For 1,500 years Jewish society had been designed to produce
intellectuals… Jewish society was geared to support them…
Rich merchants married sages’ daughters; …Quite suddenly,
around the year 1800, this ancient and highly efficient social
machine for the production of intellectuals began to shift its
output. Instead of pouring all its products into the closed circuit
of rabbinical studies, …it unleashed a significant and ever-
growing proportion of them into secular life. This was an event
of shattering importance in world history. (A History of the Jews,
Paul Johnson 1988, 340-341)