out him are grouped
Abraham de Portaleone, an excellent archaeologist, who established that
Jews had been the first to observe the medicinal uses of gold; David de
Pomis, the author of a famous defense of Jewish physicians; and Leo de
Modena, the rabbi of Venice, "unstable as water," wavering between faith
and unbelief, and, Kabbalist and rabbi though he was, writing works
against the Kabbala on the one hand, and against rabbinical tradition on
the other. Similar to him in character is Joseph del Medigo, an
itinerant author, who sometimes reviles, sometimes extols, the Kabbala.

There are men of higher calibre, as, for instance, Isaac Aboab, whose
_Nomologia_ undertakes to defend Jewish tradition against every sort of
assailant; Samuel Aboab, a great Bible scholar; Azariah Figo, a famous
preacher; and, above all, Moses Chayyim Luzzatto, the first Jewish
dramatist, the dramas preceding his having interest only as attempts.
He, too, is caught in the meshes of the Kabbala, and falls a victim to
its powers of darkness. His dramas testify to poetic gifts and to
extraordinary mastery of the Hebrew language, the faithful companion of
the Jewish nation in all its journeyings. To complete this sketch of the
Italian Jews of that period, it should be added that while in intellect
and attainments they stand above their brethren in faith of other
countries, in character and purity of morals they are their inferiors.

Thereafter literary interest centres in Poland, where rabbinical
literature found its most zealous and most learned exponents. Throughout
the land schools were established, in which the Talmud was taught by the
_Pilpul_, an ingenious, quibbling method of Talmudic reasoning and
discussion, said to have originated with Jacob Pollak. Again we have a
long succession of distinguished names. There are Solomon Luria, Moses
Isserles, Joel Sirkes, David ben Levi, Sabbatai Kohen, and Elias Wilna.
Sabbatai Kohen, from whom, were pride of ancestry permissible in the
republic of letters, the present writer would boast descent, was not
only a Talmudic writer; he also left historical and poetical works.
Elias Wilna, the last in the list, had a subtle, delicately poised mind,
and deserves special mention for his determined opposition to the
Kabbala and its offspring Chassidism, hostile and ruinous to Judaism and
Jewish learning.

A gleam of true pleasure can be obtained from the history of the Dutch
Jews. In Holland the Jews united s