Moshe Leib Lilienblum: Biography
Born: October 22, 1843, Keidany;
Died: 1910, Odessa
Moshe Leib Lilienblum was a Jewish-Russian writer, scholar, and Zionist. He was born in the town of Keidany on October 22, 1843. He received a traditional Jewish education and was steeped in the Talmud. At the age of 13, he organized a boy’s club which focused on studying “En Ya’akob.” When he turned 15, he married and lived in Wilkomir.
Although he received a traditional Talmudic education, Lilienblum also devoured the writings of the Maskilim. The Maskilim were a group of Jews during the Jewish Enlightenment or Haskalah, who advocated for various reforms in Judaism. Lilienblum read these works and was unhappy at the state of Jewish education and religious practice. He became an advocate for reforming Judaism and wrote an article where Lilienblum “insisted upon the necessity of establishing a ‘closer connection between religion and life.’”1 This article was very controversial amongst the Orthodox Jewish community, who gave him the label of “freethinker.” This controversy would prove to be so great as to prevent him from living in his city and so he would move to Odessa. There he had hoped to attend university and get a Western education, but abandoned his plans shortly after.
He continued to write about reform in Judaism; he published multiple articles titled “Jewish Life Questions” in a Yiddish newspaper. Here Lilienblum criticized Jewish life politically, economically, culturally, and morally. He also critiqued Haskalah literature and its separation from daily life saying “all human beings live on earth, but the Jews live in heaven. Even modern Jewish literature has not yet managed to come down to earth, and most of it hovers in the air.”2
In the 1870s, Russian Jews were suffering economically. Lilienblum proposed a solution as organizing a mass transfer of Jews to agricultural colonies. This was not a new idea as other Maskilim have already advocated for this prior, supporting their argument with agricultural colonies in Ukraine that turned out a success. Lilienblum argued for his solution through a utilitarian lens.3
Lilienblum became a Zionist during a wave of antisemitic riots in the 1880s which changed his thinking on the safety of Jews in exile. During antisemtic pogroms in Odessa on May 5 and May 7 he wrote “how good that I was tortured. For it has happened to me, at least once in the days of my life, to feel what my ancestors felt every day of their lives… how great now is my satisfaction, because I have been able to know and feel the life of my nation during the exile.”4 His beliefs on human reason, progress, and Jewish integration that was founded in the Jewish Enlightenment declined. He believed that Jews in Europe were too foreign to Europeans to be able to integrate successfully, and said that economic success would not give Jews civil rights but put them in danger of violence. He discussed his worries in an article he wrote titled “Obshcheyevreiski Vopros i Palestina.” In this article he discusses the Jewish question, writing that Jewish immigration to Palestine is the only solution. In 1883, he served as secretary for the committee organized in Odessa for Jewish settlement in Palestine called Lovers of Zion. Leo Pinsker, a Practical Zionist would serve as President of the committee. Jews from all over Europe met at this committee conference discussing the settlement of Palestine. Lilienblum did not give up all his ideas developed during the Jewish Enlightenment, he continuously advocated for agricultural colonies only in the Land of Israel instead of Europe. He also opposed Ahad Ha’am, a Cultural Zionist who criticized his support for settlement in Palestine.
Moshe Leib Lilienblum died in 1910 in Odessa.5
