Chapter 176 - The Beginning of the Haskalah Movement's Takeover of Jewish Life

00:00 We continue with the story of Rabbi Yitzchak Aizik of Vitebsk’s uncle, Zalman Satsker. And this is his story: I spent about five or six days at the Drutza estate [?], and I was there for Shabbos Chazon as well. For Shabbos Nachamu, I went to a place called the Yanta estate, home of a Jewish leaseholder renowned for his righteousness and generosity, who honored and cared for Torah scholars. When I arrived, I saw many guests there, among them many great Torah scholars and geonim. I also saw that same brilliant scholar with the remarkable memory [?] with whom I had earlier gone to the Karnitzky estate. As I learned, he had been there the whole time, studying with one of the estate owner’s sons at his request. There was a large house with spacious rooms for guests. The guests ate, drank, and slept there, except on Shabbos, when all the guests ate together with the wealthy man, his sons, and his son-in-law. There was a magnificent large beis midrash, with large rooms set aside for study and many books. On Shabbos, after Maariv, we all entered a large room where tables were set with every good thing. Many silver lamps stood on the tables, in addition to the brass lamps hanging in the room. The wealthy leaseholder, his son-in-law, and his three sons sat at the head of the table. The rest of us sat around the tables. We made Kiddush over wine and ate fish and meat for the meal. During the meal, the wealthy man shared some Torah insights. He was not a great Torah scholar, but he was knowledgeable. He also offered some interpretations of Aggadah that were pleasant to hear. I stayed at the Yanta estate for about a month. I applied myself to my studies with great diligence, and a few days after my arrival I was surprised that I no longer saw that brilliant scholar with the remarkable memory. I asked about him. They told me he had gone to the yeshiva in Mezhibuzh, and the wealthy man’s son, who studied with him, had gone along. They remained at the yeshiva in Mezhibuzh for the entire month of Tishrei. Now, while I was at the Yanta estate, Yitzchak Aizik’s uncle relates, I did not know what the

02:40 yeshiva in Mezhibuzh was, and many others like me did not know its name or what it was about. But later, when I was living in Brisk, people began telling me that at the far end of the country, in the town of Mezhibuzh, a man had emerged who called himself the Baal Shem Tov. He performed wonders through incantations, and a number of people, including Torah scholars, were gathering around him. He had formed a group with strange customs. Afterward, I heard people also beginning to speak against the wealthy innkeeper of the Yanta estate, saying that he too belonged to that group. They said that his hospitality on such a broad scale was at the instruction of the man who called himself the Baal Shem Tov, who had commanded him to welcome guests in general and Torah scholars in particular. The righteous, learned gaon and kabbalist Rabbi Zevulun Shimon Prisha ruled that all members of that group, with their instigator and seducer at their head, should be excommunicated and shunned as rebels. Rabbi Zevulun Shimon Prisha conveyed his opinion to the Council of the Lands in Vilna and Slutsk. While I was in Brisk, Zalman Satsker continues, I heard that among those Torah scholars were great geonim who had, may Hashem protect us, fallen into the trap of that belief. Some of them traveled among Jewish settlements, ensnaring innocent souls. Then I understood that the clever, furtive fellow was one of that group. Twenty-five years later, the nature of the group became widely known: many of its members were great Torah scholars, even geonim, who were spreading throughout the country, especially through the yeshivas, to ensnare souls. And many of the geonim of the Council of the Lands in Brisk, Vilna, and Slutsk issued a proclamation against the Baal Shem Tov of Mezhibuzh and his students. Now my learned uncle concludes his story: You understand well why your father, the gaon, did not want to send you to one of the yeshivas. He was afraid you might, G-d forbid, fall into the snares of that group, may Hashem protect us. And Rabbi Yitzchak Aizik himself concludes his account, saying: “Give thanks to Hashem, for He is good.” In the second year of my journey from Smilovitch, at about this time,

05:25 I saw the great luminary, the Alter Rebbe, when he came to Minsk to debate the leading misnagdim, and I formed a strong bond with him. So, to recap this remarkable story: Yitzchak Aizik of Vitebsk’s uncle, an immense gaon, tells his story and concludes it with the tremendous opposition to the Baal Shem Tov and the whole of Chassidus. And Yitzchak Aizik himself, a great gaon in his own right, relates how he came to recognize that Chassidus was the truth, that the Alter Rebbe was a true leader, and how he became attached to him. Now we turn to another aspect of a movement that existed in those days, a movement whose aim was to shake and undermine the very foundations of Judaism. It was called the Haskalah movement. We now enter that story. From ancient times, even before the Council of the Four Lands was established, and especially after its establishment, the rabbis of the Jewish people—the great Torah scholars, G-d-fearing men, and leaders of the generation—alone had the authority and the say in all communal and public affairs. Together with the leading members of the community, they would stand before the king and his ministers on every matter concerning the Jewish people’s moral and Torah standing, as well as their economic circumstances. But in 5524, 1764, a large number of the rabbis, great in Torah and fear of Heaven, came out against the approach of our teacher the Baal Shem Tov and his holy successor, the Maggid of Mezritch. Through this opposition and division, they created a rift among the Jewish people. At that time, the affliction of the Berlin Haskalah was also spreading. It had been started by Mendelssohn and his associate, the linguist and grammarian Wessely. Though they conducted themselves with a certain measure of fear of Heaven, the aspiration toward Haskalah spread among the Jewish people. People then cast off the authority of the rabbis, and at the same time began to be lax in observing practical mitzvos and to treat the customs of the Jewish people with disdain. The dissolution of the Council of the Four Lands in 5524 caused the great Torah scholars and G-d-fearing men worry and sorrow. They worried about the moral condition

08:30 of our Jewish brethren, which had deteriorated terribly without shepherds and leaders to watch over them carefully, as there had been when the Council of the Four Lands existed. The great Torah scholars therefore decided to place responsibility for supervising and guiding the holy communities on a select few of the leading Torah scholars. In Vilna, the mantle of guidance and leadership was placed on the Gaon of Vilna, of blessed memory. The Gaon of Vilna, our master Rabbi Eliyahu, was then forty-four years old. He was born on 15 Nissan, during Pesach, in the year 5480. For some thirty-five years he had applied himself to study with unparalleled success and diligence, twenty hours a day. Torah, fear of Heaven, and wholeheartedness were his life’s work. Out of his great humility, he did not want a position of leadership, not even a rabbinic post. But he was compelled to accept responsibility for guiding the community and its rabbinical court, with the principal matters to be decided according to his judgment. Our master Rabbi Eliyahu, the Gaon of Vilna, was not only an extraordinary Torah genius, with astonishing mastery of Torah as a whole—the Mishnah, the Babylonian and Jerusalem Talmuds, Midrashim, the holy Zohar, and works of Kabbalah, Jewish thought, and mussar. He also loved wisdom and science. He said that the roots of all the natural sciences and intellectual disciplines come from the Torah, and that the Torah has great need of them, since all branches of knowledge are limbs of the Torah. The Gaon of Vilna used to say that all fields of knowledge are needed for our holy Torah and are contained within it. To the extent that a person lacks knowledge in those fields, he will lack a hundredfold in Torah wisdom, for Torah and wisdom are joined together. So, as we said, the Gaon of Vilna very much wanted to increase knowledge among the Jewish people in addition to Torah knowledge. He himself studied astronomy, medicine, music, and other subjects. He also called for several works of knowledge from the nations of the world to be translated into the holy tongue, so that knowledge would increase among the Jewish people and the nations would not raise a clamor against us, asking, “Where is your wisdom?” He thought that such a situation would constitute a desecration of Hashem’s name. But the Gaon of Vilna, in his great righteousness and wholeheartedness, measured

11:17 Each person according to his own nature: for him, “the beginning of wisdom was the fear of Hashem.” He therefore did not see the danger hidden in the growing study of the sciences. It was terribly distressing that the doors to secular learning were opened wide among the outstanding Torah scholars in Vilna in the years 5534 to 5537—that is, 1774 to 1777—during the Vilna Gaon’s lifetime, through his brother, the gaon Rabbi Yissachar, and his son, the gaon Rabbi Avraham, z"l. This is what happened. For many years, the Vilna Gaon, Rabbeinu Eliyahu, expressed his great distress to his students, his esteemed brother Rabbi Yissachar, and his esteemed son Rabbi Avraham that the Five Books of the Torah had not been translated into spoken Yiddish with a clear, orderly explanation that everyone could understand. The gaonim—his brother and his son—were not only exceptionally learned in Torah but also widely knowledgeable in various fields and spoke several languages: Polish, German, and French. When they heard that in Berlin there was an outstanding Torah scholar, careful in his observance of the mitzvos, who had translated the Five Books of the Torah into clear German, they chose five of the leading students, among them the gaon Rabbi Moshe Meisels, who later became a fervent chossid, and sent them to Berlin to learn more about this Torah scholar and copy his translation. The students remained in Berlin for over a year. They copied many pages of the Torah translation and brought them to the gaonim mentioned above. The translation pleased them, and they praised it to the Vilna Gaon. With his permission, Torah scholars then made several dozen copies and distributed them among learned people, and set times for public study before the wider community. The spread of Mendelssohn’s translation among Torah scholars and learned people, besides reviving the light and radiance of the Torah’s holiness, also served as a bridge for several dozen gifted Torah scholars

13:45 from the study halls of Vilna, Shklov, Slutsk, Brisk, and Minsk. They went to Berlin to learn German and study medicine, astronomy, and engineering. Among them were Baruch Schick, Binyamin Zalman Rivlish [?] of Shklov, Menashe of Ilya, Pinchas Eliyahu of Vilna, author of Sefer Habris, and the renowned grammarian Rabbi Shlomo of Dubno. While Rabbi Shlomo of Dubno was in Berlin, Mendelssohn proposed that he teach his son grammar and write a commentary on his translation. He offered to pay him well, in addition to providing him with respectable lodging and meals in his home. So the grammarian Shlomo of Dubno spent about a year in Mendelssohn’s home and completed his commentary on Mendelssohn’s translation. But as they had agreed, the commentary was Shlomo of Dubno’s private property. Mendelssohn hoped that if Shlomo remained in his home a while longer, they would come to terms and he could buy the rights to the commentary. Who was this Shlomo of Dubno, with whose help Mendelssohn began spreading the Haskalah movement? Shlomo of Dubno was a student of the well-known gaon, chossid, and renowned wonder-worker, the righteous Rabbi Naftali, who headed the beis din in Dubno. Rabbi Naftali, who was the head of the city—the head of the beis din—was one of the Baal Shem Tov’s students. At that time, however, Rabbi Naftali became very ill, and the doctors advised him to travel to a specialist in Offenbach, near Frankfurt am Main. The gaon and tzaddik Rabbi Pinchas, author of the Hafla’ah, who in fact later became a student of the Maggid of Mezritch, sent several of his students to greet Rabbi Naftali and assist him throughout his stay in Offenbach. When his treatment was complete and the doctor permitted him to return home, Rabbi Pinchas Horowitz traveled personally to greet him and ask him to visit his yeshiva in Frankfurt am Main and honor the glory of the Jewish people in the community of

16:28 Frankfurt with his visit. When Rabbi Naftali returned home, he traveled through Berlin and stayed there for several days to rest from the journey. His student Shlomo of Dubno, who was then in Berlin, came to him and helped him. In the course of their conversation, Shlomo happened to tell his teacher about his stay in Berlin, and also told him about Mendelssohn and his translation. We do not know what Rabbi Naftali said to his student Shlomo of Dubno. We do know that a few days later, Shlomo left Mendelssohn’s home and traveled to Vilna. He knew that the Vilna Gaon and his son-in-law, the gaon Uri Shraga Feivel, were fond of studying grammar, and that the gaon Rabbi Yissachar, the Vilna Gaon’s brother, had written his book on the Torah according to the rules of language and grammar. So Shlomo of Dubno hoped to win their favor and publish the commentary on the Torah that he had written while at Mendelssohn’s home. The Vilna Gaon and his distinguished students received Shlomo of Dubno warmly. A wealthy man named Yosef Peseles, who was also a relative of the Vilna Gaon, gave him fine lodging in his home. And the gaonim Rabbi Chaim of Volozhin and his brother Rabbi Zalmele gave their approbations to his commentary. So we see how the Haskalah movement was slowly making inroads into Jewish tradition, little by little, without anyone noticing. The renowned gaon Rabbi Zalman of Volozhin, on whom the Gaon had laid his hand—that is, the Vilna Gaon had laid his hand on him—was deeply devoted to explaining Scripture according to its plain meaning and studied the translations with the utmost precision. This is what he wrote about Shlomo of Dubno and his commentary: “The words of his delightful commentary are very dear to me, for he has drawn on all the early commentators who follow the path of the plain meaning.” So Rabbi Zalman of Volozhin, in writing that approbation, called on people to support the scholar from Dubno and enable him to compose commentaries

19:09 on Nevi’im and Kesuvim as well. Moving on. The preacher in Vilna, Rabbi Yechezkel Feivel, who was the Vilna Gaon’s right-hand man and was respected by all his contemporaries for his fear of Heaven and renowned for his great asceticism, rebuked in his sermons the Torah scholars who devoted too little time to studying Scripture. He urged them to set aside regular times to study Scripture with commentators who followed its plain meaning and to distance themselves from fanciful people who distorted the Torah on the basis of esoteric wisdom—that is, on the basis of Kabbalah. In other words, opposition to Kabbalah, and the study of Chumash and Nevi’im was beginning to move away from the way Torah ought to be studied. At that time, young Torah scholars grew increasingly eager to know Lashon Hakodesh and studied it with tremendous diligence. From time to time, the gaon Rabbi Yissachar, the Vilna Gaon’s brother, arranged gatherings of language scholars to speak to the young men in praise of the Hebrew language, Lashon Hakodesh, which stirred their hearts. Perhaps it was not “the Hebrew language” but Lashon Hakodesh, which only later, to our sorrow, people began calling Hebrew. At one gathering, the well-known elderly grammarian Shlomo Hena, author of Tzohar Hateivah, who was then a guest in Vilna, was present. He spoke about the study of language, expressed a deep love for the sacred writings, and encouraged his listeners to devote themselves to studying the language in which they were written. At that time, a society of young men called Lovers of the Holy Tongue was also founded. Among them were gifted individuals who tried writing poems and various literary pieces of their own, until they succeeded in writing long stories in clear language. From then on, the Berlin Haskalah slipped into Lithuania—in other words, Mendelssohn and his friends were succeeding in gaining control of Jewish life. The students of the Maggid of Mezritch received a tradition concerning an event that took place in 5503, when the Baal Shem Tov called together the senior members of his holy circle of students and told them the following story. This is what the Baal Shem Tov related: In a town in Ashkenaz—that is, present-day Germany—there was a sofer STaM named Menachem. This Menachem was

21:50 He was G-d-fearing and an outstanding scholar, and Hakadosh Boruch Hu gave him a son with fine abilities. He studied Scripture, Mishnah, and Gemara with him. But this Menachem did not believe in Kabbalah. More than that, he scorned Kabbalah in his heart, and often disparaged it aloud, speaking ill of the holy Zohar as well. This had a harmful effect on his son’s faith. When Menachem passed away, his orphaned twelve-year-old son longed to study Torah. He left his hometown and came to another town in Ashkenaz. There, in addition to studying Torah, he also took an interest in other sciences. The Samech-Mem—that is, the sitra achra, the Satan—tempted him and succeeded, for he had chosen him to lead the Jewish people astray with false beliefs and to create a breach among them by raising up people who would deny Hashem and His Torah. And anyone who follows his path according to our way—that is, the way of Chassidus, the Baal Shem Tov continued and concluded—“will be saved from him, from his students, and from his students’ students.” When word spread in 5536 of the publication of Mendelssohn’s translation, the senior students of the Baal Shem Tov and the students of the Maggid came out against studying the translation and its commentary. As a safeguard, they also opposed the study of grammar and made sure that chassidim studied Tanach only with Rashi’s commentary. This caused a great uproar among the Torah scholars in the Misnagdim camp. In other words, we see here an attempt by the Haskalah movement to take over—and not merely an attempt, but, unfortunately, the beginning of its success. May Hashem help.