The breadth of view that had marked the decision of many of its rabbis was gone.[17] Judaism was a mere mummy of its former self.  Here, too, the Gaon came to the rescue.  Rightly or wrongly, he “established the importance of Minhagim [religious ceremonies] according to their antiquity or primitivism, regarding those which have originated since the codification of the Shulhan ’Aruk as not binding at all; those which have been adopted since the Talmudic period to be subject to change by common consent; while those of the Bible and in the Talmud were to him fundamental and unalterable."[18]

But the Gaon’s influence on the Haskalah movement by far surpassed his influence on the study of the Talmud or on the ceremonials of the synagogue.  Many, in point of fact, regard him as the originator of the movement.  As he was the first to oppose the authority of the Talmudists, so he was the first to inveigh against the educational system among the Jews of his day and country.  The mania for distinction in rabbinical learning plunged the child into the mazes of Talmudic casuistry as soon as he could read; frequently he had not read the Bible or studied the rudiments of grammar.  The Gaon insisted that every one should first master the twenty-four books of the Bible, their etymology, prosody, and syntax, then the six divisions of the Mishnah with the important commentaries and the suggested emendations, and finally the Talmud in general, without wasting much time on pilpul, which brings no practical result.  “These few lines,” says a writer, “contain a more thorough course of study than Wessely suggested in his Words of Peace and Truth.  Though they did not entirely change the system in vogue—­for great is the power of habit—­they produced a wholesome effect, which was visible in a short time among the people.”  Furthermore, the Gaon exhorted the Talmudists to study secular science, since, “if one is ignorant of the other sciences, one is a hundredfold more ignorant of the sciences of the Torah, for the two are inseparably connected.”  He set the example by writing, not only on the most important Hebrew books, Biblical, Talmudic, and Cabbalistic, but also on algebra, geometry, trigonometry, astronomy, and grammar.[19] And his example served as an impetus and encouragement to the Maskilim in spreading knowledge among their coreligionists.

Such was the man who led the crusade against the converts to Hasidism.  But even he could not stem the current.  In their despair, the Lithuanian Jews turned to their coreligionists in Germany, and implored their assistance in eradicating, or at least suppressing, the threatened invasion.  The great learning and literary ability of the “divine philosopher, Rabbi Moses ben Menahem” (Mendelssohn, 1729-1786), were appealed to for help.  Not a stone was left unturned to crush the new sect (kat), so called.  Volumes of the Toledot Ya’akob Yosef, in which Rabbi Jacob Joseph of Polonnoy set forth the principles