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Updated: June 7, 2025
Like English classic poetry, it is pretty in form but poor in spirit. The element of nationality, or distinctiveness, the life-giving and soul-uplifting element in all poetry, as Delitzsch justly maintains it to be, was lacking in the German Maskilim, anxious for naturalization as they were.
There is, first of all, Jedidiah, the common type of the Maskil, working zealously for culture, spreading truth and light in all the circles he can reach, dreaming of a Judaism, just, enlightened, exalted. Then there are the ardent young apostles, like that noble friend of Joseph, Gideon, most enlightened and most tolerant of Maskilim.
With this poem we bring to a close the analysis of Gordon's satires. It shows at their best the dreams, the aspirations, the struggles of the Maskilim, in their opposition to the aims of the reactionaries and the moral and material confusion in which Slavic Judaism wallowed.
The Maskilim of the "forties" and "fifties" were antiquated in the "sixties" and "seventies." They began to see that the fears of the orthodox and their denunciations of Haskalah were not altogether unfounded. A young generation had grown up who had never experienced the strife and struggles of the fathers, and who lacked the submissive temper that had characterized their ancestors.
Encouraged by the success of the new ideas, the Maskilim became more aggressive in their struggle with obscurantism. They ventured to expose the Tzaddiks who scattered the seeds of superstition, to ridicule the ignorance and credulity of the masses, and occasionally went so far as to complain of the burdensome ceremonial discipline, hinting at the need of moderate religious reforms.
As if to counteract this demoralizing tendency, a new sect, known as Hasidim, originating in Lithuania and headed by Judah Hasid of Dubno and Hayyim Malak, taught its devotees to hasten the advent of the Messiah by doing penance for the sins of Israel. Time was when all writers on the subject, usually Maskilim, thought it their duty to cast a stone at Hasidism.
The struggle between these anti-Maskilim and the Maskilim had ceased in the golden days of Alexander II. But the clouds were gathering and overspreading the camp of Haskalah. The days in which the seekers after light united in one common aim were gone. Russification, assimilation, universalism, and nihilism rent asunder the ties that held them together.
Beginning with this time a new class appeared among the Jews of the ghetto, the class of the Maskilim, or men of lay learning and letters, a class with which the Rabbis have since had to reckon, with which, indeed, they have had to share their authority over the people. So far as the Hebrew language is concerned, the Meassefim succeeded in purifying it and restoring it to its Biblical form.
Mapu has without a doubt exaggerated reality, and frequently to the detriment of truth. Nevertheless they remain veracious types. On the other hand, he has not succeeded so well in the creation of the Maskilim type. The new generation, the enlightened friends of culture, are puppets without life, without personality, who speak and move only for the purpose of glorifying the "Divine Haskalah".
He set the example by writing, not only on the most important Hebrew books, Biblical, Talmudic, and Cabbalistic, but also on algebra, geometry, trigonometry, astronomy, and grammar. And his example served as an impetus and encouragement to the Maskilim in spreading knowledge among their coreligionists. Such was the man who led the crusade against the converts to Hasidism.
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