about him he witnessed "the dead bodies of
enlightenment, which are just as numerous as the victims of ignorance."
He saw the Jewish youth fleeing from its people and forgetting its
national language. He saw Reform Judaism of Western Europe which had
retained nothing of Jewish culture except the modernized
superficialities of the synagogue. Repelled by this spectacle,
Smolenskin decided from the very beginning to fight on two fronts:
against the fanatics of orthodoxy in the name of European progress, and
against the champions of assimilation in the name of national Jewish
culture, and more particularly of the Hebrew language. "You say,"
Smolenskin exclaims, addressing himself to the assimilators, "let us be
like the other nations. Well and good. Let us, indeed, be like the other
nations: cultured men and women, free from superstition, loyal citizens
of the country. But let us also remember, as the other nations do, that
we have no right to be ashamed of our origin, that it is our duty to
hold dear our national language and our national dignity."

[Footnote 1: See above, p. 218.]

In his first great novel "A Rover on Life's Paths" (_Ha-to-'eh bedarke
ha-hayyim_, 1869-1876), Smolenskin carries his hero through all the
stages of cultural development, leading from an obscure White Russian
hamlet to the centers of European civilization in London and Paris. But
at the end of his "rovings" the hero ultimately attains to a synthesis
of Jewish nationalism and European progress, and ends by sacrificing his
life while defending his brethren during the Odessa pogrom of 1871. The
other _Tendenz_-novels of Smolenskin reflect the same double-fronted
struggle: against the stagnation of the orthodox, particularly the
Hasidim, and against the disloyalty of the "enlightened."

Smolenskin's theory of Judaism is formulated in two publicistic works:
"The Eternal People" (_'Am 'olam_, [1] 1872) and "There is a Time to
Plant" (_'Et la-ta'at_ [2], 1875-1877). As a counterbalance to the
artificial religious reforms of the West, he sets up the far-reaching
principle of Jewish evolution, of a gradual amalgamation of the national
and humanitarian element within Judaism. The Messianic dogma, which the
Jews of the West had completely abandoned because of its alleged
incompatibility with Jewish citizenship in the Diaspora, is warmly
defended by Smolenskin as one of the symbols of national unity. In the
very center of his system stands the cult of He