[4] Lilien attended the Fifth Zionist Congress, held in Basel, as a member of the Democratic Fraction, an opposition group that supported the development of secular national culture.

[5] In 1905, at the Seventh Zionist Congress, in Basel, he, along with Boris Schatz, became a member of a committee formed to help establish the Bezalel Art School.

[1] Lilien was one of the two artists to accompany Boris Schatz to what is now Israel in 1906 for the purpose of establishing Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, and taught the school's first class in 1906.

Although his stay in the country was short-lived, he left his indelible stamp on the creation of an Eretz Israel style, placing biblical subjects in the Zionist context and oriental settings, conceived in an idealized Western design.

[4] Lilien's illustrated books include Juda (1900), Biblically themed poetry by Lilien's Christian friend, Börries Freiherr von Münchhausen, and Lieder des Ghetto (Songs of the Ghetto) (1903), Yiddish poems by Morris Rosenfeld translated into German.