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The modern Hebrew is nothing more than an adaptation of the ancient Hebrew, conformable to the modern spirit and new ideas. The extreme innovators, who at best are few in number, cannot but confirm this statement of the case. Ginzburg was a fertile writer; he has left us fifteen volumes, and more, on various subjects.
As far as the period under discussion is concerned, the Jewish center of the South can claim no share in the production of new Jewish values. While yielding to Odessa in point of external civilization, Vilna surpassed the capital of the South by her store of mental energy. Ginzburg, born in the townlet Salant, in the Zhmud region, lived for some time in Courland, and finally settled in Vilna.
Ginzburg is the creator of a realistic Hebrew prose style, though he was permeated to the end with the style and the spirit of the Bible. Whenever the Biblical style can render modern thoughts only by torturing and twisting it, or by resorting to cumbersome circumlocutions, Ginzburg does not hesitate to levy contributions from Talmudic literature and even the modern languages.
In its day Lebensohn's drama excited the wrath of the orthodox. If Abraham Bar Lebensohn is considered the father of poetry, his no less celebrated contemporary and compatriot, Mordecai Aaron Ginzburg, has an equally good claim to be called the foremost master of modern Hebrew prose.
Schulman became the head of a school. His poetic and inflated style long imposed itself upon all subjects, and hindered the natural development of Hebrew prose, inaugurated by Mordecai A. Ginzburg. More creative writers were not long in making their appearance.
Among his works is a history of Russia, but his most important production, Hazon la-Mo'ed, is a narrative of his travels and the impressions he received in the "Jewish zone", chiefly Lithuania. In certain respects, he must be classified with Mordecai A. Ginzburg, with whom he shares clarity of thought and wit.
Ginzburg and Lebensohn were the central pillars of the Vilna Maskilim circle, which also included men of the type of Samuel Joseph Fünn, the historian, Mattathiah Strashun, the Talmudist, the censor Tugendhold, the bibliographer Ben-jacob, N. Rosenthal, in a word, the "radicals" of that era for the mere striving for the restoration of biblical Hebrew and for elementary secular education was looked upon as bold radicalism.
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