From Ohio History Central Max Lilienthal was born on November 6,
1815, in Munich, Germany. He earned his Ph.D. at the University
of Munich in 1837, and he accepted an appointment as principal
of a Jewish school in Riga, Russia, in 1839. In 1841, the
Russian government dispatched Lilienthal to travel in the
western portion of the country to ask Jews if they would agree
to send their children to government schools. Many Jews feared
that the Russian government wanted to convert them to the
Eastern Orthodox faith. They had difficulty believing that the
Russian government truly wanted to create Jewish institutions.
Most Jews rejected Lilienthal and his views for two reasons.
First, he was acting as an agent of the Russian government, a
government that most Jews did not trust. Second, Lilienthal was
an outsider. While he was Jewish, he also was German. Many
Russian Jews did not believe that a German Jew could understand
their beliefs or needs. In 1842, Lilienthal became a rabbi for
the Jewish population in Odessa,