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The Haskalah Movement in Russia by Jacob S. Raisin
page 33 of 309 (10%)
then fired at the children, and when the women fell from the trees at
the horrible sight, he presented each with a piece of money, and thanked
them for the pleasure they had afforded him.[2]

In the cities, though the pan's excesses were bound to be somewhat
bridled there, the lot of the Jews was equally gloomy. They were treated
like outlaws, were forbidden to engage in all but a few branches of
trade or handicraft, or to live with Christians, or employ them as
servants. In 1720 they were prohibited to build new synagogues or even
repair the old ones. Sometimes the synagogues were locked "by order
of ..." until a stipulated amount of money bought permission to reopen
them. We of to-day can hardly imagine what pain a Jew of that time
experienced when he hastened to the house of God on one of the great
Holy Days only to find its doors closed by the police!

Their status was no better in Lithuania and Great Russia. The accession
of Ivan IV, the Terrible (1533-1584), dealt their former comparative
prosperity a blow from which it has not recovered to this day. As if to
remove the impression of liberalism made by his predecessor and
obliterate from memory his amicable relations with Doctor Leo, de
Guizolfi, and Chozi Kolos, this monster czar, with the fiendishness of a
Caligula, but lacking the accomplishments of his heathen prototype,
delighted to invent tortures for inoffensive Jews. He expelled them from
Moscow, and deprived them of the right of travel from place to place.
During his occupancy of Polotsk he ordered all Jews residing there
either to become converts to Greek Catholicism or choose between being
drowned in the Dwina and burnt at the stake.

But even the removal of the terrible czar and the dawn of the century of
reason and humanitarianism failed to effect a change for the better in
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