The World of the Brivnshteler

ENCOUNTERING MODERNITY

The age of the brivnshteler was an age of modernization, which some Russian Jews pursued, some resisted, and most accommodated to one degree or another. The brivnshteler served as an agent of change, guiding Jewish readers in their adaption of new social, cultural, and economic realities. It was also a reflection of change, encompassing within its pages almost the full range of Jewish responses to modernization.

The earliest Russian brivnshtelers appeared against a backdrop of political and social fragmentation. In the early nineteenth century, the authority wielded by the rabbinate was under attack, as the spread of Hasidism gave rise to a competing religious establishment. The cohesion of Jewish communities was further broken by the military draft instituted by Nicholas I. With no good way out, community leaders used the children of the poor to fulfill conscription quotas dodged by the rich through influence and bribes. The kahal—the autonomous Jewish community council—continued to run local communities even after being formally outlawed in 1844, but its authority over individuals was considerably weakened.

Another challenge to the religious elite served as a forceful instrument of modernity. The Haskalah—the Jewish Enlightenment—was a reformist rethinking of Jewish intellectual and community life that started in Berlin and reached Russia in the early nineteenth century. Proponents of the Haskalah, maskilim, drew from the ideas of the European Enlightenment, as well as from Hebrew translations of medieval and Renaissance works of philosophy, science, and history. The self-appointed teachers of their nation, they became, in the formulation of Olga Litvak, a Jewish intelligentsia—"the bearers of a modern Jewish metaphysics and the founders of a new Romantic religion." As implacable opponents of Hasidism but critics of complete secularization, maskilim pursued a modernizing agenda that included spiritual and cultural renewal as well as the social and economic integration of Jews into the broader society. While most remained religiously observant, they espoused ideas that the Jewish establishment considered subversive.

The story of the maskilim intersects with that of the brivnshteler because of the Haskalah's emphasis on the acquisition of non-Jewish languages (initially German) and its interest in broadening the scope of Jewish education. The first authors of brivnshtelers were maskilim. But these early Jewish intellectuals were also fundamental in reforming the institutions and subject matter of Jewish schooling more broadly. In the 1840s, when the intentions of the imperial government could be interpreted generously, some maskilim bypassed Jewish channels of influence to cooperate directly with Russian authorities. They shared with Russian government officials the idea that Jews should be transformed into productive subjects of the modern state and saw education as the key to promoting acculturation. Traditionally minded Jews, seeing the same linkage, did what they could to resist.

A law of 1844 mandating the establishment of government schools for Jews was followed, over the next few years, by the opening of specialized primary and secondary schools under the control of the Ministry of Education. Fearing that this largely secular education would cause Jewish religious identity to fatally unravel, Jewish communities replicated their response to the military draft and filled the schools with orphans and the children of the poor. But the unexpected success of the educational recruits led some prosperous parents to change their minds. The draft deferment that accompanied enrollment was a strong incentive, but so were practical benefits of secular study.

To get a sense of what secular schools looked like from the point of view of a maskil, we can turn to an 1865 brivnshteler by Hirsh Lion Dor. Through the medium of a model letter, Lion Dor is ecstatic in his praise of the new curriculum, which he sees as the foundation for Jewish renewal, self-respect, and prosperity under an enlightened imperial government:

Day in and day out, in the schools which opened in Vilna a few years ago, young children blaze ahead in skill, in languages, in the sciences, which was unheard of until our age. Before, no one could write or do arithmetic or open their mouths in any language. They were the laughingstocks of other nations. Now, however, everyone possesses the greatest sophistication. There are finally very skilled men, in Russian, German, French, and other languages; in arithmetic ... like the greatest mathematicians. It is lovely to behold and beautiful to hear.... Their livelihood is taken care of. They will never know need and won't have to go looking for a way to make a living as in the past, when some of ours, in impoverished circumstances, finally came home [from yeshiva] and had no way to make a living. And so, understandably, they barely managed to find jobs as a janitor [strazhnik] via a friend, family member, or acquaintance for a low salary, earning their bread with sweat to support a wife and children, all because they hadn't been educated and had no skills or profession.... But through the favor of the government and the help of our educated Jews, who with the schools have opened the eyes of our clever children ... each and every one of them will study and dedicate themselves to good, which will be pleasing in the eyes of God and the other nations, and especially our government.

The educational reforms involved girls too, though differently. Girls from well-off families had never been as sequestered from secular subjects as their brothers. Because women did not engage in the study of religious texts but did participate in economic life, girls from families who could afford it learned Russian and German, the two significant languages for entry into the outside worlds of culture and business. At the most basic level, girls of marriageable age were supposed to be capable of drafting a business letter—a specialty of the brivnshteler. Higher up the social scale, merchant families who moved or aspired to move in Russian circles expected their daughters to be conversant with Russian and German high culture.

Wealthy girls could always be educated by private tutors. But in the 1840s, enlightenment-minded educators began to open schools for them as well, more than one hundred between 1844 and 1881. Even some religious Jews sent their daughters to these schools, in the belief that education would make them more marriageable. As modernization progressed, education became decoupled from marriage, and young women pursued it with intensity. By 1909, the law faculty at the Bestuzhev Higher Women's Courses in St. Petersburg—the most prestigious postsecondary institution for women in Russia—had a Jewish enrollment of 20 percent, despite the restrictions on Jewish residence in St. Petersburg that...