sums, the Polish authorities energetically supported the persecutors. Those in distress showed signs of repentance, and made public confession of their misdeeds, which, be they accurate or exaggerated, present a sad picture of the deterioration of the Polish Jews. Before the council of rabbis in Satanov, in open court, several men and women stated that they and their friends had not only treated the rites of Judaism with contempt, but had abandoned themselves to fornication, adultery, incest, and other iniquities, and had done so in accordance with Kabbalistic-mystic teachings. The penitents declared that Frank had taught his followers to scoff at chastity. In consequence of this evidence a solemn sentence of excommunication, during the reading of which tapers were extinguished, was pronounced in Brody against the Frankists: no one might intermarry with them, their sons and daughters were to be treated as bastards, and none who were even suspected could be admitted to the post of rabbi, to any religious office, or to the profession of teacher. Every one was in duty bound to denounce and unmask the secret Sabbatians. This excommunication was repeated in several communities, and finally ratified by a great synod in Konstantinov on the Jewish New Year (September, 1756). The document was printed, distributed, and ordered to be read aloud every month in the synagogues for observance. This sentence of excommunication contained one point of great importance. No one under thirty years of age was to be permitted to study the Kabbala. Necessity at length opened the eyes of the rabbis to the recognition of the impure spring, which since the time of Lurya had poisoned the sap of the tree of Judaism. More than four centuries had passed since philosophical inquiry had been forbidden, and the young Kabbala encouraged. In their blindness, the rabbis had imagined that they were strengthening Judaism in placing folly on the throne of wisdom. This course produced that book of lies, the Zohar, which impudently set itself above the Holy Writings and the Talmud. Finally, the delusions of the Kabbala declared a life and death war against rabbinical Judaism. Such were the fruits of blindness. The members of the synod of Konstantinov turned in their perplexity to Jacob Emden, who, since his controversy with Eibeschütz, was accounted the representative of sound orthodoxy. He, too, enjoyed a triumph, though of an altogether different kind from the one his antagonist was at the same time celebrating in the midst of his noisy admirers. The Polish Jews at last began to be aware that secular knowledge and cultivated eloquence are after all not altogether objectionable, since they can render assistance to Judaism. They were desirous that a cultured Portuguese should come to Poland, endowed with knowledge and readiness of speech, who would represent them before the Polish magistracy and clergy, in order to suppress the dangerous Frankist sect.