Nevertheless, the cruel restrictions could not suppress the need for education in a people with an ancient culture.  Those that had failed to gain admission to the gymnazia completed the prescribed course of studies at home, under the guidance of private tutors or by private study, and afterwards presented themselves for examination for the “maturity certificate” [1] as “externs,” braving all the difficulties of this thorny path.  Having successfully passed their secondary course, they found again their way barred as soon as they wished to enter the universities, and the “martyrs of learning” had no choice left except to take up their pilgrim staff and travel abroad.  Year in, year out, two processions of emigrants wended their way from Russia to the West:  the one was travelling across the Atlantic, in search of bread and liberty; the other was headed towards Germany, Austria, England, and France, in search of a higher education.  The former were driven from their homes by a peculiar interdictio ignis et aquae; the other—­by an interdictio scientiae.

[Footnote 1:  The name given in Russian (and German) to the diploma of a gymnazium.]

Having closed the avenues of higher education to the bulk of Russian Jewry, the Government now went a step further and contrived to dispossess even those Jews who had already managed to obtain a higher education, in spite of all difficulties.  It was not satisfied with barring college-bred Jews from the civil service and an academic career, thus limiting the Jewish physicians and lawyers to private practice; it was anxious to restrict even this narrow field of activity still open to Jews.  In view of the fact that the Jewish jurists had no chance to apply their knowledge in the civil service, and were entirely excluded from the bench, they naturally turned to the bar, with the result that they soon occupied a conspicuous place there, both quantitatively and qualitatively.  Their success was a source of annoyance to the Russian anti-Semites, both those who hated the Jews on principle and those who did so selfishly, being themselves members of the bar.  These enemies of Judaism called the attention of the Government to the large number of Jewish lawyers at the St. Petersburg bar—­a circumstance due partly to the natural gravitation towards the administrative and legal center of the country, and partly to the fact that the admission of Jews to the bar met with less obstruction from the judicial authorities in the capital than in the provinces, where professional jealousy frequently stood in the way of the Jews.

The reactionary Minister of Justice, Manassein, managed to convince the Tzar that it was necessary to check the further admission of Jews to the bar.  However, from diplomatic considerations, it was thought wiser to carry this restriction into effect not under an anti-Jewish flag, but rather as a general measure directed against all members of “non-Christian persuasions.”  The restriction was therefore extended to Mohammedans and the handful of privileged Karaites, [1] and the religious intolerance of the new measure was thus thrown into even bolder relief.