The storm of pogroms not only broke many young twigs on the tree of “enlightenment,” which had attained to full bloom in the preceding period, but it also bent others into monstrous shapes.  This abnormal development is particularly characteristic of the idea of religious reforms in Judaism which sprang to life in the beginning of the eighties.  A fortnight before the pogrom at Yelisavetgrad, which inaugurated another gloomy chapter in the annals of Russian Jewry, the papers reported that a new Jewish sect had appeared in that city under the name of “The Spiritual Biblical Brotherhood.”  Its members denied all religious dogmas and ceremonies, and acknowledged only the moral doctrines of the Bible; they condemned all mercantile pursuits, and endeavored to live by physical labor, primarily by agriculture.

The founder of this “Brotherhood” was a local teacher and journalist, Jacob Gordin, who stood at that time under the influence of the South-Russian Stundists [1] as well as of the socialistic Russian Populists. [2] The “Spiritual Biblical Brotherhood” was made up altogether of a score of people.  In a newspaper appeal which appeared shortly after the spring pogroms of 1881 the leader of the sect, hiding his identity under the pen-name of “A Brother-Biblist,” called upon the Jews to divest themselves, of those character traits and economic pursuits which excited the hatred of the native population against them:  the love of money, the hunt for barter, usury, and petty trading.  This appeal, which, sounded in unison with the voice of the Russian Jew-baiters and appeared at a time when the wounds of the pogrom victims were not yet healed, aroused profound indignation among the Jews.  Shortly afterwards the “Spiritual Biblical Brotherhood” fell asunder.  Some of its members joined a like-minded sect in Odessa which had been founded there in the beginning of 1883 by a teacher, Jacob Priluker, under the name of “New Israel.”

[Footnote 1:  A Russian sect with rationalistic tendencies which are traceable to Western Protestantism.]

[Footnote 2:  See above, p. 222.]

The aim of “New Israel” was to facilitate, by means of radical religious reforms conceived in the spirit of rationalism, the contact between Jews and Christians and thereby pave the way for civil emancipation.  The twofold religio-social program of the sect was as follows: 

The sect recognizes only the teachings of Moses; it rejects the Talmud, the dietary laws, the rite of circumcision, and the traditional form of worship; the day of rest is transferred from Saturday to Sunday; the Russian language is declared to be the “native” tongue of the Jews and made obligatory in every-day life; usury and similar distasteful pursuits are forbidden.

As a reward for all these virtuous endeavors the sect expected from the Russian Government, which it petitioned to that effect, complete civil equality for its members, permission to intermarry with Christians, and the right to wear a special badge by which they were to be marked off from the “Talmudic Jews.”  As an expression of gratitude for the anticipated governmental benefits, the members of the sect pledged themselves to give their boys and girls who were to be born during the coming year the names of Alexander or Alexandra, in honor of the Russian Tzar.