into a rigid system of religion. The Study of the Law or Talmud Torah had become the Ruling Passion of the house of Israel. Talmudic learning was exalted as the chief virtue and the Practise of the Law had become the very end of life. Whatever is implied in Jewish orthodoxy, is represented in the term, Rabbinism. Every Jewish duty or Mitsvoh still observed by the orthodox Jew, is a part of this Rabbinical system of life. Line upon line, precept upon precept, the Rabbinical tradition had accumulated, and, at the beginning of the Eighteenth Century, Judaism had crystallized into a code of religious practise.

Now, Rabbinism was to encounter its first stumbling block in the Mystic -- Messianic Movements that swept over the Jews of Russia and Poland on the threshold of the Eighteenth Century. Political and economic causes favored the spread of mystical ideas. For centuries, the Jews of Poland had enjoyed unlimited freedom and prosperity. Under the special protection of the Polish kings, Israel had grown and flourished in all parts of the Polish nation. The era of happiness did not last long for the Jewish peoples. For, at the beginning of the Eighteenth Century, there ensued a fearful period of persecution and suffering. This was mainly due to what is known as the Cossack Uprising, or the Chmielnicki Rebellion. Poland was turned from a garden spot into a veritable desert by the terrible Cossacks, who, as agents of Russia, brought about the revolution. The whole life of Polish Jewry was