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Updated: June 21, 2025
This periodical, which appeared in Vienna but was read principally in Russia, pursued a two-fold aim: to fight against the fanaticism of the benighted masses, on the one hand, and combat the indifference to Judaism of the intellectuals, on the other. Ha-Shahar exerted a tremendous influence upon the mental development of the young generation which had been trained in the heders and yeshibahs.
The new Hebrew periodical ha-Shahar published several of his "contemporary epics" in which he vented his wrath against petrified Rabbinism. He portrays the misery of a Jewish woman who is condemned to enter married life at the bidding of the marriage-broker, without love and without happiness, or he describes the tragedy of another woman whose future is wrecked by a "Dot over the i."
The Yiddish weekly Kol Mebasser, which was published during 1862-1871 as a supplement to ha-Melitz and spoke directly to the masses in their own language, attacked the dark sides of the old order of things in publicistic essays and humoristic stories. Another step forward was the publication of the Hebrew monthly ha-Shahar, "The Dawn," which was founded by Perez Smolenskin in 1869.
And a rising young Hebraist, Eliezer ben Yehudah, while still a student of medicine, wrote, in 1878, and again in 1880, stirring letters to the editor of Ha-Shahar, in which he advocated the return to the Holy Land and the revival of the holy tongue as a conditio sine qua non for the realization of the Jewish mission.
Besides such well-known names as Chwolson, the eminent professor, Harkavy, the indefatigable explorer of Jewish history in the Slav countries, and Gurland, the learned chronicler of the persecutions of the Jews in Poland, it is proper to make mention of David Kahana, one of the most eminent of the scientific contributors to Ha-Shahar, a scholar of distinction, who has succeeded in throwing light upon the obscure epoch of the false Messiahs and on the origin of Hasidism.
The impetus issuing from Ha-Shahar was visible on all fields of Judaism. The number of Hebrew readers increased considerably, and the interest in Hebrew literature grew. Though it was a purely scientific work, laying bare the successive steps in the natural development of Rabbinic law, it produced a veritable revolution in the attitude of the orthodox of the backward countries.
Dreaming of the redemption of his people, he paved the way for the Zionistic movement, which spread with tremendous rapidity after his death. And his sincerity and ability were repaid in the only coin the poor possess in love and admiration. Pilgrimages were made, sometimes on foot, to behold the editor of Ha-Shahar and the author of Ha-Toëh. The greatest journalists in St.
With the extinction of Ha-Shahar we arrive at the end of the task we have set ourselves, of following up a phase of literary evolution. Modern Hebrew literature, for a century the handmaiden of one preponderating idea, the humanist idea in all its various applications, henceforth enters upon a new phase of its development.
The clash of opinions and tendencies encouraged by the authority and the tolerance of Smolenskin was fruitful of results. Ha-Shahar had made itself the centre of a synthetic movement, progressive and national, which was gradually revealing the outline of its plan and aims.
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