ollowed by the Committee was to consider the project in the order
indicated in the memorandum: first "enlightenment," then abolition of
autonomy, and finally disabilities.

[Footnote 1: See above, p. 16, n. 1.]

2. UVAROV AND LILIENTHAL

An elaborate _expose_ on the question of enlightenment was composed and
laid before the Committee by the Minister of Public Instruction, Sergius
Uvarov. Having acquired the _bon ton_ of Western Europe, Uvarov prefaces
his statement by the remark that the European governments have abandoned
the method of "persecution and compulsion" in solving the Jewish
question and that "this period has also arrived for us." "Nations,"
observes Uvarov, "are not exterminated, least of all the nation which
stood at the foot of Calvary." From what follows, it seems evident that
the Minister is still in hopes that the gentle measures of enlightenment
may attract the Jews towards the religion which derives its origin from
Calvary.

The best among the Jews--he states--are conscious of the fact that
one of the principal causes of their humiliation lies in the
perverted interpretation of their religious traditions, that ... the
Talmud demoralized and continues to demoralize their
co-religionists. But nowhere is the influence of the Talmud so
potent as among us (in Russia) and in the Kingdom of Poland. [1]
This influence can be counteracted only by enlightenment, and the
Government can do no better than to act in the spirit that animates
the handful of the best among them.... The re-education of the
learned section among the Jews involves at the same time the
purification of their religious conceptions.

[Footnote 1: See on the meaning of the latter term Vol. I, p. 390, n. 1.]

What "purification" the author of the memorandum has in mind may be
gathered from his casual remark that the Jews, who maintain their
separatism, are rightly afraid of reforms: "for is not the religion of
the Cross the purest symbol of universal citizenship?" This, however,
Uvarov cautiously adds, should not be made public, for "it would have no
other effect except that of arousing from the very beginning the
opposition of the majority of the Jews against the (projected) schools."

Officially the reform must confine itself to the opening in all the
cities of the Jewish Pale of elementary and secondary schools in which
Jewish children should be taught the Russian language, secular sciences,
Hebrew, and "rel