including police inspection and compulsory labor.  But while engaged in these charitable projects, the law-givers were taken aback by the Crimean War, which, with its disastrous consequences for Russia, diverted their attention from their war against the Jews.  Yet for a successive number of years the law concerning the “assortment,” or razryaden, as it was popularly styled by the Jews, hung like the sword of Damocles over the heads of hundreds of thousands of Jews, and the anxiety of the suffering masses was poured out in sad popular ditties: 

     Ach, a tzore, a gzeire mit die razryaden! [1]

[Footnote 1:  “Alas!  What misfortune and persecution there is in the assortment!”]

2.  COMPULSORY ASSIMILATION

As for the measures of compulsory assimilation long ago foreshadowed by the Government, such as the substitution of the Russian or German style of dress for the traditional Jewish attire, the long coats of the men, they were without any effect on Jewish life, and merely resulted in confusion and consternation.  A curt imperial ukase issued on May 1, 1850, prohibited “all over (the Empire) the use of a distinct Jewish form of dress, beginning with January 1, 1851,” though the governors-general were given the right of permitting aged Jews to wear out their old garments on the payment of a definite tax.  The prohibition extended to the earlocks, or peies, of the men.

A year later, in April, 1851, the Government made a further step in advance and proceeded to deal with the female attire.  “His Imperial Majesty was graciously pleased to command that Jewish women be forbidden to shave their heads upon entering into marriage.” [1] In October, 1852, this ukase was supplemented by the regulation that a married Jewess guilty of shaving her head was liable to a fine of five rubles ($2.50), and the rabbi abetting the crime was to be prosecuted.  Since neither the Jews nor the Jewesses were willing to submit to imperial orders, the former from habit, the latter from religious scruples, the provincial authorities entered upon a regular warfare against these “rebels.”  Both the governors-general and the governors subordinate to them displayed extraordinary enthusiasm in this direction.  The officials tracked with utmost zeal not only the women culprits but also their accomplices the rabbis who attended the wedding ceremony, even including the barbers who were called in to shave the heads of the Jewish ladies.  Jewish women were examined at the police stations to find out whether they still wore their own hair beneath their kerchiefs or wigs.  Frequently the struggle manifested itself in tragic-comic and even repulsive forms.  In some places the police adopted the practice of cutting the peies or shortening the long coats of the Jews by force.

[Footnote 1:  In accordance with orthodox Jewish practice, married women are not allowed to expose their own hair.  Apart from the wearing of a wig, or Sheitel, it was also customary for women to cut or shave their hair before their wedding and cover their heads with a kerchief.]