From the beginning of the nineteenth century, there were attempts to reform the training of rabbis and teachers in Europe. Such programs were conducted at seminaries that were modeled on elite state schools under Enlightened absolutism and on ecclesiastical seminaries, and combined traditional learning with the modern sciences; what was novel was the instruction in secular subjects as well as homiletics. The idea of rabbinical and teachers’ seminaries was developed by maskilim, under both the pressure and the protection of the state. At times there were also open-minded traditional rabbis and teachers among the founders of the seminaries, who intended to anticipate and moderate changes dictated by the state or by radical Jewish reformers.
