Note (return) — Chapter V

These auspicious signs renewed the hope of the Maskilim and intensified their zeal. They were convinced of the noble intentions of the Liberator Czar; they were confident that the emperor who emancipated the muzhiks, and expunged many a kromye Yevreyev ("except the Jews") which his father was wont to add to the few privileges he granted his Christian subjects, would ultimately remove the civil disabilities of the Jews altogether. In a very popular song, written by Eliakum Zunser (Vilna, 1836-New York, 1913), then a rising and beloved Badhan (bard) writing in Yiddish and Hebrew, Alexander II was likened to an angel of God who finds the flower of Judah soiled by dirt and trampled in the dust. He rescues it, and revives it with living water, and plants it in his garden, where it flourishes once more.6 The poets hailed him as the savior and redeemer of Israel. All that the Jews needed was to make themselves deserving of his kindness, and worthy of the citizenship they saw in store for them. In Russian, in Hebrew, and in Yiddish, in prose and in poetry, the one theme uppermost in the mind of all was enlightenment, or rather Russification. From all quarters the reveille was sounded. Abraham Bär Gottlober (1811-1899) exclaimed: