Note (return) — Chapter III

The privilege of attending public schools and colleges further stimulated the Russification of the Jews. As soon as these institutions of learning were thrown open to them, numerous Jewish youths made headway in all branches taught, especially in medicine. That Alexander's benign decree of November 10, 1811, issued through the Secretary of State Speransky, was not always executed by his officials goes without saying. Simeon Levy Wolf, one of the first Russo-Jewish graduates, was denied his degree of doctor of jurisprudence in Dorpat unless he embraced Christianity.23 When, in 1819, some of the Vilna graduates applied for the privilege of not paying the double tax, they were told that they must first renounce their faith, an exception being made only in favor of Arthur Parlovich. Still the number of Jewish graduate physicians was on the increase. Osip Yakovlevich Liboschüts, who was the son of the famous physician of Vilna, took his doctor degree at Dorpat (1806), became court physician in St. Petersburg, where he founded a hospital for children, and wrote extensively in French on the flora of his country.24 The medical institute of Vilna (1803-1833), afterwards transferred to Kiev, became the centre of attraction for the Russian Jewry. Padua, Berlin, Königsberg, Göttingen, Copenhagen, Halle, Amsterdam, Cambridge, and London were for a third of a century replaced by the home of the Gaon and of Doctor Liboschüts. The first students were recruited from the bet ha-midrash, and they frequently joined, as in former days, knowledge of the Law with the practice of their chosen profession. Such were Isaac Markusevich, whose annotations to the Shulhan 'Aruk (ab. 1830) were published fifty years later;25 Joseph Rosensohn, the promising Talmudist who became rabbi of Pyosk at the age of nineteen;26 and Kusselyevsky of Nieszvicz, a stipendiary of a Polish nobleman and a great favorite with Professor Frank. Because of his proficiency, he was exempted from serving as a vratch (interne), and for his piety and learning he was addressed by Jews and Gentiles as "rabbi."27