You wish—­thus he addresses himself to the assimilationists—­you wish to be like the other people?  So do I. Be, I pray you, be like them.  Search and find knowledge, avoid and forsake superstition, above all be not ashamed of the rock whence you were hewn.  Yes, be like the other peoples, proud of your literature, jealous of your self-respect, hopeful, even as all persecuted peoples are hopeful, of the speedy arrival of the day when we, too, shall reinhabit the land which once was, and still is, our own.

But as the soil of Palestine, however regarded, is at present inaccessible to Jews as a national entity, the language once spoken in Palestine is so much the more to be cherished and cultivated by the exiled people.

You ask me—­he calls out again—­what good a dead language can do us?  I will tell you.  It confers honor on us, girds us with strength, unites us into one.  All nations seek to perpetuate their names.  All conquered peoples dream of a day when they will regain their independence....  We have neither monuments nor a country at present.  Only one relic still remains from the ruins of our ancient glory—­the Hebrew language.  Those, therefore, who discard the Hebrew tongue betray the Hebrew nation, and are traitors both to their race and their religion.

No less trenchant and outspoken was he against the serried array of self-styled “reformers” of Judaism.  He could not forgive the German rabbis and Russian Maskilim for presuming to “dictate” to their coreligionists what to select and what to reject in matters religious.  The whole movement he condemned as a mere imitation of Protestant Christianity.  To renovate Judaism!  What a stigma on a religion that had endured through the ages, and is rich in all that makes for holiness and right living!  The old garment needs no new patches.  It still fits and will fit “the eternal people” till time is no more.  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.  But he saw that in the home of Haskalah, the Biur, and the Meassefim, apostasy increased, Hebrew was almost forgotten, and Judaism was declining, and he blamed the pellucid water at the source of the stream for the muddy pool at its mouth.  Mendelssohn, however, lacked no defenders among his Russo-Jewish coreligionists, and their sentiments were voiced by Abraham Baer Gottlober in an opposition periodical, The Light of Day (Ha-Boker Or, Lublin, 1876).  “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.