At the same time that this was taking place in the wilderness of Siberia, a phenomenon of rare occurrence was to be witnessed in the very heart of the Jewish Pale, in Lithuania.  Aroused by the wretched condition of his coreligionists, Solomon Posner (1780-1848) determined to erect cloth factories exclusively for Jews.  He sent to Germany for experts to teach them the trade.  These Jewish workingmen proved so industrious and intelligent that before the end of three years they surpassed their teachers in mechanical skill.  But this attempt of Posner was only prefatory to the greater and more arduous task he set himself.  It was nothing less than the establishment of a colony in which some of the most Utopian theories would be applied to actual life.  Ten years after Robert Owen founded his communistic settlement at New Harmony, Indiana, several hundred robust Russian Jews settled on some of the thousands of acres in Lithuania that were lying fallow for want of tillers.  With these farmers Posner hoped to realize his Utopia.  He provided every family with sufficient land, the necessary agricultural implements, as well as with horses, cows, etc., free of charge, for a term of twenty-five years.  In return, the members of the community pledged themselves to use simple homespun for their apparel, black on holidays, gray on week-days, not to indulge in the luxuries of city life, and to avoid trading of any sort.  As time passed, Posner opened coeducational technical schools for the children and batte midrashim for adults, and soon the homesteads presented the appearance of progressive and flourishing farms.  Posner’s successful effort attracted the admiration of Prince Pashkevich, and was both a living protest against the accusation of Nicholas that Jews were unfit to be farmers and an eloquent plea for the unfortunate victims of a capricious tyrant in Siberia and Kherson.[38]

In his efforts to curb the stiff-necked Jews by all manner of fiendish persecution, Nicholas did not neglect to try the efficacy of some of the plans advocated by Lewis Way.  Undismayed by the failure of the Committee of Guardians for Israelitish Christians, in which Alexander I had put so much confidence, a “Jewish Committee,” all the members of which were Christians, was organized by imperial decree (May 22, 1825).  This committee established, in 1829, a school at Warsaw where Christian divinity students were to be instructed in rabbinical literature and in Judeo-German, in order to be fully equipped for missionary work among the Jews.  It appointed Abbe Luigi Chiarini to translate, or rather expose, the Babylonian Talmud, to which undertaking the Government contributed twelve thousand thalers.