success. Filled with fresh hopes, Lilienthal returned in 1843 to St.
Petersburg to participate in the work of the "Rabbinical Commission"
which had been convoked by the Government and was now holding its
sessions in the capital from May till August.

The make-up of the Rabbinical Commission did not fully justify its
appellation. Only two "ecclesiastics" were on it, the president of the
Talmudic Academy of Volozhin, [1] Rabbi Itzhok (Isaac) Itzhaki, and the
leader of the White Russian Hasidim, Rabbi Mendel Shneorsohn, [2] while
the South-western region and New Russia had sent two laymen: the banker
Halperin of Berdychev, and the director of the Jewish school in Odessa,
Bezalel Stern. The two representatives of the "clergy" put up a warm
defence for the traditional Jewish school, the heder, endeavoring to
save it from the ministerial "supervision," which aimed at its
annihilation. Finally a compromise was effected: the traditional heder
was to be left intact for the time being, but the proposed Crown school
was to be given full scope in competing with it. The Commission even
went so far as to work out a program of Jewish studies for the new type
of school.

[Footnote 1: In the government of Vilna. See Vol I, p. 380, et seq.]

[Footnote 2: The grandson of Rabbi Shneor Zalman, the founder of that
faction. See Vol. I, p. 372.]

The labors of the Rabbinical Commission were submitted to the Jewish
Committee, under the chairmanship of Kiselev, and discussed by it in
connection with the general plan of a Russian school-reform. It was
necessary to find the resultant between two opposing forces: between the
desire of the Government to substitute the Russian Crown school for the