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He takes the question altogether out of the region of pedantic Rabbinism, and bases His vindication upon the two great principles that mercy and help hallow any day, and that not to do good when we can is to do harm, and not to save life is to kill. They are silenced. His arrow touches them; they do not speak because they cannot answer; and they will not yield.
The extraordinary mental energy that had matured the Bible and the old writings in the first period, manifested itself in the second period in the encyclopedic productions of the Talmudists, in the religious philosophy of the middle ages, in Rabbinism, in the Kabbala, in mysticism, and in science.
Rabbinism employed the mystical as its adjutant. The one exercised control over all minds, the other over all hearts. The growth of mysticism was fostered both by the unfortunate conditions under which the Polish Jews endured existence and by the Messianic movements which made their appearance among the Jews of other countries.
The old struggle between Hasidism and Rabbinism had long been fought out, and the Tzaddiks rested on their laurels as teachers and miracle-workers. The Tzaddik dynasties were now firmly entrenched. In White Russia the sceptre lay in the hands of the Shneorsohn dynasty, the successors of the "Old Rabbi," Shneor Zalman, the progenitor of the Northern Hasidim.
Led back by Smolenskin to its national source, stripped of every religious element, and imposed by the force of circumstances upon the masses and the educated alike, as the link uniting them thenceforth for the furtherance of the same patriotic end, it has again taken its place as the language of the Jewish people. It has ceased to serve as the mere mediator between Rabbinism and modern life.
Where so cheerful a creed? The trouble with thee is that thou hast no childish associations with our glorious religion, thou camest to it in manhood with naught but the cold eye of Reason." "But thou dost not accept every invention of Rabbinism. Surely in Porto thou didst not practise everything." "I kept what I could. I believe what I can.
Too late! Rabbinism was too old, too arid, to tone down the impulsive outbreaks of passion among the people. In their religious exaltation the masses were looking for an elixir. They were languishing, not for light to illumine the reason, but for warmth to set the heart aglow. They desired to lose themselves in ecstatic self-renunciation.
The wretched, debased condition of the average Jew, conjoined with the traditions of the Kabbala and the excrescences of Rabbinism, created a foothold for Chassidic teaching. Chassidism replaced Talmudic ratiocination by exalted religious sentiment.
His last historical poem, "King Zedekiah in Prison", dates from the period when the poet's skepticism was a confirmed temper of mind. According to Gordon, the ruin of the Jewish State was brought about by the weight given to moral as compared with political considerations. He no longer contents himself with attacking Rabbinism, he goes back to the very principles of the Judaism of the prophets.
In the young neo-Hebrew literature, mysticism found a foeman far more powerful than ever logic and rationalism had been. The Hebrew language was cultivated with zeal by the educated classes, and even by the young Rabbis. It was the epoch of the Melizah, and the Melizah was to supplement the jejuneness of Rabbinism and oppose the Hasidim with good results.
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