Investor Presentaiton
in its most radical form, the Haskalah represented "the secular educated Jewish intellectual, who,
alienated from traditional Judaism and isolated from Russian society, sought salvation in
revolution."19
Haberer demonstrates the link between the Haskalah movement and the 1844
Jewish educational reform law when he notes that "within a decade of the new law on Jewish
education, the Pale of Settlement was spun with a network of Haskalah-based schools,
irrevocably rooting the Haskalah in Russia's still predominately traditionalist community.”20
Though the traditional Jewish community was still predominant, the new education system paved
the way for significant levels of Jewish involvement in revolutionary activity in the years to
follow.
Haberer concludes that "the end result of this institutionalization of the Haskalah was the
formation of a full-fledged Russian-Jewish intelligentsia that was to shape modern Jewish
cultural life well into the 1870s."21 Jewish involvement in notable revolutionary movements in
the late 1880s demonstrates this impact. For example, by the 1880s, “Jews made up about 17
percent of all male and 27.3 percent of all female activists of the People's Will," a revolutionary
terrorist group in the late Russian Empire. 22 By 1905, Jews often represented large percentages of
political deportees and prisoners (such as 37 percent in January 1905 compared to 41.9 percent
of Russians).23 Inna Shtakser also notes the importance of the Haskalah in creating the secular
Jewish community. She argues, "while the Haskalah was about combining Jewish religion with
19 Ibid, 4-5.
20 Ibid, 5.
21 Ibid, 10.
22 Slezkine, The Jewish Century, 151.
23 Ibid.
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