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Updated: September 12, 2025
But his mercantile pursuits did not hinder him from study, and his high living did not interfere with his high thinking. His palatial home at Ustye, in Mohilev, became a refuge for all needy Talmudists and Maskilim, whom he helped with the liberality of a Maecenas; he conducted an extensive correspondence on rabbinic literature, and for many years supported Doctor Schick and Mendel Levin.
His rank, un-weeded eloquence, abounding in play of words, rabbinic allegories, verses defiant of prosody, in the kind of erudition he professed to despise, with here and there a shameless image, the product not of formal method, but of Neapolitan improvisation was akin to the heady wine, the sweet, coarse odours, of that fiery, volcanic soil, fertile in such irregularities as manifest power.
The Torah, though the chief, is not, however, the only object of rabbinic idealism. God and His name, it is said, alone existed before the world was created, and in a Talmud legend relating the birth of man, the ideal power is identified with Truth, which, like the Logos, is pictured as God's own seal.
There was always a latent power and tendency in Judaism towards inward religion; and it may be that this power was intensified, this tendency encouraged, by the loss of Temple and its Sacrificial rites. But though the Temple had gone the Covenant remained. Not so much in name as in essence. We do not hear much of the Covenant in the Rabbinic books, but its spirit pervades Judaism.
During the revolt against Hadrian an Assembly of Rabbis was held at Lydda. But while this decision throws a favourable light on the Rabbinic theory of life, it can in no sense be called a fixation of a creed.
At the head of the Warsaw community during this stormy period stood a man who combined Polish patriotism with rabbinic orthodoxy. Formerly rabbi in Cracow, Berush Meisels had as far back as 1848 been sent as deputy to the parliament at Kremsier, and stood in the forefront of the Polish patriots of Galicia. In 1856 he accepted the post of rabbi in Warsaw.
His pensive mind, stifled by Rabbinic scholasticism, turned to the Kabbalah. Mystical exaltation more and more took possession of him, and the day came when he all but declared himself a follower of Hasidism. It was his mother who saved him. He yielded to her prayers, and was held back from committing a perilous act of heresy.
This sudden determination on the part of the multitudes to force the hand of Jesus was probably due to the prevalence of an idea, found also in the later rabbinic writers, that the Messiah should feed his people as Moses had provided them manna in the desert.
Though well on in years, he yet did not shrink from the risk of incurring the anger of the fanatics. He openly declared himself in favor of pedagogic innovations. With sage-like modesty and mildness, the poet stated the pressing need for adopting new educational methods, and showed them to be by no means in opposition to the Mosaic and Rabbinic conception of the Jewish faith.
May his name be blotted out! 'Why, what is wrong with Yossel? Moses Mendelssohn himself had a hump. 'Who speaks of humps? Have you forgotten we are of Rabbinic family? Her son had quite forgotten it, as he had forgotten so much of this naïve life to which he was paying a holiday visit. 'Ah yes, he murmured.
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