Mendel's fondness for study determined his future career. Nowhere were there such opportunities for learning the Talmud as in Kief. Its numerous synagogues, its eminent rabbis, its large Hebrew population, made it the centre of Judaism in Southern Russia. In its schools some of the most learned rabbis of the Empire had studied.
Throughout the whole of Russia there were, at the time of which we speak, but few universities, and these scarcely deserved to rank above second-rate colleges. Education was within the reach of very few. At the present day, "the merchants do not even possess the rudiments of an education. Many of them can neither read nor write and are forced to keep their accounts in their memory, or by means of ingenious hieroglyphics, intelligible only to their inventors. Others can decipher the calendar and the lives of the saints, and can sign their name with tolerable facility. They can make the simpler arithmetical calculations with the help of a little calculating machine, called stchety."[6]
In the days of Nicholas it was infinitely worse. Learning of any kind was considered detrimental to the State; schools were practically unknown. "The most stringent regulations were made concerning tutors and governesses. It was forbidden to send young men to study in western colleges and every obstacle was thrown in the way of foreign travel and residence. Philosophy could not be taught in the universities."[7]
Contrast with this enforced lethargy the intellectual activity that we meet with everywhere in Jewish quarters. No settlement in which we find a minyan (ten men necessary for divine worship), but there we will also find a cheder, a school in which the Bible and the Talmud are taught. Indeed, study is the first duty of the Jew; it is the quintessence of his religion. The unravelling of God's Word has been from time immemorial regarded as the greatest need, the most ennobling occupation of man—a work commanded by God. The Talmud teems with precepts concerning this all-important subject.
"Study by day and by night, for it is written: 'Thou shalt meditate therein day and night.'"
"The study of the Law may be compared to a huge heap that is to be cleared away. The foolish man will say: 'It is impossible for me to remove this immense pile, I will not attempt it.' But the wise man says: 'I will remove a little to-day, and more to-morrow, and thus in time I shall have removed it all.' It is the same in studying the Law."[8]
It was to this incessant study of the Scriptures that Israel owed its patience, its courage, its fortitude during centuries of persecution. It was this constant delving for truth which produced that bright, acute Jewish mind, which in days of fanaticism and intolerance, protected the despised people from stupefying mental decay. It was this incessant yearning after the word of God, which moulded the moral and religious life of the Jews and preserved them from the fanatical excesses of the surrounding peoples.
That this study often degenerated into a mere useless cramming of unintelligible ideas is easily understood, and its effects were in many cases the reverse of ennobling. At the age of five, the Jewish lad was sent to cheder and his young years devoted to the study of the Bible. Every other occupation of mind and body was interdicted, the very plays of happy childhood were abolished. The Pentateuch must henceforth form the sole mental nourishment of the boy. Later on he is led through the labyrinth of Talmudic lore, to wander through the dark and dreary catacombs of the past, analyze the mouldering corpses of a by-gone philosophy, drink into his very blood the wisdom, superstitions, morality and prejudices of preceding ages. He must digest problems which the greatest minds have failed to solve. Either the pupil is spurred on to preternatural acuteness and becomes a credit to his parents and his teachers, or he succumbs entirely to the benumbing influence of an over-wrought intellect and is rendered unfit for the great physical struggle for existence.
What is the Talmud, this sacred literature of Israel? It is a collection of discussions and comments of biblical subjects, by generations of rabbis and teachers who devoted their time and intellects to an analysis of the Scriptures. It is a curious store-house of literary gems, at times carefully, at times carelessly compiled by writers living in different lands and different ages; a museum of curiosities, into which are thrown in strange confusion beautiful legends, historical facts, metaphysical discussions, sanitary regulations and records of scientific research. In it are preserved the wise decisions, stirring sermons and religious maxims of Israel's philosophers.
Although a huge work, consisting of twelve folios, it bears no resemblance to a single literary production. On first acquaintance it appears a wilderness, a meaningless tangle of heterogeneous ideas, of scientific absurdities, of hair-splitting arguments, of profound aphorisms, of ancient traditions, of falsehood and of truth. It is a work of broadest humanity, of most fanatical bigotry.