the Minister that all obstacles in the path of the desired re-education
of the Russian Jews would disappear, were the Tzar to grant them
complete emancipation. To this the Minister retorted that the initiative
must come from the Jews themselves who first must try to "deserve the
favor of the Sovereign." At any rate, Lilienthal accepted the proffered
task. He was commissioned to tour the Pale of Settlement, to organize
there the few isolated progressive Jews, "the lovers of enlightenment,"
or Maskilim, as they styled themselves, and to propagate the idea of a
school-reform among the orthodox Jewish masses.

While setting out on his journey, Lilienthal himself did not fully
realize the difficulties of the task he had undertaken. He was to
instill confidence in the "benevolent intentions of the Government" into
the hearts of a people which by an uninterrupted series of persecutions
and cruel restrictions had been reduced to the level of pariahs. He was
to make them believe that the Government was a well-wisher of Jewish
children, those same children, who at that very time were hunted like
wild beasts by the "captors" in the streets of the Pale, who were turned
by the thousands into soldiers, deported into outlying provinces, and
belabored in such a manner that scarcely half of them remained alive and
barely a tenth remained within the Jewish fold. Guided by an infallible
instinct, the plain Jewish people formulated their own simplified theory
to account for the step taken by the Government: up to the present their
children had been baptized through the barracks, in the future they
would be baptized through the additional medium of the school.

Lilienthal arrived in Vilna in the beginning of 1842, and, calling a
meeting of the Jewish Community, explained the plan conceived by the
Government and by Uvarov, "the friend of the Jews." He was listened to
with unveiled distrust.