In restoring the Jewish state in Palestine, Ezra cherished two hopes, to preserve the purity of the Jewish race, and to spread the study of the Torah until it should become the common property of the people at large. To help on his first purpose, he inveighed against marriages between the Jews and the nations round about. He himself had carefully worked out his own pedigree before he consented to leave Babylonia, and in order to perpetuate the purity of the families and groups remaining in the East, he took all the "unfit" with him to Palestine.