Moshe Leib Lilienblum
Encyclopedia
Moshe Leib Lilienblum was a Jewish
Jews
The Jews , also known as the Jewish people, are a nation and ethnoreligious group originating in the Israelites or Hebrews of the Ancient Near East. The Jewish ethnicity, nationality, and religion are strongly interrelated, as Judaism is the traditional faith of the Jewish nation...

 scholar and author born at Keidany, Kovno, October 22, 1843. From his father he learned the calculation of the course of the stars in their relation to the Hebrew calendar (Ḥaṭṭot Ne'urim, i. 15). At the age of thirteen he organized a society of boys for the study of En Ya'aqob
Ein Yaakov
Ein Yaakov is a compilation of all the Aggadic material in the Talmud together with commentaries. Its introduction contains an account of the history of Talmudic censorship and the term Gemara...

(ib. i. 14); and at the age of fifteen he married and settled at Vilkomir. He also used the pseudonym Zelaphchad Bar-Chuschim (צלפחד בר־חושים). A change in the fortunes of his father-in-law threw him upon his own resources, and in 1865, Lilienblum established a yeshivah in Vilna and another the following year (ib. i. 53-54).

Changed views of Judaism and the Jewish question

Changes affecting the Jewish community over the years, however, wrought a great change in the Lilienblum's attitude toward Judaism
Judaism
Judaism ) is the "religion, philosophy, and way of life" of the Jewish people...

 and the Jewish Question
Jewish Question
The Jewish question encompasses the issues and resolutions surrounding the historically unequal civil, legal and national statuses between minority Ashkenazi Jews and non-Jews, particularly in Europe. The first issues discussed and debated by societies, politicians and writers in western and...

. Initially, he had read the writings of the Maskilim, the leaders of Haskalah
Haskalah
Haskalah , the Jewish Enlightenment, was a movement among European Jews in the 18th–19th centuries that advocated adopting enlightenment values, pressing for better integration into European society, and increasing education in secular studies, Hebrew language, and Jewish history...

, particularly those of Mapu
Abraham Mapu
Abraham Mapu was a Lithuanian-born Hebrew novelist of the Haskalah movement. His novels later served as a basis for the Zionist movement.-Biography:...

 and M. A. Ginzburg. These produced in him a feeling of dissatisfaction with traditional Talmudic studies and an abhorrence for the ignorance and superstition surrounding him; he decided, therefore, to combat these faults. In an article entitled Orḥot ha-Talmud, in Ha-Meliẓ
Ha-Meliz
Ha-Meliẓ was the first Hebrew newspaper in Russia. It was founded by Alexander Zederbaum, in Odessa, in 1860, as a weekly, and was transferred to St. Petersburg in 1871....

, 1868, he arraigned the superstitious beliefs and practises of his people, demanded the reform of Judaism, and insisted upon the necessity of establishing a "closer connection between religion and life." This article, and others of the same nature to follow, stirred up the Jewish communities in Russia, and a storm of indignation against him arose among the more traditionalist Orthodox
Orthodox Judaism
Orthodox Judaism , is the approach to Judaism which adheres to the traditional interpretation and application of the laws and ethics of the Torah as legislated in the Talmudic texts by the Sanhedrin and subsequently developed and applied by the later authorities known as the Gaonim, Rishonim, and...

; he was denounced as a freethinker and his continued residence in Wilkomir became impossible. In 1869, he then went to Odessa
Odessa
Odessa or Odesa is the administrative center of the Odessa Oblast located in southern Ukraine. The city is a major seaport located on the northwest shore of the Black Sea and the fourth largest city in Ukraine with a population of 1,029,000 .The predecessor of Odessa, a small Tatar settlement,...

 where he intended to prepare himself for the university (Ḥaṭṭot Ne'urim, ii. 3), but he was compelled to give up that idea.

The anti-Jewish riots of 1880 and 1881 however, aroused in Lilienblum a consciousness of the unsafe position of the Jews "in exile," and he wrote of his apprehensions in an article entitled Obshcheyevreiski Vopros i Palestina (in Razsvyet, 1881, Nos. 41, 42); in it he points to the reestablishment of the Jews in Palestine
Palestine
Palestine is a conventional name, among others, used to describe the geographic region between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, and various adjoining lands....

 as the only solution of the Jewish question. This article did not remain without results; some hailed the idea as practical, and set themselves to realize it. In 1883 a committee was organized at Odessa for the colonization of Palestine, Lilienblum serving as ṣecretary and Dr. Leon Pinsker, author of Autoemancipation, as president. With the Hibbat Zion
Hovevei Zion
Hovevei Zion , also known as Hibbat Zion , refers to organizations that are now considered the forerunners and foundation-builders of modern Zionism....

 conference in Katowice, in which Lilienblum took an earnest and energetic part as secretary, representatives of European Jewry met and discussed the first plans for colonization in Palestine, a foundation stone was laid for the Zionist movement(Derek la-'Abor Golim, p. 16).

Lilienblum's activity thus covers two distinct periods in his thinking. In the first period, he followed the example of the Maskilim and the Haskalah and demanded the reform of Judaism; he differed however from the Maskilim in that he was much less extravagant, his style being free from the flowery meliẓah used by them, and his ideas being marked by soberness and clearness. His Orḥot ha-Talmud, mentioned above, and his Ḥaṭṭot Ne'urim (Vienna
Vienna
Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...

, 1876), contain a description of his material and spiritual struggles; both made a marked impression upon the earlier period. His influence in the second period, that of Jewish national reawakening, in which he actively participated, also was due to this characteristic style. In his article on the Jewish question and Palestine in 1881, as well as in his later O Vozrozhdenii Yevreiskavo Naroda (Odessa, 1883), which includes the former and other essays of a similar character, he clearly and soberly presents the anomalous position held by the Jewish people among the nations in which they lived and logically demonstrates their hopelessness except through national independence.

Works

Lilienblum wrote also: Ḳehal Refa'im, a poem describing the different types of Russian Jewry of the time, as they appear in the nether world (Odessa, 1870); Olam ha-Tohu, on some phases of Hebrew literature (in Ha-Shaḥar, 1873); Biḳḳoret Kol Shire Gordon, on J. L. Gordon as a poet (in Meliẓ Eḥad Mini Elef, St. Petersburg, 1884); Zerubbabel,"a historical drama in Yiddish (Odessa, 1888); "Derek la-'Abor Golim," a history of the Chovevei Zion movement up to the time of the ratification by the Russian government of the committee for the colonization of Palestine (Warsaw
Warsaw
Warsaw is the capital and largest city of Poland. It is located on the Vistula River, roughly from the Baltic Sea and from the Carpathian Mountains. Its population in 2010 was estimated at 1,716,855 residents with a greater metropolitan area of 2,631,902 residents, making Warsaw the 10th most...

, 1899); Derek Teshubah, an addition to Ḥaṭṭot Ne'urim, describing the transition of the author from the negative period of the Haskalah to the positive period of national reawakening; Pyat Momentov Zhizhni Moiseya (in Russian; ib. 1901), a psychological analysis of some important moments in the life of Moses
Moses
Moses was, according to the Hebrew Bible and Qur'an, a religious leader, lawgiver and prophet, to whom the authorship of the Torah is traditionally attributed...

. Lilienblum also edited Kawweret, a collection of articles in Hebrew (Odessa, 1890), and the Luaḥ Aḥiasaf, 1901. He was the author of a number of other articles, of which the most important is O Neobkhodimosti Reform v Yevreiskoi Religii (in Voskhod, 1882-83). He died in 1910.

Jewish Encyclopedia bibliography

  • Lilienblum, Haṭṭot Ne'urim, Vienna, 1876;
  • idem, Derek Teshubah, Warsaw, 1899;
  • idem, Derek la-'Abor Golim, ib.;
  • Mordecai b. Hillel ha-Kohen, in Luaḥ Aḥiasaf, ib. 1893;
  • Berdychevsky, Dor Dor, ib. 1901;
  • N. Slouschz, Littérature Hébraïque, pp. 166 et seq., Paris, 1903;
  • Wiener, Yiddish Literature, p. 238, New York, 1899
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