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It is a significant phenomenon that the Science of Judaism, the ideal
meant to replace the dry study of the Law, and fill the void left in the
Jewish mind by the course of recent developments, took firm hold upon
the Polish Jews, the very bodyguard of Rabbinism, of which, in point of
fact, it is but a modern and rational transformation.

Yet this new science, founded on the study of Israel's glorious past,
and warmly welcomed by the intellectual and the cultivated in Western
Europe, could not entirely satisfy the intelligent in Polish Jewry. In
an environment wholly Jewish, having no reason to nurse illusive hopes
of imminent assimilation with their neighbors, from whom they were
divided by every possible circumstance, beginning with moral notions and
ending with political fortune, the Polish Jews resigned themselves to a
sort of Messianic mysticism. But the mystic's explanation of the
phenomenon of the existence of Judaism also failed to satisfy their
yearnings. What they sought was a warrant in reason itself justifying
the permanence of Judaism and its future. The arguments set forth by
Maimonides and Jehudah Halevi contained no appeal for the modern soul. A
philosopher was needed, one who should solve the problem of the
existence of the Jewish people and its proper sphere from the vantage-
ground of authoritative knowledge. Such a philosopher arose in Galicia
itself.

Nahman Krochmal (1785-1840), the originator of the idea of the "mission
of the Jewish people", was born at Brody. His chief work, published
posthumously through the efforts of Zunz, the _Moreh Nebuke ha-
Zeman_ ("The Guide of the Perplexed of Modern Times"), is the most