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Sura in Babylonia, where Saadia was the head of the academy, was the chief centre of Jewish learning, and Saadia was the heir in the main line of Jewish development as it passed through the hands of lawgiver and prophet, scribe and Pharisee, Tanna and Amora, Saburai and Gaon. As the head of the Sura academy he was the intellectual representative of the Jewry and Judaism of his day.
Elijah of Wilna, surnamed "the Gaon", "his Excellency", succeeded in resisting the assaults of Hasidism, which threatened to overwhelm, if not the learned among them, certainly the Lithuanian masses.
Levinsohn's life was a continuous struggle against an insidious disease, which kept him confined to his bed, and prevented him from accepting any prominent position. But though, as he said, he had "neither brother, wife, child, nor even a sound body," he impressed his personality upon Russian Jewry as no one else, save the Gaon, had before him.
But in the course of time the casuistic method, originally a mere pastime, became the approved method of study, and produced what is known as pilpul. Scholars wasted days and nights in heaping Ossa upon Pelion, in reconciling difficulties which no logic could harmonize. Here the Gaon found the first and most urgent need for reform. The Talmudists, he declared, were not infallible.
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."
By the force of enthusiasm for faith, it drew its adherents together into a firmly welded unit in contrast with Rabbinism, which sought the same goal by the aid of the formal law. Scenting danger, the rabbinical hierarchy declared war upon the Kabbala. Emden opposed Eibeschuetz, the Polish Sabbatians and Frankists were fought to the death, the Wilna Gaon organized a campaign against the Chassidim.
In Bagdad there are about 40,000 Jews , and they dwell in security, prosperity and honour under the great Caliph, and amongst them are great sages, the heads of Academies engaged in the study of the law. In this city there are ten Academies. At the head of the great Academy is the chief rabbi R. Samuel, the son of Eli. He is the head of the Academy Gaon Jacob.
No explanation is given by the Gaon as to its purpose in the tenth century, and it can hardly have been used to hold the effigy. Now, in many of the primitive bonfires, the fire was produced by aid of a revolving wheel. This wheel typifies the sun.
Padua, Berlin, Königsberg, Göttingen, Copenhagen, Halle, Amsterdam, Cambridge, and London were for a third of a century replaced by the home of the Gaon and of Doctor Liboschüts. The first students were recruited from the bet ha-midrash, and they frequently joined, as in former days, knowledge of the Law with the practice of their chosen profession.
The spirit of freedom that had animated Slavonian Judaism during the Middle Ages had fled. The breadth of view that had marked the decision of many of its rabbis was gone. Judaism was a mere mummy of its former self. Here, too, the Gaon came to the rescue.
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