This commercial theory of an exchange of services accomplished its purpose. The people brought their last pennies to the Tzaddik, and the Tzaddik in turn was indefatigable in bestowing blessings, pouring forth divine favors upon earth, healing the cripples, curing the sterility of women, and so on. The profitable calling of Tzaddik became hereditary, passing from father to son and grandson. Everywhere petty "dynasties" of Tzaddiks sprang up, which multiplied rapidly and endeavored to wrest the supremacy from one another. Such was the fate of the cult of the Righteous taught by Besht, which now assumed gross materialistic forms. It is fair to add, however, that not everywhere did Tzaddikism sink to such low depths. There were Tzaddiks who were idealists, lovers of mankind, and saintly men, however strange the forms in which these virtues often manifested themselves. One of these men, to quote one instance, was Levi Itzhok of Berdychev, who in his youth had been cruelly persecuted by the Lithuanian rabbis for his devotion to Hasidism. Towards the end of the eighteenth century he settled in Berdychev as Tzaddik, and became tremendously popular in his new calling on account of his saintly life and his fatherly love for the common people. Speaking generally, however, the Ukrainian, Podolian, and Galician Tzaddiks had one tendency in common, that of inculcating in their followers a blind faith in the truths of Hasidism and shunning all "speculation" as injurious to religious sentiment. The development of Hasidism in Lithuania and White Russia was altogether different. Whereas in the south Hasidism captured entire communities at one stroke, meeting with feeble resistance from the dry-as-dust representatives of Rabbinism, in the north it was forced to engage in a bitter struggle for existence with powerful Rabbinism as represented by the Kahal organization. At the same time it received a special coloring there. The Hasidism of Besht, having been carried to the north by the disciples of Baer of Mezherich, Aaron of Karlin, Mendel of Vitebsk, and Zalman of Ladi, could not help absorbing many elements of the dominant doctrine of Rabbinism. The principal exponent of this new teaching in the North, Zalman Shneorsohn[202] (died 1813), of Lozno, and later of Ladi, both in the Government of Moghilev, succeeded in creating a remarkable system of thought, which may well be designated as "rational Hasidism." He summed up his theory in the words: "Wisdom, Understanding, and Knowledge."[203]