The feeling of tolerance manifested itself also in the Jewish attitude towards the Gentiles.  “O that we were identified with the nations of our time, created by the same God, children of one Father, and did not hate each other because we are at variance in some views!” This exclamation of Doctor Hurwitz[19] found an echo in the works of the other Maskilim that wrote in Hebrew, but more especially of those who used a European language.  They were deeply interested in whatever marked a step forward in their country’s civilization.  The opening of a gymnasium in Mitau (1775) was a joyful occasion, which inspired Hurwitz’s Hebrew muse, and at the centennial celebration of the surrender of Riga to Peter the Great (July 4, 1810), the craving of the Jewish heart, avowed in a German poem, was expressed “in the name of the local Hebrew community to their Christian compatriots.”  The last stanza runs as follows: 

  Grant us, who, like you, worship the God above,
  Also on earth to enjoy equality with you! 
  To-day, while your hearts are open to love,
  Let us seal our happiness with your love, too![20]

This desire for naturalization brought with it an attempt at “Russification.”  To show the beauty of the Russian language, Baruch Czatzskes of Volhynia translated some of the poems of Khersakov into Hebrew, and others published manuals for the study of Russian and Polish.[21] Among the first books issued from the newly-established printing-press in Shklov, the centre of Jewish wealth, refinement, and culture at that time, was the Zeker Rab with a German translation (1804).  In an appendix thereto the Shklov Maskilim announced their intention to publish a weekly, the first in the Hebrew tongue.  Yiddish was also resorted to as a medium for educating the masses, and as early as 1813 some Vilna Jews applied to the Government for permission to publish a paper in that language, though it was not until ten years later (1823-1824) that a Yiddish periodical, Der Beobachter an der Weichsel, appeared in Warsaw.  Nor do we hear of any opposition to the Government decrees, issued probably at the request of Dillon, Notkin, Peretz, or Nebakhovich, that the elders of the kahals in and after 1808, and the rabbis of the congregations in and after 1812, be conversant with either Russian, German, or Polish.  This sudden Russification of the Jews amounted sometimes to no more than a superficial imitation of Russian civilization, which pious rabbis as well as liberal-minded men like Schick, Margolioth, Ilye, and Hurwitz, felt impelled to call a halt to.  Jews, especially the rich, aped the Polish pans.  Their wives dressed in Parisian gowns of the latest fashion, and their homes were conducted in a manner so luxurious as to arouse the envy of the noblemen.  Israel waxed fat and kicked.  Their greatest care was to become wealthy; they pampered their bodies at the expense of the impoverishment of their souls, and some feared that “with the passing away of the elder generation there would not remain a man capable of filling the position of rabbi."[22]