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Updated: May 6, 2025
As far back as in the autumn of the first pogrom year Lilienblum published a series of articles in which he interpreted the idea of Palestinian colonization, which had but recently sprung to life, in the light of a common national task for the whole of Jewry.
However, during the period under consideration he moved entirely within the boundaries of the Haskalah, of which he was a most radical exponent. Persecuted for his harmless liberalism by the fanatics of his native town of Vilkomir, Lilienblum began to ponder over the question of Jewish religious reforms.
The religious reforms introduced by the German Rabbis have but had the effect of drying up the springs of poetry in the religion, and as for the compromise between faith and life, extolled and urged by Lilienblum, it is only a futile phrase.
The propaganda of these Hobebe Zion the Hebrew equivalent for "Lovers of Zion" who acknowledged as their leaders the first exponents of the territorial restoration of Jewry, Pinsker and Lilienblum, led to the organization of a number of societies in various cities.
Lilienblum was an Apikoros, the "heretic" par excellence of the Lithuanian ghetto. The young writer had to undergo a series of outrageous persecutions and acts of vengeance inflicted by the fanatics, especially the Hasidim, of his town. It is made up of torment and suffering, all the more grievous as they are kept hidden in the recesses of one's heart...."
Lilienblum and his followers gave themselves up to regrets over the futile work of three generations of humanists, who, instead of restoring the ghetto to health, had but hastened its utter ruin. The ideal aspirations of the Maskilim had been succeeded by a gross utilitarianism without an ideal.
As for the educated element that had never, at least in spirit, left the ghetto, men like Lilienblum, Braudes, and others, whose later activity, a propaganda for economic reforms and instruction in manual trades, had almost ceased to have a reason for continuing, as for them, their adhesion to Zionism could not be long delayed.
In his poems, Mises assails Geiger for the religious reforms urged by him, and he opposes also the school of He-Haluz in the name of the national tradition. Later on Mises published an important history of modern philosophy in Hebrew. Michael Pines, a writer in Ha-Lebanon, and the opponent of Lilienblum, was the protagonist of the conservative party in Lithuania.
"We have seen our youths return to us," writes Lilienblum, "and our hearts were filled with joy. In their restoration we found balm for our wounds, and with rapturous wonderment we asked 'who has borne us these?" The poets welcomed them with songs.
His historical pieces, his satires, and his epigrams, published for the most part in Ha-Shahar, have finish and grace. In his Zionist poems, he gives evidence of an enlightened patriotism. In this poem, as well as in his prose articles, he ranged himself with Lilienblum in demanding a reshaping of Jewish life on an utilitarian, practical basis.
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