ent, now broke out in all its fury. Anti-Talmudic works in
English, French, and German were imported into Russia, translated into
Hebrew, and scattered among the people. _The Old Paths_, by Alexander
McCaul, a countryman and colleague of Lewis Way, but surpassing him in
zeal for the conversion of Jews, was translated into Hebrew and German
(Frankfort-on-the-Main, 1839) for the edification of those who knew no
English. Jews themselves, either out of revenge or because they sought
to ingratiate themselves with the high authorities, joined the movement,
and openly came out against the Talmud in works modelled after
Eisenmenger's _Entdecktes Judenthum_. Such were Buchner, author of
_Worthlessness of the Talmud_ (_Der Talmud in seiner Nichtigkeit_, 2
vols., Warsaw, 1848), and Temkin, who wrote _The Straight Road_ (_Derek
Selulah_, St. Petersburg, 1835). The former was instructor in Hebrew and
Holy Writ in the rabbinical seminary in Warsaw; the latter was a zealous
convert to the Greek Catholic faith, who spared no effort to make
Judaism disliked among his former coreligionists.

All these desperate attempts proved of no avail. Judaism was practiced,
and the Talmud was studied during the reign of Nicholas I more ardently
than ever before. Their sacred treasures attacked by the Government
without and by renegades and detractors within, the Russian Jews
nevertheless clung to them with a tenacity unparalleled even in their
own history. Danzig's _Life of Man_ (_Hayye Adam_, Vilna, 1810),
containing all Jewish ritual ceremonies, was followed out to the least
minutiae. Despite the poverty of the Jews and the comparatively
exorbitant price the publisher had to charge for the Talmud, and, aside
from the many sets of former editions in the country and those
continually imported, and in addition to the Responsa, commentaries,
Midrashim, and other works directly and indirectly bearing on it, more
than a dozen editions of the Talmud had appeared in Russia alone since
the ukase of Catherine II (October 30, 1795) permitting Russian Jews to
publish Hebrew works in their own country. This ukase had been intended
originally to exclude seditious literature from Russia, but what was
unfavorable for the rebellious Poles proved, in a measure, very
beneficial to the law-abiding Jews. Under the supervision of a censor,
and with but slight interruptions, the Jews published their own books,
and in 1806 Slavuta, in Volhynia, saw the first complete edit