[Footnote 2:  See above, p, 120, n. 1.]

It would be manifestly unjust to view the hasidic indulgence in alcohol in the same light as the senseless drunkenness of the Russian peasant, transforming man into a beast.  The Hasid drank, and in moderate doses at that, “for the soul,” “to banish the grief which blunteth the heart,” to arouse religious exultation and enliven his social intercourse with his fellow believers.  Yet the consequences were equally sad.  For the habit resulted in drowsiness of thought, idleness and economic ruin, insensibility to the outside world and to the social movements of the age, as well as in stolid opposition to cultural progress in general.  It must be borne in mind that during the era of external oppression and military inquisition the reactionary force of Hasidism acted as the only antidote against the reactionary force from the outside.  Hasidism and Tzaddikism were, so to speak, a sleeping draught which dulled the pain of the blows dealt out to the unfortunate Jewish populace by the Russian Government.  But in the long run the popular organism was injuriously affected by this mystic opium.  The poison rendered its consumers insensible to every progressive movement, and planted them firmly at the extreme pole of obscurantism, at a time when the Russian ghetto resounded with the first appeals calling its inmates toward the light, toward the regeneration and the uplift of inner Jewish life.

3.  THE RUSSIAN MENDELSSOHN (ISAAC BAER LEVINSOHN)

It was in the hot-bed of the most fanatical species of Hasidism that the first blossoms of Haskalah [1] timidly raised their heads.  Isaac Baer Levinsohn, from Kremenetz in Podolia (1788-1860), had associated in his younger days with the champions of enlightenment in adjacent Galicia, such as Joseph Perl, [2] Nahman Krochmal, [3] and their followers.  When he came back to his native land, it was with the firm resolve to devote his energies to the task of civilizing the secluded masses of Russian Jewry.  In lonesome quietude, carefully guarding his designs from the outside world which was exclusively hasidic, he worked at his book Te’udah, be-Israel ("Instruction in Israel"), which after many difficulties he managed to publish in Vilna in 1828.  In this book our author endeavored, without trespassing the boundaries of orthodox religious tradition, to demonstrate the following elementary truths by citing examples from Jewish history and sayings of great Jewish authorities: 

[Footnote 1:  A Hebrew term meaning “enlightenment.”  It is a translation of the German Aufklaerung, and was first applied to the endeavors made in the time of Moses Mendelssohn (died 1886) to introduce European culture among the Jews of the ghetto.]

[Footnote 2:  Died 1839.  He became famous through his anti-hasidic parody Megalle Temirin, “Revealing Hidden Things,” written in the form of letters in imitation of the hasidic style.  Peri’s book has been frequently compared with the medieval Epistolae obscurorum vivorum, which are ascribed to Ulrich von Hutten (d. 1523).  See P. 127.]