Isserles had taste also for other subjects besides the Talmud, especially for astronomy. He produced a commentary to Frohbach's astronomical work, "Theorica." He likewise had an inclination for philosophy, and pursued the subject rather deeply, though only through the medium of Hebrew works. Maimuni's "Guide" was his guide, too. On this account he had to submit to a sharp reproof from the proud Solomon Lurya. Isserles also had some taste for history, which led him to induce one of his disciples to occupy himself seriously with it. David Gans (born in Westphalia in 1541, died in Prague in 1613) had come to Cracow when a youth in order to study in the rabbinical academy there; but his natural taste for scientific subjects, history, geography, mathematics, and astronomy, was involuntarily aroused by Isserles, who brought him up, and guided his studies. Gans devoted himself to these subjects, and made the acquaintance of two great leaders in mathematics and astronomy, Kepler and Tycho de Brahe. He wrote several works on these subjects, of course in Hebrew. His chronicle (Zemach David), consisting of annals of Jewish and general history, has become celebrated. It was a very great thing for a German Jew to have devoted himself to studies outside of the ordinary track. But one cannot call David's historical work great. He introduced among Jews the dry, bare form of historical narrative formerly employed by monks, which at that time had already given place to a more artistic method. However, unimportant as David's chronicle is, it possesses some merit, because it reminded those wrapped up in the study of the Talmud that they were the last links of a long historical chain. The want of appreciation of history displayed by German Jews is indicated by the brief inscription placed on Gans' tomb, while there were no limits to the eulogies glorifying the memory of some obscure rabbinical dignitary. The study of the Talmud, prosecuted merely as an effort of memory, won greater fame for its votaries than devotion to any branch of science, however profoundly grasped.
The three great rabbinical lights, first both in rank and in priority of time, Shachna, Solomon Lurya, and Isserles, laid the foundation of the extraordinary erudition of the Polish Jews. Any complicated or generally interesting question, arising in Germany, Moravia, Bohemia, even in Italy and Turkey, was submitted to them, especially to Isserles, for final decision. The revoltingly vulgar actions of the community at Prague, against which the local college of rabbis was powerless, were brought before the rabbis of Poland, and attacked vigorously by them. Passionate disputes in Frankfort-on-the-Main, which threatened to produce persecution or expulsion, were settled, and a reconciliation effected from Poland. Thus this rabbinical triumvirate founded a kind of supremacy of Poland over the Jews of Europe, acknowledged on all sides, and the Polish rabbis maintained their position as leaders up to the end of the eighteenth century.
The triumvirate, whose numerous disciples rivaled each other in the study of the Talmud, gradually caused nearly all Polish Jews to become familiar with that book, and eligible for the rabbinical office. Even in small communities of only fifty members there were at least twenty Talmudical scholars, who in turn instructed at least thirty pupils. Everywhere there arose schools with rabbis at their head as teachers, whose chief duty was to deliver lectures, everything else being of secondary importance. Young men crowded to these establishments, where they could live free from care, their maintenance being defrayed out of the treasury of the community, or by wealthy private individuals. Children were put to the study of the Talmud at a tender age, certainly to the detriment of the natural development of their minds. It was the highest honor to conduct a rabbinical school, and their ambition was encouraged to strive for this object. Supervisors were nominated to watch over the industry of the students (Bachurim) and the children. Gradually a kind of syllabus with alternating themes, in use up to recent times, was introduced for the lectures on the Talmud in the summer and the winter term.
At the end of the term, the teachers and their numerous pupils went to the great Polish fairs, in summer to Zaslaw and Jaroslaw, in winter to Lemberg and Lublin. Thus several thousand students of the Talmud met, and there ensued a lively interchange of remarks and subtle disputations upon the subject-matter of rabbinical and Talmudic study. Public disputations were held, in which anyone might take part. The keener intellects received wealthy brides as a reward for their mental exertions. Rich parents took pride in having sons-in-law educated in Talmudic schools, and sought for them at the fairs. The Polish Jews, by reason of this fervent zeal, acquired a Talmudic deportment, so to speak, which showed itself in every movement and every utterance, by ungraceful shrugging of the shoulders and a peculiar movement of the thumbs. Every conversation, whether of a perfectly indifferent nature or even upon matters of business, resembled a disputation upon the Talmud. Talmudical words, designations, phrases, and allusions, passed into popular speech, and were understood even by women and children.
But this excessive study of the Talmud in Poland was of no real advantage to Judaism. It was not carried on in order to gain a proper understanding of the book, but merely to find something unique, rare, witty, striking, something to tickle the intellectual palate. In these meetings of thousands of students of the Talmud, masters and disciples, teachers and pupils, at the great fairs, every individual exerted himself to discover something new, startling, and casuistical, bringing it forward only to surpass all others, without caring whether it stood the test of proof, or was only relatively true, but merely to gain a reputation for sharp-wittedness. The chief endeavor of the Talmudical students of Poland was directed to bringing to light something new in Talmudic criticism, or in inventing something (Chiddush). The lectures of the heads of schools, and of all rabbis, had only this object in view – to set up something hitherto unsurpassed, to weave a net of sophistical Talmudical propositions, and to go still further in the process of incomprehensible hair-splitting (Chillukim). Hence the whole trend of Jewish thought in Poland was in a wrong direction. The language of the Jews in particular suffered from this cause, degenerating into a ridiculous jargon, a mixture of German, Polish, and Talmudical elements, an unpleasant stammering, rendered still more repulsive by forced attempts at wit. This corrupt speech, despising all forms, could be understood only by Jews, natives of the country. Together with their language the Polish Jews lost that which really constitutes a man, and were thus exposed to the scorn and contempt of non-Jewish society. The Bible had fallen gradually into the background in the course of development since the time of Maimuni; now in Poland knowledge of it was utterly lost. If anyone occupied himself with it, it was merely to derive the materials for wit, or false wit, from its pages.
The circumstances of the time were such that the Jews of Poland were able, to a certain extent, to form an independent state within the Polish state. Several kings in succession were favorable to them, according them extensive protective privileges, and seeing, as far as their power went, that these rights were respected. After the death of the last king of the Jagellon dynasty, Sigismund Augustus (1572), the Jews of Poland profited by the elective monarchy. Each newly-elected king above all needed money, which could be supplied only by Jews; or, he needed a party among the nobles, and this order, in general devoted to the Jews, obtained a preponderating influence as compared with the narrow-minded German middle class, hostile to Jews.
After a thirteen months' interregnum, occupied by election negotiations and intrigues, the sagacious prince of Transylvania, Stephen Bathori, gained the Polish throne, not without the co-operation of the Jewish agent, Solomon Ashkenazi, for Turkey had supported his election. Not long after his accession, he sent kind messages to the Jews, protected those in Lithuania against false and calumnious accusation of the murder of Christian children, and uttered his conviction that the Jews conscientiously obeyed the Hebrew law of not shedding human blood. His reign of nearly twelve years (1575–1586) forms a happy episode in the history of the Jews in Poland. Stephen Bathori, moreover, did not allow the privileges to remain a dead letter, but preserved them in full force. He allowed Jews (in 1576) to carry on all kinds of trade without restriction, even to buy and sell on Christian holidays, desired that the murder of a Jew, like the murder of a Christian, be punished by death, and made the city magistracies responsible for riots and injuries caused by Christian mobs in synagogues, cemeteries, and at Jewish funerals. The promoters of tumultuous attacks upon Jews, which occurred chiefly in the half-German city of Posen, were to be fined ten thousand Polish marks, and the magistrate who had not done his duty in protecting Jews was to be fined a similar sum. Bathori's reign was not, however, free from libelous attacks on the Jews. Where was there at that time in Christian Europe a single country in which the enemies of the Jews did not assail them? A Polish poet, Klonowicz, poured forth his scorn of their trade, usury, and arrogance, in Latin verses; the rulers, he said, robbed the Jews, only to be robbed by them in turn.
In the long reign of Sigismund III (1587–1632), the Swedish prince whose election gave a pretext for internal dissensions and civil wars, the Polish Jews fared better than might have been expected from a pupil of the Jesuits and a zealous Catholic. Although he caused dissenting Poles to be severely persecuted, the Jews under his government were by no means unhappy. At the diet in Warsaw (1592) he confirmed the ancient privileges of Casimir, considered to be in their favor. However, Sigismund III introduced one law, very disadvantageous to Jews, and disclosing the ecclesiastical bent of his mind. He ordained that the permission of the clergy had to be gained to build new synagogues, a regulation which, of course, rendered the practice of the Jewish religion dependent on a church eager for persecution.
Under this king the Jews in Poland introduced (1586–1592) an institution which had not existed in that particular form in Jewish history. It gave the Polish communities extraordinary unity, firmness, and strength, and hence secured respect both from their members and outsiders. Hitherto it had naturally come about that, at the meeting of rabbis and heads of schools with their followers at the great fairs, important questions were discussed, law cases were settled, and general consultations took place. The utility of such meetings may have become clearly apparent, and given rise to the idea of arranging regular conferences of the heads of communities, to draw up final, binding decisions. Both leaders and communities must have been actuated by a healthy spirit in agreeing to common action. The communities of the chief provinces, Little Poland, Greater Poland, and Russia, were the first to unite in instituting conferences (Vaad) at regular intervals, to take place at the great fairs of Lublin and Jaroslaw. The communities sent delegates, learned men of proved excellence, who had a seat and a vote in the synod. They chose a president, who directed the discussion of questions, and drew up a report of the session. Disputes in the communities, questions of taxation, religious and social regulations, the averting of threatened dangers, and help to brethren in distress, were the main points treated by the synods, and settled finally. The synods also exercised a literary censorship by granting permission for certain books to be printed and sold, and refusing it in the case of others which seemed to them harmful. Probably the Lithuanian Jews were represented at a later period, and the synods were called the Synods of the Four Countries (Vaad Arba Arazoth). These conferences had a very beneficial effect: they prevented long-standing dissensions, averted or punished acts of injustice, kept alive a feeling of union amongst the communities, directing them towards common action, thereby counteracting the narrowness and selfishness of merely local interests, which so greatly encouraged the dismemberment and isolation of communities, as, for example, in Germany. On this account the synod of Polish Jews was respected even abroad; and distant German communities or private individuals who had any complaint to make, applied to these supreme assemblies, certain to obtain relief. It is to the glory of the men who, for nearly two hundred years, presided over the synods, that their names, worthy of the remembrance of posterity, remained in obscurity, as though they had consciously suppressed their individuality in favor of the community at large. Still less is known of the originators of this institution, who succeeded in the difficult task of overcoming the anarchic tendency of the people, as Jews and as Poles, and of inducing them to subordinate themselves to one great end. It is conjectured that Mordecai Jafa, a rabbi from Bohemia (born about 1532, died 1612), who made many journeys, and suffered much sorrow, was the organizer of these regular conferences. He had been compelled, in his youth, to assume the wanderer's staff. In this way he came to Venice; here he occupied himself in drawing up a religious code more convenient than that of Joseph Karo. Apparently the search made by the Inquisition for copies of the Talmud rendered his stay in Venice unpleasant, and he again betook himself to Poland. There finally he officiated as a rabbi, first in Grodno, afterwards in Lublin, from about 1575 till the spring of 1592. In Lublin, one of the great fair towns, many thousands of Jews used to meet, and there were always undecided law-suits and disputes to be settled. Mordecai Jafa may very possibly have gained from this the idea of transforming these chance synods into regular conferences and of drawing up rules for them. His authority was sufficient to gain acceptance for his proposals, which satisfied an urgent need. When he left Lublin in his old age to take up the office of rabbi at Prague, the presidency of the synod seems to have been occupied by Joshua Falk Cohen, the head of a school at Lemberg (1592–1616), whose great academy was maintained by his rich and respected father-in-law. The frequent meetings of the Reformers in Poland, the Lutherans and Unitarians, with their respective sects, seem to have served as a model for the Jewish assemblies. Only the latter did not discuss hair-splitting dogmas, like the others, but decided practical questions of daily life.
Poland and Lithuania, superficially considered, presented the spectacle of a land honeycombed with religious divisions, from which a new form of Christianity was to arise. While in Germany the reforming movement and the opposition to it was subsiding, while the Titans who stormed the gates of heaven were settling down into ordinary parsons; while the new church in its turn was entering upon a process of ossification, and, after a short season of youthful ardor, was falling into the feebleness of old age; the waves of religious and sectarian separation were only now rising in Polish countries, and threatening a general inundation. The German colonies in Poland had transplanted the Reformation with them, and the Polish nobility thought it an imperative fashion to pay homage to this anti-papal innovation. Christianity in Poland and Lithuania, be it the new or the old church, was too young to be firmly rooted; and so the Reformation, finding little opposition, gained rapid admittance among the nobles and the bourgeoisie almost to its own discomfiture. Sigismund Augustus had allowed the movement free play; indeed, under the influence of the Radziwills of Lithuania, who stood close to his throne, he almost renounced the papacy altogether. Thus Poland became a free state in the widest sense, and an arena for the new teaching of the Augustine monk of Wittenberg. Even those thinkers or enthusiasts in Italy, Switzerland, or Germany, who wished to push the religious movement, but were persecuted either by the Catholics or the Reformers, found kindly welcome and protection under the Polish nobility, who were quite independent in their own districts.
Thus arose a sect in Poland which, logically developed, might have given a fatal blow to Christianity in general. The ashes of Servetus of Aragon, burned at the stake in Geneva, the author of a treatise, "On the Errors of the Trinity," seem to have been the seed for fresh dissensions in the church. A number of his disciples, Socinus, Blandrata, and Paruta, Italians of bold intellect, who undermined the foundations of Christianity, and were outlawed by Catholics and Reformers alike, passed over the Polish frontier, and were allowed not only to live there free, but also to speak freely. The attacks of the Socinians or Pinczovinians (as this sect, which flourished in Poland, was called) were directed mainly against the Trinity as a form of polytheism. Hence they received the name of Unitarians or anti-Trinitarians. There arose a swarm of sects who met at synodic conventions to find grounds of union, but separated with still further divisions and dissensions.
Among the Unitarians, or disbelievers in the Trinity, were some who partially approached Judaism, rejecting the veneration of Jesus as a divine person. They were scoffed at by their various opponents as "Half-Jews" (semi-judaizantes). To the strictest sect of Unitarians in Poland belonged Simon Budny, of Masovia, a Calvinist priest, who founded a sect of his own, the Budnians. He died after 1584. He possessed more learning than the other founders of sects, and also had a slight knowledge of Hebrew, which he had probably learned from Jews. Simon Budny made himself famous by his simple translation of the Old and the New Testament into Polish (published at Zaslaw, 1572). His intercourse with Jews is shown by his respect for the universally despised Talmud.
Although the movement of religious reform in Poland, in spite of the frequent synods, disputations, and protests, did not penetrate very deep, it was not without effect upon the Jews. They were fond of entering into discussions with the leaders or adherents of the various sects, if not to convert them to Judaism, yet to show their own superiority in biblical knowledge. Conversations upon religion between Jews and "Dissenters" (as all Poles who had seceded from Roman Catholicism were called) were of frequent occurrence. A Unitarian, Martin Czechowic (born about 1530, died 1613), from Greater Poland, a man of confused intellect, who had passed through all the phases of the religious movements of the day, and who finally became a schismatic, rejected the baptism of infants, and maintained that a Christian could not undertake any office of state. This Martin Czechowic had written a work to refute the objections of the Jews to the Messianic claims of Jesus, and had fought against the continued obligatoriness of Judaism with old and rusty weapons. A Rabbanite Jew, Jacob of Belzyce, in Lublin (1581), wrote a refutation, so effective that Czechowic found himself compelled to justify his thesis in a rejoinder.
Isaac ben Abraham Troki, of Troki, near Wilna (born 1533, died 1594), a Karaite, engaged still more actively than Jacob of Belzyce in disputations with the adherents of Polish and Lithuanian sects. He had access to nobles, princes of the church, and other Christian circles, was deeply acquainted with the Bible, well read in the New Testament, and in the different polemical, religious writings of his day, and thus able to produce thoroughly accurate statements. Shortly before his death (1593) Isaac Troki collected the results of his religious conversations in a work that was subsequently to serve as the arsenal for destructive weapons against Christianity. He entitled his work "The Strengthening of Faith." He not merely answered the numerous attacks made upon Judaism by Christians, but carried the war into the camp of Christianity. With great skill and thorough knowledge of his subject, he brought into prominence the contradictions and untenable assertions in the Gospels and other original Christian documents. It is the only book by a Karaite author worth reading. It certainly does not contain anything specially new; all brought forward in defense of Judaism and against Christianity had been far better said by Spanish authors of a previous period, especially by the talented Profiat Duran. Yet Troki's work had more success, for books have a fate of their own. This book was translated into Spanish, Latin, German, and French, and gained still greater fame from the attacks upon it by Christians. One of the dukes of Orleans undertook to refute the onslaught of this Polish Jew upon Christianity. And when Reason, awakened and strengthened, applied the lever to shake the foundations of Christianity and demolish the whole superstructure, it was to this store-chamber that she turned for her implements.