Five years ago, Stack Overflow was launched. And then a miracle happened

This shelter cat has completely lost hope that someone will take him home. And then one day, sitting in a cage with an expression of universal sadness and sadness, a ray of hope lit up. They came for him, that very real and long-awaited new family.

Meet BenBen, the cat who was just one day away from being put to sleep. But then a miracle happened, and he not only survived, but also found a new family.

It turned out that BenBen was only one hour away from such a dramatic transformation from the saddest cat in the world to the happiest bundle of orange fur.

For all the time that the cat had to spend in the shelter, he was nicknamed the saddest cat, which became known to the entire Internet community.

When BenBen arrived at the shelter, the workers decided that he was attacked by street animals, since the cat had quite deep cuts on his face, his ear was bitten and his spine was broken.

Of course, how can you remain cheerful in such a situation when you are literally writhing from pain, not only physical, but also mental? And the gloomy muzzle of the redhead spoke about this.

They planned to euthanize BenBen. Shelter workers say that from the expression on the cat’s face, one could safely say that he guessed what fate awaited him.

He stopped eating and drinking. The day before BenBen was to be put down, a woman who works with a veterinary center decided to take the red sufferer into her home!

She said that as soon as they returned home, BenBen immediately changed. After just an hour, he began to smile, purr and wanted to hug.

And all because the cat finally felt safe, he felt loved and was simply happy.

So much happiness for the internet's recently saddest cat! No one expected BenBen to be able to walk again, but he proved otherwise.

BenBen can walk, run and jump, although only for short distances!

Many months have passed and now BenBen’s favorite pastimes are sleeping, playing and trying to taste human food!

Once again we are convinced that love is a powerful force that works miracles!

Leap year 2008 turned out to be very difficult for the leader of Russian basketball, Ilona Korstin. In the spring, women's CSKA was one step away from winning the Russian Championship and the Euroleague. At the Olympics in Beijing, the team failed to reach gold, and then Ilona suffered the greatest disappointment - in November her club went bankrupt. However, there is a place for miracles in life, and CSKA rose from the ashes. Ilona told Izvestia correspondent Nikolai Chegorsky about this.

“In my youth, everyone fed Masha Stepanova”

-Who do you communicate with most from the Russian championship?
-I have excellent contact with the girls. You know, training camps are a great way to test the strength of friendships. When you live in the same room with a person for three months, you either become completely attached to him, or you begin to turn away from him. There is no third. Essentially, at training camps it’s like in the army - here you quickly learn to understand people. But we have very warm relations with Masha Stepanova and Oksana Rakhmatullina. I generally consider Rakhmatullina one of my best friends.

-What do basketball players talk about when they gather in a cafe for a cup of coffee?
- About the same thing that all the other girls are talking about: discussing new clothes, recent trips to boutiques, we are talking about diets. Well, don’t forget about the strong field (smiles). Basketball takes up only a hundredth part of the conversation. In general, I don’t like to focus on one thing.

- You’ve known Masha Stepanova since the children’s basketball section.
- Yes, since the mid-90s. I remember the first time I saw Masha at training. Some skinny girl came. Our coach constantly forced her to eat two servings of the second one at training camps. And we kept telling her: “Eat, Masha, eat!”

-Bad appetite is a consequence of falling in love. Did Stepanova like some boy then?
-No, she was just calm about food... But we had freedom - her parents always made a bunch of sandwiches for her on trips. And Masha fed them all to us (smiles). It's fate that we walked almost the entire journey together. They made the national team at the same time and left for the Women’s NBA in the same year. Until the last moment we played in CSKA.

- By the way, many called Stepanova’s departure from CSKA a wake-up call, a harbinger of the death of the club.
-I know Masha very well, we constantly share our secrets... But I can assure you that then no one thought about the collapse. Everything was announced to her at the last moment. Both Stepanova and all of us were shocked that one of the leading basketball players was still being removed from the roster. And the explanation that her performance did not suit the management seemed strange. And although we were assured that everything would be fine, after that the girls became more wary of everything.

“Putin is a very charming man...”

-And a month later it became clear that your wariness was justified...
-Yeah, it would be better if it wasn’t confirmed, and the women’s CSKA didn’t die. They announced this to us a week in advance - it’s good that the club bosses said everything directly and did not fuss. The only thing we were asked to do was not to leave immediately, but to wait another week.

You quickly packed your things and left for France. It looks like there was already a ready-made option for continuing your career?
- Not in this case. It’s just that the first two or three days in Moscow I was literally inundated with offers. I wanted to leave and take a break from all this fuss, because my head was ready to explode! After all, the club managers who wanted to get me tried to persuade me to sign the contract as soon as possible. Therefore, I vacated the Moscow apartment that the club rented for us and went to France. When the deadline approached, CSKA announced that a sponsor had not been found. All that remained was to wait for the start of the work week and sign a new contract. And then a miracle happened...

-Who acted as the savior?
-The head of the “big” CSKA Sergei Kushchenko and the leadership of the women’s club. I also know that Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov used all possible levers and in a very short time found a sponsor for the club. It is very touching that the fate of the women's CSKA is not indifferent not only in sports, but also in political circles.

-You watched the Euroleague match with the participation of the men's CSKA in the company of Vladimir Putin. Were you probably worried?
-Certainly! But, in my opinion, the guys were more nervous: as soon as Putin appeared on the podium, they lost their advantage (laughs). I didn’t even plan to go to this match. I had a ticket to St. Petersburg in my hands, but the day before departure they called me and asked me to accompany the Prime Minister. It was impossible to refuse such an offer.

-Did you choose a place closer to Putin?
-No, it was assigned to me in advance. I didn’t even know that Vladimir Vladimirovich would sit next door. Of course, I was quite nervous, but Putin turned out to be pleasant to talk to and a very charming man.

-Did you tell the Prime Minister about the collapse of the club and its miraculous salvation?
- Alas, we didn’t really manage to talk. There was terrible noise and hubbub in the hall, and besides, Vladimir Vladimirovich arrived in the second half of the game. There is a “Direct Line” for detailed communication with him, but I think we still have enough time to talk. Putin was invited to the women's CSKA game (smiles).

Nikolai CHEGORSKY, newspaper “Izvestia in Ukraine”

The 20th century is the same century that the poet Osip Mandelstam called the “wolfhound century” and which killed him in 1938 while being transported to a Vladivostok camp. This wolfhound grabbed hold of the Zhzhenov family early on, killing and ruining the lives of its members.

The father and mother of the future famous artist came from poor peasant families in the Tver province. As a boy, his father moved to St. Petersburg, where he entered the service of a fellow countryman-baker. When he remained a widower and married a young orphan for the second time, he already had five children, and then he began to have children together. They lived poorly and were far from in harmony - the more severe the need became, the more the father drank, drinking away everything that was in the house, and often raising his hand against his wife. Mother was a kind, wise and loving person, and for Georgy Stepanovich she forever remained “my beautiful Mother.”

Vek the Wolfhound first growled and bared his fangs at the Zhzhenovs in 1934, immediately after Kirov’s death. The brother of the future artist Boris, who was a student at the Faculty of Mechanics and Mathematics of the university, unusually talented and giving big hopes, turned to the Komsomol organizer of his course with a request to allow him not to go to the funeral. Pointing to his broken shoes, he said: “If I go to the Tauride Palace, I will definitely freeze my feet. What is the point? This will not help Kirov.”

The Komsomol organizer, in the spirit of the new communist morality, immediately reported him. The brilliant student was immediately expelled from the university and deprived of his residence permit in Leningrad. A student expelled from the university spent a whole year knocking on the doors of the prosecutor's office, protesting against the unfair decision. Eventually he was reinstated as a student and returned to Leningrad. And in December 1936 they brought him a summons to the NKVD. He went there and never returned. In 1937, he was sentenced to 7 years for “anti-Soviet activities.” Six years later, he died in Vorkuta from dystrophy, after overstraining himself in a coal mine.

During last date Boris managed to give his mother several pieces of paper covered in small but legible handwriting. With his characteristic analytical mindset, he, like a surgeon, revealed all the horror of what he saw and experienced in the dungeons of the internal prison of the NKVD, painted a picture of the complete defenselessness of those arrested before the tyranny of blind force, when any arguments of reason and logic are in vain, when those pleasing to the investigation are knocked out of those under investigation through mockery and torture. "confession" and "testimony". Risking his life, he tried in his letter to show the true state of affairs in the justice system.

“To me,” recalled Georgy Stepanovich, “everything I read seemed incredible and terrible... Shocked, I immediately burned the leaves in the stove under my mother’s disapproving gaze. “In vain, son, in vain,” said the mother, “I should have read it properly, more carefully. Who knows, maybe it will come in handy in life.” If only I could imagine how prophetic my mother’s words would be.”

After Boris's conviction, the entire family, that is, father, mother and three sisters, was deported to Kazakhstan. Georgy, who by this time, having graduated from the Leningrad Theater School, had already starred in several films at the Lenfilm film studio, including “The Hero’s Mistake”, “Chapaev”, refused to leave for Kazakhstan. They answered him indifferently: “If you don’t go, we’ll put you in prison.”

In 1938, after filming for director Sergei Gerasimov’s film “Komsomolsk” ended, the young aspiring actor was arrested. As if in a nightmare, Georgy Stepanovich recalled, he listened to how he was accused of establishing a criminal espionage connection with an American who recruited him as a man avenging the fate of his brother.

“It’s very scary when for the first time everything was suddenly stripped away from the concepts of Justice and Humanity beautiful clothes... I was only 22 years old. I was not afraid of physical injuries, no - maybe I could have endured them - I was afraid of madness. If only I knew why you are accepting torment, it would be easier!”

All attempts to somehow resist the bullying of the investigation, when young man with a laugh, they stuck a pencil in their hand and ordered them to sign confessions, which ended with a five-year sentence and a transfer to the terrible Kolyma.

“Probably, it helped me that when I got to Kolyma, I no longer had any illusions, no faith in justice, which supposedly should triumph, in the law, and so on, no hope for a review of the case. There was only a daily, hourly struggle for physical survival. It's survival. And then, of course, a certain amount of luck. After all, people stronger than me died in the Gulag. In my autobiographical story “Sleigh,” I tell, for example, an episode when I was informed that - oh, miracle! — I suddenly received two parcels sent by my mother. To get them to the camp they had to walk 10 kilometers. I understood that the parcels could save my life, because from constant hunger my strength was diminishing every day and steadily, and I was aware that I would not last long. But I physically couldn’t walk those damned ten kilometers. I just didn't have the strength. And then the second miracle happened: the officer who was returning to the camp took me with him. And when on the way I finally collapsed into the snow, unable to take even a step, and with deep indifference I realized that this was the end, the officer put me on a sled, which he was dragging behind him, and took me away. For a cruel officer, who had long forgotten what compassion is, to carry a prisoner on a sled - it was more than a miracle.

The parcels had been sent by my mother three years earlier, and their contents - lard, sausage, garlic, onions, sweets, tobacco - had long since been mixed up and turned into frozen stone. I looked at these parcels and with the last of my strength resisted the urge to immediately bite into this stone with my teeth. I knew that I would die immediately from a volvulus. I asked the guards not to give me parcels under any circumstances, even if I crawl on my knees and beg for it, but to chop off small pieces three times a day and give them to me. They looked at me with respect and agreed. When I say that I learned not to expect or ask for anything from the camp authorities, and that this helped me survive, I am not exaggerating. In 1943, my term of imprisonment ended and I was given an official document with a coat of arms - another 21 months in the camps were added to my imprisonment. I read it almost indifferently - what else could you expect from this system?

In 1945, I was finally released, and I worked at the Magadan Polar Drama Theater, and in 1947 I came to Moscow for a job assignment. There was a note in my passport that forbade me to live in any large industrial cities where there were film studios. At the request of my teacher, director Sergei Apollinarievich Gerasimov, I was sent to work in Sverdlovsk, where I received temporary registration and began filming the film “Alitet Goes to the Mountains.”

But then, as luck would have it, the film studio was closed, the production of “Alitet” was transferred to Moscow, where I was forbidden to live with my passport. I got hired to work in the city of Pavlov-on-Oka at the local drama theater.

And here in 1949 I was arrested again. I ate prison porridge in Gorky for six months, and then I was sent into exile in northern Norilsk. Why, why, how is this possible - if I tormented myself with these questions, I would quickly go crazy. But as I already said, I didn’t expect anything else from them, I didn’t hope for anything, and that’s why I survived this time.”

“At the Norilsk Drama Theater I met Innokenty Smoktunovsky, with whom we played together. I immediately realized what kind of talent he was. He hid in Norilsk because he was a prisoner of war during the war and was afraid that he would be imprisoned.

I spent a long time trying to persuade Smoktunovsky to go to Moscow, because his talent was immeasurable and did not fit into the small Norilsk theater. He wanted and was afraid, and I understood him. He said that he had no money, and when I offered to lend it to him, he refused. Then I bought him a camera, taught him how to shoot, and he began to earn money by taking photographs in the surrounding villages. Everyone in those years needed a photograph, everyone needed to send news about themselves somewhere. Soon he returned the money to me. I gave him a letter of recommendation to Arkady Raikin, but instead of Leningrad, Smoktunovsky went to Volgograd, where he played minor roles. I didn’t leave him alone there either and literally forced him to go to Moscow, to the Lenkom Theater, where director Mikhail Romm noticed him and cast him in a small film. This is how his rapid ascent to the Olympus of Soviet cinema and theater began, and I am happy that I also helped him in this. Moreover, goodness, as a rule, gives birth to goodness. So Smoktunovsky continued the baton of goodness and brought the wonderful actor Ivan Lapikov to the cinema.

After Georgy Stepanovich returned to Leningrad to his mother and began playing first at the regional drama theater, and then at the Lensovet Theater, his creative destiny changed dramatically. He starred in more than a hundred films from many major directors, became a People's Artist of the USSR, and received literally all the awards of our cinema.

“Once during a trip to Georgia, a country that I love very much, I was invited to a banquet. Magnificent table, incomparable Georgian wines. And yet, a minute after the start of the celebration, I felt that I was caught like chickens in the plucking: Stalin was remembered in almost every toast, they drank to the “father-teacher,” “the beacon of humanity,” “the great organizer and inspirer of the victory over fascism.” etc. I couldn’t reconcile and drink with everyone, I knew that my conscience would torture me. Not to drink? Everyone will wait patiently for you to drink. I tried to ask for the floor - where is it going? And suddenly I realized what needed to be done. When the toastmaster made alaverdi to me, I stood up and asked:
Please answer me, does a real Georgian forgive a blood grudge or not?

- No, of course not! - They shouted to me cheerfully from different ends of the table.

- So, a real Russian also does not forgive blood grievances! Believe me, I don’t want to offend anyone sitting at this table... You are all nice, hospitable people. I hope you will understand everything I say correctly and not take what I say personally. - Everyone fell silent, and I continued: - At one time, three Georgians played an ominous role in my fate - Stalin, Beria and Goglidze. Thanks to these people, I spent seventeen years wandering around prisons, camps and exile. Now I find myself in a position where I am forced to drink in memory of one of the three, and I don’t want that and won’t!

The painful silence was broken by one of the ministers, a handsome, gray-haired Georgian. Feigning sympathy on his face, he said:

- Yes, it’s sad, of course. But, dear guest Georgy, do you really think that Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin knew about all this?

- Uh, come on! - I answered sharply. - Agree, it is difficult to believe that the head of state did not know about the fate of almost twenty million of his loyal subjects.
In an awkward silence, the feast immediately ended. Here is the answer to how I feel about the memory of the “father of all nations.”

Formally, I am far from church, I don’t bow, I don’t get baptized. But if God is love, then I am certainly a believer. Because I believe in goodness and always strive to follow the ancient commandment “do good.” On the other hand, when I see how some of our political figures, who had recently been baptized in the portraits of the next General Secretary of the CPSU, defiantly cross themselves in front of the icon, I am both funny and ashamed of their falseness. Everyone’s faith should be deeply their own, personal, and not ostentatious...

Despite everything, I am an optimist, I believe that our people will gradually straighten up, become free and proud, and with them the country will become so.”

And then a miracle happened

Luther was the most famous fighter for the reform of Catholicism, but he was far from the only one. There were many other devout preachers who opposed Roman doctrines: the Scotsman John Knox, the Englishman Thomas More, the French exile in Geneva John Calvin, Ulrich Zwingli in Zurich, the Spaniard Miguel Servetus, Sebastian Castillo in France, and many more lesser known but important figures in Germany. While in principle opposed to Judaism, they did not express hostility against the Jewish people themselves. Andreas Osiander of Königsberg, Protestant theologian and professor of Hebrew, in a letter to the prolific Yiddish writer Eliyahu Levite, compiler of Bove-bukh , condemned Luther's last writings with such fervor that he was horrified by the possible consequences of the publication of this letter. He also wrote a detailed refutation of the blood libel, consisting of 20 arguments. And one of the authors of the Augsburg Confession, Luther's friend and supporter Philip Melanchthon (the surname by which he is known is the Greek translation of his real surname Schwarzerd), gave a remarkable example of Catholic cruelty towards Jews to illustrate the corruption of papal institutions and their tolerance of injustice.

The upcoming meeting was supposed to soften the differences between the Catholic and Protestant princes. After Luther rejected Yosel's request to intercede with the Saxon Elector Johann Friedrich the Magnanimous, the leader of the German Jews had no choice but to appeal to him personally. In 1539, Yosel met him at the council of electors in Frankfurt. Here he had the opportunity to convince the rulers of Saxony and Brandenburg to lift the ban on the residence and even the entry of Jews into their lands. In his diary, Yosel recalls:

Standing before numerous non-Jewish scholars and disputing with them the arguments from our holy Torah against the words of Luther, Bucer and their group, I was listened to with favor.

Philip Melanchthon was present at the meeting, representing his friend and mentor Luther. He read a sermon in which he denounced the sinfulness of the Catholic Church, and cited the famous trial that took place in Berlin 29 years ago as an example of papal injustice. A coppersmith named Paul Fromm was arrested for stealing a golden monstrance from a village church, which contained two hosts - thin wafers of bread, which, according to Catholic teaching, are transformed into the body of Christ during the Mass. Under torture, Fromm revealed that he had sold one of them to the Jew Shlomo from Spandau; the latter was captured and tortured until he confessed that he had desecrated the host and sold pieces of it to other Jews. The entire area was inflamed with anger at the Jews. A short trial in Berlin sentenced Fromm to death by torture with a hot iron rod, and 36 Jews to burning at the stake; two of them, who agreed to be baptized, were mercifully beheaded. The burgomaster of Berlin, Hans Brakow, who presided over the trial, read the verdict to the crowd from a high platform built in front of the red brick wall and tall Gothic windows of the Church of St. Mary on the New Market (incidentally, this scene is the subject of the very first artistic depiction of Berlin known to us) . The condemned were burned on a huge pyre next to the city wall. All Brandenburg Jews were expelled.

Recounting Melanchthon's speech, Yosel writes:

And then a miracle happened. At this point we learned that the 38 Jews executed in Berlin in 1510 were innocent. The one who stole the monstrance committed a crime, but the bishop, being an evil man, forbade the confessor to reveal the truth to their master, Duke Joachim.

(In fact, the thief admitted that, under pressure from the bishop, he came up with a story about the desecration of the Host by Jews.)

Hearing this, the dukes abandoned their desire to expel us. All of them, including Duke Joachim, kept their word. Only the Elector of Saxony betrayed us and caused us great harm. But punishment overtook him.

The Elector's punishment was his subsequent arrest, imprisonment and death sentence, after he was defeated by the imperial troops as a result of his reckless invasion of Bohemia. He was not executed and was subsequently released, but lost his title as Elector.

Melanchthon's indictment of Catholic morality, using the case of the Jews as an example, was a surprise worthy of attention. They show how far the position of Luther's comrades was from the position of their leader and mentor, who never cited the misfortunes of the stubborn and blasphemous Jews as an example of an unjust trial.

While Martin Luther was the inspirer and head of the German Reformation, its most prominent, greatest figure, Philip Melanchthon was a scribe and practical thinker. It was the latter's position towards the Yiddish-speaking people, more balanced and practical than the fervor of the former, that reflected the main trend of Protestant thought in Europe.

Some reform-leaning countries, such as England, the Netherlands, France and Switzerland, did not support Jewish communities at all and were not interested in the attitude of religious minorities to big politics. But it so happened that at the council in Frankfurt, face to face with Yosel of Rosheim, was the later famous French pastor, who was present at the debate as a private person and had probably never seen a single religious Jew before his exile from Geneva to Strasbourg.

His name was John Calvin, and he was destined to have an even greater influence on world history than Martin Luther. In his book The Social and Religious History of the Jews, Salo Baron states that at the 1539 council, Calvin personally argued with Yosel, who later reported that he was verbally insulted by one of the theologians present at the debate - “violently, viciously and with threats.” According to Baron, this is very similar to Calvin, who himself admitted that he easily lost his temper, for example, he wrote to a colleague: “I committed a great sin because I could not keep my calm.” (Calvin's usually gloomy mood may have been the result of poor health: he suffered from many ailments, including kidney stones, causing him excruciating pain with every movement.) Yosel, always a diplomat, undoubtedly remembered that “a soft answer turns away anger,” and answered with a slightly superior smile: “You, a learned man, want to threaten us, poor people? The Lord our God has preserved us since the time of Abraham. In His mercy He will undoubtedly protect us from you too.”

This short conversation brings to mind a later essay written by Calvin entitled “Ad quaestiones et obiecta Judaei cuiusdam Responsio” (“Answer to the Questions and Objections of a Certain Jew”), which takes the form of a dialogue ( disputiato), in which the defender of Christianity argues, citing examples mainly from the Old Testament, and his Jewish opponent - mainly from the New. According to Salo Baron, “this is a summary of a real discussion that Calvin once had with a Jew,” and this Jew was probably Yosel.

Perhaps this treatise was Calvin's attempt to respond to those questions of the Jew that he could not immediately answer in that dispute; this is a kind of theological esprit de l'escalier, when a witty response is found long after the event. The subject matter was the sort of thing usually discussed in disputations, but it is rather strange that, even though he had the opportunity to consider his answers in a calm atmosphere, Calvin presented arguments which, unlike those of the Jew, seemed rather weak. Thus, Yosel - if it really was him - claims that “if it were written true that at the hour of his death Jesus turned to the Father, saying: “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing,” whereas the Father and Are the Son of one essence and have the same will?” – and how do Christians justify their treatment of Jews, hiding behind the name of God? To which Calvin replied only that the oppression of the Jews was justified by their stubbornness, persistence in errors and the cumulative sins of their ancestors, which is described in detail in the Bible. This is very similar to the "violent, angry and threatening" speech that Yosel complained about and which did not satisfy him as an answer. However, then Calvin's mind could be focused on other things, namely, on the search for a wife who would look after him (Melanchthon reproached him for being thoughtful during the dispute and for being distracted by thoughts of marriage).

But this does not mean that John Calvin was a soft man, not at all. During the first four years of the totalitarian theocratic tyranny he founded in Geneva, he sentenced 58 heretics to burning and 76 to exile; in one year he burned 43 women as witches; During the three months of the plague epidemic, he executed 34 unfortunates for “sowing infection.” In 1553 - and for this he cannot be forgiven - he sent to the stake the great Miguel Servetus, the scientist, philosopher and theologian who discovered the pulmonary circulation (although it is said that Calvin usually preferred a less cruel form of execution).

The movement begun by religious reformers, like movements inspired by political thinkers (and thinkers in general), developed developments that its founders could not have foreseen. Just as Moses would have been perplexed by modern Judaism and Jesus would have been astonished by the Vatican, so the future of Lutheran and Calvinist Protestantism would likely have surprised its founding fathers. Luther's teachings became increasingly associated with narrow German nationalism. Nazi theorist Alfred Rosenberg declared: “We must understand that it was Luther who began to Germanize Christianity,” adding that “National Socialism must complete this process.”

On the other hand, Calvin contributed to the emergence of an international religious movement that received a wider response and quickly spread to the east and west. It was his works, not Luther's, that led to the reshaping of Christendom, to the founding of Reformed churches not only in France, Germany, Scotland, the Netherlands and Hungary, but also to the emergence of the Anglican Church, which is some semblance of Calvinized Catholicism. William Pitt, who made his country an imperial power, in a speech delivered in the House of Lords on May 19, 1772, explained it this way: “We have a Calvinistic creed, a popish liturgy, and an Arminian clergy.” Moreover, Calvin's views were developed by the English Puritans, who broke with Anglicanism and brought Calvinism to North America. Today the Anglican Church and the Episcopal Church in the United States, as well as nonconformist and dissident churches—Methodist, Baptist, Presbyterian, and even Unitarian—can count Calvin among their founding fathers.

The Genevan Reformer's support for the laws of the Old Testament, especially the Ten Commandments, his aversion to images of saints, his support for commerce, even his belief in predestination, which absolved the sinner from full responsibility for sin, shaped a new direction in Christianity. The consequences were unpredictable. Researchers convincingly describe how much the modern world owes to Calvin's legacy: separation of Church and state, enlightenment, liberal humanism, religious tolerance, capitalism. We owe, at least in part, the existence of the State of Israel and the rich, influential Atlantic diaspora to this man, who wrote:

If we compare the Jews with other nations, undoubtedly their wickedness, ingratitude and rebellion surpass the crimes of all other nations.

The Encyclopaedia Judaica compares Calvin to the biblical prophet Balaam, who was called upon by the king of Moab to curse Israel, but instead of a curse, a blessing was pronounced: “the Genevan reformer also intended to curse the Jews, but in the end, as it turned out, blessed them.”

In no country was this more true than in the Polish-Lithuanian Union, where Calvinism had political significance associated with resistance to important clans, Catholic bishops, and the Lutheran preferences of the German burghers. Thanks to Calvinism, east of the Oder, Catholics were for a time just a dominant minority. Thus, in the words of Norman Davies, the land was "a land without fires":

As the Pole Benedictine wrote, “beautiful harmony is born from contradictory things, like playing a lute with different strings.”

The 19th-century Polish historian Sergei Bershadsky wrote that in 1587, during the interregnum - between the death of King Stefan Batory and the election of the Swedish prince Sigismund to the Polish throne - due to the fact that the constitution of the Polish-Lithuanian unification did not allow the throne to remain free, the rich and a worthy merchant, Shaul Yudich, a representative of the Yiddish community of Brest-Litovsk and the son of the famous Paduan rabbi Katzenellenbogen, was elected king for one night and was subsequently called Saul Val ( wahl in German means "chosen"). Even if this is a legend, it shows that the prevailing spirit of ecumenism and multi-religion in the country allowed the Jews to believe that this was possible.

In this generous atmosphere, Poland's Jewish community became a beacon of learning in the Yiddish world, a site of intellectual renaissance for European Jewry, demonstrating that Yiddish civilization could contribute not only to the European economy but also to the development of European thought.