nces which in his opinion checked the
endeavors of the Government. A memorandum presented by him to Alexander
II., when the latter was passing through Minsk in 1858, opened to him
the doors of the Holy Synod. He was appointed instructor of Hebrew at a
Greek-Orthodox seminary and entrusted with the task of finding ways to
remove the difficulties placed by the Jews in the path of their
coreligionists intending to go over to Christianity. His mission to
facilitate apostasy among the Jews proved a failure, and his services as
detective were not yet appreciated during the liberal years of
Alexander's reign.

However, with the reactionary turn in Russian politics, in the middle of
the sixties, these services were once more in demand. Brafman hastened
to the hot-bed of reactionary chauvinism, the city of Vilna, which was
firmly held in the iron grip of Muravyov, [1] and there began "to expose
the separatism of the inner life of the Jews" before the highest
administration of the province. He contended that the Kahal, though
officially abolished in 1844, [2] continued in reality to exist and to
maintain a widely ramified judiciary (_Bet Din_), that it constituted a
secret, uncanny sort of organization which wielded despotic power over
the communities by employing such weapons as the _herem_
(excommunication) and _hazakah_ (the Jewish legal practice of securing
property rights), [3] that it incited the Jewish masses against the
State, the Government, and the Christian religion, and fostered in these
masses fanaticism and dangerous national separatism. In the opinion of
Brafman, the only way to eradicate this "secret Jewish government," was
to destroy the last vestiges of Jewish communal autonomy by closing all
religious and charitable societies and fraternities. The Jewish
community itself ought to share the same fate, and the Jews forming part
of it should be included among the Christian estates in the cities and
villages. In a word, Judaism as a communal organization should pass out
of existence altogether.

[Footnote 1: Michael Muravyov (see above, p. 183) was appointed in 1863
military governor of the governments of Vilna, Kovno, Grodno, Vitebsk,
Minsk, and Moghilev, which he endeavored to Russify with relentless
cruelty. He died in 1866.]

[Footnote 2: See p. 58 et seq.]

[Footnote 3: More exactly, the acquisition of property by continued and
undisturbed possession for a period of time. This right of acquisition
was for