The new Hebrew periodical _ha-Shahar_ [1] published several of his "contemporary epics" in which he vented his wrath against petrified Rabbinism.

He portrays the misery of a Jewish woman who is condemned to enter married life at the bidding of the marriage-broker, without love and without happiness, or he describes the tragedy of another woman whose future is wrecked by a "Dot over the _i_." [2] He lashes furiously the orthodox spiders, the official leaders of the community, who catch the young pioneers of enlightenment in the meshes of Kabal authority, backed by police force.

Climbing higher upon the ladder of history, the poet registers his protest against the predominance of the spiritual over the worldly element in the whole evolution of Judaism.

He assails the prophet Jeremiah who in beleaguered Jerusalem preaches submission to the Babylonians and strict obedience to the Law: the prophet, dressed up in the garb of a contemporary orthodox rabbi, was to be exhibited as a terrifying incarnation of the soulless formula "Law above Life." [3] [Footnote 1: See p.

218.] [Footnote 2: The title of a famous poem by Gordon, _Kotzo shel Yod_, literally "the tittle of the Yod" the smallest letter in the Hebrew alphabet.