spreading the use of Hungarian among the predominantly German-speaking Jews. On 28 December 1867, the recently approved Emancipation Bill came into force. The coming Congress had little to with the principled differences between Positive-Historical and Orthodox positions, which caused much tension beforehand in the intellectual and rabbinical circles. It dealt with administrative matters, and did not reflect the former quarrels: Löw would boycott the Congress and support the Orthodox's right to independence; Hildesheimer, though averse to Hirschler, attempted to prevent a schism. One traditional rabbi considered prominent, Samuel Löb Brill, joined the progressive party in the assembly. What surfaced in the following struggle was not the theological differences between the 70 or so Hungarian rabbis who tended more or less toward the Positive-Historical approach (out of some 350 in total) and their Orthodox opponents, but those between the nonobservant, assimilated laity and the religiously committed. Preparations Eötvös held preliminary discussions for the Congress between 17 February and 1 March 1868. The conservative representatives at the meetings were led by Sigmund Krausz, a modern Orthodox who was influenced by Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch's struggle to maintain an independent traditional community in Frankfurt am Main. Like Hirsch, Krausz supported modernization hand in hand with strict observance. He stated before the Minister that two different religions existed among Hungarian Jews, the Orthodox and a new one, which were as different from one another as the Catholic and the Protestant faiths, and the government should recognize them as such and allow full independence for the former, including the right to secede from existing communities and forming separate new ones. Eötvös and the liberal representatives rejected this view. Hirschler and the organizers of the Congress declared repeatedly in the following months that the convocation was to deal with administrative issues only. They even requested that rabbis be barred from being elected as delegates to the Congress, to insure that no religious matters would be discussed. The traditionalists opposed this. Krausz was invited by the Guardians of the Faith to serve as editor of their newspaper; he soon came to dominate the party, though he was never elected as chairman. The conservatives had to deal with the many rifts among themselves. The Guardians of the Faith attempted desperately to win the support of the hasidim in Unterland, and even translated their propaganda material from German to Yiddish for them. However, one of the prominent rabbis who