It should not be forgotten that, if Lilienthal met with mighty opposition, he also had powerful supporters.  There were many who, though remaining in the background, strongly sympathized with his plan.  Indeed, the number of educated Jews, as proved by an investigation ordered by Nicholas I, was far greater than had been commonly supposed.  Not only in the border towns, but even in the interior of the Pale, the students of German literature and secular science were not few, and Doctor Loewe discovered in Hebron an exceptional German scholar in the person of an immigrant from Vilna.[31] The tendency of the time is well illustrated by an anecdote told by Slonimsky, to the effect that when he went to ask the approval of Rabbi Abele of Zaslava on his Mosde Hokmah, he found that those who came to be examined for ordination received their award without delay, while he was put off from week to week.  Ill at ease, Slonimsky approached the venerable rabbi and demanded an explanation:  “You grant a semikah [rabbinical diploma] so readily, why do you seem so reluctant when a mere haskamah [recommendation] is the matter at issue?” To his surprise the reason given was that the rabbi enjoyed his scientific debates so much that he would not willingly part with the young author.

Stories were told how the deans of the yeshibot were frequently found to have mastered the very books they confiscated because of the teachings they inculcated.  Before the reign of Nicholas I drew to its end, Haskalah centres were as numerous as the cities wherein Jews resided.  In Byelostok the Talmudist Jehiel Michael Zabludovsky was lending German books to young Slonimsky, the future inventor and publicist; in Vlotslavek Rabbi Joseph Hayyim Caro was writing and preaching in classic German; in Zhagory, Hayyim Sack helped Leon Mandelstamm (1809-1889), the first Jewish “candidate,” or bachelor, in philology to graduate from the St. Petersburg University (1844) and the assistant and successor of Lilienthal, in the expurgation and German translation of Maimuni’s Mishneh Torah.  When, in 1857, Mandelstamm resigned, he was followed by Seiberling, for fifteen years the censor of Jewish books in Kiev, upon whom a German university conferred the doctor’s degree.  The poverty-stricken Wolf Adelsohn, known as the Hebrew Diogenes, formed a group of Seekers after Light in Dubno, while such wealthy merchants as Abraham Rathaus, Lilienthal’s secretary during his campaign in Berdichev, Issachar Bompi, the bibliophile in Minsk, Leon Rosenthal, financier and philanthropist in Brest-Litovsk, and Aaron Rabinovich, in Kobelyaki (Poltava), promoted enlightenment by precept and example.  In Vilna, Joseph Sackheim’s young son acted as English interpreter when Montefiore was entertained by his father, and Jacob Barit, the incomparable “Yankele Kovner” (1793-1833) another of Montefiore’s hosts, was master of Russian, German, and French, and aroused the admiration of the Governor-General Nazimov by his learning and his ability.