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CHAPTER IV

IN LITHUANIA

HUMANISM IN RUSSIA


We are in the Jewish country, perhaps the only Jewish country in the
world. [Footnote: See Slouschz, _Massa' be-Lita_ ("Journey through
Lithuania"), Jerusalem, 1899.]

The last to participate in the intellectual movement of European
Judaism, the Lithuanian Jews start into view, in the second half of the
seventeenth century, as a peculiar social organism, clearly marked as
such from its first appearance. The Rabbis and scholars of Lithuania
acquired fame without a struggle, and its Rabbinical schools quickly
became the busy centres of Talmudic research.

The destinies of the Jewish population of Lithuania, so different in
character from that of Poland proper, were ruled absolutely by the
"Synod of the Four Countries", with Brest, and afterwards Wilna, as
headquarters.

The revolutions and upheavals to which is due the social and religious
decadence of the Polish Jews during the eighteenth century, barely
touched this forsaken corner of the earth. Even the Cossack invasion
dealt leniently with Lithuania, if the city of Wilna is excepted, and