, victims of the
Russian police regime. About the time when the Tzaddik of Ruzhin fell
under suspicion, the Russian Government began to watch the Jewish
printing-press in the Volhynian townlet of Slavuta. The owners of the
press were two brothers, Samuel-Abba and Phinehas Shapiro, grandsons of
Besht's companion, Rabbi Phinehas of Koretz. The two brothers were
denounced to the authorities as persons issuing dangerous mystical books
from their press, without the permission of the censor. This
denunciation was linked up with a criminal case, the discovery in the
house of prayer, which was attached to the printing-press, of the body
of one of the compositors who, it was alleged, had intended to lay bare
the activities of the "criminal" press before the Government. After a
protracted imprisonment of the two Slavuta printers in Kiev, their case
was submitted to Nicholas I. who sentenced them to _Spiessruten_ [1] and
deportation to Siberia. During the procedure of running the gauntlet,
while passing through the lines of whipping soldiers, one of the
brothers had his cap knocked off his head. Unconcerned by the hail of
lashes from which he was bleeding, he stopped to pick up his cap so as
to avoid going bare-headed, [2] and then resumed his march between the
two rows of executioners. The unfortunate brothers were released from
their Siberian exile during the reign of Alexander II.

[Footnote 1: See above, p. 85, n. 1.]

[Footnote 2: According to an ancient Jewish notion, which is current
throughout the Orient, baring the head is a sign of frivolity and
disrespect towards God.]

Hasidic life exhibited no doubt many examples of lofty idealism and
moral purity. But hand in hand with it went an impenetrable spiritual
gloom, boundless credulity, a passion for deifying men of a mediocre and
even inferior type, and the unwholesome hypnotizing influence of the
Tzaddiks. Spiritual self-intoxication was accompanied by physical. The
hasidic rank and file, particularly in the South-west, began to develop
an ugly passion for alcohol. Originally tolerated as a means of
producing cheerfulness and religious ecstasy, drinking gradually became
the standing feature of every hasidic gathering. It was in vogue at the
court of the Tzaddik during the rush of pilgrims; it was indulged in
after prayers in the hasidic "Shtiblach," [1] or houses of prayer, and
was accompanied by dancing and by the ecstatic narration of the
miraculous exploits of the "