offender, whether rich or poor. Everybody respected him, and he
often received gifts of money or valuables. In all religious
processions he came first. Then followed the students, then the
learned, and the rest of the congregation brought up the rear.
This veneration for the dean prompted many a youth to imitate
his example, and thus our country was rendered full of the
knowledge of the Law.

What became of the students when they were graduated? Let us turn once
more to Hannover's interesting narrative. The "fairs" of those days were
much more than opportunities for barter; they afforded favorable and
attractive occasions for other objects. Zaslav and Yaroslav during the
summer, Lemberg and Lublin in the winter, were "filled with hundreds of
deans and thousands of students," and one who had a marriageable
daughter had but to resort thither to have his worries allayed.
Therefore, "Jews and Jewesses attended these bazaars in magnificent
attire, and [each season] several hundred, sometimes as many as a
thousand, alliances were consummated."

That the rabbi, living in a strange land and recalling a glorious past,
should have indulged in a bit of exaggeration in his sorrowful
retrospect, is not more than natural; and that his picture on the whole
is true is proved by similar schools which existed in Russia till
recently. The descriptions of these institutions by Smolenskin as well
as writers of less repute are graphic and intensely interesting. They
constituted a unique world, in which the Jewish youth lived and moved
until he reached man's estate. In later years, when Russian Jewry became
infected, so to speak, with the Aufklärungs-bacilli, they became the
nurseries of the new learning. But in the earlier time, too, a spirit of
enlightenment pervaded them. The study of the Talmud fostered in them