That all this should have left a marked impression on the mentality and intellectuality of the Jews, is little to be wondered at.  The marvel is that they should have maintained their superiority over their surroundings, and continued to be a law-abiding and God-fearing people.  While among the Russians and Poles the nobles who learned to read or write formed a rare exception, there was hardly one among the Jews, the very lowliest of them, who could not read Hebrew, and even translate it into the vernacular.  Maimon tells us that in his early youth he became the family tutor of “a miserable farmer in a still more miserable village,” who yet was ambitious of giving his children an education of some kind.

Fortunately for the Jews of those times—­says a writer—­their civilization was by far superior to that of the Christians.  The rabbi, though in no way inferior to the priest mentally, was immeasurably above him morally.  The students of the yeshibot, despite their exclusive devotion to the study of the Talmud, yet were better equipped for intellectual work, were of broader minds and better manners, than the pupils of the Jesuits.  And the Jewish ba’ale battim, with an education as good as that of the Gentile shlyakhta, had a more ennobling and elevating object in life.[6]

It is remarkable how quickly they recuperated from the blows they received.  In 1648 thousands of people were killed, whole communities exterminated, Volhynia, Podolia, and a great part of Lithuania utterly ruined.  In 1660, in those very places, we hear again of Jewish settlements, with synagogues and schools and a system of education of the kind described in the preceding chapter, and we hear of the Council of Lithuania struggling to re-establish and cement the shattered foundation of their self-government.  Yet all their efforts improved the demoralized condition of the country but little.  As always in national crises, the individual was sacrificed to the community, and deprived of the few rights remaining to him.  The kehillot became brutally oppressive.  There were no longer men of the stamp of Abraham Rapoport, Solomon Luria, Mordecai Jaffe, and Meir Katz, to put their feet on the neck of tyranny.  Without special permission no one could buy or sell, or move from one place to another, or learn a trade or practice a profession.  Rabbinism became synonymous with rigorism, the coercion of untold customs became unbearable, and the spirit of Judaism was lost in a heap of innumerable rites.  The Jew’s every act had to be sanctioned by religion.  He knew of the outward world only from the heavy taxes he paid in order to be allowed to exist, and from the bloody riots with which his people was frequently visited.