Authors attributed their work to others, instead of claiming
the product of others as their own. Levinsohn's _Hefker Welt_, in
Yiddish, and _Sayings of the Saints_ and _Valley of the Dead_, in
Hebrew, belong to this category. But the deep student did not persist
long in this species of diversion. Wittgenstein, the field-marshal, and
professors at the Lyceum of his town, supplied him with books, and he,
an omnivorous reader, plunged again into his graver work, the result of
which was the little book since translated into English, Russian, and
German, _Efes Dammim_ (_No Blood!_). As the name indicates, it was
intended as a defence against the blood, or ritual murder, accusation.
It was the right word in the right time and place. In Zaslav, Volhynia,
this monstrous libel had been revived, and popular fury rose to a high
pitch. Several years later the Damascus Affair stirred the Jewish world
to determined action, designed to stamp it out once for all. To wage war
against this superstitious belief seems to have fallen to the lot of
several of Levinsohn's family. In 1757, when it asserted itself in
Yampoly, Volhynia, his great-uncle, by the unanimous consent of the
Council of the Four Countries, was sent to Rome to intercede with the
Pope.
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