As for the central Committee in St. Petersburg, its experience was not less disappointing.  For, despite all the endeavors of the Society to adapt itself to the official point of view, it was regarded with suspicion by the powers that be, having been included by the informer Brafman among the constituent organizations of the dreadful and mysterious “Jewish Kahal.”  The Russian assimilators, now branded as separatists, found themselves in a tragic conflict.  Moreover, the work of the Society in promoting general culture among the Jews was gradually losing its raison d’etre, since, without any effort on its part, the Jews began to flock to the gymnazia and universities.  The former practical stimulus to general culture—­the acquisition of a diploma for the sake of equal rights—­was intensified by the promulgation of the military statute of 1874 which conferred a number of privileges in the discharge of military duty on those possessing a higher education.  These privileges induced many parents, particularly among the merchant class which was then drafted into the army for the first time, to send their children to the middle and higher educational institutions.  As a result, the role of the Society in the dissemination of enlightenment reduced itself to a mere dispensation of charity, and the great crisis of the eighties found this organization standing irresolute at the cross-roads.

3.  THE JEWISH PRESS

In the absence of a comprehensive net-work of social agencies, the driving force in this cultural upheaval came from the periodical Jewish press.  The creation of several press organs in Hebrew and Russian in the beginning of the sixties was a sign of the times.  Though different in their linguistic medium, the two groups of publications were equally engaged in the task of the regeneration of Judaism, each adapting itself to its particular circle of readers.  The Hebrew periodicals, and partly also those in Yiddish which addressed themselves to the masses, preached Haskalah in the narrower sense.  They advocated the necessity of a Russian elementary education and of secular culture in general; they emphasized the uselessness of the traditional Jewish school training, and exposed superstition and obscurantism.  The Russian publications, again, which were intended for the Jewish and the Russian intelligenzia, pursued in the main a political goal, the fight for equal rights and the defence of Judaism against its numerous detractors.

In both groups one can discern the gradual ripening of the social Jewish consciousness, the advance from elementary and often naive notions to more complex ideas.  The two Hebrew weeklies founded in 1860, ha-Karmel, “The Carmel,” in Vilna, and ha-Melitz, “The Interpreter,” in Odessa, the former edited by Fuenn and the latter by Zederbaum, [1] were at first adapted to the mental level of grown-up children, expatiating upon the benefits of secular education and the “favors” of