of similar publications in Galicia and Germany, In 1841 and 1843 two issues of the magazine Pirhe Tzafon, “Flowers of the North,” appeared in Vilna, under Fuenn’s editorship.  The volumes contained scientific and publicistic articles as well as poems, contributed by the feeble literary talents which were then active in the Hebrew literary and educational revival in Russia—­all of them efforts of not very high merit.  But even these poor hot-house flowers were fated to be nipped in the Northern chill.  The ruthless Russian censorship scented in the unassuming magazine of the Vilna Maskilim a criminal attempt to publish a Hebrew periodical.  Such an undertaking required an official license from the central Government in St. Petersburg, and the latter was not in the habit of granting licenses for such purposes.

In Vilna, as in Odessa, the coterie of local Maskilim formed the mainstay of Lilienthal, the apostle of enlightenment, in, his struggle with the orthodox.  In the year 1840, prior to Lilienthal’s arrival, when the first intimation of Uvarov’s plans reached the city of Vilna, the local Maskilim responded to the call of the Government in a circular letter, in which the following four cardinal reforms were emphasized: 

1.  The transformation of the Rabbinate through the establishment of rabbinical seminaries, the appointment of graduates from German universities as rabbis, and the formation of consistories after the pattern of Western Europe.

  2.  The reform of school education through the opening of secular
  schools after the model of Odessa and Riga and the training of new
  teachers from among the Maskilim.

  3.  The struggle with the fiends of obscurantism, who stifle every
  endeavor for popular enlightenment.

  4.  The improvement of Jewish economic life by intensifying
  agricultural colonization, the establishment of technical and arts
  and crafts schools, and similar measures.

Several years later the authors of this circular had reason to share Lilienthal’s disillusionment over the “benevolent intentions” of the Government.  This, however, was not strong enough to uproot the original sin of the Haskalah:  its constant readiness to lean for support upon “enlightened absolutism.”  The despotism of the orthodox and the intolerance of the unenlightened masses forced the handful of Maskilim to fall back upon those who in the eyes of the Jewish populace were the source of its sorrow and tears.  There was a profound tragedy in this incongruity.

The culture movement in Russia of the second quarter of the nineteenth century corresponds in its complexion to the early stage of the Mendelssohnian enlightenment in Germany, the period of the Me’assefim. [1] But there were also essential differences between the two.  The beginning of German enlightenment was accompanied by a strong drift toward assimilation which led to the elimination of the national language from literature.  In Russia the initial period of Haskalah was not marked by any sudden social and cultural upheavals.