(1817-1893)
entered on his useful career, unbroken for forty years, as the dean of
the greatest seat of learning in the Diaspora. Under his administration
the Tree of Life College reached both the height of its prosperity and
the end of its existence (1892).[41]

Thus all the schemes and machinations of the Russian Government
respecting the Jews proved ineffectual. Nicholas I, with the possible
exception of Ivan the Terrible, the greatest autocrat in Russian
history, at whose wish seemingly insuperable obstacles were instantly
removed, the wink of whose eye was sufficient to kill or revive the
millions of his crouching slaves--Nicholas I, with all his herculean
strength, yet found himself helpless in the presence of a handful of
wretched Jews. Furious at his defeat, he expressed the intention to
reduce all Jews to Governmental servitude or to make them, like the
Cossacks, lifelong soldiers. Being advised to postpone the execution of
this plan and to employ less severe measures meanwhile, he issued the
Exportation Law of 1843, ordering the expulsion of Jews from the
fifty-vyerst boundary zone and from the villages within the Pale,
thereby depriving fifty thousand families at once of their homes and
their support.

Those from the country--writes a Russo-Jewish eye-witness of the
scenes following the enforcement of this inhuman law--move first
to the neighboring cities, and increase the existing poverty,
rendering the difficulty of finding profitable employment still
greater. God only knows how it will end when the congestion
increases still further.... I must also inform you--he
proceeds--that these past four months several imperial
commissioners have visited the frontier towns on the Lithuanian
border, from which the Jews are to be banished, in order that
the value of the real estate may be estimated. But how is the
valuation calculated? Even one who is acquainted with the
venality and unscrupulousness of Russian officers cannot form a
correct idea of how this business is conducted. If a man has no
connection with those in authority, or cannot obtain powerful
intercession, or is unable to give heavy bribes, his property is
valued at perhaps five per cent, or is set at so low a figure as
to make the appraisal differ little from downright robbery. We,
however, are used to such measures, for when they banished us
some time past from certain distr