After a failed second marriage, in 1830, he married for the third time and settled in Kremenetz, where he formed a lasting acquaintance with Isaac Baer Levinsohn.

Gottlober's next important work was the Bikoret le-Toledot ha-Kara'im, a critical investigation of the history of the Karaites, with notes by Abraham Firkovich (Vilna, 1865).

In the same year were published his Yerushalayim, a translation of Mendelssohn's Jerusalem, with an introduction, and his allegorical drama Tif'eret li-Bene Binah (Zhitomir, 1867), modeled after Moshe Chaim Luzzatto's La-Yesharim Tehillah.

His Iggeret Tza'ar Ba'ale Ḥayyim (Zhitomir, 1868) is a polemic against Abraham Uri Kovner [he]'s critical work "Ḥeker Dabar."

He also wrote several short Hebrew novels, and translated Lessing's Nathan the Wise, to which he added a biography of the author (Vienna, 1874).

Gottlober was the founder and editor of the Hebrew monthly Ha-Boker Or [Wikidata], to which some of the best contemporary writers contributed poems, articles, and stories.

His most important contribution to this magazine was undoubtedly his autobiography Zikronot mi-Yeme Ne'urai, containing much material for the culture-history of the Jews of Russia, which was reprinted in book form at Warsaw, 1880–81.