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It was the Slavonic Maskilim who mastered Hebrew in its purity, as it had not been mastered since the day of Judah Halevi. In those days of transition the diligent student can find, in germ, what was later to develop into the resplendent poetical flowers produced by the Lebensohns, the Gordons, Dolitzky, Schapiro, Mane, and Bialik.
At any rate, Lilienthal accepted the proffered task. He was commissioned to tour the Pale of Settlement, to organize there the few isolated progressive Jews, "the lovers of enlightenment," or Maskilim, as they styled themselves, and to propagate the idea of a school-reform among the orthodox Jewish masses.
Among the first books issued from the newly-established printing-press in Shklov, the centre of Jewish wealth, refinement, and culture at that time, was the Zeker Rab with a German translation . In an appendix thereto the Shklov Maskilim announced their intention to publish a weekly, the first in the Hebrew tongue.
He enjoyed prominence in Government circles, and Prince Wittgenstein was passionately fond of his company. Above all he endeared himself to the Maskilim. To him they looked as to their teacher and guide; him they consulted in every emergency. Lebensohn and Gottlober, Mandelstamm and Gordon, equally sought his criticism and advice. For all he had words of comfort and encouragement.
But it is not so much his Talmudic or secular scholarship that makes him interesting to us to-day. His true greatness is revealed by his attempts, the first made in his generation perhaps, to reconcile the Hasidim with the Mitnaggedim, and these in turn with the Maskilim. He spoke a good word for manual labor, and proved from the Talmud that burdensome laws should be abolished.
Ginzburg's premature death in 1846 was mourned by the Vilna Maskilim as the loss of a leader in the struggle for the Neo-Hebraic renaissance, and they gave expression to these sentiments in verse and prose. In this volume solemn odes celebrating events of all kinds alternate with lyrical poems of a philosophical content.
In Vilna, as in Odessa, the coterie of local Maskilim formed the mainstay of Lilienthal, the apostle of enlightenment, in, his struggle with the orthodox.
Ignorance was regarded as the bane of life, and enlightenment as the panacea for all the ills to which their downtrodden brethren were heirs. As their pious coreligionists deemed it the universal duty to be well-versed in the Talmud, so the Maskilim thought it incumbent upon everybody to be highly cultured. No obstacle was great enough to discourage them.
Among them were men of all classes and callings, from the cloistered Talmudist to the worldly merchant. The path of Haskalah was slowly yet surely cleared. The efforts of the conservative Maskilim were not devoid of some good results, nor even were those of Nicholas, though aimed at Christianizing rather than civilizing, entirely wasted.
Time helped greatly to restore, even to deepen, the affection of the Maskilim for Lilienthal.
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