In Germany, since the time of Mendelssohn, the study of the Talmud had been on the wane.  The great yeshibot formerly existing in Metz, Frankfort, Hamburg, Prague, Fiirth, Halberstadt, etc., disappeared, and the reforms introduced in the synagogue and the numerous converts to Christianity impressed the outside world with the idea that Judaism among German Jews was writhing in the agony of death.  If the same disintegrating elements were introduced among the Russian Jews, the Government believed that they would ultimately come over to the Greek Catholic Church of their own accord.  Hence it was anxious to learn the secret of this power and beamed graciously on several learned Jews of Germany.

David Friedlaender (1750-1834) was then considered the legitimate successor of Mendelssohn, whose friend he had been for more than twenty years.  He resembled his master in many respects, though he lacked both his genius and his sympathy.  Mendelssohn translated the Pentateuch and the Psalms into German, Friedlaender translated the Haftarot (selections from the Prophets) and the prayer book.  Mendelssohn encouraged the publication of the Meassef; he did likewise, and contributed several articles to the journal.  But, unlike his master, or, as he claimed, like his master in secret, he held exceedingly latitudinarian views on Judaism.  In his later years he advocated abolishing the study of Hebrew in the schools and discarding it from the prayer book.  He even rejoiced that by attending the services in Protestant churches many Jewish families were becoming acquainted with the religion he himself would have accepted on certain conditions.[6]

It was to Friedlaender that Bishop Malchevsky, actuated, as he maintained, by a desire to render the Jews worthy of the enjoyment of civil rights, applied for suggestions, in 1816, when the missionary zeal of Alexander I was first aroused.  He responded in a pamphlet, On the Improvement of the Israelites in the Kingdom of Poland,[7] in which he declared that the quickest way of “civilizing” the Jews would be to deprive their rabbis of power and influence, to force them to dress in the German fashion, and use the Polish language, to admit them to the public schools and other educational institutions, and, above all, to abrogate the laws discriminating between them and their Gentile countrymen.

Friedlaender’s advice regarding the removal of civil disabilities was never executed, but his other suggestions were followed out with more vigor than was necessary or good.  To do away with the rabbis, and consequently with the Talmud, was just what was desired.  It was partly with this end in view that Alexander I permitted, that is, commanded, the establishment of the rabbinical seminary in Warsaw.  But when it was found that, although the seminary students were provided with all necessaries, and notwithstanding the decree that six years from the date of its opening none but seminary graduates would be eligible to the