Soon after his arrival in Sejny, this known organizer and religious philosopher opened a Yeshiva (higher Talmudic school) which had a folk-revolutionary character and became hugely famous amongst the Maskilis (advocates of the enlightenment of Jewish populace), attracting many students from the distant terrains of Russia and Poland. Thanks to the school, Sejny (granted though not for long) became the center of haskali (enlightenment) for the whole of Lithuania. It was here that the most prominent Lithuanian rabbis held their conferences. Soon, the tsarist regime, fearing the spread of Awigdor’s teachings on Polish territory and deep into Russia, closed the Yeshiva in Sejny and banished Awigdor. It was not only Awigdor’s Yeshiva that was renowned during this period for the quality of its Jewish education; in the mid-19th century, a Hebrew high school was established by the writer Tuwie Pinkas Szapiro in Sejny. It was one of the first Jewish schools of a secular character, where in addition to religion students were taught geography, mathematics, Russian and other subjects not usually encountered in the Jewish curriculae of the day. Some of the most enlightened minds in the Lithuanian Jewry were recruited from among the alumni of this high school.
