“This is exactly what happened to our Russian Jews from 1860 to 1880.  For many long centuries they had endured an intellectual fast.  The Government had debarred them from the world’s culture.  They were closely packed together in the narrow and dark ghettos.  They knew of their synagogues, yeshibot, and prayer-houses (Kloisen) on the one hand, and of their little stores on the other.  That there was a great world beyond and without, a world of culture, education, and civilization, of this they had only heard.  A great many of them strove to break through the bounds that confined them and step into the world of light and life; but the Cossack, lead-laden whip in hand, stood there ready to drive them back.

“The thirst for education and civilization became daily more intense, and reached the utmost limits of endurance.  Five million Russian Jews raised their hands to the Government and pleaded for mercy:  ’Release us from this ghetto!  We, too, are human beings!  Give us breathing space!  Give us light!  We are faint and starving!’ And the Cossack promptly answered ‘Nazad (’Back!’) Here you are and here you remain—­not a step further!’

“And all at once, lo! there came a light!  Alexander II, as soon as he ascended the throne, opened wide the doors of the ghetto, and the Russian Jews, young and old, men and women, rushed to the new culture.  All crowded to the dainty dish, and no time was lost in making up for the intellectual fast.

“But here happened what usually occurs after a long fast.  The wiser partook of food with discretion.  They selected the ingredients which were wholesome, and which their system could digest.  All unripe, objectionable food they rejected; their main object was to select the food which the Jewish system could assimilate.  The governing principle was to unite Jewish learning with the new culture.  They knew that among the new delicacies there were many that were injurious and unhealthy, though the defects were disguised by alluring spices; but those who had not lost the innate, unerring Jewish scent found no difficulty in distinguishing that which was sound from the injurious, and they remain strong and faithful Jews to this day.

“Others, and they formed the greater part of the Russian Jews, seized things as they came.  Nay, the more dangerous the delicacy, the more the relish with which it was devoured.  And these delicacies were gorged at such a rate as to cause constitutional disorder.  They who were a little wiser somehow shook off the objectionable matter, and became ‘whole’ again; and a great number ‘died,’ and a still greater number are dangerously ‘sick’ to this very day.