pt aloof from concrete reality
and living knowledge. While the book was passing through the press in
Vilna, Lithuanian fanatics threatened the author with severe reprisals.
Their threats failed to intimidate him. When the book appeared, many
rabbis threw it into the flames, and made every possible effort to
arrest its circulation, with the result that the voice of the "heretic"
was stifled.

[Footnote 1: Literally, "The Interpretation of a Thing," from Eccl.
8.1.]

Ten years later, while residing temporarily in Volhynia, the hot-bed of
hasidism, Menashe began to print his religio-philosophic treatise _Alfe
Menassheh_ ("The Teachings of Manasseh"). [1] But the first proof-sheets
sufficed to impress the printer with the "heretical" character of the
book, and he threw them together with the whole manuscript into the
fire. The hapless author managed with difficulty to restore the text of
his "executed" work, and published it at Vilna in 1822. Here the
rabbinical censorship pounced upon him. The book had not yet left the
press, when the rabbi of Vilna, Saul Katzenellenbogen, learned that in
one passage the writer deduced from a verse in Deuteronomy (17.9) the
right of the "judges" or spiritual leaders of each generation to modify
many religious laws and customs in accordance with the requirements of
the time. The rabbi gave our author fair warning that, unless this
heretical argument was withdrawn, he would have the book burned publicly
in the synagogue yard. Menashe was forced to submit, and, contrary to
his conviction, weakened his heterodox argument by a number of
circumlocutions.

[Footnote 1: With a clever allusion to the Hebrew text of Deut. 33.17.]

These persecutions, however, did not smother the fire of protest in the
breast of the excommunicated rural philosopher. In the last years of his
life he published two pamphlets, [1] in which he severely lashed the
shortcomings of Jewish life, the early marriages, the one-sided school
training, the repugnance to living knowledge and physical labor.
However, the champions of orthodoxy took good care to prevent these
books from reaching the masses. Exhausted by his fruitless struggle,
Menashe died, unappreciated and almost unnoticed by his contemporaries.

[Footnote 1: One of these, entitled _Samme de-Hayye_ ("Elixir of Life"),
was written in Yiddish, being designed by the author for the lower
classes.]

2. THE STAGNATION OF HASIDISM

A critical attitude toward the