Seething Times

Lev Levanda was a Russian-language journalist and author, born and educated in Minsk. A strong supporter of the Haskalah, Levanda worked for the tsarist government and held the title Jewish Expert, overseeing the development of curricula for state-run Jewish schools. He wrote extensively for Jewish periodicals, including Rassvet, Sion, Evreiskaia biblioteka, Russkii evrei, and Voskhod, advocating against both traditionalism and assimilation, and promoting Jewish self-defense and early Zionism. While his fiction was considered stylistically subpar both in its day and by later critics, its sophisticated political engagement earned him recognition by contemporaries and later scholars alike. His Seething Times depicted reactions by Jews to the Polish uprising of 1863.