time to time some new work in Hebrew, or even a periodical publication,
reached a library, the cataloguer classified it with theologic and
Rabbinic treatises, without taking the trouble to obtain information as
to the subject of the book or the purpose of the journal. In point of
fact, in the large majority of cases they were far enough removed from
Rabbinic controversy.

Sometimes it happened that one or another Hebraist was overcome with
astonishment at the sight of a Hebrew translation of a modern author.
And he stopped at that. He never went so far as to enable himself to
pass judgment upon it from the critical or the literary point of view.
To what purpose? he would ask himself. Hebrew has been dead these many
centuries, and to use it is an anachronism. He considered it only a
curiosity of literature, literary sleight of hand, nothing more.

The bare possibility of the existence of a modern literature in Hebrew
seemed so strange, so improbable, that the best-informed circles refused
to entertain the notion seriously--perhaps not without some semblance of
a reason for their incredulity.

The history of the development of modern Hebrew literature, its
character, the extraordinary conditions fostering it, its very
existence, are of a sort to surprise one who has not kept in touch with
the internal struggles, the intellectual currents that have agitated the
Judaism of Eastern Europe in the course of the past century.

So far from deserving a reputation for casuistry, modern Hebrew
literature is, if anything, distinctly rationalistic in character. It is
anti-dogmatic and anti-Rabbinic. Its avowed aim is to enlighten the
Jewish masses that have remained faithful to religious tradition, and to