Frequently Rav Banet showed an insight lacking in his opponents. In his memorial to the government on the education of Rabbonim (printed in Toldos Mordechai, pages 35–37), he remarked that if the course of studies which the gymnasium demanded of candidates for all other professions were required of a rabbinical candidate, the latter would be fit for anything except the rabbinate. Still, far from objecting to a secular education for Rabbonim, as he was understood to do (see Löw, Gesammelte Schriften, ii. 190 et seq.), he favored it; but he thought that a Rav should first of all possess sufficient knowledge of rabbinical matters; and he proposed that a rabbinical candidate should devote his time chiefly to Jewish subjects until his eighteenth year. His opinions concerning the duties of a Rav, especially with regard to the instruction of children, show the strong influence that modern views had upon him. He wrote a catechism for religious instruction and submitted it in manuscript to the government. To judge from the letter accompanying it, Rav Banet’s views on the education of the young were sensible and in accordance with the spirit of the time.
