Note (return) — Chapter III

With what dreams such happenings filled the Jewish heart! "Thank God," writes a merchant of the first guild in reply to an inquiry from distant Bokhara, "thank God, we dwell in peace under the sovereignty of our czar Alexander, who has shown us his mercy, and has put us in every respect on an equality with all the inhabitants of the land."28 But a rude awakening was soon to make the Jews aware that their visions of better days were still far from realization. In 1815, Alexander I formed the acquaintance of Baroness Krüdener, and since then, to the satisfaction of Prince Galitzin, "with what giant strides the emperor advanced in the pathway of religion!" His humanitarian deeds gave way to a profound religious mysticism. He experienced a revulsion of feeling toward reforms in his vast empire, and, as always, the Jews were the first victims of an ill-boding change. The kindly monarch who, at Paris, had said to a Russo-Jewish deputation, J'enleverai le joug de vos épaules, began to make their yoke heavier than he had found it. The enlightened czar, who, in striking a medal commemorating the emancipation of the Jews of his empire, had anticipated Napoleon by a year, suddenly became a bigoted tyrant, whose efforts were devoted to converting the same Jews to Christianity. He who had claimed that his greatest reward would be to produce a Mendelssohn, now resorted to various expedients, to render education unpalatable to the Jews. The Jewish assemblymen, who, in 1816, soon after the Franco-Russian war, had been convoked to St. Petersburg, were not allowed to meet; and when, two years later, they did meet, their every attempt was baffled by the Government. Jews were expelled systematically from St. Petersburg (1818). They were forbidden to employ Christians as servants (May 4, 1820), to immigrate into Russia from abroad (August 10, 1824), and reside in the towns and villages of Mohilev and Vitebsk (January 13, 1825). Several years after the double poll and guild tax had been abolished in Courland (November 8, 1807), it was restored with an additional impost on meat from cattle slaughtered according to the Jewish rite (korobka). All this impoverished the Jews to such an extent that they were forced to sell the cravats of their praying shawls (taletim), in order to defray the expense of a second deputation to St. Petersburg.29