Levinsohn, living amid a different environment, deemed it best
to convince his fellow-Jews that secular knowledge was necessary, and
religion sanctioned their pursuit thereof. Guenzburg, the man of letters,
determined to teach through the vehicle of Hebrew the true and the
beautiful wherever he found it. He felt called upon to reveal to his
brethren the grandeur of the world beyond the dingy ghetto, to tell them
the stories not contained in the Midrash, _Josippon_, or the biographies
of rabbis and zaddikim. He translated Campe's _Discovery of the New
World_, compiled a history of ancient civilization, and narrated the
epochal event of the nineteenth century, the conflict between Russia and
France. He taught his fellow-Jews to think correctly and logically, to
clothe their thoughts in beautiful expressions, and revealed his
innermost being to them in his autobiography, _Abi'ezer_. As a writer he
appears neither erudite nor profound. We cannot apply to his works what
we may safely say of Elijah Vilna's and Levinsohn's, that "there is
solid metal enough in them to fit out whole circulating libraries, were
it beaten into the usual filigree.
Pages:
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225
226
227
228