They advocated the necessity of a Russian elementary education and of secular culture in general; they emphasized the uselessness of the traditional Jewish school training, and exposed superstition and obscurantism.

The Russian publications, again, which were intended for the Jewish and the Russian _intelligenzia_, pursued in the main a political goal, the fight for equal rights and the defence of Judaism against its numerous detractors.
In both groups one can discern the gradual ripening of the social Jewish consciousness, the advance from elementary and often naive notions to more complex ideas.

The two Hebrew weeklies founded in 1860, _ha-Karmel_, "The Carmel," in Vilna, and _ha-Melitz_, "The Interpreter," in Odessa, the former edited by Fuenn and the latter by Zederbaum, [1] were at first adapted to the mental level of grown-up children, expatiating upon the benefits of secular education and the "favors" of the Government consequent upon it.

_Ha-Karmel_ expired in 1870, while yet in its infancy, though it continued to appear at irregular intervals in the form of booklets dealing with scientific and literary subjects.
_Ha-Melitz_ was more successful.

It soon grew to be a live and courageous organ which hurled its shafts at Hasidism and Tzaddikism, and occasionally even ventured to raise its hand against rabbinical Judaism.
The Yiddish weekly _Kol Mebasser_, [2] which was published during 1862-1871 as a supplement to _ha-Melitz_ and spoke directly to the masses in their own language, attacked the dark sides of the old order of things in publicistic essays and humoristic stories.
[Footnote 1: Before that time, the only weekly in Hebrew was _ha-Maggid_, "The Herald," a paper of no particular literary distinction, published since 1856 in the Prussian border-town Lyck, though addressing itself primarily to the Jews of Russia.] [Footnote 2: "A voice Announcing Good Tidings."] Another step forward was the publication of the Hebrew monthly _ha-Shahar_, "The Dawn," which was founded by Perez Smolenskin in 1869.
This periodical, which appeared in Vienna but was read principally in Russia, pursued a two-fold aim: to fight against the fanaticism of the benighted masses, on the one hand, and combat the indifference to Judaism of the intellectuals, on the other.