Friedländer's advice regarding the removal of civil disabilities was never executed, but his other suggestions were followed out with more vigor than was necessary or good. To do away with the rabbis, and consequently with the Talmud, was just what was desired. It was partly with this end in view that Alexander I permitted, that is, commanded, the establishment of the rabbinical seminary in Warsaw. But when it was found that, although the seminary students were provided with all necessaries, and notwithstanding the decree that six years from the date of its opening none but seminary graduates would be eligible to the rabbinical office, few students availed themselves of the opportunity afforded, and none obtained positions, the whole plan fell into disfavor.[8] The Government, nevertheless, remained as stubbornly determined as ever, and unable to turn all the children into Cantonists, it decided to have those who remained at home gradually converted by means of a method worked out by the Minister of Education, Uvarov. They were forced to attend what became known as Government schools, though maintained exclusively with Jewish funds. In order to win the confidence of the Jews for the project, Doctor Lilienthal, whose speech at the dedication of the Riga School secured him a diamond ring as a token of the czar's approval, was sent from St. Petersburg on a mission of investigation, more especially of persuasion.
For more than three years Lilienthal was one of the most popular personages in Europe. The eyes of all who had the amelioration of the lot of the Russian Jew at heart, it may be said the eyes of the civilized world, were fixed upon him as an epoch-maker in the history of the Jews. Nature had formed him, physically and mentally, to be a leader among his people, and his training and temperament made it easy for him to ingratiate himself into the favor of the great. It seemed that he was just the man to be the successful executor of the czar's plan.
The Maskilim, above all, hailed him as the champion of the cause of Haskalah. He was their Moses or Ezra, the God-sent redeemer of their benighted brethren out of the quagmire of fanaticism. From various cities numerous urgent appeals came to him to hasten the execution of his great plan. Wherever he went, he was enthusiastically received, a truly royal welcome was extended to him. The Vilna community appropriated five thousand rubles for the school fund, and pledged itself to raise more if it were found necessary; and he was invited also to Minsk by the kahal of the city.
Unfortunately, Lilienthal's tactics exposed him to suspicion, and the seed of discord was soon sown between him and his former admirers. He tried to serve two masters, the czar and the Jews, and he alienated both. The pious regarded him as a mere tool in the hands of the Government, for, they maintained, education without emancipation leads to conversion. The enlightened element also lost confidence in one who, instead of boldly attacking superstition, preferred, while in Minsk, to identify himself not only with the Mitnaggedim, but even with the Hasidim. He was also too headstrong and too vain of his achievements. Benjamin Mandelstamm, who, as he tell us in his letters, considered Lilienthal "as wise as Solomon and as enterprising as Moses," complains a little later of his arrogance, and at the last speaks of him with contempt. His assumed superiority grieved the Maskilim, and their former enthusiasm was rapidly replaced by hatred and persecution. He found it necessary to put himself under the protection of the police while in Minsk, and when he returned to Vilna his reception was far less hearty than it had been before.
In order to regain the confidence of the Russian Jews, Lilienthal obtained a permit from the Minister of Education to call an assembly of prominent Jews at St. Petersburg, to decide for themselves how to better the condition of the existing schools and to consider the practicability of establishing rabbinical seminaries. 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."
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, Crémieux 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, and also two rabbinical seminaries, the one in Vilna, the other in Zhitomir, the former being considered the Jewish metropolis of the northwestern part, the latter, of the southwestern part, of Russia. They also proposed to do away with the Judeo-Polish garb, and suggested certain alterations in the prayer book.
The delegates met, deliberated, and disbanded, but the tidings announced in Lilienthal's epistle did not prove to be good. In one of the fables of Kryloff, the Russian Æsop, we are told that once a swan, a pike, and a crab, decided to make a trip together. No sooner had they started than, in accordance with their nature, the swan began to fly, the pike to shuffle along, the crab to crawl backward. It was so with the delegation of 1843. Rabbi Isaac, the rabid Mitnagged, could find but little to admire in the proposals of Rabbi Menahem Mendel, the ardent Hasid, and both were bitterly opposed to the view preached by Doctor Lilienthal, that the salvation of the Jews and Judaism would be brought about by a system of education adopted in accordance with an ukase by Nicholas. Stern, too, had little use for Lilienthal, whom he declared to be ignorant of the condition of Russian Jews and incapable of working in their behalf. From such discord nothing good could come. The fact is, that the few resolutions mentioned had been drawn up beforehand by the Government officials, and the time and trouble and expense which the council involved were, à la Russe, for appearance sake. Finding his efforts an utter failure, Lilienthal went to Odessa with letters of recommendation from Uvarov to Vorontzov, the patron of Stern, and was elected rabbi of that enlightened and wealthy community. But, for some inexplicable reason, he suddenly left the city on the plea of visiting friends in Germany, and went to the United States, where he remained to the end of his life, and became one of the leading rabbis and communal workers among his coreligionists whose lines had fallen in pleasanter places than the fortunes of those he had left behind in Russia.[11]