Nor did the Jewish people manage to get a hearing.  Stunned by the uninterrupted succession of blows and moved by the spirit of martyrdom, Russian Jewry kept its peace during those dismal years.  Yet, when the news of an impending general regulation of the Jewish legal status began to leak out, a section of Russian Jewry became astir.  For to anticipate a blow is more excruciating than to receive one, and it was quite natural that an attempt should be made to stay the hand which was lifted to strike.  Towards the end of 1833 the Council of State received, as part of the material bearing on the Jewish question, two memoranda, one from the Kahal of Vilna, signed by six elders, and another from Litman Feigin of Chernigov, well known in administrative circles as merchant and public contractor.

The Kahal of Vilna declared that the repressive policy, pursued during the last few years by the “Jewish Committee,” had thrown a large part of the Jewish people “into utmost disorder,” and had made the Jews “shiver and shudder at the thought that a general Jewish statute had been drafted by the same Committee and had now been submitted to the Council of State for revision.”  The petitioners go on to say that, weighed down by a succession of cruel discriminations affecting not only their rights but also their mode of discharging military service, the Jews would succumb to utter despair, did they not repose their hopes in the benevolence of the Tzar, who, on his recent trip through the Western provinces, had expressed to the deputies of the Jewish communes his imperial satisfaction with the loyalty to the throne displayed by the Jews during the Polish insurrection of 1831.  The Kahal of Vilna, therefore, implored the Council of State “to turn its attention to this unfortunate and maligned people” and to stop all further persecutions.

A more emphatic note of protest is sounded in the memorandum of Feigin.  By a string of references to the latest Government measures he demonstrates the fact that “the Jewish people is hunted down, not because of its moral qualities but because of its faith.”

The Jews, faced by the new statute, have lost all hope for a better lot, inasmuch as the Government has embarked upon this measure without having solicited the explanations or justifications of this people, whereas, according to common legal procedure, even an individual may not be condemned without having been called upon to justify himself.

The rebuke had no effect.  The Government preferred to render its verdict in absentia, without listening to counsel for the defence and without any safeguards of fair play.  In line with this attitude, it also denied the petition of the Vilna Kahal to be allowed “to send at least four deputies to the capital as spokesmen of the entire Jewish people for the purpose of submitting to the Government their explanations and propositions concerning the reorganization of the Jews, after having been presented with a draft of the statute.”  The final verdict was pronounced in the spring of 1835, and in April the new “Statute concerning the Jews” received the signature of the Tzar.