Trudy Gold
The Hebrew Enlightenment: Russian Style and its Consequences
Trudy Gold | The Hebrew Enlightenment Russian Style and its Consequences | 06.23.22
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- Well, good evening, everyone, and welcome, wherever you are. Tonight, I’m talking about the Haskalah, the Enlightenment, and I’m talking about it in Russia. But in many ways, this to me is part of the crux of modernity. What did it mean to be a Jew? Can we have the first slide, please? Thank you. Now, important to look at the map of the Pale of Settlement, and you can see that it’s a vast area. It’s almost the size of Europe, but it only makes up 4% of the Russian Empire. And you can see from the dark shading, that is where you have the highest density of Jewish population. And that is of course around what later became Poland. But if you go to the borderlands, I want you to see the borderlands. The borderlands with Russia. This is the Russian Empire, remember. The borderlands with Prussia, Germany, and of course, particularly with the Habsburg Empire. And much of the filtering of the Enlightenment ideas is going to come from those borderlands, from merchants who travel between the two. So what we need to do, I’ll give you a minute to look at that map, and I’m trying to find a really big map of the Pale, which shows all the towns and cities, because I know so many of you trace your ancestors to this region. And it’s huge, that’s the point.
But you will see in certain areas, Jews make up a very large percentage of the population. Cities like Warsaw, they’re 33%. In Lodz, they’re 25%. And in many of the shtetl, in the Ukraine, in Belarus, in Little Russia, they would make up up to 90% of the town or village, because you needed the community. And of course, the period we’re looking at now, I want to begin, I talked with you about the reign of Alexander II, and of course it’s in his reign that we make inroads into the Haskalah. So that’s really just setting the map for you. And Judi, can we come to the first slide, please? And there again is Moses Mendelssohn. Now, Moses Mendelssohn, I’m sure most of you know this off by heart now, he is really the first European Jew to go from the world of the ghetto to becoming an important figure in German philosophy. And he’s going to set a trend. And please remember, Prussia, the Habsburg Empire. So consequently, and the merchants, and later on, of course, the post, the development of ideas, ideas spread. Now, Moses Mendelssohn, and I want to say this very, very carefully. He was a totally observant Jew. He kept a kosher home. He was Torah-true. However, this young genius, he comes to Berlin as a tutor to a silk merchant in the Berlin of Frederick II.
In 1762, he had issued a charter. He is a figure of the Enlightenment, but more than that, he is a pragmatist, and he wants to create a modern city with a strong economy. So he actually invites into Berlin Jews who would be useful to the state. And because he’s a figure of the Enlightenment, he allows in other Jews to allow them to live Jewish lives. And Moses Mendelssohn, he is such a character. He becomes the tutor to the children of silk merchant. And of course, we’ve already discussed this. In Berlin, there were glittering salons hosted by the wives and daughters of wealthy Jewish merchants. And the intellectuals gathered there. And Moses Mendelssohn becomes a very regular figure. He becomes entranced by the philosophy of the Enlightenment. Remember, the Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, it’s a move towards more secularism. And he dreams, he falls in love with that thin crust of German society, the Enlighteners. And he dreams that perhaps one day that can happen to the Jews. And he was the man who said, “Be a Jew at home and a man in society.” He said religion is a private affair. And And he also said there is nothing in Judaism that is not rational.
Later on, when he began to translate the Talmud into pure German, but using perfect Hebrew letters, Judi, something has appeared on my screen. Now it’s gone. Using Hebrew letters. That’s the best way to raise people up. He used the term verbessern. What he did was, in my view, he took the whole of Israel, from the poorest to the richest, from the great scholars to the beggars, to the peddlers, and he compared them with the upper echelons of German intellectual society. And he believed, he really fell in love with German culture, Bildung. And he believed that if he could raise the Jews up, verbessern, they too could be part of it. He wasn’t a political reformer. He was an attractive personality. In the end, he was known as the Jewish Socrates by the German public. And of course it was because of his life that Lessing wrote the play “Nathan the Wise.” So in certain circles in Germany, you had the notion that perhaps in the Jews, they can be redeemed. Now, the problem was that ironically, by the time Moses Mendelssohn dies, it’s three years before the French Revolution, when the Jews are plunged into the modern world in France and all the areas that Napoleon conquers. And that’s when you have the great dilemma. “Be a Jew at home and a man in your tent.”
And these ideas with the Haskalah, they spread through the Habsburg Empire, because Joseph II also issues an edict of toleration, tolerance, toleration, funny word, is it pejorative? So basically, these ideas do spread. And through the borderlands, the early Haskalah in Russia, they do spread into the empire. But it must be said, in the empire, in the Russian Empire, which of course has the bulk of the Jewish population, it doesn’t seriously make important inroads into the world of the shtetl. Now, let me make this quite clear. The majority of the Jews living in the Russian Empire, by the time you get to the middle of the 19th century, they are either Hasidic or traditional Orthodox. And they believed that the world of the Gentile was a hostile world. And even though they were poor, and yes, there was corruption, and many of the things that the Enlighteners said about the Jewish community was true. But on the other hand, if you compare it to the world of the Gentiles that they knew in the Ukraine, in Lithuania, in Belarus, et cetera, it wasn’t a world that anybody wanted. And the other point, even if you were very poor, within the Jewish tradition, on Shabbat, you are a king. And important to remember that the Jews within the Pale, the bulk of them lived according to Jewish practise. It would be impossible not to within a Jewish society.
Now, what is happening in Europe, of course, is that when Moses Mendelssohn dies, and the French Revolution leads to Napoleon, and Napoleon’s defeated many of the countries that emancipated the Jews, take away those rights for a short period, and it leads to a terrible dislocation. And what I think happens is the Jews in the main, in Germany, in the Habsburg Empire, particularly the areas to the west, it doesn’t really apply to Eastern Hungary, et cetera, those areas, the further west you go, the more the Jewish community is seduced by Paris, London, Berlin, Vienna, and rightly so. And the whole dilemma, what does it mean to be a Jew? So can we, now, the Haskalah is, as I said, it’s spread by Jewish merchants, particularly in Galicia, and also in Odessa. We’ve already spent time on Odessa. Odessa was one of the great centres of the Enlightenment. And there was actually a migration from Brody in the Habsburg Empire to Odessa. And as you already know, there are modern Jewish schools in Odessa. It’s the freest place. Also in Vilna, there’s a certain modernization. And young great scholars of great intellect, they begin to become a little bit trammeled by the confines just of the traditional text.
They begin to read of the Renaissance, they begin to read sciences, they begin to read history in Hebrew. Now, this is important. Now, of course, this group is going to respond so enthusiastically to the reforms of Alexander II, but they are aware of the problems of the Enlightenment in Europe. Because one of the things that happened in Germany is between 1815 and 1871 when Germany’s finally unified, a third of all German Jews convert. Quite often because they want that position at the university that isn’t open to Jews. You see, it’s a toleration. Even after emancipation, it was a bar, because what you’re going to see in Europe, of course, is the rise of racism that says, this is another dilemma for all peoples. If the Jews in Germany and in the Habsburg Empire are saying, “We are Jews by religion,” and then you see the development of race theory that says, “Hold on a minute, you’re not Jews by religion, you’re Jews by race.” And it did lead to a lot of conversions. Henriette Herz, who was a fascinating woman, the wife of a very wealthy doctor and banker, he’d been a disciple of Moses Mendelssohn, had a glittering salon. Heine has said of her, she wore a cross around her neck the size of her nose. Heine converted. He hoped to have a chair at Dusseldorf University. And he actually wrote, he said, “Baptism is the passport to European civilization.”
So they are aware of the problem, and the Haskalah in Russia is going to be slightly different. They argue about language, but the Haskalah in Russia, they are going to use Hebrew. So what I put down, can we see the next slide, if you don’t mind, Judi? What I’ve done for you, I hope we can see that. Can we shift it over a little bit? Yeah. Before I get onto the characters of the Haskalah, I want to look at, and remember, they’re only a small group of people. This is very important. I must emphasise this. It doesn’t touch the majority of the masses of Jews who are, of course, either Hasidic or Misnagdim opposer. And the fact that those who oppose Hasidism are just called the Misnagdim should also give you a notion of just how important the Hasidic movement was. Okay. They wanted to believe that everything within Judaism was reasonable. Consequently, they were very critical of Kabalah, the esoteric path. Remember, the Enlightenment is the Age of Reason. They were critical of the validity of Jewish custom as opposed to law. They had a horror of superstition. And when I was thinking about this, I remember a family story. When I was born, I was the first grandchild, the first niece, et cetera, in the family. And evidently, one of my great aunts placed a kame'a on my vest with a red ribbon. The kame'a, of course, is an amulet. The red ribbon is to ward off the evil spirits. This is very much from Eastern Europe. And they had a horror of superstitions. They wanted to put emphasis on the Bible, on the Hebrew Bible, and its concentration on universal values, particularly the prophets.
Because of course, if you read the prophets, Amos, Hosea, Isaiah, Ezekiel, they’re full of the notions of universal justice. “Love ye the stranger for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt.” Find out how many times that appears in the Torah. They also wanted to change the method of study. One of the problems within the Pale is that many of the teachers were very low level. The kids were not getting the kind of education they deserved. Teachers were at the bottom. Ironically, although the rabbis are greatly respected, the melamedim, particularly in the primary schools, were not very, very good. Now, something else that must be emphasised, the romantic attitude to the Hebrew language. Whereas in Germany, Moses Mendelssohn has the effrontery to criticise a local duke because he writes in French, and he said, “Why on earth don’t you use German? It’s the most beautiful of the languages.” And of course, in France, French Jews are using French. In Russia, although some of them turn to the Russian language, there is an attitude to the Hebrew language as the most valued remnant of their glorious past. You see, remember, history, the notion of history that we are a people with a tragic but glorious past. And of course, the Haskalah in Russia leads to the creation of Hebrew poetry and the study of the language. Great emphasis placed on the humanity of all of us, that the Jew is human, but so is the Gentile. And we must look for the humanity in each of us.
Now, this is fascinating. European culture belongs to everyone and participation in it is vital. If you participate in European culture, we would change the views of both Jews and Gentiles towards each other. They are not in any way negating their, these figures of the Russian Haskalah are not negating their Judaism. Not at all. What they’re saying is, they want, if you like, can I use the word purify? They want to get rid of superstition. They also believe you can study the world of European culture, and at the same time, you can study the world of the Jew. And we’re back to that question that I keep throwing at you. I don’t know the answer. What may a Jew study? I remember the great Rabbi Sacks. He was not given huge respect which he deserved from the ultra-Orthodox, because he went to Cambridge and then to Yeshiva. If he’d done it the other way round, it wouldn’t have been such a problem. Never forget, quote unquote from the Talmud, “There is wisdom amongst the Gentiles, but there is no Torah.” It’s a very contentious point. And they also dreamt of political, cultural, and social integration. And they believed eventually, particularly in the reign of Alexander II, it was an attainable goal. And don’t forget, many of these figures of the Haskalah are actually going to find as their sponsors, the wealthy merchants that I’ve already talked to you about. Wealthy families like the Ginsbergs, like the Kronenbergs, like the Poliakovs, who are prepared to sponsor figures of the Haskalah.
They always had little courts around them, because they, of course, they are part of Russian society now, and they believe it’s going to work for them. So can we look at some of the figures, please? Can we look at the first, Judi? And of course I’ve had to choose, it’s important to remember that they are not a huge number compared with the whole mass of Russian Jewry. By 1850, remember, there are three and a half million Jews in the Pale of Settlement. And please, when I’m talking about this, don’t forget that under Alexander II reign, what happens is certain Jews are allowed out of the Pale, provided they are useful to the state. And that’s why you have the Jewish communities in St. Petersburg and Odessa. Odessa was outside, sorry, Odessa in the Pale, but special circumstances also in Moscow. And these characters, some of these wealthy merchants and bankers, when I talked about it on Tuesday, they were gaining an incredible place in Russian society. They were very useful to the state, and they dressed as Russian gentlemen. They were on terms with the Russian aristocracy. They had great palaces. And they had around them these courts of the Enlightenment. So let’s look at Yitzchak Baer Levinsohn. Now, his date, he was born in the Ukraine. That’s him, Judi, thank you.
He had a very traditional education, very, very, very bright. He married in 1807. Think how early they married them off. And he was curious about the world, and he managed to teach himself languages, Russian, German, French, Latin. And he became an official interpreter for the Russian army. And he had a great desire to study. He wanted to study of the outside world. And at this stage, he certainly doesn’t want to break away. He travelled to Galicia, he goes to Brody and Tarnopol. Now, remember, they are on the edge of the Pale. Brody is in the Habsburg Empire. And he becomes acquainted with figures of the Austrian Haskalah. And in Tarnopol, he’s incredibly clever, he’s given a teaching certificate for the school of Joseph Perl in Odessa, which we’ve referred to before. In 1820, he returns to Russia. Meanwhile, he’s mastering other languages. He masters Arabic, he masters Syriac and Greek. He studies the ancient texts. And he very much took the view of Moses Mendelssohn, insofar as he looked at the whole of Israel. And his conclusion was, there needed to be an essential change in the world of Eastern European Jewry in the areas of education and employment. Now remember, when I was talking about Alexander II, I said one of the problems was that what they want to do is to push the Jews into agriculture and into being artisans. And I said that this is a really interesting development, because wealthy Jews who set up societies to help Jews, they also believed that the world of the Jew had become downgraded.
It was this whole notion of the rise of nationalism and being in touch with your native soil. And ironically, it’s going to be taken on by the kibbutzniks. And it’s still to me, a downgraded view of the Jew, because after all, what pushed the Jews into artificial occupation patterns? Was it the Jewish world? It was the Christian world who legislated as to what professions and trades Jews could enter into. And tragically, from my point of view, but remember, I’m doing something which William talked about. I’m using the hindsight of history. We know what’s going to happen. That’s the problem. But nevertheless, he did need, he did believe that he had to change the Jewish world. And he tried actually to convince the Russian authorities. He became involved with the crown schools. And he tried very hard to disseminate the ideas of reason, the ideas of the Enlightenment, but in a Jewish way. Look, he looks like a traditional Jew. But also, he was very eloquent. He was a brilliant man. And he defended the Jews against horrific accusations, because of course, the blood libel, that notorious calumny, which began in England against the Jews, and in fact, we’re having a lecture on it in a few weeks, specifically on the Norwich blood libel, by a friend of Wendy’s who was actually sheriff north of Norwich. So that should be very interesting. And he defended the Jews against blood libels in Russia and also in the Habsburg Empire. It’s fascinating how these mediaeval ideas didn’t disappear. And what is terrifying is that you find them today in certain sections of the Arab world, and in conspiracy theories, of course, that come out of Russia, South America. It doesn’t go away.
Anyway, he criticised, however, he wrote prolifically. He criticised the rabbanim. He criticised the community. He felt that they should begin to study the outside world as a way of preparation. And can we turn to the next individual, please, Judi? This is Avraham Baer Gottlober. Can we see him? Yes. His dates are 1811 to 1899. He’s born in Volhynia, which of course is on the borders of the Habsburg Empire. He came from the world of Hasidism. He was married at 14 into a Hasidic family. And not withstanding his attraction to Hasidism, another brilliant man, he became interested in the philosophy of the Haskalah. Ironically, his father, who was a Misnagdim, travelled with him to Tarnopol, again on the borderlands, and to Brody, this brilliant young man, he meets leading maskilim of Galicia, including Joseph Perl and Bezalel Stern, if you remember, he was the superintendent of the Jewish schools who had been called in by Nicholas I to set up the crown schools. However, when he returned to his family, his Hasidic in-laws, when they discovered he was playing around with the ideas of the Enlightenment, he was forced to divorce his wife. So you can imagine what that did to him. And he becomes a wanderer. He becomes a wanderer. He works as a tutor.
That’s how he keeps himself. He travels from community to community. He goes to Mezritch, the great Maggid of Mezritch, Odessa, Kishinev, Warsaw, Berdichev, community to community as a tutor, but trying to spread the ideas. He became very important in the circles, these young circles of young, idealistic Haskalah. Not very many of them yet, but they are communicating with each other. He was also proficient in Russian and German. And he translated Moses Mendelssohn’s great philosophical work “Jerusalem” into Russian. He also translated “Nathan the Wise,” Lessing’s “Parable of Toleration,” which was really the first important play in Germany where a Jew was a hero. He also translated “Goethe and Schiller.” So he’s hoping that the world of Russian Jewry can gradually embrace the world of the Enlightenment. And he begins to translate into Hebrew. This is important. He’s one of the first of the maskilim to write about Jewish history. We’re going to see, look, when he dies, he dies in 1899. In 1881, his life is going to be completely overturned by the pogroms that erupt on the death of Alexander II, and he’s going to change his mind. Can we go on, please?
This is Lev Levanda, very, very interesting fellow. He was born, again, into a very poor Jewish family. He came from Minsk, in Belarus, and I’ve mentioned that to you many times. I travelled extensively in that area. He went to one of the crown schools, then he entered the Vilna Rabbinic Yeshiva, which was one of the modern yeshivas, the three modern yeshivas. He graduates with a teacher’s diploma. He returns to Minsk. He becomes a teacher at a crown school. And he taught there until he is appointed as an advisor to the local governor. And this is now in the reign of Alexander II. And what he does, remember, Alexander II, the opening up, he assists with programmes for Jewish children to study Jewish history. He edited Russian language, state textbooks for Jewish children, the notion of education, education. And he was also a great advocate for his people. He also assisted in ritual murder trials. There was a terrible ritual murder trial in Shavl in 1861. And he was the key witness for the defence. And when he arrives in Vilna, he participated in the publication of the first Russian language Jewish journal, which was called Rassvet. It means the dawn. And it was very, very important. It’s Russian language here. And they advocated that Jewish women, I think I mentioned this too last time, that Jewish women apply Russian wet nurses.
That Russia’s opening up, let us imbibe the milk of mother Russia. He also began to write novels. These are Jewish novels appearing in a Russian language newspapers. He gives pictures of Jewish life. He’s very prolific. And his work, written in Russian, and then translated into Hebrew. First, he believed in the ratification of Eastern European Jewry. He really believed that as Alexander II was opening up, we should become part of Russian society. And of course, through the 1870s, he continues to publish journals. He becomes a very, very important figure of the Enlightenment. But of course, look, when he dies, his views are also going to change. So many of these characters, they believe it’s going to get better, that perhaps Jews can emulate what’s going on in the west. But of course, all you have to do is look at the dates and you can work out what’s going to come. Can we look at the next one, please? This is of course Judah Leib Gordon. He was one of the most important Hebrew poets of the 19th century. He came from Vilna. He started writing Hebrew poetry, very close to that small circle of maskilim. To him, the revival of Hebrew was the key. He hated Yiddish. Yiddish, the language of the jargon of the ghetto. And later on, I’m going to give a presentation on what is the language of the Jews.
His first works were on classical Jewish literature, biblical themes. He begins to write novels on biblical themes. The love between David and Michal, I think the first romantic novel in the Pale. He translates “Aesop’s Fables.” He translates La Fontaine. And by 1860s, he really is the leading poet of his generation. He believed it was possible to create a synthesis between Jewishness as a living culture and traditional European civilization. European civilization has got an awful lot to offer us. If we can take what is great in Jewish culture, we revive our Hebrew language as well, and we revive our history, and then we can meet together in European culture. Well, he also believed that Jews should turn to artisanry, agricultural, and also be loyal to the regime. This is very much within the reign of Alexander II. He was a humanist, and he believed Hebrew, the Hebrew of the Bible was the language of humanity. He also for a while served in the crown schools in Lithuania. In 1872, he moves to St. Petersburg and becomes involved in the society for the promotion of culture amongst the Jews of Russia that was funded by the Ginsberg family. More about that soon. What he wanted was positive historic Judaism. He goes a long way along that route. And he is denounced by many of the traditional rabbanim. And he was actually sentenced to exile by the Russian authorities, because they told the Russian authorities that he was a revolutionary.
And after his release, he comes back, he tries again, and he becomes the editor of Ha-Melitz, a liberal Enlightenment-based ideology. Even after 1881, he refuses to give up his liberal reform stand. And of course, you can just imagine the dilemma with the assassination of the Czar, because the Jews are scapegoated and horrific pogroms breakout. We discussed this, and of course, it led to 40% of the Jews getting out, including, my guess, three quarters of your relatives. He did believe that Palestine eventually should be the real homeland of the people, but it could only be worthwhile. Now, this is very interesting. I’m going to say this very slowly and carefully. If Jews purged of their religious tradition, they’ve got to purge that within Judaism that was custom, that within Judaism that was not acquainted to reason. Or, he said, “If the rabbanim imposed their will in Palestine, then it will become a theocracy.” And of course, he later on had huge influence on characters like Asher Ginsberg, better known to history as Ahad Ha'am, with his great dream of culture. It was Ahad Ha'am who said the dream of the Jew is to become, the Jewish homeland must become the spiritual, intellectual lifeblood of the Jewish community. It must be cultural, it must be spiritual. And out of it, out of Zion, it will radiate the diaspora and lighten up the whole world.
He was a hugely influential figure, quite a rumbustious type. Can you imagine, he was denounced by his own people. He also had a huge influence on my hero, the great Simon Dubnow now, and also on a brilliant young lawyer called Maxim Vinaver. But what he really was committed to, along with Dubnow, Jewish continuity within a liberal, multiethnic Russia. And was that ever a possible dream? I’ll be picking up that thread when we talk about the options facing the Jews later on. He died a very, very lonely spirit. Can we go on please, Judi? Now, before we do that, I want to look with you at a couple of his poems. This is, “Awake, lift up your eyes, look around you. Acknowledge, I pray you, your time and your place. The land in which now we live and are born, is it not thought to be part of Europe? Europe, the smallest of Earth’s regions, yet the greatest in all in wisdom and reason. This land of Eden, Russia, now opens its gates to you. Her sons call you brother. How long will you dwell amongst them as a guest? And why do you now affront them? Already,” remember, this is the reign of Alexander II, the house in early days. “Already they have removed the weight of suffering from your shoulders. They have lifted off the yoke from your neck. They have erased from their hearts gratuitous, hatred, and folly. They give you their hand, they greet you with peace. Raise your head high, straighten your back, and gaze with loving eyes upon them. Open your heart to wisdom and knowledge. Become an enlightened people, and speak their language. Every man of understanding should try to gain knowledge. Let others learn all manner of arts and crafts. Those who are brave should serve in the army. The farmers should buy ploughs and fields. To the treasury of the state bring your strength. Take your share of its possessions, its bounty. Be a man abroad in a Jew in your tent, a brother to your countryman, and a servant to your king.”
Can I look now, Judi, at the poem he wrote a few years later. “My enlightened brothers have acquired worldly wisdom, and are but loosely bound to their language. They scorn the aged mother tongue holding her spindle, abandon that language whose hour has passed, abandon its literature, so tasteless, so bland. Leave it, and let each one of us use the language of the land. And our sons? The generation to follow us? From their youth on, they will be strangers to us. My heart bleeds for them. They make progress. Year by year, they forge ahead. Who knows where they will reach, how far they will go? Perhaps to the place whence they shall never return. Still the Muse visits by night, still the heart listens, the hand writes, fashioning songs in a tongue forsaken. What will I, what hope? To what end travail? For whom do I toil? To what avail? The good years wasted. Oh, who can foresee the future, who can foretell? Perhaps I am the last of Zion’s poets, and you, the last readers?” You see, this is tragic. He had believed in Russia. He believed in Russia. What would happen? What will happen? We will lose what it means to be a Jew. And of course, he was a terribly, terribly influential figure. Can we please go on, Judi, to another fascinating character? Peretz Smolenskin. I always think that he looks like Edgar Allan Poe. He’s very much a figure of Romanticism. Again, from Belarus, very poverty-stricken. His brother was kidnapped by the kidnappers to serve in the Russian army. And he had a very, very downgraded view of the shtetl.
Evidently, he travelled widely. He went to the yeshiva of Shklov, then he went to Lubavitch, he went to the court of Schneerson. He had total disenchantment with the traditional Orthodox, with the Hasidic movement. He earns his living as an assistant cantor. He becomes a wanderer. And later on, this becomes the subject of his novel, “Wanderer in the Path of Life.” And he makes it to Odessa, where he begins to publish articles in the Hebrew press. He’s at the centre of those young intellectuals in Odessa. He then travels to Vienna, becomes very important. He’s a brilliant writer. And in Vienna, he founds Ha-Shahar, The Dawn, which he actually, he is the editor and main writer right up until his death. 12 volumes, articles on Jewish thought, Jewish history, Jewish literature. He feels there’s something wrong with traditional Judaism. He wants to resurrect and revive the Jews. Through his poetry, through his essays, he wants reinterpretation of the biblical passages. And in the Ha-Shahar, he also gives news of the rest of Europe, east of Europe. He fought extremism on every level, stressing, stressing, stressing the importance of the Hebrew language. He also, in his magazine, it becomes a vehicle for you to Leib Gordon, Moses Lilien, Bloom, Peretz. It’s a very, very important publication.
This is the central focus of his life. In Vienna, he attracts around him a whole selection of Hebrew writers. It becomes a meeting place. And also, he had a public role. In 1874, he represented the French Alliance in a mission to Romania. Romania, terrible, terrible anti-Semitism. So much so that in 1878 at the Congress of Berlin, Disraeli refused to ratify Romanian independence until the Romanians emancipated the Jews. And interesting, this was an area that Sir Moses Montefiore, who I mentioned the other day, was very much interested in. His work, so it’s a very cold, hard appraisal of the Jewish world. He mocks the Hasids, he mocks the darkness, but he also mocks the assimilationist. He looks very hard and with penetrating gaze on the Haskalah of Berlin and Vienna, and he says, this is what has threatened, this is now even more dangerous than tradition. Because what you are doing are taking away the pillars of Israel. You’re pulling the foundations from the people. What are we? Are we German? Are we Viennese? What are we? And he also, it made him realise that the maskils actually reordered their priorities. In 1871, there was a pogrom in Odessa that made him realise that the Enlightenment has failed.
You know, the whole idea of the Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, that if we study the values of the world, we will discover that there are universal truths. And that man can, through Bildung, become reasonable. And he begins to work towards actually strengthening what he came to believe was Jewish nationalism. Let me throw at you, even today, you see, this problem hasn’t gone away. If I was to ask you to define Jew for me, and it’s a fascinating game, those of you who are Jewish, to play at home with your families, what does the word Jew mean? Is it religious? Is it cultural? Is it national? What does it mean? You wouldn’t have the problem, I think, if you were defining Christian. That obviously Christian means a belief in the teachings of Jesus. So it’s a fact, and this is what he’s now worried about. And he believed that what we need to do is to strengthen the Hebrew language at all costs. To concentrate on the spiritual qualities of the Torah rather than on the practical rituals of the commandments. And his definition, the Jews are a people of the covenant. So that even the most non-observant Jew can identify as a Jew. It’s fascinating.
You are the people of the covenant. You’re not just a religious community. And he began to see that the work of Moses Mendelssohn was incredibly dangerous. It was universalist, and it minimises Jewish identity. And he said that is the root of the problem. There is nothing wrong with us considering ourselves Jews. And it’s a new approach of the maskilim. He no longer believes in the universalization of ideas. He wants to improve the Jewish world. He wants to go back to Jewish value systems. He wants to get rid of the superstitions. But of course, this leads to huge infighting. You can just imagine. And it leads to the establishment of a rival Hebrew journal called Ha-Boker, Morning Light, which was founded by a rival of his. And so, of course, after 1881, you can imagine what happened. And when he visited Russia in, when he went back, remember, he’s in Vienna, in 1881, there were special receptions in his honour in the Jewish community in St. Petersburg and Moscow. Now, let’s read what he had to say. Judi, can we see the next slide? “They willfully blind us,” sorry, I made a mistake when I typed it out. “The willfully blind bid us to be like all the other nations, and I repeat after them. Let us be like all the other nations pursuing and attaining knowledge, leaving off from wickedness and folly, and dwelling as loyal citizens in the lands where we have been scattered. Yes, let us be like all the other nations, not ashamed of the rock from which we have been hewn, like the rest in holding dear our language and the glory of our people.” Thank you, Judi. She changed already. She’s wonderful. Let me just read the last stanza. “Yes, let us be like all the other nations, not ashamed of the rock from which we have been hewn, like the rest in holding dear our language and the glory of our people.”
Now, it’s interesting. He died in Italy of TB, and you will not be surprised to know that he was reburied in the land of Israel in 1952. And of course, we could spend a lot more time on all these characters, because they are incredibly important. These are the ideas that is coming out of the most authentic, if you like, of the Jewish communities. Can we go on please, Judi? This of course is the Society for the Promotion of Culture amongst the Jews of Russia. As I said, it was set up first of all in St. Petersburg. And of course, it was with the money of the Ginsbergs. And it was really to promote the Russian culture amongst the Jews of Russia. And here you see boys entering into a special school affiliated to the society. There was a centre in Vilna. The most important centre actually was in Odessa. What they did was they provided books, they provided periodicals. And they basically, well, we’re going to see what’s happening to it, because of course it’s founded in the 1860s when there was that period of hope. And, well, you don’t have to use much imagination to know what happened to it. It wasn’t just Ginsberg’s money, it was other wealthy Jews. Again, to make Jews useful, make them into merchants, make them into farmers, let them hold university degrees. Under Alexander II, Jews could go to Russian universities and gain knowledge of secular subjects. Also, they wanted more rights for Jews.
Don’t forget that side of it. And money is given by the wealthy bankers and the railway kings to create this whole infrastructure. They were very hostile to Yiddish. And the rabbis, of course, were hostile to them. They were hostile to the traditional rabbis, be they Hasidic or traditional, for saying, “You are keeping the Jews alienated from their neighbours.” And out of the branches in Odessa, you’re going to see some of the most important figures in the movement arise. And you know what movement I’m talking about. So can we move on to the last character that I want to talk to? This is of course the famous Leon Pinsker, who I will refer to time and time again. He’s born in Tomaszow in Poland. He dies in Odessa. He came from a very, very strong family. His father was a Hebrew teacher, a writer, a scholar. You know, even in these little shtetls, that’s what’s so interesting to me. I mean, I used to spend so much time in Eastern Europe going from shtetl to shtetl, where you could still see where the mezuzah had been torn out of the walls, of the doors of the wooden houses. Most of the houses are of wood. And in these forsaken places, I’m not going to say God forsaken, because they were not God forsaken, in these forsaken places, you had great scholarship, you also had the darkness and everything else that went to it.
But Leon Pinsker’s father was such a man. His father set up, his father was a maskil, became a maskil. He actually set up a Hebrew school in Odessa. And he was one of the first Jews to attend Odessa University was Leon Pinsker. He studied law, but because there was a very strict quota for Jews in law, even in the reign of Alexander II, he switched to becoming a doctor. And he becomes a doctor in Odessa, and becomes part of the society for the spread of culture amongst the Jews of Russia. He also founded a Russian language newspaper. He was another very strong advocate of secular education for Jews, and the translation of the Bible into Russian. Again, 1871, the pogrom absolutely shatters him. 1881. He realises when the pogroms were to a large extent abetted by the government, whipped up by the nationalist press, they shake all his beliefs. And in 1882, he publishes a pamphlet in German, as a mahnruf, as a warning cry to the acculturating, assimilating Jews of the West. And let us have a look, please, at one quote from “Auto-Emancipation.” “Among the living nations of the earth, the Jews are as a nation long since dead. After the Jewish people had ceased to exist as an actual state, as a political entity, they could nevertheless not submit to total annihilation. They lived on spiritually as a nation.
The world saw them as the dead walking amongst the living. A spectral form without precedents in history could but strangely affect the imagination of the nation’s. A fear of the Jewish ghost has passed down the generations and the centuries. It culminated in Judeophobia. It is a psychic aberration. As a psychic aberration, it is hereditary. And as a disease transmitted for 2,000 years, it is incurable.” And of course he is going to come out strongly against Jews going to America, coming to England. He actually said, “it’s going to follow you there. The aberration will follow you.” Let me just repeat it. “A fear of the Jewish ghost has passed down the generations and the centuries. It culminated in Judeophobia. It’s a psychic aberration. As a psychic aberration, it is hereditary. And as a disease transmitted for 2,000 years, it is incurable.” So the inevitable. Many of the characters I’ve talked about, what happens to them is they become involved in a new dream. The word Zionism is not actually created until 1891 by Nathan Birnbaum.
But they are going to realise, many of those figures of the Haskalah, not all of them, people like Simon Dubnow, they wanted to work for the end of the horror of the Russian Empire. But Jewish autonomy within Russia, there are going to be other manifestations of Jewish identity that we spend a lot of time on, because it’s something else that might interest many of you. I’m sure that when your families came west, or to South Africa, or wherever they went, they brought with them many of the ideas that were so important in Eastern Europe from 1881 up until 1939. And it’s certainly part of my family history, the argument between the Zionists, and the Buddhists, and the Yiddishists, et cetera, et cetera. And I’ve had so many wonderful correspondences with many of you where you do talk about these kind of things. So I think I’ll stop there. And Judi, thank you for helping me, even correcting as we speak. And let’s have a look at the questions, please. Let’s start.
Q&A and Comments
Oh, Rose, thank you. Saul, at one stage, the city of Grodno had more Jews and Gentiles, and of course, who ruled the city? Yeah. Tim Abraham.
Q: Do you know what they meant by being Jewish by race as opposed to Jewish by religion? A: Okay, Tim, you’ve asked a really naughty question. I personally do not believe there is such a thing as race, because if you’re going to use the pejorative notion, it’s about purity of blood. It means not mixing your bloodline. You’d have to be geographically isolated for thousands of years. But the point is, this was the term that was used in the 19th century by race theorists, not always in a pejorative term. Rudyard Kipling talked about the British race. Ironically, Disraeli talked about the British race. And this is Dr. Estelle Phillips, race means you are born into it and have no choice. Religion means you can make the decision whether or not to be Jewish.
Well, you see, this is the problem, Estelle. It depends who’s making the decision for you. I can decide on my own identity, but to the outside world, what does the outside world think of me as well? And I think, look, there’s a great quote of Isaiah Berlin’s. He said, “On the subject of anti-Semitism, before the war, we were sleepwalkers. Now we’re insomniacs.” How does the outside world judges? Can we ever really be French, English? Can we? Or German? The tragedy was what happened in the 19th century. Please don’t forget that as a result of all the race theory of the 19th century, when those evil characters came into power in Germany, it didn’t matter if you were a convert to Christianity. Edith Stein was a nun who was murdered in Auschwitz. Ironically, she is actually, the Catholic church wanted to canonise her. She was not murdered because she was a nun. She was murdered because she had two Jewish parents. It was about blood. It doesn’t matter if you’re a communist or a Hasidic rebbe. Race implies bloodline. I think it’s a totally phoney idea, Estelle. But that’s the problem. It’s used. It’s very difficult to come up with a definition for a Jew. You know what would be fun? Those of you who have Friday night dinners, play with it with your families. See what they come up with. A lot of people just hedge it and say peoplehood. Certainly at the end of the Eastern Mediterranean is a country that says every Jew throughout the world by giving us the right of return, they say we are a nation. Okay?
Romi. Hi, Romi. Yeah. Romi, I thought Ben-Yehuda was responsible for the renewal of Hebrew language. Romi, he’s the one who took it. And I’ll be talking about him, Romi. He is the one, of course he takes some of these ideas, but he’s the one who, he actually goes to the land of Israel, and he creates the first Hebrew dictionary. His children, I think it was his daughter who wrote her autobiography. It was terrible for her. The father bought them a dog so they’d have somebody to speak to in Hebrew. He made it into a living language. Jabotinsky actually wrote a textbook of how to speak Hebrew in 750 words. But yes, Romi, you’re right, it comes out of the ideas of the Haskalah, but he’s little bit later. Rose Rahami. We’re taught in the Torah to regard everyone as being equal. Yes, of course, in theory, but people aren’t always like that, are they, Rose? And thank you so much for your good wishes.
You said the Jews studied the Haskalah. Ah, be careful, Rosalyn. A small group of adherence of the Haskalah, the Enlightenment, they’re known as maskilim. They started using Hebrew, because they wanted to connect with their Jewish history, and they believed that was the purest way of showing Jewish identity. Yes, this is Ronnie. Ben-Yehuda played a major role in reviving Hebrew as a spoken language. Hebrew never died and was used in the Haskalah period for literary. Yes, of course, Abraham Markle. Obviously I didn’t have enough time to deal with them all. But I’m going to ask David Herman, who’s an expert on this, to discuss these people. I think it’s very important. Monty, tomorrow, June the 24th, a hundred years ago, Walther Rathenau was assassinated. There are articles today in the online edition of Haaretz about him by Abigail Green, professor of Modern European history. She’s writing a history of Jewish liberal activism from 1848 to 1948. Thank you for that.
And oh, you’ve echoed a chord, Monty. I couldn’t remember the name of the author of the book on Moses Montefiore. It was Abigail. And she spoke on lockdown for a couple of years ago now. Anyway, and of course Walther Rathenau is an incredibly important figure. He was one of the most powerful men in Germany. He even becomes the foreign minister in Weimar. And he’s assassinated by a group of right-wing fanatics in 1922 as an elder of Zion. What a strange world. And in fact, in August, when we’re having a completely different kind of syllabus, I’m thinking of looking at his life and Einstein and Fritz Haber, because they were all close friends. Thank you, Patricia. Ha, Shelly, I haven’t yet come on to reform and all these ideas. And I’m going to actually ask a colleague of mine. I’m hoping that Jeremy will do this. I was told that Hebrew was only allowed to be the language to speak to God. Therefore the use of Yiddish and other language becomes the tongue, ah, this is so interesting, isn’t it?
Q: What is the holy tongue, and what is the profane? A: It’s a very complicated thing, Shelly.
Q: What do you imagine the brilliant Jewish women thought of all of this? A: The role of the Jewish woman, it’s a fascinating one, isn’t it? And it is something that we are going to look at. When you look at the role of women in general and the role of Jewish women, the only thing I can say that might cheer you up a little bit, there was a disproportionate number of Jewish women going to the University of Berlin and Vienna at the turn of the century. A friend of mine did his PhD on it. And that’s interesting. But of course, Judaism had a very traditional attitude to women. There are many who say traditional Judaism still does.
This is from Danny. I’ve mentioned before that my grandfather’s uncle Jacob Zabel was prominent in the Russian Haskalah. He started out as the head of an Orthodox yeshiva in Lithuania, then became interested in the Haskalah movement and broke away from strict Orthodoxy, moved to Odessa, and built up a private subscription library of books of Jewish interest. This library was largely destroyed in the pogrom in Odessa in 1881. He was also a journalist of Yiddish Hebrew in various publications. He immigrated to Chicago, became the first poet to write his poetry in Hebrew. I know this partly from a surviving letter that he wrote to my grandfather beginning of the 20th century, and partly from the entry of him in the Jewish Encyclopaedia. Danny, this is so interesting, and this should be a lesson to every one of us. Those of you who have family stories to tell, please get them down. It is so, so important. He should be much more than a small entry in the Jewish Encyclopaedia. Yes, Ronnie, I mentioned it in the poem, “Be a Jew at home and a man abroad,” part of his poem, which I read, “Awake, My people!” Yes, of course. And it echoes Moses Mendelssohn. “Be a Jew at home and a man in society.”
Q: What do you mean by the Pale? A: Tim, it was that area of land, Pale means stockading. It was an area of land to which the Jews were confined. It was huge, about the size of Europe, but only 4% of Russia. Other people lived there, obviously. Poles, Lithuanians, Latvians, Ukrainians. But the Jews could not move into the Russian interior until the reign of Alexander II. And it basically, it’s paling is an English word, Anglo-Saxon word, means stockading.
Q: Were other minorities also discriminated in Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries, or were we the only lucky one? A: Hilton, good point, Hilton. Well, there were many groups that were discriminated against. I think, and I want to say this, there are different reasons behind all discriminations. All racisms have their commonality, and they also have their points of difference. I think the problem with the Jew, we are the ones, in inverted commas, who are meant to have the money and the power. The reality, 40% of the Jews of Eastern Europe are on poor relief, but let’s leave that aside. Well, let me think of a few minority groups that were totally persecuted. The Roma, homosexuals. It was only in the ‘60s in England that it was no longer a crime to be a practising homosexual. Everybody, look, in a Catholic country, quite often the Protestants. In a Protestant country, quite often the Catholics. It does seem, and this is what the Enlightenment was about, to try and open people’s minds. Tragically, it does seem that the majority of people have scapegoats. And I’m sure there are women listening who say, well, women, weren’t they the persecuted ones? But I think the point about the Jew is that it’s a different quality. It’s not better, it’s not worse. And also if you think of the treatment of the Black communities. Come on, when was slavery abolished in the Empire? When was slavery abolished in America? You know, come on, unfortunately, that is the nature of people. And I’m going to say something personal. One of the things I find so depressing at the moment, that we don’t seem to have learned many of the lessons of history, because they are all there. Thank you, Hilton.
Margaret, no, Gordon is not a Scottish name. It’s also a Hebrew name. And I cannot remember what it means. Somebody did tell me, a chap called Gordon. Would somebody please help me on that? Valerie says, beautiful poem, but wishful thinking. Yeah. Oh, thank you, Jen.
Q: Was Moses Mendelssohn the grandfather of the composer? A: Yes, of course he was. And when Moses Mendelssohn died, or actually it was after his wife’s death, the majority of his children converted. Abraham Mendelssohn, when he converted his children, he wrote a letter. He said, “Your mother and I have converted you because Christianity is the religion of the civilised.” I don’t think it was a deeply religious conversion with Abraham. It was pragmatic. Karl Marx’s father made a pragmatic decision. They wanted Europe. Look, think about Heine. “Baptism is the passport to European civilization.” He wanted a chair in philosophy at Dusseldorf. So he became a Christian. He didn’t get it. He made fun of himself. I think Heine’s one of my great heroes along with Disraeli.
Q: Did some of the Eastern European Jews, this is from Shelly, condemn the Haskalah because of the total conversion of Mendelssohn’s family? A: That was part of it. But the Haskalah itself was worried. They saw what had happened in Europe. They believed in Russia, it could be different. But don’t we always, when we get a hold of an idea, we always think it’s going to be different for us.
Q: Any suggestions how we can find the works? A: Yes, all you have to do is go online. And I believe his poetry, I certainly have an English edition of his poetry, and I’m sure you can actually get English editions of all these characters. Go online. Although I hate modern technology, it’s very useful sometimes. And you will find how to get the books.
Rose Rahami. Hi, Rose, again. Tragically, the Romanians are anti-Semitic to this day. Just need to see Orban, and he came in with the majority, terrible. Orban is Hungarian, yep. Unfortunately, there are many countries in Eastern Europe, and actually what you need to ask yourself, and this has got nothing to do with being Jewish or the Jews, why are we moving towards extremism? The extreme right, the extreme left. Think France. Populism, why? Because when we are economically and socially and politically insecure, it does seem that we need, we think that extreme solutions, the populist leader can save us. This is what the Enlightenment tried to suppress. I think one of the most depressing conversations of my life was with my mentor Robert Wistrich. And unfortunately, it was one of the last conversations we ever had. It was about a couple of months before he died. I dropped him at Heathrow. He was flying back to Israel. And we had a big argument about the Enlightenment. And he went off. And I was just about to drive away when he came back and he said, “Wind down your window.” He said, “I am right, and I’ll see you in Jerusalem.” Unfortunately, he died. He died in Rome, just before he was to address the Italian parliament on anti-Semitism. Maskil, maskilim, yes. This is from Jeffrey. Jews and ethnoreligious identity expressing a link to origin in Judea. Thank you, Jeffrey, that’s one description. Ethnoreligious identity, that’s quite good.
Q: Were girls and women part of this Enlightenment? A: Arlene, in England, in the British Enlightenment, you did have some interesting women, like Mary Shelley who wrote “Frankenstein.” There are lots of women, but think, no, no, no, no, no, no, not enough, because women didn’t have that kind of role in the world, if you’re looking for persecuted groups.
Rose, Orban is in Hungary, extreme right, pro-Russian because he needs their oil, and not loving Jews. He threw out the European University from Budapest, because it was financed by George Soros. You know, it’s interesting. George Soros went to the LSE, and he went to the lectures of an extraordinary man called Karl Popper, who wrote a book called “The Open Society.” He was also a dreamer, was Karl Popper. A European Jew, of course. This is from Ina. For me, to be a Jew means to have Jewish genes and to be a descendant of our ancestors, the ancient Jews of Israel, and carrying them over to those who follow. Yes, Ina, that’s one definition. But don’t forget Judaism accepts converts. So we are not, you can’t go for the pure race thing. So it’s not just a genetic thing, it’s a belief thing as well. Monty. Ah, yes, Monty, there’s a very good book about the culture of the shtetl called “Life is With People” by Mark Zborowski and Elizabeth Herzog. Thank you for that. John.
John, Naphtali Hirz Wessely, one of Mendelssohn’s coworkers, said Jews needed to learn the Torah min adam as well as Torah min shamayim. He encountered opposition of many Polish rabbis, but was very encouraged by the Italian rabbis, why? I don’t know the answer to that, John. It’s outside my sphere of knowledge. But I hope, if you listen to Jeremy Rosen, perhaps he could answer that question. Jeffrey, any books on the Haskalah? There are so many. Look, for the website, we’re going to put up a lot of books. I don’t really think I can give you one, 'cause that’s not how I operate. I’ve got to think about this. Thank you.
Oh, lovely. Jackie and Jack Sheldon, who I knew a long time ago, you’re Ollie’s aunt and uncle. Lovely to hear from you. This is, I found the question when talking to teenagers about the Holocaust, who is a Jew? Nothing to answer. I think the question will be less likely to be asked by children in Europe. I’m not sure about that. You see, we can’t answer the question of who is a Jew, can we? I’m sure, look, if you’ve got time and if you find it interesting, do pose the question to your families. I think you’ll get a lot of different answers. Susan Vikers, hoping you’ll plan a presentation on the book “The Street People.” Yes, I’ve got “The Street People.” It’s an interesting way of teaching, because, and perhaps next year, 'cause Wendy and I will be talking about syllabus soon, maybe we will look at history in a different way. Wendy and I, when we were in New York, we were walking through some of the streets of New York and we were saying, “These would make interesting lectures.” And I’m talking obviously about the streets named for people.
No, Jennifer, I’m quite well. It’s just the glasses, it’s nothing really wrong. I’ve got to have cataracts, and I’m having new glasses, and I have, I need a much stronger prescription, and it’s much easier until my new glasses are ready to wear my old prescription dark glasses, and it also stops my eyes aching. So thank you, Jennifer, I am fine. The Jews spoke Hebrew. Hebrew as a spoken language died about 200 years before the destruction, probably they spoke Aramaic. Yiddish comes in Eastern Europe, because as German Jews moved east in the 13th, 14th, 15th century, they brought German with them, written in Hebrew letters. So Yiddish is a kind of German. And of course the dialects and the words change from region to region. I’m not an expert on Yiddish, and in fact, I’ve got to find one. I had a very close friend who was, and tragically, he died. As an example, there are many people who call themselves, say French, perhaps born in France, but whose heritage bloodline might go back to Africa, Morocco, Nigeria, Egypt.
Q: Are such people scrutinised in a similar way to Jews as their nationality? A: Marcel, that’s an interesting question, but you’ve got to remember, this huge movement of peoples is new. It’s modern. If you think about England, for example, prior to the Second World War, the majority of people who made up England, not Britain, England, were English, either Protestant or Catholic, we were much more religious, or Jews. There might have been a few traders and ambassadors obviously, but settlement, no. It’s only after the collapse of the empires and people from the old empires having rights in France, in Italy, in England, in Britain, that everything changes. And also we move into a different era of multiculturalism. Whether it’s successful or not in the rise of populism and extremism is another question. Don’t forget, it was a Jew, Israel Zangwill, he coined the phrase, remember the phrase of Zangwill’s? The melting pot.
Jews of Algeria are French. You know why, Aviva? Because Adolf Crimea made it so, la patrie. Yes, Abigail, Hirsch said it’s taken up in Mosaic. Oh yes. Tim talks about the pale . Okay. Mahler converted in order to be a conductor in Vienna. Yes, yes, yes. Oh, that’s funny. Jennifer says, a cottage in Cornwall is also the refuge of Daniel Silva’s hero, Gabriel Allon. Thank you. Oh, yes, Shelly says, Jewish women were more literate than other poor Eastern European. That is true. Okay. Janet says, sadly, not all Jewish conversions are accepted. Yes. Again, what a troublesome stiff-necked people we are, always quarrelling amongst ourselves. Tim thinks, yes . Oh, thank you. I knew someone would answer. Gordon means triangular-shaped hill in Hebrew. Thank you. This is one of the reasons I love our group. Thank you very much. Is it M Meltzer? I don’t know your first name. I think, yes, Roberta.
I was talking about the late Barry Davis. He was a close friend of mine, and was brilliant on Yiddish. And Dovid Katz of course is now I think in Vilna. This is from Abigail. What I discovered while doing my documentary on Yiddish is that language is a courier of culture, but it is not culture in and of itself. This is clear to me in the struggle for French culture in Quebec that seems to be entirely focused on the preservation of the French language. This is interesting, Abigail. Could you get in touch with me, please? And on that note, I think I better say goodnight to everyone and from-
Thank you, Trudy.
Beautiful Cornwall. And Judi, thank you even for correcting when we’re live. Thanks a lot everyone.
You’re welcome. Thank you everybody, and see you all soon. Take care.
Bye
Bye-bye.