It was called "Committee of Old Testament Believers," though composed in the main of Polish officials.

It was supplemented by an advisory council consisting of five public-spirited Jews and their alternates.

Among the members of the Committee, which included several prominent Jewish merchants of Warsaw, such as Jacob Bergson, M.Kavski, Solomon Posner, T.Teplitz, was also the well-known mathematician Abraham Stern, one of the few cultured Jews of that period who remained a steadfast upholder of Jewish tradition.

The "Committee of Old Testament Believers" embarked upon the huge task of civilizing the Jews of Poland and purging the Jewish religion of its superstitious excrescences.
The first step taken by the Committee was the establishment of a Rabbinical Seminary in Warsaw for the training of modernized rabbis, teachers, and communal workers.

The program of the school was arranged with a view to the Polonization of its pupils.