the rabbi muttered in wonder , it is indeed , then , a huge country.xi yet , at that same time , the son of the dolhinov rabbi was simultaneously a great scholar of jewish law and a man of wider culture as well , an excellent violin player , and local representative of count jozel ginszberg , the richest jew in the czarist empire , responsible for collecting the liquor tax.xii in 1849 , a cholera epidemic broke out in the land of israel .