Note (return) — Chapter III

Had Alexander I been satisfied with merely restricting the Jews' rights, the favorable attitude towards enlightenment we have noticed above would probably have remained unaltered. Unfortunately, Alexander became a fanatic conversionist. It was a time when missionary zeal became endemic, and Baroness Krüdener's influence was strengthened. The Reverend Lewis Way, having founded (1808) the London Society for Promoting Christianity among the Jews, made a tour through Europe, everywhere urging the Gentiles to enfranchise the Jews as an inducement to them to embrace Christianity, the only means of hastening the advent of the Apostolic millennium. His Mémoires sur l'état des israélites presented to the Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle (October 11, 1818) and his visit to Russia resulted in an imperial ukase (March 25, 1817) organizing a Committee of Guardians for Israelitish Christians (Izrailskiye Christyanye). The members of this association were to be granted land in the northern or southern provinces of Russia and to enjoy special privileges. The bait proved tempting, and, as a consequence, some prominent Maskilim, too weak to resist the allurements, precipitated themselves into the Greek Catholic fold. Abraham Peretz, financier and champion of Jews' rights, consented to be converted, as also Löb Nebakhovich, the dramatist, whose plays were produced in the Imperial theatre of St. Petersburg and performed in the presence of the emperor.30 Equally bad, if not worse, for the cause of Haskalah was the conduct of those who, disdaining, or unable, to profess the new religion, discarded every vestige of traditional Judaism, and deemed it their duty to set an example of infidelity and sometimes immorality to their less enlightened coreligionists. What Leroy-Beaulieu says of Maimon, "that type of the most cultured Jew to be found before the French Revolution," might more justly be applied to many a less prominent Maskil after him: "Despite his learning and philosophy he sank deeper than the most degraded of his fellow-men, because in repudiating his ancestral faith he had lost the staff which, through all their humiliations, served as a prop even to the most debased of ancient Jews."31