At the same time Lilienthal was ordered to proceed again to the Pale of Settlement.  He was directed to tour principally through the South-western and New-Russian governments and exert his influence upon the Jewish masses in accordance with the instructions received from the ministry.  Before setting out on his journey, Lilienthal published a Hebrew pamphlet under the title Maggid Yeshu’ah ("Herald of Salvation”) which called upon the Jewish communities to comply readily with the wishes of the Government.  In his private letters, addressed to prominent Jews, Lilienthal expressed the assurance that the school ukase was merely the forerunner of a series of measures for the betterment of the civic status of the Jews.

This time Lilienthal met with a greater measure of success than on his first journey.  In several large centers, such as Berdychev, Odessa, Kishinev, he was accorded, a friendly welcome and assured of the co-operation of the communities in making the new school system a success.  Filled with fresh hopes, Lilienthal returned in 1843 to St. Petersburg to participate in the work of the “Rabbinical Commission” which had been convoked by the Government and was now holding its sessions in the capital from May till August.

The make-up of the Rabbinical Commission did not fully justify its appellation.  Only two “ecclesiastics” were on it, the president of the Talmudic Academy of Volozhin, [1] Rabbi Itzhok (Isaac) Itzhaki, and the leader of the White Russian Hasidim, Rabbi Mendel Shneorsohn, [2] while the South-western region and New Russia had sent two laymen:  the banker Halperin of Berdychev, and the director of the Jewish school in Odessa, Bezalel Stern.  The two representatives of the “clergy” put up a warm defence for the traditional Jewish school, the heder, endeavoring to save it from the ministerial “supervision,” which aimed at its annihilation.  Finally a compromise was effected:  the traditional heder was to be left intact for the time being, but the proposed Crown school was to be given full scope in competing with it.  The Commission even went so far as to work out a program of Jewish studies for the new type of school.

[Footnote 1:  In the government of Vilna.  See Vol I, p. 380, et seq.]

[Footnote 2:  The grandson of Rabbi Shneor Zalman, the founder of that faction.  See Vol.  I, p. 372.]

The labors of the Rabbinical Commission were submitted to the Jewish Committee, under the chairmanship of Kiselev, and discussed by it in connection with the general plan of a Russian school-reform.  It was necessary to find the resultant between two opposing forces:  between the desire of the Government to substitute the Russian Crown school for the old-fashioned Jewish school and the determination of Russian Jewry to preserve its own school as a bulwark against the official institutions foisted upon it.  The Government was bent on carrying out its policy, and found itself compelled to resort to diplomatic contrivances.