The Jews of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Europe were hardly unaffected by the intellectual currents that coursed through the territo-ries in which they lived. As a matter of fact, by breaking down the walls of ghettos and reconstituting Jews as citizens, the process of Jewish emancipation in western and central Europe not only exposed more and more Jews to those currents, it made those currents vital to their lives. Even in eastern Europe, where the process of Jewish emancipation was stillborn, constantly increasing numbers of Jews embraced the same ideas that attracted their brethren to the west.

Three factors contributed to the spread of new intellectual currents east. First, the pale and the restrictions it imposed on the lives of Jews appeared relatively late in Jewish history and were thus unsanctified by long-standing tradition. It was not strange that many Jews living in this “unnatural” state would heed the siren song of new ideas, just as it was not strange that many would seek out the West as a place of refuge. Furthermore, conditions intruding on the pale made these ideas relevant to its Jewish inhabitants. In the last chapter, we saw how urbanization, the expansion of state capabilities and demands, and the spread of market relations affected pale life. Ideas originating in the West and imported to the pale were not just coherent with the new social and economic dispensation, they provided its underlying principles. Finally, the Russian government itself promoted the spread of new ideas in the pale through its Russification program. As we have seen, during the 1840s the imperial government began building Russian-language secular schools in the pale. Because the number of qualified Jewish teachers was inadequate to meet the government's needs, these schools came to employ non-Jewish instructors, who, if not entirely sympathetic to western European ideas, provided their pupils with the linguistic training necessary to master them.