a thesis by Flora Jane Satt - Shealtiel

Flora Jane Satt—annotated by Miles SaltielOne of the important leaders of this Haskalah movement withinthe Pale was an idealistic Volhynian, Isaac Baer Levinsohn, knownas the “Moses Mendelsohn” of Russia. Alexander II’s program ofsocial amalgamation. Clearly, the children of Jacob and MalkaMilstein inherited a view of the Jewish problem quite differentfrom their neighbors in Brest, and it was these same children who,by the 1860’s and 1870’s led the Maskilim of the province who favoredsecular education, a moderate religious position and the“back-to-the-land” dream.By 1874, with the failure of the Czar’s agricultural colonies and the‘drift toward oppression’ of the Jews, it became apparent that theMaskilim program would achieve very little. The sudden change ofCzar Alexander II’s policies and open anti-Semitism began withthe Law of 1874 which restored the unfair methods of juvenileconscription for the Jewish population. The attempts at culturalfusion through secular education were recognized as utter failuresand by 1873 a ukase closed the two rabbinical schools at Vilna andZhitomir. Also the “melammeds” renewed their attacks on the“assimilationists”.Jacob and Malka Milstein’s youngest son, Isaac Leib, was forced tobecome an “only son” to a childless couple named Shames in orderto escape the dreaded quarter-century of military service, a threatthat had not menaced the Milstein family for many generationssince they were of the exempt estate. Their eldest son, Saul Baer,had experienced during his lifetime the pendulum swing of governmentattitude toward Jews; first, liberalism, then, persecutionintensified after the Polish Insurrection of 1863. As a child Saulimbibed the ideas of Haskalah enthusiastically, and as a youngman he prepared to become a “Crown Rabbi” himself by attendingthe seminary at Zhitomir. He had encouraged his younger brotherBenjamin to apply for the agricultural colony in Ekaterinaslav andhad watched him, several cousins and friends go off in high spiritsto farm--only to see most of them return discouraged and beaten9