CHAPTER XLV.
1846.
REPORT TO COUNT OUVAROFF ON THE STATE OF EDUCATION AMONG THE JEWS IN RUSSIA AND POLAND—VINDICATION OF THE LOYALTY OF THE JEWS.
The report to Count Ouvaroff, Minister of Public Instruction at St Petersburg, was as follows:—
"To His Excellency, le Comte Ouvaroff, Ministre de l'Instruction publique de sa Majesté l'Empereur de Russie, &c., &c., &c.
"May it please your Excellency,—The zealous and untiring energy which your Excellency evinces in continual efforts to promote education, and to diffuse amongst all classes of His Imperial Majesty's subjects that important blessing, Knowledge, will, I feel assured, induce you to pardon me if I venture to lay before your Excellency such observations on the present condition of my brethren in Russia, with respect to their educational establishments, as by your Excellency's favour I have been enabled to make.
"Previously to my doing so, I beg leave to present my warmest acknowledgments for the very kind and condescending manner in which your Excellency was pleased to convey to me the sentiments of His Imperial Majesty's Government. I shall ever remember with gratitude the assurances your Excellency gave me, that the Russian Government was anxious to promote only such education as is based upon pure religion; that it did not entertain sentiments inimical to the Jewish faith; that on the contrary the Government was anxious to institute with respect to the Israelites such measures as would tend to prove to them the paternal kindness of His Majesty; and that for this reason the Government had called together a Committee of Chief Rabbis, eminent for their piety, in order to gain the perfect confidence of all their brethren.
"These assurances enabled me with pleasure to undertake the task, the result of which I now have the honour to submit to your Excellency, feeling convinced that your Excellency's noble and enlightened sentiments will induce you to give a due consideration to a subject of such infinite importance.
"It must be to your Excellency a source of the highest gratification to hear that His Imperial Majesty's Hebrew subjects are far from depreciating the advantages which the human mind in general derives from education. Wherever and whenever I had an opportunity of addressing them on that subject, they assured me that they were ever ready most zealously to assist in the promotion of their mental and social improvement, and they joyfully hailed every opportunity presented to them of enriching their minds by pure and wholesome knowledge. 'An Israelite,' they said, 'cannot underrate the value of knowledge. Every page in our history proves the reverse. Our ancestors, from the earliest period of that history, have been remarkable for their zeal to uphold science and literature as the greatest and holiest acquisitions. We refer the enquirer to the works of Bartholocci, Wolf, De Rossi, Rodriguez de Castro, by which it will be at once ascertained that Israelites have always kept pace in useful learning with their neighbours, and that all circumstances considered, they possess in most instances fully as much general knowledge as falls to the share of their non-Israelite fellow-subjects in a corresponding grade of society.' And in corroboration of this statement, I beg to inform your Excellency that many of the Israelites in His Imperial Majesty's dominions have distinguished themselves by their writings in Hebrew theology and literature, and that their works are very highly appreciated by the learned in Germany. 'To improve the mind and promote every kind of useful and sound information which tends to elevate a man before God and his fellow-creatures, they deem to be an important injunction of the sacred law.' I therefore had no difficulty whatever in persuading them of the good intentions which His Majesty's Government entertained with respect to the organisation of schools for their benefit. They overwhelmed me with quotations from the sacred writings, tending to show that with the Israelite it is an imperative duty to give the best effect to such benevolence.