IN THE chapters describing Salanter's public activity, I have
attempted to elucidate and to interpret this activity in terms of the
circumstances of his time and place. Rabbi Israel took his first steps as
a rosh-yeshiva (head of a yeshiva) and as a communal leader during the
last fifteen years of the reign of Czar Nicholai I ( 1840-55). During that
time, there was an intensification of the tendency of Nicholai's govern-
ment to interfere in the internal life of the Jewish community in order
to bring about their cultural assimilation within the general Russian
population. To the earlier edict of compulsory conscription into the
Russian Army and censorship of Hebrew printing houses was added,
in the 1840s, the policy known as "compulsory enlightenment" : that
is, the attempt of the government to impose a reform upon the tradi-
tional system of Jewish education. An additional step taken by Czar
Nicholai's government during those years was the order abolishing the
kahal, the Jewish community organization. The practical consequence
of that step was the drastic restriction of the authority of the communal
organization.

This policy of Nicholai's government had significant implications
for the balance of power within Jewish society. The scope of the Jewish
communal organization's authority was severely limited, and the tra-
ditional rabbinate lost its official recognition (henceforth given over to
the government-appointed "puppet rabbis," whose function was largely
restricted to registering births and deaths). Simultaneously there was a
distinct strengthening in the public impact of the Maskilim, the follow-
ers of the enlightenment who worked to foster cultural, economic,
social, and political integration of the Jews into general society. As a
result of the pattern of cooperation with the government, which came
about during the course of "compulsory enlightenment," the Maskilim
were transformed from a persecuted and powerless minority into a self-
confident entity, capable of struggling for its approach aggressively and
firmly. The traditional camp, on the other hand, was now exposed for
the first time to the phenomenon of Enlightenment as a palpable threat
to the tradition. These circumstances lead one to the conjecture that
Rabbi Israel Salanter was motivated to found the Mussar movement,
at least in part, by the wish to strengthen the tradition in light of these
threats to it. Since circumstantial hypothesis is in itself inadequate to
prove the point, I have attempted to determine whether evidence for
this interpretation can be found within the writings and activity of
Salanter from that period. I have further attempted to ascertain whether
and in what sense the founding of the Mussar movement can be
interpreted in relation to the economic and social problems that plagued
Russian Jewry during the decade of the 1840s.

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