Hillel Zeitlin (1871-1942) embodied the intellectual and spiritual turbulence of early twentieth-century East European Jewry, forging a distinctive path from traditional Jewish education through secular philosophy and back to a transformed Torah-centered worldview. His journey as critic, mystic, and social reformer produced a unique critical methodology that transcended aesthetic analysis to probe authors' spiritual essence and their engagement with ultimate questions. Through close textual analysis of Zeitlin's literary criticism, religious writings, and social proposals, supplemented by contemporary accounts and biographical materials, a portrait emerges of a thinker who demanded total reader engagement and insisted on the inseparable connection between lived experience and textual understanding. Zeitlin's religious philosophy merged traditional Jewish mysticism with modern existential concerns, advocating for religious experience grounded in "amazement" rather than mere ritual observance. His ambitious social vision led to multiple attempts to establish elite circles of dedicated Jews who would transform society through Torah-centered living, though these initiatives failed to gain widespread traction. Zeitlin's synthesis of traditional learning, modern philosophical inquiry, and practical social engagement represents a singular response to the challenges facing Jewish civilization in modernity. His death in the Warsaw Ghetto in 1942 symbolically marked the end of the rich cultural world he sought to preserve and transform.