Some contemporary impressions of Rabbi S.J. Rapoport in 1839, 1843 and 1853, a meeting with an authentic apikores and Italian Jewish education.

In chronological order:



Narrative of a mission of inquiry to the Jews from the Church of Scotland in 1839:







Austria. Vienna, Prague, Hungary, Bohemia, and the Danube; Galicia, Syria, Moravia, Bukovina and the Military Frontier by Johann Georg Kohl, 1843:









The Story of My Life by August J. C. Hare, 1853:







Since the authors of the first mentions that they'd heard in Jassy that Rav Shir was "the head of the secret Society for undermining Judaism,"I thought I'd add some of what they'd heard in Jassy:







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Also, there's an interesting appendix in the same book, consisting of the curriculum of the yeshivos, elementary and higher level, in Leghorn (Livorno), for boys and girls:











Some of it does remind me of the description of Sephardic education in Amsterdam, 1680 in the שפתי ישינים: