IN GERMANY

THE MEASSEFIM


The intellectual emancipation of the Jews in Germany anticipated their
political and social emancipation. That is a truth generally
acknowledged. Long secluded from all foreign ideas, confined within
religious and dogmatic bounds, German Judaism was a sharer in the
physical and social misery of the Judaism of Slavic countries. The
philosophic and tolerant ideas in vogue at the end of the eighteenth
century startled it somewhat out of its torpor. In the measure in which
those ideas gained a foothold in the communities, conditions, at least
in the larger centres, took on a comfortable aspect, with more or less
assurance of permanent well-being. The first contact of the ghetto with
the enlightened circles of the day gave the impetus to a marked movement
toward an inner emancipation. Associations of _Maskilim_
("intellectuals") were formed at Berlin, Hamburg, and Breslau. "The
Seekers of the Good and the Noble" (_Shohare ha-Tob weha-Tushiyah_)
should be mentioned particularly. They were composed of educated men
familiar with Occidental culture, and animated by the desire to make the
light of that culture penetrate to the heart of the provincial
communities. These "intellectuals" entered the lists against religious
fanaticism and casuistic methods, seeking to replace them by liberal
ideas and scientific research. Two schools, headed respectively by the
philosopher Mendelssohn and the poet Wessely, had their origin in this
movement--the school of the _Biurists_, deriving their name from
the _Biur_, a commentary on the Bible, and the school of the
_Meassefim_, from _Meassef_, "Collector." [Footnote: A