ightenment (Heb. Haskalah) movement in Eastern Europe. It advocated rapprochement with the Christian population, the productivisation of Jewish society, and encouraged a gradual shift to agriculture as a means of employment. Fuenn was an enthusiastic supporter of the intensive Russification policies implemented by the Tsarist authorities with respect to the Jewish minority in the aftermath of the failed Polish revolt of 1863. Unlike ha-Maggid
and its editor, ha-Karmel
and Fuenn demonstrated a forgiving and sympathetic attitude towards the Jewish Reform movement that was developing in Germany. In the ‘Legume Debate’ of 1868, he sided with those who believed that the consumption of legumes on Passover should be permitted in order to ease the burden upon the victims of the drought and famine raging at that time in Lithuania. Fuenn also encouraged and supported the foundation of aid committees for the hungry, which emerged in Russia and in Prussia across the border.
As stated, Fuenn avoided taking extreme positions on ‘matters of life’ that plagued the Jewish public—whether out of fear of the Tsarist censorship or from a desire to avoid internal squabbling that would threaten the pious subscription base of the newspaper—and generally tried to mediate between the traditional and the new currents. In its sixth year of publication (1866), ha-Karmel received a grant of three hundred rubles from the Society for the Promotion of Culture among the Jews of Russia, which itself had intensified its activities on behalf of the ideas of the Jewish Enlightenment in order to appease its generous patrons and accommodate the agendæ that they promoted. At the same time, the number of articles on Torah scholarship declined, as the literary/scientific section took on a more popular and folk form. The abandonment of the conciliatory line on the matter of the conflict between the Enlightenment and tradition stemmed from a common belief at the time that the time was fast approaching when Tsar Aleksandr II would grant equal rights to the Jews, thus creating a desire to ‘prepare the hearts’ of the people in advance of their integration into Russian society.
Ha-Karmel suffered throughout most of its existence from difficulties with respect to its circulation and from lack of funds, which troubled Fuenn, harming not only his livelihood but his health as well. Issues did not appear on time or in proper serial order during the bulk of the newspaper's duration, and with the demise of its existence as a weekly, even the number of pages allotted to each issue was reduced. Even with occasional material assistance from the Society for the Promotion of Culture among the Jews of Russia or from the Russian authorities, ha-Karmel found it difficult to contend with the broader distribution of its competitors ha-Melits and ha-Maggid; after it turned into a monthly, it failed to compete with ha-Shaḥar (Heb. ‘The Dawn’), published by Perets Smolenskin (1842–1882) in Vienna, which was the most influential monthly of that time. The financial challenges facing ha-Karmel were further exacerbated by the inability of Fuenn to cultivate and to maintain a consistent cadre of writers of high quality, who would contribute regularly their writing to the newspaper. This problem, therefore, forced him to rely increasingly upon local forces in Vilnius, which steadily turned ha-Karmel into a local and provincial newspaper. These difficulties ultimately overcame Fuenn and ha-Karmel ceased to exist in 1880.