Arthur, had begun to fade away even from the folk books of Germany, it lived on in the Slavic countries and continued to evoke pleasure and admiration.

These chapbooks, embodying the folklore of past generations, were almost the first printed Judeo-German books, as they certainly were the most popular. That the early Judeo-German literature was intended mainly for readers in the east of Europe is amply evidenced by specific mention in the works themselves, as for example in the 'Maasebuch,' where the compiler, or author, urges the German women to buy quickly his book, lest it be all too fast sold in Bohemia, Poland, and Russia.[3] In fact, the patron of the 'Maasebuch,' or the author of the same, for it is not quite clear whether they are not one and the same person, was himself a native of Meseritz in Lithuania. Only after these story books had created a taste for reading, and in order to counteract the effects of the non-Jewish lore, the Rabbis began to substitute the more Jewish legends of the 'Maasebuch' and the 'Zeena Ureena,' and the ethical treatises which were intended to instruct the people in the tenets of their fathers. In this manner the Judeo-German literature was made possible. Its preservation for four centuries was mainly due to the isolation of the German Jews in Russia and Poland, where the German medievalism became ossified and was preserved intact to within half a century ago, when under favorable conditions the Russianization of the Jews began. Had these conditions prevailed but a short time longer, Judeo-German literature would have been a thing of the past and of interest only to the linguist and the historian. But very soon various causes combined to resuscitate the dialect literature. In the short time that the Jews had enjoyed the privileges of a Russian culture, then German medievalism was completely dispelled, and the modern period which, in its incipient stage, reaches back into the first quarter of this century, presents a distinct phase which in no way resembles the literature of the three hundred years that preceded it. It is not a continuation of its older form, but has developed on an entirely new basis.

The medieval period of Judeo-German literature was by no means confined to the Slavic countries. It reacted on the Jews who had remained in Germany, who, in their narrow Ghetto life, were excluded from an active participation in the German literature of their country. This reaction was not due alone to the fact that the specifically Jewish literature appealed in an equal degree to those who had been left behind in their old homes, but in a larger measure to the superior intellectual activity of the emigrants and their descendants who kept alive the spark of Jewish learning when it had become weakened at home and found no food for its replenishment within its own communities. They had to turn to the Slavic lands for their teachers and Rabbis, who brought with them not only their Hebrew learning, but also their Judeo-German language and literature. Up to the middle of the eighteenth century there was no division of the Jews of the west and the east of Europe; they took equal part in the common Judeo-German literature, however scanty its scope. What was produced in Russia was read with the same pleasure in Germany, and vice versa, even though the spoken form of the vernacular in Slavic countries was more and more departing from that of Germany.

Even Mendelssohn's teacher was a Galician Jew. But with Mendelssohn a new era had dawned in the history of the German Jews. By his example the dialect was at once abandoned for the literary language, and the Jews were once more brought back into the fold of the German nation. The separation of the two branches of the German Jews was complete, and the inhabitants of the Slavic countries were left to shift for themselves. For nearly one hundred years they had to miss the beneficent effects of an intellectual intercourse with the West, and in the beginning of our century the contrast between the two could not have been greater: the German Jews were rapidly becoming identified with the spiritual pursuits of their Gentile fellow-citizens, the Slavic Jews persevered in the medievalism into which they had been thrown centuries before. Only by slow degrees did the Mendelssohnian Reform find its way into Poland and Russia; and even when its influence was at its highest, it was not possible for it to affect those lands in the same way that it affected the districts that were more or less under German influence. The German language could not become the medium of instruction for the masses, whose homely dialects had so far departed from their mother-tongue as to make the latter unintelligible to them. In Russia it was a long time before the native literature could make itself felt, or before Russian education came to take the place of the German culture; so in the meanwhile the Judeo-German language was left to its own evolution, and a new literature had its rise.

In arriving at its present stage, Judeo-German literature of the nineteenth century has passed through several phases. At first, up to the sixties, it was used as a weapon by the few enlightened men who were anxious to extend the benefits of the Mendelssohnian Reform to the masses at large. It is an outgrowth of the Hebrew literature of the same period, which had its rise from the same causes, but which could appeal only to a small number of men who were well versed in Hebrew lore. Since these apostles of the new learning had themselves received their impetus through the Hebrew, it was natural for them to be active both in the Hebrew and the Judeo-German field. We consequently find here the names of Gottlober and J. L. Gordon, who belong equally to both literatures. Those who devoted themselves exclusively to creating a Judeo-German literature, like the other Mendelssohnian disciples, took the German literature as the guide for their efforts, and even dreamed of approaching the literary language of Germany in the final amalgamation with the Mendelssohnian Reform. In the meanwhile, in the sixties and still more in the seventies, the Jews were becoming Russianized in the schools which had been thrown open to their youths. In the sixties, the Judeo-German literature, having received its impetus in the preceding generation, reached its highest development as a literature of Reform, but it appealed only to those who had not had the benefits of the Russian schools. In the seventies it became reminiscent, and was in danger of rapid extinction. In the eighties, the persecutions and riots against the Jews led many of those who had availed themselves of the Russian culture to devote themselves to the service of their less fortunate brethren; and many new forces, that otherwise would have found their way into Russian letters, were exerted entirely in the evolution of Judeo-German. In this new stage, the Mendelssohnian Reform, with its concomitant German language, was lost sight of. The element of instruction was still an important one in this late period, but this instruction was along universal lines, and no longer purely Jewish; above all else, this literature became an art.

Poetry was the first to be developed, as it lent itself more readily to didactic purposes; it has also, until lately, remained in closer contact with the popular poetry, which, in its turn, is an evolution of the poetry of the preceding centuries. The theatre was the latest to detach itself from prose, to which it is organically related. These facts have influenced the separate treatment of the three divisions of literature in the present work. It was deemed indispensable to add to these a chapter on the