Introduction
“Black”Footnote 1 themes held a substantial place in twentieth-century American Yiddish poetry and prose, as well as in Yiddish journalism.Footnote 2 As Hasia Diner notes in her work on Jews and blacks in the United States in the twentieth century, Jews sympathized with the plight of American blacks and their fight for civil rights.Footnote 3 However, this had not always been the case, as evidenced by the many staunch Jewish supporters of slavery and Jewish slave owners and traders.Footnote 4 Jonathan Schorsch claims that “under the sign of the Haskala…little changed” in this respect.Footnote 5 In discussing a reference by Isaac Satanov to black slavery, Schorsch notes:
One cannot gauge from this brief comment whether Satanov knew about the abolitionist movements beginning to agitate in England and France at the time. Satanov's reportage was remarkably non-committal, betraying little, if any, sympathy for these developments.Footnote 6
In addition to Schorsch,Footnote 7 other researchers also contend that Jews in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century continental Europe had only “the scantiest exposure to color and race differences before migrating to the United States.”Footnote 8 According to Diner they may have heard of blacks through letters from friends in the United States; or, if they had visited London, Vienna, Berlin, or Paris, they may have been aware of the political debates on race relations. Likewise, European Jewish readers would have encountered blacks in literature and what Diner calls other “spotty sources of information”—in the newspaper Forverts that reached Europe, through the work of some American novelists published in Warsaw and Vilna, or in the Hebrew and Yiddish translations of Uncle Tom's Cabin published in the nineteenth century.Footnote 9
The subject of black slavery appears to have been distant both geographically and practically from nineteenth-century European Jewry. Yet an examination of maskilic literature published in that period demonstrates that knowledge of blacks and black slavery was less “spotty” than Diner has suggested. Although Satanov's comment as examined by Schorsch may not indicate opposition to slavery or knowledge of abolitionist movements, both of these did appear in the writings of other maskilim. Indeed, not only did the plight of black Americans strike “a responsive chord in Jews in Europe,”Footnote 10 but from the early nineteenth century staunch opposition to the slave trade as well as, in some cases, abolitionist views are to be found in references to and at times lengthy discussions of the raging debate on slavery current in European politics in the compositions of European maskilic writers in Hebrew and Yiddish. Although some academics have noted maskilic opposition to slavery, the phenomenon has not yet been analyzed sufficiently as a topic worthy of academic discussion in and of itself.Footnote 11 This article will explore the motif of maskilic opposition to black slavery by discussing the sources of this apparent convention through an analysis of its recurrence in one specific maskilic literary oeuvre: sea adventures.Footnote 12
Although the topics of black slavery and colonialism and the descriptions of non-European peoples are obviously interconnected, this article will focus only on the issue of black slavery. First of all, it is impossible to do justice to these three major topics in the space of one short article. Furthermore, support for treating these topics separately arises from the sources themselves. Many enlightenment thinkers, and the maskilim in particular, clearly distinguished between the issues of slavery and colonialism. While slavery was unjustifiable, colonizing activities were not only justifiable but often endorsed. As Sankar Muthu has noted in his extensive study, Enlightenment against Empire: “virtually every prominent and influential European thinker in the three hundred years before the eighteenth century and nearly the full century after it were either agnostic toward or enthusiastically in favor of imperialism.” Indeed, any attacks on imperialism “generally decried the abuses of imperial power, but not the imperial mission itself,” a generalization that applies to the corpus under analysis herein.Footnote 13
Likewise, objections to the treatment of slaves and campaigns for abolition did not translate directly into a belief that non-European or nonwhite peoples (including not only Africans but also native Americans and Asians) were equal to Europeans and should be treated as such. Abolitionists did not necessarily support granting full rights to peoples they regarded as “savages.” Despite many romanticized images of what has come to be known as “the noble savage,” abolitionists regarded non-European cultures for the most part as inferior and believed they should be supplanted by European civilization.Footnote 14 Maskilic writers sought to associate themselves, and the Jewish people as a whole, with Europeans; yet many maskilim in fact viewed the Jewish masses as savages: ignorant and superstitious, and in need of civilizing by the maskilim, who in effect became the European colonizers. In Robinzon: Di geshikhte fun alter leb, ayne vare und vunder bare geshikhte tsum unterhalt und zur belerung (Galicia, ca. 1820),Footnote 15 for example, Yosef Vitlin critiques various Jewish (in this case, Hasidic) traits through his descriptions of the savage Shabbes, who he censures for his superstition as well as other negative traits. Such an accusation was common among opponents of the Hasidic movement. Menaḥem Mendel Lefin offers similar social criticism of the Jewish masses through the medium of non-European peoples in his treatment of the Pelew Islanders in Masa‘ot ha-yam (Zolkiew, 1818).Footnote 16 In their discussions of non-European peoples, maskilic writers often used the education and transformation of the savage to symbolize the process necessary to transform the European Jewish masses into functional members of European society. For Vitlin, Shabbes's improvement from uneducated, uncivilized, and superstitious to rational, civilized, and thinking represents the potential of Eastern European Jewry to improve themselves, while Lefin continuously praises the Pelew islanders' interest in everything European and their desire to learn.Footnote 17 These trends, however, are not found in discussions of slavery.
Iris Idelson-Shein contends that opposition to black slavery was an intellectual convention, or a fashion, among maskilic writers, suggesting that their lack of direct contact with slavery perhaps facilitated the development of their opposition to it. She claims likewise that the maskilim's expressions of opposition to slavery do not indicate feelings of solidarity with the oppressed that reflect the low Jewish status within Europe and illustrate their own desire for emancipation. Rather, they are a consequence of the maskilim's identification with the Europeans and European patronage.Footnote 18 An analysis of the texts under study here is partly in agreement with her findings, but suggests a different purpose for their references to black slavery. These texts show no indication that the Jews saw in the oppression of slaves any parallel to their own status in Europe, and in fact none of the writers compare their own, however problematic, situation to that of a slave. At the same time, however, their discussions of black slavery were not simply a convention or an attempt to emulate non-Jewish writers and thinkers, but were included in maskilic works to impart education and ethical lessons. In the writings of Isaac Meir Dik we also find hints of political commentary in his discussions of slavery.
Haskalah Literature: Aims and Methods
The Jewish Enlightenment, or Haskalah, was a movement of many faces, locations, and ideologies, beginning in Germany in the second half of the eighteenth century, spreading to Galicia in the early nineteenth century, and then moving to the Russian Empire. The Haskalah movement was never a formal organization but comprised groups of Jews seeking to change the values of their society and to “normalize” European Jewry in keeping with current European trends, within limits that would prevent the annihilation of Judaism. In Shmuel Feiner's words, the maskilim “assigned themselves the historic task of leading their brethren in the transition from the epoch of immaturity to the epoch of maturity.”Footnote 19 As such, the maskilim's aims were to “reshape and re-form Judaism and the Jews in accordance with the needs of modern times and the requirements of the European Enlightenment milieu.”Footnote 20 In practice, despite many programs of comprehensive reform drawn up by maskilim, they worked primarily in the fields of culture, literature, and education.Footnote 21
The maskilim sought to expand Jewish education beyond traditional Torah study to embrace modern languages, sciences, and history.Footnote 22 This mission of educating the Jewish people would be achieved both through the founding of new enlightened schoolsFootnote 23 and through literary means, using instructional texts and works of belles lettres that were entertaining but also contained edifying material: pleasurable instruction.Footnote 24
Many maskilim perceived the Jewish masses to be not only uneducated but also morally deficient.Footnote 25 Thus in addition to their role as educators, the maskilim viewed themselves as preachers and writers of ethical, or musar, literature,Footnote 26 attempting to change the behavior and moral values of Jewish society and bring them into accordance with those of the rest of Europe.Footnote 27 As Harris Bor has noted:
Ethics formed an important element of suggestions for new school curricula, and the founding letter of Hameassef…promised to “gather from all branches of science and ethics [musar] articles and essays which will benefit and delight the soul which longs to sit in the shade of wisdom.” In addition, the Haskalah produced numerous treatises and primers for children that dealt specifically with the questions of ethics….Footnote 28
This concern with moral improvement resulted in part from external criticism of Jewish morality: the maskilim sought to encourage Jews to embrace the values of Bildung and enlightenment. By embracing these values, Jews would improve themselves, enabling them to fully enter European society. For example, Mendel Lefin's Ḥeshbon ha-nefesh discusses the importance of (among other qualities) calmness, patience, order, cleanliness, justice, frugality, diligence, silence, tranquillity, and truth;Footnote 29 and in Masa‘ot ha-yam Lefin returns to many of these qualities. Humanist values of tolerance and love of one's fellow human being also took on significant roles in maskilic works, especially in translations of the works of Joachim Heinrich Campe.
As part of their role as musar preachers, the maskilim frequently expressed allegiance to their states of residence and their desire to become fully functioning members of these societies. Such expressions are also to be found in literary works. For example, in Hame'asef one finds many poems, in both Hebrew and German, dedicated to Frederick II of Prussia and others in praise of the Austro-Hungarian monarch Joseph II, who issued the Toleranzpatent in 1781. However, while the aim of German works was to provide evidence of Jewish loyalty to non-Jewish readers and their leaders, the goal of the Hebrew works praising the Prussian monarch was to foster similar feelings among Jewish readers. By describing and praising the acts of governments and monarchs, maskilic writers sought to arouse in their fellow Jews the desire to become useful members of the societies where they resided.Footnote 30
To accomplish this complex combination of aims, the maskilim in Germany at the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth century turned to German literary sources.Footnote 31 They found a perfect vehicle in the works of Joachim Heinrich Campe, a pedagogue and one of the first German writers of children's literature;Footnote 32 they turned especially to his “sea adventures,” which combine exciting adventure stories with general and moral edification.Footnote 33
The corpus under study here consists of Hebrew and Yiddish translationsFootnote 34 of Joachim Heinrich Campe's Die Entdeckung von Amerika, Sammlung interessanter und durchgängig zweckmäßig abgefaßter Reisebeschreibungen für die Jugend, and Robinson der Jüngere, which were published between 1782 and 1874;Footnote 35 and Yiddish works by Isaac Meir Dik, which are largely original fictional compositions presented as factual narratives.Footnote 36 The maskilim who wrote these works could be classified as “moderates,” who followed the example of the Berlin Haskalah, which called for change and modernization without threatening Jewish law or advocating total acculturation.Footnote 37 These works all integrate educational material on natural phenomena, geography, history, and a host of other topics into an exciting and appealing narrative centering around adventures at sea. This combination was apparently very successful: maskilic writers continued to use this recipe until the late nineteenth century, and further editions were published in the early twentieth century.
Enlightenment Europe and the Debate on Slavery
As Dorinda Outram explains, slavery is as old as human society itself, and until the Enlightenment was almost universally accepted:
Slavery has existed as the most extreme form of unfree labor in most human societies. It has assumed a myriad of legal, economic and social forms, and still exists today in many countries. Slavery has not only existed in almost all human societies, but has historically also done so without arousing outrage or abhorrence, or undergoing any radical challenge to its existence. Even the Greek philosopher Aristotle argues that for some men, slavery was natural to their being. In the centuries between Aristotle and the Enlightenment no one argued that the slave's lot was enviable, and many had pleaded for the more humane treatment of slaves. But it was not until the eighteenth century that there were more than isolated attacks on the institution of slavery itself.Footnote 38
Almost from the beginning of the importation of Africans to the newly discovered Americas in 1518 an ongoing ideological discourse raged on the issue of the slave trade. The renowned seventeenth-century Dutch jurist Hugo Grotius claimed that slavery is an unnatural state, yet justified it on the basis of Roman law, which permits the enslavement of various classes of people, among them prisoners of war and paupers. This is clearly preferable to the other option that faced prisoners of war: slaughter. Moral and religious arguments were also advanced by Christian theologians and merchants: the strongest of these was undoubtedly based on the “Ham ideology,” which linked the African peoples directly to Ham, who was cursed by Noah to become a slave.Footnote 39
From the beginning of the eighteenth century onward, increasing numbers of political thinkers, philosophers, and economists attacked the institution of slavery, arguing that slavery was a sin, “tantamount to stealing humans and…therefore a contravention of the eighth commandment.”Footnote 40 Montesquieu maintained that Grotius's justification of slavery as preferable to slaughter was no longer relevant. Many economists also advanced arguments against slavery, even if they did not oppose the institution of slavery itself. In 1752, for example, David Hume contended that the disproportionate ratio of slaves to free men created insecurity and the need for severe discipline. Some deemed slavery to be more expensive than free labor, claiming that it also deprived the poor of necessary employment and enfeebled the rich with luxury and the pursuit of wealth. Many economic thinkers argued that free labor on the part of contented workers was preferable to slavery.Footnote 41 However, in the writings of Hume, the Marquis de Mirabeau, Benjamin Franklin, and others, despite their arguments against slavery, one finds no concern with the situation of the black slaves or any interest in abolitionism: their arguments are solely based on economic considerations.Footnote 42
From the end of the eighteenth century appeals against slavery appeared frequently in works of belles lettres, open letters, and philosophical treatises. Although the ideals of the Enlightenment—among others, equality, freedom, and controls on arbitrary power—would seem to condemn the institution of slavery, which treated human beings as no more than possessions, its existence continued to be tolerated, and in the eighteenth century the importation of slaves from Africa to the colonies in the Caribbean, Brazil, and America had reached its height.
For enlightenment thinkers, slavery presented something of a paradox; enlightenment ideals could in fact serve both defenders and opponents of slavery. The issue also played into the larger concerns of the time—the authority of the central government, conservative nobility, tyranny, and the enslavement of the European peoples. The abolition of slavery could be perceived, on the one hand, as an act of tyranny in itself and, on the other, as an assertion of the central government's control over landowners.Footnote 43 As Outram concludes, for enlightenment thinkers, “treating people as commodities, slavery raised more sharply than before such questions as the definition of a person, and the importance, both economic and political, of property”; yet to question the institution of slavery was not only to suggest dismantling a massive, global economic enterprise but also to allow government control over individual interests. By the middle of the eighteenth century, slavery “was increasingly being seen, even by ordinary people, not only as cruel and wrong, but also as somehow unalterable…”; “it is not difficult to see why anti-slavery mobilization took so long to come together.”Footnote 44
The debates were also troubled by constant contradictions relating to the development of racial thinking and the concept of “what is a man.” Even those advocating the abolition of slavery often claimed that blacks were inferior in terms of intellect and moral behavior and thus should not be allowed to enter fully into society or mate with whites. Skin color became a defining characteristic; black, with its connotations of gloom, darkness, and misfortune, became a symbol for bad, and white a symbol for good. Some scientists asserted that blackness was an aberration (white being the norm and black the deviation from that norm), others that it was a kind of illness or skin disease. Hume suggested that extremes of climate accounted for the inferiority of nations in certain areas: according to him, blacks were naturally inferior and had produced no civilized nations, no eminent individuals in the arts and sciences, and no government. The “assertion of racial inferiority cloaked in the cautious, reasoned language of science” was used to justify black slavery.Footnote 45 By no means all thinkers were of this opinion, however; standing against it were the founder of the Methodist movement, John Wesley, and philosopher Adam Smith, who in 1764 provoked reactions from advocates of slavery and black inferiority with his provocative comment that
[t]here is not a negro from the coast of Africa who does not…possess a degree of magnanimity which the soul of his sordid master is too often scarce capable of conceiving. Fortune never exerted more cruelly her empire over mankind, than when she subjected those nations of heroes to the refuse of the jails of Europe.Footnote 46
It is interesting to note that despite his concerns with liberty, his hatred of servitude, and his notion of the “good savage,”Footnote 47 Jean Jacques Rousseau never mentioned the problem of black slavery; his name was noticeably missing from a list of French abolitionists. Rousseau considered the blacks to be merely a tiny minority of enslaved humanity; he attacked instead a much more “extensive” slavery in his comment in the introduction to his Social Contract that “[m]an was born free, and everywhere he is in chains.” This is reinforced by Rousseau's comment elsewhere that “civil man is born, lives, and dies in slavery” and in his discussion of enslavement to despots. Yet many comments in The Social Contract were applied to the fight against black slavery—for example “no man has natural authority over his fellow,” or “the words slave and right contradict each other, and are mutually exclusive.” Footnote 48 Many of the French abolitionists were Rousseau's disciples.
From Traditional Jewish Attitudes toward Slavery to Maskilic Abolitionism
Over the past two decades increasing attempts have been made to target Judaism, and in particular the biblical curse of Ham, as the source of antiblack prejudice in Western civilization,Footnote 49 and to claim that Christianity and Islam then adopted it from Judaism. According to the biblical text, Ham “saw his father's nakedness” when Noah was drunk. Upon waking, Noah cursed Ham's son Canaan:Footnote 50
(Genesis 9:25) וַיֹּאמֶר אָרוּר כְּנָעַן עֶבֶד עֲבָדִים יִהְיֶה לְאֶחָיו
And he said: Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren.Footnote 51
The biblical text, however, makes no connection between the curse of Canaan and blackness—this occurs in a separate midrash slightly later in Midrash Bereshit Rabba 36:
ר’ הונא מש' ר' יוסף אתה מנעתה אותי מלעשות דבר שהוא באפילה לפיכך יהיה זרעו כעור מפוחם, אמר ר' חייא חם וכלב שמשו בתיבה לפיכך יצא חם מפוחם וכלב מפורסם בתשמישו… חם וכלב שמשו בתבה ונלקו.
R. Huna also said in R. Joseph's name: You have prevented me from doing something in the dark [sc. cohabitation], therefore your seed will be ugly and dark-skinned. R. Ḥiyya said: Ham and the dog copulated in the Ark, therefore Ham came forth black-skinned while the dog publicly exposes its copulation…. Ham and the dog copulated in the Ark and were punished.Footnote 52
David Goldenberg discusses the textual evidence produced by scholars who claim that antiblack sentiment is pervasive in rabbinic literature. He describes this evidence as “meager,” occurring in only a tiny percentage of rabbinic writings that express the views of individual writers; and he concludes that these texts in no way reflect some overall “talmudic” view of blacks. Discussions of blacks in rabbinic sources are etiological, explaining the existence of different skin colors, and if the sources do express derogatory views of blacks, it is in all likelihood due to a preference for the surrounding racial norm, which is white.Footnote 53
Goldenberg goes on to note that the argument “hinges on the assumed linkage of blackness and slavery. But such linkage is not found in the Bible or later Jewish literature…. Slavery and dark skin are two independent etiological myths. Nowhere in early Jewish literature…. is that distinction violated.”Footnote 54 In fact, Abraham ibn Ezra spoke out against the Muslim claim that blacks are slaves because of Noah's curse on Ham. Indeed, the link between slavery and black skin did not occur in Judaism but rather, according to Goldenberg, among Islamic writers from the seventh century onward and in societies that institutionalized black slavery. “When Blacks became identified with the slave class in the Islamic world and in the Christian world after the fifteenth century, the etiology was dusted off and reborn as the ‘Curse of Ham’ in order to justify the social structures.”Footnote 55 In rabbinic literature, on the contrary, Goldenberg argues, the perception of blacks is generally positive.
The issue of black slavery may appear very distant, geographically and socially, from the maskilim in Germany at the beginning of the nineteenth century and in the following generations in Eastern Europe, yet their writings make clear that they were aware of the ongoing debate on this matter. Among the literary works in which maskilic writers discoursed at length on this subject were translations of Campe's Die Entdeckung von Amerika and Robinson der Jüngere.
Die Entdeckung von Amerika (The Discovery of America), first published in 1781, is a three-part work describing the discovery of America by Columbus and the conquests of Mexico by Hernán Cortés and of Peru by Francisco Pizarro. This pedagogically directed work of creative nonfiction presents a historical narrative by way of conversations between a father and his children, with digressions to explain various matters of educational interest. It is almost impossible to categorize this work within a certain genre: it combines elements of sea stories, geographical works, historical narratives, biographies, and moral tracts. The same is true of Campe's 1779 reworking of Robinson Crusoe, Robinson der Jüngere,Footnote 56 which is also told through a series of dialogues but is put forth as a pedagogical tract rather than a novel. In both the works, the sea is a major force and factor, enabling travel, discovery, and conquest; wreaking havoc; and causing death and destruction; yet at the same time bringing life, vitality, and connection. Because the sea is also the medium that must be crossed to transport African slaves to the New World, it enables the discussion of slavery in both of these works.
Campe condemns the slave trade but applies a caveat to his descriptions of the institution of black slavery in the New World that is typical of enlightenment ambivalence, as he expresses his awareness of the sugar plantations' importance for the world economy and the provision of food.Footnote 57 In volume 1 of Die Entdeckung, Campe first describes in detail the treatment of native Americans and then relates how the decision was made to import slaves from West Africa when the native population had become so depleted that the work force needed reinforcement. He expresses emotion about these matters through the reactions of the father/narrator in his discussions with his children, for example, as he deplores the origins of an institution that has caused so much suffering and the loss of freedom and lives, calling it inhuman and a shame for mankind:
[U]nd von dieser Zeit an nahm der unmenschliche Sklavenhandel seinen Anfang, der noch bis auf den heutigen Tag, zur Schande der Menschheit, jährlich über vierzigtausenden unserer schwarzen Brüder iher Fleiheit, ihre ganze Glückseligkeit und selbst ihr Leben kostet. Und dabei blieben die armen Amerikaner nichts destoweniger, was sie waren—armselige, bis auf den Tod gequälte Sklaven.Footnote 58
In his translation of Die Entdeckung into Hebrew,Footnote 59 Frankfurt Moses Mendelsohn not only reiterates Campe's criticism of slavery, but goes further: he updates his readers on the latest developments in the abolitionist field and condemns both the trade in slaves and more broadly the enslavement of other human beings. He praises the Danish king, who outlawed both the importation of slaves to the Danish West Indies and their export from Danish holdings on the Guinea coast in 1792, long before other empires had made any move toward banning slavery; this set him up as an example to the other monarchs of the world:Footnote 60
וילמדו ממלך חסיד, רחמן, ואדיר במשפט, הוא מלך דענימרקא, אשר העיר ה' את רוחו, ויקרא דרור לעבדים הכושיים בכל מקומות ממשלתו, והוא הראשון בארץ אשר עשה כן….Footnote 61
And they should learn from the pious, merciful king who is glorious in justice, the king of Denmark, whose spirit was roused by God and called for the freedom of the Negro slaves in all of his kingdom, and he is the first in the world to do so….Footnote 62
Mendelsohn exaggerates the importance of this edict: it did not abolish slavery in all Danish colonies nor was the ban on the import and export of slaves effective in all colonies. However, this exaggeration only serves to emphasize Mendelsohn's opposition to the institution of slavery and his desire to build upon Campe's foundation and bring to his readers the most current developments regarding slavery. Likewise, it stresses his respect for the king of Denmark and the enlightened moral values that he upholds.Footnote 63
Ḥaim (Ḥaykl) Hurwitz, who adapted Die Entdeckung into Yiddish for the first time as Ẓofnas paneyaḥ (Revealer of Hidden Things), published in 1817 in Berdichev, takes a typically mercantile and also somewhat ambivalent perspective, noting, as did Campe, the global importance of sugar production and other products from the colonies. Although Hurwitz constantly deplores the treatment of native Americans, who were enslaved by the conquering Spaniards and their populations decimated by cruelty, hard work, and disease, his tone when describing the slavery of blacks is somewhat resigned, as though black slavery is indeed “unalterable.” Although he follows Campe and condemns the slave trade, Hurwitz's descriptions are not particularly emotive.
און מען האט אין אפריקא איין גיקופט פיהל טויזענט שווארצע מענטשין און מיט דיא אינדיאניר האט מען דאך זייער שוועהר גיארביט, און עד היום פיהרט מען תמיד צו פאר קויפין שווארצע מענטשין פון אפריקא, קיין אמעריקא, און אלע שוועהרי ארבאט וואס אין אמעריקא איז, ארבאט מען מיט דיא שווארצע און מען רופט זייא דיא נעגערס.
And in Africa they bought thousands of black people and together with the Indians worked them very hard, and until today people always sell black people from Africa to America; and all the harsh labor that is done in America is done by the blacks, and they are called Negroes.
Mordecai Aaron Guenzburg, who translated Die Entdeckung into both HebrewFootnote 64 and Yiddish,Footnote 65 is clearer in expressing his disgust for the slave trade. In his afterwords to both his Hebrew and Yiddish translations, he elaborates on the financial and productive benefits of the colonies (following Campe and akin to Hurwitz), yet he also condemns the slave trade, following Campe. On this, his Hebrew translation is most explicit:
ומעת ההיא והלאה התפרצה התועבה הזאת להתעמר באנשים למכרם ממכרת עבד לחרפת חברת האנשים ולבשתם, ועד היום הזה לא נגלה החרפה הזאת מעליהם, כי מדי שנה בשנה יובלו מאפריקא כמ' אלף כושים בנחושתים לחרוש ולעבוד….
And from that time onward this abomination erupted, abusing people, selling them as slaves, much to the humiliation and shame of human society. And to this day this shameful thing has not been exiled from among them, for every year around forty thousand blacks are brought from Africa in irons to plough and work….
Another Campe text that expresses his opposition to slavery is his German reworking of Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe into a pedagogical text, Robinson der Jüngere.Footnote 66 In the English novel, the hero, Robinson, spends a number of years as a plantation owner in Brazil, where he owns slaves—an acceptable and standard part of colonial existence. He is shipwrecked on a desert island during a voyage he undertakes with several other plantation owners to purchase slaves from the western coast of Africa to bring to Brazil. In keeping with his ideology, Campe removes all links between Robinson and the slave trade: his hero never reaches Brazil. However, Campe introduces the issue of slavery and enters into a discourse on the subject at another point in the work.Footnote 67 When a Spanish ship carrying slaves is wrecked off the coast of Robinson's island during a storm, the crew is forced to release the slaves from their chains under the deck so that they can pump water out of the sinking ship. The slaves revolt, rushing to the lifeboat to flee for their lives. Outnumbered by the slaves, the masters are left begging for their own lives:
Und hier kan ich nicht umhin, die Großmuth und Menschlichkeit dieser armen Sklaven zu rühmen. Ohneachtet unser Verfahren gegen sie sehr hart gewesen war, liessen sie sich doch von Mitleid rühren, und erlaubten uns, zu ihnen hinab zu steigen unter der Bedingung, daß wir keine Waffen mitnähmen. Wir gingen die Bedingung ein und sprangen in die Böte….”Footnote 68
This text contrasts the humanity of the slaves with the inhumanity of those who had forced them onto the ship and into slavery and describes as well the terrible conditions in which the slaves are transported across the Atlantic Ocean, packed like herrings.
Most of the Hebrew and Yiddish maskilic translations of Robinson der Jüngere follow this condemnation of the slave trade. Translators often use the device of the biblical inlay (shibuẓ), or fragment of a biblical verse, to condemn the slave trade and to express identification with the black slaves; Ezra Fleischer refers the shibuẓ as among Hebrew literature's oldest “and established ornamental devices.”Footnote 69 According to Dan Pagis, the shibuẓ can be divided into three types: (1) “neutral,” or primarily linguistic; (2) acting primarily “via a knowledge of the source-text”; and (3) a conceptual or descriptive center of the text.Footnote 70 In the descriptions of slavery these inlays clearly function, according to Moshe Pelli, “via a knowledge of the source-text,” allowing the reader to “derive a special, sometimes a surprising flavor from the new knit of old familiar verses and from the new context….”Footnote 71
David Zamosc's Hebrew translationFootnote 72 closely follows Campe's source text, including his discussions of slavery. Zamosc uses a shibuẓ associated with the Exodus from Egypt to describe the slaves' escape “from slavery to freedom”: מעבדות לחרות.Footnote 73 In the Yiddish Alter Leb, the hero suggests that the shipwreck was probably an act of God to free the slaves; he condemns the mistreatment of the slaves with harsh descriptions of their physical conditions: they were naked and barefoot, hungry and thirsty, and sold for money to be used for the harshest labor. To describe this labor, the adaptor uses an inlay within a Yiddish text—עבודת פרך (harsh labor) —as found in Exodus 1:13, where it describes the physical labor inflicted upon the Jews in Egypt. The use of this phrase is evidence that Vitlin saw a parallel between the plight of the black slaves and the slavery of the Children of Israel in Egypt and used it to evoke sympathy among his readers for the plight of contemporary slaves.Footnote 74 He sums up his attitude:
אוי וויא…ביטער איז מיר אונ פינסטער איז מיר לעבען וואס פאר איין אומרעכט דאס איז אז מענטשען זאלין מיט זייערע ברידער אזוא אומגיין.
Oy vey, bitter and dark is my life that there can be such an injustice, that people should treat so their brothers.Footnote 75
Only one Jewish adaptation of Robinson Crusoe claims to be based upon Defoe's original text rather than Campe's reworking: Sefer kur ‘oni by Isaac Rumsch;Footnote 76 however, Rumsch's text is in fact a translation of Franz Rauch's Robinson's Leben und Abenteuer,Footnote 77 which was in turn influenced by Campe and enlightenment ideology. Rauch too omits the hero's involvement with the black slave trade.
As Idelson-Shein notes, the opposition to the slave trade or to slavery in these works is not a necessary result of the writers’ Jewish backgrounds.Footnote 78 Yet at the same time, their reactions to slavery do not arise only from their contacts with European thought and literature. Although the maskilic observations on slavery discussed so far are all to be found in reworkings of Campe's books, since these texts are free adaptations and by no means close translations, the presence of these discussions indicates that the adaptors actively chose to include them. Reinforcing this conclusion is the authors' decision to include additional information, descriptions, and discussion of the topic; and their use of the shibuẓ to describe black slavery and identify the plight of the slaves with that of the Children of Israel in Egypt. Some of the writers also go further than Campe in their critiques of slavery. In fact, a complex set of factors motivated these maskilic writers to discuss the topic of black slavery: their desire to educate and morally edify, to praise the enlightened values of abolitionists, and to instill in readers respect for European society. However, most of these writers, while opposing the trade in slaves as inhuman, were resigned to the use of slaves on plantations in the New World and were well aware of the advantages of this system. Only Mendelsohn and Vitlin truly speak out against the institution of slavery.
Isaac Meir Dik and Black Slavery
עש איז דער פון צוא לערנען גדולות הבורא יראת שמים אונ צוא פאר שטיין כמה פסוקים אין דער תורה וויא דער פסוק זאגט יורדי הים באוניות ראו מעשי ד'.
From this we can learn about the greatness of God, fear of heaven and we can understand a few verses of the Torah, as the verse says, they that go down to the sea in ships… saw the works of the LORD (Psalms 107: 23–24).
Thus introduces the prolific writer Isaac (Ayzik) Meir Dik his work Maʿoz ha-yam oder di viste inzl (The Strength of the Sea or The Desert Island)Footnote 79 and outlines his aims in composing this work of pleasurable instruction: to teach his readers about the wonders of the Creator and the fear of heaven and to explicate for them a few verses of Torah.Footnote 80 In the latter half of the nineteenth century Dik published over two hundred works of fiction and nonfiction in Hebrew and Yiddish, including translations and adaptations of Hebrew or European works.Footnote 81 David Roskies classifies Dik's fictional works as “Yiddish popular literature,” which he describes as using “an established format and genre to convey a message that, if new, must be vertically legitimated. Vertical legitimization is achieved by invoking biblical/historical precedents; by Judaization techniques; and/or by an authorial, thematic presentation similar to that of Jewish ethical literature.”Footnote 82 For the most part, Dik's works are concerned with problems and issues within Jewish society—for example, calls for productivity or warnings against arranged marriages, sectarianism, and superstition—and with imparting moral messages to his readers on these and other topics. In some works Dik also provides his readers with general edification on topics as varied as history, geography, wildlife, natural phenomena, anthropology, politics, and more, as the above quotation demonstrates.
Within Dik's bibliography sea adventures form a homogenous group.Footnote 83 In these works, the sea serves not only as the backdrop to adventure or as a plot device, taking characters far away from their places of origin and separating them from familiar surroundings and society; as a platform for substantial introductions or digressions, it is also used to accomplish unmistakable moral and general educational aims. In all the sea tales Jewish themes and perspectives feature prominently—at times they are integral to the original story (for example, in Dik's translation of Rabbi Ovadiah of Bartenura's sea voyage to the land of Israel in Der Bartenure)Footnote 84 and at times a result of heavy Judaization by the author (as in Maʿoz ha-yam, ’Iyei ha-yam, Der apekun, and others).
Furthermore, in all his works where the sea plays an educational role as well as one important work with no connection to the sea—his translation of Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin or Negro Life in the Slave States of America as Di shklaveray oder di laybeygnshaft (Slavery),Footnote 85—Dik addresses the issue of black slavery. For Dik, the topic was clearly bound up with the sea, because he digresses to discuss slavery in relation to sea travel even when his narrative bears no connection to black slavery. Dik first addresses black slavery a year into his writing career in 1856, nine years before the abolition of slavery in the United States, and he returns repeatedly to the topic even after abolition achieved success in 1865. His approach to black slavery clearly develops as he moves from condemnations of the slave trade in his earlier work to outright abolitionism in his later texts.
Dik's choice of subject matter may be explained by both the traditional stance of the maskilim against the slave trade and the moral lessons he wished to impart to his readers using this material. An analysis of his works demonstrates that one source he used for composing his narratives of sea travel was Campe's work, possibly through Hebrew or Yiddish translations.Footnote 86 Campe's work, along with the writings of other maskilim, may have influenced Dik's views on the slave trade. Also affecting him was the political climate of Russia during the second half of the nineteenth century. As David Hecht notes, almost “all outstanding Russian progressive intellectuals were united in condemning the system of American Negro slavery. They sensed keenly the connection between serfdom at home…and the system of American Negro servitude. They hated both.”Footnote 87 In the repressive years under Nicholas I, Russian intellectuals could voice criticism of American slavery but not of serfdom in Russia. Even after Alexander II ascended the throne in 1855 and political repression lessened, these intellectuals continued to support the abolition of black slavery and accordingly sided with the Northern states in the Civil War.Footnote 88 Interest in the issue of slavery, both at home and abroad, was reflected in the success of Uncle Tom's Cabin in Russia (it was published in Russian translation in 1853, one year after its publication in English in Boston); the American book in fact created more of a sensation in Russia than Turgenev's Sportsman's Sketches (1852) or The Inn (1855), which depicted the lives of Russian serfs.Footnote 89 Dik's wide and varied reading, as demonstrated repeatedly by his eclectic sources, are evidence of his exposure to the antislavery views of the Russian intelligentsia.Footnote 90
Although Dik does not mention the slavery of the Russian serfs before their emancipation in 1861 by Alexander II, in works published after that date he praises the emperor extensively in this regard. After Alexander II's assassination in 1881 and the pogroms that followed, Dik returns only once to this topic. Despite his many and detailed descriptions of the harsh conditions of black slavery in the New World, Dik touches only rarely on the condition of the Russian serfs before 1861, and then only to note that slavery in America was harsher than Russian serfdom; in Der apekun (The Trustee), for example, he notes that the slave owners in America gave their slaves
, …עבודת פרך פיל מעהר אלס עס פלעגין צו טאן אונזערע פריצים (איידעל לייט)
much harsher labor than our nobles were accustomed to [give]…,Footnote 91
using terminology evocative of the Israelites' slavery in Egypt. In all his comparisons between the process of abolition in the United States and the freeing of the Russian serfs, Dik paints a favorable picture of the Russian government: in Russia serfdom ended peacefully, without bloodshed, and the government worried about the serfs' future, giving each one a parcel of land; in the United States, on the other hand, slavery was abolished at a terrible cost through a bloody war, and after abolition many slaves were left destitute.Footnote 92
Dik clearly saw many parallels between the situations in the two countries, but his comparisons always serve to praise Russia.Footnote 93 In this respect, Dik joins the many Jewish voices praising Alexander II throughout the 1860s. Eli Lederhandler's comments on political expressions in Hebrew newspapers during the 1860s are relevant here to Dik's Yiddish works:
When the Hebrew Hamelitz responded to anti-Jewish claims with apologetics and refutations, the editor's righteous indignation or sermonic references to civic virtue and patriotism contained a hidden agenda: The maskilic claim for full-participant status in Russian society was being advanced in Hebrew in order to convince the Jewish reader, not the Russian.Footnote 94
Maskilic authors writing in Yiddish and Hebrew did not praise the tsar to garner favor with the Russian authorities or the Russian intelligentsia. Written in the languages most familiar to a Jewish public, these texts were specifically directed at Jewish readers: the Hebrew newspaper Ha-magid, for example, recognized as its own purpose the rousing of Jews to good and useful social purpose. So too, through many of these texts, maskilic writers sought to instill feelings of patriotism to the Russian Empire and love and respect for its leader.Footnote 95
The aim of these works was to convince Jewish readers of the desirability of gaining wider education and improving themselves so that they would be granted full rights and entrance into Russian society. While not directly requesting that the tsarist government integrate Jews fully into Russian society, these writers encouraged their readers to begin transforming themselves in order to achieve this goal.
Dik's comparisons between Russia and America may also hint at his understanding of where the future of the Jewish people lay. In an article titled “America in the Works of I. M. Dik,” Shmuel Niger asserts that Dik counseled Jews to emigrate to the United States and that following the pogroms of the 1880s he sided with the ‘Am ‘Olam group, which favored emigration to the United States over emigration to Palestine. As examples Niger cites Di yidn in lite (1871), in which a Lithuanian Jew becomes a pious and successful plantation owner in Louisiana, and Der unbegetener gast (also 1871), in whose introduction Dik calls America the God-given solution to the problem of continuing population expansion in Europe; at some point the European population would become too great for mainland Europe to contain.Footnote 96
Although Dik certainly saw the possibilities for Jewish life in America, his comments on America's treatment of slaves and on the corrupting effects that American life had on Jewish settlers indicate that he was not as enamored with the United States as Niger suggests. Dik understood the negative consequences of relocation to America, including the detrimental influence of luxury, the lust for wealth, and isolation, and many of these perceptions come to fore in his discussions of black slavery. In Der apekun and Amerikaner geshikhte oder keyn soyne zol dir tsu kleyn zayn (An American Story, or Don't Underestimate Your Enemy),Footnote 97 Dik demonstrates how slave ownership can corrupt Jewish immigrants. Although he may have sided with ‘Am ‘Olam following the events of 1881, before this, during the reign of Alexander II, Dik appeared to be a firm believer that Jews should aspire to integrate into Russian society rather than leave for the New World.Footnote 98
Dik's first comments on black slavery appear in ’Iyei ha-yam (The Islands of the Sea).Footnote 99 To appeal to a traditional readership, Dik uses both Judaization and biblical allusion and imagery, which are found in the title of the work itself: ’Iyei ha-yam is a fragment of the biblical verse Esther 10:1. His hero/narrator is a Jewish doctor who joins an English battleship bound for Asia. Slavery is certainly not a central theme of ’Iyei ha-yam; rather Dik digresses from his description of sharks to a discussion of slavery.Footnote 100 Dik notes that sharks follow ships in the hope of a meal of human flesh, gathering especially around ships that are stranded or carrying sick people. Many more sharks follow the slave ships transporting black people bought by “our Europeans” to become their slaves in America, since so many die during the voyage and their corpses are thrown overboard. Those who arrive in America alive will be worked like cattle.
Despite his criticism of the “Europeans” and their actions, in his discussion of slavery in ’Iyei ha-yam Dik also makes an uncharacteristically harsh comment about the black Africans, noting that mothers sell their children for needles, beads, and other baubles, thinking that they have taken advantage of the Europeans. In none of his other works dealing with slavery does Dik repeat this statement or anything similar to it. Dik describes the harsh conditions of the Atlantic crossing, with slaves packed into ships like herring. Due to these conditions, he notes, many die in transit; and the slave dealers are happy if a third of their merchandise arrives alive. He then goes on to bless the French, Russian, and English governments who “these days” are sending warships to patrol the seas, capture slave ships, and put an end to this terrible trade.Footnote 101
Dik reiterates the same information about slave trading in Ma‘oz ha-yam.Footnote 102 This time his hero and narrator, a young British Jewish sailor, spends two years as a castaway on an island as punishment for an unspecified misdeed aboard ship.Footnote 103 Again Dik's digression on slavery has no connection with the narrative account, which is to all intents and purposes a Robinsonade. Once again, the discussion of slavery appears during a description of sharks, as it did in ’Iyei ha-yam. This time, however, the narrator confesses that he was once on a slave-trading ship with hundreds of blacks traveling from Africa to be sold as slaves in America. Sharks would accompany the ship day and night hoping to consume the dead slaves thrown into the water. Three or four would die each day, and only one in ten survived (a lower survival rate than the one-third in ’Iyei ha-yam).
In 1868 Dik published Di vistenay zahara (The Sahara Desert), in which he also addresses the issue of slavery, again as an aside from the main plot, which follows a French Jew on his journey from Senegal to his home in Europe through the Sahara Desert. In 1828 the narrator sails to the African island of St. Louis to claim an inheritance and, in his descriptions of the island, mentions its five thousand European inhabitants and the thirty thousand Negro slaves who work the land.Footnote 104 He also declares that he would need several books to describe the unfortunate condition of the slaves in every land, especially those who reach America. The slave traders who come to St. Louis to buy black slaves separate families, tearing children from their mothers’ breasts and violating all of nature's holy bonds. His descriptions of the terror and trauma that are part and parcel of the slave trade are very different from his earlier comments in ’Iyei ha-yam on the African mothers who sell their own children for baubles.
Di vistenay zahara demonstrates a development in Dik's approach toward black slavery as well as his acquaintance with more detailed sources of information. This work was published in the same year as Dik's adaptation of Uncle Tom's Cabin, Di shklaveray. Although the descriptions in Di vistenay zahara of the inhuman conditions to which slaves are subjected during the passage across the Atlantic are not based on Uncle Tom's Cabin—which concentrates on the fate of slaves in the American South—and are similar to those in ’Iyei ha-yam and Ma‘oz ha-yam, the influence of Stowe's work on Dik's approach to slavery is evident: from this time onward, his descriptions of slavery are more detailed and highly critical. Uncle Tom's Cabin transformed Dik from an opponent of the slave trade into an abolitionist.
Much of the information in Di vistenay zahara about life on plantations and about Jewish and Christian slave owners is similar to that in Uncle Tom's Cabin and Dik's Di shklaveray. Dik describes plantation owners who hit their slaves without mercy and house them in cabins that are worse than dog kennels; although they do give them Sunday as a day to rest, the slaves have to use that day to work their own plots. The slaves owned by Jewish masters, however, are treated far better—they have two days to rest every week, Shabbat and Sunday, and are not hit as hard. The worst punishment for slaves of Jewish owners is the threat of sale to Christians. Dik describes the fate of those who try to run away or rise up against their masters, including a footnote on a 1795 slave revolt in St. Helena in which slaves killed their masters and families and burned plantations, resulting in a terrible war.Footnote 105
The narrator notes a decree by the governor of St. Louis that upon selling a plantation the owner had to free ten percent of his slaves, who have ten years to pay back the cost. On selling his inherited plantation, Dik's narrator frees twenty “innocent souls” with their families. He describes the money they owe to him as “blood money,” which he shudders to accept. He also states that it is a shame on “cultured France” that such tyranny could take place.
Not only is Dik's discussion of slavery more developed and detailed in this later work, but it is also more sharply critical. In a footnote, however, Dik counterpoints his criticism with praise for the wonderful deeds of Alexander II, who abolished this terrible trade “in all his lands in our time.” Dik declares that Alexander's name will be remembered forever for freeing twenty-five million people with one stroke of his pen. At the same time, he refers to an emancipation in North America that is “smaller” in terms of the number of people liberated, but cost much blood. He concludes with the hope that this disgraceful trade will also cease in Africa. This work, written after the abolition of slavery in the United States and the freeing of the serfs in Russia, and following Dik's work on Uncle Tom's Cabin, has the advantage of hindsight, which explains its sharp criticism of the institution of slavery in parallel with extensive praise for the tsar who abolished serfdom.
Three further works by Dik revolve almost entirely around the issue of black slavery: Di shklaveray, Der apekun, and Amerikaner geshikhte. The first of these, his Judaized adaptation of Uncle Tom's Cabin, was in Dik's opinion the most accomplished of his works on slavery; hence in Der apekun he refers his readers to Di shklaveray for more information on the subject.Footnote 106 In fact most of the information on slavery in the introductions to Der apekun and Amerikaner geshikhte is based on Di shklaveray, demonstrating its continuing influence on Dik's approach to slavery.
Di shklaveray sets out Dik's total opposition to slavery and his empathy with the suffering of the slaves. The identification of slaves with the Jews and the Exodus narrative, a common motif in the preaching and writing of black slaves themselves, is a theme in Stowe's novel; note, for example, this description of Eliza's escape from the Southern to the Northern states over the frozen Ohio River: the river in front of her is “like Jordan, between her and the Canaan of liberty on the other side.”Footnote 107 Dik picks up on the use of this motif and expands upon it in the prayer he places in Eliza's mouth as she faces the frozen river with her young son in her arms: she likens herself to Ruth, the foreigner who became a believer and went to live among Jews, and was rewarded for her piety by becoming the ancestor of King David: “O Great Creator, cause me to pass through these terrible troubles as once you caused Your people Israel to pass through the Reed Sea, because I believe in You as they did; I am a poor Ruth from another people who has come to shelter under the shadow of Your wings….”Footnote 108 Dik uses biblical imagery and prooftexts throughout this work, referring to Psalms, to the sayings of the sages, and to midrashim. In a speech given by Tom to his fellow slaves as Haley is taking him away, Tom urges the others to remain calm and have patience, as God will take revenge on the white tyrants, to the third and fourth generations, quoting Exodus 20:4.Footnote 109 In a footnote, Dik informs his readers that Tom's words were “prophetic,” since they were realized during the Civil War. Likewise, he justifies helping runaway slaves with the biblical commandment not to hand over a runaway slave to his master, Deuteronomy 23:16–17.Footnote 110
Der apekun and Amerikaner geshikhte are classified by Roskies as “sensational-exotic romances.”Footnote 111 They involve far-fetched plots, forbidden love, romantic trysts, and greed against the backdrop of plantations on the American continent; and they offer strong moral messages on equality, brotherhood, love of one's neighbor, piety, and simple living as well as educational content on slavery, American history, geography, nature, and more.
Both books tell stories of European Jews who have migrated to the New World (in Der apekun, to antebellum Louisiana; and in Amerikaner geshikhte, to Guadeloupe) and how they cope with life so distant from their European homeland. In both works, Dik reiterates much of the information he provides elsewhere on slavery: its origins, the passage of slaves over the ocean, and their treatment in America; however, he also deals extensively with the issue of Jews as slave owners and the potentially morally debilitating effects of slave ownership on a person's character.
Although Dik claims (in Di shklaveray and Di vistenay zahara) that Jewish slave owners are kinder to their slaves than Christians, in Der apekun and Amerikaner geshikhte he demonstrates that this was not always the case and that Jewish slave owners could be tyrannical and inhumane. In Der apekun, his antihero, Markus Optzom, is likened to the devil. He forces his slaves to carry out harsh labor and dangerous tasks, sending the younger slaves into dark, thick forests during the night to catch beautiful birds—a task from which many do not return, because they get lost in the forest or are bitten by poisonous snakes.Footnote 112 Dik suggests that the slave revolt at the close of the story, in which Markus and his family are murdered, is God's punishment for his many sins.
Dik's description of slaves who escape their masters and band together in forests is at once idyllic and critical: he does not condone their violent attacks on slave owners, but he supports them in their decision to flee their masters.Footnote 113 This is true also of his description of the slave revolt on the island of St. Domingue (Haiti) in Di vistenay zahara, which he concludes by praising the free republic established by the former slaves.Footnote 114Der apekun concludes with the abolition of slavery, in which Dik's hero is instrumental:Footnote 115
דיזע יוזעף וואש וואר אגרויסער יוריסט האט מיט דער צייט זייער פיל בייא גיטראגין (גיחאלפין) צו דיא בעפרייאונג פון אלע שקלאפין וואש ווארין אין דיא זינדארדליכע גובערנס. ער וואר דער ערסטער וואש איז ארויס מיט אגוטין בייא שפיל דער צו. דען ער האט נאך מיט איאר צוואנציג פריהער בעפרייט זיינע שקלאפין. אונ זיין נאמען ווערט דער מאנט דארט נאך עד היום צום גוטין.
This Yosef was a great judge and in time contributed much to the liberation of all the slaves in the Southern states. He was the first to give a good example of this, for twenty years earlier he freed his slaves. And his name is remembered with honor to this day.
Thus despite his claims that Jews can be humane slave owners, usually more humane than Christians, Dik's ideal remains abolition, and he even allocates a role in this process to his Jewish heroes.
Der apekun and Amerikaner geshikhte, as well as Di shklaveray, were published after the abolition of slavery in both the United States and the Russian Empire. Why would Dik produce abolitionist texts after abolition had already been achieved? The answer to this question lies perhaps in the maskil's self-perception as a musar preacher and social reformer who attempts to arouse in his readers the desire to integrate into Russian society.
Dik uses the institution of slavery to emphasize the ethical qualities that maskilim had been championing since the beginning of the Haskalah as necessary for entrance into European society, including brotherhood, tolerance, equality, patience, and modesty; he conveys these ethical qualities through his descriptions of the corrupting effects of slave ownership and slave trading. In a similar vein, through his criticisms of black slavery, his descriptions of slave traders and owners, and his comparisons of the situations in America and Russia (to the advantage of the latter), he seeks to inspire readers both to reform themselves so that they can become a part of Russian society and to respect and honor the tsar as an example of enlightenment and humanity. All but one of the works discussed herein were written before 1881; and Dik returned only once after this to the detrimental effects of immigration to the New World and slave ownership—in a work that was published only posthumously (and indeed perhaps Dik had decided not to publish this work). The fact that after 1881 he abandoned these subjects may indicate a change in his ideology as well as in where he saw the future of the Jewish people.
Conclusion
A survey of maskilic sea literature demonstrates that from the beginning of the nineteenth century maskilic writers were interested in the issue of black slavery and wanted to educate their readers on this topic. In adaptations of sea literature that often omitted much of the material from the source text, these writers chose to include descriptions of and comments on black slavery. Most of these writers express horror at the slave trade, but many seem resigned to the existence of black slavery in the New World, acknowledging its economic benefits.
Comments by early maskilic writers such as Mendelsohn, Hurwitz and Guenzburg provided a precedent that was taken up by Isaac Meir Dik in his works of original fiction. He chose to discuss the issue of black slavery in connection with sea voyages, even where there was no clear connection between the issue and his narrative. His earlier succinct and critical descriptions of the slave trade developed in his later writings into lengthy portraits and censure of the institution of black slavery.
A complex web of factors led maskilic writers to discourse on the topic of black slavery. Among these were sympathy for the slaves, a desire to emulate European writers, the desire to educate and bring moral edification, and the goal of arousing in readers the desire to integrate into enlightened European society. Further research of texts outside the corpus discussed herein (for example, newspapers, other travel accounts, and textbooks) will widen the understanding of this phenomenon and unveil previously neglected aspects of maskilic thought.
