element. Skepticism coincided with the historical forces to initiate a new movement in Israel. Because of their great distress caused by the Cossack Uprising, the people were ready to turn to a new scheme of salvation that would at least offer solace for earthly suffering. The Rock of the Law at last was about to crumble under economic and spiritual onslaught. Judaism hardened into a legal code was to be struck by the rod of another Moses that it might bring forth the living waters of faith.

This situation might be compared to that which developed a century later in Germany and the United States. About the close of the Eighteenth Century, there appeared in Berlin the towering genius of Moses Mendelsohn, the first German Jewish Reformer. In his boyhood, he was reared in the typical Rabbinical atmosphere. Until his eighteenth year, he was untouched by modern culture and life. This was practically true of all his German Jewish contemporaries. Moreover, even the German language was forbidden or unknown. The Jewish Jargon or Yiddish was the vernacular of the people. Mendelsohn secretly mastered the German language, and in his plastic mind, it became the key that unlocked the gates of the mental Ghetto into which the Jew had been forced by bias and prejudice. Mendelsohn came to Berlin where he began his task of leading his people into the broader life of Germany. Under the influence of Frederick the Great, a new and liberal spirit was fostered. The day of the Ghetto was over, and the Jew was ready to step out into the modern world.