For Jewish solidarity was more than a word in those days. "Sefardim" had
not yet learned to boast of aristocratic lineage, nor "Ashkenazim" to
look down contemptuously upon their Slavonic coreligionists. It was
before the removal of civil disabilities from one portion of the Jewish
people had sowed the seed of arrogance toward the other less favored
portion. Honor was accorded to whom it was due, regardless of the
locality in which he happened to have been born. Glückel von Hameln
states in her _Memoirs_ that preference was sometimes given to the
decisions of the "great ones of Poland," and mentions with pride that
her brother Shmuel married the daughter of the great Reb Shulem of
Lemberg.[23] With open arms, Amsterdam, Frankfort, Fürth, Konigsberg,
Metz, Prague, and other communities renowned for wealth and learning,
welcomed the acute Talmudists of Brest, Grodno, Kovno, Lublin, Minsk,
and Vilna, whenever they were willing or compelled to consider a call.
The practice of summoning Russo-Polish rabbis to German posts was
carried so far that it aroused the displeasure of the Western scholars,
and they complained of being slighted.[24]

The reverence for Slavonic learning was strikingly illustrated during
the years following the Cossack massacres, when many Russo-Polish rabbis
fled for safety to foreign lands. Frankfort, Fürth, Prague, and Vienna
successively elected the fugitive Shabbataï Horowitz of Ostrog as their
religious guide. David Taz of Vladimir became rabbi of Steinitz in
Moravia; Ephraim Hakohen was called to Trebitsch in Moravia and to Ofen
in Hungary; David of Lyda, to Mayence and Amsterdam, and Naphtali Kohen,
to Frankfort-on-the-Main in 1704, and later to Breslau. No less
personages than Isaac Aboab and Saul Morteira welcomed the
merchant-Talmudist Moses Rivkes of Vilna when he sought refuge in
Amsterdam, and they entrusted to him the task of editing the _Shulhan