JACOB S. RAISIN.

E. Las Vegas, N. Mex.,

Thanksgiving Day, 1909.




CHAPTER I

THE PRE-HASKALAH PERIOD

?-1648


"There is but one key to the present," says Max Müller, "and that is the
past." To understand fully the growth and historical development of a
people's mind, one must be familiar with the conditions that have shaped
its present form. It would seem necessary, therefore, to introduce a
description of the Haskalah movement with a rapid survey of the history
of the Russo-Polish Jews from the time of their emergence from obscurity
up to the middle of the seventeenth century.

Among those who laid the foundations for the study of this almost
unexplored department of Jewish history, the settlement of Jews in
Russia and their vicissitudes during the dark ages, the most prominent
are perhaps Isaac Bär Levinsohn, Abraham Harkavy, and Simon Dubnow.
There is much to be said of each of these as writers, scholars, and men.