The
abridgment and translation of Maimuni's _Mishneh Torah_ (St. Petersburg,
1851), superintended by Leon Mandelstamm, cost the Russian Jews tens of
thousands of rubles, notwithstanding the expenditure of two or three
millions on their own educational institutions, and at a time when every
kopeck was needed for the support of the host of victims of fire,
famine, and cholera, which ravaged many a city. Hence the reaction
became more and more formidable. The cry grew louder and louder, _Znaty
nye znayem, shkolles nye zhelayem!_ ("We want no schools!"). The
opposition, which began in the latter years of Alexander I, reached its
culmination in the last decade of the reign of Nicholas I. "Israel,"
laments Mandelstamm, "seems to be even worse than formerly; he is like a
sick person who has convalesced only to relapse, and the physicians are
beginning to despair." It was a struggle not unlike that all over Europe
at the beginning of the Renaissance, a struggle between liberty and
authority, between this world and other-worldliness, between the spirit
of the nineteenth century and that of the millenniums which preceded it.
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