No sooner was a specimen of the translation published, than the rabbis of the old school were prejudiced against it, and planned how to keep the enemy from the house of Jacob. To these opponents of Mendelssohn's enterprise belonged men who brought honor upon Judaism, not alone by their Rabbinical scholarship and keen intellects, but also by their nobility of character. There were especially three men, Poles by birth, who had as little appreciation of the innovations of the times as of beauty of form and purity of speech. One of them, Ezekiel Landau (chief rabbi of Prague, from the year 1752; died in 1793), enjoyed great respect both within and outside his community. He was a clever man, and learned in time to swim with the tide. The second, Raphael Cohen, the grandfather of Riesser (born 1722, died 1803), who had emigrated from Poland, and had been called from Posen to the rabbinate of the three communities of Hamburg, Altona, and Wandsbeck, was a firm, decided character, without guile or duplicity, who as judge meted out justice without respect to persons, considering justice the support of God's throne. The third and youngest was Hirsch Janow, a son-in-law of Raphael Cohen, who, on account of his profound acumen in Talmudical discussions, was called the "keen scholar" (born 1750, died 1785). His acute mind was equally versed in the intricate problems of mathematics as in those of the Talmud. He was thoroughly unselfish, the trifling income that he received from the impoverished community of Posen he gave away to the unfortunate; he distributed alms with open-handed benevolence, and without asking questions whether the recipients were orthodox or heretics, whilst he himself starved. He contracted debts to save the needy from misery. Solomon Maimon, a deep thinker, who had opportunities of knowing men from their worst side, called this rabbi of Posen and Fürth "a godly man," an epithet not to be considered an exaggeration from such lips. To these three rabbis a fourth kindred spirit may be added, Phineas Levi Hurwitz (born 1740; died 1802), rabbi of Frankfort-on-the-Main, also a Pole, educated in the Chassidean school. These men, and others who thought like them, and who regarded the perusal of a German book as a grievous sin, from their point of view were right in opposing Mendelssohn's innovation. They perceived that the Jewish youth would learn the German language from the Mendelssohn translation more than an understanding of the "Torah"; that the former would strongly tend to become the chief object of study; the attention to Holy Writ would degenerate into an unimportant secondary matter, whilst the study of the Talmud would be completely suppressed. Though Mendelssohn himself enjoyed good repute from a religious point of view, his adherents and supporters were not invariably free from reproach. Unworthy men, who had broken with Judaism, and conceitedly termed themselves Mendelssohnians, were energetic in advancing the sale