The sufferings which Jews had to endure during the fifteenth century and of which the expulsion from Spain and Portugal was the culmination, were the cause of a strengthening of mysticism. Particularly in Palestine, to which quite a number of Spanish Jews were drawn by Messianic hopes, such a center was formed. In Safed, where Joseph Caro wrote his “Shulhan Aruk,” a number of disciples gathered around Isaac Luria, who preached a religion based on the belief in the mysterious. He did not write, but numerous disciples put his ideas in writing. Among them were Hayyim Vital, who was considered a worker of miracles, and Elijah de Vidas, whose work, “The Beginning of Wisdom,” became a favorite book for edification. Another Kabbalistic author of the same circle was Solomon Halevi Alkabez, best known by his popular Sabbath hymn, “Lekah Dodi,” which also has a Kabbalistic tendency. German Jews came to Palestine to join the circle of mystics. One was Isaiah Horowitz (1550-1630), who had been rabbi of Frankfort-on-the-Main and Prague. Of his works a large Kabbalistic compendium, “The Two Tablets of the Covenant” (Shelah), became very popular. Abstracts of it were made and translated into Judæo-German. Even in Italy, where secular culture was far more general among Jews than in any other country in Europe, Kabbala had a strong hold on the people. A great enthusiast for the doctrine of mysticism was Moses Hayyim Luzzatto (1707-1747), who wrote allegorical dramas in Hebrew, one of which, “Praise to the Righteous,” is a masterpiece of modern Hebrew literature. His ethical treatise, “The Path of the Righteous,” is also deservedly popular. He went to Palestine hoping to receive prophetic inspiration there, and died at the age of forty of the plague. Talmudic literature monopolized the activities of the German and Polish Jews, the latter being considered the leaders in this line and filling most of the Rabbinic positions in Western Europe during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Among the most prominent dialecticians may be mentioned Jacob Joshua of Lemberg (1680-1756), rabbi of Frankfort-on-the-Main, Aryeh Loeb of Minsk, rabbi of Metz (1700-1786), Ezekiel Landau (1713-1793), rabbi of Prague, and Jonathan Eybeschuetz (1690-1764), rabbi of Metz and Altona, whose works show the highest development in this branch. Already in the eighteenth century a sounder development of Rabbinic studies, showing the beginnings of criticism and an interest in historical and archæological questions, began.