Lilienblum, Moses Leib

(1843–1910)

   Hebrew writer, religious reformer and Zionist. Lilienblum received an Orthodox education in Lithuania, but became a socialist, believing this would end anti-Semitism. The pogroms of 1881 changed his ideas and he turned to Zionism.

   He settled in Odessa and wrote in vehement articles that while the winds of change were sweeping through the intellectual world, the learned rabbis still pored over ancient books and were excited only about some new comment on a biblical text. He analyzed anti-Semitism and the rising tide of nationalism, and concluded that ‘aliens we are and aliens we shall remain… We need a corner of our own. We need Palestine’.

   As an adherent of the Chibbat Zion movement, he was one of the thirty-six delegates to the Kattowitz Conference in 1882. After the conference he was constantly involved in raising funds for the struggling Palestine farm settlements, and in fighting the Orthodox injunction that all work on the land had to stop every seven years. When HERZL organized the Zionist movement, he became an active member, in the faction of the ‘practical Zionists’. Lilienblum wrote his autobiography in 1873–6 and a play in Yiddish called Zerubbabel (1887). A collection of his writings was published in four volumes after his death (1910–13).