Isserles was right. The philosophy with which he occupied himself could scarcely be destructive of Orthodoxy. This is shown by his large work _Torath ha-`Olah_ ("The Law of the Burnt-Offering," 1570),[94] which represents a weird mixture of religious and philosophic discussions on themes borrowed from Maimonides' "Guide of the Perplexed," interspersed with speculations about the various classes of angels or the architecture of the Jerusalem temple, its vessels and order of sacrifices. The author professes to detect in all the details of the temple service a profound symbolism. Notwithstanding the strange plan of the book there are many chapters in it that show the intimate familiarity of Isserles with the philosophic literature of the Sephardim, a remarkable record for an Ashkenazic rabbi of the sixteenth century. The intimate connection between rabbinic learning and Jewish life stood out in bold relief from the moment the "Council of the Four Lands" began to discharge its regular functions. The Council had frequent occasion to decide, for practical purposes, complicated questions appertaining to domestic, civil, and criminal law, or relating to legal procedure and religious practice, and the rabbis who participated in these conferences as legal experts were forced to accomplish a large amount of concrete, tangible work for themselves and their colleagues. Questions of law and ritual were everywhere assiduously investigated and elaborated, with that subtle analysis peculiar to the Jewish mind, which pursues every idea to its remotest consequences and its most trifling details. The subject as well as the method of investigation depended, as a rule, on the social position of the investigator. The rabbis of higher rank, who took an active part in the Kahal administration, and participated in the meetings of the Councils, either of the Crown or of Lithuania, paid particular attention to the practical application of Talmudic law. One of the oldest scholars of this category during the period under discussion was Mordecai Jaffe (died 1612), a native of Bohemia, who occupied the post of rabbi successively in Grodno, Lublin, Kremenetz, Prague, and Posen. Towards the end of the sixteenth century he presided a number of times over the conferences of the "Council of the Four Lands." Though a pupil of Moses Isserles, Jaffe did not consider the _Shulhan Arukh_ as supplemented by his teacher the last word in codification. He objected to the fact that its juridical conclusions were formulated dogmatically, without sufficient motivation.