the aid of the Government was invoked in religious controversies. A
question regarding the preferable form of prayer was submitted to the
decision of Paul I. In 1777, Prince Radziwill decided who should
officiate as rabbi in so important a centre of Judaism as Vilna,[7] and
in 1804 the Government issued a "regulation" depriving the kahal of its
judicial functions altogether.

What was even more disastrous was the spiritual poverty of the masses.
Seldom have the awful warnings of the great lawgiver been fulfilled so
literally as during the eighteenth century:

And upon them that remain of you, I will send a faintness into
their hearts in the land of their enemies; and the sound of a
shaken leaf shall chase them; and they shall flee as fleeing
from a sword; and they shall fall, when none pursueth. And they
shall fall one upon another, as it were before a sword, when
none pursueth: and ye shall have no power to stand before your
enemies (Lev. 26: 36-37).

But the Lord shall give thee there a trembling heart, and
failing of eyes, and sorrow of mind. And thy life shall hang in
doubt before thee; and thou shalt fear day and night, and thou
shalt have none assurance of thy life (Deut. 29: 65-66).

Having learned from sad experience that there was no crime their foes
were incapable of perpetrating, they gave credence to every rumor as to
an established fact. A report that boys and girls were to be prohibited
from marrying before a certain age resulted in behalot (panics), during
which children of the tenderest ages were united as husband and wife
(1754, 1764, 1793). Mysticism became rampant. "Messiah" after "Messiah"