time, created by the same God, children of one Father, and did not hate
each other because we are at variance in some views!" This exclamation
of Doctor Hurwitz[19] found an echo in the works of the other Maskilim
that wrote in Hebrew, but more especially of those who used a European
language. They were deeply interested in whatever marked a step forward
in their country's civilization. The opening of a gymnasium in Mitau
(1775) was a joyful occasion, which inspired Hurwitz's Hebrew muse, and
at the centennial celebration of the surrender of Riga to Peter the
Great (July 4, 1810), the craving of the Jewish heart, avowed in a
German poem, was expressed "in the name of the local Hebrew community to
their Christian compatriots." The last stanza runs as follows:

Grant us, who, like you, worship the God above,
Also on earth to enjoy equality with you!
To-day, while your hearts are open to love,
Let us seal our happiness with your love, too![20]

This desire for naturalization brought with it an attempt at
"Russification." To show the beauty of the Russian language, Baruch
Czatzskes of Volhynia translated some of the poems of Khersakov into
Hebrew, and others published manuals for the study of Russian and
Polish.[21] Among the first books issued from the newly-established
printing-press in Shklov, the centre of Jewish wealth, refinement, and
culture at that time, was the _Zeker Rab_ with a German translation
(1804). In an appendix thereto the Shklov Maskilim announced their
intention to publish a weekly, the first in the Hebrew tongue. Yiddish
was also resorted to as a medium for educating the masses, and as early
as 1813 some Vilna Jews applied to the Government for permission to
publish a paper in that language, though it was not until ten years
later (1823-1824) that a Yiddish periodical, Der Beobachter an der