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Moreover, before publishing his first work Te'udah, he had submitted the manuscript to Shishkov, the reactionary Minister of Public Instruction, applying for a Government subsidy towards the publication of a work which demonstrates the usefulness of enlightenment and agriculture, "instills love for the Tzar as well as for the people with which we share our life, and recounts the innumerable favors which they have bestowed upon us."
It had been and might be reformed from time to time, but this can and must be only along the lines of its own genius. On the contrary, make them better Jews, and they will be better citizens. The Bet Yehudah may justly be called the connecting link between the Te'udah, which preceded it, and Zerubbabel, which followed it.
"Art and science," he says, "are steadily progressing.... To perfect ourselves in them we must resort to non-Jewish sources." This was a bold statement for those times, however mildly expressed. The Te'udah became a bone of contention. It was torn and burnt by fanatics, exalted to the skies by friends.
His breadth of view and his sympathetic disposition gradually won him the respect and love of all who knew him. The zaddikim Abraham of Turisk and Israel Rasiner were his lifelong friends; the Talmudist Strashun acknowledged his indebtedness to him, and Rabbi Abele of Vilna remarked jestingly that the only fault to be found with the Te'udah was that its author was not the Gaon Elijah.
In return for their copyright they received a number of copies of their books, which they were at liberty to dispose of as best they could. Now, while Levinsohn's copies of his Bet Yehudah were still at the publisher's, a fire broke out, and most of them were consumed. The Te'udah be-Yisraël had been prompted by a desire to prove the compatibility of modern civilization with Judaism.
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