A Discourse, at Temple Keneseth Israel,
by
Rabbi Joseph Krauskopf, D. D.

Philadelphia, December 25th, 1910.

ResumÉ—Discourse I: Reasons for my visit to Russia and for my calling on Tolstoy. His appearance and personality. Some of his views on Russia, its statesmen, religion, misgovernment. A pause under the Poverty Tree—his burial place.

Discourse II: Recalled food-relief for famine-stricken in Russia from Philadelphia and from Jewish congregation in California. Admired Quakers for their opposition to war. Blamed schools for many social wrongs. Severely criticised political and economical evils of our country. Ascribed them to growth of cities and to farm-desertions. His relationship with wife and family. His working-room. Against lawyers. Belittled his novels. Spoke of his book What To Do? Saw solution of Jewish problem in agriculture only.

Tolstoy suggests school for training American lads in agriculture.

At the conclusion of my last discourse I made mention of yet another request count Tolstoy made of me. It was in connection with his prediction that the Russian government would not look favorably upon my proposition to colonize Russian Jews upon unoccupied farm-lands in the interior. "If the plan cannot be entered upon in Russia," he asked, "why can it not be made successful in the United States? What are you, Americans, doing to prevent a Jewish problem in your own country? How long before the evils that are harrowing your people in the old world may be harrowing them in the new? Your people are crowding into your large cities by the thousands and tens of thousands. You have built up Ghettoes worse than those of Europe. There is excuse for it in Russia; there is no excuse for it in the United States. Yours is the right to own land and the best of it, and to till as much of it as you please. Granted that ages of enforced abstention from agricultural labor have weaned the elder generation from a love of country life and farm-labor, why may not a love for it be instilled in the young? Lead your young people to the country and to the farm. Start agricultural schools for them. Teach them to exchange the yard-stick for the hoe, the peddler's pack for the seed-bag, and you will solve the problem while it may yet be solved. You will see the lands tilled by them overflow, as of old, with milk and honey. You will see them give of their plenty to the people of the land, and receive in return goodly profit and esteem. And once again there will arise from among Jewish husbandmen prophets, lawgivers, inspired bards and teachers to whom the civilized world will do homage."

At yet greater length he spoke on this subject, and the more he spoke the more he quickened within me the resolve to do as he wished it to be done.

Founding of Farm School promised.

And there, under The Poverty Tree, it was where I gave Tolstoy the solemn promise that upon my return home the earliest task I would enter upon would be the establishment of an agricultural school for Jewish lads, and other lads. And the existence of the National Farm School, near Doylestown in this state, is testimony that I kept my promise. I had gone to Russia to see the Czar, and I saw a greater man instead. I had gone with a plan for colonizing Russian Jews in Russia, and I returned with a plan for teaching agriculture chiefly to Russian Jewish lads in the United States. Verily, "man proposes and God disposes." And the hundreds of young men who have received their agricultural training at the National Farm School, and the hundreds of others, young and old, who, directly and indirectly, have been encouraged by that school to forsake the congested cities and to take up the farmer's life, owe their escape from the miseries of the Ghetto, and their enjoyment of health and happiness, to the promise asked of me by that noblest of all farmers, count Tolstoy.

Promise kept under difficulties.

The establishment of the school was not an easy task, nor is its maintenance easy even now, notwithstanding the excellent record it has made. The bulk of our people have not yet acquired that profound grasp of the seriousness of our problem, and of its only possible solution, that Tolstoy had, sixteen years ago. Therefore is the support of that school still so meagre. Therefore has it still less than a hundred students in attendance when it easily could have a thousand, and more, if it had the means. And, therefore, are our Ghettoes more crowded than ever, and a greater drain than ever on our charities. That despite indifference and even hostility the school has persevered is due, to a very large extent, to the determination to keep sacred a promise solemnly given to one of the best of men.

Parting from Tolstoy.

It was late that night when I took leave of the count and of some of the members of his family. Before departing, it was agreed that I enter at once upon my journey to the Jewish agricultural colonies in the interior, that I might see them at work during the height of their harvesting, and a peasant and his wagon were engaged to take me on that trip. The count bade me a hearty God-speed, and repeatedly urged me to make my report personally to him, and I promised that I would avail myself a second time of his proffered hospitality, if my way should lead me back again to Moscow or St. Petersburg.

Never heard from him again.

Unfortunately, after my inspection of the Jewish agricultural colonies, which fully confirmed the favorable reports the count had received of them, my investigations led me to the Southern and Polish provinces, and consumed so much of my limited time that a return North was impossible. And so I never got to see the count again. And I never heard from him. Neither my report, which I sent to him in writing, nor my other communications to him, written in Russia and outside of it, have brought from him a reply. Never a line from him even in answer to the information sent him that the National Farm School, which he had so strongly urged, had been founded. Never an acknowledgment from him of the early annual reports of the School that were sent him to show the headway it was making.

Probable reason of silence.

The heartiness of his reception of me, his almost affectionate farewell, his deep interest in my mission and his earnest invitation that I repeat my visit to him, preclude the thought that I was forgotten by him or became indifferent to him after my departure. There is but one explanation—an explanation strengthened by similar experiences of others in connection with him—none of my communications ever reached him. I was not wanted in Russia. I was a persona non grata to the government; my name was blacklisted, and my mail fell under the ban of the censor.

With him in spirit under Poverty Tree.

But, if my mail has never reached him, my thoughts have been with him often. Many a time have I sat with him, in spirit, under that Poverty Tree. And yet more often will I sit with him there in the future, now that that site has become Holy Ground.

Has become his grave.

Gladly do I forgive the church of Russia many an outrage or blunder she has perpetrated or permitted to be perpetrated, for the one good act she has performed—that of refusing Tolstoy sepulture in what she is pleased to call "consecrated ground." She thus obliged him to designate as his last resting-place a spot that was one of the dearest on earth to him, a spot that was intimately associated with his life's philosophy, a spot located within a confine wherein he ruled more mightily and more exaltedly than any Czar that ever wielded scepter in vast Russia, where he wrote those epochal books of his which are destined some day to become of the basal elements of the religion of the future.

No Czarian funeral more solemn than Tolstoy's.

And even though no priest was nigh when the last rites over his remains were performed, there were present, besides his family, those who were more sacred in his eyes than priests or metropolitan, more honorable than even the Procurator of the Holy Synod—his dearly beloved peasants. It was these who followed him to his last resting place. It was these who sang the mortuary hymn Everlasting Memory, at his open grave. It was these, the "orphaned peasantry," as they called themselves because of his death, who gave his burial a distinction such as no Czarian funeral procession had ever enjoyed, notwithstanding ecclesiastical pomp or military display. It was these whose labors and outlook he had sought to soften and to brighten, who delivered the briefest and most eloquent eulogy that has, perhaps, ever been spoken: "His heart has burst because of his unbounded love for humanity. The light of the world is extinguished."

In spite of herself church has made a saint of him.

In refusing religious sepulture to the holiest man in Russia, the Greek orthodox church performed the crowning feat in her long series of stupidities. And yet, by that act she did, in despite of herself, the very thing she did not wish to see done. Like Mephistopheles in Goethe's Faust who, in response to the question who he is, says: "Ich bin ein Theil von jener Kraft, die stets das BÖse will, und stets das Gute schafft," so did she prove herself the power that sought the evil and yet performed the good. By her act of intolerance she gave a new saint to Russia, and perhaps the only one she has. By it she furnished a sanctuary to that country, one that may be destined to make a Mecca of Yasnaya Polyana, one that may be more piously sought in the future, and by larger numbers, than any shrine or sanctuary of her own creation. By that act she shed a halo of immortal glory around the head of him whom she sought to cover with infamy.

Has two ways of making saints.

The church has two ways of conferring saintships, a lesser and a higher one. The lesser distinction she confers upon lesser luminaries, generally upon those made famous by myth or legend for great endurance in fasting or penance, or for conquering imaginary devils, for working fancied miracles, or for displaying fiendish cruelty in persecuting and exterminating heretics. The higher distinction she confers generally at the stake or on the gallows, within prison walls or in the torture chamber, upon men of great minds or great hearts, upon lovers of truth and fearless enunciators of it, upon men who because of their love of humanity defy the power that interdicts God's greatest gift to man: the right to think and the right to believe and speak in accordance with the canons of reason and with the dictates of conscience.

Still makes of intolerance an act of piety.

In asking me the difference between reform and orthodox Judaism in America, and between American Reform Jews and Russian Karaitic Jews, and in replying that the difference exists mainly in the synagogue, that outside of it there is little or no difference in life and in social relationship, Tolstoy replied: "Our church has not yet arrived at the stage of tolerance of different religious beliefs. That is the reason why such people as the Jews and Doukhobors and Stundists are persecuted, and such men as I are in ill repute. Our church still makes of religious hatred an act of piety. It still measures God by the passions of man. Had the church the power in our days which it at one time had, and were the age of martyrdom not past, she would long since have silenced me for rebelling against her irrational teaching and for denouncing her craven supineness in the midst of outrageous wrongs and injustices, as now they silence men in our country for rebelling against unjust enactments of the government."

Tolstoy hoped for the reign of universal good-will.

Upon my saying that it was fortunate for us of the present day that all churches have been deprived of their one-time all-controlling power, since no church has yet been known to have possessed power and not to have abused it, he replied: "That is true of all power, temporal as well as of ecclesiastic, and it would be more fortunate still if governments were as restricted in their power as is the church, if all power, all authority, were to cease, if the good that is inherent in every human being were to be given a chance to germinate and to flourish, and every man learn to live in complete harmony with the highest of all laws, the law of peace and good-will, which God has written into the human heart. There would then be no need of armies and armaments, of courts and police, of prisons and jails, no need of impoverishing the masses through heavy taxation for the support of millions of soldiers and officers in idleness, who ought to raise their own bread by their own handiwork."

Believed that the Messiah is still to come.

"On that day," said I, "the Messianic Age, for which the Jews have hoped and prayed, will surely have dawned." To which he answered: "You, Jews, are right, the Messiah is still to come, or, if he has come, his message has not yet entered the hearts of men."

Recalling this remark of Tolstoy, on this Christmas morn, suggests the question: How many Christmas days will yet have to come and go before its gospel of peace and good-will will govern the hearts of all who call themselves Christians as it governed that of the Russian peasant-saint.

Lessening of church power shown by failure of Tolstoy's excommunication.

And vividly I recalled his remarks on the shorn power of the church, when, six years later, the papers brought the news that Tolstoy had been excommunicated by the Russian church. I could picture to myself the expression of sorrow or disgust on his face when that church decree was conveyed to him. Its ecclesiastical wrath, could have meant only hollow sounds to him. None knew better than he that the metropolitans who issued this excommunication merely grasped at a shadow, that the substance was gone, that that age was happily passed when the pronouncement of the ecclesiastical anathema deprived its victim of all association with friend or foe, deprived him of intercourse even with the closest members of his family, prevented them, under the penalty of like punishment, from providing him even with food, shelter and raiment. When during his flight from home, shortly before his death, he knocked at the doors of a monastery, and said "I am the excommunicated and anathematized Leo Tolstoy," the reply was "It is a duty and a pleasure to offer you shelter." The life of Tolstoy passed on as serenely, in the midst of his family and friends, after his excommunication as before. And the world's esteem of him grew even greater than it had been, by reason of the charges upon which the excommunication was based, namely:

"In his writings on religious questions he clearly shows himself an enemy of the Russian Orthodox Church. He does not recognize God in three persons (or three persons in one God), and he calls the Son of God, the second person of the Trinity, a mortal human being. He scoffs at the idea of Incarnation. He perverts the text of the Gospel. He censures the Holy Church and calls it a human institution. He denies the Church Hierarchy and ridicules the Holy Sacraments and the rites of the Holy Orthodox Church. Therefore, the Holy Synod has decreed that no priest is to absolve Count Tolstoy, or give him communion. Nor is he to be given burial ground, unless, before departing this life he shall repent, acknowledge the Orthodox Church, believe in it, and return to it."

Died unreconciled with church.

He never recanted. He never changed his attitude towards the errors and wrongs of the Russian orthodox church. And no one who ever stood and talked with him, face to face, could ever have believed that that modern Prometheus, that stern and fearless personality, that re-incarnation of Mattathias of old, and of his valiant sons, the Maccabees, could ever swerve from a position once taken by him. When upon his death-bed, he was frequently importuned to return as a penitent to the mother-church; he spurned every mention of it. He was still in the possession of his senses, he said, he still knew and believed that twice two equals four, and as long as he knew and believed this so long would he continue to know and to believe that what he had said and written concerning the errors and wrongs of the church was the truth.

Never a truer follower of Jesus than he.

It is noteworthy, and quite in keeping with the general tenor of the Russian orthodox church, that no cognizance was taken by the church of the many noble things Tolstoy had said and written and done; no cognizance of the self-sacrificing efforts he had made to live the life which Jesus had lived and had enjoined upon his followers; no cognizance of his having conscientiously endeavored to square his life with the teachings of the Sermon on the Mount; no cognizance of his having brought light to those in darkness and comfort to those in sorrow, of his having consorted and labored with the poor and lightened their burden, of his having thirsted and hungered after righteousness, of his having sought peace and protested against war, and preached the gospel of the wrongfulness of all physical resistance, of his having, though of the oldest nobility, spurned luxury and ease and even money, having regarded these the source of corruption and the root of many of the evils in society.

Yet refused Christian burial.

Such a person, and one even but half as good as this, should have been entitled to sepulture in the most sacred of Christian cemeteries, and the most eminent of priests should have deemed it a privilege to have been permitted to perform the last rites over his mortal remains. So would it have happened among rational people, but so could it not have happened in Russia. There, because he could not subscribe to doctrines and rites and ceremonies for which he found neither scriptural nor rational warrant, priests felt themselves disgraced, and in danger of eternal damnation, even when their names were associated with that of Tolstoy.

Priest objected to his name being associated with Tolstoy's.

A striking illustration of this was given, seven years ago, at the university of Dorpat, at the occasion of the celebration of its hundredth anniversary. In commemoration of that event the institution elected as honorary members of the corporation a number of Russians distinguished in literature, science and art, one of these was Tolstoy, another was Ivan, the miracle-working priest of Cronstadt, elected to allay the church's indignation at the choice of Tolstoy. Ivan, the priest, refused the honor, and in the following letter to the Rector of the University:

"Your Excellency—I have read your estimable and respectful letter to me, which is so full of subtle delicacy—I decline absolutely the honor of the membership to which I have been elected. I do not wish to become connected, in any way, with a corporation—however respectable and learned—which, by some lamentable misunderstanding, has put me side by side with that atheist Leo Tolstoy—the most malignant heretic of our unfortunate age—who, in presumption and arrogance, surpasses all previous heretics of any age. I do not wish to stand beside Antichrist. I am surprised furthermore, to see with what indifference the University Council regards that satanic author, and with what slavishness it burns incense to him."

IVAN SERGEIEF,
Prior and Archpriest of the Cronstadt Cathedral.

This letter tells of the attitude of the church towards Tolstoy better than any words of mine can tell. And this same Ivan, it is said, approved of the massacre of the petitioners of St. Petersburg on that memorable White Sunday, and when petitioned to protect the Jews against threatening massacres, treated the appeal with silent contempt.

Government hatred back of that of the church.

It is to be remembered, however, that over and back of the Church of Russia stands the government. The Czar is the head of the church. Whom the government favors the church favors; whom the government hates, the church hates. The church hated Tolstoy because the government hated him, and why it hated him we shall be told in the next discourse of this series.