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He returned to Wilna, the first centre of the Haskalah in Russia. The secular literature couched in Hebrew had penetrated to the very synagogue, if not openly, at least by the back door. In secret Gordon devoured all the modern writings that fell in his hands. It was the time of the elder Lebensohn, when he stood at the summit of his fame and influence.
It was after the appearance of Mapu's "Hypocrite", in the year 1867, that Abraham Bar Lebensohn published, at Wilna, his drama "Truth and Faith", written twenty years before, in which, also, the Tartufe of the ghetto plays a great part. His novel is a failure. The subject is the antagonism between religious fathers and emancipated sons, and the action takes place in Hasidic surroundings.
Sir Moses was accompanied by His Excellency the Civil Governor Terebzow. They presented us with a number of valuable works, each of which was adorned with a poem written by the gifted poet A. B. Lebensohn.
In his first attempts at poetry, Lebensohn did not depart greatly from the achievements of the many Rabbinical students whose favorite pastime was to discuss the events of the day in Hebrew verse.
A disciple of Isaac Bar Levinsohn, and visibly affected by the influence of Wessely and Abraham Bar Lebensohn, he devoted himself to poetry. The first volume of his poems appeared at Wilna in 1851. His earliest productions go back to the middle of the last century. He is a remarkable stylist, and, in some of his works, his language is both simple and polished.
In his hatred of the adversaries of the Haskalah, Lebensohn depicts him, besides, as a hypocrite, a lover of the good things of this world, and given to lewdness, which are not the usual traits of these Rabbis. The alleged Tartufe of the ghetto cannot be called a hypocrite. He is a believer, and hence sincere. What leads him to commit the worst excesses, is his fanaticism, his blind piety.
When the celebrated philanthropist Montefiore went to Russia, in 1848, to induce the Czar's government to ameliorate the civil condition of the Jews and grant reforms in the conduct of the schools, Lebensohn ranged himself publicly on the side of the reformers. According to him, the degradation of the Jews was due to three main causes: 1.
They came from Micah Joseph Lebensohn, the son of "Adam" Lebensohn, author of high-flown Hebrew odes a contemplative Jewish youth, suffering from tuberculosis and Weltschmerz. He began his poetic career in 1840 by a Hebrew adaptation of the second book of Virgil's Aeneid but soon turned to Jewish motifs. A cruel disease cut short the poet's life in 1852, at the age of twenty-four.
If the first two causes are more or less just, the third displays a ludicrously naive conception of life. Lebensohn was speaking of a famished people, the majority of whom ate meat only once a week, on the Sabbath, and he reproaches them with gastronomic excesses and extravagance in dress. We shall see that his simple outlook was shared by most of the Russian Maskilim.
He devoted much time to the study of Hebrew philology and grammar, and he was justly reputed a distinguished connoisseur of the language. Both his linguistic researches and his new linguistic formations in Hebrew are extremely valuable. The muse visited him early, and by his first attempts at poetry he earned the good-will and favor of Lebensohn the father and the friendship of Lebensohn the son.
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