Here he published in 1870 his rhymed satire _Kehal refa'im_, [2] in which the dark shadows of a Jewish town, the Kahal elders, the rabbis, the Tzaddiks, and other worthies, move weirdly about in the gloom of the nether-world.
[Footnote 1: In the government of Kovno.] [Footnote 2: "The Congregation of the Dead," with allusion to Prov.
21.16.] In Odessa Lilienblum joined the ranks of the Russified college youth, and became imbued with the radical ideas of Chernyshevski and Pisaryev, gaining the reputation of a "nihilist." His theory of Jewish reform, superannuated by his new materialistic world view, was thrown aside, and a gaping void opened in the soul of the writer.

This frame of mind is reflected in Lilienblum's self-revelation, "The Sins of Youth" (_Hattot ne'urim_, 1876), this agonizing cry of one of the many victims of the mental cataclysm of the sixties.

The book made a tremendous impression, for the mental tortures depicted in it were typical of the whole age of transition.

However, the final note of the confession, the shriek of a wasted soul, which, having overthrown the old idols, has failed to find a new God, did not express the general trend of that period, which was far from despair.
As for our author, his tempestuous soul was soon set at rest.

The events which filled the minds of progressive Jewry with agitation, the horrors of the pogroms and the political oppression of the beginning of the eighties, brought peace to the aching heart of Lilienblum.