eminaries. For he, too, like the Maskilim,
considered the rabbis the chief menace to Haskalah. Rabbinical authority
was supreme, and if the rabbis could be won over, all would be gained.
The bell-wethers once secured, the flocks were sure to follow. It took a
long time for Lilienthal, and still longer for the Maskilim, to find out
that what they regarded as the cause was in reality the consequence.
Eight years later Lilienthal himself admitted the sad truth, that the
rabbinical seminaries in Russia could not effect the coveted end. "It
must not be lost sight of," says he in his _Sketches of Jewish Life in
Russia_[9] "that the Russian Jews live strictly in accordance with our
received laws, and they are sufficiently learned in them to know that
the many cases of conscience which are of constant occurrence cannot be
decided understandingly by any one who has but a superficial knowledge
of the Talmud and of the decisions of the later doctors of the Law, but
that it requires the study of an entire lifetime to become thoroughly
acquainted with those stupendous monuments of learning and deep research
in the great concerns of life."

[Illustration: ALEXANDER ZEDERBAUM, 1816-1893]

After several busy months at St. Petersburg and frequent consultations
with Count Uvarov, Lilienthal returned to Vilna, and two weeks later he
published his circular letter, _Maggid Yeshiiah_ (_The Announcer of Good
Tidings_)[10] The "good tidings" were that an imperial ukase (June 22,
1842) would convene a council of distinguished Jews at St. Petersburg,
to deliberate how to "re-educate" the Jews. Accordingly, in the early
part of April, 1843, the notables, from different places and with
diametrically opposed views, assembled in the Russian capital.
Representing the Jews, there were Rabbi Isaac Volozhin, the dean of the
Tree of Life Yeshibah, perhaps the strongest man present; Rabbi Menahem
Mendel Shneersohn of Lubavich, leader of the Hasidic reform sect; Joseph
Heilprin, the financier and banker of Berdichev, and Bezalel (Basilius)
Stern, principal of the Jewish public schools of Odessa. Representing
the Government were Count Uvarov, Chevalier Dukstaduchinsky, and others,
with de Vrochenko, Minister of State, as chairman and Lilienthal as
secretary. Montefiore of England, Cremieux of France, and Rabbi
Philippson of Germany had been invited, but they failed to come. The
council decided to open Jewish public schools in every city where Jews
reside,