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Endowed with a temperate, logical mind, untroubled by an excess of sentimentality, Lilienblum, one of those deliberate, puritanic scholars that constitute the glory of Lithuanian Talmudism, was at once hero and actor in the intense drama performed in the Russian ghetto, which he himself described as the "Jewish tragi-comedy".
The fresh air of religion was breathed once more, the stars and the open sky replaced the midnight lamp and the college. But it was destined to raise a fog more murky than the confined atmosphere of the study. The man with the book was often nearer God than was the man of the earth. The opposition of Talmudism against the neo-mysticism was thus on the whole just and salutary.
In Lithuania the whole mental energy of the Jewish youth was absorbed by Talmudism. The synagogue served as a "house of study" outside the hours fixed for prayers. There the local rabbi or a private scholar gave lectures on the Talmud which were listened to by hosts of yeshibah bahurs. The great yeshibahs of Volozhin, Mir, and other towns sent forth thousands of rabbis and Talmudists.
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