The cruel project continued to engage the attention of the “Jewish Committee” for a long time.  In April, 1815, the chairman of the Committee, Kiselev, addressed a circular to the governors-general in which he pointed out that after the promulgation of the laws concerning the establishment of Crown schools and the abolition of the Kahals—­laws-which were aimed at “the weakening of the influence of the Talmud” and the destruction of all institutions “fostering the separate individuality of the Jews”—­the turn had come for carrying into effect, by means of the proposed classification, the measures directed towards “the transfer of the Jews to useful labor.”  Of the regulations tending to affect the Jews “culturally” the circular emphasizes the prohibition of Jewish dress to take effect after the lapse of five years.

All the regulations alluded to—­Kiselev writes—­have been issued and will be issued separately, in order to conceal their interrelation and common aim from the fanaticism, of the Jews.  For this reason his Imperial Majesty has been graciously pleased to command me to communicate all the said plans to the Governors-General confidentially.

It would seem, however, that the Russian authorities had grossly underestimated the political sense of the Jews.  They were not aware of the fact that St. Petersburg’s conspiracy against Judaism had long been exposed in the Pale of Settlement, if only for the reason that the conspirators were not clever enough to hide even for a time the chastising knout beneath the cloak of “cultural” reforms.

4.  INTERCESSION OF WESTERN EUROPEAN JEWRY

The mask of the Russian Government was soon torn down also before the yes of Western Europe.  In the initial stage of Lilienthal’s campaign, public-minded Jews of Western Europe were inclined to believe that a happy era was dawning upon their coreligionists in Russia.  At the instance of Uvarov, Lilienthal had entered into correspondence with Philippson, Geiger, Cremieux, Montefiore, and other leaders of West-European Jewry, bespeaking their moral support on behalf of the school-reform and going so far as to invite them to participate in the proceedings of the Rabbinical Commission convened at St. Petersburg.  The replies from these prominent Jews were full of complimentary references to Uvarov’s endeavors.  The Allgemeine Zeitung des Judentums,[1] in the beginning of the forties, voiced the general belief that the era of persecutions in Russia had come to an end.

[Footnote 1:  A weekly founded by Dr. Ludwig Philippson in 1837.  It still appears in Berlin.]