Note (return) — Chapter VI

With the establishment of the rabbinical seminaries and the ukase (May 3, 1855) that only such may officiate as rabbis as have completed a prescribed course of study, Russian Jewry was placed in a sore predicament. It was a very difficult task to find men who united secular knowledge with that thorough mastery of Talmudic literature which the Jews of Russia exact from their rabbis. Every community was compelled to appoint two rabbis: an orthodox rabbi (dukhovny rabbin) and a "crown," or Government, rabbi (kazyony rabbin). The people recognized only the authority of the former, the Government that of the latter. The consequence was that a man with a mere high-school education would apply for, and would often receive, the position of crown-rabbi. His duties consisted in merely keeping a register of marriages, births, and deaths, administering the oath, and the like. The many lawyers and physicians who were debarred from practicing their professions sought to become candidates for the rabbinate. To avoid the unpleasant results which followed, Rabbi Chernovich of Odessa and Rabbi I.J. Reines of Lyda established seminaries in Odessa and Lyda, to take the place and to continue the teaching of the Vilna and the Volozhin yeshibot, which had been closed, and to furnish proper rabbis for the various congregations.19