Judah Loeb Gordon
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Judah Leib Gordon (, ; December 7, 1830 – September 16, 1892), also known as Leon Gordon, was among the most important
Hebrew Hebrew (; ''ʿÎbrit'') is a Northwest Semitic languages, Northwest Semitic language within the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family. A regional dialect of the Canaanite languages, it was natively spoken by the Israelites and ...
poets of the
Haskalah The ''Haskalah'' (; literally, "wisdom", "erudition" or "education"), often termed the Jewish Enlightenment, was an intellectual movement among the Jews of Central Europe, Central and Eastern Europe, with a certain influence on those in Wester ...
.


Biography

Gordon was born to well-to-do Jewish parents who owned a hotel in
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. As a privileged child, he was able to study ''
Torah The Torah ( , "Instruction", "Teaching" or "Law") is the compilation of the first five books of the Hebrew Bible, namely the books of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. The Torah is also known as the Pentateuch () ...
'' with some of the great educators of the city, and soon proved to be an exceptional student. He had already mastered the entire
Bible The Bible is a collection of religious texts that are central to Christianity and Judaism, and esteemed in other Abrahamic religions such as Islam. The Bible is an anthology (a compilation of texts of a variety of forms) originally writt ...
by the age of eleven, and was fluent in hundreds of pages of ''
Talmud The Talmud (; ) is the central text of Rabbinic Judaism and the primary source of Jewish religious law (''halakha'') and Jewish theology. Until the advent of Haskalah#Effects, modernity, in nearly all Jewish communities, the Talmud was the cen ...
.'' Matters took a sharp turn when Gordon was fourteen, and his father went
bankrupt Bankruptcy is a legal process through which people or other entities who cannot repay debts to creditors may seek relief from some or all of their debts. In most jurisdictions, bankruptcy is imposed by a court order, often initiated by the de ...
. Unable to finance his son's education any longer, the younger Gordon began a course of independent study at one of the many study halls in the city. In just three years, he had mastered almost the entire Talmud and dozens of other religious texts. By that time, however, he was also drawn by the spirit of the Enlightenment that was sweeping across the city. He began reading secular
literature Literature is any collection of Writing, written work, but it is also used more narrowly for writings specifically considered to be an art form, especially novels, Play (theatre), plays, and poetry, poems. It includes both print and Electroni ...
and learning foreign languages, and he befriended some of the leading
Haskalah The ''Haskalah'' (; literally, "wisdom", "erudition" or "education"), often termed the Jewish Enlightenment, was an intellectual movement among the Jews of Central Europe, Central and Eastern Europe, with a certain influence on those in Wester ...
figures of the time, including
Kalman Schulman Kalman Schulman (1819 – 2 January 1899) was a Jewish writer who pioneered modern Hebrew literature. Life Schulman was born in 1819 in Bykhaw, Mogilev Governorate, Russian Empire, Russia. He came from a Hasidic Judaism, Hassidic family. Schul ...
, the poet
Abraham Dob Bär Lebensohn Abraham Dov Ber Lebensohn (; – November 19, 1878), also known by the pen names Abraham Dov-Ber Michailishker () and Adam ha-Kohen (), was a Lithuanian Jewish Hebraist, poet and educator. Biography Avraham Dov Ber Lebenson was born in Katloŭ ...
and his son Micah Joseph Lebensohn. With the financial situation deteriorating at home, Gordon, then twenty-two, decided it was time for him to pursue a career. He received a teaching certificate from the local rabbinical college, and became a school teacher in some of the smaller towns that housed major ''
yeshiva A yeshiva (; ; pl. , or ) is a traditional Jewish educational institution focused on the study of Rabbinic literature, primarily the Talmud and halacha (Jewish law), while Torah and Jewish philosophy are studied in parallel. The stu ...
s'', including Ponivezh and Telz. During the twenty years he spent as a teacher, he produced his most important work as a poet and author. In late 1871 Gordon was invited by the
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community of
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to serve as secretary of both the community and the Society for the Spread of Enlightenment among the Jews of Russia; after several months of negotiations, he accepted the dual position for a three-month trial period, beginning in June 1872. Welcoming the move to the cosmopolitan Russian capital, and finding his activities on behalf of the community and the society well suited to his aspirations to contribute to the modernization of Jewish life, he quickly made himself indispensable in his post, and the community offered him a permanent contract, which he accepted. He continued in this position continuously for nearly seven years. In May 1879 he was arrested for purported anti-czarist activities, and exiled for some months to
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, in the Olonets district, before finally being cleared of the charges in 1880; it was a blow to him that the Saint Petersburg community chose not to reinstate him in his post upon his return. That same year Gordon became an editor for the Hebrew newspaper ''
Ha-Melitz ''HaMelitz'' (Hebrew: ) was the first Hebrew newspaper in the Russian Empire. It was founded by Alexander Zederbaum in Odessa in 1860. History ''HaMelitz'' first appeared as a weekly, and it began to appear daily in 1886. From 1871, it was publis ...
''; and, despite frequent conflict with the newspaper's founder and editor-in-chief, Aleksander Zederbaum, he continued in that capacity until 1888.


Literary work

Gordon took a leading part in the modern revival of the Hebrew language and culture. His
satire Satire is a genre of the visual, literary, and performing arts, usually in the form of fiction and less frequently non-fiction, in which vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, often with the intent of exposin ...
s did much to rouse the Russian Jews to a new sense of the reality of life, and Gordon was the apostle of enlightenment in the
ghetto A ghetto is a part of a city in which members of a minority group are concentrated, especially as a result of political, social, legal, religious, environmental or economic pressure. Ghettos are often known for being more impoverished than other ...
s. Much of his poetry revolves around biblical and historical themes. These include ''The Love of David and Michal'' (1857), ''King Zedekiah in Prison'' (1879), ''Judah's Parables'' (1859), ''David and Barzilai'', ''Osenath, Daughter of Potiphera'', ''From between the Lion's Teeth'', and ''From the Depths of the Sea''. His works were intended to disseminate Enlightenment values and had a profound impact on Jewish life. Gordon also published collections of fables, most of them translated. In works such as "Little Fables for Big Children", he continues to advocate for the adoption of Enlightenment values, as he does in his memoirs, published in the last year of his life. Among his other writing on social issues is "The Point on Top of the
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" (''Kotzo shel yud''), dealing with the rights of women. The poem, which he dedicated to his friend the Hebraist Miriam Markel-Mosessohn,Balin, Carole B. (March 1, 2009)
Miriam Markel-Mosessohn
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describes a narrow-minded rabbi who destroys a woman's chance for happiness by invalidating her ''get'' (divorce document) – due to a trifling spelling mistake. His poems were collected in four volumes, ''Kol Shire Yehudah'' (St. Petersburg, 1883–1884); his novels in ''Kol Kitbe Yehuda'' (''Collected Writings of Gordon'',
Odessa ODESSA is an American codename (from the German language, German: ''Organisation der ehemaligen SS-Angehörigen'', meaning: Organization of Former SS Members) coined in 1946 to cover Ratlines (World War II aftermath), Nazi underground escape-pl ...
, 1889).


References


Further reading

* * * Stanislawski, Michael (1988). ''"For Whom Do I Toil?": Judah Leib Gordon and the Crisis of Russian Jewry''. New York: Oxford University Press. *


External links

* * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Gordon, Judah Leib 1830 births 1892 deaths 19th-century poets Hebrew-language poets Hebrew-language writers Jewish poets Lithuanian Jews Lithuanian satirists Lithuanian novelists Lithuanian satirical novelists Modern Hebrew writers People of the Haskalah