1830-1892), who began by
composing biblical epics and moralistic fables, soon entered the field
of "intellectual poetry," and became the champion of enlightenment and a
trenchant critic of old-fashioned Jewish life. As far back as 1863,
while active as a teacher at a Crown school [1] in Lithuania, he
composed his "Marseillaise of Enlightenment" (_Hakitzah 'ammi_, "Awake,
My People"). In it he sang of the sun shedding its rays over the "Land
of Eden," where the neck of the enslaved was freed from the yoke and
where the modern Jew was welcomed with a brotherly embrace. The poet
calls upon his people to join the ranks of their fellow-countrymen, the
hosts of cultured Russian citizens who speak the language of the land,
and offers his Jewish contemporaries the brief formula: "Be a man on the
street and a Jew in the house," [2] i.e., be a Russian in public and a
Jew in private life.

[Footnote 1: See on the Crown schools pp. 74 and 77.]

[Footnote 2: _Heye adam be-tzeteka, wihudi be-oholeka._]

Gordon himself defined his function in the work of Jewish regeneration
to be that of exposing the inner ills of the people, of fighting
rabbinical orthodoxy and the tyranny of ceremonialism. This carping
tendency, which implies a condemnation of the whole historic structure
of Judaism, manifested itself as early as 1868 in his "Songs of Judah"
(_Shire Yehudah_), in strophes radiant with the beauty of their Hebrew
diction:

To live by soulless rites hast thou been taught,
To swim against life, and the lifeless letter to keep;
To be dead upon earth, and in heaven alive,
To dream while awake, and to speak while asleep.

During the seventies, Gordon joined the ranks of the official agents of
enlightenment. He removed to St. Petersburg, and became secretary of the
Society for the Diffusion of Enlightenment. The new Hebrew periodical
_ha-Shahar_ [1] published several of his "contemporary epics" in which
he vented his wrath against petrified Rabbinism. He portrays the misery
of a Jewish woman who is condemned to enter married life at the bidding
of the marriage-broker, without love and without happiness, or he
describes the tragedy of another woman whose future is wrecked by a "Dot
over the _i_." [2] He lashes furiously the orthodox spiders, the official
leaders of the community, who catch the young pioneers of enlightenment
in the meshes of Kabal authority, backed by police force. Climbing
higher upon the ladder of his