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Updated: May 22, 2025
This is the rationale of Smolenskin's opposition to the religious dogmatism of Mendelssohn, who had wished to confine Judaism inside of the circle of Rabbinic law without recognizing its essentially evolutionary character. Maimonides himself is not spared by Smolenskin, for it was Maimonides who had set the seal of consecration upon logical dogmatism.
Ben-Zebi wrote "Letters from Palestine", in which he depicts the ways of the rapacious notables of the old school in his country. Science, historical and philosophical, found a sure welcome in Ha- Shahar. Smolenskin knew how to arouse the interest of the educated in these branches, which had been neglected by writers of Hebrew in Russia.
"Why," exclaimed the editor, "were it not for him and his reforms ... were it not for that grand and noble personality ... neither you nor I should have been what we are!" It was only the sad sincerity of Smolenskin that mitigated the errors he had committed in regard to the history of his people and the theology of its religion.
In a series of photographic pictures, Smolenskin reproduces in detail the ways and exploits of all the bohemians of the ghetto, from the beggars up to the peripatetic cantors, their moral shortcomings, their spitefulness, and their insolence. Impelled by the wish to acquire an education, and perhaps also put a roof over his head, Joseph finally enters a celebrated Yeshibah.
In an article on The Ways of the Talmud, by Moses Löb Lilienblum, the prevailing Jewish religious observances were vehemently attacked. This was followed by another article from the pen of Gordon, Wisdom for Those Who Wander in Spirit, with suggestions for adapting religion to the needs of the times, and a still more powerful one, The Chaotic World, by Smolenskin.
A synthesis was needed to merge the two currents, the humanist and the romantic, and lead the languishing Haskalah back to the living sources of national Judaism. This was the task accomplished by Perez Smolenskin, the leader of the national progressive movement. Perez Smolenskin was born, in 1842, at Monastryshchina, a little market town near Mohilew.
Since the reform movement in Germany went back to the time of Mendelssohn, Smolenskin hurled the missiles of his criticism against the Berlin sage, forgetting that for more than half a century his example and encouragement had served to awaken a love of knowledge in the hearts of his countrymen.
He was assured the cooperation of all independent literary men, for Smolenskin had never posed as a believer in dogmatic religion or as its defender. On the contrary, he waged constant war with Rabbinism.
The Odessa pogrom of 1871 staggered his impressionable soul. He was tossing about restlessly, seeking an outlet for his resentment, but everywhere he knocked his head against the barriers of censorship and police. Had he been granted longer life, he might, like Smolenskin, have chosen the road of a nationalistic-progressive synthesis, but the white plague carried him off in his twenty-ninth year.
Then there are Leon Rabinovich, editor of Ha-Meliz, David Yellin, Lerner, A. Kahana, and others. The history of modern literature has found a worthy representative in the person of Reuben Brainin, a master of style, himself the author of popular tales. His remarkable studies of Mapu, Smolenskin, and other writers, are conceived and executed according to the approved methods of modern critics.
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