“Yonah ben Amitai” [i.e. Mordechai Aaron Guenzburg]. Magid Emeth [critical review of Lilienthal’s Magid Yeshuah]

(LILIENTHAL, MAX).

J. H. Nagel

Leipzig

1843

Vinograd Leipzig 89; Chajes, Saul Otzar Beduyai Hashem no. 2336.

Mordechai Aaron Guenzburg (1795-1846) was one of the leading spokesmen of the Vilna Maskilim and founder of the first modern Jewish school in Lithuania. Of German origin, Max Lilienthal served in the Czarist government’s Ministry of Education seeking to enforce secular education upon Russian Jewry. The author here pokes fun at Lilienthal’s German background and although he certainly agrees that Russian Jewry needs to benefit from the Haskalah educational framework, he feels that Lilienthal is not the man to deliver as he does not comprehend the Russian-Jewish psyche.