Moshe Leib Lilienblum

In an article entitled Orḥot ha-Talmud, in Ha-Meliẓ, 1868, he arraigned the superstitious beliefs and practises of his people, demanded the reform of Judaism, and insisted upon the necessity of establishing a "closer connection between religion and life."

This article, and others of the same nature to follow, stirred up the Jewish communities in Russia, and a storm of indignation against him arose among the more traditionalist Orthodox; he was denounced as a freethinker and his continued residence in Wilkomir became impossible.

The anti-Jewish riots of 1880 and 1881 however, aroused in Lilienblum a consciousness of the unsafe position of the Jews "in exile," and he wrote of his apprehensions in an article entitled Obshcheyevreiski Vopros i Palestina (in Razsvyet, 1881, Nos.

With the Hibbat Zion conference in Katowice, in which Lilienblum took an earnest and energetic part as secretary, representatives of European Jewry met and discussed the first plans for colonization in Palestine, a foundation stone was laid for the Zionist movement.

His Orḥot ha-Talmud, mentioned above, and his autobiography, Ḥaṭṭot Ne'urim (The Sins of Youth; Vienna, 1876), contain a description of his material and spiritual struggles; both made a marked impression upon the earlier period.