offered them an explanation, based on modern science and yet in accord
with their Jewish essence as revealed by history and therefore
satisfying to their national pride.

Thus Krochmal opened up a way for the seekers after enlightenment in
future generations. On the ideas of the master, his successors built up
their conceptions of the Jewish people. Abraham Mapu, the father of the
historical novel in Hebrew, drew his inspiration from the "Guide", and
in our days the well-known essayist Ahad ha-'Am has seized upon certain
of Krochmal's principles, notably the importance to be attached to the
spiritual element in the life of the Jewish people. [Footnote: R.
Brainin, in his biography of Mapu, p. 64, Warsaw, 1900.]

These two leaders, Rapoport and Krochmal, stimulated a whole school of
writers, whose works established the fortune of the Hebrew language in
Galicia. With more or less originality, all departments of literature
and science were cultivated.

Very soon, however, the times ceased to be propitious to serene thinking
and investigation of the past. Hasidism, triumphant, having conquered
the whole of Russian-Poland, threatened to crush all thought and reason
at the very time in which the _Kulturkampf_ was battering at the
gates of the Polish ghetto. Rapoport, we have seen, contended with
Hasidism in a witty pamphlet. After him, there appeared a satirist of
great talent, who waged pitiless war with its partisans and with all the
powers of darkness.

Isaac Erter, of Przemysl (1792-1841), was the friend and disciple of
Krochmal. An infant prodigy, he spent all the years of his early
childhood in the exclusive study of the Law. When he was thirteen years