The Jews had to resort to the old medieval form of a national protest by pouring forth their feelings in the synagogue.

Many Jewish communities seemed to have come to an understanding to appoint the 18th of January as a day of mourning to be observed by fasting and by holding religious services in the synagogues.

This public mourning ceremony proved particularly impressive in St.Petersburg.On the appointed day the whole Jewish population of the Russian capital, with its numerous Jewish professionals, assembled in the principal synagogue and in the other houses of prayer, reciting the hymns of perpetual Jewish martyrdom, the _Selihot_.

In the principal synagogue the rabbi delivered a discourse dealing with the Jewish persecutions.
When the preacher--an eye-witness narrates--began to picture in a broken voice the present position of Jewry, one long moan, coming, as it were, from one breast, suddenly burst forth and filled the synagogue.

Everybody wept, the old, the young, the long-robed paupers, the elegant dandies dressed in latest fashion, the men in Government service, the physicians, the students, not to speak of the women.