great confidence in it. As for a Russification of the Jewish masses,
there could be no question of that, at a time when Russian civilization
and language were themselves in an embryonic state.

It was only when the first Alexander came to the throne that the reforms
planned by the government began to make an impression upon the distant
ghetto. A special commission was instituted for the purpose of studying
the conditions under which the Jews were living, and how to ameliorate
them materially and intellectually. The first close contact between Jews
and Russians took place in the little town of Shklow, inhabited almost
entirely by Jews. It was an important station on the route from the
capital to Western Europe, and the Jews were afforded an opportunity of
entering into relations with men of mark, both Russians and strangers,
who passed through on their way to St. Petersburg. [Footnote: As early
as 1780 a Hebrew ode was published on the occasion of Empress Catherine
II's passing through Shklow. A printing press was set up there about
1777, and it was at Shklow that a litterateur, N. H. Schulmann, made the
first attempt to found a weekly political journal in Hebrew, announcing
it in his edition of the _Zeker Rab_.] A circle of literary men
under the influence of the Meassefim was founded there, and a curious
literary document issued thence testifies to the hopes aroused by the
reform projects planned in the reign of Alexander I for the improvement
of the condition of the Jews. It is a pamphlet bearing the title _Kol
Shaw'at Bat-Yehudah_, or _Sinat ha-Dat_ ("The Loud Voice of the
Daughter of Judah", or "Religious Hatred"), and published, in Shklow in
1803, in Hebrew and Russian. The author, whose name was Lob Nevakhovich,
protests energetically, in behalf of truth and humanity, against the
contemptuous treatment accorded the Jews. [Footnote: Grandfather of the
well-known scholar E. Metchnikoff, of the Pasteur Institute.]