whatever is not religion; and rich patrons refused to support a
literature that had not the _entree_ of good society,--while these
held aloof, the _Maskil_ ("the intellectual") of the small
provincial town, the Polish vagabond _Mehabber_ ("author"),
despised and unknown, often a martyr to his conviction, who devoted
himself heart, soul, and might to maintaining honorably the literary
traditions of Hebrew,--he alone remained faithful to what has been the
true mission of the Bible language since its beginnings.

It is a renewal of the ancient literary impulse of the humble, the
disinherited, whence first sprang the Bible. It is a repetition of the
phenomenon of the popular prophet-orators, reappearing in modern Hebrew
garb.

The return to the language and the ideas of an eventful past marks a
decisive stage in the perturbed career of the Jewish people. It
indicates the re-awakening of national feeling.

The history of modern Hebrew literature thus forms an extremely
instructive page in the history of the Jewish people. It is especially
interesting from the point of view of social psychology, furnishing, as
it does, valuable documents upon the course taken by new ideas in
impregnating surroundings that are characteristically obdurate toward
intellectual suggestions from without. The century-long struggle between
free-thinking and blind faith, between common sense and absurdity
consecrated by age and exalted by suffering, reveals an intense social
life, a continual clashing of ideas and sentiments.

It is a literature that offers us the grievous spectacle of poets and
writers who are constantly expressing their anxiety lest it disappear