LILIENTHAL, MAX.

Max Lilienthal (1815-82) was a German-born adviser for the reform of Jewish schools in Russia and later a rabbi and proponent of Reform Judaism in the United States. Lilienthal recounts here his meetings with the Government’s Ministry of Education in St. Petersburg seeking to enforce secular education within Russian Jewry. Also described are his meetings with the Jewish communal leaders of Vilna who were deeply opposed to his pedagogic approach. Mordechai Aaron Guenzburg (1795-1846) was an active member of the Haskalah movement and founder of the first modern Jewish school in Lithuania. He here pokes fun at Lilienthal’s German background and although certainly agrees that Russian Jewry would benefit from the Haskalah educational framework, Guenzburg’s feels that Lilienthal is far from being the man to deliver, as he totally does not comprehend the Russian-Jewish psyche. <<Two scarce polemical pamphlets.>>