In order to regain the confidence of the Russian Jews, Lilienthal obtained a permit from the Minister of Education to call an assembly of prominent Jews at St. Petersburg, to decide for themselves how to better the condition of the existing schools and to consider the practicability of establishing rabbinical seminaries.  For he, too, like the Maskilim, considered the rabbis the chief menace to Haskalah.  Rabbinical authority was supreme, and if the rabbis could be won over, all would be gained.  The bell-wethers once secured, the flocks were sure to follow.  It took a long time for Lilienthal, and still longer for the Maskilim, to find out that what they regarded as the cause was in reality the consequence.  Eight years later Lilienthal himself admitted the sad truth, that the rabbinical seminaries in Russia could not effect the coveted end.  “It must not be lost sight of,” says he in his Sketches of Jewish Life in Russia[9] “that the Russian Jews live strictly in accordance with our received laws, and they are sufficiently learned in them to know that the many cases of conscience which are of constant occurrence cannot be decided understandingly by any one who has but a superficial knowledge of the Talmud and of the decisions of the later doctors of the Law, but that it requires the study of an entire lifetime to become thoroughly acquainted with those stupendous monuments of learning and deep research in the great concerns of life.”

[Illustration:  ALEXANDER ZEDERBAUM, 1816-1893]

After several busy months at St. Petersburg and frequent consultations with Count Uvarov, Lilienthal returned to Vilna, and two weeks later he published his circular letter, Maggid Yeshiiah (The Announcer of Good Tidings)[10] The “good tidings” were that an imperial ukase (June 22, 1842) would convene a council of distinguished Jews at St. Petersburg, to deliberate how to “re-educate” the Jews.  Accordingly, in the early part of April, 1843, the notables, from different places and with diametrically opposed views, assembled in the Russian capital.  Representing the Jews, there were Rabbi Isaac Volozhin, the dean of the Tree of Life Yeshibah, perhaps the strongest man present; Rabbi Menahem Mendel Shneersohn of Lubavich, leader of the Hasidic reform sect; Joseph Heilprin, the financier and banker of Berdichev, and Bezalel (Basilius) Stern, principal of the Jewish public schools of Odessa.  Representing the Government were Count Uvarov, Chevalier Dukstaduchinsky, and others, with de Vrochenko, Minister of State, as chairman and Lilienthal as secretary.  Montefiore of England, Cremieux of France, and Rabbi Philippson of Germany had been invited, but they failed to come.  The council decided to open Jewish public schools in every city where Jews reside, and also two rabbinical seminaries, the one in Vilna, the other in Zhitomir, the former being considered the Jewish metropolis of the northwestern part, the latter, of the southwestern part, of Russia.  They also proposed to do away with the Judeo-Polish garb, and suggested certain alterations in the prayer book.