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Updated: September 12, 2025
This is the rationale of Smolenskin's opposition to the religious dogmatism of Mendelssohn, who had wished to confine Judaism inside of the circle of Rabbinic law without recognizing its essentially evolutionary character. Maimonides himself is not spared by Smolenskin, for it was Maimonides who had set the seal of consecration upon logical dogmatism.
And lest it be thought that the stress laid upon faith was peculiar to Hellenizing Judaism, we have only to note such passages as Dr. Schechter has adduced from the early Midrash on the rabbinic conception.
The disagreeable references to proselytes in Rabbinic literature, the difficulties thrown in their way, and the grotesque conception of their status towards their former families, cannot counterbalance the fact, established by Radin in his learned work, "The Jews Among the Greeks and Romans," that there was a carefully planned effort of propaganda.
The antiquity of the rabbinic record is so uncertain, however, that it is only useful as showing what possibly may have been the case.
The former, which seems to have been due to the milder nature of Judaism, and which was derived from a happy piece of rabbinic exegesis on Prov. xxxi. 6, consisted in giving to the condemned, immediately before his execution, a draught of wine medicated with some powerful opiate.
To attract the intelligent among the Polish Jews, permeated as they were with deep knowledge of Rabbinic literature, more was needed than witty sallies and childish conceits in an affected style. The appeal had to be made to their reason, to their convictions, their constant longing for intellectual occupation.
The attitude towards him was, further, an outcome of the deepening antagonism between the schoolmen and the peasantry. But even then it was by no means invariable. One of the most famous of Rabbis, Akiba, who died a martyr in 135 C.E., was not only a shepherd, but he was also the hero of the most romantic of Rabbinic love episodes.
Move from house to house, and you lose a shirt; go from place to place, and you lose a life so ran the Rabbinic proverb. This subject might be enlarged upon, but enough has been said to show that this breaking up of the family life was one of the worst effects of the Jewish travels of the Middle Ages, and even more recent times.
On the one hand is the intellectual emancipation of the Jewish masses, which had fallen into ignorance, and, as a consequence, the conflict with prejudice and Rabbinic dogmatism; and, on the other hand, the awakening of national sentiment and Jewish solidarity.
This very imperfect sketch of Aristotle's mode of approach to the ever-living problems of God, the universe and man shows us the wide diversity of his method from that with which the Jews of Biblical and Rabbinic tradition were identified.
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