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The Minister's suggestion was bitterly attacked by Dr. Mandelstamm, who saw in it a new attempt to make sport of the Jews, Even Professor Bakst, who objected to emigration on principle, declared that the proposed scheme of settling the Jews amounted in reality to "a deportation to far-off places" and was tantamount to an official "classification of the Jews as criminals."

Benjamin Mandelstamm, who, as he tell us in his letters, considered Lilienthal "as wise as Solomon and as enterprising as Moses," complains a little later of his arrogance, and at the last speaks of him with contempt. His assumed superiority grieved the Maskilim, and their former enthusiasm was rapidly replaced by hatred and persecution.

The cry grew louder and louder, Znaty nye znayem, shkolles nye zhelayem! The opposition, which began in the latter years of Alexander I, reached its culmination in the last decade of the reign of Nicholas I. "Israel," laments Mandelstamm, "seems to be even worse than formerly; he is like a sick person who has convalesced only to relapse, and the physicians are beginning to despair."

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 conference, which had been called by Baron Horace Günzburg, with the permission of Ignatyev, was made up of some twenty-five delegates from the provinces among them Dr. Mandelstamm of Kiev, Rabbi Isaac Elhanan Specter of Kovno and fifteen notables from the capital, including Baron Günzburg himself, the railroad magnate Polakov, and Professor Bakst.

His attitude toward contemporary pedagogic methods may be gauged from the epistle addressed by him in 1848 to Leon Mandelstamm, Lilienthal's successor in the task of organizing the Jewish Crown schools. In this epistle Rabbi Mendel categorically rejects all innovations in the training of the young.

He enjoyed prominence in Government circles, and Prince Wittgenstein was passionately fond of his company. Above all he endeared himself to the Maskilim. To him they looked as to their teacher and guide; him they consulted in every emergency. Lebensohn and Gottlober, Mandelstamm and Gordon, equally sought his criticism and advice. For all he had words of comfort and encouragement.

The intellectuals who stood nearer to the people, such as the well-known oculist, Professor Mandelstamm, who enjoyed great popularity in Kiev, and others like him, as well as a section of the Jewish press, particularly the Bazsvyet, insisted continually on the necessity of organizing the emigration movement, which they regarded as the most important task confronting Russian Jewry at that time.

Now this "city and mother in Israel" became one of the pioneers of Haskalah, all the more because, in addition to the public schools and the rabbinical seminary, the Jews were admitted to its university on equal terms with the Gentiles. "Within six years," exclaims Mandelstamm, "what a change has come over Vilna!