[21] Among the first books issued from the newly-established
printing-press in Shklov, the centre of Jewish wealth, refinement, and
culture at that time, was the _Zeker Rab_ with a German translation
(1804). In an appendix thereto the Shklov Maskilim announced their
intention to publish a weekly, the first in the Hebrew tongue. Yiddish
was also resorted to as a medium for educating the masses, and as early
as 1813 some Vilna Jews applied to the Government for permission to
publish a paper in that language, though it was not until ten years
later (1823-1824) that a Yiddish periodical, Der Beobachter an der
Weichsel, appeared in Warsaw. Nor do we hear of any opposition to the
Government decrees, issued probably at the request of Dillon, Notkin,
Peretz, or Nebakhovich, that the elders of the kahals in and after 1808,
and the rabbis of the congregations in and after 1812, be conversant
with either Russian, German, or Polish. This sudden Russification of the
Jews amounted sometimes to no more than a superficial imitation of
Russian civilization, which pious rabbis as well as liberal-minded men
like Schick, Margolioth, Ilye, and Hurwitz, felt impelled to call a halt
to.
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