trades. His profound scholarship, the gentleness and sincerity of his
writings, earned for him the respect of even the most orthodox. His
_Bet-Yehudah_ ("The House of Judah") and _Te'udah be-Yisrael_
("Testimony in Israel") are pleas in favor of modern schooling. In
"Zerubbabel" he treats of questions of Hebrew philology, and with the
help of documents he annihilates the legend of the ritual murder in his
_Efes-Dammim_ ("No Blood!"). _Ahijah ha-Shiloni_ is a defense
of Talmudic Judaism against its Christian detractors. Besides, Levinsohn
wrote a number of other things, epigrams, articles, and essays.
[Footnote: We owe a new edition of all his works to Nathansohn, Warsaw,
1880-1900.]

The contemporaries of Levinsohn exaggerated the importance of the
literary part of his work. Not much of it, outside of his philologic
studies, deserves to be called literary, and even they often fall below
the mark on account of the simplicity of his views, and especially on
account of his prolixity and his awkward diction and style. Also the
direct influence which he has exerted upon Jews is less considerable
than once was thought. Upon Hasidism he made no impression whatsoever.
In Lithuania, to be sure, his works were widely read by the Jews, but in
that home of the Hebrew language the subject-matter and arguments of an
author play but little part in giving vogue to what is written in the
Biblical language.

By his self-abnegation and his wretched fortunes, his isolated life in a
remote town, weak in body yet working for the elevation of his co-
religionists, he won the admiration of his contemporaries without
exception.

The fame of the solitary idealist of Kremenetz spread until it reached