The idea of the minister of education, Stanisław Kostka Potocki, was for a Higher Israelite School (Wyższa Szkoła Izraelska), which would train rabbis and schoolteachers.
Most of the graduates formed Warsaw's progressive Jewish elite: entrepreneurs, merchants, scientists, journalists, artists and patrons of the arts.
The founding committee appointed by the government of Congress Poland consisted of three Poles, including Stefan Witwicki.
Some of the chief teachers of the school were Aaron Moses Cylkow, father of the Judæo-Polish preacher of Warsaw, Jacob Cylkow (who translated the Psalms into Polish; Warsaw, 1883), Abraham Buchner (author of "Der Talmud und Seine Nichtigkeit"), and Izaak Kramsztyk.
It did not help matters that the school inspector was a catholic priest, the Christian Hebraist Luigi Chiarini, a notorious critic of the Talmud.