Zionist library for boys and girls · 1908-01-01 · 5 · p. Seite 2

~2such ad easy thing. The maskil had to he prepared to take up a hitter fight against the orthodox Rabbis and very often his hooks were forhiclden, and the young person who nevertheless dared to read them was punished severely, Peretz Smolenskin, when he grew up also became a fighter for the Haskala ideas. He too desired with all his heart to effect a change in Jewish life and to introduce reforms in the means of education, and to alter the whole outlook of the Chetto-Jews« But he differed very much from those Ha ska! a teachers, who preached "enlightenment", for the sake of Assimilation, He opposed those who wanted to shake off their Jewishness and become one with the other peoples. Many Jews who were inspired by the ideas which came from the West (see Moses Mendelsohn) thought that their Western brethren were much better off materially even because they knew more, because they learned more, and they forgot to see that Western Europe was at that time a much more advanced country than Russia. Smolensk in was a journalist and a novelist." He