In his first novel, "The Grocery Store" (1860), of little merit from the artistic point of view, he still appears as the naive bard of that shallow "enlightenment," the champion of which is sufficiently characterized by wearing a European costume, calling himself by a well-sounding German or Russian name (in the novel under discussion the hero goes by the name of Arnold), cultivating friendly relations with noble-minded Christians and making a love match unassisted by the marriage-broker.
[Footnote 1: In Russian, _Uchony Yevrey_, an expert in Jewish matters, attached, according to the Russian law of 1844, to the superintendents of school districts and to the governors-general within the Pale.] During this stage of his career, Levanda was convinced that "no educated Jew could help being a cosmopolitan." But a little later his cosmopolitanism displayed a distinct propensity toward Russification.

In his novel "A Hot Time" (1871-1872), Levanda renounces his former Polish sympathies, and, through the mouth of his hero Sarin, preaches the gospel of the approaching cultural fusion between the Jews and the Russians which is to mark a new epoch in the history of the Jewish people.

Old-fashioned Jewish life is cleverly ridiculed in his "Sketches of the Past" ("The Earlocks of my Mellammed," "Schoolophobia," etc., 1870-1875).

His peace of mind was not even disturbed by the manifestation, towards the end of the sixties, of the anti-Semitic reaction in those very official circles in which the "learned Jew" moved and in which Brafman was looked up to as an authority in matters appertaining to Judaism.

[1] But the catastrophe of 1881 dealt a staggering blow to Levanda's soul, and forced him to overthrow his former idol of assimilation.