Lara Lempertienė (Martynas Mažvydas National Library of Lithuania)
The periodical press of the Jewish enlightenment activists, maskilim, was born with the Haskalah movement in the second half of the 18th century in Germany. It evolved further in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and later, in the Russian Empire. The first maskilic periodicals in the Russian Empire, the Hebrew magazines, Pirche Tsafon (The Northern Flowers) and Ha-karmel (The Mount of Carmel), were published in Vilna. The realization of a broad educational and ideological program, aimed at constructing new Jewish identity that would dull some of its traditional elements and introduce the new ones, bringing the Jews closer to the culture of their immediate surroundings and the world culture in general, was an important goal of the Haskalah periodicals in Western as well as Eastern Europe. The paper discusses the content of the Vilna maskilic periodicals, the strategies of their editors and authors, the audience they envisioned and attempts of forming it, and evaluates the success of this enterprise.