At the same time the Minister of the Interior instructed the administrators of the western Governments to prevent the slightest contact between the Jews of Russia and the Synhedrion in Paris, which the French Government was using as a tool to curry political favor with the Jews. The same circular letter to the Governors recommends another rather curious device. It suggests that the Jews be impressed with the idea that the Synhedrion in Paris was endeavoring to modify the Jewish religion, and for this reason did not deserve the sympathy of the Russian Jews. At the same time the Holy Synod was sending out circulars instructing the Greek Orthodox clergy to inform the Russian people that Napoleon was an enemy of the Church and a friend of the Jews. That he might the more effectively put the Church of Christ to shame--so the Holy Synod proclaimed--Napoleon assembled the Judean Synagogues in France ... and established the Great Synhedrion of the Jews, that same ungodly assembly which had once dared pass the sentence of crucifixion upon our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, and he now planneth to unite the Jews, whom the wrath of the Almighty hath scattered over the face of the whole earth, so as to incite them to overthrow the Christian Church and proclaim the pseudo-Messiah in the person of Napoleon. By these devices the Government, finding itself at its wits' end in the face of a great war, shrewdly attempted to frighten at once the Jewish people by the specter of an anti-Jewish Napoleon and the Orthodox Russians by Napoleon's leaning towards Judaism. The former were made to believe that the Synhedrion was directed against the Jewish religion, and the latter were told that it was established by the Jewish "pseudo-Messiah" for the overthrow of Christianity. In this precarious situation the Government once more decided to ascertain, by means of a circular inquiry, the views of the representatives of the Jewish communities on the best ways of carrying the "reform" into effect. The ukase of February 19, issued by the Tzar on this occasion, is couched in surprisingly mild terms: Prompted by the desire to give our subjects of the Jewish nationality another proof of our solicitude about their welfare, we have deemed it right to allow all the Jewish communes in the Governments ... of Vilna, Grodno, Kiev, Minsk, Podolia, Volhynia, Vitebsk, and Moghilev, to elect deputies and to suggest, through them, to the gubernatorial administrators the means which they themselves consider best fitted for the most successful execution of the measures laid down in the Statute of 1804. The deputies were summoned this time, not to St. Petersburg, but to the provincial capitals in order to present their opinions to the governors.