The dayyan always gave true judgments.

Nohem Rabinovitch, the richest man in Polotzk, could not win a case against a servant maid, unless he were in the right.
Besides the rav and the dayyan there were other men whose callings were holy,--the shohat, who knew how cattle and fowls should be killed; the hazzan and the other officers of the synagogue; the teachers of Hebrew, and their pupils.

It did not matter how poor a man was, he was to be respected and set above other men, if he were learned in the Law.
In the synagogue scores of men sat all day long over the Hebrew books, studying and disputing from early dawn till candles were brought in at night, and then as long as the candles lasted.

They could not take time for anything else, if they meant to become great scholars.

Most of them were strangers in Polotzk, and had no home except the synagogue.