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The same warmth and historical verisimilitude is found again in Asenath Bat- Potipherah. From the same period dates the first volume of fables by Gordon, published at Vienna, in 1860, under the title Mishle Yehudah, forming the second part of his collected poems, and being itself divided into four books.
In the Hebrew literature of his time, they are equalled only by the 'Ammude Bet Yehudah and the Hekal 'Oneg of Doctor Hurwitz. This short period of enlightenment and tolerance, inaugurated by a semblance of equality, indicates the native optimism of the Slavonic Jew. For a while a cessation of hostilities was evident in the camp of Israel.
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.
And a rising young Hebraist, Eliezer ben Yehudah, while still a student of medicine, wrote, in 1878, and again in 1880, stirring letters to the editor of Ha-Shahar, in which he advocated the return to the Holy Land and the revival of the holy tongue as a conditio sine qua non for the realization of the Jewish mission.
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.
Levinsohn's object in writing his Bet Yehudah was the reverse. The impetus came from without the Jewish camp. The book represents the author's views on certain Jewish problems propounded by his Christian friend, Prince Emanuel Lieven, just as Mendelssohn's Jerusalem was written at the instigation of Lavater.
Several years later, in 1839, the volume finally came out, clothed in the form of a reply to inquiries addressed to the author by a high Russian official. From the point of view of Jewish learning, Bet Yehudah can claim but scanty merits. It lacks that depth of philosophic-historic insight which distinguishes so brilliantly the "Guide of the Perplexed of Our Time" of the Galician thinker Krochmal.
His principal work, entitled Bet Yehudah, "The House of Judah," a semi-philosophic, semi-publicistic review of the history of Judaism, remained for a long time in manuscript.
Mendelssohn's translation of the Pentateuch was at first hailed with joy, and was recommended by the most zealous rabbis. Doctor Hurwitz of Vilna did not hesitate to dedicate his 'Ammude Bet Yehudah to Wessely, who was more popular in Russo-Poland than in Germany.
Seeing that the Alliance Israélite Universelle encouraged emigration to America, both he and Ben Yehudah published violent attacks on the French society, and endeavored to thwart its plans as far as possible. The Hebrew weekly Ha-Meliz, published in St.
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