knowledge.  The hasidic legend narrates that the Tzaddik pleaded before the Committee passionately, and often with tears in his eyes, not only to retain in the new schools the traditional methods of Bible and Talmud instruction, but also to make room in their curriculum for the teaching of the Cabala.  Nevertheless, Rabbi Mendel was compelled to endorse against his will the “godless” plan of a school reform, and a little later to prefix his approbation to a Russian edition of Mendelssohn’s German Bible translation.  His attitude toward contemporary pedagogic methods may be gauged from the epistle addressed by him in 1848 to Leon Mandelstamm, Lilienthal’s successor in the task of organizing the Jewish Crown schools.  In this epistle Rabbi Mendel categorically rejects all innovations in the training of the young.  In reply to a question concerning the edition of an abbreviated Bible text for children, he trenchantly quotes the famous medieval aphorism: 

The Pentateuch was written by Moses at the dictation of God.  Hence every word in it is sacred.  There is no difference whatsoever between the verse “And Timna was the concubine” (Gen. 36. 12) and “Hear, O Israel:  the Lord our God, the Lord is one” (Deut 6. 4). [1]

[Footnote 1:  See Maimonides’ exposition of the dogma of the divine origin of the Torah in his Mishnah Commentary, Sanhedrin, chapter X.]

Withal, the leaders of the Northern Hasidim were, comparatively speaking, “men of the world,” and were ready here and there to make concessions to the demands of the age.  Quite different were the Tzaddiks of the South-west.  They were horrified by the mere thought of such concessions.  They were surrounded by immense throngs of Hasidim, unenlightened, ecstatic, worshipping saints during their lifetime.

The most honored among these hasidic dynasties was that of Chernobyl. [1] It was founded in the Ukraina toward the end of the eighteenth century by an itinerant preacher, or Maggid, called Nahum. [2] His son Mordecai, known under the endearing name “Rabbi Motele” (died in 1837), attracted to Chernobyl enormous numbers of pilgrims who brought with them ransom money, or pidyons. [3] Mordecai’s “Empire” fell asunder after his death.  His eight sons divided among themselves the whole territory of the Kiev and Volhynia province.

[Footnote 1:  A townlet in the government of Kiev.]

[Footnote 2:  See Vol.  I, p. 382.]

[Footnote 3:  The term is used in the Bible to denote a sum of money which “redeems” or “ransoms” a man from death, as in the case of a person guilty of manslaughter (Ex. 22. 30) or that of the first-born son (Ex. 13. 13; 34. 20).  The Hasidim designate by this term the contributions made to the Tzaddik, in the belief that such contributions have the power of averting from the contributor impending death or misfortune.]