With all their
shortcomings, and though producing but few rabbis acceptable to
Russo-Jewish congregations, the seminaries in Warsaw, Zhitomir, and
Vilna were powers for enlightenment. In them the future prominent
scientists, scholars, and litterateurs were reared, and there the
foundations were laid for the activities of Goldfaden, Gurland, Harkavy,
Kantor, Landau, Levanda, Mandelkern, Paperna, Pumpyansky, Rosenberg,
Steinberg, and others. Their fate was that of Mendelssohn's Bible
translation. The end became a means, the means, an end. But they not
only "brought forth" great men, they rendered no less important a
service in "bringing out" those already great. Had it not been for their
professorships, men like Abramovitsch, Lerner, Plungian, Slonimsky,
Suchastover, and Zweifel, who were not blessed with worldly goods like
Fuenn, Katzenellenbogen, Luria, or Strashun, would probably have sought
in private teaching or petty trading a source of subsistence, and
Judaism in general and Russian Jewry in particular would have sustained
a considerable loss. They helped to prepare the soil, even to implant
the germ, and
Once the germ implanted,
Its growth, if slow, is sure.
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