In Odessa Lilienblum joined the ranks of the Russified college youth, and became imbued with the radical ideas of Chernyshevski and Pisaryev, gaining the reputation of a “nihilist.”  His theory of Jewish reform, superannuated by his new materialistic world view, was thrown aside, and a gaping void opened in the soul of the writer.  This frame of mind is reflected in Lilienblum’s self-revelation, “The Sins of Youth” (Hattot ne’urim, 1876), this agonizing cry of one of the many victims of the mental cataclysm of the sixties.  The book made a tremendous impression, for the mental tortures depicted in it were typical of the whole age of transition.  However, the final note of the confession, the shriek of a wasted soul, which, having overthrown the old idols, has failed to find a new God, did not express the general trend of that period, which was far from despair.

As for our author, his tempestuous soul was soon set at rest.  The events which filled the minds of progressive Jewry with agitation, the horrors of the pogroms and the political oppression of the beginning of the eighties, brought peace to the aching heart of Lilienblum.  He found the solution of the Jewish problems in the “Love of Zion,” of which he became the philosophic exponent.  At a later stage he became an ardent champion of political Zionism.

7.  JEWISH LITERATURE IN THE RUSSIAN LANGUAGE

The left wing of “enlightenment” was represented during this period by Jewish literature in the Russian language, which had several noteworthy exponents.  It is interesting to observe that, whereas all the prominent writers in Hebrew were children of profoundly nationalistic Lithuania, those that wrote in Russian, with the sole exception of Levanda, were natives of South Russia, where the two extremes, stagnant Hasidism and radical Russification, fought for supremacy.  The founder of this branch of Jewish literature was Osip (Joseph) Rabinovich (1817-1869), a Southerner, a native of Poltava and a resident of Odessa. [1] Alongside of journalistic articles he wrote protracted novels.  His touching “Pictures of the Past,” his stories “The Penal Recruit” and “The Inherited Candlestick” (1859-1860) called up before the generation living at the dawn of the new era of reforms the shadows of the passing night:  the tortures of Nicholas’ conscription and the degrading forms of Jewish rightlessness.

[Footnote 1:  See above, p, 219.]

The fight against this rightlessness was the goal of his journalistic activity which, prior to the publication of the Razswyet, he had carried on in the columns of the liberal Russian press.  The problems of inner Jewish life had but little attraction for him.  Like Riesser, he looked upon civil emancipation as a panacea for all Jewish ailments.  He was snatched away by death before he could be cured of this illusion.