Lloyd P. Gartner, History of the Jews in Modern Times (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001)
Chapter 6: Travail in Eastern Europe, 1815-1881
Study Questions
1) In what ways did Jewish communal autonomy in Russia decline in the second half of the nineteenth century? In what ways did it continue to assert itself, albeit unofficially?
2) Of what did the Russian Tsar’s policy of “enlightened absolutism” consist with respect to the Jews? What did the Tsar’s Jewish affairs advisors Frizel and Derzhavin in the early nineteenth century recommend for “reforming” Jewish life?
3) What so outraged many in the Jewish communities about the kahal’s involvement in Tsar Nicholas I’s military conscription?
4) Might certain practices of the Jewish ruling elite in the Russian empire and beyond have later motivated young Jews to become socialists? Do you find such speculation about motivations to be constructive or counter-productive?
5) How had the Jewish Enlightenment (Haskalah) and Tsarist policies become linked by the 1840s, according to Gartner? Did the Jews experience this development in the same way in Poland as they did in Russia proper?
6) Why was the Tsarist regime so eager to educate the Jewish masses? What did Tsarist educational policies emphasize? De-emphasize?
7) How would you describe Max Lilienthal’s legacy for Jewish history? Was he a force for genuine progress or a Tsarist pawn?
8) How did the demands of taxes and military conscription make possible the autocratic control of “local potentates” over Jewish communities? What eventually undermined their dominance?
9) What exactly was the (as Gartner phrases it) “yeshiva world”? What change did Rabbi Salanter’s mussar ethical movement attempt to inaugurate and why was it largely rejected?
10) In what ways did the Haskalah movement in Russia become bifurcated and socialized by the 1860s? What conflicting programs did the “Russifiers” and “Hebraist radicals” seek to promote?
11) Why did Haskalah take on a more strident, even angry tone in Russia
during this period?