Beer despatched abroad as his apostles bombastic preachers who seasoned his injurious teachings with distorted citations from the Scriptures. Simple-minded men, rogues, and idlers, of whom there were so many in Poland, attached themselves to the new Chassidim; the first from inclination to enthusiasm and belief in miracles; the cunning, in order to procure money in an easy way, and lead a pleasant existence; and the idlers, because in the court of the Zaddik they found occupation, and gratified their curiosity. If such idlers were asked what they were thinking of, as they strolled about pipe in mouth, they would reply with seriousness, "We are meditating upon God." The simple people, however, who hoped to win bliss through the Chassidean discipline, engaged continually in prayer, until through exhaustion they dropped unconscious.
Neo-Chassidism was favored by two circumstances, the fraternization of the members and the dryness and fossilized character of Talmudic study as carried on in Poland for more than a century. At the outset the Chassidim formed a kind of brotherhood, not indeed with a common purse, as among their prototypes, the Essenes and the Judæo-Christians, but having regard to the wants of needy members. Owing to the closeness of their union, their spying system, and their energy, it was easy for them to provide for those who lacked employment or food. On New Year and the Day of Atonement people, even those who dwelt at long distances, undertook pilgrimages to the Zaddik, as formerly to the Temple, and left their wives and children to pass the so-called holy days in the company of their chief, to be edified by his presence and actions. Here the Chassidean disciples learned to know one another, discussed local affairs, and rendered mutual help. Well-to-do merchants found opportunity at these assemblies, in conversation with fellow-believers, upon whose fidelity and brotherly attachment they could rely, to discover fresh sources of income. Fathers of marriageable daughters sought and easily found husbands for them, which at that time in Poland was considered a highly important matter. The common meals on the afternoons of Saturdays and the holidays strengthened the bonds of loyalty and affection among them. How could meals for so many guests be provided? The wealthy Chassidim regarded it as a duty to support the Zaddik liberally. A special source of income was the superstitious belief prevalent among the Chassidim that the Zaddik for certain sums (Pidion, Redemption) could ward off threatening perils and cure deadly diseases. Pressure was brought to bear upon wealthy but weak-minded persons, and they were terrified into believing that they could escape impending calamities only by rich gifts. Whoever desired to enter upon a hazardous transaction consulted the Zaddik as an oracle, and had to pay for his counsel. The cunning Chassidim knew everything, were ready with counsel in any emergency, and by their craftiness were able to afford real assistance. The Zaddik, however miserly he might be, had to assist the poor and distressed with his revenues. Thus every member received help here. Full of enthusiasm they returned home from their journey; the feeling that they belonged to a brotherhood elevated them, and they ardently looked forward to the return of the holy time. The poor and forsaken, the fanatical and the unprincipled, could not do better than join this union, this easy-going yet religious order.
Earnest men, also, desirous of satisfying their spiritual wants, felt themselves attracted to the Chassidim. Rabbinical Judaism, as known in Poland, offered no sort of religious comfort. Its representatives placed the highest value upon the dialectic, artificial exposition of the Talmud and its commentaries. Actual necessity had besides caused that portion of the Talmud which treated of civil law to be closely studied, as the rabbis exercised civil jurisdiction over their flocks. Fine-spun decisions of new, complicated legal points occupied the doctors of the Talmud day and night. Moreover, this hair-splitting was considered sublimest piety, and superseded everything else. If any one solved an intricate Talmudic question, or discovered something new, called Torah, he felt self-satisfied, and assured of his felicity hereafter. All other objects, the impulse to devotion, prayer, and emotion, or interest in the moral condition of the community, were secondary matters, to which scarcely any attention was paid. The mental exercise of making logical deductions from the Talmud, or more correctly from the laws of Mine and Thine, choked all other intellectual pursuits in Poland. Religious ceremonies had degenerated, both amongst Talmudists and the unlearned, into meaningless usages, and prayer into mere lip-service. To men of feeling this aridity of Talmudic study, together with the love of debate, and the dogmatism and pride of the rabbis arising from it, were repellent, and they flung themselves into the arms of the new order, which allowed so much play for the fancy and the emotions. Especially preachers, semi-Talmudists who were looked upon and treated by erudite rabbi-Talmudists as inferior and contemptible, who eked out a wretched living, or almost starved, leagued themselves with the neo-Chassidim, because among them their talents of preaching were appreciated, and they could obtain an honorable position, and be secured against need. By the accession of such elements the circle of neo-Chassidim became daily augmented. Almost in every town lived followers of the new school, who occasionally had intercourse with their brother-members and their chief.
With advancing strength the antipathy of the neo-Chassidim to the rabbis and Talmudists increased. Without being aware of it they formed a new sect, which scorned intercourse with the Talmud Jews. With Beer at their head, they felt themselves strong enough to introduce an innovation, which would naturally bring down the anger of the rabbis upon them. Since prayer and the rites of Divine service were the chief consideration for them, they did not trouble themselves about the prescriptions of the ritual law as to how many prayers should be said, nor at what time the different services should commence and terminate, but were entirely guided by the feeling of the moment. Through their daily ablutions, baths, and other preparations for public worship they were seldom ready for prayer at the prescribed time, but began later, prolonged it by the movements of their bodies and their intoning, and suddenly came to an end after omitting several portions. They were especially averse to the harsh interpolations in the Sabbath and festival prayers (the Piyutim). These insertions interrupt the most important and suggestive portions of the service. To abolish these at a blow, Beer Mizricz introduced the prayer-book of the arch-Kabbalist, Isaac Lurya, which for the greater part conforms to the Portuguese ritual, and does not contain poetical (poetanic) additions. In the eyes of the ultra-orthodox this innovation was an enormous, or rather a double crime, permitting, as it did, the omission of interpolations hallowed by custom, and the exchange of the German ritual for the Sephardic.
This innovation would probably have been severely visited upon the neo-Chassidim, but that at this time, when the political power of Poland lay crushed, the firm political connection of the Polish Jews had also been dissolved. Poland was distracted by civil war. "In this country," as the Primate of Gnesen complained at the opening of the Reichstag, March, 1764, "freedom is oppressed, the laws are not obeyed, justice cannot be obtained, trade is utterly ruined, districts and villages are devastated, the treasury is empty, and the coin of the realm has no value." It had been enfeebled by the Jesuits, and was already regarded by Russia as a sure prey. Its king—Stanislaus Augustus Poniatowski—was a weakling, the plaything of internal factions and external foes (September, 1764). In the first year of his reign, Poniatowski among other laws issued a regulation which destroyed the communal union of the Polish Jews. The synod of the Four Countries, composed of delegates, rabbis and laymen (Parnassim), with authority to pronounce interdicts and levy fines, was not permitted to assemble, pass resolutions, or execute them.
The dissolution of the synod was very fortunate for the neo-Chassidim. They could not be excommunicated by the representatives of the Polish Jewish world, but each individual congregation had to proceed against them and forbid their meetings. Even this step was not taken at once, as the terrible death-struggle in which Poland engaged before its first partition was severely felt by the wealthy Jews, who trembled for their lives. The Confederation War broke out, which made many districts a desert; Poland was punished by eternal Justice in the same way as it had sinned. In the name of the pope and the Jesuits it had always persecuted dissenters, and excluded them from public offices, and, in the name of the dissenters, Catherine plunged the land into fratricidal war. The Russians, for the second time, let loose against Poland the Zaporogian Cossacks—the savage Haidamaks—who inflicted death, by every known method, upon the Polish nobles, the clergy, and the Jews. The Haidamaks hung up together a nobleman, a Jew, a monk, and a dog, with the mocking inscription, "All are equal." Most inhuman cruelties were inflicted upon captives and the defenseless. In addition came the Turks, who, in the guise of saviours of Poland, murdered and plundered on every side. The Ukraine, Podolia, in general the southern provinces of Poland, were turned into deserts.
These misfortunes were more advantageous than injurious to the neo-Chassidim. They spread in the north, and whilst hitherto they had been able to carry on their cult only in small, comparatively young communities, from this time they gained ground in the large and old congregations. Their numbers had already grown to such an extent that they formed two branches—the Mizriczians and the Karlinians—the former called after their original home, the latter after the village of Karlin, near Pinsk. The Karlinians spread as far as Wilna and Brody. At first they proceeded cautiously. As soon as at least ten persons had assembled, they looked for a room (Stübel) in which to conduct their services; there they practiced the rites of their creed, and sought to gain new adherents; but all this was skillfully done, so that nothing came to light before they had secured a firm foothold. In Lithuania their system was not yet known, and thus at first they aroused no suspicion.
The first violent attack upon them was made by a man whose influence was blessed during his lifetime, and even after death, and who, in a more favorable environment, might, like Mendelssohn, have effected much for the moral advancement of his co-religionists. Elijah Wilna (born 1720; died 1797), whose name, with the title of "Gaon," is still mentioned by the Lithuanian Jews with reverence and love, was a rare exception among the mass of the Polish Jews. He was of the purest character, and possessed high talents, which he did not put to perverted uses. It suffices to say of his character that in spite of his comprehensive and profound Talmudical erudition, he refused a post as rabbi, in contrast to most scholars in Poland, who were office-seekers, and obtained rabbinates by artifice. In spite of the marvelous fertility of his pen in many domains of Jewish literature, he allowed nothing to be published during his lifetime, again in contradistinction to contemporary students, who, in order to make a name and to see their ideas in print, scarcely waited till the ink of their compositions was dry. In his disinterestedness, Elijah Wilna realized the ideal of the Talmud, that a teacher of Judaism "should use the Law neither as a crown to adorn himself therewith, nor as a spade to dig therewith." In spite of the superiority of his knowledge and the full and general recognition accorded him, he modestly and conscientiously avoided asserting himself. The gratification that results from research, from the seeking of knowledge, completely satisfied him. His intellectual method corresponded in its unaffected simplicity with his character and life. As a matter of course, the Talmud and all the branches connected with or dependent on it filled his mind. But he disliked the corrupt method of his countrymen, who indulged in hair-splitting, casuistry, and subtleties. His sole aim was to penetrate to the simple sense of the text; he even made an attempt at the critical examination and emendation of texts, and by his undistorted explanations he blew down the houses of cards which the subtle Talmudists had erected upon quicksand.
It required extraordinary mental force to swim against the high tide of custom and rise above the aberrations into which all the sons of the Talmud in Poland had fallen. In point of fact Elijah Wilna stood isolated in his time. It seemed as though from his youth he had been afraid of following the errors of his compatriots, for he attached himself to no special school, but, strange to say, was his own teacher in the Talmud. Talmudical studies did not exclusively occupy his mind. Elijah Wilna devoted great attention to the Bible—a rarity in his circle—and, what was still more unusual, he acquainted himself with the grammar of the Hebrew language. Unlike his compatriots, he by no means despised a knowledge of extra-Talmudic subjects, but studied mathematics, and wrote a book upon geometry, algebra, and mathematical astronomy. He exhorted his disciples and friends to interest themselves in profane sciences, and openly expressed his conviction that Judaism would be the gainer from such studies. Only his scrupulous piety, his immaculate conduct, his unselfishness, and his renunciation of every office and position of honor, saved him from the charge of heresy on account of his pursuing extra-Talmudical branches of knowledge.
Elijah Wilna, above all, implanted a good spirit in the Lithuanian Jews. He taught his sons and disciples to seek simplicity and avoid the casuistry of the Polish method. In Elijah Wilna the beautiful Talmudical saying was exemplified, "He who flees from honors is sought out by them." At an early age he was recognized, even outside of Poland, as an authority and a man of truth. Yet even Elijah was subject to the delusion that the hateful Kabbala was a true daughter of Judaism, and contained true elements. He deeply lamented the moral ruin wrought by the Kabbala among Podolian and Galician Jews, through the rascally Frank, who had driven them into the arms of the Church, and made them enemies to the Synagogue; yet he could not free himself from it. Even when the danger of these false doctrines was brought home to him by the rise of the Chassidim, and he was compelled openly to oppose them, he could not relinquish his blind fondness for the Kabbala.