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Updated: June 23, 2025
The King of Kashgar, seeing the bad state of his affairs, solicited the aid of Kudar, King of Chuton, a province of Tartary, on the confines of China, and that prince marched to join him with fifty thousand horse. Strengthened by this alliance, he crossed, with the confederate armies, the river Gaon, which was five parasangs from Balak, and opposed himself to the camp of Mahmud.
A prominent Talmudist at twenty-five, he, nevertheless, left his business and household at that age, and went to Vilna to become the humble pupil of the Gaon, whose method he had followed from the beginning.
Not inappropriately he was called Gaon and Hasid, for in mental and moral attainments he was unique in his generation. As the Besht was noted in his early life for dulness and indifference, so Elijah was remarkable for diligence and versatility. His life, like the Besht's, became the nucleus of many wonderful tales, which his biographer narrates with painstaking exactness.
These fragments are sufficient to show us that unlike Israeli, who shows little knowledge of the Muʿtazilite discussions, Al Mukammas is a real Muʿtazilite and moves in the path laid out by these Mohammedan rationalists. Saadia knows the Kalam; but though coming originally from Egypt, he spent his most fruitful years in Babylonia, in the city of Sura, where he was gaon.
For Doctor Schick he built a laboratory, and filled his library with rare manuscripts and works on Jewish and secular subjects. Even among the conservative Talmudists signs of improvement were not wanting. The Gaon became the centre of a group of enlightened friends and disciples, who continued in his footsteps after his death.
The reforms introduced by the Gaon, and propagated by his disciples, began to bear fruit. Protests by Hasidim themselves against the irreverent spirit that developed after the death of the Besht, had in fact been heard before.
Perl's school was the pattern and model for a multitude of other schools, among them the one founded by Zittenfeld in Odessa, in the faculty of which were Simhah Pinsker, Elijah Finkel, the grandson of Elijah Gaon, and Abraham Abele, the eminent Talmudist.
With all his admiration for the Gaon, but for whom, he claimed, the Torah would have been forgotten, he also had points of sympathy with the Hasidim, for whose leader, Shneor Zalman of Ladi, he had the highest respect. Like many of his contemporaries, he determined to go to Berlin.
And the Head of the Captivity, and the Head of the Academy Gaon Jacob, sent to Alroy, saying, "The time of redemption is not yet arrived; we have not yet seen the signs thereof; for by strength shall no man prevail. Now our mandate is, that thou cease from these designs, or thou shalt surely be excommunicated from all Israel."
At the very moment in which Europe was beginning to realize its medieval errors and repent of them, and the era of universal ideals of humanity was dawning, Judaism raised barricades between itself and the world at large. Elijah Gaon and Israel Besht were the contemporaries of Voltaire and Rousseau.
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