Haskalah
itself was not impugned, and as theretofore translations and original
works on science were encouraged, and the wish was entertained that
"many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased."[32]
But the latest experiences in their own country put Haskalah in a very
different light from that in which they were wont to regard it. Formerly
the opposition to it had been limited to the very land that gave it
birth. Because of their determination to study, Solomon Maimon was
denied admission to Berlin, Manasseh of Ilye was stopped in Koenigsberg,
and Abba Glusk Leczeka, better known as "the Glusker Maggid," the
subject of a poem by Chamisso, was persecuted everywhere. It was Rabbi
Levin, of Berlin, who prohibited the publication of Wessely's works, and
insisted that the author be expelled from the city.[33] It was Rabbi
Ezekiel Landau of Prague who, though approving of Wessely's _Yen
Lebanon_, opposed the translation of the Pentateuch by Mendelssohn,
while Rabbi Horowitz of Hamburg denounced it in unmeasured terms,
admonishing his hearers to shun the work as unclean, and approving the
action of those persons who had publicly burnt it in Vilna (1782).
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