They
also proposed to do away with the Judeo-Polish garb, and suggested
certain alterations in the prayer book.
The delegates met, deliberated, and disbanded, but the tidings announced
in Lilienthal's epistle did not prove to be good. In one of the fables
of Kryloff, the Russian AEsop, we are told that once a swan, a pike, and
a crab, decided to make a trip together. No sooner had they started
than, in accordance with their nature, the swan began to fly, the pike
to shuffle along, the crab to crawl backward. It was so with the
delegation of 1843. Rabbi Isaac, the rabid Mitnagged, could find but
little to admire in the proposals of Rabbi Menahem Mendel, the ardent
Hasid, and both were bitterly opposed to the view preached by Doctor
Lilienthal, that the salvation of the Jews and Judaism would be brought
about by a system of education adopted in accordance with an ukase by
Nicholas. Stern, too, had little use for Lilienthal, whom he declared to
be ignorant of the condition of Russian Jews and incapable of working in
their behalf. From such discord nothing good could come. The fact is,
that the few resolutions mentioned had been drawn up beforehand by the
Government officials, and the time and trouble and expense which the
council involved were, _a la Russe_, for appearance sake.
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