with Rabbi Shneor Zalman of Ladi, it, too, advocated the study of the
Talmud, the distinction between it and Mitnaggedism was hardly
perceptible. The study of the Zohar and Cabbala was equally cultivated
by both; Isaac Luria and Hayyim Vital were equally venerated by both,
and hero worship was common to both. The _Ascension of Elijah_ (Gaon) is
as full of miracles as _The Praises of the Besht_. It is no wonder,
then, that the animosities, which reached their acme during the last few
years of the Gaon's life, were weakened after his death, and that the
compromise, pleaded for by Doctor Hurwitz and Manasseh Ilye, was somehow
effected. But it was otherwise with the Haskalah. "Verily," says the
zaddik Menahem Mendel of Vitebsk, "verily, grammar is useful; that our
great ones indulged in the study thereof I also know; but what is to be
done since the wicked and sinful have taken possession of it?" In the
same manner does Rabbi Hayyim of Volozhin inveigh against the followers
of Mendelssohn, because of the latitudinarian habits of the Maskilim,
who "despise the counsel of their betters, and go after the dictates of
their hearts."[35] Both saw in Haskalah a deadly foe to their dearest
ideals, a blight upon their most cherished hopes, and, like Elizabeta
Petrovna, they would not derive even a benefit from the enemies of their
religion.

Still, Alexander I approached his object only tentatively. Haskalah
during his reign was like the Leviathan in the Talmud legend which
resembled an island, so that wayfarers approached it to moor under its
lee and find shelter in its shade, but as soon as they began to walk and
cook on it, it would turn and submerge them in the stormy and bottomless
sea. The Jews were invited or induced to forsake their religion, and
only the less discerning were caught in the snare. It remained for the
"terrible incarnation of autocracy," Nicholas I (1825-1855), or, as his
Jewish subjects called him, Haman II, to fill their cup of woe to