Vilna, he was always the representative speaker on behalf of that important community. In 1852, he was one of the delegates from Vilna to petition Czar Nicholas I in regard to the oppressive conscription duties of the Jews by the ukases of January 8, 1852 and of August 16, 1852. Barit was a man of great tact and political wisdom, a pleasant and impressive speaker and conversationalist. In 1855, when a project was laid before the government to appoint chief rabbis in the capitals of the various governments of Russia, Vladimir Ivanovich Nazimov, then governor-general of Vilna, recommended Barit to be chief rabbi of the government of Vilna. A Rabbinical Committee attached to the Ministry of the Interior had been established by the law of May 26, 1848, to consider questions involving the Jewish religion, but had rarely been called together. When the Committee was again summoned to St. Petersburg by the edict of May 25, 1857, Barit was appointed as one of the members and acted as its chairman for the whole session of six months. He acted in the same capacity at the Rabbinical Conference of 1861, which lasted about five months. In both of these assemblies, Barit bravely defended the honor of his co-religionists against the calumnies of their enemies, and his arguments, coming from the heart, found their way into the hearts of the authorities, the judges of the Jewish question. In 1862, he was one of the delegates that were elected by the Jewish communities to congratulate Emperor Alexander II at the one thousandth anniversary of the foundation of the Russian empire. In 1871, when Governor-General Kaufman called an assembly of specialists to investigate the accusations against the Jews made by Jacob Brafman (himself a baptized Jew) in his work Kniga Kahala. Barit was appointed member of the assembly and fully convinced the Christian members of the evil design and the unfounded and false character of Brafman's statements. The president of the assembly, Spasski, was so pleased with Barit's able and truthful defense of the Jews, that he paid him a visit and presented him with his photograph. Barit was appointed by the government as one of the inspectors of the Vilna City Hospital, and was of great help there to Abraham Lebensohn in rebuilding it, when it was in a dilapidated condition. He was also a useful member of the Vilna Talmud Torah, which