As soon as a portion of this translation was published, it was criticized by rabbis of the old school, including Raphael Cohen of Hamburg, Ezekiel Landau of Prague, Hirsch Janow of Posen, and Phineas Levi Horwitz of Frankfort-on-the-Main.
Netibot ha-Shalom This act led Solomon Dubno to give up his work after having finished Genesis; but, in order that the undertaking might be completed, Mendelssohn himself undertook the commentary.
Finding, however, that the work was beyond his strength, he committed to Naphtali Herz Wesel (Hartwig Wessely) the biur to Leviticus, to Aaron Jaroslav that to Numbers, and to Hertz Homberg that to twenty-two of the middle chapters of Deuteronomy.
It is preceded by an introduction in Hebrew, written by Mendelssohn, in which he discusses the history of the work and the rules of idiom and syntax followed in his translation.
The movement later crossed the Atlantic, and Isaac Leeser of Philadelphia translated the Bible into English according to the interpretations of the Biurists; while in Europe steps were taken toward the perpetuation of the movement, in the foundation of the Ḥebra Doreshe Leshon 'Eber (Society of Investigators of the Hebrew Language) by Isaac Abraham Euchel and Mendel Breslau, and in the establishment of the periodical "Ha-Me'assef" (The Gleaner).