everyone according to his
merit."

From the few historical notes about him, it can be seen that the
Senior was a man of strong and energetic will. With a firm hand he
seized the authority given him over his co-religionists, and he threw
an anathema over those who would not obey him, especially on the
Karaites, excluding them from the Hebrew community, and refusing them
the friendship and help of their tribe. Under such a blow the
existence of the inhabitants of Szybow, already poor, sad, and
inactive, was made altogether unbearable. The descendants of Hazairan
rulers, heretics, constituting, as always, a great minority of the
population, exposed to aversion and hatred, oppressed and poor, left
the place which had given them shelter for a certain time, carrying
with them in their hearts their stubborn attachment to the Bible, and
on their lips their poetical legends. They scattered in the broad and
hostile world, leaving behind them in that little town where they had
lived two hundred years only a few families, cherishing still more
passionately their old graveyards, the hill now covered with the
ruins of their temple, which the conquering Rabbinits had destroyed.
The Rabbinits took possession of Szybow, and, if the truth be told,
they changed, by their energy, industry, perfect harmony of action,
the result of unusual mutual help, the quiet, gray, poor, sad little
village into a town full of activity, noise, care, and riches.

In those times, under the Senior's rule, the Jews in general were
prosperous. Besides material prosperity, there began to live in them
the hope of a possibility of rising from their mental ignorance and
social humiliation. The Senior must surely have had a superior and
keen mind, for he was able to thoroughly understand the spirit of the
time and the needs of his people, notwithstanding the ancient
barriers and prejudices. He rejected the Karaites from the bosom of
Israel, not because of religious fanaticism but for broader social
reasons. Although he was a Rabbinit, and obliged to give to the
religious authorities absolute faith and worship, his mind was
sometimes visited by fits of scepticism--perhaps the best road to
wisdom. In one of his reports to the King, refuting some objections
which had been made to his sentences, he wrote, sadly and ironically:

"Our different books give us different laws. Very often we know not
what to do when Gamaliel differs from Eliezer. In Babylon is one
truth-