The harassing care for a living, the
terrible difficulties in surmounting them forced them, in an
hour of distress, to deny their faith. I always compared them
with the Anusim [forced converts] of Spain. Among them there is
no religious indifference, as is the case in Western Europe and
Germany; and I have met with many converted Jews there, who,
with tears in their eyes, complained of heart-burnings and pangs
of conscience; and they look upon themselves as eternally lost.
Those tears will show a heavy balance against Czar Nicholas,
when, bereft of his earthly power, he stands before the eternal
tribunal.
The other charge--he says again after refuting several
accusations of the kind stated above--the other charge, that the
Jews are averse to secular studies, rests upon an equally
erroneous foundation. For even in Germany Jewish parents have at
length found out that it is absolute folly to let their sons
devote themselves to the study of science, since they never can
hope for obtaining the least office; and since many a one, after
the best years of his youth are passed, tired of waiting, and
fearful of not having in his old age any means of support, finds
in the baptismal font the last anchor of his shattered hopes.
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