up the rear.
This veneration for the dean prompted many a youth to imitate
his example, and thus our country was rendered full of the
knowledge of the Law.

What became of the students when they were graduated? Let us turn once
more to Hannover's interesting narrative. The "fairs" of those days were
much more than opportunities for barter; they afforded favorable and
attractive occasions for other objects. Zaslav and Yaroslav during the
summer, Lemberg and Lublin in the winter, were "filled with hundreds of
deans and thousands of students," and one who had a marriageable
daughter had but to resort thither to have his worries allayed.
Therefore, "Jews and Jewesses attended these bazaars in magnificent
attire, and [each season] several hundred, sometimes as many as a
thousand, alliances were consummated."

That the rabbi, living in a strange land and recalling a glorious past,
should have indulged in a bit of exaggeration in his sorrowful
retrospect, is not more than natural; and that his picture on the whole
is true is proved by similar schools which existed in Russia till
recently. The descriptions of these institutions by Smolenskin as well
as writers of less repute are graphic and intensely interesting. They
constituted a unique world, in which the Jewish youth lived and moved
until he reached man's estate. In later years, when Russian Jewry became
infected, so to speak, with the Aufklaerungs-bacilli, they became the
nurseries of the new learning. But in the earlier time, too, a spirit of
enlightenment pervaded them. The study of the Talmud fostered in them
was regarded both as a religious duty and as a means to an end, the
rabbinate. Even in the Middle Ages Aristotle was a favorite with the
older students, and Solomon Luria complained that in the prayer books of
many of them he had noticed the prayer of Aristotle, for which he blamed
the liberal views of Moses Isserles![40]

Another typically, though not exclusively, Slavonic Jewish institution
was the study-hall, or bet ha-midrash. As the synagogues gradually
became Schulen (schools), so, by a contrary process, the bet ha-midrash
assumed the function of a house of prayer. Its uniqueness it has
retained to this day. It was at once a library, a reading-room, and a
class-room; yet those who frequented it were bound by the rigorous laws
of none of the three. There were no restrictions as to when, or what, or
how one should study. It was a place in which o