These words were penned on December 2, 1827, three months after the promulgation of the baneful conscription ukase ordering the compulsory enlistment of under-aged cantonists!  The request was complied with.  A year later the humble Volhynian litterateur received by imperial command an “award” of 1000 rubles ($500) “for a work having for its object the moral transformation of the Jews.”  This “award” came when the volume had already appeared in print, in the terrible year 1828 which was marked by the first conscription of Jewish recruits, the ominous turn in the ritual murder trial of Velizh and the constant tightening of the knot of disabilities.

But these events failed to cure the political naivete of Levinsohn.  In 1831 he laid before Lieven, the new Minister of Public Instruction, a memorandum advocating the necessity of modifications in Jewish religious life.  Again in 1833 he came forward with the dangerous proposal to close all Jewish printing-presses, except those situated in towns in which there was a censorship.  The project was accompanied by a “list of ancient and modern Hebrew books, indicating those that may be considered useful and those that are harmful”—­the hasidic works were declared to belong to the latter category.  Levinsohn’s project was partly instrumental in prompting the grievous law of 1836, which raised a cry of despair in the Pale of Settlement, ordering a revision of the entire Hebrew literature by Russian censors. [1]

[Footnote 1:  See above, p. 42 et seq.]

Levinsohn’s action would have been ignoble had it not been naive.  The recluse of Kremenetz, passionately devoted to his people but wanting in political foresight, was calling Russian officialdom to aid in his fight against the bigotry of the Jewish masses, in the childish conviction that the Russian authorities had the welfare of the Jews truly at heart, and that compulsory measures would do away with the hostility of the Jewish populace toward enlightenment.  He failed to perceive, as did also some of his like-minded contemporaries, that the culture which the Russian Government of his time was trying to foist upon the Jews was only apt to accentuate their distrust, that, so long as they were the target of persecution, the Jews could not possibly accept the gift of enlightenment from the hands of those who lured them to the baptismal font, pushed their children on the path of religious treason, and were ruthless in breaking and disfiguring their whole mode of life.

In his literary works Levinsohn was fond of emphasizing his relations with high Government officials.  This probably saved him from a great deal of unpleasantness on the part of the fanatic Hasidim, but it also had the effect of increasing his unpopularity among the orthodox.  The only merit the latter were willing to concede to Levinsohn was that of an apologist who defended Judaism against the attacks of non-Jews.  During the epidemic of ritual murder trials, the rabbis of Lithuania and Volhynia addressed a request to Levinsohn to write a book against this horrid libel.  At their suggestion he published his work Efes Damim, “No Blood!” (Vilna, 1837), [1] in the form of a dialogue between a Jewish sage and a Greek-Orthodox patriarch in Jerusalem.