_Ha-Shahar_ exerted a tremendous influence upon the mental development of the young generation which had been trained in the heders and yeshibahs.

Here they found a response to the thoughts that agitated them; here they learned to think logically and critically and to distinguish between the essential elements in Judaism and its mere accretions.

_Ha-Shahar_ was the staff of life for the generation of that period of transition, which stood on the border-line dividing the old Judaism from the new.
The various stages in the Russification of the Jewish _intelligenzia_ are marked by the changing tendencies of the Jewish periodical press in the Russian language.

In point of literary form, it approached the European models more closely than the contemporary Hebrew press.

The contributors to the three Russian-Jewish weeklies, all of them issued in Odessa, [1] had the advantage of having before them patterns of Western Europe.