In the second half of the eighteenth century, thanks to the peace with
which Lithuania was blessed after its subjection by Russia, Rabbinical
studies reached their zenith. The high schools, the _Yeshibot_,
became the centres of attraction for the best of the young men. The
number of writers and scholars increased considerably, and the Hebrew
printing presses were kept in full blast. The ideal of every Lithuanian
Jew was, if not to marry his daughter to a scholar, at least to have a
_Bahur_ at his table, a student of the Talmud, a prospective Rabbi.
"The Torah is the best _Sehorah_" ("merchandise"), every Lithuanian
mother croons at the cradle of her child.

In those days a Rabbinic authority arose like unto whom none had been
known among Jews in the later centuries, and his earnest, independent
genius, as well as his moral grandeur, conferred a consecration upon the
peculiar spiritual tendencies prevailing in Lithuanian Judaism, which he
personified at its loftiest. Elijah of Wilna, surnamed "the Gaon", "his
Excellency", succeeded in resisting the assaults of Hasidism, which
threatened to overwhelm, if not the learned among them, certainly the
Lithuanian masses. To parry the dangers of mysticism, which exercised so
powerful an attraction that the dry and subtle casuistry of Rabbinic
learning could not damp its ardor, he broke with scholastic methods, and
took up a comparatively rational interpretation of texts and the laws.
He went to the extreme of asserting the value of profane and practical
knowledge, the pursuit of which could not but bring advantage to the
study of the Law--a position unheard of at his day, and excusable only
in so popular a man as he was. He himself wrote a treatise on
mathematics, and philologic research was a favorite occupation with him.
His pupils followed his example; they translated several scientific
works into Hebrew, and founded schools and centres of puritanism, not
only in Lithuania, but also as far away as Palestine. From this time on