potent as among us (in Russia) and in the Kingdom of Poland. [1]
This influence can be counteracted only by enlightenment, and the
Government can do no better than to act in the spirit that animates
the handful of the best among them.... The re-education of the
learned section among the Jews involves at the same time the
purification of their religious conceptions.

[Footnote 1: See on the meaning of the latter term Vol. I, p. 390, n. 1.]

What "purification" the author of the memorandum has in mind may be
gathered from his casual remark that the Jews, who maintain their
separatism, are rightly afraid of reforms: "for is not the religion of
the Cross the purest symbol of universal citizenship?" This, however,
Uvarov cautiously adds, should not be made public, for "it would have no
other effect except that of arousing from the very beginning the
opposition of the majority of the Jews against the (projected) schools."

Officially the reform must confine itself to the opening in all the
cities of the Jewish Pale of elementary and secondary schools in which
Jewish children should be taught the Russian language, secular sciences,
Hebrew, and "religion, according to the Holy Writ." The instruction
should be given in Russian, though, owing to the shortage in teachers
familiar with this language, the use of German is to be admitted
temporarily. The teachers in the low-grade schools shall provisionally
be recruited from among melammeds who "can be depended upon"; those in
the higher-grade schools shall be chosen from among the modernized Jews
of Russia and Germany.

The Committee endorsed Uvarov's scheme in its principal features, and
urgently recommended that, in order to prepare the Jewish masses for the