Jewish soul they could not speak, and they could not formulate a new
ideal to take the place of the tottering traditions of the past and the
faltering hope of a Messianic time. An entire generation was to pass
before historical Judaism came into its own again, through the creation
of a pure "Science of Judaism" and the conception of the mission of the
Jewish people.

Nevertheless the movement called into being by the Meassefim caused
considerable stir. For the first time the Rabbinic tradition, petrified
by age and ignorance, was assailed, in the sacred language at that, and
the attack was launched in the name of science and life. For the first
time the _Haskalah_, Hebrew humanism, declared war on whatever in
the past trammelled the modern evolution of Judaism. In vain the
Meassefim, save the exceptional few, refrained scrupulously from violent
declamation against primary dogmatic principles. In vain their master
Mendelssohn, contravening good sense and historical Judaism, went so far
as to proclaim these principles sacrosanct. The secularization of Jewish
literature and Jewish life had made a breach in the ghetto wall.
Thereafter nothing could oppose the march of new ideas. The Rabbis of
the period saw it clearly; hence the stubbornness of their opposition.

Beginning with this time a new class appeared among the Jews of the
ghetto, the class of the _Maskilim_, or men of lay learning and
letters, a class with which the Rabbis have since had to reckon, with
which, indeed, they have had to share their authority over the people.

So far as the Hebrew language is concerned, the Meassefim succeeded in
purifying it and restoring it to its Biblical form. Wessely and Mendes
obliterated the last vestiges of the Middle Ages, and many of the
litterateurs of the period bequeathed models of the classic style to