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Tormented by such reflections, Esther scarcely listened to the music. Still less, it may be believed, did she listen to the Baron, who held one of his "Anchel's" hands in both his, talking to her in his horrible Polish-Jewish accent, a jargon which must be as unpleasant to read as it is to hear spoken.
When, in 1859, the Warsaw Gazette published an anti-Semitic article in which the Jews were branded as foreigners, the Polish-Jewish patriots, including the banker Kronenberg, a convert, were stung to the quick, and they came forward with violent protests. This led to passionate debates in the Polish press, generally unfriendly to the Jews.
Two other Polish-Jewish revolutionaries, Lubliner and Hollaenderski, shared all the miseries of the refugees and, while in exile, indulged in reflections concerning the destiny of their brethren at home. The community counted among its members several Jews.
A philosopher was needed, one who should solve the problem of the existence of the Jewish people and its proper sphere from the vantage- ground of authoritative knowledge. Such a philosopher arose in Galicia itself. Krochmal led the sad life of the Polish-Jewish scholar void of pleasures and filled to overflowing with privation and suffering. His whole time was consecrated to Jewish science.
The whole year 1861 stood, at least as far as the Polish capital was concerned, under the sign of Polish-Jewish "brotherhood." At the synagogue service held in memory of the historian Lelevel Jastrow preached a patriotic sermon.
Chayyim Malach, Judah Chassid, and other Galician mystics, in the second decade of the eighteenth century brought down upon themselves a rabbinical decree of excommunication. At the same time a much more profound movement, instinct with greater vitality, made its appearance among the Polish-Jewish masses, a movement rooted in their social and spiritual organization.
One of the most prominent contributors to that journal, Ludwig Gumplovich, the author of a monograph on the history of the Jews in Poland, who subsequently made a name for himself as a sociologist, and, after his conversion to Christianity, received a professorship at an Austrian university, opened his series of articles on Polish-Jewish history with the following observation: "The fact that the Jews had a history was their misfortune in Europe.... For their history inevitably presupposes an isolated life severed from that of the other nations.
Our conscience bade us to attend to the betterment of this most down-trodden part of our population at the earliest possible moment." It is worthy of note that the wave of Polish-Jewish patriotism did not spread beyond Warsaw.
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