Liliental (Lilienthal) Max (Menakhem) (1815, Munich — 1882, Cincinnati, USA) — public figure.

Max Liliental graduated from the University of Munich. In 1839–40 he headed the Riga Jewish School. In January 1841 he was invited to St Petersburg by the Minister of Public Education, S. Uvarov, to prepare a programme for the reform of Jewish education. In the same year Lilienthal published a book dedicated to Uvarov, “Preaching in the Synagogues of Riga and Others” (Predigten in der Synagoge zu Riga, etc., in German).

While preparing the reform programme he came into conflict with the orthodox Jewish community due to his strongly reformist position. In the summer of 1842 he travelled through the towns of the Pale of Settlement, urging Jews to support the government’s reform policy. In 1843 he took part in the work of the “commission established by Imperial decree for the education of the Jews”. In 1844 he left Russia. From 1845 he lived in the United States. He served as a rabbi in New York and from the 1850s in Cincinnati, where he also worked as a teacher, journalist, and publisher. He published a collection of poems “Freedom, Spring and Love” and a volume of sermons.

Literature:

Morgulis M. On the History of the Education of Russian Jews, in: Questions of Jewish Life. St Petersburg, 1889;

Beletsky A. The Question of the Education of Russian Jews in the Reign of Emperor Nicholas I. St Petersburg, 1894;

Wunderbar R. History of the Jews in the Provinces of Livonia and Courland. Mitau, 1853;

Fünn S. Safah le-Ne’emanim, pp. 171–74;

Marek P. Essays on the History of the Enlightenment of the Jews in Russia (Очерки пo истории просвещения евреев в России) . Moscow, 1910;

Tzinberg S. Isaac Ber Levinson and His Time, in: Evreiskaia Starina ( Исаак Бер Левинзон и его время Еврейская старина. 1910. Вып. IV) 1910, issue IV; Hessen Yu. The Shift of Social Currents (I. B. Levinson and M. Lilienthal), in: Perezhitoe (Гессен Ю. Смена общественных течений (И. Б. Левинзон и М. Лилиенталь) Пережитое. СПб., 1911. Т. III; Рукописные материалы; некоторые документы из переписки Л. Пережитое). . St Petersburg, 1911, vol. III; Manuscript materials and several documents from Lilienthal’s correspondence, in: Perezhitoe ( Рукописные материалы; некоторые документы из переписки Л. Пережитое). St Petersburg, 1911, vols. I–II.