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The heads which had but recently been bending over the Talmud folios in the stuffy atmosphere of the heders and yeshibahs were now crammed with the ideas of positivism, evolution, and socialism.
It promoted higher education by granting monetary assistance to Jewish students, but it did nothing either for the upbuilding of a normal Jewish school or for the improvement of the heders and yeshibahs. The dissemination of the knowledge of "useful subjects" reduced itself to the grant of a few subsidies to Jewish writers for translating a few books on history and natural science into Hebrew.
Petersburg, Lilienthal presented Uvarov with a report which convinced the Minister that the execution of the school-reform was a difficult but not a hopeless task. On June 22, 1842, an imperial rescript was issued, placing all Jewish schools, including the heders and yeshibahs, under the supervision of the Ministry of Public Instruction.
This periodical, which appeared in Vienna but was read principally in Russia, pursued a two-fold aim: to fight against the fanaticism of the benighted masses, on the one hand, and combat the indifference to Judaism of the intellectuals, on the other. Ha-Shahar exerted a tremendous influence upon the mental development of the young generation which had been trained in the heders and yeshibahs.
In Lithuania the whole mental energy of the Jewish youth was absorbed by Talmudism. The synagogue served as a "house of study" outside the hours fixed for prayers. There the local rabbi or a private scholar gave lectures on the Talmud which were listened to by hosts of yeshibah bahurs. The great yeshibahs of Volozhin, Mir, and other towns sent forth thousands of rabbis and Talmudists.
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