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In Galicia, it gave birth, in the domain of philosophy, to the ideal of the "mission of the Jewish people", and to the "science of Judaism." But for the great mass of the Jews remaining faithful to the Messianic ideal, what was of greatest significance was the national and religious romanticism expounded by Samuel David Luzzatto.
From the point of view of dramatic art, the piece is not of the highest interest. The subject, purely moral and didactic, gives no opportunity for a serious study of character, and, as in all allegorical pieces, the dramatic action is weak. The theme was not new. Even in Hebrew and before Luzzatto, it had been treated several times.
Like Jehudah Halevi, the sentimental philosopher whose successor he is, Luzzatto feels and thinks in the peculiar fashion that distinguishes the intuitive minds among the Jews. He loves his native country, and this love appears clearly in his writings, yet, at the same time, they all, whether in prose, as in his Letters, or in verse, as in the Kinnor Na'im, sound a Zionistic note.
The conservative romanticism of a Samuel David Luzzatto and the Zionist sentiments of a Mapu had planted a germinating seed in the heart of traditional Judaism itself.
Among the most distinguished of the contributors to Ha-Meassef is the second writer acclaimed poet by popular consent. Like most Jews of Spanish origin, his family clung to the Spanish language. He was the friend and disciple, and likewise the imitator, of Moses Hayyim Luzzatto.
Nevertheless he was endorsed and admired by the literary men of his time as the heir of Luzzatto. An enumeration of all the writers and all the scholars who, directly or indirectly, contributed to the work of Ha-Meassef, would be wearisome. Only those who are distinguished by some degree of originality will be set down by name.
As to the unlettered, they preferred to make use of the vernacular, which presented fewer difficulties than the Hebrew. The task of tearing asunder the chains that hampered the evolution of Hebrew in a modern sense devolved upon an Italian Jew of amazing talent. He became the true, the sovereign inaugurator of the Hebrew Renascence. Moses Hayyim Luzzatto was born at Padua, in 1707.
These being of the very essence of dramatic composition, his drama reduces itself to a moral treatise, wearisome at once and worthless. The plan is simple enough. The influence of Moses Hayyim Luzzatto is direct and manifest. Like the older author, Lebensohn, skeptic though he is, does not go to the length of casting doubt upon faith.
Without being a fanatic, he believes, with Samuel David Luzzatto, that the religion of the Jew on its poetic side is the peculiar product of the Jewish national genius that the religion, and not the artificial legal system engrafted upon it, is the essential part of Judaism.
He was a master and a prophet, a gracious and brilliant exponent of the Renascence of Hebrew literature, which had been inaugurated by one of his ancestors, another Luzzatto. A century of efforts and uninterrupted labor had wrought the resurrection of the Hebrew language.
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