_She