a new Neolog initiative to form a seminary. He argued the Orthodox should accede and simply demand that the institute conform to their principles. The more hard-line rabbis managed to have the government reject the establishment of such a facility. The rabbi of Eisenstadt and the moderate wing, leaning toward neo-Orthodoxy, which supported him were severely condemned and his status was diminished. The radicals rallied behind the decree of Nagymihály (Mihalovitz in Yiddish), drafted by an assembly headed by Lichtenstein that convened in that city on 27–28 November 1865. The decisions banned participation in modernized services and entry into synagogues that enacted any form of ritual reform – it declared that it was forbidden to listen to a sermon preached in vernacular or to a prayer accompanied by a choir, to enter a synagogue where the reader's table (bimah) was not in the middle of the interior or where the partition in front of the women's section enabled them to be seen by the men, and to attend services performed by a cantor who wore special clothing or a wedding not held under the sky. Synagogues that did not meet any of these demands were branded "Houses of Epikorosy" (heresy), and a blanket paragraph added that any other change in the traditional customs of prayer was generally forbidden. Silber deduced the decree was not primarily aimed at the Neologs, but at the moderates: its clauses were an obvious reference to innovations recently introduced in the Synagogue of Pressburg, the most important traditionalist center in Hungary, such as having sermons delivered in German. The mainstream wing, which included such prominent rabbis as Moshe Schick and Samuel Benjamin Sofer, rejected both the seminary and the decree. However, while the centrist Orthodox condemned the former, they avoided publicly attacking the latter as Hildesheimer did. Nethanel Katzburg regarded this attitude as signifying the growing dominance of the radical viewpoint among the traditionalists. This ideology, "equating those who made modifications in tradition and custom with transgressors of the fundamentals of faith", also called for complete separation from the nonobservant, and its acceptance heralded the secession to come. While Hildesheimer and his call for rapprochement with modernity were dominant in the previous decade, by the late 1860s it was evident the radicals managed to sway the silent majority toward their views. The Hungarian Jewish Congress The initiative While calls for forming a national representative organization that