The Flowering of Yiddish Literature

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The Flowering of Yiddish Literature

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ALSO BY SOL LIPTZIN

GENERATION OF DECISION

GERMANY'S STEPCHILDREN ARTHUR SCHNITZLER SHELLEY IN GERMANY RICHARD BEER-HOFMANN

THE WEAVERS IN GERMAN LITERATURE LYRIC PIONEERS

OF MODERN GERMANY

THE ENGLISH LEGEND OF HEINRICH HEINE HISTORICAL

SURVEY OF GERMAN

LITERATURE

FROM NOVALIS TO NIETZSCHE

ELIAKUM ZUNSER PERETZ HEINE

!

The Flowering of Yiddish Literature

by

Sol Liptzin

New York. Thomas Yoseloff, Publisher · London

1963 by A. S. Barnes and Company, Inc.

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 63-18244

Thomas Yoseloff, Publisher 8 East 36th Street

New York 16, N. Y.

Thomas Yoseloff Ltd

18 Charing Cross Road

London W.C.2, England

9910

Printed in the United States of America

Contents

CHAPTER

I

PAGE

The New Dawn

11

Mendele

20

III

The Theater of Goldfaden

33

IV

Rise of the Yiddish Press

52

Lyric Pioneers

63

The Sentimental Novel

76

Sholom Aleichem

88

Peretz

98

II

V VI

VII VIII

IX

Wider Horizons

117

X

The Social Lyric

131

Golden Era of the Yiddish Theater

149

The Battle of Ideas

165

XIII

Sholem Asch

178

XIV

The Pure Lyric

190

The Lyric of Young America

206

H. Leivick

219

Bibliography

236

Index

243

XI

XII

XV XVI

Preface

THE PRESENT VOLUME deals with the Flowering of Yiddish Literature. After generations of ebbing vitality, this literature began to stir again in the first half of the nineteenth century. It achieved its first important. triumphs in the 1860's and

1870's. It reached its apex on the eve of World War I. Then the Classical Triumvirate of Mendele, Peretz, and Sholom

Aleichem were at the height of their influence; the Yiddish theater flourished

in

the Old

World and the New;

and

readers of the Yiddish press were numbered in the millions. While the present volume discusses literary movements and

writers whose initial impact was felt before 1914, it continues the analysis of their subsequent development until the present day. A second volume will deal with contemporary Yiddish writers and movements that have arisen since World War I,

the unleashing of new creative forces in the 1920's, the twilight of the 1930's, the deluge of the 1940's and the renewal of

hope in the 1950's.

The Flowering of Yiddish Literature

The New Dawn

I

ALTHOUGH THE HISTORY of Yiddish literature goes back to the

birth of the Yiddish language almost a thousand years ago, it reached maturity only a century ago. Since the founding of the first influential Yiddish periodical Kol Mevasser in 1862 and since the decision of the highly gifted Hebrew writer Mendele Mokher Sforim in 1863 to turn from the revered

sacred tongue to the vernacular in order to reach a wider audience,

Yiddish has experienced

a century

of

literary

growth, efflorescence, and decline. Is its present golden glow a reflection of its setting glory or

are there already premonitions of another dawn? The com ing generation, which will determine the character of Jewish

cultural survival in the lands of Jewish dispersion, will also determine the viability of Yiddish, which is still the inter

national medium of communication among Jews but which has been most grievously hurt by the blood-letting in our generation.

Yiddish literature may be defined as the expression of Yiddish-speaking Jews, whose home a century ago was Europe between the Baltic and the Black Seas, the Oder and the Dnieper Rivers, and who are at present scattered over all

continents. Ever since the Middle Ages Ashkenazaic Jewry, from which stem most of today's Jews, has made use of

Yiddish as the principal oral medium of communication, even

though until about a hundred years ago Hebrew, the tongue of the Bible, was preferred as the written medium. 11

The Flowering of Yiddish Literature

12

Of all the languages spoken by Jews during two millen nia of dispersion-Aramaic, Greek, Arabic, Judeo-Persian, Ladino, and lesser known vernaculars-Yiddish has had the

widest vogue in space and time. At the outbreak of the Second World War, the Yiddish-speaking groups numbered about ten million or about sixty per cent of the Jewish population of

the globe. Approximately half of this number perished during the years when the Nazis overran Europe. Of the surviving

half, the overwhelming majority is to be found in North and South America, Russia, and Israel. In these territories, almost

all persons whose mother tongue was Yiddish are today bilingual or multilingual, with ever increasing proficiency in English, Spanish, Russian, or Hebrew. Four main components entered into the formation of Yid dish: Hebrew, Laaz-the Jewish correlates of Old French and Old Italian-German, and Slavic. Of these, medieval German of the Middle Rhine region was most important, supplying far more than three-quarters of its vocabulary as well as its basic grammatical structure. Hebrew, as the oldest

component, still predominates in the religious and intellectual vocabulary of Yiddish. The Romance component was more noticeable in Old Yiddish than in contemporary speech. The Slavic component was richest in areas of daily practical activities; but borrowings from English, which have become increasingly

significant

during

recent

decades,

have

been

crowding out older terms derived from Russian, Polish, and

Czech. Since the rise of Israel, many neo-Hebrew words have

been added. The basic structure of the language, however, has not been seriously affected by the recent vocabulary changes.

Since the formation of initial Yiddish, from the years 1000 to 1250, the language has undergone constant growth and modification. It has become customary to make a chronolo gical distinction between Old Yiddish, from 1250 to 1500;

The New Dawn

13

Middle Yiddish, from 1500 to 1750; and Modern Yiddish,

from 1750 on. It is also possibble to make a spatial distinction

ever since the sixteenth century between Western Yiddish, now nearing extinction, and Eastern Yiddish, which could be subdivided

since

the eighteenth

century into a northern

dialect centering in Lithuania and a southern dialect extend ing from Poland to the Ukraine and Rumania.

With the mass immigration of Yiddish-speaking Jews into the United States during the closing decades of the nineteenth century and the early decades of the present century, the southern dialect dominated on the theatrical stage while the

northern dialect was preferred on the lecture platform. In daily speech, however, every variety of pronunciation was tolerated in the New World. Because of the decline of the

Yiddish theater and because of the ever-present need for a common pronunciation to be taught in Yiddish schools on all continents, the northern dialect has been forging ahead as the standard.

A uniform spelling for Yiddish has not yet been achieved, but the spelling reforms recommended in 1936 by a confer ence of linguists and educators under the auspices of the Yivo

Institute for Jewish Research have had a profound impact. Although some Yiddish newspapers still adhere to an older

spelling and although publications in the Soviet Union since the

1920's abandoned the traditional spelling of Hebrew

words in Yiddish for a more phonetic system, order has gradually been evolving out of the chaotic multiplicity of

forms and it is anticipated that the Great Yiddish Dictionary, which began to appear in 1961, as well as the increasing

efforts of Yivo and other academic groups to solve this prob lem, will before long result in a universally accepted spelling standard.

The oldest dated work in Yiddish literature goes back to 1382, a manuscript found in Egypt and containing four epic

The Flowering of Yiddish Literature

14

poems based on biblical and post-biblical aggadic themes. However, Yiddish biblical glosses and glossaries can be traced back still further. Extant glossaries, which helped to explain

difficult Hebrew words, are primarily of interest to linguists and have no literary value. The oldest surviving literary crea tions

in Yiddish

were

the

products of

medieval Jewish

minstrels who sang not only of ancient heroes such as Abraham, Joseph, Moses, Samuel, David, and Solomon, but also of Arthurian knights and famed warriors of European folklore whose exploits were delighting audiences in non Jewish tongues. The coming of the printing press furthered the dissemination of these poetic ballads and epics but even more their recasting as prose romances. Secular Yiddish works

made their appearance alongside of Yiddish translations and

paraphrases of biblical books. Eli Levita, also known as Eliyahu Bakhur (1469-1549), the

most prominent Yiddish poet of his day, excelled in

the

adaptation of both religious and secular themes. But, while

his translation of the Psalms published in 1545 served chiefly the utilitarian purpose of aiding pious maidens and the few men who were not too well versed in Hebrew, his Yiddish

heroic epic Bovo-Bukh, dealing with the adventures of the

wise and God-fearing Sir Bovo d'Antona or Bevis of Hampton and composed in ottava-rima in Padua about

1507,

was

designed to entertain. And entertain it did, generation after

generation. Its many reprints during four centuries, especially as the prose chapbook Bovo-Maase, were so popular that the expression "Bovo-Maase" or "Bobo-Maase" was soon used to

designate any adventure story that verged on the incredible.

Since "bobo" is also the Yiddish word for grandmother, the expression has currently come to connote a grandmother's tale

or old wives' tale and its relationship to the original knightly romance has sunk into oblivion.

More popular even than the secular Bovo-Bukh was the

The New Dawn

15

religious work of the sixteenth century, Tseno-Ureno, which might be designated as the women's bible. Compiled by Jacob

Ashkenazi (1550-1628), its chapters parallel the weekly por tions of the Torah but do not translate them literally. Rather,

by means of parables, legends, admonitions, and descriptions of heaven and hell, the book emphasizes the moral lessons

which can be derived from the biblical passages. The Tseno Ureno has been recited in a chanting voice by millions of women down the years and is still being reprinted. Similar in moral intent were the devotional prayers in Yid

dish composed for women, often by women. These Tkhines circulated as penny booklets but also as insertions in richly

bound prayer-books. Pious pleas to the creater of the universe and the lord of life and death, they often survive as pages yellowed with age and sodden with the tears of mothers and

grandmothers who poured out their hearts in anguish and hope, as they read aloud or chanted the Yiddish phrases. There were Tkhines not only for normal occasions such as those to be uttered before the lighting of candles on the eve of

the Sabbath or before leaving for the synagogue on the morn ing of a holiday, but also for special situations such as one to

be recited by a woman who was childless and longing for off spring, another by a wife whose husband was away from home on business or unable to provide her with her daily sustenance,

a third by a mother who was about to give birth, and a fourth by a mother whose son was straying from the path of righteous ness or whose daughter was of marriageable age. There was a

prayer for women who must summon up strength to resist

temptations of all sorts. The most alluring temptation and

apparently the hardest to resist, was the temptation to clothe the body in splendid garments. And yet it had to be over

come, because a woman garbed in gaudy finery might arouse improper thoughts in the minds of men. Many of these Tkhines are ascribed to Sarah bas Tovim, a figure half real

16

The Flowering of Yiddish Literature

and half mythical, a woman of the Ukrainian town of Satanov

who had herself supposedly erred during her young days and who was therefore condemned to wander eternally over the face of the earth. As partial atonement for her sins, she was

writing prayers for women admonishing them to be moral and pious, so that they might be spared a tragic fate like her own.

Yiddish literature was often oriented towards women-readers because Jewish women were not generally learned in Hebrew

as were Jewish men, of whom considerable proficiency in the sacred tongue was required. Scholars, in their serious writings, therefore disdained the use of the Yiddish vernacular and

labelled it a jargon unworthy of survival. The militant fol lowers of the rationalist German philosopher Moses Mendels

sohn, who set out to reform and to renovate Jewish life, were able to effect a substitution of German for Yiddish in Central

Europe but they were unsuccessful in uprooting Yiddish in Eastern Europe. Indeed, the most ardent Maskilim or Men of Enlightenment had to resort, in Russia, Poland, and Galicia,

to this despised jargon of the masses in order to reach the very people whom they wished to enlighten and to modernize. In doing so, they were following the example of their most

vigorous antagonists, the mystics or Hassidim. While the religious movement of Hassidism owed its success

since the eighteenth century chiefly to its joyous affirmation

of life, it was able to disseminate its doctrines more rapidly and to reach out to every village and hamlet because it resorted

to Yiddish in prayers, songs, and parables. The tales of wonder working rabbis were generally spread by word of mouth but,

whenever some of these stories were printed in Yiddish, they were read to shreds. Some Hassidic booklets were printed in

editions of thirty thousand copies but now survive only in rare copies. The tales of Israel Baal Shem Tov (1700-1760), the founder of Hassidism, and of Levi Yitzhok of Berditchev

(1740-1809), the most compassionate of the Hassidic saintly

The New Dawn

17

figures, and especially of Rabbi Nakhman Bratslaver (1772 1810), the most talented weaver of narratives, moved hearts

and stirred imaginations because of the intimate Yiddish form. At first shamefacedly and often anonymously, scholars and learned Hebraists turned to Yiddish in order to combat the

Hassidim, whom they regarded as an ignorant, superstitious

sect, and in order to propagate their own ideas of cultural assimilation and religious reformation. But soon they saw in Yiddish a more suitable vehicle to interest and to entertain

readers even while sermonizing. Though they never wholly

renounced their main didactic objective, they courted popu larity by appealing to emotion and fantasy and by using the stylistic devices of their Yiddish adversaries. Among such Yid

dish pioneers of the Haskalah were Isaac Baer Levinsohn (1788-1860), whose satiric dialogue Die Hefker-Velt Wanton

(The

World) circulated for sixty years in hand-written

copies until published by Sholom Aleichem in 1888; Israel Aksenfeld (1787-1866), who only succeeded in having two

Yiddish playlets appear in print during his lifetime; Shlome

Ettinger (1799-1855), a physician who failed to have his fables in verse and his comedy Serkele published before his death but who is today regarded by many as the most talented and the most elegant of the pre-Classical masters of Yiddish; and Abraham Baer Gottlober (1811-1899), whose Yiddish songs resounded from the lips of many who were indifferent to his

closely reasoned Hebrew essays. None of these writers, however, despite their greater eru dition, could elicit a popular response comparable to that achieved by the story-teller of Vilna, Isaac Meir Dick (1814 1893) or the bard of Vilna, Eliakum Zunser (1836-1913).

Dick initiated the publication of Yiddish narratives on a grand scale. In his early years he acquired a moderate reputa tion as a Hebrew scholar and at first shared in the prejudice of

the Maskilim towards the so-called jargon of the masses. But, when in the 1850's he stooped to write simple tales in the

The Flowering of Yiddish Literature

18

despised

vernacular,

he

found a response far

beyond

his

expectations. One hundred thousand copies of his booklets were circulated within a few years and many times this num ber during the four decades of his literary activity. Such a vast reading audience had never been equalled by the best Hebrew writers. Many of Dick's tales have failed to come

down to us, despite their large editions, because they were passed around from reader to reader until they crumbled to bits. His published booklets have been estimated to number between three hundred and four hundred.

Dick introduced

into

Yiddish literature the sentimental

novel, the realistic novel, and the historical novel. His main

objective was to teach ethical conduct and to broaden the

intellectual horizon of the common man by feeding him maxims and information by means of exciting narratives and anecdotes. His satire is milder than that of other Maskilim and

often yields to pure humor. His works teach love of Jewishness

and tolerance towards non-Jewishness and abandonment of the traditional medieval dress but retention of Torah.

Dick was hailed by Sholom Aleichem in 1888 as one of the

four giants of Yiddish literature, but soon thereafter his repu tation began to wane and his works are today important mainly

as a storehouse of the folklore of Eastern European Jewry. Zunser was affectionately known as the people's bard. His creative life spanned the decades from the Crimean War to the

eve of World War I. He faithfully recorded in song the reactions of the common man to the counsels of despair and to the messianic panaceas, as well as to the less sensational but more practical wisdom of original Jewish thinkers. As

badchen at weddings and at public festivities, he brought cheer and

merriment to ever-widening audiences and

helped to

lighten, with his heart-warming verses and catchy tunes, burdensome days and sorrow-laden nights in ghetto commun ities. His songs lulled to sleep the child in its cradle. They accompanied venturesome youth as it set forth across the

The New Dawn

19

Atlantic in search of a brighter future. They seeped into the

hearts of aging fathers and mothers left behind in pogrom ridden provinces. They reawakened Jewish national feeling long before the call of Theodor Herzl. For the first pioneers who set out for Israel in 1882 Zunser composed the words

and melodies of such songs as Shivas Zion (Return to Zion) and Die Sokhe (The Plow). The former is a lyric monologue

of Mother Zion, long widowed and deprived of her beloved children, who at long last beholds the first of her offspring returning to her. The latter hymns the joy of labor. In the plow lies bliss and blessedness, life's true essence. The poet

invokes God's help for the heroic Jewish youth as it sets out to till the soil of the Holy Land.

As the popular bards began to reduce their improvised oral

chants to printed texts and as the Maskilim adapted to the

speech of the masses the literary patterns, skills, and nuances

which they had borrowed from German, Russian or Polish and which they had earlier incorporated into their Hebrew publications, Yiddish became a more subtle medium of expres sion for an ever wider range of subjects and ideas.

The innovator who succeeded in elevating the spoken tongue of Eastern European Jewry to a literary level of the highest order was Sholem Yakob Abramovitch (1836-1917), who is best known under his pseudonym of Mendele Mokher Sforim and who is often referred to as the grandfather of Yiddish Literature.

Mendele

II

A

MAP

OF

THE

RUSSIAN

PALE

would

show

hundreds

of

communities in which Jewish life flourished for many gener ations and which are now completely denuded of Jewish inhabitants. But one would search in vain for the names of

Tuneyadevke, Glupsk, or Kabzansk. These towns belong to

mythical geography and yet they stand vividly before us with their dark alleys, their decaying hovels, their dusty roads, their

market-squares teeming with colorful crowds. These towns are the embodiment of the many Jewish settlements between the Black Sea and the Baltic through which coursed the stream

of generations and into which a gifted writer breathed the breath of life. This writer was Mendele Mokher Sforim, the

grandfather of Yiddish literature. Mendele was undoubtedly the ablest exponent of Yiddish Naturalism and the traits which were characteristic of Euro

pean naturalism from Emile Zola to Gerhart Hauptmann were also to be found in him. Chronologically however, he preceded the masters of European naturalism and was unin fluenced by them. Nor did the ablest Russian Realists, Ivan

Turgenev and Leo Tolstoy, who were his contemporaries, leave an enduring impress upon any of his works. The only

Russian whom Mendele unconsciously assimilated and even

consciously imitated belonged to an earlier age, that of Push kin. He was Gogol, the whimsical narrator of the Ukraine, the

author of the finest Russian comedy, The Inspector General, and of the sardonic novel, Dead Souls. Like Gogol, Mendele too

depicted

communities situated 20

three

years ride

from

Mendele

21

nowhere and souls oppressed and humiliated but harboring beneath their outer drabness sparks of divinity. The Slavic satirist also bequeathed to his Yiddish disciple an entire gallery of ignoble patricians, dishonest officials, and pompous nobodies,

whose Jewish equivalents Mendele never tired of ferreting out

and exposing to ridicule. All the literary and spiritual influences which were brought

to bear upon Mendele from the non-Jewish world pale into

insignificance, however, in comparison with the rich Jewish heritage which was available to him ever since his childhood.

Although he was born in the Russian province of Minsk, the landscape that lived in his imagination was that of the Jordan

and the Euphrates, the Red Sea and the Sinai Peninsula. The boy who at the age of ten could quote entire biblical chapters by heart and who at fourteen could delve into the intricacies

of Talmudic and Rabbinic lore, was not preoccupied in his dreams with the muzhiks of Byelorussia who ploughed the northern earth with horses and oxen. He rather roamed in

his dreams with the patriarchs of old on camels and donkeys through the sands of the Negev and the vineyards of the Carmel. In later years he recalled that when his father roused

him before dawn and walked with him through the silent lanes to the early matin prayers of the synagogue, he looked up into the star-studded sky and penetrated with his intense gaze

to the very gate of heaven where angelic hosts were ascending and descending. He heard their sweet chanting before the throne of the Lord as the portals of Eden were opened and the King of Kings became visible in all his majesty and holiness. Then trembling seized them and all lips were hushed. The awe some silence, however, was soon broken by the mighty sobbing of God, who wept over the fall of Jerusalem, the destruction of the holy temple, and the exile of his beloved children from Zion. All the heavenly hosts joined in this universal sorrow

and their tears were the dewdrops that covered the earth at dawn and fell upon Mendele's face as he made his way to the

The Flowering of Yiddish Literature

22

House of Prayer. There he sang his hymns and immersed him

self in religious meditation and ardent studies. This idyllic childhood came to an end at fourteen when Mendele's father died and the aspiring scholar was thrown on his own resources. He attended famous rabbinical schools

at Slutsk and Vilna, nourishing his soul on the wisdom of the

Talmud and his body on the meager fare which kind strangers bestowed on needy students. At seventeen, Mendele made the acquaintance of a sly mendicant, Avremel the Lame, who entranced listeners with

stories of prosperity prevailing in the Ukraine, supposedly a land flowing with milk and dripping with honey. Both set out

for this promised region, begging their way from town to town and getting nowhere. The young lad, however, was acquiring a fund of experiences, a treasure of folklore, and an insight

into Jewish and Russian folkways. These months of vagrancy provided a storehouse of memories into which the later nar

rator could dip for rich ore whereof to fashion his masterpieces. Mendele, after much suffering, managed to escape from the older vagabond, who was holding him in bondage, and he remained for a time in Kamenez, a large Jewish center in the Ukrainian province of Podolia. Here the Hebrew publicist Abraham Baer Gottlober took an abiding interest in him; nurtured his dawning talent; arranged for his education in Russian,

German,

and

arithmetic;

provided

him

with

a

position as teacher in a modernized Jewish school; and stimu lated the publication of his first literary effort, an article on the

necessity for widening the educational curriculum to include Russian and natural science. Encouraged by the favorable reception accorded his early pamphlets, Mendele decided to

move on to Berdichev, a much larger town, and to devote him self to creative writing not only in Hebrew but also in Yiddish. The decision to turn to Yiddish after he had attained some

recognition as a Hebrew writer was not easy. Usually this involved a loss of prestige. But he realized that the majority

Mendele

23

of his fellow-Jews did not have sufficient command of Hebrew

to read with pleasure works written in the sacred tongue and

that Yiddish was a much more suitable vehicle for popular tales designed to influence larger masses. Hence, in 1863, he submitted to Alexander Zederbaum, the editor of Kol Mevas

ser, his first Yiddish manuscript, Dos Kleine Menshele (The

Little Man). In order not to hurt his growing literary reputa tion as a Hebrew essayist, he asked that this Yiddish satire be

published not under his real name, Sholem Yakob Abramo vitch, but under the pseudonym of Senderl Mokher Sforim, a

mythical bookseller who was peddling literary and religious wares, driving with an emaciated nag and a rickety wagon

along the muddy roads near Glupsk or Berditchev. Zederbaum agreed to serialize this work but feared that readers might ascribe it to the editor himself, since Senderl was an easily

recognizable variant of his own first name Alek-Sender. He

therefore used his editorial prerogative and changed the pseu donym from Senderl to Mendele. Thus, there came to public notice Mendele, the bookseller who records his observations of

individuals and social groups as he travels between Glupsk Town of Ignorance, Kabzansk-Town of Poverty, and Tune yadevke

Town of Emptiness.

The Little Man was a devastating satire aimed at the cor

rupt politicians and hypocritical bigwigs who had risen to leadership in Jewish communities and who were fattening on

the spoils derived from taxes and religious imposts which these public benefactors were called upon to supervise. Mendele, the narrator, was led by his nag to Glupsk. Arriving there, he was summoned to the rabbi's house to hear the reading of the

last will and testament of a pillar of this society who had just died. The testament was prefaced by a detailed confession of the dying penitent, who recorded how in young years he had

been buffeted and abused by the strong and the brutal, and how he had witnessed the poverty and the humiliation of the

kind and the decent. He had, therefore, made up his mind to

24

The Flowering of Yiddish Literature

embark upon a career which would also bring him success, wealth, and prestige. This necessitated his becoming harsh,

hypocritical, and unyielding to the better promptings of the heart. He attributed his progressive moral decay to the cruelty of his environment which hardened his soul, and to the gulli bility of the masses, which made exploitation by the unscru

pulous easy and profitable. To effect a change for the better, a new type of Jew would have to be brought into being by an educational system that would not degrade the individual in

his most impressionable years but would let him retain his human dignity, whatever his social or economic status. The

satire, which subjected to scrutiny many Jewish failings, con cluded with an appeal for greater enlightenment and a more modern school system. Other satires followed, in which the literary moralist con

tinued with ever-increasing skill to expose injustice, to fight wrong, and to urge emergence from the stagnant swamp in which Russian Jewry seemed to be mired. Such a satire was

his drama, Die Takse (The Meat-Tax, 1869), wherein he

attacked the communal leaders who used the impost on Kosher meat as a means of enriching themselves at the expense of the poor and the pious. Even more famous was his poetic satire,

Die Klatshe (The Dobbin, 1873), an allegory of Jewry as the world's scapegoat. Looking out of a window one day, Mendele noticed a poor emaciated Jew cursing and lashing a

lean sweating horse that was struggling to pull a wagon filled with heavy bricks. Mendele imagined the horse saying to the

tormentor: "You fool! You yourself are a horse harnessed in the service of a master who is abusing you, cursing you, lash ing you, and you yourself are trembling at his every glance."

Mendele then composed the satire in which the Jew was depicted as a prince who had been metamorphosed into a dobbin, undernourished and overworked, beset on all sides by

the better-fed breed of aristocratic steeds and becudgelled by ignorant, unpitying good-for-nothings.

Mendele

25

Although Mendele found an ever-increasing circle of readers and admirers who applauded his winged barbs, he also met with the resentment of the communal heads whom he car

icatured so ably and he was forced for his own safety to flee from Berditchev to Zhitomir. However, it was not until he

settled in Odessa in 1881 that he found an enlightened envir

onment and a congenial group of intellectuals and disciples, and it was from this Black Sea port, as one of the Wise Men of Odessa, that his influence radiated to all the corners of the

Yiddish-speaking world. Mendele's constant moralizing was a literary malady which

he shared with his generation of Yiddish pioneers. Between the inevitable didactic sermons, however, the gifted artist inter

spersed poetic scenes of nature and painted unforgettable portraits of persons and things. He graspa every situation with

all his senses and brings it vividly before us in all its dimensions. When he describes a character, we not only perceive the person

from head to foot; we hear his every intonation, his rasping and gasping; we feel his itching, twitching, and squirming; we

smell the sweat from his steaming pores; we touch his every limb, the furrows on his brow, the curls of his forelocks, and

the quality of his beard. Town and country are alive for Mendele. Every season has its changing moods and even every hour of the day and the night. When the trees shake in the breeze, they nod their heads together, whisper to each other, and exchange secrets after a long silence. The sheaves of corn

awaken like young children and kiss each other endearingly.

God's breath wafts over the lowly grass and awakens to joy the frogs in the ponds, the cattle on the meadows, and the

warblers in the woods. God's world is teeming with wonder and is inviting man to seize its beauty and to sing of its glory. Mendele does not write of the great of the earth or of the aristocrats of thought. His heroes are not scholars or saints.

They are paupers and nebbichs, little men with crippled bodies

and tortured souls. But when the slightest sunlight penetrates

The Flowering of Yiddish Literature

26

to the murky grayness of their drear existence and a single ray of happiness seeps through the haze of melancholy that usually envelops them, what a transformation comes over them! The beggar is shown possessed of a princely soul and the hunch backed waif is more alluring than the stately heroines of

legendary lore. Fishke

der

Krumer

(Fishke

the Lame,

1868-1888)

is

Mendele's classic of the poorest of the poor, the many varieties

of outcasts, vagabonds, and thieves. He does not gloss over the evil traits of his co-religionists, he often even exaggerates their festering sores, but he does not despair of effecting a cure. He

is always careful to point out that wickedness is not inherent in the Jewish character but has been grafted upon it by the

horrible environment. Need compels individuals to act against their better nature and to rise in rebellion against their moral conscience. Poverty is normally allied with filth and decay,

but poverty may also make a person resourceful and compas sionate. There are poetic souls even in hovels. Such a soul is

Fishke, the pauper and ex-bath-attendant, whose nobility shines through rags and bespattered features. After a childhood

and boyhood of neglect, he is pounced upon by the town's

busybodies and married off to a blind orphan, whose expert ness in the complex art of beggary is her chief asset. Both

wander from town to town, until they link up with a large

company of their professional associates, a weird assortment of mendicants. Among these dregs of humanity, they get to know not only devilish types such as Red Bully, who makes

overtures to Fishke's blind mate but also angelic types such as

the hunchbacked girl who suffers brutal mistreatment years without end and who nevertheless has more tears of pity and

sympathy for the sufferings of others than for her own. Fishke is drawn to her. Subjected to affliction, ridicule, and beatings, they would gaze in silence upon one another and kindness

would well up in their hearts and tears of pity in their eyes. Talking to each other in rare hours about their common misery,

MENDELE MOKHER SFORIM

The Flowering of Yiddish Literature

28

loneliness would be taken from them and joy would sparkle through their tears. They are symbols of the entire Jewish

people, God's children, dispersed and despised, bruised and beaten, but retaining divine attributes of character and an in

exhaustible warmth of compassion. Somewhat higher in the social scale than the waifs and

beggars described in Fishke the Lame are the Luftmenshen portrayed in Masoes Beniamin Hashlishi (The Wanderings of

Benjamin

the

Third,

1878),

an

uncompleted

prose

epic

modelled after Cervantes' Don Quixote.

A Luftmensh may be defined as a being consisting of energy without matter, a person with the urge to do constructive work but without the physical basis to set this urge in motion, a Jew with the dynamic will to recreate this world in the image of

God but without the slightest opportunity to direct this will

towards any specific practical objective. The life of such a Luftmensh might alternate between the sordid confusion of the market place and the deep holiness of the synagogue, or it

might be frittered away in empty daydreams of a Utopia somewhere in the blue distance, while his distraught wife

worried about providing him and the family with the pittance needed to keep body and soul together.

Benjamin the Third is the Jewish Don Quixote and his neighbor Senderl is his Sancho Panza. With a mind set afire by too much reading of the medieval traveler Benjamin of Tudela, the exploits of Eldad the Danite, and other recondite

works, Mendele's hero decides to leave his native Tuneyadevke and to set out in search of the marvelous realm of the Red Jews,

which is supposed to be situated beyond the Kingdom of Prester John and the turbulent Sambation River. Benjamin and Senderl never get further than the neighboring towns of Glupsk and Teterivke and the only river across which they are

ferried is the shallow Piatgnilevke. In their imagination, however, every petty ridiculous experience is magnified to

enormous proportions, since their entire lives had until then

Mendele

29

been so poor in happenings and their horizons so circum

scribed by the wall of conventions and meticulous observances. Dragons and sirens are presumed by them to be swarming, and whales and mermaids to be swimming about in the great

world beyond the unexplored borders of the little town. If these perils and allurements could be overcome, then these

Jewish pilgrims were certain that they would catch sight of that exalted land still inhabited by the offspring of Moses and

could invoke the aid of these free pious Jews for their oppressed co-religionists in the Russian exile. Benjamin's travel plans had first taken shape when a Jew once passed through Tuneyadevke and brought a real date to this remote town. The entire population ran to catch a glimpse

of this exotic fruit mentioned in the Bible. Surely, this very date must have come from the land of Israel. In looking at it,

there arose visions of the Cave of Machpela, the Tomb of Rachel, and the Wailing Wall. Jews saw themselves walking beside the Jordan River, bathing in the hot springs of Tiberias along the Lake of Galilee, climbing the Mountain of Olives, eating dates and other biblical fruit, filling their pockets full of the sacred soil which could be so useful to them at burial time,

since its sacred attributes had the magic power to keep the worms away from the corpse. In such moments, tears of

longing for a homecoming to Zion and for the Messianic Age

came to all eyes and the reality of exile became almost unbearable.

Of the adventures that befell Benjamin and Senderl on

their journey, from their first night in a strange inn to their

impressment into military service and their expulsion from the army by

a court-martial,

Mendele fashions unforgettable

scenes full of humor and pathos. He compels the reader, even while laughing at these characters, to sympathize with them despite their cowardice, their unworldliness, their laziness, their estrangement from common sense, their utter lack of dignity. He moralizes far less than in his earlier satirical works. He

30

The Flowering of Yiddish Literature

shows his unheroic heroes as simple honest human beings who might have led a healthy normal existence but who were mis shapen by their hostile environment and distorted into unedi

fying caricatures of the human species. Nevertheless, amidst all

hardships, they were not brutalized, they did retain their compassionate Jewish heart, they did remain kind and moral, they did have faith in God's dominion and in the ultimate

restoration of God's chosen people to its princely heritage. Mendele's longest novel was Dos Vinshfingerl (The Wishing Ring), which he wrote in the 1870's and rewrote in the 1880's,

and which he regarded as his best work. In the story of young Hershele, the wrath of Mendele the reformer, yielded to the compassionate understanding of Mendele the mellowing poet.

Poverty still haunted his newest hero. The world of practical reality was still a cage in which Hershele was penned so that he could not spread his wings. At every step he was made aware of his weakness and insignificance and he too still sought flight to the world of dreams. However, this escape from reality via

wishful thinking was no longer condemned by Mendele as it

had been in earlier works. It was rather interpreted as a necessity for survival. In hungry hours, the boy Hershele dreamed of possessing a wishing-ring which would enable him to satisfy his longing for

the food of this earth and the pleasures of the present. This imagined ring would have the power to transport him to a palace with a hundred rooms, where the finest delicacies would be spread before him on golden tables. He merely had to wish and the princesses would troop in, each more beautiful than the other, each dressed in silver and gold brocade and adorned with pearls and diamonds. He merely had to wish and a host of angels would beckon to him with kind glances and sing to him songs of hope, consolation, love, and sympathy. The

material for this wished-for paradise was derived from the holy

legends of his people. A foretaste was available to him in the

Mendele

31

transformation of the average Jew from a dog's existence on

weekdays to that of a prince on the Sabbath. As Hershele grew up, however, he, along with many young

men of his generation, thought that they had discovered in the new proscribed books of the Haskalah, the wishing-ring, the magic key that would open up to them a Garden of Eden where

enlightenment flourished and wisdom blossomed. A

refreshing breeze swept across the stagnant Jewish communities

after the Crimean War and woke them to new life. Hope re-arose during the early years of the reign of Alexander II and lightheartedness began to break through the heavy gloom. But the Pogroms of the 1880's came as a horrible aftermath; hope in the liberating power of Russian and European enlight

enment faded away, and gloom again enveloped the ravaged

Jewish towns. Hershele and his pioneering companions, who had sallied forth from towns like Kabzansk and Glupsk and

who had been fascinated by the great, wide, wonderful, cos mopolitan spirit

of Europe

recognized

themselves

as the

betrayed victims of an ideological swindle. They had been

chasing a fata morgana, human brotherhood, and in the pro

cess they had left behind their Jewish brotherhood. The bloody evidence of their rejection by the non-Jewish world had been supplied by the savage massacres. Was it not the primary duty of a Hershele, a child of Kabzansk, to bind up the wounds, to

seek reintegration with the Jewish masses, to accept whole heartedly his destiny as a single thread which was to be woven with other threads into the fabric of Jewishness? Just because he was bone of their bone and flesh of their flesh, just because

in his childhood he had been subjected to typical experiences and privations of his ethnic group-hunger and cold and religious exaltation-it was incumbent upon him, after he had risen in the social scale and had attained to wealth and

culture, to take his stand with his ancestral group and to give up assimilationist delusions.

Mendele had come to feel that all talk of morality and

The Flowering of Yiddish Literature

32

enlightenment would not effect a change for the better, but that simple deeds of kindness and mercy by individuals for

individuals would do so. Jews must have bread. They must develop institutions for mutual aid. They must find within

themselves the resources to carry on. Jews who merely sat around and waited for messianic panaceas or for saviors from without would not be helped and indeed did not deserve to be helped.

Though Mendele lived on until 1917, the year of the Com munist Revolution, his outlook was shaped by the dark era before the Crimean War, the era of Nicholas I, when the

hands of the Jews were fettered and Jewish life was congealed. He helped to thaw his co-religionists from their frozen status. He tried to rouse them from their mood of resignation. He prodded them to exert themselves so that their bonds might be loosened bit by bit and their energies released for creative tasks.

Mendele once described himself as looking into the realm of

the Angel of Light, a palace of gleaming gold and dazzling brilliance. Amidst all its loveliness, however, boredom over came him, a feeling that there was nothing for him to do there. He then peered into the domain of the Angel of Dark

ness. He saw gloomy caves, yawning abysses, surfaces pitted

with crevices and broken up by slippery rocks. He crept along

fissures and chasms day after day and year after year. What an inexhaustibly fascinating world! A lifetime would not suffice to describe it. Mendele's exploration of this dark domain are recorded in literary monuments that endure long after his

activities as a reformer have become obsolete and historic.

merely

metter, but duals for ey must d within

merely sat from

III

The Theater of Goldfaden

to

Com

IN 1876, THE YIDDISH THEATER WAS BORN and Abraham

era

Goldfaden was its father. For a quarter of a century he domin

en the

ated this theater as author, composer, director, and producer.

gealed.

Then followed a quarter of a century during which the Yid

status.

on. He might eative

lm of

zzling over

do

Dark

dish theater played a vital role in the cultural life of the Jewish

masses, especially

on

the

American

scene.

Jacob

Gordin, David Pinski, Peretz Hirshbein, Sholem Asch, and

others expanded the range of subject-matter, added greater subtlety to the dialogue, and deepened character-analysis. This period of intense dramatic activity was followed in turn by a

quarter of a century of the theater's waning influence as a cultural expression of Jewish life. The end came with the closing of the Yiddish Art Theater in New York by its director

Maurice Schwartz in 1950. Throughout this entire period of long t an

ffice are

his

-ely

rise, efflorescence, and decline, however, the Yiddish theater

never emancipated itself completely from the dramatic tradi

tions established by Goldfaden. His impress was enduring. Goldfaden's creative personality was determined by his early

exposure to the two currents of Jewishness which had long flowed side by side without merging but which successfully merged in him. The one current, in whose limpid waters the

intellectual aristocrats of Russian Jewry disported themselves, was the Haskalah or Enlightenment. The other current, in

which the less-learned masses throughout Eastern Europe found delight and relaxation, was the popular literature of the folksingers, the Badchonim, the Marshaliks, the Purim Players. 33

34

The Flowering of Yiddish Literature

Abraham Baer Gottlober initiated Goldfaden into the ranks of

the Maskilim, the Men of Enlightenment; and the Broder Singers, purveyors of popular entertainment, taught him the art of influencing and amusing the common man. Son of a watchmaker in Alt-Konstantin, a town in the

Russian border province of Volhynia, young Goldfaden was first trained in the handicraft of his father. This occupation

could guarantee him a living under normal conditions. But the year 1840, when he was born, and the fifteen years which

followed, witnessed constantly increasing oppressive legislation by Czar Nicholas I and his reactionary

advisers. It

was

directed against the Jews to break their will to live on as a distinct religious and ethnic group. The cruelest of those de crees tore children under the age of eighteen, often no older

than eight, from the arms of their parents and forced them

into military service for a minimum term of twenty-five years. Frantic parents sought to evade this decree by smuggling their children across the border into Rumania. If such a child was

skilled in some handicraft, he could survive more easily in the

new environment. Fortunately for young Goldfaden, he did not have to shift for himself, since his parents could choose another and less perilous expedient for saving their son from military entombment.

Czar Nicholas I, in his unceasing efforts at the Russification of his Jewish subjects, had ordered, toward the end of his reign, the founding of Government schools in Jewish com munities, and promised exemption from military service for all

children who attended these Russian schools rather than the

traditional Kheder. The fourteen-year old Goldfaden sub

mitted to Russian education. Upon graduating in 1857, the seventeen-year old youth went on to Zhitomir to study at the

"Rabbinical Academy" there. That peculiar institution had

been established by the Government for the training of teachers and spiritual leaders who would be loyal to the Czar's program

35

The Theater of Goldfaden

of whittling down distinctions between Jews and Slavs. Ironic

ally, it was during his decade at Zhitomir that Goldfaden came under the influence of the Maskilim and abandoned his orthodoxy and his ambition for a rabbinical career. But not until the arrival of Abraham Baer Gottlober, in 1865, did he

encounter a learned teacher who was at the same time a lover of Yiddish.

Gottlober, the son of a cantor, often arranged musical evenings at home. On such occasions his young disciple joined

in the singing of Yiddish folksongs, and was even stimulated

to compose several songs in this vernacular. Until his meeting with Gottlober, Goldfaden had tried to write Hebrew lyrics

and had even published a few in 1865. But then, following Gottlober's example and advice, he found in Yiddish-like

Mendele Mokher Sforim before him-a

more rewarding

medium of communication. In 1866 appeared his earliest col lection of Yiddish songs under the title Dos Yiedele (The Little Jew). This was followed later by more dramatic lyrics

entitled Die Tiedene (The Jewess). Both booklets caught the popular fancy and were used by folksingers to enrich their repertoire.

Gottlober may also have taught Goldfaden not only the joy

of dramatic expression but also the device of using satirical dialogue as a vehicle of popular enlightenment. For, as far back as 1838, this leader of the Enlightenment had written one of

the

finest

Yiddish

comedies,

Der Dektukh

(The

Canopy). It is true that this comedy was probably not

intended for stage production, since there was no stage as yet upon which Yiddish plays could be produced; but it circulated

in many handwritten copies and delighted his contemporaries and disciples. It was not, however, until Goldfaden came to know the

achievements of the Broder Singers that he conceived of drama primarily as living theater for the masses rather than as a

The Flowering of Yiddish Literature

36

written exercise of scholarship. His graduation from the Zhitomir Academy in 1866 assured him a teaching position in

a government school; but his restless temperament did not let him abide long as a teacher at Simferopol, a Crimean com

munity. Nor did he find happiness when he transferred to Odessa, the larger commercial center on the Black Sea, and tried to make a living in trade. Before a decade elapsed, he abandoned all efforts for a career in South Russia and left for the Galician metropolis of Lemberg, now Lvov.

There, in 1875, he founded and edited together with Yoel

Linetzky a humorous periodical, Der Alter Yisrolik, which was favorably received among the few hundred subscribers throughout Eastern Europe. But, when the Czarist Govern ment banned its circulation in Russia, Goldfaden was forced

to give up. He proceeded to found a more serious periodical in Czernovitz, or Cernauti, the capital of Bukovina, then the

easternmost province of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. This city was the seat of a flourishing Jewish community. After the first few issues, Goldfaden saw the possibility of increasing the

weekly's circulation by transferring its publication to the neighboring Rumanian town of Jassy. It was at Jassy that he

came in contact with the Broder Singers, and there he founded the first Yiddish theater in 1876.

The Broder Singers derived their name from Brody, a Gali cian trading outpost. There the folksinger Berl, nicknamed Berl Broder, had, since the 1850's entertained visiting Jewish

merchants with dramatic songs and monologues in which he

impersonated various ghetto types and callings. Until Berl's

appearance dramatic spectacles had been restricted to festive occasions, such as holidays and weddings, and were performed in private homes to which Badchonim and Purim Players were

invited or admitted. Goldfaden himself had taken part in such dramatic spectacles during his student days at Zhitomir. Berl

Broder,

a

talented

impersonator,

succeeded,

however,

in

37

The Theater of Goldfaden

attracting audiences evening after evening to winecellars and restaurant gardens.

From Brody and Eastern Galicia, Berl Broder wandered on to Russia and Rumania, singing his ditties and acting out his

impersonations. His success gave rise to a host of imitators who called themselves "Broder Singers" and entertained at inns

and picnic grounds. By 1876, their repertoire included songs not only by Berl Broder himself but also by more talented

poets such

as

Gottlober, Velvel

Zbarzher,

Yoel

Linetsky,

Eliakum Zunser, and, to an ever increasing extent, by young Goldfaden.

In Jassy the struggling journalist heard his own songs sung

and saw them acted out in costume by impersonators to the hilarious applause of overflowing audiences in

the town's

largest garden-restaurant. The thought came to him that the

dramatic effect could be heightened, if the songs were com bined with prose dialogue and woven into an interesting plot.

So, in October 1876, the first performance took place. Having only two actors at his disposal, Goldfaden prepared merely a scenario. As in the commedia dell'arte, the exact

words were largely left to the inspiration of the moment on the

stage. The actors were given the plot, the songs, and general instructions on what to talk about but not precisely what to say. The audience was spellbound by the rapid succession of

actions and interspersed lyrics-an entirely novel experience. With increasing enthusiastic crowds the performances could

have continued indefinitely. But they had to stop when the chilly autumn days set in, since they were given outdoors.

The initial success sufficed, however, to spur Goldfaden to project an entire series of comedies in other towns. He engaged

additional personnel from among wandering singers and can tors' assistants, whom he undertook to train as actors. He even

dared a greater innovation: the acting of feminine roles by women, not by men disguised as women. His troupe was in

The Flowering of Yiddish Literature

38

great demand; with every year it expanded its range, travelling

through the length and breadth of Eastern Europe. Soon other troupes of wandering actors arose, either under his guidance or

in competition with him. Most of these flourished, and planned ever-expanding repertoires, when suddenly catastrophe struck. For by 1883 the Russian Government, becoming aware of this new influential medium for stirring emotions, determined

to put an end to it before it might be converted into a revolu

tionary weapon. The banning of the Yiddish theater in that year forced its authors, actors, and producers to migrate west ward to France, England, and America. In the ensuing decade Goldfaden himself also followed the route to Paris, London, and New York. After a brief flurry of success in these Western

centers, he returned to Eastern Europe in a mood of disillu sionment. Not until the last years of his life did he cross the

Atlantic again. Goldfaden's plays may be grouped into three categories.

The first embraces his early comedies, which castigated the

follies of ghetto life and preached enlightenment for the super stition-ridden masses. The best of these comedies are Schmen

drik, The Kuni-Lemels, and Kabzensohn et Hungerman. The second category comprises the plays which were in the main written after the Russian pogroms of 1881; they underscored

the vices of excessive enlightenment, of overhasty assimilation to foreign ways. The most typical of these are Dr. Almasado

and Moshiakhs Tseiten (The Messianic Age). The third

category contains the dramas of Jewish national resurgence and Zionist hopes: these include Shulamith, Bar Kochba, and Ben-Ami.

Schmendrik, 1877, was by far the most popular of Gold faden's early plays. Its title-hero has become proverbial. A

"schmendrik" is stupid but not vicious, gullible but not venge ful, glad enough to accept the gifts of life which come un sought, but easily reconciled to loss and failure. As a child,

The Theater of Goldfaden

39

Schmendrik is promised in marriage to his cousin Tsierele; but, after the death of his father, his ambitious mother regards

this promise lightly. Her wealth should enable her to obtain a better match for her son, the beautiful daughter of an impoverished patrician, and thus elevate her simpleton to a

higher social level. In this plan she fails, despite the efforts of

the match-maker Psakhia. The climax of the hilarious comedy is reached during the interchange of the veiled brides at the wedding ceremony. The duped Schmendrik ends as the groom of his cousin Tsierele, fulfilling the promise of his father after

all, while the beautiful Rosa weds the young man she has always loved but was ready to give up to save her father from poverty.

Throughout the comedy there is not a single unpleasant character. The representatives of the older generation are well

meaning in planning for their children's welfare, even if they sometimes err; and the children do not revolt against parental

authority, though they would prefer to listen to the voice of the heart. The good are ultimately rewarded, and there are no

wicked to be punished. All suffering is but temporary, and all misunderstanding is resolved by greater tolerance and deepen ing insight.

The early plays of Goldfaden all resemble Schmendrik in their good-natured satire, their clearly developed action, their

lack of sub-plots, their unsophisticated characters, their abun dance of song and spectacle, their alternation of laughter and tears, their mild approach to the raging conflict between old

ways and new. Thus, in the playlet Die Bobe mit dem Ehnikel (Grandmother and Granddaughter), the aging Bontsia sends a matchmaker to the Hassidic court at Sadugera to select a

young scholar as a mate for her grandchild. It is not important, in her opinion, that the eighteen-year-old Adele should see or like the young man. The shadkhen is experienced in his pro

fession and his judgment can be relied on. He will not bring disgrace upon a respectable Jewish family by choosing a young

The Flowering of Yiddish Literature

40

man who is unlearned or irreligious. Adele, however, has been initiated by her tutor Ignatz into new ideas streaming from the

progressive lands, beyond Russia's western border, and she argues vehemently against her grandmother's plan to marry her off to an unknown and unseen man. Brusquely told that an immature girl has no right to opinions even on such an important matter as marriage, she elopes with Ignatz. Her grandmother, brooding in lonely hours, comes to realize that

too much severity may bring about tragic consequences. Per

haps, after all, youth has its own yardstick of right and wrong. Perhaps age should be more tolerant of youth's apparent way wardness. This insight in her dying moments causes Heaven

to relent and to show her, in a final vision, the happy couple in wedding robes, entering upon a life together no less moral

or worthy than that of their forebears, despite its strangeness and modernity. In the comedy of errors entitled Die beide Kuni-Leml (Both

Kuni-Lemels) Goldfaden presents another variation of the same theme:

the right of the young girl to a voice in the

selection of her mate. The comedy is a satire on Hassidic circles, especially on their tendency to consider high family connections, yikhes, as more important than personal worth. The one-eyed, lame, stuttering Kuni-Leml is regarded by Reb Pinkhesl as a better match for his daughter than the handsome

student Max, simply because Kuni-Leml is the stepson of the yikhesdiker Reb Shloimenie. Disguising himself as the expected

Kuni-Leml, Max charms everyone. Reb Pinkhesl, though taken

aback by the extreme ugliness of his prospective son-in-law,

comforts himself with the thought that within the ungainly figure there must be lodged the soul of a Lamedvovnik, a hidden saint, able to perform miracles. How else could such a Kuni-Leml have won the consent of the reluctant girl in a

single meeting of a few minutes? Then, as was to be expected, complications arise when the real Kuni-Leml appears on the

scene. Since nobody believes in this newcomer, he himself

41

The Theater of Goldfaden

begins to doubt his own identity. At the height of the confusion, Reb Schloimenie arrives and unravels the tangle. Max is his

brother's son, and deserving in every respect of the girl he loves and who loves him. The real Kuni-Leml, hesitating to go back home empty-handed, is married off to the shadkhen's daughter,

who is glad to get any husband at all. Several

of the scenes are

reminiscent

of Shakespeare's

Comedy of Errors. Others bear close resemblance to the Amphitryon

theme.

Goldfaden

may

have

been

aware of

Molière's version of Amphitryon, either in a Russian transla tion or in the German adaptation of Heinrich von Kleist. His closest source, however, was an obscure German tale, entitled

Nathan Schlemihl; and in the title-hero Kuni-Leml there were embodied all those traits that Yiddish folklore associated with

a schlemihl.

Molière's influence is more apparent in Kabzensohn et Hungerman, for which Les Précieuses Ridicules undoubtedly

served as model. Unlike preceding plays, in which the young dramatist rebuked age for imposing its will upon youth, he now rebukes youth for feeding on romantic delusions and disregard

ing the wisdom of age. He advocates tolerance towards new attitudes, but not capitulation to them. He seeks a loosening of the rigid bonds that tied the generations to each other, but not their complete severance.

In this satiric comedy with a tragic ending, which Gold faden called a melodrama, the father Reb Yitzkhok cannot

marry off his daughter Hannah, already an old maid of twenty-eight, because she insists on being wooed in the man ner of story-books: her suitor must be able to speak to her in high-sounding German rather than in the lowly Yiddish; he

must have a foreign name such as Franz; and he must declare

his love for her in over-emotional, extravagant, ultra-poetic language. Her cousin Shloime, whose wife has died, returns from abroad to ask Reb Yitzkhok for the hand of Hannah.

The distraught father tells him of the absurd sentimentalism

42

The Flowering of Yiddish Literature

plaguing the silly, romantic girl. Shloime's honest proposal is

indignantly rejected by Hannah, who clings to her dreams of pure love far above this world of sordid reality. She accepts

Kabzensohn, the worthless charlatan, who presents himself under the name of Franz Franzensohn and who woos her on

his knees in bombastic speeches, such as: "Oh my angel, what a spell have you cast over me! Oh, your nose is the nose of all noses. Your divine image pursues me in my dreams. Say to me: 'I love thee!' Or else I die."

A tragic aftermath follows. Hardly is Hannah's dowry at the disposal of her romantic mate than all romance disappears.

With his friend Hungerman he squanders her wealth, lives

merrily and travels widely, while she weeps at home. Her last funds exhausted, the two scoundrels throw Hannah out of the house. Despairing and lamenting her errors, she hurls herself into the river.

This tragic ending, unusual in Goldfaden's early plays, could

of course have been easily changed by having the faithful Shloime reappear in time to save Hannah, instead of a few minutes too late. But here the dramatist wished above all to

emphasize the moral of the tale, even at the sacrifice of a

happy ending. Jewish audiences at that time sought moral edification in the theater no less than amusement. Drama as

well as all other literary forms must needs be infused with

maxims and ethical precepts to satisfy the Jewish soul. For all the flirting with modernism and foreign forms, always there

remained a residue of traditional attitudes lodged in the hearts of the men and women who came to the Yiddish theater.

Goldfaden took this fact into account; he never outraged his

audience by condoning behavior beyond the range of permis sible variations. Hence his popular appeal. The pogroms of 1881, which followed upon the assassin

ation of Czar Alexander II, sharpened Goldfaden's sense of moral responsibility as a dramatic writer and producer. If in

ABRAHAM

GOLDFADEN

The Flowering of Yiddish Literature

44

his early comedies and operettas he had satirized the seamy aspects of Jewish life, he could do so no longer at a time when

Jewish communities were being ravaged by fire and sword. Whatever their failings, his co-religionists who were suffering torture and death were after all morally superior to the pogrom hordes that inflicted them.

Remorse assailed him when he

recalled that in the very year before the pogroms he had attained his greatest success in Moscow with performances of

Schmendrik. A large part of his audiences, who came to be amused, consisted of Gentiles. Those Muscovites, upon emerg

ing from the theater, baited their Jewish neighbors by calling them schmendriks. Goldfaden's artistic triumph had thus been

purchased at a sombre price, by exposing his own people in a most ridiculous role to the gaze of their enemies. Surely this people had been amply chastised; and was it not more properly

the duty of a Jewish writer, in a year of Jewish affliction, to counteract despair and lay a healing hand upon bleeding wounds?

In Doctor Almasado, first performed at St. Petersburg in 1882, Goldfaden tried to atone for his earlier farces and satiric

comedies. If he had previously presented fanatics, fools, and idlers as symbols of the Jewish people, he now projected in the physician Almasado a hard-working, wise, unselfish character, the savior of his community in an hour of distress.

The action of the operetta takes place in Palermo at the opening of the fourteenth century. The Governor is about to enforce the royal decree banishing all Jews from this Sicilian town. When his own daughter falls sick, however, he finds

himself in a painful dilemma. The most eminent physician, the only one who can cure her, is the Jew Almasado, who is leaving

for exile with his co-religionists the next morning. Besides, Jews have been forbidden for a long time to treat Christian patients. But the governor's wife, in her maternal anguish, summons the

proscribed doctor to the palace. He answers the call, cures her

daughter and ends up in prison as a lawbreaker. The lament

45

The Theater of Goldfaden

of Almasado in his cell is among the most moving arias in the whole Yiddish repertoire. It gives poignant expression to the

sad fate of Jews, wandering eternally from exile to exile, ever unwanted, ever despoiled. All pleas of the Biblical people to their neighbors, who hold the Bible sacred, are met with the

scornful reply: the Bible was a gift of the ancient Hebrews and not of the present accursed Jews. These must wander on and on. Burdened with holy precepts, weighed down by divine commandments,

they stagger

down

the

generations.

Yet,

though often on the verge of collapse, still they maintain that

God is just; and, from the depths of despair in the deepest dungeons, they still cling to their hope of ultimate redemption. Almasado's faith is vindicated in the course of the play. He is released from prison. Upon the governor's intercession with the monarch, the royal decree banishing the Jews from Palermo

is rescinded. The operetta ends, in the typical Goldfaden man ner, with dance and merriment, and with the marriage of Almasado's fair daughter to his favorite pupil. Doctor Almasado voiced Goldfaden's immediate reaction

to the pogroms of 1881. By transposing the scene to remote Palermo and the fourteenth century, the dramatist could avoid

offending the suspicious officials with whom he had to deal. He could circumvent the severe Government

censorship with

which every writer had to reckon. But in the drama Moshiakhs

Tseiten (The Messiamic Age)-composed a decade after the outbreak of the pogroms, and designed to be published and produced

outside

Russia's

borders-Goldfaden

could

risk

speaking out more boldly. Now he sought to give a panoramic

view of Russian Jewry, from the assimilationist aspirations under Alexander II through the years of tragedy under Alex ander III and the panic-induced migration to the Western Hemisphere.

This famous play, Moshiakhs Tseiten, in six acts and thirty scenes, suffers from a superabundance of sensational coinci

dences as well as from too many changes in time and place.

46

The Flowering of Yiddish Literature

The action shifts from a tiny village in the Ukraine to the metropolis of Kiev and then on to New York, and from a ship

wreck in mid-Atlantic to an agricultural colony in Palestine. The thesis of the drama is that "the messianic age," which

Russian Jews had expected from the growth of the spirit of progress in the land of their birth, proved to be a dangerous

illusion. And the hopes they were placing upon America, their new haven, must prove no less disappointing. For, upon this fresh soil they fell victim to the mania for gold. As a result,

they lost

their moral

hold

on

themselves;

they

became

exploiters of their own kin, greedy and depraved. His own disillusioning experiences during his first sojourn

in America, in 1887, were reflected in Goldfaden's pessimistic

portraits of raw American Jews, later immortalized in Yiddish folklore as allrightniks. Perhaps only in Palestine could the Jew be

rehabilitated?

Perhaps

only

in

the land

of

the

Patriarchs could he escape the poisonous moral atmosphere that pervaded his existence everywhere else? Goldfaden, there

fore, ended the play with an eloquent plea for a homecoming to Zion. His hero found happiness at last as a pioneer tiller of the soil in the Holy Land. Goldfaden's Zionist sentiments had been fed since child

hood by romantic dreams of the sacred soil. Like every Jew reared in the ancestral traditions, he imbibed a love of Zion

from the Bible in his earliest years. As a young man, he had pored over Abraham Mapu's idealizing novels in the ancient tongue, which depicted a happy, robust Jewish life in the groves and vineyards of Samaria during the reign of King

Hezekiah. It was in 1880, a year before the pogroms gave impetus to realistic colonizing efforts in Palestine by Russian Jews the

Choveve-Zion-movement-that

his romantic musical drama Shulamith;

Goldfaden wrote and in

1882

he

completed his tragedy of Jewish national resurgence, Bar Kochba.

The Theater of Goldfaden

47

The influence of Mapu's Hebrew novel Ahavath Zion (Love of Zion) on Shulamith is unmistakable, though the

primary source for this musical drania was a Talmudic legend which Goldfaden's father-in-law had versified a few years earlier. This legend told of an annual day of rejoicing in ancient Judea when the marriageable young men sang and

danced with the white-robed maidens in the vineyards of Jerusalem until each obtained the mate of his choice. On

such a day the young warrior Absalom won the lovely Abigail and married her. This marriage, however, was an act of

infidelity

on

his

part

towards

the

beautiful

shepherdess

Shulamith. Her he had once rescued from a well and to her

he had been betrothed, with the all-seeing cat and the deep well as the only witnesses.

These witnesses brought down

vengeance upon Absalom for his broken oath by robbing him of his new-born children: one was strangled by the cat and the

other drowned in the well. Broken-hearted, the repentant Absalom returned to his first love, who had kept faith through out the years, warding off all suitors by feigning madness. This most popular of Goldfaden's musical dramas abounds in highly emotional scenes-scenes of love and

laughter,

solemn processions, the wail of mourners contrasting with

herdsmen's yodels and the fervent wooing of happy youths. The opening scene depicts a pilgrimage on the road from Bethlehem bearing gifts to the Temple at Jerusalem; the final scenes reach a climax in

the festive march of God's holy

people around the holiest altar. Priests in ornate robes are

followed by Levites playing on various musical instruments, and by crowds of pilgrims waving banners and torches and

lulav-reeds. Magnificence dazzles all eyes; everywhere is rejoicing without end. What a colorful world is conjured up as a contrast to the drabness of ghetto existence! What a

national utopia is projected by the dramatist to warm the

longing hearts of men and women cowering in daily fear of

The Flowering of Yiddish Literature

48

pogroms! No wonder the songs of Shulamith were soon on all lips, and scenes from this drama were played by amateur as well as professional groups with undiminishing success year

after year. The reception accorded to a performance in New York as late as 1951 was hardly less enthusiastic than in the towns of the Old World seven decades before.

But the gaiety of Shulamith of 1880 is entirely lacking in

Bar-Kochba of 1882. Its theme is the last, desperate revolt of the Jews against the Romans sixty years after the destruction

of the Second Temple. Young Bar-Kochba is the leader of the war party, that believes in opposing oppression with armed might, while the aged Elazar, father of Dina, Bar Kochba's

bride, is the chief advocate of the peace party, that accepts necessary submission to foreign rule, since national salvation must await the advent of Messiah and the moral regeneration of man. Memorable scenes of the play include the coronation of Bar-Kochba on Mt. Moriah at the end of the first act; his

taming of a raging lion in the arena at the end of the second

act; Dina addressing the besieging Jewish army from the battlement of Caesarea, where she is held a captive of the

Romans. This is perhaps the most blood-tingling scene. Dina calls on her compatriots to storm the fortress; and in order

that they should not be restrained by fears for her safety, hurls herself

down from

the

wall.

And

when

Bar-Kochba

condemns the preacher of pacifism to death, his holy cause becomes unholy. By staining his hands with the blood of the saintly Elazer, Bar-Kochba proves himself a false Messiah,

and hastens both his own end and the collapse of his people's hope of immediate redemption. The last of Goldfaden's plays, Ben-Ami, resumed the theme of national redemption, now associating it not with an event in

the remote past but with the rebuilding of Zion in the present. The première of this drama took place a few days before

Goldfaden's death in 1908. Its inspiration sprang from a novel

49

The Theater of Goldfaden

of a generation earlier, George Eliot's Daniel Deronda, which was published in 1876. The hero of this novel, on discovering

that he was not of aristocratic English descent but of Jewish

origin, experienced a sense of elevation rather than degrada tion. Gladly accepting his Jewishness as his fate, he made the decision to devote his life and fortune to restoring his people to their historic homeland, where they could take their place again as a free political entity among their peers.

Goldfaden's hero, a Viennese baron, experienced a similar transformation when his dying uncle revealed to him his

Jewish origin. Witnessing a pogrom in Odessa, his heart went out to the victims, and he married a girl he had saved from

the savage mob and went with her to the Holy Land. There he planned to found an institution for training Jewish youths to be tillers of the soil and warriors of national liberation.

Though not an original thinker, Goldfaden had the talent

to project on the stage the thoughts that coursed through the

best minds of his generation. He did not invent his plots; but in adapting

them

from

successful European

dramas and

novels, ranging from Gogol's Inspector-General in Der Ligner (The Liar) to George Eliot's Daniel Deronda in Ben-Ami—he stripped those plots of their Russian or French or German or

English characteristics and made them palatable to his Jewish audiences. Thus, in basing his symbolic play Lo Tachmod

(Thou Shalt Not Covet) upon Goethe's Faust, he drew upon Jewish folklore for the figure of Ashmodai. This demon of

Talmudic Jore was still alive in popular imagination, close to the Jewish heart; so Goldfaden substituted him for Mephis topheles as the spirit of negation and temptation with which every human being must wrestle. Goldfaden is a moralist, but he does not sermonize. Rather,

he breathes the breath of life into imagined characters who symbolize forces of good and evil, and these characters by

his art engage in conflict and turmoil before our eyes. His

The Flowering of Yiddish Literature

50

conscience, however, never lets evil triumph, except tempor

arily; and his kind heart rarely permits him to prolong unduly

the sufferings of his heroes and heroines, or even villains. The theatrical stage is for him but a replica of the stage of life; and even his supernatural characters

his demons, angels, and

witches are not merely vivid symbols of spiritual realities but incarnations of beings that might be encountered in the flesh. Thus in his drama Die Kishifmakherin (The Witch), Bobbe Yakhne is a living creature of malevolence, not a mere personi

fication of the forces of evil that assail pure innocent beings.

Her opponent, the peddler Hotsmakh, is not only an emissary of God's will, he not only fulfills the assigned moral task of

setting at naught the machinations of the wicked; he is also a vivid human being, laughable for his absurdities and ador able for his inexhaustible kindness.

Without any training in musical composition, indeed with out

the

ability

even

to read

a

musical note,

Goldfaden

managed nevertheless, far more than any other man, to enrich

the Yiddish musical repertoire. His catchy tunes and songs ranged from lullabies and dance melodies to patriotic hymns

and festive choruses. Millions of Jews have for generations

hummed such songs as Dos Pintele Yied or Yisrolik Kum Ahaim.

Decades of

wandering through

the

Slavic,

Rumanian,

German, French and English-speaking lands brought Gold

faden into contact with both the folk-tunes and art-songs of many peoples. In sleepless hours of the night and in the silence of pre-dawn, musical associations would well up into his consciousness, combinations of Jewish

and non-Jewish

phrases would haunt him. At first he would sing these melodies

to his actors when rehearsing their roles with them; but in later years he would have these melodies recorded by others skilled in musical notation.

The motley origin of Goldfaden's music has been analyzed

The Theater of Goldfaden

51

in detail by the musicologist A. Z. Idelsohn, who was able to trace back twenty-three of the twenty-five music numbers in Shulamith and fourteen of the seventeen in Bar-Kochba to

Italian, German, French, Ukrainian, Polish, Gypsy, Yemenite and Turkish sources, as well as to traditional synagogue and Hassidic chants.

But whatever the origins of Goldfaden's adaptations, his

welding of words and music did impart a Jewish flavor, which immediately appealed to the Jewish masses. To Goldfaden, the theater was a medium for both enter

taining and comforting his people. He had faith in the liberat ing power of laughter, in the fruitful mating of art and morality, and in the benign union of beauty with goodness.

He held that just as the gifted writer must be the teacher of his readers, so the talented dramatist must be the leader of his

auditors, directing their attention toward a better way of life. Thus he continued the traditions both of the Maskilim, the

Men of Enlightenment from whom he stemmed, and of the

Badchonim, the didactic folksingers whose beginnings he car ried on to dramatic fruition. His Yiddish theater soared to

success because its texts and melodies, its philosophy and morality, were in harmony with the enduring spirit of his people.

IV

Rise of the Yiddish Press

THE YIDDISH PRESS WAS THE FOREMOST educational medium

for the Yiddish-speaking masses. It brought to Jewish homes

in remotest towns and villages news of important happenings throughout the world. It infiltrated knowledge of natural phenomena, scientific achievements, and modern ways.

It

molded and directed Jewish public opinion. It was the vehicle for the propagation of social, political, and ideological move ments ranging from democracy, socialism, communism, and anarchism to Zionism, territorialism, and even assimilationism.

It made possible the growth and efflorescence of literature of high rank in the vernacular. It was a significant force in unify

ing Jews dispersed on all continents. Its origins go back almost three centuries. The first Yid

dish journal was Die Kurantin, published in Amsterdam dur ing 1686 and 1687. Appearing twice a week, generally on Tuesdays and Fridays, it contained reports about Jewish life in many communities.

Along with news of

purely local

interest, readers were kept informed about the achievements

and tribulations of their co-religionists. They learned about an

auto-da-fé in Lisbon, a curfew for Jews in Rome to prevent mob violence against them, an action by Viennese Jews to ransom unfortunate Jews held in captivity, the existence of

black and white Jews in remote India. The individual Jew of the Netherlands was thus constantly made aware that he

was linked to a brotherhood that extended beyond the boundaries of his own country. 52

Rise of the Yiddish Press

53

In Eastern Europe, the first Yiddish periodical did not

appear until 1823. It was a weekly, Der Beobachter an der Weichsel, printed in Warsaw, edited by Anton Eisenbaum,

and subsidized by the government commission for popular education. It had both Yiddish and Polish texts and included

official

reports, foreign news, descriptions of Jewish life

abroad, and business announcements. It ceased publication after forty-four issues.

For more than a generation thereafter, all efforts to found a Yiddish periodical met with a firm refusal on the part of

Czarist authorities to grant permission, since these officials feared the spread of subversive doctrines through such a mass medium.

It was only after the death of Nicholas I and the rise of a spirit of liberalism during the early years of the reign of

Alexander II that Alexander Zederbaum, the enterprising editor of Hamelitz, was finally able to obtain in 1862 permis sion to append to this Hebrew organ a Yiddish supplement, Kol Mevasser. It is true that in dealing with the Russian

authorities Zederbaum had to emphasize the assimilationist possibilities of such a supplement. He had to resort to the strange argument that, since Yiddish was yielding too slowly

to Russian, a periodical in Yiddish was a good means of hastening the death of this jargon by making it more obnox ious in the eyes of Jews. In reality, however, Zederbaum was as vigorously opposed to the shallow enlightenment of the Russifying assimilationists as to the fanaticism of the over

credulous Hassidic mystics. He felt that the true blessings of cultural regeneration could best be brought to the unenlight

ened majority through the tongue most easily understood by them. He wrote that Yiddish was for Jews the language of the heart, that its picturesque idioms were untranslatable, and that to assume its voluntary abandonment by the millions who still communicated in it was unrealistic.

The Flowering of Yiddish Literature

54

During the decade of Kol Mevasser's existence, from 1862

as a supplement of the Hebrew Hamelitz and from 1869 to 1872 as a separate publication, this journal exerted an enormous influence in standardizing spelling, in enriching vocabulary, in evolving stylistic patterns. Its correspondents reported on Jewish communal life throughout Russia and even beyond

Russia's borders.

It surveyed

and interpreted

the

European political scene with special emphasis upon possible repercussions

of

changing events upon Jews.

It

brought

lengthy articles on geography, science, and nature, on educa tion, history, and literary criticism. It sponsored activities to relieve the needy. It furnished biographical sketches of famous

Jewish personalities of all eras. It brought to wider notice the strivings and achievements of Ettinger, Aksenfeld, and Gott

lober, all of whom had already pioneered in Yiddish letters, and it introduced new writers such as Mendele, Goldfaden,

and Linetzky. It paved the way for other Yiddish periodicals. In 1875, Linetzky and Goldfaden founded in Lemberg, the

Jewish intellectual center of Galicia, the weekly Der Alter Yisrolik. This periodical, which featured entertainment far

more than news, might have prospered beyond a single year.

But, when the Russian governments forbade its importation, its shrunken circulation proved inadequate for survival. Much more successful was Kol l'Am, founded in 1876 by M.

L. Radkinson in Koenigsberg, East Prussia. Heralded

as a weekly devoted to politics, literature, science, and travel,

it managed to attract writers of various shades of opinion from Eliakum Zunser, the popular bard who acted as its Minsk correspondent, to Moritz Vinchevsky, the pioneer of socialism

who was at that time in sympathy with the Narodniki or

Populist Movement. When it ceased publication in 1879, Zederbaum, who had been without a Yiddish audience ever

since the suppression of Kol Mevasser seven years earlier, felt

that the time was ripe for a new venture. At St. Petersburg

Rise of the Yiddish Press

55

he founded in 1881 the weekly Yiddishes Folksblat, which immediately became a most influential organ of enlighten ment and also of early Zionist thought.

In recalling Zederbaum's new venture, the historian Simon Dubnow also recalled the apologetic spirit that pervaded the

exponents of Yiddish journalism in

1881.

When Mark

Varshavsky, temporarily the editor of an influential Russian periodical at St. Petersburg, asked him to lend support to Zederbaum's project by writing an article on the importance

of a news organ for Jews in their own "jargon," Dubnow agreed to do so but at the same time could not suppress his own conviction, later abandoned, that educated Jews ought to

create primarily in Russian, the tongue of their future, and

secondarily in Hebrew, the tongue of their venerable past. The pogroms of 1881 had, however, brought on a crisis in Jewish

life and it had become essential to hasten the process of educating the Jewish masses. These were constantly exposed

to silly tales and to the rhymed absurdities of benighted scribblers, because Jewish intellectuals did not deign to write

in Yiddish. But how were the poor masses ever to rise to a higher level of culture or intelligence, if they were never brought into contact with reading material of good quality?

The projected weekly, Zederbaum's Folksblat, was therefore performing a desirable function. Among the writers attracted to this weekly were Sholom

Aleichem

and

Mordecai

Spector,

two storytellers whose

earliest tales appeared in its columns, and S.S. Frug, who

risked his attained reputation as a Russian lyricist by compos ing Yiddish lyrics.

Zederbaum's associate and later co-editor in this weekly was Israel Levi, who utilized its columns to

launch attack

after attack upon the hated "jargon." He not only prophesied its early death and replacement by Russian and Hebrew, but

even went so far as to direct polemics against his own writers,

56

The Flowering of Yiddish Literature

especially Sholom Aleichem, the most talented among them. Nevertheless, the weekly flourished until Levi was expelled from St. Petersburg in 1890 when the police discovered that as

a Jew he had not been granted legal residence in the capital.

Then the Folksblat ceased publication. Again Zederbaum's example was followed by other pioneer ing journalists. Furthermore, the rise of Jewish mass move ments of a political character during the closing decade of the nineteenth century necessitated the existence of a Yiddish press to disseminate information and to win new adherents.

Since the Jewish Labor Bund was founded in 1897 with a

revolutionary and socialistic objective, its periodicals, whether published in Russia or abroad,

could

not hope for legal

sanction. The problems faced from 1897 until the Revolu

tion of 1905 by Die Arbeiter Stimme, chief organ of the Bund, were not only those of writing, editing, and printing

each issue secretly but also those of distributing each copy clandestinely. A person caught in the act of reading its inflam matory columns or even possessing a single issue in his home might end up in prison or in Siberian exile.

The Zionists, though functioning legally, also encountered difficulties in reaching non-Hebrew readers. After the First

Zionist Congress at Basel in 1897, they too desired a Yiddish journal to carry on their propaganda among the masses. The

Czarist authorities, however, were suspicious of all journals with a potential mass circulation among Jews, whom they regarded as an unreliable sector of the empire's population. To

circumvent legal obstacles, when Der Yud was founded in 1899, its Zionist supporters had to proceed with a printer in Cracow, an editor in Odessa, and its main office in Warsaw.

Despite these complications, the vogue of this semi-monthly under the guidance of Y. H. Ravnitzky was so great that after twenty issues it was converted into a weekly. In its columns Y. L. Peretz, Sholom Aleichem, H. D. Nomberg, Sholom

‫קענערערן‬ ‫‪163‬‬

‫‪3:5‬‬

‫נו דער הכאַג‬

‫אשר‬

‫דאיידענו‬

‫ריי ישראו‬

‫װאכנבלא‬

‫‪SAFLE‬‬ ‫‪ELT‬‬

‫יניים‬

‫פאלקס‬

‫‪FID'N‬‬

‫שטימס‬

‫‪tes‬‬

‫‪----‬‬‫‪-‬‬

‫ווארט‬

‫צייטיננ‬

‫דפּעסע‬

‫‪NITUTA‬‬

‫‪100‬‬

‫‪14331‬‬

‫אסטרטג‬

‫אנער היינט‬

‫‪cMa utn‬‬ ‫די אדישע שטימע‬ ‫‪ALL‬‬

‫רצוװעג‬

‫‪20:00‬‬

‫קוע יד‪2‬‬

‫לעבר שלום‬ ‫‪CLARLO‬‬

‫‪axes‬‬

‫כיר בשנ‬

‫‪100‬‬ ‫‪THE YIDDISH PRESS‬‬

‫‪HAT‬‬

‫דיינעןפאסט‬

‫‪682‬‬

The Flowering of Yiddish Literature

58

Asch, and Abraham Reisen made noteworthy contributions to Yiddish

literature,

while

Hebrew

writers

Klausner, Reuben Brainin, Nachman

such

Syrkin,

as

Joseph

and

Simon

Bernfeld continued to debate in its Yiddish pages the desira

bility of Jewish bilingualism. Within four years Der Yud had become so successful that Zionists conceived the possibility of

a Yiddish daily. The weekly was, therefore, replaced by Der Freind, which thus became the first Yiddish daily in Russia,

although by that time several dailies had already experienced

varying tides of fortune in the New World. When the new century dawned, there were at least a dozen Yiddish

journals

published

simultaneously,

illegally, whereas a decade earlier, in

most

of

them

1890, not a single

journal had survived. The revolutionary year 1905 saw the number grow to more than two dozen. It is true that most of

the periodical publications were ephemeral or illegal

and

reached only a tiny sector of the Yiddish-speaking population. But, on the other hand, there were also among them influential dailies such as Der Veg, edited by Zvi Hirsh Prilutzky in Warsaw; Dos Leben, edited by S. I. Rapaport in St. Peters burg as a replacement for Der Freind, which had been banned

temporarily; and Der Veker, which attained a circulation of 30,000 as the organ of the legally functioning Bund before it was suppressed and replaced by the new daily Folkszeitung. Before another decade had passed and before the out break of World War I slowed down new ventures, the Yiddish

dailies, weeklies, monthlies and annuals appearing simultan eously in the Czarist realm were exceeding fifty and were embracing a vast audience.

In

Warsaw alone,

the dailies

Haint and Moment were each claiming a circulation of 100,000 and were shaping Jewish public opinion on political

and social issues, in addition to imparting information and enriching cultural life.

Meanwhile beyond Russia's borders, Abraham Reisen, as

Rise of the Yiddish Press

59

editor of Dos Yiedishe Vort, founded in Cracow in 1904, was

proclaiming Yiddish as the national language of the Jewish masses. A world conference of Yiddish publicists, literary men,

and scholars, meeting in 1908 at Czernovitz, did not go so far in its zeal for the once despised jargon but nevertheless did claim for it the role of a national language. Zionist ideologists, who insisted on Hebrew as the sole national language of the Jews, found it difficult not to concede to Yiddish a lasting

place at least as the folk language, in view of the rapid strides it was making in all Jewish centers. Yiddish journals were appearing even in the citadel of Hebrew, in the land of Israel, ever since 1877 when Die Rose

was founded as a semi-monthly by Israel Dov Frumkin and Michel Hacohen. However, it was beyond the Atlantic that Yiddish periodicals were making their greatest strides. The

Yiddish press, scorned by the German-speaking and English speaking Jews of the New American scene in

the

World,

1870's

and

first soon

broke became

upon the

the

main

véhicle both for the Americanization of the Eastern European immigrants as well as for the retention of their Jewish cultural ties.

While

the

earliest

Yiddish

weeklies

in

New

York

and

Chicago led a brief, precarious existence, the Tageblatt, a daily founded by Kasriel Zvi Sarasohn in 1885, proved to be a most profitable venture because by the mid-eighties the pace of immigration was quickening and the newcomers needed a newspaper in their own language to orient themselves in the

unfamiliar environment. Within fifteen years, and before Europe could even boast of its first Yiddish daily, the Tageblatt's circulation had risen from 3,000 to 40,000 and a decade later it climbed to almost 70,000. Since the Tageblatt

catered primarily to orthodox immigrants, labor groups made several attempts to establish a newspaper that would corres pond more closely to their own views and that would mirror

The Flowering of Yiddish Literature

60

and defend their interests. These efforts were shortlived until

the founding in 1897 of the Forverts under the editorship of

Abraham Cahan as the organ of the Socialists.

Between 1898 and 1902 Cahan also acquired rich exper ience as an English journalist vying with Jacob Riis, Lincoln Steffens, Hutchins Hapgood, and the more sensational muck rakers. He did not hesitate during the half century when he

was in unchallenged command of the editorial policies of this

newspaper to introduce controversial material and to experi ment with unconventional, entertaining features capable of

attracting men and women who had not until then been

accustomed to reading dailies. Besides, Cahan insisted on his associates using the simplest vocabulary, monosyllables where

ever possible, and even English words current in the daily speech of his New York readers. Difficult concepts were to be avoided or else presented in a most elementary manner. The ardent devotion of the Forverts to the cause of trade unionism

and its leadership in the struggle for the amelioration of

sweatshop conditions soon made it the most influential voice of the Eastern European Jews on American soil, a majority

of whom still lived in slums and in abject poverty. Its editor ials bolstered the morale of the hungry masses, calling upon them to hold out during critical strikes until the day of victory.

Its advice during hotly fought political campaigns often determined the outcome of local elections. Among its illus

trious contributors were Moritz Vinchevsky, Leon Trotzky,

Sholem

Asch,

Abraham

Reisen,

I.

I.

Singer,

Zalman

Schneour, and Abraham Liessin.

Since both Yiddish dailies were afternoon papers, the Morgen Journal, founded in 1901 by Jacob Sapirstein and

edited by Peter Wiernik, arose to satisfy the need for an earlier

newspaper.

It was most

eagerly read by newly arrived

immigrants in need of a job, since it could furnish them the best leads through its copious advertisements. It shared with

61

Rise of the Yiddish Press

the Tageblatt a leaning towards orthodoxy and ultimately, in 1928, when the latter's circulation had declined, it absorbed

its older competitor. The liberal tendency was represented by Die Wahrheit, edited by the gifted journalist Louis Miller from its founding

in 1901 until the outbreak of the First World War. It appealed to independent readers and secular intellectuals. It attracted renowned writers such as Chaim Zhitlovsky, Nachman Syrkin,

Ber Borochov, and Sholom Aleichem. It prospered until it had to face the rivalry of the Tog under the editorship of Herman

Bernstein. Founded in 1914, the Tog boasted of a galaxy of famed writers that included the dramatist Ossip Dymov, the poet Yehoash, the leader of Reform Judaism and later first

President of the Hebrew University J. L. Magnes, the brilliant

essayist and literary critic Abraham Coralnik, the skilled editorial writer D. M. Hermalin, the literary editor Tsivyon (Dr. Ben Zion Hoffman), and many journalists until then

affiliated with the Wahrheit. After more than four years of brave resistance, the Wahrheit succumbed to its younger and more vigorous competitor. By 1914, ten American Yiddish dailies had a circulation of

760,000 copies and by 1916, shortly before America's entry into the War, the total circulation of the New York Yiddish

dailies alone was estimated at 646,000 copies. Since each copy was read on an average by about three readers, it may be

assumed that about two million Jews felt the impact of the

Yiddish word every day. No wonder, therefore, that the Yiddish press, far more than the printed book, became the medium through which literary men

most easily reached

their public.

Women

who had

formerly wept over Tkhines now shed no less copious tears while pursuing the fictitious fates of imaginary heroes and

victims in the serialized novels of newspapers. Youths pored over

philosophical

essays,

economic

treatises,

and esoteric

The Flowering of Yiddish Literature

62

feuilletons

in

weekly

journals.

Workers

were

roused

to

demonstrations and fiery protests by political lyrics incor porated in Anarchist, Bundist, and Socialist organs. Drama tists, unable to stage their tragedies and comedies, could still

get them to an audience through the pages of monthly periodicals.

The rise of the Yiddish periodical publications from the first issue of Kol Mevasser in 1862 to their splendid blossom ing during the early decades of the present century was most

intimately associated with the rise of modern Yiddish literature from the early satiric tales of Mendele to its high noon on the eve of the First World War.

Lyric Pioneers

V

THE YIDDISH PRESS PAVED THE WAY for the refinement and

the flowering of the Yiddish lyric. In the mid-nineteenth cen

tury, decades before the founding of Yiddish periodicals, Berl Broder

(1815-1886),

Velvel

Zbarzher

(1826-1883),

and

Eliakum Zunser (1836-1913) were the most popular bards. They

entertained

with

rhymed

verses

at

weddings

and

festivals. Most Hebrew poets disdained to give expression to their innermost

feelings in the language of the jesting

Badchonim.

When Michel Gordon (1823-1890) ventured to pioneer with Yiddish songs in the 1850's and 1860's, he hesitated to

print them, lest his reputation as a man of learning be endangered. He, therefore, copied his songs by hand and distributed them among his friends in Poltava, to whom he also taught the appropriate melodies. These songs soon circu lated throughout the Ukraine, their authorship often unknown

to the new singers. But when Gordon finally published his collection of Yiddish lyrics in 1868 in Zhitomir, then a center of enlightenment, he did so anonymously. The success of this volume lessened his embarrassment.

The following year he composed his most famous Yiddish

poem, which began with the slogan "Arise, My People!" In stirring verses, he tells his people that the hour has struck for Jews to take their place in the sun, side by side with other national groups. For their rebirth they needed knowledge as 63

The Flowering of Yiddish Literature

64

a supplement to faith and this knowledge could not be brought to them in tongues unintelligible to most of them. In his own efforts to raise the educational level of the com

mon man, Gordon wrote and published in 1869 a Yiddish history of Russia. The book was to dispel ignorance of the past of the Russian majority among which Jews lived, a majority

to which they must adjust. Before long, however, Gordon realized, as did so many of

his contemporaries who had begun with naive faith in enlightenment, that increasing knowledge did not result in

growing mutual tolerance between Jews and their neighbors. The liberalism of Alexander II was not followed by Jewish emancipation from medieval disabilities. The awakening of his

co-religionists from lethargy did not lessen discrimination against them. After the pogroms, with which Alexander III ushered in his reign, Gordon reacted with a vigorous asser tion of the moral superiority of the victims. Jews were indeed

a people apart, pioneers of freedom, equality, and ethical principles not yet practiced by others. Let Jews, therefore,

remain within the community to which their birth consigned them.

Let

them

not

be

ashamed

of

their

time-honored

pedigree. Let them maintain gladly the Jewishness which had cost them so dearly in the past and which still demanded of them severe sacrifices.

The militant singer of enlightenment became an elegiac comforter of a hurt generation. For the 1889 edition of his

Yiddish poems he rewrote his once famous didactic poem

Der Yied in Golus (The Jew in Exile). Originally composed in 1865, it had reviewed the sufferings of Jews at the hands of Greeks, Romans, Catholic Popes, knightly Crusaders, and Spanish Inquisitors, and had then concluded that more toler

ant days were now dawning, peoples were becoming wiser, governments were behaving better towards Jews. However, this optimistic conclusion could no longer be sustained in the

65

Lyric Pioneers

1880's and the poet had to end on the sadder note that still

more punishment was in store for his people before the hour of redemption would strike. Gordon's gloom was intensified by his penury and by the loneliness of his last years. The world that seemed so beauti

ful and so promising in the springtime of his life had dis appointed him. He now sang of the dark night that was

enveloping him. The blue sky had turned black and the green earth was mocking him. The wind was weeping through the woods and the nightingale was moaning aloft. He was being driven hither and thither as a ship without a rudder

amidst the jagged rocks of life's ocean. His few friends had left him in his need but his many enemies had remained faith ful to their hatred of him. Soon his last hour would strike and

he would descend to the peace of the grave. Michel Gordon, dying lonely and neglected, underestimated the extent of his influence upon Yiddish poetry. Among his talented admirers were Yehuda Leib Gordon (1830–1892), S.

S. Frug (1860-1916), and Mark Varshavsky (1848-1907). The younger Gordon was primarily a Hebrew poet. As the brother-in-law of Michel Gordon, he at first also followed the latter's

semi-assimilationist

ideal.

He

launched

the

most

famous slogan of the Maskilim: Be a Jew at home and a human being outside of the home. He advocated Hebrew and

Russian for the Jew with a claim to culture. Nevertheless, he

too could not resist the lure of the hated "jargon," even though he raged against it and once referred to it as the sad

dest phenomenon in the historic life of the Jewish people. This jargon was attracting an ever larger reading public and so he made use of it as soon as Yiddish periodicals came into vogue. In 1886, he was even persuaded to let his collected

Yiddish poems appear in a volume, which was republished again and again. The volume is marred by his scorn of his linguistic medium, which he

attacks repeatedly in

satiric

66

The Flowering of Yiddish Literature

verses, but it also displays his mastery of the Yiddish heroic

couplet and the Yiddish picturesque phrase. A far greater master of Yiddish verse than the younger

Gordon was S. S. Frug. In two poems Frug also acknowledged his indebtedness to the older Gordon. In the first of these, he

hailed him as a lyric innovator who in the dark of night went

through the town tapping on doors and windows, awakening Jews from their slumber and leading them forth to greet the dawn. The second poem was an elegy in which Frug recalled his mentor who had just departed this life, penniless and

seemingly friendless. He addressed the poet's soul as it winged its way to the other world and consoled it with the certainty

that Michel Gordon's Yiddish songs would continue to resound

among Jews everywhere.

Frug was a trilingual poet. He began with Russian lyrics that established his reputation in his native land. He reached

the height of his fame with Yiddish songs. He turned to Hebrew verse in his final years. Frug was born in an agricultural colony, not far from Odessa, and experienced a carefree childhood in a non-ghetto

atmosphere. The surrounding forests and fields fed his early imagination and provided him with the nature images which peer through all his works. The boy's freedom did not come to an end even when at the age of seven his father wrapped him early one morning in a yellowing tallith and brought him to the kheder. Fortunately for Frug, his teacher was not one of those prototypal melamdim who mixed bad pedagogy with frequent pinching, but a kind and understanding man eager

to impart learning and morality. Here Frug hungrily imbibed the many Biblical and Talmudic legends which he was later to recast in Russian and Yiddish ballads. He often wrote about

the kheder, but his descriptions have charm and nostalgic

flavor. They are free of the vitriolic tone adopted by so many

67

Lyric Pioneers

other poets when dealing with this particular educational institution.

At the age of nine, Frug was enrolled in the village school where he learned to read and write Russian. At twelve, his formal schooling was over. He remained for a brief period in his native settlement, but soon moved to neighboring Kherson

where he obtained a position as secretary to the government rabbi. Here for the first time he came into personal contact

with poverty and squalor, and this encounter with the more sordid aspects of reality seared his boyhood optimism. In Kherson, a local correspondent for the metropolitan

newspapers taught the inquisitive lad the rudiments of verse composition. The publication of his first Russian poem in 1880 aroused immediate interest, since he was at that time the only

Jewish poet uninhibited enough to use the Russian language for expressing his own people's sorrows, ideals and hopes. The

following year, the Russified Jewish intellectuals invited him to St. Petersburg to participate in their literary projects. In the capital, Frug continued to write on Biblical themes and on

subjects of contemporary Jewish interest. Yehuda Leib Gor don, the leading Hebrew poet of the day, hailed him as the harbinger of a new dawn: "I am a withered leaf; you are a blossoming flower."

By

1890,

Frug had

completed

three

volumes of verse in Russian. Although his first Yiddish volume,

Lieder un Gedanken (Songs and Reflections), did not appear until 1896, he had been contributing to the Yiddish periodicals since 1885.

Frug, hearkening to the cry of the wounded and the maimed during the numerous pogroms that marked the reign of

Alexander III, tells us not to expect his song to be sweet and joyous; the mark of the Jew has been branded upon his heart and he is caught up in the Jewish destiny. Streams of blood and rivers of tears flow about him. Hellish fire has been let

loose. The executioner's axe and the hangman's gallows rule

68

The Flowering of Yiddish Literature

the land. The Jewish dead lie in the streets and the Jewish

wounded collapse nearby. "Give shrouds for the dead. And for the living bread," he calls out in famous lines that were for years the slogan in every appeal made for suffering Jewry. No Jew, far or near, may stand aside and look on with indifference. The Jewish hand is weak in combat, but the Jewish heart overflows with love and compassion.

The poet recalls the proud days of antiquity, when the Jew stood upright on this earth, when Moses liberated him from

slavery, when Deborah, Samson, Gideon defended his freedom. But now the Jew survives only as a creeping ant, trembling

before every footstep. The promise God made to Abraham that his children will be as numerous as the stars in the sky and the sands on the shore of the sea-is only half-fulfilled. Abraham's seed is trodden under foot like sand; but, Oh,

laments the poet, where are the bright and shining stars? In a song entitled Dos Yiedishe Kind (The Jewish Child), Frug lamented that the Jewish child lived its years far from sunlight and fresh air, crawling like a blind worm in the

darkness of the ghetto. Not even the lullaby sung by its mother

conjured up playful hours in gardens and fields. It rather fore warned of a lifetime of sighs and tears, hunger and cold, in endless forests of misery. Frug noted that, when the bells of liberation rang out for the Russians and the flag of freedom was unfurled by the revo

lutionists, Jewish blood still continued to flow in pogroms. After such a disillusioning experience, it might be best to cease ineffective complaints and prayers, to rise up in wrath like the goaded Samson, and to perish in battle if perish Jews must.

Frug, the poet of the pogroms, did not, however, limit his range to despair. He sang, too, of hope and comfort. His imagination fired

by

the budding

Zionist movement,

he

sought to rouse his people from slumber and submission, and

in a series of impassioned verses he urged Jews on to new

Lyric Pioneers

69

heroic deeds. But can one expect heroism from the sick, the downtrodden, the persecuted? Only when the ghetto Jew

returns to productive labor and tills his own soil, Frug asserted,

will his strength return, as did the strength of Antaeus when he touched the earth, his mother. And so Frug issues the call

for a homecoming to Zion's ancestral soil. He blesses every calloused

hand

that

wields

the scythe

and

every sweat

drenched brow that follows the ploughshare. His stirring verses on behalf of Zion inspired the early colonists who left the over crowded

Russian

towns

to

reclaim

the

barren

Palestinian

earth.

Today, Frug's nationalist exhortations have a somewhat period ring and are rarely recalled, in Israel or elsewhere; the actuality of Jewish statehood has rendered such sentiments

anachronistic. But a few of Frug's poems on Jewish holidays, a few of his satiric, Heine-like ballads, and above all his

legends still have the power to delight the contemporary reader. Among the best of the legends is Dem Shamos's Toch

ter (The Sexton's Daughter), a Jewish parallel to the Greek tale of Admetus and Alcestis, immortalized in verse ever since

Euripides. In Frug's version, Admetus is not a monarch but a rabbi,

and Alcestis becomes the pious daughter of a sexton. She has been taught by the old rabbi to read and write and to follow

the way of righteousness. In the Greek legend, the king can escape the toils of death provided that someone volunteers to

die in his stead. But none of his subjects, not even his aging father or mother, are willing to give up their lives for his and the king is pressed into accepting the sacrifice of his wife's years. For the dying rabbi, on the other hand, Jewish men,

women and children gladly relinquish a portion of their alloted life-spans, each one a day or a month, so that their beloved

leader's time on earth might be lengthened. A scroll is drawn up and Deborah requests that on it there be inscribed her gift

31

S.S.

FRUG

Lyric Pioneers

71

to her teacher-all of her remaining years. Neither the protest

ations of the townspeople nor the tears of her father can per suade her to change her mind. When the completed scroll is

deposited in the holy ark, the rabbi recovers instantly, and on

that same day the young girl is brought to her eternal rest. The old rabbi lives on and on, while time takes its toll of the

village. Children mature, grow old and die. Throughout the

long years the rabbi continues to perform his holy task of inter preting the sacred law to his people. And every year, on the

anniversary of his recovery and of Deborah's death, he recites the Kaddish for his departed pupil. Little do others know that the face of Deborah floats constantly before him during the nights of study, that he continuously implores the girl's forgive

ness for having been the unwitting cause of her untimely death. Had she lived out her preordained years, the rabbi thinks to himself, she surely would have become a bride in due time. She would have given birth to children. She would have sung them lullabies. She would have rejoiced when her son

became a famous scholar and when her daughter was led to

the wedding canopy. Hers would have been the calm, dutiful existence of the Jewish matron. The rabbi's soul is rent with

guilt and remorse. Every day is torture for him and the night resounds with his anguished prayer for death. Still he lives on, a gaunt, lonely relic, ultimately indifferent to joy and pain, estranged from the new life and customs springing up around him. Finally, the long desired hour of salvation strikes, the

hour when Deborah's originally allotted span would normally have come to an end, and the rabbi is released from life's

ordeal to join his pupil in eternity. In a versified epitaph, Frug characterized himself as a poet who wept and wept his whole life long. His very humor, he tells us, was mournful and bitter, his heaven overcast, his

landscape desolate. For he, the poet of nascent Zionism and

the pioneer of Jewish rebirth, was the victim of great personal

72

The Flowering of Yiddish Literature

unhappiness. Frug had the misfortune to fall in love with the daughter of a Greek Orthodox priest, and Czarist regulations forbade her conversion to Judaism. He, on the other hand, did not wish to become an apostate to his own religion. Their sub sequent union was marked by bitter sorrow. Leon Feinberg, the American Yiddish poet, who in his youth in Odessa was a classmate of Frug's only daughter, re calls the tragedy of the father who tried to implant in the soul of the sensitive, frail girl a love for the Jewish people, only to

be thwarted by the child's grandfather, who often took her to services in his church. When she died, a few years before her father, the priest insisted upon a Christian burial. Frug's per

sonal sufferings intensified the gloom of his later years and undermined his health. Neither poetry nor excessive drinking could dispel the shadow under which he lived and created.

When Frug died in 1916, the Jewish populace of Odessa turned out in great numbers to pay him homage. A quarter of a century later, the Nazis and their Rumanian allies entered Odessa and slaughtered its Jewish inhabitants. To complete

their task of making the

city altogether Judenrein, they

destroyed the Jewish cemeteries and carted off the tombstones.

Jews returning to Bucharest at the war's end noticed sidewalks paved with Jewish tombstones. Among these was a black marble block with the Hebrew and Russian inscription still

legible. It was the tombstone of Shimon Shmuel Frug. His tangible memorial has now found a resting place in the Jewish

cemetery of Bucharest. While Frug reacted to the worsening Jewish situation with

satires and elegies, Mark Varshavsky (1848-1907) reacted with humor and witty couplets. Just because life was becoming so

difficult for him and his people, he felt the need for extracting increasing joy out of normal activities and to smile through tears. A similar attitude had led his friend Goldfaden to found

the Yiddish theater in which much use was made of folk

73

Lyric Pioneers

dances

and

folksongs.

Varshavsky

delighted

friends

and

listeners with improvised lyrics to which he supplied his own

tunes. However, it did not occur to him, a graduate of the University of Odessa and a practicing Russian lawyer in Kiev, that these Yiddish lyrics were of sufficient literary worth to

merit publication. But Sholom Aleichem, on hearing these

songs in 1897, became so enthusiastic that he persuaded Var shavsky to write out the texts and to have the tunes recorded.

A slender volume of these lyrics appeared in 1900, when

interest in Jewish folklore had just been aroused. An introduc tion by Sholom Aleichem called attention to the freshness and

sweetness residing in the simple words and melodies and he prophecied that these would before long find entry into many Jewish homes. This prophecy was immediately fulfilled. One of the songs its first line begins with the words "Oifn Pripitshek" has been intoned by millions of Jews ever since, though few still remember the name of its author or that its

title was Dos Lied fun Alef-Bes (The Alphabet-Song). As a lullaby it has delighted generations of Jewish children and to

adults it brings back nostalgic memories of earliest school days. Its stanzas evoke a picture of an oven-warmed classroom

where a Rebbe teaches little children the alphabet. Though

the Hebrew letters are hard to master, the effort is rewarding,

since the letters are the keys which open up the treasures of the Torah. Happy is the person who has learned Torah; what more does he need? In these ancient letters are embedded so

many tears and laments, but also so much strength, the forti tude necessary to enable Jews to carry on the burdens of exile.

Varshavsky's wedding songs include verses to be sung at the

veiling of the bride before she is led to the wedding canopy. The refrain of these verses, "Weep, Bride, Weep," is not meant to be depressing. Under the circumstances, it is rather elevating. Weeping is the Jewish form of emotional release,

according to Varshavsky. Weeping befits the pure bride at the

The Flowering of Yiddish Literature

74

holy hour when she should recall the tender care of her

parents, whom she is about to leave, and the carefree years that will never come back. Her fate hereafter will be linked to her new duties. She will have to sweeten her husband's hours when his heart is embittered, she will have to attach her chil

dren to their Jewish destiny, she will have to remember the

poor if fortune smiles upon her.

Another wedding song reverberates with the joy of the father who is marrying off his mezinke, his youngest daughter, and who invites all his relatives to join him in the circle of the dance.

Among Varshavsky's dancing songs is one in which an

eighty-year-old grandmother participates. Life has not been

easy for her, yet she has no quarrel with God. She feels that she might as well float up to him on the rhythmic waves of the dance.

Another dancing song, with the refrain "eighty he and

seventy she," is most appropriate for a fiftieth wedding anni versary. Its lilting, caressing stanzas review the harmonious traditional life of an aging couple, surrounded by children,

grandchildren and well-wishers. In a song on the Jews of Rumania, the poet calls for laughter and wine to dispel the visions of horror, blood, and terror from the minds of the pogrom-survivors.

Varshavsky emphasizes the beauty and charm of the old

fashioned ways derided by his enlightened contemporaries. The goblet, from which the head of the household drinks, glitters so brightly because it is a family heirloom to which

grandfather held on even in direst austerity. It brought joy to children. It has been filled repeatedly not only with wine but

also with ancestral tears. It will remain in the family as a

symbol of the family's Jewishness and of the unity of genera tions under God.

Varshavsky's songs of Zion give further expression to the

Lyric Pioneers

75

unity of the children of Zion throughout the globe. These songs brought greater hope and more comfort to Russian Jews than did the more sophisticated lyrics of the Maskilim which

preached integration into the Russian environment.

Sholom Aleichem reports that in the birth-years of Zionism,

many an evening devoted to serious ideological debates would end with his own humorous readings and with Varshavsky's songs. Then faces would light up and cheer would return to

bored or harrassed audiences. Varshavsky's simple folksongs had the therapeutic effect of compelling gaiety even as had Sholom Aleichem's tales of Kasrilevke and Yehupetz.

VI

The Sentimental Novel

ALONGSIDE OF THE YIDDISH periodicals and the Yiddish lyric

there flourished ever since the mid-nineteenth century the moralizing tale, which appealed not only to women as did the Tkhines but also to less-learned men and especially to adoles cents. Peddlers of religious tracts and wares who traveled

through villages and small towns included in their wagons a considerable stock of Yiddish narrative booklets, new and old.

Many a person would scrimp on food in order to be able to purchase a copy. Or else, a family member might rent a book

let on a Friday afternoon with a promise to return it on Sunday morning, before the peddler, who stayed in town over the

Sabbath, would be moving on to the next community. Then the family would invite friends and neighbors to gather in its home on Friday evening and the booklet would be read aloud

to the delight and edification of all listeners. These would

retell the story to their acquaintances and coworkers through out the week and so each story would circulate by word of mouth, ultimately reaching a great many homes.

These stories emphasized moral living and imparted informa tion about foreign lands, strange customs, and remote ages. Though the information was often outdated, exaggerated, and embellished by fictitious details, it did broaden the intellectual

horizon of the common man and did perform an educational function of an elementary nature. These moralizing tales, whose chief representative in the

1850's and 1860's was I. M. Dick, were gradually supple mented in the 1870's and 1880's by the sentimental novel, 76

The Sentimental Novel

77

whose most popular representatives were Jacob Dineson and Nahum Meier Shaikevitch.

These novelists discarded the club and the rapier, weapons preferred by Mendele and Linetzky who had preceded them. They bathed their audiences in tears. They still could not

dispense with the preaching of morality, but they reduced their sermonizing to ever lesser proportions. They never went to the extreme of art for art's sake. How could they, if they were

appealing to a large extent to the same women who had been

raised on a reading diet of Tkhines? Yitzkhak Yoel Linetzky (1839-1915) was the last novelist

who courted and for a time won popularity solely through the use of harsh satire and bitter invective. His vogue faded when the sentimental tale came upon the scene. His best novel Dos

Poilishe Yingel (The Polish Boy) first appeared as a serial in

Kol Mevasser during 1867 and was frequently reprinted in book form during the following years. It attacked the fanati cism of the Hassidim mercilessly. It ridiculed their clothing, their speech, their manners, their beliefs, their intolerance, their educational system, their warping of sensitive souls, their

neglect of family responsibilities,

their abject devotion to

immoral greedy hypocrites who posed as saints and miracle workers.

The earliest chapters from the pre-natal fears of the hero to his marriage at the age of thirteen are uproariously funny. Other chapters which depict his rise at the Rebbe's court until

he becomes the chief official and the best expert in rascality are in the best tradition of the picaresque tale. The concluding chapters, that deal with his downfall, suffer from excessive sermonizing. This novel, as well as its belated continuation two decades

afterwards, was largely autobiographic. Linetzky himself had

suffered severely teachers

had

from

beaten

his Hassidic upbringing.

and

humiliated

him.

His

Despotic

father

had

married him off at fourteen to a girl of twelve in order to

78

The Flowering of Yiddish Literature

chain him to his local community of Vinnitsa in Podolia. When the youthful husband succeeded in winning his submissive wife over to his own anti-Hassidic, more enlightened views, his

outraged father compelled him to dissolve the marriage and to wed a deaf, moronic woman. At nineteen, he succeeded in

breaking away from his father's supervision and escaping to Odessa. There he acquired a knowledge of German and

planned to study at the Breslau Rabbinical Seminary. When he attempted to cross the border to Galicia, he was appre hended by Hassidim and returned to his father's home.

The following years under the inquisitorial eyes of his father

embittered him even more. Finally, in 1862, he was able to

divorce his second wife and to make good his escape from the Hassidim by entering the Zhitomir Rabbinical Academy. From

that time on, he repaid his Hassidic persecutors by becoming their most implacable literary tormentor. Dipping his pen in venom, he gave vent to all his pent-up angry emotions. His avalanches of words were coarse, colorful, verging on the grotesque. He became a master of invective and of the pictur

esque malign phrase. Nevertheless, despite his effectiveness as a satirist, he did not touch the heart of his readers. They admired or deprecated his vitriolic outbursts, but they sensed that he

lacked love for his fellow beings and kindness towards the folk ways of his own group. As the era of militant enlightenment receded, his exaggerated style and his anti-Hassidic subject

matter became obsolete. In the last years of his long life, he

gave the impression of a neglected historic relic. On the other hand, readers did react with a rich tribute of

tears to the novels of Jacob Dineson, (1856-1919), Linetzky's

younger contemporary and Dick's most talented protégé. Although orphaned early in life, Dineson escaped hardships

such as ruined the temperament of Linetzky. The poet Michel

Gordon, his godfather, befriended him and foretold that a promising career as a writer would await him. At eighteen, Dineson completed two novels. When he showed the first of

The Sentimental Novel

79

these Beavon Avoth (For the Sins of the Parents) to Dick, the

latter recommended it so enthusiastically to his own Vilna

publisher that it was accepted for immediate publication. How ever, the censor interposed a veto, even though there was not the slightest political reference in the entire book. Apparently, the censor recognized in one of the characters too close a

resemblance to a member of his own family and did not want the uncomplimentary portrait to be exposed to the public gaze. The novel illustrated the fatal consequences that might ensue

if parents compelled a daughter to marry a husband chosen by them rather than by the girl herself. Dineson had known of a sensitive girl who had hanged herself after her parents had exerted too much pressure upon her and had compelled her

to marry an ill-tempered young man of their choice. Karl Gutzkow had used a similar theme in his historical tragedy Uriel Acosta, 1847. This tragedy was familiar to the Maskilim in the original and was soon to become even better known

when Joseph Lerner produced it on the Yiddish stage of Odessa in 1880. Besides, Dineson himself was in love with a

girl whose parents, his employers, were asking him to act as an intermediary in marrying her off to a distant relative. His own

heartache thus found lachrymal relief in this novel which could not pass censorship as well as in his other novel which did

appear as his first published one under the title Der Shvartser

Yingermantshik (The Dark Youth) in 1877 and which became an instantaneous, sensational success.

This success may be attributed to two causes. In the first

place, there existed a reading public which had grown to ever

larger dimensions during the decade of Kol Mevasser's publi cation and which found itself with insufficient reading material after the cessation of this periodical in 1872. Wandering book peddlers, who were profitably hawking short stories, found that the public was no less eager to devour long novels. In the

second place, Dineson had discovered the secret of touching the heartstrings of the unsophisticated person, especially the

80

The Flowering of Yiddish Literature

boy and the girl addicted to romantic daydreams. He fed them

characters that were either utterly angelic or utterly diabolic and he had the courage to let the wicked triumph over the good. While other storytellers, interested in the moral uplift of

their Yiddish audience, preferred the happy ending, dealing

out poetic justice, rewarding the hero and punishing the vil lain, Dineson showed the lovable hero and the lovelorn heroine

being driven to an untimely death, while the black egoist

attained a position of prominence and respectability in the community. The long drawn out emphasis on the suffering of

the pure and the good, who shed unending torrents of tears

in chapter after chapter, elicited equally warm and copious tears from pitying readers. These could delve into their own fancied and actual experiences,

recall their own youthful

romantic dreams that went awry, and picture themselves as innocent victims of more successful family members, neighbors, or townsmen. Dineson thus evoked an illusion of reality with

out actually depicting reality and was far more effective with his kind, caressing, intimate sentimentalism than were the earlier storytellers with their satiric and abusive imprecations

against the evils of the world. Dineson's novel burst upon the Yiddish

scene even

as

Goethe's comparable sentimental novel The Sorrows of Wer

ther had burst upon the German scene a century earlier. It let

loose the floodgates of emotion, especially among women and

young girls. It called forth a host of imitators. Yet Dineson himself waited thirteen years before publishing his next novel,

despite the fact that his first one had sold during those years more than 200,000 copies.

Dineson's long hesitation has been attributed in part to the scornful silence with which Jewish intellectuals greeted this

pioneer of the full length novel. It was precisely the Hebrew publicists whose opinion at this time carried most weight with him and whose approval he sought but failed to win. He was

told by their chief spokesman, Peretz Smolenskin, that for an

JACOB DINESON

The Flowering of Yiddish Literature

82

enlightened person who could express himself in Hebrew to use Yiddish was an absurdity and that no talent whatsoever

was required to write in such a coarse jargon. For years, the quiet, timid novelist retreated before the apparently better judgment of the Hebraists. Then, an incident of extreme,

almost pathological hostility towards Yiddish led him to ques

tion the soundness of their judgment. In

1887, Heinrich

Graetz, the famed Breslau historian and Bible scholar, refused

permission for the monumental History of the Jews to be trans lated from the original German into Yiddish. The reason given

by Graetz was that the Yiddish jargon was a great disgrace for the Jewish people, a disgrace from which his most im portant work should be preserved.

This was more than the gentle novelist could put up with. Indignantly he rose up in defence of the abused tongue. Under the heading "Professor Graetz and the Yiddish Jargon or Who

Disgraces Whom?" Dineson accused the haughty historian of hating the Russian Jews and of ignoring not merely their mother tongue but also their general cultural achievement. As

for himself, Dineson had come to love the old folkways and he resented the attempts to tear them up by their roots. If his fellow Jews erred, more often through ignorance than through

malice, he would hold up to them a mirror of their failings; he would get them to weep over the wreckage in human lives

brought about by their possibly too rigid, intolerant attitudes;

he would better them by appeals to the sympathetic Jewish heart.

This was his approach in his later novels:

Even Negef,

1890; Hershele, 1891; and Yossele, 1899. This led him to

pioneer in the founding of a new, secular type of elementary Jewish school in which the traditional harsh method of the

cat-o'-nine tails was replaced by kindness, understanding, and the stimulation of joyousness in the classroom. Such schools, which flourished during the First World War, were often called

the Dineson Schools. They persisted until the Nazi avalanche.

The Sentimental Novel

83

Dineson also served the cause of Yiddish literature through

the encouragement he gave to Y. L. Peretz for a quarter of a

century. The friendship between both was symbolized by a common mausoleum erected over their common tomb in War

saw. But, while Peretz was creative as a literary giant until his final days in 1915, Dineson's literary star had set much earlier even as had Linetzky's, who died in the same year as Peretz,

and even as had Shaikevitch's, who was Dineson's chief rival in the 1870's and 1880's.

Nahum

Meier

Shaikevitch

(1849-1905),

who

is better

known under his pen name Shomer, was a most facile and prolific novelist, the Yiddish Eugene Sue. He was only eleven when there came into his possession a

copy of this Frenchman's sensational novel The Mysteries of Paris, probably in Kalman Schulman's Hebrew translation. In

its pages, which he often reread during adolescent years, he learned of virtuous harlots who emerged purehearted from harrowing experiences, of human beasts who preyed on inno cent maidens, of a prince who consorted incognito with crim inals in their dens, drunkards in their taverns, prostitutes in their cellars, and who always arrived at the last moment to avert irrevocable misdeeds and to rescue the good from harm. These episodes fired Shomer's imagination and stimulated him to use them as models for Jewish narratives. A Shomer tale abounds in adventures and surprises. His Jewish Cinderellas find princely mates or at least become countesses. His millionaire lives disguised as a poor beggar and is befriended by a poor, honest, overworked, beautiful seam stress. Now and then this hero reverts to his aristocratic circles

but ultimately he marries the seamstress with the alabaster hands.

Shomer refused to go along with Dineson's innovation of

the tragic ending. He held that to let the good perish and the wicked triumph must lead to a questioning of divine justice and to a loss of faith in a better tomorrow. He wanted to bring

84

The Flowering of Yiddish Literature

holiday cheer to the grayness of every day, to sweeten dull hours with tears of joy, to counteract emotional apathy with

visions of blissful possibilities. His sentimental love scenes never descended to luscious sensuality. His banal romanticism was easily digestible. He recognized that the masses wanted enter

tainment, suspense, humor, the marvelous and the fantastic combined with the illusion of reality. He aimed to satisfy this taste and not to impose ill-fitting, high-brow, literary standards. The story is told that the young author, on coming to Vilna

in 1876, brought to Samuel Joseph Finn, the editor of the Hebrew periodical Hakarmel, the manuscript of a Hebrew novel. The editor promised to look into it but mentioned at the same time that there was a demand for a Yiddish work of

fiction. The next day Shomer returned with a Yiddish narra

tive which he had written during the night. It was immediately accepted for publication. The editor made the encouraging remark that if Shomer ever wrote another booklet of this kind,

he would be interested to see it. The next morning Shomer submitted his second narrative. This went on

for nine suc

cessive days. When the publishers had purchased nine manu scripts at three rubles each, they felt they had enough for a while. Fortunately for Shomer, he was offered a job before his last ruble had been spent. He was to help get supplies of hay

and oats to a Czarist cavalry regiment fighting against the Turks in Rumania. At Bucarest, he met Abraham Goldfaden

and became interested in Goldfaden's theatrical experiments. When the fighting was over, he settled in Odessa in 1879. Here

Gottlober befriended him, theatrical ventures opened up possibilities for a dramatic author, publishers besieged him with requests for stories like the nine which had meanwhile carried the name of Shomer far and wide.

Would he attempt a full length novel? Dineson's pioneering

success with The Dark Youth had opened up a new major field for authors and publishers. Within a few weeks Shomer wrote his first long novel and within the following months

The Sentimental Novel

85

two more. All three appeared in 1879 and filled the gap created

by Dineson's unwillingness to publish additional novels after his initial one.

Shomer followed with six more novels in 1880. Soon even

his prolific pen could not keep pace with the ever-rising demand for sentimental prose romances and consequently several imi tators arose. One used the name of Shamir; another called himself Shomer of Slutsk; a third was a Shomer of Sadlikov; a fourth remained anonymous but claimed on the title page of his novel that his was a story in Shomer style. These pseudo

Shomers capitalized on the vogue of the original Shomer and caused much confusion. The fact that housemaids and appren

tices sang Shomer's praises called forth the opposition of the intellectuals against him. Beginning with an article by the young historian Simon Dubnow in 1884, attacks upon him increased until they reached their climax four years later

in Sholom Aleichem's satiric pamphlet Shomer's Mishpet (Shomer On Trial). The gifted humorist brought to bear the heaviest verbal artillery to demolish the favorite of the masses and to brand him as the corruptor of literary taste.

Shomer never recovered from this onslaught. Although

he wrote a great many more stories, novels and plays and although he retained his popularity with the masses both of Eastern Europe and of the United States-his home since

1889-nevertheless critics and literary historians, with rare

exceptions, have either been silent about his achievements or else repeated Sholom Aleichem's devastating estimate. It is true that, when subjected to close scrutiny, Shomer's plots,

characters and dialogue, hardly credible even in his Parisian models, appear absurd in an Eastern European Jewish milieu. But his appeal was to an uncritical audience, whose needs were

not dissimilar to the present needs of movie and television

viewers for Westerns full of glamor, adventure, cowboys, Indians and beautiful girls. Shomer did not corrupt the taste of readers. He rather won

The Flowering of Yiddish Literature

86

for the Yiddish book tens of thousands of barely literate per sons who would otherwise never have turned to the printed

page for entertainment. Their taste could then be developed by novelists with greater refinement.

Such a novelist was Mordecai Spector (1858-1925), who learned from Shomer the art of entertaining readers by treating them as equals and addressing them as friends and neighbors

rather than as ignorant pupils in need of learning or unen lightened sinners in need of verbal chastisement. However, unlike Shomer, whom he repudiated, Spector based his plots

on actual happenings in his immediate environment. He let

his characters debate current issues of specifically Jewish con cern. He reproduced the colloquial speech of the market-place

and the workshop. Spector is an excellent observer of reality and adheres to

verifiable facts wherever possible, but he is not an original

thinker or a subtle psychologist penetrating into the deepest layers of the soul. With a keen eye for distinctive Jewish traits and with an excellent knowledge of Jewish folklore, he records

honestly and with gentle humor Jewish family life and Jewish communal activities and aspirations. His novel Der Tidishe Muzhik

(The Jewish Peasant),

which

appeared in

1884,

advocated the ideas of the Lovers of Zion, the return of Jews

to productive labor and to Israel's soil. A prolific writer of feuilletons, travel-sketches, and short

stories, as well as long novels, Spector reached the height of his

fame as editor of the annual publication Der Hausfreund, 1888-1889. Five years later, he joined Peretz in editing the

Yom-Tov Bletlekh in Warsaw. He participated in many liter ary ventures of the Yiddish cultural revival in Russia before

emigrating to America in 1921. In this cultural revival, the Yiddish narrators from Dick,

Mendele, and Linetzky to Dineson, Shomer, and Spector per

formed a valuable function in developing a large reading public. Sholom Aleichem's humor and Peretz's wisdom could

The Sentimental Novel

87

then reach this reading public, elevate it, and inspire it. By the 1880's, the groundwork had been laid for a Golden Era of Yiddish literature.

VII

Sholom Aleichem

IN YIDDISH LITERATURE Sholom Aleichem ranks among the

three most talented interpreters of the Jewish soul. His popu larity has far exceeded that of the other two members of the Yiddish classical triumvirate, Mendele Mokher Sforim and

Yitzkhok Leibush Peretz, despite the fact that he does not equal Mendele in richness of imagination or Peretz in pro fundity of insight into so-called eternal problems. Sholom Aleichem is read by the average Jew because he incorporates in his writings most frequently, most clearly, and most lovingly the inarticulate desires, the unrealized dreams,

the unsolved worries, the daily interests, the ever recurring

frustrations, and the undying hopes of the average person not the heroic or the unusual individual, not the rebel or the

saint, but the average Jew. He was born Sholom Rabinovitch on March 3, 1859, at

Pereyaslav, a small town in the province of Poltava, Russia.

He received his early education in the neighboring community of Voronkov, the model for Kasrilevke, locale of many of his famous short stories.

His talent as a humorist was manifested in his boyhood, when he managed to discover a ridiculous aspect in every situation and a caricature in every person. Until his thirteenth year his studies were largely limited to the Bible and sacred

books, but when in his fifteenth year he read his first secular novel, Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, his imagination was intensely stimulated and he wrote his first immature novel, about a 88

89

Sholom Aleichem

Jewish Crusoe. Encouraged by his father, he continued with the composition of poems, novels, dramas, and aphorisms in Russian

and

in

Hebrew.

The

Russian

editors

returned

his

manuscripts to him unprinted and only a few of his aphorisms appeared

in

the

two

Hebrew

periodicals

Hatzfira

and

Hamelitz, between 1879 and 1882.

Unable to make headway in either of these refined tongues, he turned in 1883 to the language of his adored Mendele and found an immediate response. It was in 1883 also that he first

used the pseudonym Sholom Aleichem. During the preceding three years he had been functioning as a government rabbi of a

small community in the province of Poltava and he had just married the daughter of a prominent businessman. He deemed it wise not to hurt his precarious professional and social stand ing by being known as a "jargon" writer whom women and uneducated artisans could understand and so he refrained from

signing his feuilletons and comic sketches with his own name. The

veteran

editor Alexander

Zederbaum,

the

successful

novelist Mordecai Spector, and the leading historian Simon Dubnow lauded his earliest Yiddish efforts and foretold that

even greater achievements might be expected of the young

humorist. Before the end of his twenties, his reputation was well established with the Yiddish reading public.

In 1888 and 1889 he undertook the editorship of a literary

annual, Die Yiddishe Folksbibliotek. Since temporary wealth enabled him to play the role of a Maecenas, he succeeded in attracting to this venture the best Yiddish writers, such as

Mendele, Peretz, Linetzky, Frischman, Dineson, Gottlober,

Zunser, and Y. L. Gordon. In this annual appeared his mem orable longer tales Stempenyu and Yosele Solovey. But soon the wealth he had inherited from his father-in-law and that

he had even augmented by fortunate speculations on the stock exchange came to an end, when, like his unworldly hero

Menachem Mendel of Yehupetz, he met with financial disaster when the Kiev stock-market declined in 1890. When he tried

90

The Flowering of Yiddish Literature

to recoup his losses in Odessa the following year, he forfeited the remainder of his shrunken capital. The ex-banker, ex

broker, and ex-businessman then had to devote the last quarter century of his life, his best years, to a desperate struggle for bread. Nevertheless, the more difficult his economic plight became and the poorer the state of his health, the more did he

seek relief in laughter. In his bitterest years he created the humorous character

Tevye der Milchiger, a lighthearted pauper who drives his rickety wagon and his emaciated nag along the dusty road

between Kasrilevke and Yehupetz-equivalents of Gotham and Chelm-in search of a bare pittance but whose thoughts traverse the entire globe and reach up to God. Tevye the

Dairyman is Sholom Aleichem's symbol for the average Jew, the honest, pious, impractical, suffering head of a family. The tragedies Tevya experiences with his many daughters, his

assortment of sons-in-law, and his Don Quixotic partner Menachem Mendel were typical of tragedies which recurred in thousands of Jewish homes. Though severest trials assail this simple being, Tevye wipes away the unwelcome tear,

strikes up a merry tune, finds comfort in spiritual admonitions, remains morally immaculate, and rejoices that he still lives in God's sunlight on this beautiful earth.

When Tevye invests his money with Menachem Mendel,

the eternally optimistic speculator, and loses it all, this is his reaction: money comes and money goes but the important thing is to remain a decent human being, no matter how the winds of fortune blow. He reasons that the more troubles a

person has, the more he needs the sustenance of faith; and the poorer a person is, the more he needs the radiance of hope. To live with faith and hope is surely desirable and moral.

Besides, where all are poor, including the revered rabbi of Kasrilevke, poverty is neither a disgrace nor a cause for sad

ness. A soul can be young, healthy, and pure, even though the body is old, sick, and half-starved. There is a silver lining to

91

Sholom Aleichem

every cloud. Jews ought to be happy that they are alive, even when they cannot make a living.

In his tales, Sholom Aleichem commingles the serious and the ridiculous, the grim event and the trivial happening. His reader is compelled to laugh at petty foibles and queer ideo syncracies, but this laughter is not accompanied by malice

or a feeling of superiority. It is a healthy laughter, interrupted now and then by an involuntary sigh and a pause of com passion.

Sholom Aleichem to laugh at

taught

a

people

steeped

its troubles. He discovered

coreligionists the

therapeutic

in

tragedy

for his imperilled

power of laughter.

His

pre

decessors, even his revered model Mendele, had used humor

and mockery, biting satire and grim irony, as instruments for reform, as devices to change individuals and groups, as means to elevate their readers to a higher level of moral behavior.

He held, however, that the primary need was to make the Jew a less melancholy human being. Necessary reforms and com munal improvements would result inevitably, if gaiety and

light-heartedness replaced the wailing and whining all too prevalent in the hovels and dens of the shtetl. Kasrilevke's Jews are jolly. These restless Luftmenshen are always rush ing about, trying to earn enough for the Sabbath, the one day

in the week when a Jew has to eat. Though such a Jew quite often cannot afford meat or fish, he can find contentment in

a piece of bread and an onion. But even if he lacks these

meager ingredients for a festive Sabbath, he can borrow them from a neighbor. On some other Sabbath, when the wheel of

fortune will have turned, his neighbor can borrow from him. A characteristic anecdote told of a Jew of Kasrilevke illus trates the indestructible good humor that broke through the murky mists that hovered over this poverty-infested town. This

Jew once offered the banker Rothschild a prescription for eternal life for the price of a mere three hundred rubles. After pocketing the money, he said: "If you want to live forever,

The Flowering of Yiddish Literature

92

Mr. Rothschild, just leave Paris and come to Kasrilevke, because, as long as Kasrilevke has been in existence, no rich man has ever died there."

Despite a surface appearance of competitive striving and feuding, there are deep bonds of affinity and a profound sense of mutual responsibility among Sholom Aleichem's Jews. The individual is embedded in the group and is therefore never

afflicted with loneliness. In adversity he calls upon his fellow Jews for help and generally receives it. In turn, he is always ready to share his good fortune with others.

When Tevya dreams of wealth, he does not conjure up visions of epicurean feasts or of gaudy clothes for himself. He aspires rather to be a benefactor dispensing charity in grand

style, to build a new solid roof over the old synagogue, to endow his town with a Hebrew school and with a hospital for

the ailing. When a Melamed, a poor school teacher, muses on what he would do, if he were Rothschild, he does not revel in day dreams of intoxicating sensuality or of stores of earthly goods, but rather envisages inexhaustible opportunities for doing good and for helping his less fortunate fellow-men, non-Jews as well as Jews. He would use his imagined billions to render it un

necessary for anyone to envy or hate another in the struggle

for bread. He would strive to abolish war by satisfying with his immense resources the longing of each country for economic

betterment. He would ultimately abolish money altogether. Then the desire for possessions would wane, greed would abate, and evil would disappear from the face of the earth. In the Jewish world portrayed by Sholom Aleichem, learning

is esteemed far more than wealth. A father of eight children is least proud of the one child who helps to support the other

seven children and their offspring, because this hard-working child lags behind the others in intellectual attainment. The

father reasons that if such an unlearned person is privileged to marry into a family whose members were able to discuss

"

Sholom Aleichem

93

the Talmud and its commentaries with great acumen, then he should pay for this privilege by working for them.

Sholom Aleichem's Jews live like members of one large family. They gossip and they quarrel but without venom. They

weep together at cemeteries during the month of Elul and they rejoice at common festivals. When a child is born to a woman whose husband was not heard from after leaving for

America, the other women in her neighborhood supply all her immediate needs and the men vie with one another to provide for the brith, an occasion not only for religious devotion but

also for gladness, dancing, and wholesome good-will. At a

wedding, the entire community dances. On Purim, households interchange gifts of cake and fruit. When Yom Kippur nighs or Passover arrives, litigants reconcile their disputes. Competi tors confide their troubles to each other and find mutual under

standing and sympathy. People visit the graves of their dear departed relatives, pour out sorrow-laden hearts and plead for

intercession with the Supreme Righter of all wrongs. A daugh ter at the grave of her sainted mother laments that there is

insufficient tuition money for the boy's preparation for Bar Mitzvah. A wife complains to her departed father about her good-for-nothing

husband,

who

was

squandering his

last

pennies on books to nourish the mind and not on food to

sustain his body. Another wife conveys a mazel-tov to her

husband in the other world on the approaching marriage of their eldest daughter. At the same time she also asks his advice

on how to raise the money for the wedding and the dowry, since a respectable bride has to be endowed and the entire community has to be invited to the wedding.

There is stability and soundness in the soul of Sholom

Aleichem's ragged, quaint Jews, who stand aside from the

main stream of so-called progress, lost in dreams of eternity, brooding over absolute moral values, enchanted with their

ancestral ways. It is true that news of events beyond the im

mediate locality drifts to them a month or a year late, garbled

The Flowering of Yiddish Literature

94

and second-hand. Yet these Jews in the remotest hamlets feel

responsible for injustice committed anywhere in the world and they react vigorously and unselfishly. They feel the pain of all mankind, even though mankind is not interested in them. They never doubt that right and justice will ultimately prevail in God's universe. If facts seem to point otherwise, facts must not be believed. In the Dreyfus case, for example, Kasrilevke's

Jews refuse to accept the miscarriage of justice in remote Paris as final. They adore Emile Zola as God's emissary on earth because he was a fighter for justice, no matter what the odds against him. Were he to come to Kasrilevke, they would carry

him on their hands as a precursor of Messiah, the Prince of the House of David destined to usher in the final era of justice

throughout the universe.

Sholom Aleichem's unheroic heroes may wear gray, shabby, unstylish clothes, but their souls are colorful, good, gay, and alert. Once when a tragic ending to a story seemed inevitable, the author stopped short in his narrative and begged his readers not to make him continue to the unhappy conclusion. He generalized that most golden dreams ended in disillusionment. However, he preferred to leave lamentations and moralizing to others, while he himself took leave of his Yiddish audience in a mood of cheerfulness and with the wish that all his co

religionists might join him in laughing at this sorry mess of a world.

Sholom Aleichem loved his men and women for their weak

nesses and their follies no less than for their quiet heroism and their mute idealism. But his deepest love was reserved for the

Jewish children who refused to grow up and to accept the established order. His first successful tale, which endeared him to the heart of Yiddish readers, was Dos Messerl (The Pen

knife), written in 1886. It mirrored the soul of a young boy to whom a pocket-knife brought intensest bliss, pain, fear, and dream-filled experiences. But the most attractive of his many stories of children deal with the orphaned boy Mottel, the

PornTal

Киели на

18

f SHOLOM ALEICHEM

96

The Flowering of Yiddish Literature

Yiddish Huckleberry Finn, a cantor's son who could not and did not want to adjust himself to adult norms and who man aged, without descending to delinquency, to turn every situ

ation topsy-turvy. Mottel knows neither bitterness nor prejudice; neither snob bishness nor pettiness. He does not flatter the powerful nor cajole the weak. He comes as a bright cloud of glory out of the hand of God. He is a pure, tender creature who is cheerful for no reason whatsoever. He is full of insatiable curiosity and, though his questions are usually dismissed with a scolding, he

persists in seeking a meaningful answer. He is what Sholom Aleichem himself would have wanted to be, wise beyond his

years while a boy and childlike, carefree, and innocent after growing up. In reality, however, at the very time that this most renowned of Yiddish humorists poked fun at life as but a jest, his own heart was bruised and broken; and when others ap plauded his jokes, he kept out of sight and hearing his own

aches and groans. Sholom Aleichem came to America for the first time in 1906

and again upon the outbreak of World War I in 1914. With his keen insight into the inner needs and picturesque follies of human beings, he became as excellent an interpreter of Amer

ica as he had been of Kasrilevke, Yehupetz, and Boiberick. He saw both the strength and the weakness of American Jewish life, the conflict between immigrant fathers and assimilated sons, the possibilities for a Golden Era of Jewishness on American soil, the dangers of decline and decay that lurked

in the increasing prosperity of the Jewish go-getter, the allrightnik, and his increasing sloughing of traditional values.

Sholom Aleichem entitled his autobiography, composed in his fifties mainly in New York, Funm Yarid. This title is far

better translated From a Fair than At a Fair, since he was not looking forward in his final years to attend life's fair but was rather interested

in recounting his experiences as he

was

coming home from the noise and confusion of the fair. He

97

Sholom Aleichem

held that a person who started out for a fair was full of hope and expected to acquire in a hurry great bargains at its counters, but that one who returned after the rush and excite ment could

at last

ponder leisurely on

the results of his

excursion among the proferred wares and could retrace in

memory the many and varied individuals and innovations he encountered.

This autobiography, designed on a grand scale, consists of reminiscing chapters that flow on in a lyrical, elegiac, and humorous vein. It was never completed. Its author died in New

York on May 13, 1916. However, his health-giving, sorrow dissolving laughter has resounded throughout the Jewish world to this very day.

Sholom Aleichem requested, in his will, that he be laid at

rest not among aristocrats or men of great wealth but among the plain, honest people, whom he ever loved and who loved

him in turn. Since his death, his fame has grown constantly and translations of his sketches and stories have appeared

in many languages. His tales have been dramatized for the American stage and for Russian

films. His anecdotes and

aphorisms are retold and reprinted wherever Jews congregate.

For, he teaches them how to seek liberation from pain in jest, how to get along without the plaudits of others, how to attain

to joy by following timeless Jewish folkways. His humor is good tonic for drab, dull days. His laughter still reverberates in Jewish homes wherever Yiddish is read or understood.

VIII

Peretz

YITZKHOK LEIBUSH PERETZ is the supreme literary artist of Eastern European Jewry. From his poems, stories, and dramas far more than from the cold chronicles of objective historians, one can gain the deepest insight into the moods, morals, and

folkways of his colorful cultural epoch. From him also stem

many talented disciples who enriched Yiddish literature with literary masterpieces and who are still influencing Jewish life today. Peretz, who was born in 1852 at Zamosc in Poland and

died in 1915 at Warsaw, experienced all the ferment and rest

lessness that swept Jewish life from the mid-nineteenth century until the First World War. He was reared in the orthodox

religious tradition that had persisted with but slight changes since the Middle Ages. Early in life, however, he ate of the

sweet and somewhat poisonous fruit of the Haskala. Nor did

the heady wine of romantic Hassidism pass him without leaving profound imprints upon his personality. He partici

pated in the rejuvenation of Hebrew and he led the movement for the elevation and purification of Yiddish. He was part of the cultural revival in the lands of the diaspora, but there also

penetrated to him the call of the Lovers of Zion. Peretz belonged to a generation that was no longer satisfied

to continue in the unchanging ways of its fathers or to pay lip service to religious observances and ancient rituals which to them appeared as a moat of stagnant waters separating the walled Jewish

fortress from the wide world beyond. The 98

Peretz

99

talented critical youth of his generation experienced parental authority as tyranny and the cramped Jewish life with its many taboos and restrictions as a prison from which it yearned to

break loose. Beyond the prison and the fortress-moat lay Utopia and the vast open spaces through which streamed the invigorating cultural currents of humanity-at-large. Idealistic youth stole forth furtively from semi-Asiatic villages or sallied

forth boldly from the larger Jewish centers, hungry for foreign knowledge, athirst for alien panaceas, aflame with longing for unknown freedom and equality, zealous for comradeship with the good, the beautiful, and the true. For the sake of a cause

greater even than the Jewish cause, for the sake of mankind as a whole, the larger entity envisaged in intoxicating dreams, these youths,

unwise in the

ways of

the

world, became

estranged from their own people and divorced from the God of their fathers.

Their hunger was not sated, their thirst was not stilled, their longing was not appeased, their zeal was not rewarded with

fulfilment. Utopia proved to be a delusion, a fata morgana. The dreamers of the ghetto were not greeted by the outside world with a brotherly kiss. No arms were outstretched to

receive them. No invitations were extended to them to partici pate in a feast of peoples, in a brotherhood of nations.

For a time these idealists continued to stammer pleas for

acceptance within the foreign orbit. They placed their trust in socialistic and revolutionary parties, in the promise of liberal ministers, and in the allied striving of nationalities, such as the Poles, who were also being oppressed by an autocratic govern

ment. But, whatever faint hopes assimilated Jewish youths entertained ultimately petered out. Political parties misused

their services, ministers proved faithless, other nationalities resisted their sincere overtures. Then they fell into an abyss of gloom and wallowed in despair. From this nihilistic mood, they often emerged in a penitent frame of mind, angry against the

foreign seducers and false Messiahs, preferring the ossified

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The Flowering of Yiddish Literature

Jewish folkways they had abandoned and the petrified rituals they had despised, homesick for the God of their childhood, for the synagogue and the ancient liturgy, for the intimate joyous ceremonies of Purim and Passover, and the awesome spirit of the Shofar season and Atonement Day. Peretz knew these Jews well and he often described their malady of estrangement and return. It was to some degree his own malady, from which he had quickly recovered with

strength unspent, better able to assume intellectual leadership of his people and to battle for their integration as a vital organ in the world-organism.

From the age of three, Peretz too had been stifled by the close, stale atmosphere of the old fashioned Talmudic schools. At the age of fifteen, however, he was given a key to the library of a Jewish scholar in his native town. This library contained scientific, literary, historical, and miscellaneous knowledge in

foreign tongues. Peretz fell upon this material, which was not readily accessible to him otherwise. He taught himself the

foreign languages and devoured the unfamiliar books as though they contained manna from heaven. Secular education fascin

ated him more than did his religious studies. At twenty-five he completed the study of Russian jurisprudence and was admitted to the practice of law in his native town. For eleven

years he sat at his desk, with law and literature disputing over the mastery of his soul. Yitzkhok Leibush Peretz even became

for a brief period Leon Peretz, the successful Polish lawyer, intensely interested in Russia's problems and Poland's 'soul.

But his own roots in Jewish soil had been sunk too deeply. He recognized the bitter taste of the alien manna before it

had poisoned him. He sensed his own homelessness when too

far removed from his own people's weal and woe. Hence his solicitude for the estranged Jews who sought to find their way back to their origins. He correctly evaluated the importance of their fresh and chastened viewpoint, he welcomed them

back whole-heartedly, he encouraged their participation in

101

Peretz

Jewish communal activities, he even pleaded with the vacil lating intellectuals to tend their own native vineyards; but at the same time he admonished them not to offend by an

attitude of superiority and not to bring in alien ideologies as contraband.

Jewishness was for Peretz not a morass or swamp but rather

a well of living waters. It was not static or congealed but

dynamic and evolutionary. He did not ask for strict adherence to the letter of the law as laid down at Sinai, fearing that this

might arrest normal healthy Jewish growth and progress. Biblical Judaism was, in his eyes, the base but not the apex of the Jewish pyramid. He felt that no spot on earth, no moment in time, and no particular social class had an exclu sive monopoly of Jewishness, but that everywhere, at all times,

and amongst all sectors of the people, Jewishness was being

lived and the Jewish spirit was sprouting, blossoming, and bearing fruit. No matter what language a Jew spoke, the intimate

Yiddish,

the

sacred

Hebrew,

or even

the

more

recently acquired tongues such as English, Russian, German,

or Polish; no matter what ideas he propounded, radical or orthodox, revolutionary or conservative, his eloquence was

Jewish eloquence, his wit was Jewish wit, his sensitiveness to his environment Jewish sensitiveness,

and his reactions to

eternal problems Jewish reactions. Every Jewish individual

was participating in the golden chain of tradition. Die Goldene Keit (The Golden Chain) was Peretz's power ful drama of the great personality who tries to raise mortals beyond the trivialities of every day into the messianic realm of holiness and ecstasy. But Peretz was also aware of the chain

of life which keeps man rooted to earth and portrayed this

chain in his drama In Polish oif der Keit (Expiation). Yet neither of these dramas nor the ghostly spectacle Bei Nakht

oifn Alten Mark (The Old Market at Night) were theatrically

as effective as the less profound but more glamorous plays of the old master Goldfaden or even those of Peretz's own

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The Flowering of Yiddish Literature

disciples, David Pinski, Peretz Hirshbein, and Sholom Asch.

The supreme achievements of Peretz must be sought in his poems, short stories, sketches, and essays. His first major Yiddish poem was the ballad Monish, of which the earliest version appeared in Sholom Aleichem's literary annual for 1888. In verses often reminiscent of Heine,

in cadences ranging from the pathetic to the satiric, he por trayed the tragedy of man engaged in a desperate struggle

with demonic forces within himself. Monish is the pious youth subjected to the irresistible temptation of Lilith, who in Jewish

folklore parallels the Greek Circe or the medieval Lady Venus. The handsome ascetic is introduced while immersed in his

studies, unaware of the lure he is exerting by his very being upon all the girls and women about him. His pure spirituality threatens Samael's dominion over the human species and so this satanic ruler invokes the help of the enchantress Lilith to

bring about the student's downfall. She appears as the golden haired daughter of a prosperous businessman. Her honeyed words, her joyous laughter, her melodious song penetrate to the

house of learning and distract Monish from his studies. Despite admonitions of his good angel, he makes his way to the mound of the enticing Lilith and is lost, body and soul. This theme of the revolt of the fettered flesh against the tyranny of the soul recurs in Peretz's ballad Reb Yossel. Here the emaciated teacher, who terrifies pupils with his visions of

the hellish fire ordained for sinners, is himself consumed by the sensual flames emanating from his neighbor's wife. However, when he falls a victim to her seductive behavior and she

exposes him to himself as a hypocrite, shearing him of his pious forelocks, this Jewish Delila, unlike her Philistine forerunner,

is herself overcome with great pity for the ensnared, shorn Samson and regrets her avenging deed. For, was not her tempting him beyond human endurance as much a sin as if she

had yielded to him? Were he to return, she would beg his

forgiveness and wash his feet in penance.

Peretz

103

Peretz holds that the denial of worldly pleasure is a Christian

and not a Jewish virtue and that whosoever forswears earthly joy entirely must be tortured by its demands and is more likely to topple into sin and damnation. He shows this vividly

in one story of an ascetic who is ultimately overwhelmed by

longing for the arms of the Queen of Sheba and in another story of a recluse who seeks to escape life's temptations by self abasement but who sinks ever deeper into evil and guilt. For tunately, the latter's grim experience was only a dream welling up from his subconscious and the recluse can still return to the

society of ordinary men and women who are unplagued by

the sex-hallucinations that beset ascetics. For, according to Peretz, saintliness of the variety ordinarly associated with

abstinence does not confer happiness upon its bearer or upon others. The almost perfect hero of the story Lo Sakhmod (Thou Shalt Not Covet) finds it intolerable to be at all times a paragon of virtue and he envies in his heart of hearts the

drunken peasants who sit beside a warm fireside, drink whiskey from tin cups, bite into salted herring, and utter profanity.

Peretz believes that, if there were a saintly person on earth who because of devotion to God and to self-purification had won to a position far above the battle of passions and con

flicting desires, such a person would find existence empty and dull.

Peretz's stories deal with every day experiences, with prob lems of the average man, the struggle for bread, the trials of marriage, the joys and cares of parenthood, the alternation of

births, feasts, and funerals. Yet, every event described is irradi ated by an unearthly light and leads from drab existence on to a realm beyond life.

When, in a delightful tale by Peretz, the poor simpleton Abraham, the Jewish Parsifal, plays the bass-viol, the heavens open, a choir of angels sings, a band of angels joins in, and

Abraham's bass harmonizes with the tune that sways through out the celestial spheres.

104

The Flowering of Yiddish Literature

When, in another story by Peretz, Avreml the Fiddler plays

on Purim, he brings cheer to the destitute, the silent souls, the inarticulate denizens of the Pale.

Though Bontzie Shvayg, the title-hero of Peretz's most popular story, is unnoticed and mistreated here on earth, he ranks in the heavenly realm with the most deserving saints and with the Patriarchs, for there true eternal values reign.

In the beautiful tale Drei Matones (Three Gifts), Peretz selects simple, unsensational deeds of piety, purity, and self sacrifice as the gifts of goodness most acceptable to the saints in paradise. Nakhman of Zbarash, an ideal Peretz hero, refuses to follow

the Angel of Light into a paradise where no one needs a tear of pity, a word of comfort, or a sympathetic heart. He prefers to follow the Angel of Darkness into the realm of the unfortu

nate, the hungry, the parched, the weary-hearted, the tortured, the lost, and the accursed-because there he can suffer with others and feel with others.

Another ideal Peretz character was the Rabbi of Nemerov.

A Lithuanian Jew who put his trust in reason and logic set out

to disprove Hassidic faith in the wonder-working saintliness of the famed Rabbi and ended as the Rabbi's most ardent dis

ciple. The sceptic was won over not by a miracle brought about through prayer, fasting, or castigation, but by a simple kind act performed by the Rabbi in the silent hours of pre

dawn: his chopping wood and bringing it to a poor bedridden widow. The conversion of the anti-Hassidic Litvak is to some

extent symbolic of Peretz's own conversion to a more sympa thetic understanding of the much maligned mystic brother hood.

Peretz came to recognize the importance of the Hassidic Movement in Jewish life and the attraction which the Zaddik

or holy leader had upon multitudes of followers. This irrational development of joyous mysticism was a necessary antidote to the harshness, scorn, and hostility of the outside world. It

shielded its followers against despair and spiritual decay. These

Peretz

105

followers ascribed to their revered leader miraculous powers that he himself never claimed but also never denied. They saw in him their intermediary between God and man. They felt

that because of his own immaculate pious life his pleas for his fellow-men were more likely to be heard in the heavenly region and so they came to him for advice and for intercession with the divine powers. The wealthier among these followers con

tributed to the rabbi's court and palace in a magnificent way. An atmosphere of gaiety always prevailed. Dancing and sing

ing were prescribed, especially on the Sabbath and on holi days. The dejected, the troubled, the hurt came and were infected with the gay mood. They forgot their anxieties for a

while and left invigorated by their exalted experience and almost always comforted by a good

word and sagacious

counsel from the saintly leader.

In the story Tzvishen Zwee Berg (Between Two Mountains), probably the best of Peretz's Hassidic tales, he described such

a gathering of Hassidim on Simkhas Torah, the festive day of Rejoicing of the Law: eyes sparkling, voices interweaving

melodious sounds, long-robed worshippers dancing and pranc ing in the sunlight like carefree children. Heaven and earth

seemed to join in the contagious merriment and the soul of the universe seemed to dissolve in sweet accords. When the Has

sidic rabbi, who formed the center of this orgy of exultation,

was upbraided by his former teacher, the anti-Hassidic Rabbi of Brisk, for indulging in such sensuous irrational mysticism, he replied that the hard dry road of logical Talmudic study

could be trodden only by the most learned of Jews, few in number and gifted with the keenest intelligence, but that such a road was not adapted for all the children of Israel. Rational

learning of the Torah overemphasised its exhortations and prohibitions; it was without mercy; it had not a spark of grace; it did not lead to happiness or freedom; it had nothing to offer to the woodcutter, the simple artisan, the common sin ful folk. God's Torah was, however, meant not alone for the

106

The Flowering of Yiddish Literature

gifted but also for the lowly and the untutored. Hassidism served their needs.

In Peretz's works there frequently recurs a legendary figure who was as vividly alive in Jewish consciousness for many

centuries as is Santa Claus among Christian Americans today,

a prophet whose presence is still felt in Jewish homes on Pass over nights, whose exploits are still related from mouth to

mouth, and whose intervention is still dreamed about in hours

of adversity. He is Elijah, the Herald of the Messiah. Peretz incorporated this figure in the beautiful romantic tale Mesiras Nefesh (Self-Sacrifice), in which he opened for his

readers the gates of dreamland and invited them to stroll about under starlight. However, it was in the story Zibn Gite Yor (Seven Years of Plenty) that Peretz presented Elijah in the most interesting role. This story is based on an ancient legend that was frequently

reprinted in Hebrew books. The pre-Peretz versions tell of a well-to-do person who lost his fortune and became so poor that he had to hire himself out to do manual labor in somebody else's field. One day, while at work, he was accosted by Elijah, disguised as an Arab, who told him: "You are fated to enjoy

seven years of plenty. Do you want them now or before your

death?" After consulting his wife, the impoverished person chose the proferred good years immediately. The couple used every opportunity to do good and to practice charity, once they had the means. When the seven good years were up and

Elijah reappeared, the man told him:

"If you can find a

better steward of the wealth entrusted to us, we shall gladly give it up." God recognized the proper use made of this wealth

by the couple and granted it to them as a permanent posses sion.

This tale of a rich man who lost his wealth and had it

restored with the aid of Elijah belongs to a narrative genre

popularized by itinerant story-tellers of a century ago,

107

Peretz

migrant scholars well versed in Jewish lore but not too well

provided with worldly means. Such a tale might be told by a learned guest during or after a Sabbath meal to his temporary hosts who were sufficiently prosperous to welcome strangers to their home for the Sabbath. Such hosts would not normally

engage in manual labor, because of restrictions imposed by governments and guilds, but would most likely carry on some trade or profession that would enable them to earn a living without the sweat of their hands. To this class of people the narrator hints that wealth is only a pledge entrusted to mortals but that it can be retained for a long time, even forever, if the proper use is made of it, if every opportunity to do good is conscientiously observed, and especially if charity is practiced, as much charity as possible. Among these auditors, agricultural

work, especially laborious service in the field of another person, was looked upon as a degradation so deep that it must arouse universal sympathy and must require the intervention of heaven.

Peretz, in his artistic recasting of the story, transposes it from the Orient to a town in Poland. Since his readers are not

well-to-do

patricians

but

the

Yiddish-speaking,

woefully

impoverished masses, he cannot use as hero a rich man who

for some unexplained reason lost his fortune. Peretz must

prefer a laborer who has never known prosperity. As the singer of the underprivileged, the declassed, the inarticulate, the suffering human creatures, Peretz is not interested in see

ing wealth restored to the rich. If Elijah is to appear on earth in order to succor human beings, then surely his efforts should more properly be exerted on behalf of the humble and pious

individuals who merit divine intercession. Such a person is Tovye, the porter, the spiritual brother of Bontsie Shvayg,

Peretz's hero who is acclaimed in heaven as the worthiest of men

even

though

he

is unnoticed by his fellow mortals.

Furthermore, if Elijah is to appear in a town of Russian

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The Flowering of Yiddish Literature

Poland, he can do so neither in the guise of an Arab nor even in the guise of an all-too-familiar and not too highly esteemed Russian or Pole.

German,

since

Peretz,

the

therefore, transmutes him into a

Germans

of

pre-Hitler

vintage

were

respected by Eastern Jewry for their efficiency, their honesty in business-dealings and their straightforwardness in speech.

Tovye's reaction to the proposition of the stranger does not deviate from Peretz's source. At first he assumes the stranger

to be a wizard, he tries to get rid of him by pleading poverty and inability to pay for well-meant advice and efforts. But

when the stranger repeats the proposition three times, Tovye decides to take the matter more seriously and to consult his wife. In the pre-Peretz versions, no adequate reason is given for the wife's preferring the seven good years to begin at once. The only reason that can be deduced from her attitude is that the couple will at least be sure of seven good years and, if they

do sufficient charity, more years of good fortune may be vouchsafed version,

them, a rather sensible calculation. In Peretz's

there

is

a

further

motivation

which

reveals

the

poor porter and his wife in a much finer light: the children have been sent home from school because they were unable to

pay the tuition fee. This is the determining factor in the couple's decision. In the original, husband and wife enjoy the

seven years of unexpected affluence. In Peretz's version, they continue to lead their simple hard life and do not touch the

money for their own purposes, because they hold that a person has a right only to the money he earns with his own ten fingers. Of the wealth placed at their disposal by God,

they took only the tuition fee that would enable their children to continue to study God's Torah. Such study may be paid for with God's gold. The rest of the gold is God's to take back and to dispose of as he sees fit. When Elijah reports this answer to the heavenly court, the judgment is rendered that there were

Y. L. PERETZ

110

The Flowering of Yiddish Literature

no better stewards of God's gold than Tovye and his wife. These therefore know only years of plenty ever after. The magic touch of Peretz thus transforms a simple legend

of the rich man who lost his wealth and then regained it into an artistic narrative of the noble proletarian who received

the well-earned reward of a life of hard physical labor, unalloyed honesty, and unquestioning faith in the goodness of God and in the moral structure of the universe. From this

tale there peers the kindly face of Elijah, who in Jewish lore is the patron saint of the poor. He is the ready helper in adversity.

He

is

the

kind

stranger

bringing

comfort

to

burdened hearts. He shuns sham and pretence. During his stay on earth in the reign of King Ahab and the wicked Queen

Jezebel, he experienced persecution because of his faith and ostracism because of his uncompromising zeal for Jehovah.

Remembering his own labors and pain, he is ever ready to answer honest appeals, rushing on his seven-league-boots to all

the ends of the earth, bringing succor where it is most needed and most deserved.

In a tale written for children, Peretz lets the kind-hearted, white-bearded wanderer come into a home to rest for a while.

Elijah puts down his bundle, which is filled with raisins, almonds, and other sweets, and he talks about the rewards

available to good children who behave properly. In another tale, Der Kuntsenmakher (The Magician), Peretz associates Elijah with the Passover ceremony. It is still the tradition on

the first two evenings of Passover to fill a cup of wine for Elijah, the largest, finest, and most precious cup. It is still the custom to open wide the front door, so that Elijah will know that he is heartily welcome to everyone in the house. But this

warm hospitality is accorded not only to him. It is extended

to every Jew. The opening invocation at the Seder is addressed to all the needy: let them come in and participate in the feast commemorating liberation from slavery. This brotherhood of

Peretz

111

all Jews, rich and poor, during the Passover season, this solicitude of neighbors that not one family be left out of the

joyousness prescribed for Jews everywhere, this spirit of true

humanity among even the humblest representatives of a much maligned people, fascinated Peretz, filled him with pride, and found expression in the narrative of Elijah's visit to the trust

ing Chaim-Yone and the obedient Rivke-Beele. He appears as

a conjurer, bringing an unexpected Seder-feast to these two silent souls who are worthy of extraordinary assistance because

they retain faith in the fundamental justice that must prevail in heaven and on earth, in the realm of God and in the destiny of man.

In Sarah Bas Tovim Peretz recreates the fairy godmother of Jewish folklore. Sarah helps the poor girl who intones the

devotional prayers by candle-light. She brings to this Jewish Cinderella the rich groom who has travelled far and wide in search of the maiden whom the golden slippers fit. Whom

else would they fit but the simple, pious, orphaned girl deep in the forest?

Miraculous help also comes to the Jewish fisherman Sati, who is caught in a storm on the sea on the eve of Yom

Kippur. His silent soul has only one language with which to speak to God-the language of song. A wave crashes into the

boat. Sati wants to die singing. As the boat capsizes, two white figures, as though woven of white mist, walk barefoot over the sea, holding each other by the hand, their eyes aglow, their hair unfurled behind them. As Sati overturns with his

boat, they stoop down to pick him up, step with him over the waves, and lead him arm-in-arm through storm and tumult.

Through the tumult of life and the storm of oppression, Yiedel, who is enslaved for twenty-five years as a cantonist in a military cantonment, remembers the words impressed upon him at the age of six by the saintly mendicant in the forest :

"You will wander far and wide. What you have learned will

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The Flowering of Yiddish Literature

be beaten out of your head. You will forget father and mother. But remember your name: Yiedele. Remain a Jew." Peretz often makes use of the supernatural for poetic effect and for stimulating the reader's imagination. At the same time he ridicules most savagely

the superstitious

and the

ignorant who believe literally that the cow jumped over the moon or that a well is bewitched by a goat, lizard, or cat. Peretz delves into Jewish folklore of all ages and effects a

happy union of Realism and Romanticism. Peretz was impressed by the inexhaustible energy of the

Jewish people, their tremendous vitality that enabled them to survive cruel, crippling blows and ever anew to raise their head high up to heaven, to their God. He saw every nation demanding of its Jewish inhabitants allegiance and patriotism

and at the same time insisting on its sovereign right to expel Jews or to deprive them of all forms of cultural expression.

He pointed out that each people had its own streams and lakes, that flowed beneath its own star-studded sky, and its own

mountains,

fields,

and

forests,. that whispered

to

it

intimate melodies of long ago and invited to dreams of com

ing greatness. The Jews alone were everywhere and yet no where; they skirted all streams, lakes, mountains, fields, and

forests,

but

were

left

with

nothing,

nothing-save

an

unquenchable longing for one little spot, a bit of sandy earth through which flowed the fabled Jordan. Despite the primacy that Jews accorded to the Holy Land,

Peretz did not believe that all energies should be concen trated in this one direction. He held that there were battles for

self-preservation and for self-expression to be fought by Jews

in all other lands where they formed a substantial minority. He did not conceive of the modern state as a Moloch on whose altar minority groups must sacrifice their national individual

ities. He rather held that, just as clans, tribes, and nations were originally formed in order to protect the weaker families

Peretz

113

against the inroads and machinations of the stronger families, so too did the larger political units, known as sovereign states,

find their raison-d'etre in the protection which they afforded the national minorities against the encroachment of the aggres

sive majority population. If states were faithless to their trust, then the Jews need not yield to despair. They must, in such event, withdraw into their own inner fortress and develop for themselves their own cultural institutions, until the better day dawned when they could be integrated as a group into the

larger cultural continents. Peretz believed that such a day must inevitably come, but he did not expect it in the near future. The immediate outlook

was not promising and he did not delude himself or his fellow

Jews by minimizing the hard road ahead. His messianic visions were indeed dazzling and breath-taking, but they were visions of the Golden Age at the end of time and not to be

realized by his own generation. Peretz told his generation that theirs was a world to whom the redeemer had not yet come, a world of sin and suffering,

a world in which God's word was not supreme and in which justice did not prevail. God's people, the guardian of justice,

must bide their time. They must not compromise with injustice even though assailed on all sides. They must not abdicate,

even though cut off from food and drink. At the same time, they must not wait for equal rights to be brought to them by

others on a silver platter or for a magnanimous act of libera

tion by pitying outsiders. Peretz saw no difference between the actions of modern

states and those of medieval monarchs toward the Jewish minority, save that the latter were more frank in their brutality

while the former cloaked their intentions in revolting hypo

critical phraseology. When a medieval ruler needed money, he opened the gates of his country to Jews, and because of this gracious privilege he demanded that the Jews love him and his

The Flowering of Yiddish Literature

114

land and kiss the soil that gave them refuge. Hardly did the

Jews bow to the ground, kiss the soil, and come to love their adopted land, when the monarch felt the need of more money,

ever more money, until the guests were plundered to the last farthing, and then they were expelled as useless beggars. The

modern

European

states did

not behave

any

differently

towards their patriotic and super-patriotic Jews. Most of these states participated in the plundering of Jewish possessions and then discovered that the Jews as an impoverished group were no longer an asset.

Peretz believed in Jewish self-emancipation in the diaspora. His most venemous darts were directed against those Jews who placed their hope for the salvation of the Jewish people upon

liberal

Christian

forces

and

upon

democratic

and

socialistic parties. The first demand of these forces and parties was that Jews give up Jewishness, disown all specific Jewish interests, deny their brotherhood with their fellow-Jews in other countries, and cast aside 3,000 years of Jewish culture.

In return, Jews would be permitted to pay the bloody costs of liberating other peoples and allowed to pull the chestnuts out

of the fire with bare hands, so that others might enjoy a meal. Peretz warned Jews not to be misled by the rosy promises of politicians, who were most eloquent when in opposition to a government and bore no responsibility for official acts and policies. Experience taught that the moment these politicians

came to power, they proved incapable of healing the severe Jewish wounds with mere phrases and found it inconvenient

to go beyond words. He asked Jews to face the bitter truth that, though they were the first to preach justice, they them

selves would be the last to receive it, and that, though they fought in the vanguard of all movements for the salvation of the common people, they themselves would be the last to attain salvation.

When the Russian Revolution of 1905 roused the enthu

Peretz

115

siasm of Jews everywhere, Peretz called attention to the

pogroms that accompanied it. In a brilliant essay, he for mulated his hopes and fears. He welcomed the destruction of the old order, but he did not expect Utopia to result from any

new revolutionary regime. He feared the oppressed who on attaining to victory would themselves turn into oppressors, into bureaucrats interested only in the gray, equally shorn herd. These new rulers will regiment and mechanize life. They

will defend the equal rights of the herd to the grass under their feet and to the salt above their heads but they will persecute the free individual, the savior, the poet, the artist, and all who strive to ascend beyond man. They will tread under foot the buds of a still newer day, they will destroy its

blossoms, they will pour streams of icy water upon the flower

ing heads of prophecy, hope, and new vision. In another brilliant essay on coming days, Peretz prophesied that the Jews would pay everywhere the bloodiest cost of the process of liberation but would be unnamed in all emancipa tion proclamations. They would be the last for redemption.

They were cursed and blessed to be the eternally bleeding, highest soaring expression of the divine in life. He called upon them to unite and close ranks, for theirs was still a long and

dangerous road ahead. Peretz was the tribune of the Yiddish masses, the voice of their conscience, the spokesman for their striving. The 100,000

Jews that marched in silence through the streets of Warsaw in 1915 to pay final tribute to him on the day of his funeral were but a small fraction of the millions he influenced and

inspired. He spoke the language of the common man and he expressed the pain, idealism, and messianic hope, that was lodged in the Jewish heart. He once related the following

Greek story and it was his own story: When Sparta was besieged and the situation within the town

became critical, a call for help went out to Athens. The

The Flowering of Yiddish Literature

116

Athenians responded by sending a single hunchbacked person. Sparta gnashed its teeth in anger. But this unwarlike person

was the poet Pindar. He took up his position in the market square and sang a martial song that lent strength to all enfeebled hands and roused all faltering hearts to renewed

deeds of valor. The foe was repelled and victory won. Peretz was the Jewish Pindar. He revived faltering Jewish hearts and strengthened enfeebled Jewish hands. The spirit he called into being grew and flourished until it attained the

height of heroism a generation later in the Battle of the Warsaw

Ghetto,

when

the naked hands

of

Jewish

men,

women, and children went into action against the tanks and cannons of Nazi hordes. The Jewish heroes and heroines who

manned Warsaw's ghetto walls went down fighting for a more moral

world,

even

as

did

their

ancestors

who

manned

Jerusalem's walls nineteen centuries earlier. Their spirit is in

the pages of Peretz, the profoundest of the Yiddish classical masters.

IX

Wider Horizons

BY 1889 YIDDISH LITERATURE had attained maturity. Press and theater, poetry and fiction were flourishing. The classical masters were making their impact felt. Mendele's militancy had mellowed. Peretz had given up Russian and Hebrew for

Yiddish. Sholom Aleichem's humor was at its brightest and gayest.

Interest in Yiddish folklore was yielding a rich harvest.

Spector was collecting Yiddish proverbs. When he learned that over 2,000 Yiddish proverbs current in Russia, Poland, and

Galicia had already been collected by Ignacy Bernstein (1836 1908), a wealthy industrialist of Warsaw, he gave priority to their publication in Hausfreund, the annual he was editing in

1888 and 1889. These proverbs were later augmented by Bernstein and

almost 4,000

of

them

were included in

a

magnificent volume that left press in 1908. Meanwhile Pesach Marek (1862-1920) and Saul Ginsburg (1866-1940) were beginning their collection of Yiddish folk songs. Their standard

volume appeared in 1901 and paved the way for all later studies, such as those of I. L. Cahen (1881-1937), who was to

devote a lifetime to research in this field. Soon thereafter Joel Engel (1868-1927) was arousing enthusiasm for Yiddish folk music. The interest in folk legends, stimulated by Peretz,

brought about a more favorable appraisal of Hassidic legends and ultimately culminated in the ethnographic studies of S.

Anski (1863-1920). One of the folk legends was to ripen 117

The Flowering of Yiddish Literature

118

into Anski's symbolic drama Dybbuk, a theatrical sensation shortly after his death. The period of militant enlightenment was over. Revolution ary Bundism and political Zionism had not yet developed organizational patterns that used up the energy of Jewish

youth. Literature became a passion and Yiddish culture a romantic

dream

during

the

1890's.

Yiddish strengthened

Jewish national consciousness no less than Hebrew had done. Indeed, for many young men the Yiddish periodical replaced the Hebrew prayer-book. Correspondents sprang up in little towns and youths hopefully sent the products of their pen to revered

editors

and

were

in

turn

revered

if

their

names

appeared in print. Among these youths, Abraham Reisen (1876-1953) and David Pinski (1872-1959) were the earliest of the illustrious disciples whose literary career Peretz furthered. They were soon followed by a whole galaxy of brilliant young writers who looked

up

Nomberg

to

Peretz

(1874-1927),

as

their

mentor,

Sholem Asch

including

(1880-1957),

H.

D.

Peretz

Hirshbein (1880-1948), and I. M. Vaisenberg (1881-1938). What Peretz meant to all of them was once formulated in a

lyric tribute by Reisen. He recalled Peretz's favorite symbol of the Golden Chain. This precious chain of Jewish traditions lay dust-covered and forgotten, while Jewish intellectuals were reaching out for foreign treasures and were being rebuffed as

intruders. Then came Peretz. He brought back to them their own glittering Golden Chain and reawakened their pride in their own heritage. Reisen was only fifteen when Peretz, as editor of an annual,

accepted his first lyric for publication in 1891 and only six

teen when his first short stories appeared. Pinski was eighteen, en route to study medicine at the University of Vienna, when he met Peretz in Warsaw and was encouraged to devote him

self to literature. Peretz encouraged but did not dominate. As

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Wider Horizons

a result, both Reisen and Pinski became more than mere

disciples. They developed and perfected their own uniqueness and enriched Yiddish with memorable works for over sixty

years thereafter. Abraham Reisen stemmed from a family of writers. His father Kalman Reisen

(1848-1921) was a minor Hebrew

poet who also dabbled in Yiddish verse. His brother Zalman Reisen (1888-1941) was a Yiddish scholar and editor, the

author of a four volume encyclopedia that has for a generation been the main reference work about Yiddish literary figures. His

sister

Sarah

Reisen

(born

1885)

translated

Gogol,

Andreyev, and Oscar Wilde into Yiddish and published stories

and lyrics full of sad longing and quiet resignation. Reisen's earliest poem reveals that already as a youth, when ever life was bitter and loneliness encompassed him, he found in the Yiddish lyric a magic that warmed his heart. And not only his own heart! Soon these lyrics were resounding from the lips and hearts of old and young. One of them, Mai Ka Mashmalon, has become a folksong which has moved millions

with its plaintive melody. It is a pensive song of the wander ing Torah-students, thousands of whom were sent away far from home at too early an age to continue their studies at

various centers of learning. Such a youth had to provide for himself while learning, but not by working. The hard bench

of the synagogue served as his bed and pious families let him have a meal or two in their homes on a specified day each week.

Trained to muse on the symbolic meaning of every phenomenon, Reisen's lad finds that the raindrops trickling

down the window panes are not unlike the tears trickling down

his cheeks. The road is turning to mud and his boots are torn. Soon winter will be coming and he is without a warm coat. He gazes upon the tallow dripping from the candle. Is not the sputtering light that grows ever dimmer symbolic of his own

120

life

The Flowering of Yiddish Literature

that

is wasting

away bit

by bit

and

will

soon

be

extinguished? And what of the clock whose face has turned

yellow? Its hands must move and it must strike the hours. It

must continue to do the bidding of its maker, who allowed it no feeling or will of its own. Is it not a symbol of each of us, who are driven by our Maker to carry out his will and not our own? Do we fare any better, though we are orn with

feeling and vitality? Do we not let our youth rot away and

yellow age sear us far too soon? Are we not denying ourselves the gifts of this world, while we wait and hope for a world

beyond? Reisen is the singer of the poor and the rejected, the gray colorless

beings

whose

yearnings

and

frustrations

rarely

interest poets. He singles out for attention not the masses as a whole but the individual human being among the masses

whose distinguishing traits are unnoticed by others. He makes us aware that the beggar who stands on the threshold and

pleads for alms with tired hand and lowered eyes is also God's creature, a member of the highest terrestrial species, the crown

of the world. He makes us feel with the carpenter who builds

mansions for others but has neither time nor money to repair his own leaking roof, with the tailor who is busy sewing clothes for others but who cannot afford warm clothes for himself,

with the cobbler who hammers on and on until midnight so

that the shoes for the rich man's daughter might be finished on time and bread come into the house.

Like the Asra of Heine and Stendhal, Reisen's Jewish Azra, also turns pale and paler every evening when seen at the

fountain. However, he is dying not of unrequited love but of hunger. It is true that for a time Reisen felt the spell of Heine, as had Peretz, Frischman, Frug, and many other Yiddish poets of that generation. He too wrote love lyrics for which

Heine's Buch der Lieder served as model. But he quickly realized the falseness of presenting the budding love of a

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Wider Horizons

Jewish boy or girl in a flirtatious or ironic vein. Jewish reality demanded a different approach than Heine's. Love was

still a fresh experience for the Yiddish lyric and a cynical tone

was most inappropriate. The imagery of the Song of Songs

could best serve as a starting point. Hence Reisen eschews sophistication. The melody of love that floats between his timid youths and chaste maidens is the same melody that angels sing in Heaven's tent and God is its composer. Of each

kiss a new angel is born. A single caress is like a ray of sun

light breaking upon a dreary day or like a refreshing oasis in the parching desert. A moment of love is a moment of relief from the silence and loneliness that are ultimately inescapable. Reisen

treats

universal

themes

but

imparts

to

them

specific Jewish features. He chooses his similes and metaphors from Jewish activities. He attempts a synthesis of the biblical and the modern. He feels that the gift of mating words and tones has been bestowed upon him not to toy with in idle

hours but rather to clarify concepts, to deepen insights, to dispel evil, to communicate messianic visions, to work for universal salvation. His is a responsible calling. He does not brood on his individual sorrow but rather buries it in the com

mon sorrow of his people. He therefore cannot follow alien models, despite his adoration of Pushkin and Shelley, Baudel aire and Leopardi. His Yiddish verses rather strive to emulate

the rhythmic prayers of the synagogue, which were born of millennial martyrdom, intense faith, and prophetic vision. Such verses aid to banish wickedness from the face of the earth

and

to

augment

kindness.

Reisen

charms.

He

does

not

devastate. His simplicity is his greatest asset. His humor is

mild, not bubbling; his tragedy is elevating, not depressing. He is a master of the short story and compresses in minimum

words a moment of eternity.

Reisen left his native city of Kaidanov near Minsk when he was fifteen. After enduring military service at Kovno,

The Flowering of Yiddish Literature

122

where he composed an elegy on the death of Rabbi Isaac Elchanan, he lived in Warsaw and Cracow. He participated in the Czernowitz Conference of

1908, which proclaimed

Yiddish as a national language of the Jewish people. He came to America for the first time in 1908. From 1914 on, America

was his permanent home and many of his stories deal with American situations faced by the Jewish immigrants. But the lasting home of his muse was the shtetl of his childhood. The further he was removed from it, the more idyllic was his

description of its streets, its characters, its atmosphere. He was convinced that its soul was imperishable and would somehow

be reincarnated in the New World and in Israel, although he

was vague about the institutional forms in which it would be embodied anew.

Like Reisen, David Pinski was ever proud to acknowledge himself a disciple of Peretz, to whom he brought the first

produ of his pen in 1892 for critical judgment. Pinski however, a more dynamic personality than the gentle Reisen, he was not content merely to transmute reality to beauty. He

worked

to

convert dreams and

thoughts

into deeds.

He

brought a note of optimism and joy in mere living, which was lacking in the meek Reisen. Indeed, it was also lacking in the

Yiddish classics of the closing nineteenth century. For, the smile of Mendele was a sardonic smile barbed with bitterness.

And the wisdom of Peretz was the melancholy wisdom of Koheleth. And the laughter of Sholom Aleichem was the dis

illusioned laughter of the pessimist who, according to the inscription on his tomb, "poked fun at life as but a jest, laughed up his sleeve at all that mattered; when other men were happiest, alas, his heart was bruised and shattered." Pinski is, of course, aware that life may be bitter, but he holds that there are blissful moments which make it worthwhile.

These moments are way-stations for whose sake the whole trip is undertaken. His play, Die Bergsteiger (The Mountain

Wider Horizons

123

Climbers), is an allegory of the mountain of life we all climb. At its peak is the inn where the innkeeper, Death, has arranged

for us to spend the night after our tortuous upward journey. Pinski's heroine voices his basic sentiment in her final hour

before entering the inn, saying, "Just to be alive is the highest happiness. To have come out of the unknown into this life

is happiness. Though we be poor and wretched, sick and dis appointed-we are alive. Every day we should be thrilled by this fact. Our last breath should be exultation that we have

lived... We need happiness but not the happiness of the victor who strides over the corpses of his victims. We need the inner happiness that warms and irradiates and which only goodness can confer upon us."

And Pinski is good. In his opinion, the key to happiness is goodness, not power or wealth or fame. In the play, Alexander and Diogenes, the dramatist concludes that Diogenes, who had no earthly possessions except the barrel in which he lived, was,

by virtue of his inner goodness, happier than his contempor ary, the world-conqueror Alexander, who sat on a golden throne surrounded by hundreds of flattering courtiers. When

Alexander reproaches Diogenes as a nay-sayer to life, as a barrel-dweller and a wearer of rags, Diogenes replies, "It is true that I have lived in a barrel. It is true that I have worn

rags. But I have not been a scorner of life. I have loved life no less than you. I have loved the sun by day and I have also known the night with its charm. A beautiful flower could delight me with its loveliness and fragrance. I have enjoyed

the brook and its murmurings. Was this not enough of life? What more did I need in order to say Yea to life? I have assimilated all of nature into my being. I have acquired wisdom and knowledge in fullest measure. Did you, with all your battles and bloodshed, gain more for yourself?" Pinski

clearly infers that happiness lies not in conquest and dominion

The Flowering of Yiddish Literature

124

but in peace of mind, in self-mastery, in rising beyond self to pure goodness.

In the original unpublished version of Der Oitzer (The Treasure), Pinski's most successful play, he incorporated two

simple characters who stand aloof from the feverish hunt for the buried treasure. They do not partake of the hysteria

which swept over the entire Jewish community. These two

unassuming individuals are happy and serene amidst their poverty because they have inner fullness, while all the others quarrel and

wrangle over

the division of a non-existent

treasure.

Pinski's sympathy, like that of most Yiddish writers, is ever

with the poor, the underprivileged, the uncomplicated. But he is not content merely with depicting the warm humanity of these forgotten creatures of God. He pours fire into their veins; he makes them battle for a better world-order. His poor do not accept in a fatalistic mood their abject condition. They are not obsequious beggars like Mendele's Fishke the Lame. They are

not Luftmenshen like Sholom Aleichem's Tevye the Dairy man

or Menachem

Mendel

of

Yehupetz.

They are not

Kabtzonim of Kabtzansk. They are fighting individuals who strike out for a more equitable social order. The odds against them may be overwhelming, as they are for Isaac Sheftel, the

title-hero of Pinski's first proletarian drama; but at least they roar out like a raging lion. They do not grovel and whine and plead. Pinski began as a Naturalist in the 1890's when European

Naturalism was dominant and developed into a Symbolist after the turn of the century. He began as a literary pioneer of the proletariat. However, each of his proletarian heroes, though sharing in the common problems and privations of the masses, also retains individual traits and is as lonely in his

uniqueness as is the scholar in his study, the poet in his garret, the millionaire in his palace, or God in his heaven.

125

Wider Horizons

Isaac Sheftel, the title-hero of a play of 1899, is Pinski's typical unheroic hero. He is not a superior or even unusual

human being. He is an average representative of the working

class, living in a simple home and eking out a bare subsistence. He has, however, a creative urge, a dream, a bit of uniqueness.

He is not content to sit at the inefficient loom, year in year out. He wants to improve things. He wants to change the

weaving process with a new machine. This envisaged invention

absorbs his complete attention. To his family on the verge of starvation, the unending brooding of the breadwinner, who

stays away for days from the shop, is incomprehensible, a mild form of insanity. He is harassed on all sides. His fellow

workers bait him. His wife berails him. His employers exploit him and his inventive talent. Mutely he endures all scolding, mockery, misunderstanding, and ill-will until the breaking

point is reached. Then he revolts in a magnificent gesture of rage and defiance, smashing and trampling upon the factory

machines to which his own fertile brain once gave birth. This

destructive deed is the impulsive protest of a fettered person ality, the desperate act of a creature at bay. It leads not to

salvation but to nihilism. It is followed by despair, drunken ness, self-annihilation.

Pinski discovered the Jewish factory hand when industrial

ization in Russia was still in its infancy. His characters are naked souls stripped of idealizing veneers and true to their inner urges. They are real in their mixture of brutality and

tenderness, callousness and kindness. They speak the Yiddish

of the market-place and the workbench, broken sentences, ejaculated

phrases,

repetitious

monosyllables.

Their

revolt

against God and society is still an individual act motivated by their need to retain a last remnant of dignity.

After the pogroms that ushered in the new century, Pinski preached

mass resistance.

In

addition

to

the

social

and

economic struggle which Jews as oppressed and exploited

126

The Flowering of Yiddish Literature

victims must carry on against Czarist oppressors and capitalist exploiters, there was also the specific struggle of Jews for survival in a hostile environment. Jews, he felt, were a small minority in the vast Russian realm and, therefore, no match

for the Cossack hordes. But they must not let themselves be led to the slaughter like dumb oxen or slink away into cellars like rats. They must resist their ruthless foes and go down fighting for the Jewish values they held dear. Accordingly,

Pinski wrote the stirring tragedy, Family Tzvi, in 1903 and 1904, with the heart-rending pictures of the Kishinev Pogrom

before his eyes. And the message of his play was: we have had

enough of vague talk about brotherhood, internationalism,

cosmopolitanism. We are not stray individuals let loose in the world. We are Jews, part of a living social and historic entity. We must take our proper place as disciplined members of the

Jewish people. Pinski, thus combining his faith in social justice with a faith in Zionism, took his position at the forefront of the Labor

Zionist movement from its early founding. For half a century he wrote, lectured, and agitated for his two ideals: Zionism and socialism.

Pinski's boldness and originality also manifested itself in his treatment of the relation between the sexes. While Euro

pean literature since the Renaissance became ever more pre occupied with the theme of love, Yiddish literature assigned it minor importance, thus reflecting Jewish reality in which marriage preceded love. Marriage was seen as love's begin

ning and not as its culmination. The greater freedom in the

selection of mates, which Jewish youth of the past century fought for and gradually achieved, found literary repercussion in the sentimental novel, in the theater of Goldfaden, and in

the poetry of the enlightenment. But until Pinski paved the way, writers were most reticent in the treatment of sensual love.

DAVID PINSKI

128

The Flowering of Yiddish Literature

With Pinski, the lure of the flesh in all its intensity, fury,

and havoc makes its entry. The first of his characters to wrestle titanically with sensuality was Yenkel the Smith, the title-hero of a drama written in 1906. Yenkel is in love with

his wife and at the same time finds his neighbor's wife almost irresistible. The latter seeks out the robust, powerful Yenkel

and exposes him to temptation not because she is wicked but rather because she is married to a good-natured, adoring weakling who does not answer her need for sense-intoxicating joy. Pinski does not glamorize or gloat over illicit love. He is

saddened by its prevalence. In the end, his characters work their way out of the entrapping swamp of sensuality into an acceptance of family living which neither negates the joy of

the flesh nor avoids responsibility. In the drama Gabri and His Women, completed in 1908, Pinski again deals with this theme and arrives at the same

conclusion. Gabri, like Yenkel, is the man of strong passions. The emotional urge which once impelled him to elope with his employer's daughter drives him after ten years of married

happiness into the arms of a young girl. But the sense of guilt and the feeling of impurity poison his new experience. Beyond all momentary delusions of ecstasy, he yearns for moral health

and he finds it only after returning to his wife and reverting to the stable marriage relationship. Pinski's ideal characters are his women who carry their burdens faithfully as wives and mothers, who penetrate with intuitive insight into far deeper layers of a man's personality than do the flamboyant adven turesses, and who are so patient, so tolerant, so dutiful, so for

giving, that they offer a lasting haven to their erring husbands,

a sheltering home after emotional hurricanes. In Professor Brenner, written in 1911, Pinski dramatized

the love of the aging man for the young girl, thus bringing to the Yiddish stage a theme which Ibsen, Hauptmann, and

Schnitzler had popularized on the European stage of that

The Flowering of Yiddish Literature

130

Pinski seeks to compress within this single play far too

many contrasting ideas, love versus admiration, age versus youth, the severe demands of art versus the pleasures of the

commonplace. He attempts to broaden the domain of the Yiddish

drama

to encompass

more

than

specific

Jewish

themes. He treats eternal problems that are meaningful to

human beings everywhere. Though Professor Brenner falls

short of being a masterpiece, his play Der Oitzer (The Treasure), which explores the theme of avarice, does enter

into the stream of European literature. It was successfully

produced on the Berlin stage in German in 1910, even before its Yiddish premiere. Other works by Pinski moved English, French, Russian, and Japanese readers. Pinski came to America in 1899 and lived in New York

for half-a-century. When his lifelong dream of a Jewish state became a reality, he left for Israel in the seventy-fifth year of

his long life and took up his domicile atop Mt. Carmel over

looking Haifa Bay. There for fully a decade he continued to write stories

of Jewish

regeneration

and biblical

dramas

centering about Saul and Samson. There, until 1959, Israel's

Yiddish writers drew sustenance from his optimistic faith in the meaningfulness of their own striving.

In the main, however, Pinski belongs to the stream of American-Jewish

culture.

His

novels

of

Jewish

life

in

America, his editorship of various periodicals, chief among them Die Zukunft, his influence upon the New York Yiddish theater,

and his many essays on

current events form

an

important contribution to Yiddish-American literature, whose

significant beginnings go back to the 1880's, the first decade of mass immigration by Yiddish-speaking Jews.

The Social Lyric

X

YIDDISH LITERATURE IN AMERICA is the expression of the first generation of Eastern European Jews on American soil. It has its roots in the Old World and never entirely emancipates itself from its origin. But it does adapt itself to the specific American conditions faced by the immigrant Jews. It mirrors their hopes

and their reality. It begins on a significant scale in the 1880's when political

pressures in Czarist Russia compelled a mass exodus of Jews. These Jews included young intellectuals who envisaged the

United States as the promised land of freedom. On arriving, they did indeed find political freedom, practically unlimited liberty to speak, to write, to assemble, and to agitate. But they

also

found

that

where

rugged

individualism

flourished

unrestrained, it produced excrescences. It made possible the exploitation of man by man. Starvation wages, unemploy ment,

slums,

unsanitary

factory

conditions

were

bringing

about much needless suffering and were negating the blessings of political freedom. Newcomers soon realized that political freedom must be

accompanied by economic freedom if the human personality were to blossom and ripen in a healthy fashion. The struggle

against economic oppression was, therefore, waged by the immigrant pioneers with the same zeal and with similar slogans

as had been the struggle against Czarist tyranny. Out of this struggle arose great labor movements in which Jews played a 131

The Flowering of Yiddish Literature

132

dominant role, such as the International Ladies' Garment

Workers' Union and the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America. This struggle was sparked by the kindling verses of young Yiddish poets, verses of poverty's heavy affliction, the dignity of labor, and the joy of self-sacrifice, verses that were

sung and recited in sweatshops, at cellar-assemblies, on the picket-lines, and in the prison-cells in which strikers were herded. Many of these poets were merely pamphleteers in

verse, but the most gifted among them, David Edelstadt (1866-1892), Joseph Bovshover (1873-1915), Morris Rosen feld (1862-1923), and Morris Vinchevsky (1856-1933), left as

their heritage a few lyrics of enduring value. Edelstadt was born at Kaluga in the heart of Russia, far from the Jewish Pale. At an early age, he began to write Russian

verses

under

the

influence

of his

favorite

poets

Nekrassov, Nadson, and Frug. At first it was the loveliness of the Russian

landscape

and

the

poverty of

the Russian

peasantry that moved him to compose songs of nature and of social protest. But when, in 1881, he heard on the streets of

Kiev the shouts of pogrom-hordes crying for Jewish blood, the idealistic youth felt degraded and sought to flee from the beloved earth where he was unwanted to a land whose

doors were then wide open for the tired, the poor, the hungry masses

yearning

to

be

free. At sixteen

he

emigrated

to

Cincinnati and there he toiled for several years as a button hole maker in a clothing factory. The Haymarket Square riot

of May 1886 when striking workers battled Chicago police and as an aftermath four anarchists were hanged stirred him no less deeply than had the Kiev Pogrom. He now saw in the sovereign state, republican or monarchical, the defender of

entrenched privileges, capitalistic or aristocratic, and the foe of the free personality, worker or intellectual. He was seized

with a missionary zeal to become through the medium of the

133

The Social Lyric

winged verse the liberator of the individual from govern mental and economic oppression.

In 1889, three years before his death, he published his first

Yiddish songs. A year later, he was called to New York to edit

Freie

Arbeiter

Stimme,

the

organ

of

the

Jewish

Anarchists. Within a few months he became the adored poet of the East Side radicals. But tuberculosis, the scourge of the

slum-dwellers and the sweatshop-toilers, claimed him. At the age of twenty-six, he breathed his last in the Denver Sana

torium, only three days after he had implored King Death for a reprieve: "I am still young; I want to enter the fray again; I want to attack inhumanity and tyranny with new strength.

If I dream, O Icy King, let me complete my dream. I have lived so little. I still have time to go home."

Edelstadt

was

not

an

original

thinker.

His

Anarchist

philosophy stemmed from Michael Bakunin, Peter Kropotkin, and Johann Most, and he did not enrich it with any new ideas. He was also influenced by Leo Tolstoy but did not

accept Tolstoy's doctrine of non-resistance. However, the intensity of his fervor gave vigorous life to the products of

Anarchist speculations. His songs were genuine, honest out pourings of a youthful heart sensitive to the world's imperfec

tions. He believed that if people were made aware of what caused their misery, they would put an end to it. If they knew the truth, they would embrace it. They would substitute for

injustice and evil a social order based on kindness, pure free dom, and voluntary mutual aid. For man is good!

The poet's task, according to Edelstadt, was to present the naked truth, to depict the horrible conditions of the present and the lustrous possibilities which a revolution could bring about, to light up like a star the tempestuous sea of human

blood and human tears, and to join in the universal hymn of freedom which earth and heaven sing. Edelstadt's favorite theme was Revolution, a sacred cause

134

The Flowering of Yiddish Literature

worth dying for. His synonym for the worker was slave of industry. The product of labor was crystalized pain. The

employers were robbers who dwelt in palaces.

In a fiery poem, entitled Anarchy, Edelstadt defined his ideal of anarchy as a world without rulers and tears; where

every heart and thought would be free and no separation would be made between thine and mine; where love would

not be bought and sold but would bestow happiness accord

ing to its desire; where churches and synagogues would be converted into cattle-barns and the dark tower of theology would at last be shattered; where bullets and crowns, bloody symbols of monarchs, would survive only in museums; where art, science, industry would topple superstition and ignorance;

where every human personality would be held sacred and liberty would quicken and inspire every brain.

In Edelstadt's visions, church and state were pestilential vampires, whose tentacles had to be removed from man before he could soar as an eagle into the radiant future. Edelstadt

held that the suffering of the Jews would come to an end only when all governments would fall, when all nations would merge into a single family, and when Christians, Moslems, and Jews would exchange their separate creeds for the com

mon anarchistic creed of freedom, justice, love, and joy on earth. The Jewish cause was synonymous with mankind's cause and Jews must, therefore, work not for their restoration as a nation but for internationalism or world-brotherhood.

Edelstadt's most famous lyric, My Testament, written at the beginning of his brief meteoric career and inscribed on his

tomb, was sung for decades by Jewish workers and not only in the United States. The poet H. Leivick recalled that when as a young man he was imprisoned in Russia, this song

accompanied him in the cells of Minsk and Moscow and along

the snow-covered roads of Siberia. He remembered an experi ence in a ghostly pre-dawn hour, when a chained political

135

The Social Lyric

prisoner was led out to be hanged; then the melody of

Edelstadt's song arose from the lips of a cell-mate and filled the entire space with the breath of eternity. The four stanzas contained Edelstadt's message to his good friends: when I die,

carry to my grave the flag reddened with toilers' blood and sing my free song of the enslaved Christian and Jew. I shall hear it in my grave and shed tears for them. But when there resounds to me the clash of swords in freedom's final battle, I'll sing from my grave and lend courage to the people's hearts.

Upon Edelstadt's death, several elegies appeared lamenting the passing of humanity's true friend, the warrior-poet of the

working-class,

the

heart

that glowed

for freedom

and

sympathized with all pain. The best of these elegies, in twenty

seven quatrains, was the work of Joseph Bovshover, who had come to America during the preceding year at the age of eighteen. Composed on the day of Edelstadt's death, this elegy immediately established Bovshover as his successor, as the poet of the anarchistic radicals. But at twenty-six, Bovshover too

was shrouded in spiritual darkness, and sunk in incurable melancholia, though he lived on until 1915. In all of Bovshover's poems there was hardly a kind refer

ence to Jews, even though he wrote for them in their tongue. His heart bled for an abstract humanity. His invective was

directed against world iniquities. His inflammatory verses lashed priests and plutocrats, kings and hangsmen. His inspira tion stemmed from the apocalyptic, atheistic poetry of Shelley and

the vitriolic social

poetry of

the

dying

Heine.

He

preferred Bohemianism as a way of life both for himself and

for all untamable spirits and, when this form of protest against conventions no longer sufficed to buoy him up in his ever darkening moods, he took refuge in insanity.

Before melancholia tightened its grip upon his soul, how ever, Bovshover had bright moments in which he sang out his

The Flowering of Yiddish Literature

136

joy at being alive and free on this lovely earth. He turned to

nature for invigoration and to poetry for intoxication. Both offered him a magic realm of beauty, splendor, and delight. He translated Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice and parts of

Goethe's Faust. He wrote essays on his favorite poets Heinrich Heine, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Walt Whitman, and Edwin Markham. He anticipated Markham's Man With the Hoe

with his own English poem To the Toilers, which he published under the pseudonym Basil Dahl in Benjamin R. Tucker's Anarchist journal, Liberty, in 1896, and which created a greater stir in radical circles than had the Yiddish original. But poverty continued to haunt him. After initial jobs as furrier, grocer, newspaper vendor, and tutor of languages, he

despaired of holding down any job for a considerable length

of time. The singer of labor's unconquerable might was conquered by the privations of a restless, penniless existence. The anarchistic poetry of the 1880's and early 1890's reflected

the dominance of the libertarian ideology among the radical Jewish immigrants. With the rise of trade-unionism and the

emergence of Jewish leaders who were prepared to use the democratic process of the ballot-box to hasten the collapse of the sweatshop system, the doctrines of Socialism began to make

greater headway among the Yiddish-speaking masses. The founding of the daily Forverts in 1897 signalized the decisive victory of Socialism over its rival Anarchism on New York's

East

Side.

Morris

Vinchevsky,

Morris

Rosenfeld,

and

Abraham Liessin were the most prominent poets associated

with this Yiddish newspaper during its earliest years. Vinchevsky grew up in Kovno, Lithuania, during the reign

of Czar Alexander II, when revolutionary socialism appealed to enlightened Jewish young men as the road to the salvation

of all people including their own. Beginning in 1877, he participated in the early Yiddish periodicals on the Continent, after having won a reputation as a Hebrew writer in Hamagid

137

The Social Lyric

and as the editor of a Hebrew periodical which propagated the socialist ideas of Aaron Lieberman (1844-1880).

Vinchevsky suffered imprisonment in Prussia in 1878 and in Denmark in 1879, and was banished from these countries

because of his undeviating devotion to Socialism. He did not share the impatience of his Jewish associates after the Pogroms of 1881. These kept on asking for immediate steps to alleviate Jewish suffering and were advocating Jewish self-emancipa tion and Jewish colonization of Palestine. Vinchevsky, how

ever, looked upon Leon Pinsker, Ahad-Haam, and the Lovers of Zion as seducers who were leading the Jewish masses away from the true savior Socialism. He himself left for London to

carry on his agitation from this center of Jewish radicalism, where Karl Marx was still alive. Here he spent fifteen years

of restless activity on behalf of his ideal. Here he founded in 1884

the

first

Yiddish

socialist

periodical.

Here

he

was

especially influenced by the messianic socialism of William Morris, whom he hailed as the muse's gift to humanity and

whose death he bewailed in a solemn elegy. Here he also imbibed a negative attitude

towards America.

terized

a land

the

United

States

as

where

the

He charac dollar

was

almighty and the Almighty was the Protector of the Dollar Lords;

where freedom was under police surveillance and

equality survived only on paper, buried in archives; where science was the handmaid of commerce, and art the boot

black of industry; where honesty was a luxury, love an article of contraband and philosophy a hindrance to business. With the departure to America of his closest co-workers and

hundreds of his readers year after year, Vinchevsky, after long hesitancy, finally decided in 1894 to join them in New York. Here the Crazy Philosopher, as he dubbed himself, the Grand

father of Jewish Socialism, as his disciples preferred to call him, continued to agitate in prose and verse for Inter

nationalism and Socialism. Efforts to win his support for

The Flowering of Yiddish Literature

138

specifically Jewish causes brought from him the rejoinder that cosmopolitan causes must take precedence. Society must first acquire a new orientation, the belly of the poor worker must

first be filled, then perhaps there would be time to think of national questions and Jewish national rebirth. Nationalism was, in his eyes, a luxury; while bread was a necessity. This attitude, originally outlined

in

1886 in

an essay

entitled Palestinism and Socialism, remained unchanged until his death in 1933, even though he later fought for Jewish

cultural autonomy and vigorously opposed the melting-pot philosophy. This attitude led his followers among the radical immigrants to resist Zionism. It made them more responsive to the call of the Bund, when this movement which combined

socialist

internationalism

with

Jewish

cultural

separatism

sought adherents beyond the boundaries of Russia. As a pioneer of the proletarian lyric, Vinchevsky preceded Edelstadt, Rosenfeld, and Bovshover. Edelstadt eulogized him

as the poet who could express the pain, hope, and militancy of the worker in simple language that evoked tears and healed wounds. But not merely the worker! His gentle heart bled

for all the world's stepchildren, the orphaned, the sick, the aged, the handicapped. In one of his earliest poems, London At Night, he reviews the sights which a street-lamp might see in the course of a

single night: a homeless boy looking for a spot to shelter him from exposure to the moist cold; a red-eyed girl waiting out

side a hospital where her father writhes in death's agony and wondering how she will now find bread for her five younger

brothers and sisters, long motherless and soon fatherless; an old actor who once made others laugh with his comic antics

but is now weak, hungry, pale, and bewildered; a newly

arrived Jew who is roaming the strange metropolis without a relative or savior to whom he can turn in his loneliness and helplessness.

The Social Lyric

139

Equally pathetic is Vinchevsky's poem of two little orphaned children cast adrift on London's streets. Too poor to trade, too

small to beg, too honest to steal-where will they get food? "The street is silent, its heart is of stone. And silent are wind, rain, and cold."

Vinchevsky is militant as well as sentimental. He aims to

arouse anger as well as pity. He converts propaganda into poetry. He transforms abstract Socialist doctrines into real, living imagery. In his essays, he speaks of poverty. In his

poems, we see the poor: the blind fiddler, the tattered beggar, the honest thief, the riveter's wife who gives birth in a stable, the three sisters at Leicester Square of whom one sells flowers,

another shoelaces, and the oldest herself. In his essays, he preaches the coming of a social revolution. In his poems, we see the flags unfurled, the living-dead on the march, the Jews

joining freedom's legions in the attack upon humanity's foes. After the Russian Revolution of 1917, Jewish Communists

hailed Vinchevsky as their anticipator and spokesman, but after a triumphant reception in Soviet Russia, he returned in 1925 to the United States, reconciled to his American home.

Morris Rosenfeld alone among the major social poets of his day gave affirmative emphasis to his Jewishness. In an autobiographic sketch of 1897, he dated the most productive period of his poetry as the years of the pogroms. Then he forgot the great wide world and remembered only the Jew.

He poured out his heart for his people and to his people. Although he was close to anarchist circles in his London

period from 1883 to 1886 and to socialist circles after settling

in New York in 1886, he never subordinated the Jewish cause to cosmopolitan panaceas. He became the singer both of labor and of Zion. If his Songs of Work and Freedom, translated into many tongues, earned for him a worldwide audience, his

National and Folk Songs endeared him to his own people. Rosenfeld was the only Yiddish poet of the sweatshop to

The Flowering of Yiddish Literature

140

attain international fame. This fame he owed not only to his

natural talent but also to a stroke of good fortune. For eleven

years he wrote, recited, and published sad lyrics of the toiler's lot, even while himself toiling long hours daily as a tailor on the brink of starvation. In 1897, his Song Book attracted the attention of Professor Leo Wiener of Harvard University, who

reviewed it in the Nation, a widely read and influential weekly.

This English review of a Yiddish work by a poet of the slums was followed by articles in the Boston Transcript and by the

publication in 1898 of Rosenfeld's Songs From the Ghetto in an English transliteration and an English prose rendering by Wiener. New York newspapers sensationalized the emergence of a genuine poet in the exotic Judeo-German jargon of the immigrants. Periodicals in French and German spread his

reputation to foreign countries. As a consequence, a non Jewish reading public discovered that Yiddish had become a

1

literary medium and native American Jews, especially those of German parentage, were led to reexamine their antipathy towards this tongue of their less assimilated co-religionists.

In his best lyrics, Rosenfeld deals with personal experiences and communicates feelings and not ideas or slogans. The sigh of

the

tired

worker

becomes sad music.

The

tears

of

the

factory slave are gathered one by one in the treasury of this teardrop millionaire-and are then poured out in melancholy verses. We hear the roar of the machines in his tumultuous

rhythms. We see the toiler lose his personality and become a soulless puppet, working and working and working without

end, busy and busy and busy all the time. For such a puppet, emotions, thoughts, reason are but a hindrance to efficiency.

When the whistle blows, an unfeeling mechanical monster claims the pale operator, the whirling wheel drains his life's

blood. In the long run the factory uses up his strength. Then another living corpse takes his place and sews and sews, on and

on. If the wage-slave prays for a day's rest on which he can

1

The Social Lyric

141

forget the angry growl and terrible look of boss and foreman, he can be comforted with the thought that all too quickly he

will know ceaseless rest. If he yearns for trees and flowers and birds, he is reminded that he will be carried away to a verdant

field soon enough. If he dreams of escape from the dark,

smoky, suffocating shop, where cleanliness is impossible, he is consoled that ere long he will be garbed in a pure white shroud and cool forest air will waft about him. If he prays for a dear companion to take loneliness from him, he is

advised to wait just a little longer and he will have myriad companions swarming all over him. Rosenfeld sings of the little boy who dreams of his father but rarely sees him during waking hours, because need drives

the breadwinner out of the house too early in the morning and brings him home too late at night. Rosenfeld sings of the pretty girl who hurries at daybreak through mute streets to get to the shop, because she must earn a living, and also walks the streets late at night through darkness and cold, because she

still must earn a living. Rosenfeld sings of blighted women and blighted men whose bodies are spent and spirits broken by murderous drudgery. But Rosenfeld also sings of specific Jewish sorrows. He portrays the Jew as a mendicant who has no resting place, as

a pariah with whom every people disports, as a tragic figure whose very laughter is a mixture of sighing and groaning. Jewish life has no flavor, Jewish happiness has no charm. The plaintive, withered ram's horn is the only instrument left to

the Jew, since his enemies ages ago broke his cymbals, flutes, and guitars. Nevertheless, a spark of hope still survives in the

sick, sobbing body of the weary wanderer, a spark that is being fanned to a bright flame again. This wanderer dreams anew

of the cedars of Lebanon and the myrtle of Sharon, of Mt.

Moriah and the Carmel range, of shepherd songs and of the

blessed greeting Shalom in his homeland Zion. Why beg

MORRIS ROSENFELD

143

The Social Lyric

strangers for refuge when Jerusalem asks its exiled children to resume their inheritance and regain their youth? A voice commands the poet to awaken his people with the message that the night of affliction is over.

The Chanukah lights

remind him of Maccabean heroism and the old fire that waits

to

be

rekindled.

He

retells

legends

of

Shulamith,

the

shepherdess beloved of Solomon, and Judith, who broke the

might of Assyria with her daring deed. Rosenfeld's Zionist songs lack the concrete imagery and the

sense of immediacy which his sweatshop poems, based on real personal experiences, possess. After the passing of the sweat

shop system in America and the establishment of a Jewish national home, his verses were revered as historic treasures,

somewhat

tarnished

with

age,

but

only

a

few

of

them

continued to be recited or read.

Of the social poets of the nineteenth century, Abraham Liessin (1872-1938), alone was able to make the transition to

pure poetry. Already in his boyhood in Minsk nature entranced him. At sixteen, he sang of the hot breath of earth

when it awoke from winter's sleep and the joyous haste of the waters liberated from their icy prison. His heart dissolved in love for all creation, animate and inanimate, but above all

for the sea of humanity of which he was but a droplet and into which he wanted to dissolve. The desire for self-sacrifice,

for martyrdom, was strong in him. Liessin was descended from a family of scholars and rabbis.

He was especially proud that he was related to Gabriel

Riesser (1806-1863), champion of Jewish emancipation in Germany and participant in the Revolution of 1848. Steeped in Jewish learning at the famed Yeshivas of Slobodka and

Volozhin, Liessin dreamed of joining the long list of saints

who shed their blood for Jewish values. But Minsk was hardly an arena for dramatic heroism. In his first Yiddish poem, he gives vent to his disappointment that in the face of the terror

144

The Flowering of Yiddish Literature

waged against his people there was no way of striking back

effectively. Thirsting for activity, he could not content himself with a tear and a sigh. When he discovered revolutionary socialism, he threw him

self into this cause with all the ardor of youth. He organized

groups of workers, inspired them with zeal for sacrifice, wrote for them impassioned lyrics of rebellion. But he also lectured

to them on Jewish history and recited to them the heroic deeds of their ancestors. He refused to endorse the assimila

tionist cosmopolitanism dominant in Jewish labor circles. If the Jews were to disappear when socialism ushered in the new glorious order, why then did they preserve themselves as a

separate group throughout 3,000 dark and splendid years? "I live with my head in the radiant future, but my heart is filled only with you, O gloomy, great, heroic past; how dear art thou to me!" He voiced the heresy that socialism must not seek to alienate the Jewish workers and intellectuals from their

Jewishness but must take into account the specific Jewish national qualities. Instead of advocating Russification, Jewish

socialists should bend their efforts to retain and to strengthen Yiddish culture in Russia. In

1897, Liessin's subversive activities forced him to flee

from his native land.

He

arrived

in New

York's

harbor,

enraptured by its symbolic Statue of Liberty, before whose gaze the ships paraded with their cargoes of hopeful wan derers. He accepted in lyric ecstasy the invitation of the torch-bearing goddess to join the young, the free, and the energetic in building a better world. But when he tramped

New York's streets, lonely and lost, he heard a mocking voice resounding from

the tenements, the voice of the raucous

metropolis that swallowed up millions in its cavernous hell. A

huge spider had settled upon the city and was lying in wait to ensnare the newcomers in its web and to suck out their life's

energy. He himself found nobody to live for and no cause to

The Social Lyric

145

die for. Melancholy poems of autumn and sunset replaced his

joyful poems of spring and dawn. Fortunately, the Forverts was founded in the year of his arrival and soon he was asked to participate in this socialist daily. As its editorial writer for seventeen years, he wielded considerable influence among the Jewish masses. He encour

aged them in their strikes and applauded their struggles for industrial unionization and the abolition of the sweatshops. He tried, and not always successfully, to veer his socialist col

leagues towards a more positive stand on Jewish nationalism. In 1913, he became editor of the monthly periodical Zukunft.

In his hands, it not only increased its circulation sixfold within the first eight months but it also became the finest medium for

Yiddish literary expression. For a quarter of a century his

comments and feuilletons on

every aspect of Jewish life

strengthened resistance to the dominant melting-pot philos ophy. Liessin's deepest love, however, was reserved for the lyric

muse. He aimed at lyric perfection and therefore waited until the last years of his life before reluctantly agreeing to the publication of his poems in book form. He was so keenly

aware of inadequacies that he continued to polish and to

rewrite verses long after their original appearance in period icals. When his own muse was barren, especially during the First

World

War,

he

translated

poems by Pushkin

and

Lermontov, Nekrassov and Tyuchev, Bialik and Walt Whit man, Lenau and Heine. Of these poets, he felt the spell of Heine longest and most intensely. Shortly before his death in 1938, he stood before the Lorelei Fountain erected to Heine's

Memory in the Bronx and projected eight poems on the bitter fate of this German-Jewish seer who perished in Parisian exile. He also visited Poe's cottage in the same borough and five

days before his own death paid moving lyric tribute to the American poet who died there.

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The Flowering of Yiddish Literature

Liessin poured into lyric form his unceasing questioning of fate. He constantly searched for an imperishable meaning to

the radiant moments alloted to mortals between the dark

eternity of the past and the unknown eternity of the future. He wrestled in verse with the mysterious force that sent him forth like a firefly to glow an instant in flaming brightness and

then to be extinguished forever. He begged for an anchor in the vast emptiness of space, for a symbol of stability in the immense whirling of time, for faith to help him emerge from the abyss of scepticism. If only he could recapture the fervor of the Jewish leaders who perished for the sanctification of God's name or the unquestioning trust of the simple men and

women whose agonizing end on the gallows and in torture chambers appeared so purposeless to his questioning mind!

He repeatedly reproduced in verse the solemn mood of the Ninth Day of Ab when Jewish heroism and Jewish tragedy reached their apex. He recalled his mother's reading to him from the Tsena Urena the story of the pious Hannah and her seven sons. Never would he forget their proud answers to the tyrant Antiochus or the leap to death of the bereaved Jewish Niobe after she had seen all her children slain before her

eyes. He would like to emulate these sons and the thirty-one

Jews of Blois who preferred death at the stake rather than abjuring their God. He sang of them and also of Shlomo Molcho who gave up an aristocratic marrano existence for a Jewish end in flames, and of the last Rabbi of Portugal who,

like Ugolino, was immured alive in a tower-wall for clinging to his faith. He retold in fifteen lyrics the victorious battles of

Judas Maccabaeus, the stubborn leader of a stubborn little

people that insisted on maintaining its uniqueness. But he also glorified in song the defeated defenders of the Jewish cause,

the ancestors who manned Jerusalem's burning ramparts against Rome's overwhelming might, Bar Kochba who rallied the dispirited to a last stand, Rabbi Akiva and Rabbi Yehuda

The Social Lyric

147

ben Bava, who experienced the ecstasy of dying for a holy

cause, Rabbi Meier of Rothenberg, who refused liberation at his people's expense and rotted away in a Hapsburg dungeon. Nor did Liessin fail to render poetic homage to contemporary Jewish martyrs, such as the silent smith of Boisk who forged the bullets for Jewish self-defense against the massacering Cossacks and the shoemaker Hirsh Lekert who went to the

gallows because he would not tolerate indignities perpetrated against Vilna's Jewish idealists.

Liessin recreated in verse the varying moods of Jewish holi days and reinterpreted many biblical tales and legends. He was fascinated by Moses, the first liberator, and by Elijah,

who was still waiting with mounting impatience for the final redemption of humanity. When Liessin wrote of days to come,

it was not in bombastic verses about a revolutionary proletariat on the march, but rather in messianic visions inspired by prophets like Isaiah and Ezekiel. In a nostalgic poem, he portrayed a classroom, ten children listening with rapt atten

tion to their teacher's recital of swords turned into plowshares

and peoples marching to Zion's holy shrine. The outdoors lured as sleds with ringing bells and playmates sliding down icy hills became audible. However, the ten little Jews, cheeks aglow, continued to dream of ultimate days when sin would disappear from the earth. Their schoolroom was not a gloomy prison but a portal opening on dreamland.

In Liessin's final poem, an elegy on the death of Baruch Vladeck

(1886-1938)

composed

four days before his own

death, he hailed this Jewish labor leader as an idealist who

freely chose the hard lot of a galley-slave and rowed on and on towards an envisaged promised land of socialism. The poem was symbolic of Liessin himself. He too voluntarily chose a life of service to a socialist ideal in Russia and

America. But he also served the Yiddish muse and the Jewish people. To Yiddish literature, he gave of his heart in ballads

148

The Flowering of Yiddish Literature

and songs, pure in diction, melodious in sound, rich in imagery, intense in feeling. To the Jewish pople, he lent

courage in dark decades with his visions of their historic heroism and his faith in their national rebirth.

The social lyric in America was dominated in its initial

phase by revolutionary, irreligious internationalism. Edelstadt and Bovshover, its typical representatives, would not tolerate

Jewish separatism. Rosenfeld added to songs of labor and revolt songs of Zion. But it was Liessin who saw most clearly

that, if Jews were some day to share in a feast of peoples, then they must be redeemed not only as individuals but also

as a people. He, therefore, became the lyric voice of Labor Zionism, the spokesman for Religious Socialism, the anticipa

tor of the young Yiddish poets who preferred Jewish themes to cosmopolitan slogans.

XI Golden Era of the Yiddish Theater

THE YIDDISH DRAMA in the New World shows a steady rise

in literary quality from the initial period in the 1880's when it stands under the influence of Goldfaden and his disciples Lateiner, Hurwitz, and Shomer, through the second period at the turn of the century when it is dominated by Jacob Gordin and his disciples Leon Kobrin and Z. Libin, until it reaches

its crest during the decade of the First World War when the disciples of Peretz such as Sholom Asch, David Pinski, and Peretz Hirshbein come into their own. For a full generation thereafter, the producer Maurice Schwartz battles for the preservation of Yiddish drama at its highest achieved level,

staging plays by H. Leivick, I. J. Singer, S. Anski, and Ossip Dymov, but with the closing of his Yiddish Art Theater in 1950 this literary genre suffers a mortal blow and is reduced

largely to book-drama.

The beginning of the American Yiddish theater goes back

to the beginning of mass immigration of Yiddish-speaking

Jews. In 1882, the first plays-Goldfaden operettas-were successfully produced in New York under the direction of

Boris Thomashefsky (1866-1939), a cigar worker with a fine singing voice. The ban in

1883

of all Yiddish

theatrical

activities in Russia compelled actors and dramatic authors to

emigrate in search of a livelihood. After brief stays in Paris and

London, most of them made their way to New York and Chicago. Jacob P. Adler (1855-1926) and David Kessler (1860-1920) were most prominent among the actors and also 149

150

The Flowering of Yiddish Literature

functioned as producers. Joseph Lateiner (1853-1935), who arrived in 1884, wrote the first full-length drama on American soil and on an American subject. He was soon followed by Moshe Hurwitz (1844-1910), nicknamed Professor. Both

dominated the American-Yiddish stage with their texts because of their knowledge of stagecraft even though they were com

pletely lacking in literary. talent. Not even Shomer, who pro

duced six plays during his first year as dramatic author, could

compete with them. Nor could Goldfaden during his first brief stay in America dislodge these imitators from their almost monopolistic hold. Actors and audiences only became aware of the low level to which Lateiner and Professor Hurwitz had reduced the Yid

dish theater when Jacob Gordin (1853-1909) turned his atten tion from 1891 on to the writing of serious drama. Gordin had begun his literary career in the 1870's as a con

tributor to liberal Russian periodicals. He espoused the prin ciples of the Narodniki or Populists who believed in going to the people, living with them, sharing their hardships, educating

them, and inciting them to fight for a more just social and

political regime. For a time he joined the Ukrainian intellec tuals who dreamed of an autonomous Ukrainian culture in a

Ukrainian state separated from Russia. He was most capti

vated, however, by the Bibleitzy, an Evangelical Bible Brother

hood, which glorified physical labor, accepted the ethical teaching of the Bible and rejected all supernaturalism. In 1880 Gordin founded a Jewish Bible Brotherhood which

sought to emancipate the Jewish faith from ritual and dogma and to retain solely the ethical principles of the Torah as a guide to individual and group living. When pogroms broke out the following year, he reacted to Jewish suffering by

blaming the victims for having alienated the Russian populace by arrogance and gold-greediness and he appealed to his co

religionists to exchange their decadent immoral callings for a

151

Golden Era of the Yiddish Theater

more healthy productive existence as tillers of Russia's soil. This well-meant but wrongly timed advice embittered Jewish

readers and caused his ostracism from Jewish circles. To prac tice what he preached, he spent the following three years as a

peasant in a Ukrainian village. He won a few adherents to his heretical sect

and

a

great many

vigorous

opponents,

an

experience which he later dramatized in Elisha Ben Abuya, 1906, the heretic of the second century who placed his faith in Rome's good intentions while his people was being lashed by Roman tormentors.

When the Russian government began to persecute the Bibli cal Brotherhoods, Gordin was compelled to leave for America in 1891. In the New World, he hoped to establish an agricul

tural colony in which Tolstoyanism would find practical reali zation. But, when he was faced with the immediate practical

problem of having to support his family, which included nine children

a number later increased

to fourteen-he had to

turn to more lucrative work and found it in becoming a dramatic writer for the Yiddish stage.

Gordin is said to have adapted and originated at least seventy plays. He learned a great deal about dramatic con

struction by translating Ibsen, Strindberg, Tolstoy, and Gorky. He based many of his own plays on excellent foreign models

and derived some of his plots from Euripides, Shakespeare, Calderon,

Schiller,

Gutzkow,

Grillparzer,

Gerhart

Haupt

mann, Victor Hugo, Ostrovsky, and Sudermann. Gordin's first success was achieved with Der Yiedisher Kenig Lear (The Jewish King Lear) in 1892. While Boris Thoma

shefsky was regaling a vaudeville type audience with a Lateiner operetta and David Kessler was vying for the same kind of

audience with a Hurwitz operetta, Jacob Adler realized that Jewish intellectuals who shunned the Yiddish theater could be

attracted if a serious problem of general interest were seriously

presented. The Lear tragedy, which adapted a Shakespearean

152

The Flowering of Yiddish Literature

theme to Jewish needs, was ideally suited for this purpose.

The conflict of generations was then raging with full force in immigrant homes. Old-fashioned fathers could no longer

maintain their patriarchal authority over their Americanized children and saw their own heart-ache mirrored on the stage. Parents brought their children into the theater that these might learn a lesson and mothers wrote to Adler, who acted the main role, that their sons behaved better towards them

after seeing the play. The Jewish King Lear ushered in the Golden Era of the

Yiddish theater and encouraged Gordin to continue with the

presentation of problems of universal appeal. He used drama as an educational medium, as a stimulus to thinking, and not

as a pleasant means of relaxation. In Mirele Efros, 1898, he touched the hearts of Jewish theater-goers with the tale of a Queen Lear, a strong-willed Jewish mother who ran her business and her household in imperial fashion but who in a moment of weakness turned over

the reins to her children.

These soon made it impossible for her to remain in her own home. Old, beggared, dependent, she had to seek shelter else

where, while her children lived in regal splendor. Gordin could not end his play on this tragic level, however, since his audiences could not be left to question the basic moral struc ture of the world. As an ethical mentor, he had to dole out

punishment for wrongdoing and bring about reconciliation after atonement. And so Gordin appended a final act. Hardly was Mirele gone from her palatial home when remorse assailed her children. In their inexperienced hands the wealth she had turned over to them was soon dissipated. Their ill-deed hung as a curse over them until retribution had run its course and

at the grandson's Bar-Mitzvah reconciliation of the family

could take place.

In Sappho, Gordin presented the emancipated woman who was prepared to follow the call of love wheresoever it lead

Golden Era of the Yiddish Theater

153

her and whatever the consequences she must endure from out

raged public sentiment. Sudermann's Magda had electrified European audiences with its thesis of woman's right to absolute truthfulness to her

own emotions. But while

Sudermann

carried his thesis to its logical conclusion by making his heroine in the final act balk at marrying the father of her child and by having her defy the ever mounting pressures of family and

public opinion, Gordin weakened the message he was expound ing by letting his heroine agree in the final scene to marry for the child's sake the man she had ceased to love. This concession

was necessary when writing for a Jewish audience that had only recently acquired the freedom to choose mates in mar

riage on the basis of love and that was not prepared to sanction

love without marriage. In the tragedy Gott, Mensh un Taivel (God, Man, and the Devil), 1903, Gordin wrestled with the problem of man's dual

nature. In a prologue reminiscent of the Book of Job and of

Goethe's Faust, he has God and Satan enter into a wager over the soul of Hershele Dubrovner. Satan undertakes to deflect

this poor pious Jew from adherence to honesty and purity by showering wealth upon him. The devil succeeds only to a

limited extent and finally has to acknowledge that wealth may corrupt and cripple but cannot entirely destroy the human

soul. Torn between good and evil, man may temporarily be tempted to sin and cruelty, but his conscience will reassert itself

and bring him back to his better self. Gordin's play precedes

by six years Andreyev's Anathema, which deals with the same subject of a divine wager and the tempting of a humble pious

Jew by the wealth suddenly bestowed upon him by Anathema, the incarnation of Satan.

Although Gordin's texts still abound in sudden reversals of

fortune that are inadequately motivated, though he often prefers the happy ending for a basically tragic situation, and

though his humor is sometimes forced and superficial, never

Golden Era of the Yiddish Theater

155

the horrors of hell are vividly impressed upon him if he persists in a sinful life with an alien Lilith and if he becomes a rene

gade to his religion. These pressures finally reach a climax on

his wedding day. Finding no discernible satisfactory solution for his moral and emotional dilemma, he seeks release from life's inscrutable complexities by hanging himself. Kobrin has a keen ear for the melodies of the human heart.

He projects lovers wrestling with duty, modesty, fear, and pride. He shows them exultant in complete abandonment at one moment and remorse-ridden and ripe for death soon there after. Free love was a favorite subject for discussion in immi

grant radical circles. Kobrin's dramatization of nature's fierce

sex claims upon man was a daring innovation. Only Pinski had earlier ventured to depict raw emotions in all their brutal nakedness but Pinski was still in Russia in the 1890's in con

tact with Russian reality. Kobrin, on the other hand, had arrived

penniless in

Philadelphia

in

1892.

He

had gone

through the gruelling experiences of a sweatshop worker. He

knew at first hand the fierceness of the factory struggles, the filth of the slums, the idealism of strikers, and the hunger for bread and also for love. His Memoirs of a Dramatist, pub lished in 1925, and his last work My Fifty Years in America.

which appeared posthumously in 1955, recreate no less vividly

than do his dramas and novels the atmosphere of the pioneer ing Yiddish generation. Z. Libin (1872-1955) also began under the aegis of Gordin with dramas and stories of stark realism and social criticism

He too shared the fate of immigrant workers in sweatshops and tenement-graves. His grim portraits, which record the anguish and tears of New York's East Side, are, however, relieved by lyric sentimentalism and humorous touches. His

most successful play was Broken Hearts (1903), later filmed with Maurice Schwartz in the main role.

The Gordin era was the golden era of the Yiddish theater.

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The Flowering of Yiddish Literature

With his death in 1909 began a decline in the quality of Yiddish drama, which was only temporarily arrested by the founding of Maurice Schwartz's Yiddish Art Theater a decade

later. Many reasons have been given for this decline. Probably the phenomenal growth of the theater as a mass medium was

its undoing. By becoming big business, it could prosper only by attracting a very large attendance. Melodramatic spectacles

and entertaining musicals served this purpose better than pro

found dramas expounding social panaceas or stimulating phil

osophic questioning. The success of Moshe Seifert's musical, Dos Pintele Yid in 1909, when all serious plays failed to gain a hearing, was symbolic of the decline. The flight of Ameri

canized Jews to English and the sudden stoppage of new immigration upon the outbreak of the First World War re duced the size of the potential Yiddish public. Despite efforts of authors, composers, actors, and producers, theater-goers dwindled from year to year. Deprived of old patrons by death

and assimilation and unable to gain new patrons, the Yiddish

theater nevertheless continued for fully another generation a heroic struggle for survival in America.

Meanwhile in Russia, with the lifting in 1904 of the ban on Yiddish production that had been imposed in 1883, drama

was experiencing a revival. Plays by Peretz and his disciples Pinski, Asch, and Hirshbein could now be staged.

The most dynamic spirit in this revival was Peretz Hirsh bein (1880-1948), a dramatist of high literary caliber and also

a producer and director of tremendous energy. Born as the son of a miller near a little town in the province of Grodno, he early imbibed the learning of the traditional

Kheder and the folklore of his Jewish surroundings. At the age of eleven, he was sent away to Brisk to continue his education.

Then began a series of wandering from town to town in search of ever greater knowledge. As a Yeshiva student, dependent upon day-boarding with charitable families, he came to know

Golden Era of the Yiddish Theater

157

varied aspects of Jewish life in the Russian Pale and pic turesque types from beggars and tramps to more respectable itinerant preachers and arrogant patricians. At sixteen he became infected with the learning of the Maskilim and at seventeen, in 1897, he felt the impact of Herzl's call for a return to Zion. At eighteen, he made his way to Vilna-to him a symbol of the great wide world and was stimulated to write Hebrew songs and Yiddish stories. One of

his Hebrew songs was printed in a periodical edited by David Frischman. This encouraged him to write his first dramas in

Hebrew: Miriam, the tragedy of a Jewish prostitute, pub lished in 1905, and The Intellectual, afterwards translated and

published in Yiddish in 1907. In 1904 Hirshbein left for Warsaw. There he was introduced

by the Hebrew novelist Isaiah Bershadski (1871-1908) to Peretz and by Peretz to Bialik. There he came to know the

literary elite: Abraham Reisen, Sholem Asch, Joseph Klaus ner, Nomberg, Dineson, and was encouraged to continue with the writing of dramas, even though the outlook for staging them was dim.

In 1905, when the abortive revolution broke out, he returned

to Vilna to participate in the founding of Hazman, a Hebrew periodical edited by Benzion Katz (1875-1958) and around which there soon gathered young writers such as Isaac Dov Berkowitch (born 1885), Hillel Zeitlin (1872-1943), Zalman Schneour

(1887-1959),

Z.

I.

Onokhi

(1876-1947), A.

A.

Kabak (1880-1944), and Reuben Brainin (1862-1939).

Hirshbein introduced Brainin to the poor quarters of Vilna and Brainin mentioned in his feuilletons that his guide during his stay in this Lithuanian-Jewish metropolis was the poet of the cellar-dwellings. This title clung to Hirshbein for a long time. In Hazman were published Hirshbein's Hebrew dramas,

but there was no possibility of letting them resound from the boards of a theater.

In 1906, therefore, Hirshbein turned to the writing of Yid

JACOB GORDIN

Golden Era of the Yiddish Theater

159

dish plays. The first of these, Oif Yenner Sait Teikh (On the Other Side of the River), broke with the naturalistic portrayal of life which had characterized his Hebrew plays. The sym bolist technique which he now attempted and the emphasis

upon communicating a mood rather than a lucid vision of reality earned him the title of "the Yiddish Maeterlinck," a

title which greatly annoyed him in later years, when he turned away from symbolism. He now arrived at the theory that literature should not mirror life as it was but should rather

point the way for life as it ought to be.

During a stay in Berlin in 1907 he composed the drama Die Erd (Earth), an expression of his aversion to city life and his longing for a return to the soil and nature.

At St. Petersburg in 1907, he completed Tkias Kaf (Con tract), the tragedy of a Jewish girl whose father had pledged her hand in marriage to a mate of his choice and who may not therefore marry the young man of her own choice. As a contrasting drama, he wrote Oifn Shaidveg (Parting of the

Ways), in which he portrayed the new type of Jewish woman who dared to fashion her own fate. This theme had been

popular on the Yiddish stage ever since Goldfaden had intro duced it in the 1870's, because it was still a burning issue in

Eastern European Jewish families. In

1908, encouraged by Bialik,

Hirshbein organized in

Odessa the Hirshbein-Troupe of actors to present Yiddish dramas of high literary merit. For two years he wandered about Russia giving performances of his own dramas and those of Sholom Asch, Pinski, Gordin, and Sholom Aleichem.

Financial difficulties compelled the dissolution of the Hirsh bein-Troupe in July

1910, after its last performances in

Bobroisk and Dvinsk. Nevertheless, his example exerted a great

influence upon the formation years later of the Vilna Yiddish Troupe and upon the New York Yiddish Art Theater. Some of the actors he had trained in ensemble playing before the

First World War continued this tradition long afterwards.

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The Flowering of Yiddish Literature

Disillusionment with Czarist Russia led Hirshbein to Vienna,

to London, and finally to New York, where he landed in November 1911. Here he wrote in 1912 his dramas Die Puste

Kretshme (The Haunted Inn) and A Farvorfen Vinkel (A Neglected Nook), but could find no American theater to pro duce them. In a mood of depression he returned to Russia in

1913 but soon left it again in order to seek happiness as a tiller of the soil in Argentina. Visiting the colonies established there by Baron de Hirsch and his Jewish Colonization Associ ation since 1890, Hirshbein described his experiences in the book Fun Veite Lender (From Distant Lands), begun in June 1914 and completed in November, after war had broken out. The book reaches its climax in the narration of his experiences

at sea on an English steamer which was sunk by a German cruiser and his days of captivity until he was landed on the Brazilian coast and could proceed to the United States.

In his book America (1918), he describes his travels through

the North American continent. He emphasizes not only its natural wonders but also the problems of adjustment faced by the immigrant masses. He sympathizes with the Indians from whose eyes sadness looks out upon the white usurpers, the

Negroes of Georgia and Alabama who are, in his opinion, treated with less love than dogs or horses, the Polish miners

who spend their days in the dark bowels of the earth, and

above all the Jews who toil in New York's sweatshops or who plod wearily as custom-peddlers with packs on their backs in distant Southern and Western communities. He sees the first

immigrant generation dying off and taking to the grave its own languages and intimate traditions. He foresees a second generation growing up strong and healthy, flexing its muscles, noisy and raucous. He believes it too is only a transition to that

third generation which will be genuinely rooted in the New

World and which will sing out its great, lustrous song, for which America's mountains, rivers, fields, and forests were

yearning. He holds that Europe will more likely be Ameri

Golden Era of the Yiddish Theater

161

canized in coming decades than that America will continue Europe's traditions. As for the Jews, perhaps a time may come when a purified Judaism will emerge under America's skies,

but as yet the purifiers have not been born and meanwhile the

destroyers of historical Jewishness were dominant. During the war years he wrote the dramas A Leben far a Leben (A Life for a Life, 1915), Greene Felder (Green Fields, 1916), and In Shoten fun Doires (In the Shadow of Gener ations, 1917).

Beginning with 1918, Maurice Schwartz produced Hirsh bein's dramas with great success. These became part of the standard repertoire of the Yiddish Art Theater. From 1920 to 1922, Hirshbein undertook a trip around the world. This resulted in his fascinating book Arum der Velt

(Around the World, 1927). In recording experiences in South Sea Islands, New Zealand, Australia, and South Africa, his

heart goes out to the primitive tribesmen-Papuans, Maori, Bushmen, Zulus, and Hottentots-who are perishing under

the onslaught of the white man's civilization. He feels the pain of the conquered and the enslaved. He senses a deeper kinship with the innocently smiling savages and with the descendants

of cannibals than with the domineering officials, plantation owners, and missionaries, all of whom are so certain of their

own national, social, and religious superiority. Wherever he travels, he seeks to discover Jewish settlers and he is able to

ferret them out in the remotest corners of the globe, strange wanderers cast adrift but everywhere yearning for Jewish com panionship. He sees the time coming when the entire globe

will be studded with Jewish settlements and a common bond will encircle all Jewish communities. These will seek regener ation as a world people. Only after that regeneration will have

taken place, will Jews find in their hearts-even as have non

Jews-rest, peace, stability under the sun. In 1925, Hirshbein again set out on a world tour. It lasted five years. His experiences in the Holy Land are described in

The Flowering of Yiddish Literature

162

his volume Eretz Israel (1929). He sees the land both blessed and accursed and he is most at home with the workers in the

collective villages who seek to build a new way of life under

the greatest difficulties. In India he meets Gandhi and Tagore and lives for many months on the Tibetan border at the foot hills of the Himalayas, an experience recorded in his book

India (1929). His most ambitious efforts as a storyteller were his novels

Roite Felder (Red Fields, 1935) which deals with the post revolutionary efforts to settle Jews in Crimean agricultural

collectives, and Bovel (Babylon, 1942), which describes the dis

integration of old Jewish ways in the phantasmagoric metrop olis of New York, his home throughout the 1930's. From 1940

on, he lived in Los Angeles. Twenty-six of Hirshbein's dramas were published in 1916. Posthumously, five volumes of his projected collected works

appeared in 1951. Hirshbein began under the influence of Peretz and Bialik and attempted a synthesis of Naturalism and Symbolism in

his earlier period but ended as a neo-Realist. Nevertheless, a lyric idyllic tone interpenetrates his most realistic tales.

In

drama he is a supreme master of the natural dialogue, creating living characters with utmost economy of words. His travel

sketches are the most sensitive of this literary genre in the Yiddish tongue and they span all continents. He occupies a

most prominent place among the epigones of post-Classical Yiddish literature,

the

writers who were rooted in Jewish

traditional soil and who assimilated Russian and European literary forms and innovations without, however, succumbing to them in their inner personalities.

Among

Hirshbein's Russian

contemporaries,

A.

Veiter

(1878-1919) was attracting attention with Symbolist dramas during intervals between his revolutionary activities. Unfor

tunately, his preoccupation with political agitation, his long

163

Golden Era of the Yiddish Theater

years of imprisonment, and his early death prevented the full maturing of his literary talent. Born as Eisik Meir Devenishski, he began as a writer of Hebrew lyrics filled with socialist sentiments. After joining the Bund, he ran afoul of the Czarist authorities and was im prisoned for the first time in 1899. Upon his release, he con

tinued his underground activities in Vilna, Kovno, and Lodz. An impassioned orator in Yiddish, Polish, and Russian, he

continued to be persecuted by the police and was sentenced to Siberian imprisonment in 1902. Released in 1904, he took an

active part in the Revolution of the following year. Under the influence of Peretz, he became more active in Yiddish literary and cultural projects. In 1912, he was again exiled to Siberia. With the outbreak of the Revolution of 1917, he returned

to

European

Russia

and

found

in

the

Yiddish

essayist

S. Niger his closest collaborator. Both undertook to edit Yiddish periodicals in Lithuania

and

White

Russia.

When

Polish

soldiers captured Vilna in 1919 and went about marauding

and killing Jews, they shot Veiter and Niger escaped to America.

Veiter's early short stories and essays received less notice than did his three symbolic dramas between the two revolutions. In

the poetic drama Fartog (Before Dawn, 1907), he mirrored

the ideological struggles within the soul of Russian Jewish intellectuals when the outbreaks of 1905 occurred. The heroine,

who was then studying abroad at the Swiss University of Bern,

had been torn away from her Jewish ancestral roots. She was disillusioned with the alien world that had lured her earlier.

She heard the call of the pioneers who were finding their way to Zion. But she also sensed the value of a life devoted to the

discovery of new knowledge in the scientific laboratory. A

decision of which path to follow was indeed difficult, in Veiter's view.

In a second drama In Fire (1910), Veiter mirrored the

despair that gripped disappointed Jewish youth that saw its

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The Flowering of Yiddish Literature

cherished libertarian ideals go up in flames and that was

nevertheless no longer able to return to the wholesome religious life of its forefathers.

In his third drama Der Shtumer (The Mute), 1912, Veiter

again depicted the deep suffering of his Jewish generation that had recognized the loudly proclaimed new dawn of freedom to be but a mirage and that sought atonement in silence and in a penitent homecoming to the old-fashioned synagogue and Jewish House of Learning.

Veiter's own oscillating between the Russian, Polish, and Jewish aspects of his soul, his desperate unsuccessful search for a synthesis, his long martyrdom for Russia's liberation, his undeserved, unnecessary death at the hands of his beloved

Poles, and his vague perception of the need for some kind of revitalized Jewishness reflect the contradictions of his gener ation, a generation in which ideas stemming from widely diver gent historic experiences clashed and in which the outlines of

an impending cultural crisis were beginning to take shape.

The Battle of Ideas

XII

AT THE TURN OF THE CENTURY, the battle of ideas was joined which was to rage on in many communities on all continents and which divided Jews into Zionists and Bundists, Pales tinians and Territorialists, Hebraists and Yiddishists, Religion

ists and Secularists. During the decade between 1897, the year of the First Zionist Congress at Basel and the founding of the

Bund, and 1908, the year of the Czernowitz Congress of Yid dish writers

and

thinkers,

the

various

ideologies

assumed

definite shape and were reflected in Yiddish literary organs and movements.

Among the original thinkers of this decade, Simon Dubnow

(1860-1941), Ahad-Haam (1856-1927), and Chaim Zhitlov sky (1865-1943) exerted a strong impact upon the Eastern European Jewish mind, even though Zhitlovsky alone gave primacy to the Yiddish tongue. Dubnow was an historian by training and inclination and wrote chiefly in Russian. However, in his earlier years he was

a pioneer of Yiddish literary criticism and in his maturer years he inspired the founding of Yivo as the central institute for

scholarly research and publication in Yiddish. Dubnow too had at first been sceptical that literary works of great value could be created in a tongue that apparently had no standardized grammar and lacked the subtle nuances of Russian or German. The first sketches of Sholom Aleichem

convinced him of his error and, under the pseudonym of Criticus, he published in 1887 a glowing tribute to the young 165

166

The Flowering of Yiddish Literature

humorist. In a later volume, Fun Zhargon Tsu Yiddish (From Jargon to Yiddish), 1929, he reminisced about his discovery in the 1880's that in Yiddish, the deprecated language of the masses, far more than in Hebrew or Russian, the languages of the educated, works of the highest artistic merit could arise

and satisfy the needs of the largest sector of the Jewish people. He recalled with pride his participation in the evolutionary process whereby Yiddish had grown from a jargon to literary and scientific eminence. He gave his critical blessing to Men

dele, Dineson, Spector, Frug, and above all Sholom Aleichem. He raised the prestige of Yiddish among Russian readers who were accustomed to look down upon it and to desire its dis appearance.

After a decade at St. Petersburg, Dubnow arrived in Odessa

in 1890 and there he joined the circle of scholars and poets who later came to be known as the Sages of Odessa. They included

Ahad-Haam and S. S. Frug, Mendele and Sholom Aleichem, Chaim Nachman Bialik (1873-1934) and Y. H. Ravnitzky (1859-1944), Ben-Ami (1854-1932) and Chaim Tchernowitz (1871-1949).

It was during Dubnow's Odessa years 1890 to 1903, when

he was stimulated by constant interchange of ideas with these creative minds, that his own theories of Spiritual Nationalism and Autonomism matured. These ideas found best formulation

in his Letters on Ancient and Modern Judaism, which first appeared in the influential Russian-Jewish weekly Voskhod from 1897 to 1906, and which later formed the basis for his

ten volume History of the Jewish People, 1925-1929. Although Dubnow's Letters were written in Russian and were translated into German in 1905, into Hebrew in 1937,

and into English in 1958, before they were finally rendered into Yiddish in 1959, their influence was strongest upon Yid dish groups, because Yiddishists found in them the logical underpinning to their own striving.

Dubnow begins with the assumption that national types

167

The Battle of Ideas

evolved from simplicity to complexity and from common material interests to common spiritual bonds. He sees in the tribal unity the original national type. It arose out of common ethnic belongingness and the sharing of a common territory

for many generations.

It

gradually evolved into a more

advanced cultural type as there continued to accumulate com mon

tendencies, habits, attitudes,

beliefs,

experiences,

and

above all an ever richer and more complex common language. This cultural type, occupying a common territory, did not lose its material base. It was still linked with common economic

activities and brought about the formation of a unified political structure, the national state. If such a state was conquered by

a superior armed might, the culture group which constituted its indigenous population became assimilated to the conquering

group and fused with it. The process might take longer or

shorter, depending upon how intense was the will of the defeated nationality to continue in its uniqueness. Where its collective will was unusually strong, it could ward off for a considerable time the danger of complete submersion or fusion. Remaining on its own territory, it could resist being swallowed

up by the victors despite the temporary loss of its political independence or statehood. The Irish, the Poles, the Czechs,

and the Basques exemplified such tenacious survival through generations of foreign domination. However, there is only a single example in all human history of the survival of a people

down the millennia after the loss both of its political inde pendence and of its territory, a people no longer united by any common material factors but bound together primarily by a common faith, a common moral sense, a common spirituality. The Jewish people alone developed the strength to retain its nationality, its peoplehood, its historic uniqueness solely on the

basis of spiritual and ethical factors. It is the precurser of the

highest and most advanced national type, the spiritual type which no other group on earth has yet reached. It is held

together by common convictions and common concepts of

The Flowering of Yiddish Literature

168

ultimate values. It makes ever new cultural contributions. It

creates ever new autonomous institutions. It finds ever new ways of maintaining its vital energies alive and functioning. It is the most stubborn of peoples. Its will to survive is indestructible. Without the protective shell of political inde pendence or territorial stability, exposed to the ravages of hostile or at best indifferent surroundings, it has persisted because

it

was

able

to

evolve

out

of

inner

need

its

own

distinguishing traits, aspirations, and autonomous institutions. Religion, according to Dubnow, is an essential aspect of this

spiritual nationality but it is not the only aspect. In the many centuries when religion was the dominant force among the Christian and Moslem nations in whose midst the Jews dwelt,

many ethical, social, political, and philosophic facets of Jewish culture had to be shaped in religious contours. As a result,

religion is not limited among Jews merely to man's relation to God but has expanded to encompass the entire range of

man's relations to man, to groupings of men, to peoples. Hence, a Jew who converts to Christianity cannot be regarded as a

Christian member of the Jewish people. By changing his faith, he also secedes from his people. Dubnow denies that Jews have a special mission but he does see them as a people that in the course of millennia has accu mulated a tremendous treasure-house of experience. It has

reached a level of spirituality unequalled by any other group. It has a right to be proud of its historic deeds, which include

the giving of two other world religions to humanity, its present achievements, which include significant contributions in many

lands, and its messianic ideals projected onto the future. It is justified in not wanting to be absorbed in other nations whose

culture is shorter in time and poorer in experience. It must be allowed to grow freely on its own spiritual soil. Zionism en

riches the Jewish people by adding a territorial protective covering for a sector of this spiritual nationality, the Pales

tinian sector. However, Zionism must not negate the viability

The Battle of Ideas

169

of the other Jewish sectors. It should not negate Diaspora Jewishness by labelling it Galuth and dooming it to ultimate

disappearance through assimilation to the non-Jewish majority cultures alongside of which it now flourishes. Dubnow distinguishes between national individualism, the

right of each cultural group to develop its own uniqueness, and national egotism, the chauvinistic claim of a temporarily ruling

cultural group to the right to impose its pattern of life, its language, its educational system, its religion upon minority groups. National egotism is aggressive, oppressive, imperialistic,

while national individualism merely seeks to conserve for its members freedom to co-exist quietly and peacefully alongside of its neighbors.

According to Dubnow, assimilation is national suicide. On the other hand, isolationism stands for exclusion from the

currents of life flowing all along this ever shrinking globe. Opposing both extremes, Dubnow preaches cultural auton omism, the preservation and strengthening by Jews of their

historic personality. Jews are not only citizens of a particular country, participating in its civic and political life, but they are

also members of the Jewish people, participating in the religious and cultural organizations and activities of their Jewish kin the world over.

Yiddish, as a medium of communication between Jews in

many lands, is a strong force for Jewish cultural survival and every effort must be made to preserve it. Dubnow, therefore,

lends his support to Yiddish creativeness not only in the folk

vein but also in scientific research and public debate. His

position is intermediate between that of the spiritual Zionists who looked to Ahad Haam as their mentor and the extreme

Yiddishists whose spokesman was Chaim Zhitlovsky.

While Ahad-Haam negates Yiddish and wants to concen trate all efforts upon the rebirth of Hebrew, Dubnow sees

Hebrew as the permanent healthy leg upon which the Jewish people stands but insists on retaining Yiddish, even if it be only

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The Flowering of Yiddish Literature

an artificial leg and not present at the birth of this people. For, it is better to walk on two legs than to hobble on one. Zhit

lovsky, on the other hand, believes in Yiddish as the main living language of the Jews. In his view, Yiddish is the healthy leg and Hebrew the artificial one.

The difference between Dubnow and Ahad-Haam is, there

fore, one of emphasis. Dubnow places maximum emphasis on national and cultural autonomy in the lands of the Diaspora

but does not object to Zionism as a supplementary activity, while Ahad-Haam wants maximum emphasis to be put on the building of a national center in Palestine which would radiate Jewishness in all directions and stem the disintegration of the Diaspora centers.

In contrast to both Dubnow and Ahad-Haam, Zhitlovsky

dissociates himself entirely from Zionism, political or spiritual, and from the Hebrew revival. For Dubnow, who loves Hebrew and writes in Russian, Yiddish is precious as the embodiment

of a heritage of several centuries in Europe. However, as an

historian, he is aware that Jewish history spans not centuries but millennia and is not limited to the European continent.

Yiddish is indeed precious as the spoken medium of a large sector of Jewry but it leaves untouched other important sectors of Jewry. It should, therefore, be retained as an additional

temporary pillar which helps to uphold the Jewish structure

but this structure must be shored up by other pillars, especially the strongest one, the religious. For Zhitlovsky, on the other

hand, Yiddish is the most powerful cohesive factor now uniting the Jewish people and Yiddishism is an end in itself.

Zhitlovsky argues that, if the Jewish people were to obtain autonomous rights in the multinational states, such as the

Russian and Austro-Hungarian Empires, and if, through a proper education and suitable cultural institutions, Yiddish could be elevated to the status of a literary, scholarly, national

language, then the preservation of the Jewish nationality would be assured regardless of the adherence or non-adherence of

CHAIM ZHITLOVSKY

172

The Flowering of Yiddish Literature

Jews to a common religious, philosophic, spiritual tradition. According to Zhitlovsky, Jews, if they so wished, could even convert to the Christian faith and yet not suffer in their national structure. What would happen in such case would be a transformation of Christianity in the Jewish image, a modi fication of Christianity to conform with the psycho-physical organization of the Jewish converts. It is true that in earlier

centuries the divorce of Jewishness from the Jewish religion was unthinkable, because the trunk of Jewishness was rooted

in religion and all aspects of Jewish culture were nourished by it. But this is no longer valid since the Emancipation. In the

present organization of peoples, religion is only a single branch of the cultural tree and if the Jewish people are hereafter to

flourish as a modern secular, free, progressive, vital organism, they too will have to reduce the religious factor to a subordin ate role. Nor can they substitute a common territory as the foundation for their culture, since history has made of them a non-territorial people. Language must, therefore, serve as the

unifying factor for their cultural striving. Jewish survival and

growth requires the preservation and elevation of Yiddish. Zhitlovsky stemmed from a patrician family. In his youth in Vitebsk, he was most closely associated with his classmate

S. Anski (1863-1920), best known for his later mystical play The Dybbuk. In 1882, Zhitlovsky left for Tula, deep in the heart of Russia. There he hoped to assimilate to Russian ways

and to participate in revolutionary work to liberate the Russian people. Contact with Russian anti-semitic literature, however, brought him back to Jewishness. As early as 1884, there was

born in him the desire to fight for the preservation of the Jewish national individuality on the Russian territory, which harbored the largest Jewish population. Early Zionism, em

braced by intellectual penitents during this decade of pogroms, did not appeal to him, since it meant flight from Russia and

Europe and was a product of despair. He felt that the Jewish nationality could prosper far better in the lands of the Galuth,

The Battle of Ideas

173

if these lands were reorganized on a socialistic basis. He, there

fore, joined an underground circle and carried on socialist agitation among Jewish workers.

In 1886, Zhitlovsky planned to found a Yiddish socialist periodical and a Jewish section of the revolutionary movement but was ordered to desist by the Russian leaders of his party,

not a few of whom were of Jewish origin, on the ground that such activities would promote Jewish separatism and would

impede the complete assimilation of Jews to Russian ways. This raised in his mind the question as to why Jews must

assimilate to other nationalities, a question which continued to disturb him and for which he at first could find no answer.

Finally, after years of study and research both in Russia and at the Swiss universities of Zürich and Bern, he arrived at the

conclusion that the struggle for the individual emancipation of

Jews as a preliminary step towards Jewish assimilation to the majority populations was an error, because Jews were not a

small percent of other peoples but one hundred percent of their own people and had a distinct national personality. They must, therefore, strive for National Emancipation, for equality

as a nationality among the other nationalities on this globe. Socialism would most quickly lead to the regeneration of the Jewish national personality by changing the economic struc ture of Jewish society from a parasitic existence to a more normal and more useful existence as a laboring group in agri culture and industry. Under socialism, the Jewish workers would be redeemed both as Jews and as workers. Socialist internationalism would not seek to abolish national units or to

knead all of them into a common dough, in order to make of

them one big loaf labelled humanity. It would, on the con

trary, give each nationality the opportunity to develop freely its own specific group configuration for the benefit of all. Just as there would then be no exploiters and exploited in the

economic field, so also there would be no oppressors and op pressed among the nations. Socialist internationalism would

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The Flowering of Yiddish Literature

never recognize privileged or chosen peoples. Each people had its virtues and its faults. Each people had something of value to offer to the others and something to learn and to take over

from others. Since nationalities occupying the same territory would be living with each other in equality and amity, there

would be no need for Jews to abandon their present abodes and to emigrate to Zion. They would rather found Jewish schools and universities and develop Jewish cultural institu tion in all the lands where their numbers were significant. It

might be desirable for them in addition to have a single terri tory where they would form a majority and would till their own soil in productive labor but such a territory could be an

autonomous province of Russia or of any other land. It did not have to be Palestine, as Zionists insisted.

According to Zhitlovsky, Dubnow's spiritual nationalism was

too tenuous a concept to attract the Jewish masses who were tired of their abnormal status. They wanted to become a

normal group held together by a common language and by a common culture that flourished somewhere on earth and not

in a spiritual limbo. Their striving was finding increased ex pression in Yiddish literature, a folk-literature that would attract ever more talented exponents and before long rival the finest European literatures. Yiddish must become rich in books

embracing all branches of learning. Then the new generation

would not have to seek its necessary knowledge among foreign peoples and tongues. It would express its feelings and thoughts in its own language. It would publish its achievements in art, science, and technology in Yiddish. Through this linguistic

medium, it would link into a unity Jews of all lands, the educated as well as the uneducated. If three million Swiss can

support ten universities, then eight to nine million Yiddish speaking Jews ought surely to be able to support twenty-five

universities. By becoming one of the most educated peoples, the Jews of the entire world, whether residing in Vilna, Warsaw or

New York, would develop pride in their group's achievements;

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The Battle of Ideas

they would transform Western learning into their own forms and return it to others enriched by unique contributions. They would be taking and giving. They would be fulfilling the

prophecy of Isaiah that all peoples shall live in peace with each other and the earth shall be full of knowledge as the sea is full of water. Should an era come when all peoples would flow together into one unity, the ocean of humanity, then the Jews would also cease their separate existence; but until that

distant future they must live as an equal among equals and not

accept a lesser role among the nations. Meanwhile, Jewish honor was being trodden under foot and

Jewish achievements were being credited to other peoples. This would not happen, if Jewish intellectuals would create more in their own tongue and less in foreign tongues. In contrast to such Jews as Heine, Marx and Ricardo who were adding to the prestige of the Germans and the English, Peretz, Sholom Alei

chem, and Sholem Asch were conferring dignity upon the Jewish name through their Yiddish works. The struggle of the

Yiddishists was, hence, a struggle for the normal, free, many

sided, rich, fruitful culture of the Jewish people, a struggle for its life, honor, and prestige. Zhitlovsky, therefore, joined with other exponents of Yid dishism to convoke in 1908 a conference at Czernovitz for the

purpose of clarifying the role of Yiddish in Jewish life. The initiator of the conference project was Nathan Birn baum (1864-1937), a pioneer of Zionism. As early as 1883, during his student days at Vienna, Birnbaum had founded the Jewish

fraternity

Kadimah,

the

first student

organization

whose members accepted the concept of Jewish nationhood and the necessity for Jewish rebirth in its own land. From 1884

on Birnbaum had fought for Jewish self-emancipation, a

slogan popularized by Leon Pinsker in 1882. He had entitled his periodical, which appeared from 1884 to 1893, Selbsteman zipation. When Herzl issued the call for the First Zionist Congress in 1897, Birnbaum, who had already agitated for

176

The Flowering of Yiddish Literature

political Zionism for over a decade, enthusiastically joined the new

movement

and became

its first secretary-general.

In

the course of his Zionist activity, Birnbaum became better acquainted with Eastern European Jewry and discovered in them a dynamic people that expressed itself in its own living idiom Yiddish. When Zionism, after its Second Congress in

1898, veered to the view that Jewish national life in the Galuth

was an impossibility and that all efforts must be concentrated on Zion, Birnbaum left this movement and devoted his talents

towards strengthening Galuth-Nationalism. This led him to stress more and more the necessity of bringing Yiddish, the

natural speech of Eastern Jewry, to the Western Jews, so that Yiddish rather than the more artificial, reconstructed Hebrew

might become the universal Jewish tongue.

During a lecture tour in America early in 1908, Birnbaum

won over to his idea of a language conference Chaim Zhit lovsky, David Pinski, Jacob Gordin, and the publisher A. M. Evalenko. These five organizers thereupon issued an invitation to Yiddish writers and editors to meet in Czernovitz, then the

capital of the Austrian province of Bukovina and the seat of a large Jewish community, in order to discuss the standard ization of Yiddish spelling, grammar, vocabulary, and other

subjects of common interest. The most controversial item for consideration, however, was whether Yiddish was to be recog nized as the sole Jewish national language, or as one of the

national languages alongside of Hebrew, or merely as a folk

tongue used by the masses. This last item was debated throughout most of the ten

sessions and in a very heated manner. For a time, agreement seemed impossible, since the seventy participants included all

shades of Jewish opinion from Zionist Hebraists to militant Bundists and such diverse personalities as Y. L. Peretz, Sholem Asch, H. D. Nomberg, Noah Prilutzky, Abraham Reisen, Matthias Mieses-a brilliant historian of Yiddish dialects, Gershom Bader (1868-1953)-editor of the first Yiddish news

177

The Battle of Ideas

paper in Galicia, M. L. Halpern-the youthful poet of Zlochov who was about to emigrate to America, I. Kisman-student

historian of Rumanian Jewry, and the fiery Esther Frumkin (1880-1938)-a rebel against Czarist tyranny, a fighter for the Jewish proletariat of White Russia, later on an extreme ex

ponent of Moscow Communism and a victim of one of Stalin's

purges. The skill of the presiding officers Birnbaum and Zhit lovsky succeeded in effecting an agreement on the proclama tion of Yiddish as a national language of the Jewish people. But the relation of Yiddish to Hebrew was not too clearly defined, so that individuals and differing groups could retain a

wide latitude of opinions. After the close of the conference, Peretz, Asch, Reisen, and Nomberg set out to tour Jewish settlements in order to win adherents for the proclaimed political, cultural, and social

equality of Yiddish, its desired evolution from a vernacular of the masses to a literary, scientific, and national organ of the Jewish people. The Czernovitz Conference was derided by Ahad Haam as

a Purim carnival, it was defended by Sholom Aleichem, it created difficulties for bilingual writers ranging from Mendele to Bialik, it brought to a climax the battle of ideas raging in Jewish press and literature. But its impact was enduring. It

heightened the prestige of Yiddish. Its ideology became the basis for many educational institutions that flourished after World War I. It stimulated translations of the world's classics

into Yiddish. It encouraged research and publication in Yid

dish. It led to the purification of Yiddish vocabulary. It paved the way for the scholars and thinkers who in 1925 founded

Yivo as the central institute standardization

of

Yiddish

Yiddish-speaking Jewry.

and

for the investigation and as

the

central

archive

of

Sholem Asch

XIII

SHOLEM ASCH IS The most talented of the many disciples of Peretz. In 1899, at the age of nineteen, he made his way to Warsaw and placed before Peretz his earliest literary products: tales and sketches in Hebrew. Peretz advised him to turn to

Yiddish and helped him to publish his first melancholy, romantic stories.

In 1904 Asch completed his idyllic tale Dos Shtetl (The Townlet), a nostalgic narrative of the beauty and inwardness of Jewish life in the small communities far from the main

stream of European culture. His kind, tender approach to the Shtetl was immediately sensed as a great innovation, since such settlements had until then been subjects for ridicule and satire,

symbols of Jewish petrifaction and superstitious resistance to enlightenment. Only rarely had attention been directed to rays

of light that pierced the prevailing gloom. Young Asch was the

first to place a romantic halo about the despised townlets, to seek out fragments of beauty in the filth-infested streets, to concentrate on the moments of charm and poetic elevation

amidst the grayness of daily existence. His was the Sabbath tone, the holiday-tone. In Dos Shtetl, Asch takes us into the house of the lumber

merchant Yekheskel Gombiner, where the door is always open day and night and where all travelers from far and near are

welcomed guests and feel at home. This merchant is no Luft mensh

as

was

Sholem

Aleichem's

Yehupetz or Mendele's Benjamin 178

Menachem

Mendel

of

the Third. His feet are

179

Sholem Asch

firmly planted on the earth. His eyes survey clearly the many business projects he sets in motion and he is ever on the alert

to make a profitable investment. At the same time, however, he is also aware that man in all his enterprises has a partner

in God and he therefore never deviates.from the moral prin ciples recorded in God's holy book. When spring torrents break up the ice and threaten to sweep his rafts of logs out to sea, he mobilizes during the day all available human resources to save

as many logs as possible. However, when darkness sets in and the raging waters threaten to swallow everything, he shows no fear. God's mercy will guard the rafts overnight. Confident in

the fairness of his heavenly partner, he orders the work to be interrupted until dawn rather than to endanger human lives.

And God does help. The ice bypasses his rafts and he is able to bring his logs to safety.

Gombiner's business trip to his icebound lumber also brings

him in contact with another merchant, whose learned young lad, fresh from a Yeshiva, might make a fine mate for his daughter and so the match is discussed by the two fathers. Though the girl would have preferred the son of the Hassidic rabbi whom she saw and admired from a distance, neverthe less she submits to

her father's

wish

and

travels with an

entourage of relatives to meet the chosen young man. In

accordance with the recent innovation of having young couples see each other before betrothal so that they might signify their voluntary acceptance of their parents' choice, the two young people are brought together for a few moments and then the engagement ceremony proceeds as a union not merely of two individuals but also of two families. The climax is

reached a few months later when the entire community partici pates in the wedding festivities. The early literary success of Asch enabled him to travel to

Palestine in 1908 and to the United States in 1909. In the Holy Land he was overawed by the biblical sites and memories and on his return he called for the translation of the ancient

180

The Flowering of Yiddish Literature

Hebrew classics into Yiddish. As his own contribution, he

translated the Book of Ruth. His trip to the New World resulted in a series of articles depicting the magnificence of America's natural phenomena from Niagara Falls to the Grand Canyon and by contrast the cruel seamy side of Jewish immi grant life in slums, tenements, and sweatshops. More important

was his narrative America, 1910, in which he described the

sad lot of a Jewish child whose first attempt to emigrate to America with his mother, brothers, and sister ended in failure

when he was sent back to Russia by the health authorities of Ellis Island, the island of tears. However, when he ventured

the ocean crossing a second time a few years later and was admitted to the land of his dreams, he was unable to adjust to its rugged ways, its heartless materialism, and its dying Jewishness. In Yossele's odyssey, Asch mirrored the tragic

homelessness of every Jewish person who was torn away from childhood roots in the old country. Asch himself was the tenth and most sensitive child of his family. His brothers and sisters,

when transplanted to America, grew roots in the new soil. His heart, however, remained attached to the Polish-Jewish earth

from which he sprang and the patriarchal atmosphere of his father's house. Not until many years later did he, the homeless

wanderer, reconcile himself to America and appraise more

sympathetically the American purpose. In Reb Shlome Nagid, 1913, the title character was modeled

after his idealized image of his own father and the period described was the generation preceding his own when the new ideas that were to revolutionize the patriarchal townlets had not yet made their full impact.

The tale, written in glowing poetic language, begins with a

description of the Sabbath at the home of the prosperous merchant Shlome Nagid and ends with the celebration of the

birth of a son and the betrothal of a daughter. Temptations, quarrels, and riots pass as clouds across the clear, eternal sky of Jewishness; momentarily they cast an ominous shadow;

Sholem Asch

181

but in the long run the clouds are dissolved, the shadows disappear, and the townlet continues its normal, moral, tra ditional routines.

A year after Asch completed this romantic idyl of the Shtetl,

World War I broke out and was followed by massacres of Jews in Ukrainian towns and villages. Communities such as Asch

had portrayed with much affection in romantic colors went up in flames and their Jewish inhabitants were slaughtered by covetous neighbors, Cossack plunderers, Petlura's pillagers,

Denikin's marauders. Asch saw in the brutal pogroms of 1919 a repetition of the events of 1648 when Chmelnitzky's hordes

in the same districts laid waste earlier flourishing Jewish com munities. In old chronicles he read of the martyrdom of the Jews of Zlochov, Nemirov, and Tulchin, when Ukrainian

peasants revolted against their Polish overlords and, unable

to reach these absentee landowners, vented their rage upon the helpless Jewish minority. He was tempted to retell these historic events with an eye to the present. In glorifying the martyrs of the seventeenth century, he wanted to bring com fort to the contemporary survivors of similar outrages. In seeking for a meaning to the suffering of earlier ancestors, he was at the same time giving his interpretation of the current Jewish tragedy. In the narrative Kiddush Hashem (For the

Sanctification of the Name), 1920, he succeeded in creating

an enduring masterpiece of Yiddish literature. Its central figure is the innkeeper Mendel, the only Jew of Zlochov, far out on the steppe of Podolia. Though living on

good terms with his peasant neighbors and the Zaporozhe Cossacks, Mendel felt ill at ease because there were no Jews near him and no synagogue. The Polish aristocratic land

owner, under the influence of the Jesuit priest, sought to humiliate the Greek Orthodox faith in the eyes of the Cos

sacks by leasing their church to the Jewish innkeeper, thus compelling them to apply to the Jew for the key which un

locked the church and to pay a fee to the Jewish collector of

SHOLEM

ASCH

Sholem

Asch

183

the tax whenever there was a christening or other religious rite. In moments of drunkenness, Father Stephan threatened Mendel with the little brothers who would some day come riding out of the steppe, liberate the peasants from the lords

and the churches from the Jews, and avenge all wrongs. Despite this ever present danger, Mendel wins permission to erect a synagogue and thus to attract other Jews to this remote outpost. As the first settler, Mendel becomes the Parnes or headman of the Jewish community. At the dedication of the

synagogue, he marries off his eight-year old son to the rabbi's daughter.

Six years later the young married man is sent

off to the famed Yeshiva of Lublin, from which he returns at the age of twenty as a learned Talmudist fit for communal

leadership. Suddenly, the peaceful growth of the new Jewish com munity is tragically ended when Hetman Chmelnitzky rises up against the Poles and at the head of an army of Cossacks

and Tatars advances upon Zlochov. Its Jews want to stay and to defend their synagogue, but their rabbi and the Lamedvov nik, a saintly tailor, command them to flee with the Torah

scrolls. Jews must not risk their lives defending a structure built of stones and sticks. They must save their strength for a higher purpose, for a more trying occasion. They must pre serve their lives, which belong not to themselves but to God.

There follow stirring scenes of their flight to Nemirov, the

massacre of most of Nemirov's Jews, the escape of the rest to Tulchin, and the betrayal of the Jews of Tulchin by their

Polish allies, who hand them over to the Cossacks in return for their own safety. The climax is reached when the betrayed Jews are offered a chance to survive, if they would bow down before the cross. They reply with the singing of Psalms to the Lord of Israel. Their hour of sacrificial heroism is at hand.

For the sake of their God, 1400 men, women, and children were slaughtered that day in the orchard of Tulchin by the

Cossacks. Their blood became intermingled and their souls

184

The Flowering of Yiddish Literature

rose up together. But not a single one of them purchased his life with the abandonment of his faith.

The theme of Jewish sacrificial heroism fascinated Asch. Repeatedly he reverted to the conflict between non-Jewish

physical might and Jewish moral elevation, to the apparently

temporary triumph of the armed fist and the more enduring victory of the Jewish spirit through the very act of martyrdom. He often contrasted the wicked arrogance of those who com

mitted wrong with the simple holiness of the victims who suffered wrong. He held that death for the Sanctification of the Name supplied the best testimony that Jews were uncon querable.

An episode of Kiddush Hashem, the startling effect pro duced by a Jewish girl with a Madonna-face upon her captor and her resolute death for her faith despite all allurements, were expanded by Asch to form the main theme of Die Kishif

makherin fun Kastilien (The Witch of Castille), 1921.

The scene of the new tale was sixteenth century Rome, where many Jews who had fled from Spain and Portugal

found a safe haven for a generation or two. Evil days broke upon them, however, when Paul

IV

ascended

the

papal

throne. Unable to stem the tide of Reformation which Luther

and Calvin had set in motion, he vented his rage upon the helpless Jews of Rome's ghetto and heaped ever new indign ities and tortures upon them. Still he could not break their stubborn adherence to the God of their fathers. Even in the

cells of the Inquisition as soon as they were released from the rack, they sang the Psalms of their ancient faith.

A Venetian painter who found his way to the Roman

ghetto was struck by the Madonna-like appearance of a beautiful, sad Jewess, a descendant of the aristocratic Sephar

dic family of Abarbanel. He modelled a Madonna alter-piece after her. When the resemblance was noticed, a rumor spread that the Madonna had appeared among the Jews of the ghetto

Sholem Asch

185

and was protecting them. When this report reached the Pope,

he accused the Jewess of having usurped the face of the mother

of Jesus through sorcery. To test whether she was indeed the Madonna, as many insisted, he ordered that she be burned at the stake, holding that flames could not consume a heavenly

being. Dying at an auto-da-fé as the Witch of Castille, she bore witness to her stern faith even as had her father before

her and Jews of all centuries who would not bend the knee to the Cross.

Year after year Asch continued to enrich Yiddish literature with narratives glorifying Jewish deeds of brotherly love and silent heroism and contrasting these deeds with non-Jewish

reliance on brute force and superstitious arrogance. Der Tilim Yied (Salvation), completed in 1932 on the eve of Hitler's

rise to power and published in 1934, was such a glorification of Jewish ethical striving.

Yekhiel, who was called the Psalm-Jew because his learning at first extended no further than to an ability to interpret the Psalms, could not reconcile himself to the evil that abounded

all around him. Every misfortune of others and every suffer

ing inflicted upon living beings rent his heart. Because of his

all-embracing pity, he was like a magnet attracting crippled bodies

and

starved

souls.

His

confidence

in

the

ultimate

triumph of good infected all his followers and spread rays of

sunshine upon their poor lives. By comforting others and suffering with them, he himself attained to salvation. His God

was to be served with joy and compassion and the earth was to be sanctified and raised to a heaven for human beings.

The novel was not merely a narrative of the simple person who overcame temptations and human frailties and worked

his way up to supreme holiness, a light and a hope unto all who came within the range of his presence. It was also an

epic of Polish Jewry of the post-Napoleonic generation, a Jewry

that sought

release from

abjectness, servility,

and

Sholem Asch

187

the most wronged among the disciples of the Rabbi of Nazareth. However, during the years of work upon The Nazarene and the two Christological novels that followed,

The Apostle, published in English in 1943 and still unavail able in the original Yiddish, and Mary, published in English in 1949 and also unavailable in the original, Asch became so deeply involved in his creative task and his imagination so deeply stirred by his sources, primarily The New Testament, that he soon found himself more at home in the generation when Jesus walked on earth than in his own. He himself

seemed to be experiencing the very transmigration he attrib uted in The Nazarene to his hero Yochanan, the pupil of Nicodemus, a transmigration from the twentieth century to

the first. While tragedy was overwhelming his contemporary kinsmen, Asch became imbued with the notion that he might serve as the precursor of Messiah; he felt that he might be

able to save from extinction the remnant that was surviving

Hitler's holocaust; Stalin's liquidations, and Bevin's rage, by effecting a reconcilation between the Jews and the Christian world. He abhorred apostasy but he genuinely believed that by enriching the accepted Jewish tradition with the hitherto

unacceptable teachings of Rabbi Yeshua he would be helping his people and accomplishing a deed of great historic value. The angry rejection of his Christological novels by most of his Jewish admirers and the lukewarmness of his few Jewish

defenders who apologized for him on the ground of aesthetic freedom hurt and embittered him. The adulation of hundreds

of thousands of non-Jewish readers did not assuage his bitter

ness or take from him a sense of gathering loneliness. The

triumph of Israel and the phenomenal recovery of the maimed survivors of ghettos and concentration camps revealed to him his people's resiliency even in the mid-twentieth century. He had so often depicted the stubborn adherence of Jews to their

one God and their unbreakable will to survive in their unique

188

The Flowering of Yiddish Literature

ness, but when he saw catastrophes descend upon them in his own time, he had weakened in his faith in their ability to

continue any longer their separate historic existence. He had been the man of little trust. He had not expected the miracle of Jewish rejuvenation that was unfolding before his eyes.

He was amazed by their re-emergence as a revitalized group. In the last decade of his life he repented of his temporary loss of confidence in them. He sought to break out of his isolation from his adored Jews and to convince them of his good inten tions. He resumed work on his novel Moses, which he had

put aside during the decade of his Christological trilogy. He retold the story of the man of humility and supreme courage

who led his people out of bondage and gave to them the Law by which they were to live ever thereafter. In 1954 he settled in Israel. There the restless wanderer felt at home at last. The

controversy about him began to ebb. His house along the Mediterranean on the outshirts of Tel-Aviv attracted Hebrew

and Yiddish intellectuals who appraised him with ever increas ing kindness. He was again recalled as the romanticist of the Jewish-Polish townlets that had been erased from the face of

the earth but that lived on in his early works. It was more difficult to regain enthusiasm for his realistic social novels such

as Motke Ganef (Motke the Thief), 1916, which had once been a box-office success when adapted for the Yiddish stages of New York and Warsaw, or Uncle Moses, 1918, his novel of

American Jewish life, or his trilogy Farn Mabul (Before the Deluge), 1929-1930, better known to English readers under

the title Three Cities. His dramas no longer resounded to Yiddish theater-goers. Half a century after his most effective

play Gott fun Nekoma (God of Vengeance),

1907, had

aroused heated debates wherever produced, it retained merely antiquarian interest. But, whatever the weaknesses of Sholem Asch, he did achieve what even

the Classical Triumvirate had failed to

XIV

The Pure Lyric

THE PIONEERS OF YIDDISH poetry in America before the com ing of Yehoash to New York in 1890 were primarily social poets. With Solomon Bloomgarden (1870-1927), who wrote under the pen-name of Yehoash, Yiddish poetry ceases to be the handmaid of social movements and becomes the imagina

tive expression

of purely

individual experiences. Yehoash

voices his own unique reactions to nature, love, God, society,

and not reactions designed to be typical of workers or intel lectuals, anarchists or socialists, nationalists or cosmopolitans.

There is, therefore, in his lyrics a genuineness of feeling and a clarity of observation that have not become obsolete with the passing of generations.

Yehoash's first decade on American soil was spent in New

York but tuberculosis compelled him to spend the following

decade from 1900 to 1910 at a Denver Sanitarium. Together with the physician and co-founder of the Sanitarium, Charles D. Spivak, he completed a dictionary of the Semitic words

used in Yiddish, defining about 4,000 Hebraic and Chaldaic

words. After a few years in New York devoted to the publica tion of his collected poems, he left in 1914 for Palestine and settled in Rehovoth. He mastered Arabic and undertook to

translate from the Koran and Arabian story-books. The First World War drove him back to New York. Here, in 1917, he published in three volumes the narrative of his experiences

From New York to Rehovoth and Return, translated into English by Isaac Goldberg under the title The Feet of the 190

191

The Pure Lyric

Messenger. The impress of the biblical land was so profound that he devoted his remaining years almost exclusively to the translation of the Bible into impeccable Yiddish. Yehoash is the first pure nature poet of magnitude in the Yiddish tongue. He infuses his soul into inanimate phenomena

and they become animate. The landscape and the changing

seasons become alive in a multiplicity of moods. Spring's breath at night is soft and fragrant like the breath of a beauti ful woman. The tree in late autumn curses the storm that

strips it of its last yellow and brown leaves and compels it to face the

coming bitter

months, naked,

orphaned, lonely.

Winter, reluctant to yield to its successor, explodes in a storm of white wrath, his last desperate gesture before his inevitable

defeat. When the sun sets, the evening winds intone for it Kaddish, the prayer for the departed, and the heavens sur

round it with memorial lights appropriate for the recently dead. The young snow laughs and sings and dances and

accepts the poet as its laughing, singing, dancing partner. Yehoash is the poet of love's intensity and contradictions.

He depicts the struggle of reason and emotion in his own breast,

the complexity of loving and hating, trusting and

doubting, at one and the same moment. He sings of passion's

flaming robe and fiery breath that envelop and consume his rational faculties. He glamorizes untamed lust common to man

and beast and then reproaches himself for doing so. He

realizes that in the instinct which impels man to woman and woman to man, Eden's radiance and hellfire are commingled, gold and slag are molten together, divine purity and infernal sin are inextricably enmeshed, and he explores this contradic tion in many variations. He is aware of the transitoriness of

all emotional relations. At the very moment when he asks his beloved to be as wild as the seething blood that rushes through his temples, he also senses that love's magic dissolves all too soon and that an aftermath of doubt will before long assail

The Flowering of Yiddish Literature

192

him. And yet, he wants love's dying moments to be no less

intensely sweet and no less tearlessly joyous than was its birth. Yehoash holds that love and faith are needed by sentient

man and that a person who has buried his love or his faith is but a living corpse. Reason can never be a substitute for God. His God is not anthropomorphic but rather a pantheistic force immanent in all things, acts, and thoughts. The poet does not delude himself that he alone can will freely while all creation is tied to inflexible law. He recognizes that the same force

which binds sand, grass, trees, mountains, and rivers also enchains him. He can only will what he must.

Yehoash's pantheism is best expressed in a poetic dialogue between two souls who meet at heaven's gate. One soul has just returned from life and the other soul is about to enter upon life. The former is glad to be released from the bondage

of days and nights, deeds and doubts, sorrows and joys, and at last to dissolve into the timeless, spaceless, whirling void. The latter, on the other hand, looks forward most eagerly to its

entry upon the terrestrial sphere where alternate night and

light, striving and fulfillment, more and less. The colorless

equanimity of eternity is a deathless death. The universal knowledge available in the realm beyond space and time does not confer happiness as does the search for knowledge, the

gradual unveiling layer by layer of the mystery of the all. A voice from heaven ends the debate of the two souls with the

conclusion

that the divine

force operates everywhere

and

permeates everything. It is in motion and in rest, in the whirl of suns and in the single ray, in the stream and in the source

of all streaming. It is in matter and in spirit, in creation and destruction, in life and in death. God is all.

Yehoash is the poet of ideas. In the versified prologue to his poetic works, he illustrates playfully how different moods must be expressed in different meters but he ends on the

serious note

that,

though

thoughts should

be

clothed

in

193

The Pure Lyric

appropriate verse forms, glittering verses in the absence of thought cannot by themselves make a poem. Yehoash revivifies biblical and post-biblical legends begin ning with the days of creation and the experiences of Adam.

He portrays the moment of shuddering hesitation before Judah's tribe plunges into the Red Sea, trusting in God's word that the waters would part. He depicts the awesome

night before the granting of the Torah to

the 600,000

liberated slaves and also the following morning when the heavens are rent asunder so that God, flanked by angelic cohorts, can bring down the divine Law to earth. He presents Moses at the height of his power and Moses at the end of his days reluctant to accept death. In one dramatic scene, Zippora, wife of Moses, opens her heavy heart to her father Jethro and reveals the hidden tragedy of the woman married

to a husband who has become divinely great and hence divinely cold. Yehoash recreates the night when God elects young Samuel as the successor of Eli at Shiloh and he also dramatizes the

last night of Saul when the doomed king consults the Witch of Endor and rouses the ghost of Samuel from the realm beyond

life. In another dramatic scene, the High Priest Hyrcanus

wrestles with his conscience before entering the Holy of Holies on the Day of Atonement. The most moving of Yehoash's

biblical dramatizations is the scene in which old King David meets the young Shunamite and listens to her idealized image of the young singer and hero who once slew ten thousands of the Philistines.

Yehoash devotes five cantos to the Queen of Sheba who

comes to seek deepest wisdom of Solomon but who pales with

disappointment when the monarch's eyes emit sparks of passion and he speaks to her unwisely of love's intoxication.

Yehoash retells rare legends from Talmudic sources, medieval

chronicles,

and

Hassidic

lore.

The

influence

of

194

The Flowering of Yiddish Literature

Peretz, who encouraged him in his youth and published his

earliest verses, is especially noticeable. His poetic romances are peopled with ghosts and apparitions, which appear far

too frequently between midnight and dawn. In such hours Rachel walks from her grave to the Jordan and gazes upon its waters while her tears flow from eyes beautiful even after death. Ghosts of Jews slaughtered by Chmelnitzky's Cossacks

appear to the community leader of a later generation and demand that the planned synagogue be erected on ground hallowed by their martyred blood. Ghosts of the dead whose shrouds have been stolen and who therefore cannot pray with

their clothed colleagues come to the gravedigger and extract

a promise to supply them with new shrouds. Ghosts of bride groom and bride, musicians and wedding guests, all of whom

died of the plague on the same day, arise from their graves

on the wedding's anniversaries and dance in their shrouds on

the cemetery grounds. The ghost of a merchant murdered and hurled into a well appears to his former travelling com panion and asks to be interred in Jewish sacred soil. When only nine persons are available for Kol Nidre Services, a radiant spirit appears to complete the necessary quorum of ten. In a dream vision, the poet sees himself returning as a ghost and knocking at his mother's door, only to find that he has

already been forgotten among the living. In the ghostly ballads of Yehoash, the influence of Heine

is unmistakable. Few Yiddish poets could escape the spell of the

German-Jewish

romanticist.

Indeed, Heine's

influence

extends to Yehoash's nature poetry and love poetry no less than to his legends and ballads. In an essay on Jewish demonology, Yehoash takes over Heine's idea that the demons

who peopled Christian imagination were pagan Gods exiled from their original shrines and degraded in rank by their successors of the Christian pantheon. Hence some Christian

demons still retain beautiful and helpful characteristics. Elves

YEHOASH

The Flowering of Yiddish Literature

196

and dwarfs are especially helpful to man. Yehoash points out

that since Jews worshipped only a single God and have until now remained faithful to him, friendly demons could not

develop. Jewish demons were in their origin wicked spirits and not dethroned Olympians. They can hurt but not help, with the single exception of the Golem, who is, however, only a

temporary creation and without a will of his own. Yehoash versifies fables of Aesop, Lafontaine, Lessing, and the Talmud. He constructs many fables of his own. His method is to begin with a basic idea and then to devise an animal situation which would illustrate his idea.

Yehoash

enriched

Yiddish literature

with

translations of

Longfellow's Hiawatha, portions of Fitzgerald's Omar Khay yam, and suras of the Koran. But his greatest achievement was his translation of the Bible, a masterpiece of translation often compared to Martin Luther's German rendering or the King James' English version. The Bible had been his inseparable companion since child hood. It had been the source of many of his finest ballads. It

had

supplied

him

with

similes,

metaphors,

and

images

throughout his creative years. It had enriched his boyhood dreams at the Volozhin Yeshiva and it had comforted him

during his decade of illness at Denver. He looked upon his translation as a holy task. In order

that it might be authoritative and acceptable to Jews of all shades of opinion, it had to reproduce the original without the

slightest modification. No sentence was to be paraphrased, interpreted, or slanted in

any direction, regardless of

the

translator's own belief or good intentions. No additions and

no subtractions from the exact Hebrew word and phrase were to be tolerated. A Yiddish was to be used which took into

account the idiomatic treasures of the many generations since

the Tsena Urena. Indeed, by revitalizing many of the expres sions of the Tsena Urena, which had become obsolescent, an

197

The Pure Lyric

archaic flavor would be imparted that would enhance the holiness of the text. Besides, there were still many old Yiddish

expressions which were no longer used in daily speech but

which were still current in the vocabulary of the Kheder and handed down orally by teachers ever since the Middle Ages. These could add a traditional patina, a mellow ancestral

aroma. A synthesis of all dialects was to be aimed at, with each dialect contributing its characteristic verbal treasures to the entire structure.

Beyond intellectual content, however, the Bible possessed rhythm and music. Yehoash set out to transfer into his new linguistic instrument, in so far as possible, these ever changing

subtleties: the translucent simplicity of patriarchal dialogue, the rhapsodic tone of the victory paeons, the crashing intensity

of the prophets, the melancholy calmness of Koheleth, the

passion of the Song of Songs, the lyric soulfulness of the Psalms.

For thirty years Yehoash worked on his translation and at the end of his days he concluded that, if he had several lives to devote to this labor of love, they would not suffice to

achieve the standard of perfection he envisaged. The concentration of all efforts on this marvelous transla

tion deprived Yehoash of the leisure to continue with his own

original poetry during the final decade when he had acquired

supreme mastery of Yiddish as had no New World writer before him. The young poets were nevertheless aware of their

indebtedness to him as the pioneer of the pure lyric.

In the wake of Yehoash came two poets H. Rosenblatt (1878-1956)

and Joseph

Rolnick

(1879-1955),

who

also

emancipated themselves from the didactic social poetry of the closing nineteenth century and paved the way for the indivi dualistic pure poetry of impressionism and symbolism which was to become dominant after 1905.

Rosenblatt was only fourteen when he arrived in New York

The Flowering of Yiddish Literature

198

in 1892, two years after Yehoash. However, the experiences of his early years in a Ukrainian village were to supply him with no less material for his lyrics than his sixty-four years in

America. As the son of a miller, he grew up in natural sur roundings and, although his adult years were spent in the large metropolises of New York, Detroit, and Los Angeles, his sensitivity to nature never atrophied. Because of the persecu

tion of village Jews under Czar Alexander III, who tried to force them into the overcrowded towns of an ever shrinking

Pale, Rosenblatt's family sought to escape abroad in 1891. On crossing the border illegally, all its members were apprehended and only after a year's hardship did they succeed in reaching their American haven.

For two years young Rosenblatt worked in the same sweat shop as his father, who pressed clothes from dawn to sunset. But the future poet was not satified with hard-earned wages

of two dollars a week and changed to sign-painting, newspaper delivery, and other callings. At night he continued his educa

tion and

attended

a teachers' training school

but

never

graduated. Rosenblatt is said to have tried fifteen different callings without achieving practical success in a single one of them, probably because he could not give them his undivided

attention. His mind was preoccupied with rhythmic thoughts and his imagination soared to distant lands, times, and figures. Rosenblatt

was

twenty-two

when

his

first

sentimental

ballads were published in the periodical press and thirty-two when his first book of songs appeared. With each volume, his

reputation grew. After a few years in Detroit, where he edited a Yiddish weekly, he settled in Los Angeles in 1921 and for

the next thirty-five years helped to make this growing Pacific community a center of Yiddish culture.

Rosenblatt began when the sweatshop poetry was still dominant. He tried but could not force his own muse into the strait jacket of the proletarian lyric. His own path led from

The Pure Lyric

199

pure realism to symbolism. Nevertheless, he always retained his admiration for Morris Rosenfeld, the pioneer of the social lyric whose star was then beginning to wane. In the idyl Erd

(Earth), he paid tribute to Rosenfeld in the figure of

Lorberkrantz, the old lion of poetry, and rebuked irreverent youth for its attacks upon the talented veteran. He hailed Rosenfeld as the plowman who first dug up the dead earth, as the sower who spread the first seeds, as the lyricist who broke the clear, cool, fresh spring from which others drink. Rosenblatt assimilated influences from many sources before

achieving poetic maturity. The influence of Abraham Reisen is apparent in early lyrics which approach the simplicity of folk songs. Some of these have been set to music by Solomon Golub (1887-1952), Michel Gelbart (born 1889), and other

composers. The influence of Yehoash is most evident in Rosenblatt's poetic retelling of the tales of Genesis from the creation of the universe to the last hours of Jacob in the volume Adams Kinder (Adam's Children), 1944. Amidst all reverence, Rosenblatt does not hesitate to add touches of subtle humor to God's activities, Adam's confusions, and the

patriarchs' problems, while Yehoash always eschewed humor

in the presence of biblical events. In a series of three long idyls, the last of which Earth was still unfinished at the time of his death, Rosenblatt reviews his

family's transplantation from a Podolian village to the slums

of New York and its yearning to resume an existence nearer to fields and farms. In the figure of Hirshl, the impractical son who strives for the poet's laurels, he left an unforgettable portrait of himself from boyhood until his first steps into the literary jungle of New York's East Side.

In the volume Mein Likhtike Nesiya (My Lightsome Journey), 1944, he reverts to the theme of the poet's pursuit

of radiant words while others were gathering up earthly treasures and he expresses his confidence that the radiant

200

The Flowering of Yiddish Literature

words will still be spreading light when he and those who called him fool will be long gone.

Rosenblatt was exposed to English literature at an earlier

age than any preceding Yiddish poet and reproduced in Yiddish verse the subtle nuances of Edgar Allen Poe's The Raven and Oscar Wilde's Ballad of Reading Gaol. He dis covered for the Yiddish lyric an America west of the Hudson.

In Grandpa Timothy McGee, he sang of the passing era of homesteaders in the undeveloped West. In Saskatchewan, he wept with the Red Man of the Prairies, the last chieftain of a free tribe. He retold in verse legends of the Indians. He revealed the strange magnificence of California's ever chang

ing landscape from desert to mountain to sea. Rosenblatt matured very slowly and composed some of his finest lyrics in his seventies. In his volume In Shensten Tog foon

Herbst (The Brightest Day of Autumn), which appeared in

his seventy-fifth year, he sings of his faith in life, his wander ings in the shadowy realm of memories, his fearlessness as he

prepares for the final journey. The Ukraine of his childhood

once more parades before him, the village of his birth, the forest in which he roamed, the fields with their aroma of new

mown hay. He pays poetic tribute to Peretz, Pínski, and Hirshbein. His tones are muted in this autumnal volume and

even

more so in his final volume with

the symbolic

title

Farnacht (Twilight), which appeared posthumously. These last lyrics breathe the calm of twilight after a long, beauty-studded life. They are full of gratitude for the colorful daydreams that found embodiment in melodious words, for the smiles of fellow-mortals who called him friend, and even for the sadness that often haunted him. "How beautiful is the

brief moment of the setting of the sun," exclaims the poet again and again.

It is this moment that Rosenblatt seeks to capture in glitter

ing verses before he too fades away to become a legend, a

The Pure Lyric

201

mystery, a droplet in the ocean of eternity. He invites the world, now also grown old and wrinkled, to be his guest and to share with him his tired, happy visions. He knows he is living on borrowed time. But while the coachman is getting

the carriage ready to take him on the trip to his Maker, he

wants to sing his swan song and to affirm his gladness with the fate that was allotted to him.

Rosenblatt voices no regrets for things done or undone dur

ing his earthly stay. He is at peace with himself. He is aware that he has hoed well the little garden into which he has been

set. He recalls that in the springtime of life he has helped to bring forth a few beautiful blossoms and that in summertime

he has seen the precious fruit ripen. He intones psalms of praise to the Almighty who still lets a bit of golden sunlight

seep through the poet's window and a few blue rays of moon light stir him to rhythmic incantation. He blesses every hand that builds, every heart that dreams, every light that beckons from afar to us, human pilgrims. He who earlier sang of the silence and the loneliness of the California desert has seen

growing up around him a huge city with a resonant Jewish community. He who once reproduced the restlessness of the

ocean has discovered its quiet moods as he looked out upon it from the hills of Los Angeles. His ballads of the sea derive

their inspiration, however, far more from English poems, such as Coleridge's Ancient Mariner, than from actual experiencing of the sea. Images and thought-associations of the Pacific Ocean are most abundant but they are of the kind that occur to one who looks out upon its endless expanse from a window

on land and who broods for many long hours on its eternal ebb and flow.

The essence of religious feeling is in his poems and yet in his homecoming to God he retains a certain shamefastness

and he avoids the wordiness of breast-beating penitents. This world may be merely a dream within a dream but, in his

202

The Flowering of Yiddish Literature

opinion, it is not vanity of vanities. Let us, therefore, comport

ourselves bravely within this dream as the only reality or shadow of reality now available to us. Let us fill it with beauty. Let us eat, drink, sing, and enjoy ourselves at the banquet-table spread before us; and when the lights go out let us arise and depart into the blue, retaining glad memories of the feast.

Blue is the poet's favorite color and some of his lyrics are

symphonies in blue. His images even of death are images of

ever deepening blues and hence communicate awe but not fear, as might the black hues preferred in traditional poetry about the Reaper of all things living. Joseph Rolnick is only a year younger than Rosenblatt and is also the son of a miller. But he came under American

influence much later. His first two years in New York, from 1899 to 1901, ended in failure. His next three years in Eng land were also difficult. He returned to Russia in 1904, experi

enced the revolution of the following year as an observer rather than as a participant, was unhappy with the reaction that ensued, and finally came back to New York in 1908.

He began his poetic career at the opening of the present century with a translation of a Hebrew poem by David

Frischman. In his first American years he tried to conform

to the traditions of the dominant social poetry but, despite the fact that he himself worked in a sweatshop, he could muster even less than Rosenblatt the necessary enthusiasm to hate abstract tyrants, wicked capitalists, and villainous exploiters. In his Spring Song of 1901, he confessed to the heresy that he wanted to kiss the whole world on its awakening from its winter sleep and to embrace as his brothers both the good and the bad people, both the tyrants and the slaves, indeed

all human beings over whom shone the health-bestowing, joy-infusing sun.

Rolnick never emerged from poverty and loneliness but he

The Pure Lyric

203

gradually learned to resign himself to both and to convert his resignation into beautiful simple lyrics. Why rage and rebel

against fate, when every morning may be our last morning,

every walk our last walk, every deed our last deed? Let us rather be as meek as a lamb and let us follow wheresoever God leads even as a child follows its father. It is true that each

of us is imprisoned in his own solitary cell, each of us is continually knocking his head against the encircling stone walls, each of us ends without a friend or a savior. However,

the cry of loneliness which a poet seals in a song and sends forth into the unknown may find a receptive ear somewhere,

somehow. This hope that skirts despair is Rolnick's sole comfort

for many years as he transmutes emotions and

impressions into verse.

The typical Rolnick poem consists of a few quatrains that

fixate with maximum clarity, fidelity, and simplicity a single thought or a single mood. When the thought or mood is in any way complex, he resolves it into simpler components, into a cycle of successive lyrics that illumine it from different approaches, into a string of lustrous pearls each of which adds clarity and beauty to the whole.

In Cafè is a good illustration of such a string of poetic pearls. Its theme is loneliness, the most characteristic Rolnick

theme. The first lyric shows three guests, strangers to one another, sitting at the same table in a cafè. Each is engrossed in his own thought of how best to commit suicide. One decides

that opening the gas-jets might be the most desirable way,

another prefers using a towel as a noose, the third thinks of a

leap from a high-storied window. Three mute strangers with a

common thought separate to meet again in the Beyond, if indeed there is a Beyond for them. The casual reader is tempted to cry out: O, if only these strangers could get over their shyness and talk to each other,

their tragic loneliness would to some extent be taken from

204

The Flowering of Yiddish Literature

them! Rolnick's second poem dismisses such a facile solution. As a contrast, he presents three talkative guests who sit all day in the cafè and gossip about a huge variety of subjects but not

a single one of them touches on his own hidden ache. They

heap words upon words in order to drown out the pain that gnaws within them. When night comes, they too arise and go their separate, lonely ways.

The third poem changes from balanced quatrains to free

verse. It begins with the poet's own lament. He is so very much homeless and alone that he even envies the dog which has found a master and a kennel. A wife lives for her husband,

a mother for her child. A worker, though he be a scavenger, still has a useful task. But who cares for or listens to the quiet

song of a Yiddish poet? What he waited for never came to pass and what he possessed has floated far away. Rolnick then proceeds in four additional lyrics to develop

this theme of his own loneliness and his vague hope that perhaps for him, now derided by the prosperous and the sated,

and for his poems, now dripping with his heart's blood, there may be-who knows?-some sort of eternity.

In his young days Rolnick sang of the Lithuanian village where he was cradled as a region of naked, sparse forests, sand-blown fields, poor in trees and flowers but rich in bore dom, infested by chirping grasshoppers and croaking frogs. How could one bless such a dull land, even though it would

be impious to curse one's motherland! In his later years, how ever, Rolnick reverted in memory to the village of his birth and the miller's hospitable house where he grew up, and like Rosenblatt, he

too reproduced

in

idyllic

verses

his early

experiences as the miller's child. His New York existence

amidst stony tenements took on dull, gray hues, while the

hamlet of. Zhukhovitz, whose dullness and grayness he had formerly emphasized, sparkled with activity, as his nostalgic vision colored its rustic scenes.

The Pure Lyric

205

The pure lyricists, like Yehoash, Rosenblatt, and Rolnick,

who at the turn of the century sang in gentle, muted tones of

their individual moods and sorrows, helped to wean a few sensitive readers away from the dominant raucous bombastic

social poetry. However, it was the revolt of the younger poets, born

after

1880,

which effectively

turned

the tide from

Naturalism and an emphasis on social protest to Impression ism and individualism. The revolt of the group, which called itself Die Yunge, enriched Yiddish literature with new subject matter based on the American milieu and innovations in style for which American literature served as model.

XV The Lyric of Young America

IN 1907, Die Yunge BURST UPON THE American scene and for

fully a decade compelled the fascinated attention of critics and readers. These poets, novelists, and artists were no longer

political or social revolutionaries when they reached the New World, for they had experienced the failure of the Revolution of

1905 and the disillusioning pogroms that preceded and

followed the abortive uprisings against the Czarist regime. Born in the 1880's, they already profited in their childhood from the spiritual awakening of Eastern European Jewry out of medieval stagnation and the Yiddish achievements of the

Peretz circle. They also imbibed as much of Russian, Polish, and German thought and literature as could penetrate to their towns. They heard the siren call of a Promised Land to the

West. Hardly had they outgrown their boyhood, when they made their way across the Atlantic at the crest of a wave of

immigration during the decade preceding the First World War.

New York received these wondering, romantic, dream-filled youths and fed them into its sweatshops and cavernous tene ments. But their vitality seemed inexhaustible. Their hunger

for intellectual activity after a day's hard physical work was

insatiable. They used their few free hours for literary expres sion and their last pennies to publish their tales and songs in collective volumes and ever new periodicals.

These talented young writers sought to emancipate Yiddish literature from lachrymose sentimentalism and from propa 206

The Lyric of Young America

207

ganda for social panaceas. They abhorred the moralizing tone which still persisted from the days of the Badchonim and the Maskilim. They remained aloof from the tides of Jewish nationalism, on the one hand, and political cosmopolitanism,

on the other hand. They saw in art primarily the expression of

an individual's moods and unique sensitivity. They accepted the slogan of art for art's sake. They de-emphasized content. They strained for perfection of form. They used the word and the word-combination not to elucidate concepts or to clarify problems but rather to communicate impressions and to satiate eye and ear with images and tonal effects. They wanted to lead the Yiddish muse out of its parochial hamlet and onto

the world scene. They tried to raise the dignity of the Jewish vernacular to the level of English, German, and Russian. They insisted on grafting on to Yiddish the newest innovations of

Occidental literary theory and practice. They produced original works of merit and impeccable translations of foreign poetry. They enriched the Yiddish vocabulary with resplen

dent, beautiful sounding neologisms. Daniel Ignatoff compared Die Yunge, of which his father

David Ignatoff (1885-1953) was a leading figure, to a rushing stream that in spring bursts out of snow-covered mountain

peaks with titanic force. It hurls and whirls great chunks of ice and enormous masses of broken trees as it hastens onward,

foaming and seething, a sight of beauty and awesome power. At first, the literary efforts of Die Yunge, published in 1907

in their earliest periodical with the provocative title Yugend (Youth), were met with derision and vituperation. The young men were called untalented upstarts, would-be aristocrats,

decadents. They replied to their detractors by publishing additional works of the group in two issues of Literatur in 1910 and in the more weighty issues of Shriften, which appeared from 1912 to 1926. David Ignatoff was the most dynamic member of the group and Moshe Leib Halpern

il bamonds

bel sin 16

Tons

sh and

work lonte

supe voi chong

mon bot lego fue Ballest

kad

ono

art

no

erlenin

eboomm

TE 201 he

lo acord

200 acitrijlengs i

M. L. HALPERN

209

The Lyric of Young America

(1886-1932) the most colorful. Mani-Leib (1884-1953), shoe maker and poet, Zisha Landau (1889-1937), housepainter

and poet, and Reuben Iceland (1884-1955), capmaker and

poet, were brought to the forefront of attention in the very first volume of Shriften as best embodying the ideology and

techniques of the group. Among older writers Yehoash, Rosen blatt, Rolnick and Yoel Entin (1874-1959) were sympathetic

to the movement while the editors of the influential daily press

were generally unfriendly. Among new writers, I. I. Schwartz (born

1885), Isaac Raboy (1882-1944), Joseph

Opatoshu

(1886-1954), Joel Slonim (1885-1944), Moshe Nadir (1885 1943), M. J. Haimowitz (1881-1958), Berl Lapin (1889

1952), M. Bassin (born 1889), and A. M. Dillon (1883-1934)

participated in the publications, discussions, and activities of

the group. Literary cafes, centering about New York's East Broadway, formed congenial meeting places and Bohemianism was a favorite affectation of some of these writers.

With Mani-Leib, Bohemianism was more than an affecta

tion. He was a neo-romanticist full of longing for the Blue Flower, an errant minstrel who played a merry tune for

children and a sad tune for the wiser grown-ups, a lover of overrefined sensations, a seeker of magic overtones and rain bow colors amidst stony tenements, a lyricist who discovered

beauty in black bread and white salt. As a creature of moods, Mani-Leib could at one moment sing decadently of the fascin

ation of

pregnant

women

with

their bellies

pointed

and

swollen, dragging their double bodies like cows on grassy dales. But he could also at another moment eschew all sophis tication and compose lyrics of such absolute simplicity, abound

ing in naive repetitions, lilting cadences, suggestive alliterations and assonances, that he became a favorite poet for children. However, not until the sonnets of his last years did Mani

Leib, the eternally restless singer, learn to accept his fate, the frailties of old age, the nighing of death.

210

The Flowering of Yiddish Literature

Zisha Landau, who stemmed from a rabbinical family, evolved under the influence of Die Yunge into a literary icono

clast who would not bow even to the genius of Peretz. When he arrived in New York in 1906 at the age of seventeen, he began with translations of Heine and Nadson and with original lyrics that caught the attention of the pure aesthetes. As the

youngest of the young poets, he delighted in outraging tradi tion. He characterized himself as half clown and half poet. He

held that all life was illusion, a play of shadows. He therefore conjured up imaginary worlds and then with consummate

romantic irony he dissolved these worlds into thin air. Landau

entitled

his

four

comedies

Es

Is

Gornisht

Nit

Geshehn (Nothing of Any Import). They are modelled upon Schnitzler's puppet-play Zum Grossen Wurstl and the topsy turvy reality of Gozzi. Human beings and human relations are satirized through the masks of Pierrot, Harlequin, and Colum bine. Biblical and legendary figures are stripped of their saint liness and are involved in the marvelous and the banal as they move from fairyland to the contemporary scene and then are

whirled away to timelessness.

Although Landau affects power and robustness, the reveal ing word "tired" occurs far too frequently in his verses. At his

best, his speech is soft, his phrases are slender, his sentences suggestive and not expressive. Although he poses as a free

adventurer, he really does not negate responsible living. He knows that, in spite of his theory of the poet as an unfettered personality, he, the grandson of the Strikover Rabbi, cannot tear himself loose from the chain of generations. However, he

feels that even in the cage of duties and laws there is still room

for the freedom loving spirit to spread wings and to exhale

joyousness. His most famous lyric is his joy-filled song of the Baal-Shem who finds ever new reasons for intoning hymns to life and gratitude to life's creator. When the icy wind blows out of the north and the Baal-Shem's limbs shudder with

The Lyric of Young America

211

piercing cold, he opens his frozen lips and expresses his thanks

that he was privileged to experience the frost. When the blazing sun burns down upon him and not a breeze stirs in the air, he lifts his parched voice in praise of the Lord who lets him experience heat and thirst. All is well with God's

world and joy is everywhere. As an adherent of Die Yunge, Landau sang of peacocks and

nightingales, of knights and damsels, of ballerinas and fairy

queens. He pretended to welcome pain, terror, despair, and exotic adventures. But in his finest lyrics, when he does not

pose or seek applause, he prefers the quiet fireplace, the silence of simple souls, the calmness of normal routines. In a bewitch

ingly beautiful lyric, he describes an apparently uneventful evening at his home. He sits at the window and looks out into

the night. His wife pauses in her stitching and thinks sadly of the monotony of constantly recurring petty cares; how each day passes dully like the other and not a single one will ever

return; how hopes postponed are gradually fading away. Yet, as she lifts her glance to him, his glance too has turned from the window and divined her thoughts. He walks over to her, puts one hand on her shoulder, and with the other caresses her hair. No word is uttered by either and yet ethereal music flows from heart to heart and fills the rooms. As he returns to

the window, the great stars shine more meaningfully and his soul expands in the deep night. He is at peace with himself and the world.

In another beautiful lyric, Die Strikover Rebbitzin, he re

calls the holiness and peacefulness that prevailed in his grand

mother's home. He describes the preparations for a Seder evening: the grandchildren sitting on the long benches about

the festive table and the grandmother bustling about, radiant

with happiness like a shy bride. How many winecups will she need? Today all her children and grandchildren have gathered in her house. As she looks about, she fears to count them, lest

The Flowering of Yiddish Literature

212

she arouse the envy of the Heavens. And so she gathers an

apronful of cups and throws them on the table: "My golden children, I do not want to count you!" Landau is a master stylist. His words stimulate with their fragrance

and delicate suggestiveness.

He is attracted

to

Romantic and Symbolist poets and has translated some of them with great skill. He has translated, from the Russian,

lyrics by Feodor Sologub and, from the German, lyrics by Joseph von Eichendorff, Ludwig Uhland, and August von

Platen. But his most memorable translations are Old English Ballads and Heine's grotesque Atta Troll. While Zisha

Landau

and

Mani-Leib

are

musicians

in

words, Reuben Iceland is the painter in words. His poetic ideal was to fixate moments of time, to solidify a scene or an emo

tion before it dissolved in the whirl of events. Typical of his word-etchings is the first of three lyrics entitled "Still Life." We see bread and cheese and honey on a table, golden tea

beckoning in two thin glasses, a green pitcher inviting with its cool fresh water, and alongside of a feminine handkerchief a small wise hand on a thin book of verse which is bound in

wine-colored silk.

Everything else

is left

to

the

reader's

imagination.

In poems on Tolstoy, Blake, Rilke, and lesser known figures,

Iceland reduces the entire personality of each to a single sym bolic vision caught by a word-impregnated camera. He saw in the silence of objects their true immortality and in the normal

routines of life themes worthy of a poet's attention. Thus, he depicts without pathos or rage a typical working day of a fac tory hand from the moment he awakens in the murky dawn

and his sleep-drenched wife serves him breakfast and prepares for him a paper-bag containing bread and an apple. We see

him amidst the other factory hands in the tumult of the day, lost and loncly. We sense with pitying intensity the dull mono

The Lyric of Young America

213

tony of the eternally repetitious days, the many gray years which ebb away without content.

Only rarely does Iceland escape from his poor, difficult existence in factory and tenement by intoxicating himself with beautiful phrases and blissful imagery. All too soon he sinks back into heavy melancholy and into unsated nostalgia for a

youthful past that can never be retrieved. Of these young years in a Galician town he sings in his longest poem Tarnow, in which he recaptures scented fragrances, early pride, and

traditionally festive moods. Iceland had arrived in America in 1903 at the age of nine

teen and participated in the plans, anthologies, and theoretical discussions of Die Yunge

from the very inception of this

movement. But not until he was thirty-five, when he came to

know the poetess Anna Margolin, was he inspired to create his finest lyrics. As Rosa Lebensbaum, she had already experi enced many variations of fortune in Russia, America, and Palestine, before she returned to New York on the eve of the

First World War. The emotional struggles of both before they found complete fulfillment in each other is depicted by him in

1922 in a cycle of twenty-two tender lyrics Fun Mein Zumer (Of My Summer) and by her in a book of verses published seven years later Margolin.

under her

poetic

pseudonym

of

Anna

In the poetry of A. M. Dillon, there is a yearning for joy but most of his days were joyless. He felt the hardness of this

world on the evenings when he slept crumpled up on a park bench, but the blackness with which night enveloped him concealed his misèry. In his poetry there is a yearning for companionship and yet the only faithful companion that ever shared his tears and lamentations was the dog that whined

and howled with him in the open field at night. In his poetry there is a yearning for love but the beloved he sang and spoke of were, according to David Ignatoff, mere figments of the

214

The Flowering of Yiddish Literature

imagination and not real creatures of flesh and blood. In his

poetry there is a premonition of death and, just as he offered

no resistance to the currents of life which swept him to and fro, so too he made no effort to oppose death when it called for him. "My life wants to lose me and hand me over to

death. I am in death. I am in life, even as a round ring in a chain."

Dillon is aware that he is no bright sun on the poetic firma

ment. He is content to be one of the quiet, suffering stars that light up with a few timid rays the dark paths of night. According to him, everything on this terrestrial planet is sad. Plants weep, even dust. Every living creature is lonely, the wolf and the dove no less than the human individual. And

there is no end to our suffering. Nevertheless we all persist because our marvelling and our dreaming lifts us to the infinite and the immortal. Berl Lapin was the son of a miller and as a child was taken

in 1895 from the province of Grodno in Russia to a Jewish colony in Argentina. Four years later the family returned to Eastern Europe but could no longer establish firm roots there.

At thirteen, Lapin left his parents and continued his wander ings alone through various communities of the Russian Pale.

From the age of fourteen, the self-educated lad found relief

from sorrow and loneliness by fleeing to nature and to poetry. To his first collection of lyrics, which were completed in Vilna

before he left for New York in

1909, he gave the title

Umetige Vegn (Sad Ways). Despite this title, however, many of the poems are full of the joy of life and reflect the un

bounded energy of youthfulness. Lapin's heart leaps and whirls and wants to dissolve ecstatically amidst the blossoming flowers and the song-intoxicated birds. But soon, as he matures in New

York in contact with Die Yunge and under the influence of

Chaim Zhitlowsky, he calms down and the more the storms of life assail him the more he learns to bend before them and

to await clearing skies and the ensuing silence.

215

The Lyric of Young America

Lapin's contributions lie more in the refinement of Yiddish

verse than in the introduction of new subject-matter. He seeks quiet effects. While some of Die Yunge were drowning in a

swamp of words, heaping neologism upon neologism, he was

most meticulous in his choice of language. He did not let words flourish as weeds in his poetic garden. He rather wooed each word until he extracted from it essential meaning, music,

image. His ideal was clarity and not labyrinthian profundity. He used each word as an atom which he paired with another verbal atom and still another until the atomic word-dust took

on crystalline shape and combined into an organic, living

entity.

Lapin's mastery of form enabled him to enrich Yiddish poetry with impeccable translations of Shakespeare's sonnets,

Russian lyrics, and American hymns. To read or sing "The

Star-Spangled Banner," in Lapin's translation fills one with astonishment at the flexibility of the Yiddish verse even when

it is fettered by a foreign model and a prescribed melody. His beautiful renderings of Robert Frost, A. E. Housman, Edwin Arlington Robinson, and Edna St. Vincent Millay proved to

Yiddish readers that the subtlest nuances of modern poetry could be effectively reproduced in this revitalized tongue.

To his selected poems, published two years before his death, Lapin gave the symbolic title Der Fuler Krug (The Full Pitcher),

1950.

The poet was the resonant

pitcher that

gathered up and poured out in a flow of verbal rhythms the joys and pains of all animate and inanimate objects that

crossed his path from man and beast and bird to plant and rock and cloud. His songs of New York reproduced the roar of its cavernous streets, the jungle-noises of its subterranean

heart, the siren wails of its piers and ferries, the tramping of its hastening multitudes on its stony pavements. But Lapin also perceived the individual in the crowd, the uniqueness in each member of the so-called masses. When a "hand" died in his

shop

and was replaced, unmourned

and immediately,

by

The Flowering of Yiddish Literature

216

another "hand," he, the poet, called upon the machines and tools to mourn the departed hand, for it was attached to a human being and with it also perished a good heart and a kind intelligence.

Lapin's ultra-sensitive social consciousness led him to reject

pure aestheticism as a way of life. But he did learn from Die

Yunge not to let his social poetry degenerate into metrical propaganda but rather to clothe his social sympathy in well proportioned, well-balanced, well-disciplined form. Among Die Yunge, the strangest and most restless poet was Moshe Leib Halpern. Born in Zlochov, Galicia, and appren

ticed to a sign-painter in Vienna at the age of twelve, he spent almost a decade in the Hapsburg capital, whose intellectual

life was then dominated by Jungwien, a group of aesthetes and patricians mostly of Jewish origin. The young sign-painter too began to dabble in German verse. When he returned to

his native Zlochov, however, he was persuaded by the young Yiddish poets of Eastern Galicia, Jacob Mestel (1884-1958) and S. J. Imber (1889-1942) to turn to Yiddish. Before he left for America in 1908 in search of bread and freedom, he had

already published his first Yiddish poems in a Lemberg daily. In his new home, he found no bread and he saw freedom

tainted

by

economic injustice.

His

disillusionment

found

expression in bitter verses which hammered away at social evils and moral decay.

Halpern's early sardonic poems, written during hungry, lonely years in New York and Montreal, were published in

humorous, satiric periodicals and in the anthologies of Die Yunge. In grotesque images, he mocked at his own uprooted generation that saw the many-colored hues of a heavenly rainbow but that was forced to live in the black mire of the gutter.

When the Yiddish Communist daily Freiheit was founded

in 1924, he was welcomed in its columns as the great prole tarian poet and was for a brief time lionized in Jewish radical

The Lyric of Young America

217

and

circles. But his free spirit could submit to no restraint or group

dto a

discipline. Three years later, he broke with the Communists

akind

and continued his solitary, poetic odyssey. He could find no

lasting home nor even a foothold in Chicago, Detroit, Cleve reject

land, Los Angeles, and finally returned to New York.

mDie

Halpern's verse, strongly influenced by German poets from

trical

Heinrich Heine to Richard Dehmel and reflecting his own

well

unstable existence often on the brink of despair, alternated between strident assertion of individualism and deep sympathy

was

for the underprivileged, between robust sensualism and phil

pren

osophical pessimism, between a love of life in all its aspects

Spent

and an awareness that all life was but the vanity of vanities.

actual

As a protest against lyric phrase-mongers, he evolved, in

hetes

his two volumes In New York, 1919, and Die goldne Pave

inter

(The Golden Peacock), 1924, a most unconventional style,

d to

fierce, violent, raw, lurid, undisciplined. He seemed to delight

ung

in coarseness and brutality. However, these apparent traits

958;

were but a façade, mere affectations. They afforded him relief

left

from inner despair. He played the clown and boasted of his

had

gaiety, but his loud laughter and grandiloquent posture masked

ily.

hidden tears. At heart he was a helpless child crying in the darkness of night, crying out to a mute, unfeeling world. He

nd

once characterized himself as a living corpse dwelling in limbo.

cial

In absolute disgust, he once called out: "Help me, O God, to spit on the world and on you and on myself." How should he

Ty, in

Die ed

Jy

sing of the fragrance of flowers in spring when the fragrance that floated up to his nostrils was of gasoline fumes from the exhaust of cars? For whom and for what should the lonely poet wait in his tenement room or to what refuge should he

betake himself? He could not go down to tarry in the street, for the city streets were meant for shopkeepers and the hurry ing people for whom time was money. He was not at ease in

the literary coffee-houses where cynics flagellated themselves. He could not visit the salons of the rich where dreamers and

high-brows were derided by wooden-faced successful people.

218

The Flowering of Yiddish Literature

He could not even muster the courage to wander out into the wide open spaces, for there too he would be homeless. As

a poet, he had peered too deeply into human frailties, social lies, and moral humbug; he was tired of cavorting before others as a beggarly intellectual who might at best be rewarded for

his "word-and-louse" genre with a spitoonful of honor. Halpern's pain, penury, and blasphemy were symptoms of

Die Tunge in dissolution. By setting out to encourage indi vidual uniqueness, the movement placed a premium on eccen tricities and undermined common striving for common goals. By seeking to attach Yiddish poetry to the most recent currents of European and American literature, the movement weakened existing links with the Yiddish classical tradition developed by

Peretz and his disciples. By following the will-o'-the wisp of pure art, the movement veered away from the reality of the immigrants' world and onto a Romantic realm of kaleido

scopic word-bubbles. As an expression of youth, Die Yunge brought excitement and controversy. But when its writers matured, they returned

to specifically Jewish themes and

resumed interpretations of Jewish reality. Out of this literary movement emerged the finest singer of twentieth century Jewish martyrdom, glory, and messianic hope: H. Leivick (1888-1962).

XVI

H. Leivick

WHEN LEIVICK ARRIVED IN AMERICA in the summer of 1913,

he was only on the threshhold of a long creative career but his

philosophy of life had already matured as a result of almost a

quarter of a century of cruel experiences in his native Russia. Born as Leivick Halpern in the province of Minsk in 1888, he knew poverty at first hand and the whip of injustice on his own flesh. As the oldest of nine children, he had to shift for himself from the age of ten when he was sent away from home penni less to attend a Yeshiva in Berezin. There he found it easier to

appease his hunger for knowledge than his hunger for food. He had to resort to Teg-Essen. This "Day-Eating" was a method devised by school authorities which enabled pupils

without funds to concentrate on learning by providing them with free meals at different households each day. The house

holders who could carry the burden of feeding an additional mouth at least one day a week agreed to this form of extra

taxation by the educational leaders because such a good deed might earn them a reward in the hereafter. As for nightly

lodging, a hard wooden bench in the synagogue was always available.

For four full years Leivick lived on in this way while study ing the traditional religious classics. At the same time, like so many of his bright contemporaries, he was also surreptitiously

gaining his first insight into more modern works frowned upon by the Jewish authorities. These modern tracts tended to 219

220

The Flowering of Yiddish Literature

undermine the faith which the Talmudic tracts were meant

to instill.

Leivick's early doubts and longings found their first formu

lation in Hebrew lyrics and in an unpreserved drama but soon he began to write also in Yiddish. From fifteen to seventeen he

supported himself by accepting a position as a private tutor to the children of a Jewish villager. The revolutionary ferment of 1905, which infected idealistic

Jewish youth in every community, led Leivick to join the Jewish Labor Movement, the Bund, and to participate in its

demonstrations against the Czarist regime. As a consequence, he suffered his first arrest for subversive activities before his

eighteenth birthday and his second arrest soon thereafter.

During two years of imprisonment at Minsk before his trial, during four years of imprisonment in Moscow after his trial,

and during his Siberian exile in a remote village along the

ena River, he found consolation in composing three poetic dramas and numerous Yiddish lyrics filled with protest against tyranny and with visions of a free happy humanity. The longing for a messianic liberator who would burst all

bonds and break all bars grew in these years of living entomb ment to such intensity that it remained with him ever there after and became a main theme of his later works. Leivick

noticed that each prisoner who was locked in a cell was wait

ing for a miracle, for a redeemer who would suddenly open all gates, unshackle all chains, and lead the jailed out to freedom, past forests and seas, on to a distant ideal land.

Meanwhile, the reality Leivick faced, even after completing his jail sentence, was less glamorous. In vivid stanzas, the poet portrayed his march in a column of 300 convicts when he

was attached to a transport for permanent exile in Siberia.

These convicts were chained four in a row, with soldiers on either side to guard them and to urge them on. At dawn the

command "March!" would ring out and all would step for

H. Leivick

221

ward, half-awake and half-asleep, shoulder to shoulder and knee to knee. They would march through the desolate un inhabited steppes hour after hour and week after week. Every

day they would yearn for sunset and for rest, though it be on

a barren strip of earth, but the lash would impel them to con tinue on and on. In all their faces, Leivick saw his own face mirrored, in all their eyes his own glances, in all their hearts his own sadness.

A few of Leivick's Siberian poems found their way to

America and brought to their author messages of encourage ment and financial aid which enabled him to plan escape from his remote village north of Irkutsk. After months of perilous journeying alone through the frozen wastes, often on the verge of exhaustion, the hunted exile made his way back to Euro pean Russia and continued on from there until he finally landed in New York.

In the New World, Leivick found himself immediately accepted as a Yiddish writer of great promise and was claimed

by the poets of Die Yunge as one of their adherents. Like some of these youthful poets, he too experienced days of hard work

as a factory-hand at starvation wages and nights of ecstasy composing lyrics about his harrowing past abroad and his

gray present in the land of political freedom and economic exploitation. These lyrics, which were printed in Yiddish

literary organs, were often confused with the lyrics of M. L. Halpern, a prominent figure among Die Yunge. As a result,

Leivick Halpern decided to adopt the pseudonym of H. Leivick and it was under this pseudonym that he rose to fame

ever since the publication in 1918 of his first volume of poems Hintern Shloss (Locked In).

This first volume contained Leivick's perennial themes: the universal prevalence of pain and the expectation of purifica tion through pain; the silence that accompanied sorrow and the joy that inhered in self-sacrifice; the loneliness of each

222

The Flowering of Yiddish Literature

creature and the need to reconcile oneself to this loneliness;

the radiance in every human heart and the search for a key to unlock this radiance.

Glanz-Leyeles, a founder of the Introspectist Movement in Yiddish poetry, immediately hailed the appearance of Leivick's first volume as an important date in Yiddish literature. He

praised Leivick's verses as lightning-flashes that instantaneously illumined secret crevices of the human soul. He saw in Lei

vick's visions both the clarity of realism and the profundity of symbolism. What distinguished Leivick's approach from that of Die

Yunge was his dissatisfaction with the expression merely of

individual emotions, experiences, and striving. He constantly sought a universal meaning in every particular happening. A

sensitive social consciousness overhung his most personal lyrics. He did not want to be absolved from responsibility for the suffering experienced by his fellow-men. He felt guilty in

being excluded from the tragic fate of his fellow-Jews left behind in the war-torn Old World. He,

therefore, turned

more and more to Jewish myths and to historic legends in which to incorporate his reactions to the blood-drenched con

temporary Jewish scene and to the undying Jewish hopes for a messianic redeemer.

The messianic theme dominated Leivick's creative activity. His first preserved dramatic poem, written in 1908 while imprisoned in Minsk for revolutionary agitation, was entitled

Die Ketten fun Moshiakh (The Chains of Messiah) and gave intense utterance to the longing that ever abided with him, the

longing for the prince of peace, the final savior of suffering

mankind. Leivick recognized that messianism was inseparable from Judaism, that the vision of an ultimate redeemer accom

panied Jews throughout their long historic experience and

made their horrible reality tolerable. At present, while the earth was sunk in sin and uncleanliness, its redeemer was still

223

H. Leivick

in chains. According to Jewish folklore, these chains were forged by the angels upon the command of the Almighty on the third night after the fall of Jerusalem. In Leivick's version, only

a single angel Azriel revolted against carrying out such a com mand. He could not join the other angels in singing hymns of praise to the Lord of the Universe while the desolated earth

groaned under the burden of suffering. He was prepared to forfeit the bliss of Eden and of all the seven heavens for the

deeper experience of sharing in the woe of earth and of man. He defiantly hurled back his angelic wings and accepted a human lot: to roam through the terrestrial sphere and to work

for the liberation of the Messiah. Along with this magnificent rebellious figure, reminiscent of the defiant Titan Prometheus, there also descended from heaven on a pillar of light another precursor of Messiah, the prophet

Elijah who had once

ascended to heaven on a chariot of fire. He too will wander on

all roads through generations of pain and will comfort man with the assurance of glorious salvation as soon as the human heart will be cleansed of evil. Until then, let all the dispersed

of Israel continue in every land to call for Messiah and they will ultimately free him from his chains. For a second time Leivick issued his own call for Messiah

in his most famous dramatic poem The Golem. It was com posed during the years 1917 to 1920, when the Russian Revo

lution released Utopian visions of a Kingdom of Heaven upon earth but at the same time also bathed the Russian soil in the

blood of its finest sons. The pogroms of Petlura and Denikin, the devastation of Jewish communities in so many Ukrainian and Polish provinces, the degradation of an ideal goal by the use of apparently necessary brutal means filled the poet's heart with sadness and with forebodings of greater horrors to come before mankind would be ripe for the true Messiah. The Golem, a legendary automaton recurring in Jewish folklore

since Biblical days, became for Leivick the symbolic personifi

224

The Flowering of Yiddish Literature

cation of the physical force that sought to bring about pre maturely a messianic order in an age when the human soul was still impure and unready. Although mentioned in the Psalms and in the Talmud, it

was not until the Middle Ages that the term Golem was asso ciated with guided robots who could be animated to do the will of man and was not until the sixteenth century that the legend of the Golem as the bodily protector of Jews against

their assailants was developed. The helplessness of the Jewish minority, entrapped in the midst of hostile populations, led it

to imagine a savior who would have the power to strike back effectively in an hour of the greatest need. Such an hour came in Prague during the lifetime of Rabbi Loew, better known as Maharal (1513-1609). A false accusation of ritual murder then threatened to wipe out the ancient Jewish settlement. The revered rabbi, an expert Kabbalist, was believed

to have

brought the clay image of the Golem to life and to have sent

it forth to discover the real murderer and to apprehend the maligners of the Jews.

Leivick's Golem is the dull, inert body, the mass-man, into whom the life of the spirit has been injected by the Maharal.

Awakened into revolutionary activity, its behavior could not be entirely foreseen. The aftermath of the union of clay and

spirit could not be anticipated. During the many generations while the clay was dormant, the spirit had wandered about lost in space. Nevertheless, when the hour of its entry into the body arrived, the spirit begged to be allowed to remain in the shadowy realm. It feared to exchange the calm dark stillness

of the unborn for the restless turbulence of streets and people. It forewarned that wherever its powerful foot would tread desolation might ensue and that whenever it would let its

mighty fist descend on things these might turn to dust and ashes. To animate the Golem meant to unleash brute force.

The Maharal, however, thought that he would be able to

H.

LEIVICK

226

The Flowering of Yiddish Literature

manage the Golem and to direct its iron strength to a desirable objective: the repelling of perils that threatened the Jewish community. Before long the Maharal learned that no living creature could be used merely as a means to an end. The rabbi wanted a robot who dwelt in darkness and brought light

to others, a servant who obeyed every command and asked no questions. But the moment a robot was granted a soul, it could not be prevented from developing a will of its own or

from experiencing sadness, restlessness, loneliness, and yearning for love. Others might need it solely as a temporary savior able to wield fist and axe and to answer force with greater force. But

once it had been taught to strike and to spread havoc, it con

tinued on a wild rampage, killing friends and foes, until it had to be stopped in its thoughtless frenzy. The Maharal, who had hoped to undo injustice, saw his emissary and creature cause new injustice. In the end, he had to deprive the Golem of the breath of life and return its limbs to inertness.

Leivick's play was written under the impact of the Russian

Revolution of 1917. He was aghast at the cost in blood and cruelty. He sought to comprehend the seeming necessity of

using ignominious means to bring about a desired social Utopia. These means were themselves brutalizing man and

were bringing greater darkness upon him. Hate begot hate. The poet could not reconcile himself to the revolutionary

Golem as the long anticipated Messiah. He, therefore, had the true Messiah appear in the play as a young beggar in the company of Elijah, an old beggar. Both roamed about un heeded and, when recognized by the Maharal, were chased

away by him. For, their age had not yet dawned, their love was still unwanted and undeserved, human hearts were not

yet cleansed of evil, suffering had not yet reached sufficient magnitude to renovate the human species.

A decade after completing The Golem, Leivick returned for the third

time to the messianic theme in

the Geula

H. Leivick

227

Komedie (Salvation-Comedy). Composed between 1930 and 1932, this poetic drama wrestles with tragic dilemmas and justified the appellation "Comedy" only in the same sense as Dante's Divine Comedy. It ascended from an inferno to a

happier state of being. The action takes place in the remote future. The Golem, who was the main figure in the earlier drama, is now no longer the central character and Messiah, who was there merely a

minor figure, here comes to the fore as the chief protagonist. During the many centuries when the Golem was lying in the Prague attic deprived of motion and vitality, there ripened in him a longing to rouse himself from the paralysis of inertness. With his yearning for new life, there also grew in him a vision of a true savior who would release him from his Golem status and transform him to a real human being. In the play,

this dream takes on aspects of reality for the awakened Golem. The Messianic Age nighs but it is preceeded first by the Age

of Gog and Magog and then by the struggle between the blood-stained, power-hungry, unholy Messiah of the House of

Joseph and the pure-hearted, love-imbued, holy Messiah of the House of David. Both Messiahs aim at a better world but one

seeks to achieve it by the methods of a Lenin or Stalin and the other by the methods of a Gandhi. The former leads the underprivileged in the battle against Magog, but hardly is he victorious when again there arises out of the midst of his followers a division between the newly sated individuals and

the still hungry hordes, between the sycophants who know how to exploit the new opportunities and the less adroit persons who have to submit to further restrictions. The Savior of the

House of Joseph becomes drunk with achieved power. He who was hailed as the apostle of a social revolution that promised justice to all men fails to carry out his promise. He who pro claimed salvation from bloodshed continues to shed blood. He

ends by persecuting his gentler ally, the Messiah of the House

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The Flowering of Yiddish Literature

of David. The latter alone feels the pain and the terror of the tortured and the slain, whether of the righteous or the un

righteous camp. For, is not the blood of Gog and Magog also blood? Though the entire world may condone liquidation of

opponents as a political necessity, the longed-for Messiah can not. The true savior embodies the conscience of the world and

bears responsibility for all that happens everywhere. The true redeemer will, therefore, be the last to be redeemed.

Between the two myth-making lyric dramas of Messianism,

Leivick composed seven realistic plays. The first of these, Shmattes

(Rags)

was successfully

produced

by

Maurice

Schwartz in 1921 and became a part of the permanent reper toire of the Yiddish Art Theater of New York. Of the others,

Shop, 1926, and Hirsh Lekert, 1927, attracted wide attention

among theatergoers. The hero of the latter drama was a Vilna shoemaker who

was hanged for attempting to assassinate the Governor of Vilna in 1902. This official had dispatched police and Cossacks to break up a street demonstration of Jewish workers during the May Day celebration. Such a reaction to defiance of auth

ority was probably anticipated by the organizers of the demon stration and was expected to foment additional discontent

with the Czarist regime. But the Governor had gone further and had ordered that the arrested political leaders be whipped. This was an outrage against their human dignity and stirred

revolutionary groups to cry out for reprisal. Hirsh Lekert

undertook to be the Jewish William Tell and to kill the tyran

nical official. Though unsuccessful in his terrorist act, merely wounding his intended victim, he displayed such courage in prison and on the gallows, refusing to reveal his co-conspirators even to save his own life, that he became the hero of the masses after his death and his deed was immortalized in a

widely sung folk ballad.

Leivick's historical drama was produced in

Moscow,

H. Leivick

Odessa,

and

229

Kharkov, as well as in

Poland and

South

America, and it endeared him to the Communists, who laid

claim to him as a Fellow Traveller. They were soon disillu sioned, however, when he broke with them in 1929. They were justifying the Arab massacres of Hebron's defenseless

Jews in that year as a revolutionary act of liberation from colonialism and imperialism. Thereupon Leivick denounced these heartless admirers of his genius and refused to let them publish his poems in their organs. They reacted by labelling

him a traitor to the cause of the proletariat. But he preferred to earn his bread as a house-painter and paperhanger, if he could not earn it as a writer, rather than to accept limitations

upon his freedom of thought and expression. Leivick's long and difficult struggle to make a living with his hands so that he might retain the integrity of his mind took its

toll of his health. Tuberculosis set in and he had to spend the years from 1932 to 1936 in the Denver Jewish Sanitarium.

These were years of intense physical pain and highest spir itual elevation. In Denver he completed his Geula-Komedie (Salvation-Comedy), his Lieder fun Paradise), his biblical dramas Die

Gan-Eden Akede

(Songs of

(Sacrifice)

and

Sodom, and his medieval drama of martyred love Abelard and Heloise.

The rise of Hitlerism and its tragic consequences for Jews transformed the poet and dramatist of individual sorrow into

a prophetic admonisher and consoler of his people. Leivick

sensed the onrush of danger and he urged resistance. He saw an abyss of horror opening up for all mankind but especially for his Jewish kinsmen who least deserved their tragic fate.

Apparently Cain had usurped God's throne and every day brought its quota of murder for the body and poison for the spirit. Hell was breaking loose, the earth was lying in convul

sions, nature was becoming Hitlerized. The poet could no longer dream dreams of Eden or intone gentle songs of kind

230

The Flowering of Yiddish Literature

ness. He was obsessed with guilt at being so far away from the victims of concentration camps and gas chambers, at being unable to share in the woe of the Jewish martyrs at a time

and at the spot where his comfort was needed most.

In his poems of the Nazi Period, entitled In Treblinka Bin Ich Nit Geven (In Treblinka I Was Not) and published in

1945, he sought to atone by breast-beating and versified lamentations. He realized the inadequacy of mere words to convey what the tortured victims saw in their last agony. He felt that even God must have been struck mute in looking

down upon the horrors of Treblinka and Maidanek. In a vision he saw God as a poor, tired beggar come to the poet's room in the dead of night and with mute gesture implore him for understanding. The creator and judge of the universe,

aghast at the unleashed brutalities, asked his creature to pass judgment upon him for his sin of letting dogs in human shape devour the children of Israel. But the poet had no word of pity for the creator who had once been a God of fiery heroism

and who had allowed himself to be reduced to a poor weakling unable to cope with events. God's chosen people were not a

vengeful group, but the innocent blood of their slaughtered millions was crying out for atonement.

The Nazi period also found dramatic repercussion in Lei vick's plays Nes in Ghetto (Miracle in the Ghetto), 1944, Maharam of Rothenberg, 1944, and Die Khasune in Fern

wald (The Wedding in Fernwald), 1949. In this last play, composed after the War, he tried to free himself from the

Nazi nightmare which had occupied his imagination for over

a decade. In the first wedding in a refugee camp of two liberated survivors whose earlier mates had been dragged away to death, he sought to symbolize the beginning of a new

life that would again blossom over the ruins of the old. In 1946 he had visited the Jewish survivors in the American

Zone of Occupation and had discovered among them an in

H. Leivick

231

destructible will to rebuild their shattered existences. This

enabled him to sing again of new hopes and of Israel's eternal regeneration after historic catastrophes.

The Bible again furnished him his chief inspiration. In Abel who fell under Cain's murderous hand, in Isaac who was led

to the altar upon the command of a superior will, and in Job

who was upright and eschewed evil and who nevertheless suffered far more than did the wicked, Leivick saw biblical figures who presaged the Jewish martyrs of all ages. The

questioning of Jewish destiny had occupied the poet ever since his youthful years behind prison bars. It had ripened in him

from decade to decade until it widened into a questioning of God's ways with all mankind, indeed with all living creatures. In his last drama, entitled In die Teg fun lov (In the Days

of Job) and completed in 1953, he finally reached the apex of his creative career and fought his way out from the dark ness of doubt to a reinvigorated faith. He saw that after the

deluge of blood a rainbow was appearing in the heavens. After

the Nazi effort to exterminate the Jewish people, a Jewish state had arisen and the remnants of Israel were beginning

again the rebuilding of their lives. Perhaps, after all a moral balance did operate in the universe. Perhaps there was mean ing to the swing of the pendulum from apparently unmerited suffering to unexpected joy.

With Job whom God had chosen for testing and who had

cried out against such election, Leivick had felt during the

Hitler years a stronger bond of sympathy than with Abraham and Isaac who had also been tested severely and who had

accepted their lot without protest. To rage against a God

whose justice or injustice remained inscrutible did at least offer emotional relief amidst great anguish. But soon Leivick realized the inadequacy of mere lamentations and protests. Was Job's

frenzy really to be preferred to Isaac's silent resumption of a dutiful existence after the experience on Mt. Moriah? Did

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The Flowering of Yiddish Literature

not Job himself later arrive at a similar conclusion to resume normal activities?

Leivick was struck by a Talmudic passage that Job may

have lived in the days of Isaac. This passage gave the dramatist the possibility of bringing together these two victims of God's testing. Leivick's Satan, a magnificent personification of the spirit

of scepticism by which faith was tested, did not relish his assigned mission as negative executor of God's will. The radiant deity who directed his Satanic counterpart to subject Job to the cruel ordeal seemed to be unmoved by the victim's woe

and expected the pious, saintly Man of Uz to endure without whimpering. Satan's sardonic laughter, on the other hand, stemmed from his basic sadness, a sadness growing out of his sympathy with all pain that he witnessed while roaming over the face of the earth. He had been at Moriah when Isaac lay on the altar gazing with horrified eyes upon the knife that

played about his neck. Was not such a deed commanded by God and to be executed by a father more reprehensible even

than his own more recent mangling of Job's healthy body? Moreover, even if Isaac's flesh was miraculously spared at the last moment, would not his soul ever remain affected by this

agonizing experience? Leivick had seen many scarred souls among the survivors who had been miraculously redeemed

from Auschwitz and Treblinka. They had relived Isaac's ordeal.

Leivick felt that such persons, the Isaacs of all eras, could

not remain aloof when they heard of Jobs who writhed in pain. A person who was as severely hurt as the son of Abraham had been must ever be sensitive to the plea of all living things, even

of the moth and the blade of grass, who begged him not to mutilate or crush them. The distance that separated him from

Job would not shield him from sharing in the latter's pain. When, therefore, the Biblical Job opened his lips after seven days of silence and cursed the day that he was born, then Isaac

H. Leivick

233

had to leave Abraham's peaceful tent in Beersheba and join the blind, the lame, the crippled, and the leprous as these made their way to the afflicted crier in the night who was

demanding a reckoning of God. Job, in his agonized protest, did not blaspheme God. Con scious of his own innocence, however, he wanted the supreme

overlord to justify himself. All the misshapen, underpriviliged, beaten creatures found a spokesman in him. They blessed his courage in questioning God's ways with man and joined in his protest against God's universal order or disorder.

If all their suffering was punishment for guilt, then God was equally guilty, perhaps more so, for subjecting them to tempta tion and leading them on to guilt. If God's omnipotent will

ruled the world, then God also willed sin, cruelty, misery, and bloodshed. Job wanted to know why. Once the question, which Isaac had not dared to ask when bound on Moriah, was

opened up by Job, others joined in, from the sick and the disabled of the human species to the overburdened camel and the becudgelled donkey. The sacrificial lamb, whose throat had been slit in lieu of Isaac's throat, asked this son of Abraham

how it was possible for one who had just been dragged to the altar himself to drag joyfully another living creature to be

sacrificed. How could one who had felt the knife poised at his own throat himself become an executioner a short while

later? Must not each of us feel responsible not alone for the pain we caused but also for the pain that inhered in all existence and whose author was God?

The dramatist repeated these questions in many variations through the mouth of diverse characters and he refused to accept the facile answer that in the long run the Lord requited

all pain with joy and atoned for all seeming wrong that he caused. For, not even God could undo what had once been

done or make the past disappear as if it had never been. Assuming that he could bring back to life children who had been hurled into the flames and reduced to ashes, could he

234

The Flowering of Yiddish Literature

also obliterate their experienced agony as they were being consumed in the fire?

God's answer in the whirlwind awed Job, the temporary

doubter, but it did not satisfy Satan, the eternal critic of God's ways. The Lord's recital of the grandeur of natural phenomena did not refute weighty rational arguments and

powerful accusations against the moral structure of the world he created. Perhaps there was no answer logically supportable. However, beyond the realm of logic and beyond the spirit of

scepticism personified by Satan lay the realm of faith and the spirit of trust.

The dramatist, therefore, had Satan in the end bow before the Lord and plead for his own annihilation, thus leaving the field to Abraham and Isaac and Job, who had been seared but not broken by pain. They were prepared to bind up each other's wounds, to rebuild their lives on the basis of faith and

love, to plow and to sow the desolated earth so that it might

bear more wholesome fruit for less turbulent generations. Shortly after completing the drama of Job's tribulations, the poet was himself afflicted with years of bodily agony. His last poems, composed before his disabling illness, were col lected in 1959 under the symbolic title Lider Tsum Eybikn

(Songs to Eternity). In these twilight poems, the aging lyricist accepted the sadness at the heart of things and curbed his earlier rebellion against the destiny allotted to him. He sought refuge in the hope that good would somehow be the final end of evil but this faith did not come easily to him. Only in the poems composed in Israel in 1957 did the elegiac singer strike up gayer melodies. He dreamed in the golden silence of Jerusalem's dawning and in the blue silence of its nights about the lost paradise of his people which could again be won. In the Holy Land, the white-haired, tired wanderer

at last experienced peace, joy, supreme beauty, and a new youth. Though he returned to the West, much of his heart remained in the East.

H. Leivick

235

As the greatest Yiddish poet and dramatist of his generation, Leivick absorbed and expressed its tragic experiences and its resurgence to new hope.

Bibliography

YIDDISH

BIBLIOGRAPHIES

of

writers

discussed

in

the

text

are

available in Zalman Reisen's Lexikon fun der Yiddisher Literatur

(4 vols., 3rd ed., Vilna, 1928), and in the more recent Lexikon fun der Nayer Yidisher Literatur, which began to appear in New

York in 1956 under the auspices of the Congress for Jewish Culture and which is rapidly nearing completion. A bibliography of books on, and translations from, the Yiddish literature available in English until 1940 is appended to A. A. Roback's Story of Yiddish Literature, published by the Yivo in

New York. The Jewish Book Annuals, published by the Jewish Book Council of America from 1941 to 1963, list the most recent English translations of Yiddish books. An evaluation of transla

tions is attempted by Shlome Noble in his article "Modern Yiddish Literature in English Translation," Jewish Book Annual, VII, 67-73.

The present bibliography serves primarily as a guide to further reading in English.

GENERAL

REFERENCES

AND ANTHOLOGIES

Basic Facts About Yiddish, YIVO, 1946.

Block, Etta. One Act Plays from the Yiddish. Cincinnati, 1923. ———

One Act Plays from the Yiddish (Second Series).

New York, 1925.

Frank, Helena. Yiddish Tales. Philadelphia, 1912.

Goldberg, Isaac. Six Plays of the Yiddish Theater. Boston, 1913. Six Plays of the Yiddish Theater (Second Series).

Boston, 1918. 237

238

The Flowering of Yiddish Literature

Goodman, Henry. The New Country; Stories from the Yiddish about Life in America. New York, 1961.

Howe, Irving and Greenberg, E. A Treasury of Yiddish Stories. New York, 1954.

Imber, S. J. Modern Yiddish Poetry; an Anthology. New York, 1927.

Leftwich, Joseph. The Golden Peacock. New York, 1961. Roback, A.A. Curiosities of Yiddish Literature. Boston, 1933. -.

Story of Yiddish Literature. New York, 1940.

Rubin, Ruth. A Treasury of Jewish Folksong. New York, 1950.

Soltes, Mordecai. The Yiddish Press, an Americanizing Agency. Philadelphia, 1925. Waxman, Meyer. History of Jewish Literature, Vol. V. New

York, 1960. Weinreich, Uriel. Field of Yiddish. New York, 1954.

White, Bessie. Nine One-Act Plays from the Yiddish. Boston, 1932.

Wiener, Leo. History of Yiddish Literature in the Nineteenth

Century. New York, 1899.

INDIVIDUAL AUTHORS

Ahad Haam

Selected Essays. Cleveland, 1962. Simon, Leon. Ahad Haam, a Biography. London, 1960. S. Anski

Dybbuk. New York, 1926. Sholem Asch

Apostle. New York, 1943.

From Many Countries; The Collected Short Stories. London, 1958.

In the Beginning. New York, 1935.

Bibliography

239

Kiddush Hashem. Philadelphia, 1912.

Mary. New York, 1949. Moses. New York, 1951. Mother. New York, 1930.

Mottke the Thief. New York, 1935. Mottke the Vagabond. Boston, 1917. Nazarene. New York, 1939.

Passage in the Night. New York, 1953. Sabbatai Zevi. Philadelphia, 1930. Salvation. New York, 1934.

Song of the Valley, New York, 1938. Three Cities. New York, 1933. Three Novels. New York, 1938. Uncle Moses. New York, 1920.

War Goes On. New York, 1936.

Simon Dubnow

History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. 3 vols. Philadelphia, 1916-20.

Jewish History; an Essay in the Philosophy of History. Phila

delphia, 1903. Nationalism and History; Essays in Old and New Judaism. New

York, 1958.

Peretz Hirshbein

The Haunted Inn. Boston, 1921.

Mendele Mokher Sforim

Fishke the Lame. New York, 1960.

The Nag. New York, 1954. The Parasite. New York, 1956.

Travels and Adventures of Benjamin the Third. New York, 1949.

The Flowering of Yiddish Literature

240

Y. L. Peretz

As Once We Were; Selections from the Works of Peretz. Los

Angeles, 1951. Book of Fire. New York, 1960.

Bontche the Silent and Other Stories. Philadelphia, 1927.

Goodman, Philip. Peretz, A Sourcebook on Programming. New York, 1951.

"Guide

to

English

Translations of Y.

L.

Peretz,"

Field

of

Yiddish, edited by Uriel Weinreich. New York, 1954. pp. 292-299.

In This World and the Next; Selected Writings. New York, 1958.

Peretz. Bilingual Edition. Yivo, 1947. Roback, A.A. Peretz, Psychologist

of Literature.

Cambridge,

Mass., 1935. Samuel, Maurice.Prince of the Ghetto. Philadelphia, 1948.

Stories and Pictures. Philadelphia, 1906.

Three Canopies. New York, 1948. Three Gifts and Other Stories. New York, 1947. David Pinski

Arnold Levenberg. New York, 1928.

Cripples. New York, 1932. Dollars. New York, 1932.

Forgotten Souls. New York, 1932. Generations of Noah Edon. New York, 1931.

King David and His Wives. New York, 1923.

Temptations; A Book of Short Stories. New York, 1919. Ten Plays. New York, 1920. Three Plays. New York, 1918. Treasure. New York, 1915. Morris Rosenfeld

Songs of Labor and Other Poems. Boston, 1914. Songs of Labor and Other Poems. Boston, 1914.

Teardrop Millionaire and Other Poems. New York, 1955.

Goldenthal, Leon. Toil and Triumph; Life of Morris Rosenfeld. New York, 1960.

Bibliography

241

Sholom Aleichem

Adventures of Motel, the Cantor's Son. New York, 1953.

Great Fair; Scenes from my Childhood. New York, 1955. "A Guide to English Translations of Sholom Aleichem," Field

of Yiddish, edited by Uriel Weinreich, New York, 1954, pp. 285-291.

Inside Kasrilevke. New York, 1948.

Jewish Children. New York, 1920. Old Country. New York, 1946. Samuel, Maurice. World of Sholom Aleichem. New York, 1943. Selected Stories. New York, 1956.

Sholom Aleichem Panorama. London and Ontario, 1948.

Stempenyu. London, 1913. Stories and Satires. New York, 1959.

Tevye's Daughters. New York, 1949. Wandering Star. New York, 1952.

Mordecai Spector Three Worthies of Brebendefka. New York, 1905.

Yehoash

Feet of the Messenger. Philadelphia, 1923. Poems. London, Ontario, 1952.

Chaim Zhitlowsky The Future of Our Youth in This Country. Pittsburgh, 1935. Eliakum Zunser

Liptzin, Sol. Eliakum Zunser; Poet of his People. New York, 1950.

Selected Songs. New York, 1928.

Index

Adler, J. P., 149, 151f Aesop, 196

Bovshover, Joseph, 132, 135f, 138,

Ahad-Haam, 137, 165f, 169f, 177

Brainin, Reuben, 58, 157

Aksenfeld, Israel, 17, 54

Bratslaver, Nakhman, 17

Alexander II, Czar, 31, 42, 45, 53,

Broder, Berl, 34-37, 63

148

64, 136

Alexander III, Czar, 45, 64, 67, 198

Cahan, Abraham, 60 Cahen, I. L., 117

Andreyev, Leonid, 119, 153

Calderon, P. C., 151

Anski, S., 118, 149, 172

Cervantes, Miguel de, 28

Asch, Sholem, 33, 58, 60, 101,

Coleridge, S. T., 201

118, 149, 156f, 159, 175-189

Coralnik, Abraham, 61

Ashkenazi, Jacob, 15 Dahl, Basil, 136 Baal Shem Tov, Israel, 16, 210f

Defoe, Daniel, 88

Bader, Gershom, 176 Bakunin, Michael, 133

Dehmel, Richard, 217 Devenishski, E. M., 162-164

Bassin, M., 209

Dick, I. M., 17f, 76, 78f, 86

Baudelaile, Charles, 121

Dillon, A. M., 209, 213f

Ben-Ami, 166

Dineson,

Jacob,

77-84,

86,

89,

157, 166

Benjamin of Tudela, 28

Berkowitch, I. D., 157

Dreyfus, Alfred, 94

Bernfeld, Simon, 58 Bernstein, Herman, 61

Dubnow, Simon, 55, 85, 89, 165

Bernstein, Ignacy, 117

Dymov, Ossip, 61, 149

176

Bershadski, Isaiah, 157 Bialik, C. N.,

145,

157,

159, 162,

Edelstadt,

166, 177

David,

132-135,

148

Birnbaum, Nathan, 175-177

Eichendorff, Joseph von, 212

Blake, William, 212

Eisenbaum, Anton, 53

Bloomgarden, Solomon, 61, 190

Elchanan, Isaac, 122

199, 205, 209

Borochov, Ber, 61

Eldad the Danite, 28 Eliot, George, 49 243

138,

244

Index

Emerson, R. W., 136

Hapgood, Hutchins, 60

Engel, Joel, 117

Hauptmann, Gerhart, 20, 128, 151

Entin, Yoel, 209

Heine, Heinrich, 69,

102,

120f,

Ettinger, Shlome, 17, 54

135f, 145, 175, 194, 210, 212,

Euripides, 69, 151 Evalenko, A. M., 176

217

Hermalin, D. M., 61 Herzl, Theodor, 19, 175

Feinberg, Leon, 72

Hirsch, Baron de, 160

Finn, S. J., 84

Hirshbein, Peretz, 33,

Fitzgerald, Edward, 196 Frischman, David, 89,

101,

118,

149, 156-162, 200

120,

157,

Hitler, Adolf, 185f, 229

Frost, Robert, 215

Hoffman, Ben Zion, 61 Housman, A. E., 215

Frug, S. S., 55, 65-72, 120, 132,

Hugo, Victor, 151

202

166

Frumkin, Esther, 177

Ibsen, Henrik, 128, 151

Frumkin, I. D., 59

Iceland, Reuben, 209, 212f Idelsohn, A. Z., 51

Gandhi, Mahatma, 162 Gelbart, Michel, 199

Ignatoff, Daniel, 202 Ignatoff, David, 202, 213

Ginsburg, Saul, 117

Imber, S. J., 216

Glanz-Leyeles, A., 222 Goethe, J. W., 49, 80, 136

Kabak, A. A., 157

Gogol, Nicolai, 20f, 49, 119

Katz, Ben Zion, 157

Goldfaden,

Kessler, David, 149, 151

Abraham,

33-51, 54,

72, 84, 101, 126, 149f, 154, 159

Kisman, I., 177

Klausner, Joseph, 58, 157

Golub, Solomon, 199

Gordin,176 Jacob, 33,159 149-156,

,

Kobrin, Leon, 149, 154f

Kropotkin, Peter, 133

Gordon, Michel, 63-66, 78

Gordon, Y. L., 65-67, 89

Lafontaine, Jean, 196

Gorky, Maxim, 151

Landau, Zisha, 209-212

Gottlober, A. B., 17, 34f, 37, 54,

Lapin, Berl, 209, 214-216

Lateiner, Joseph, 149-151

84, 89 Gozzi, Carlo, 210

Lebensbaum, Rosa, 213

Graetz, Heinrich, 82

Leivick, H., 134, 149, 218-235

Grillparzer, Franz, 151

Lekert, Hirsh, 147, 228

Gutzkow, Karl, 79, 151

Lenau, Nikolaus, 145

Leopardi, Giacomo, 121 Hacohen, Michel, 59

Lermontov, Mikhail, 145

Haimowitz, M. J., 209

Lerner, Joseph, 79

Halpern, Leivick, 134, 149, 218

Lessing, G. E., 196 Levi, Israel, 55f

235

Halpern, M. L., 218, 221

177, 207f, 216

Levi Yitzhok of Berditchev, 16 Levinsohn, I. B., 17

245

Index

Levita, Eli, 14

Pindar, 116

Libin, Z., 149, 155

Pinsker, Leon, 137, 175

Lieberman, Aaron, 137 Liessin, Abraham, 60, 136, 143

Pinski, David, 33, 101, 118f, 122 130, 149, 155f, 159, 176, 200

Platen, August von, 212

148

Linetzky,

Yoel, 36f, 54, 77f, 83,

Poe, E. A., 145, 200

Prilutzky, Z. H., 58, 176

86, 89

Longfellow, H. W., 196 Luther, Martin, 196

Pushkin, Alexander, 20, 121, 145

Maeterlinck, Maurice, 159

Radkinson, M. L., 54

Magnes, J. L., 61

Rapaport, S. I., 58

Raboy, Isaac, 209

Maharal, 224, 226

Ravnitzky, Y. H., 56, 166

Mani-Leib, 209

Reisen, Abraham, 58-60, 118-122,

157, 176f, 199

Mapu, Abraham, 46f Marek, Pesach, 117

Reisen, Kalman, 119

Margolin, Anna, 213 Markham, Edwin, 136

Reisen, Sarah, 119 Reisen, Zalman, 119

Marx, Karl, 137, 175

Ricardo, David, 175

Mendele Mokher Sforim, 11, 19

Riesser, Gabriel, 143

32, 35, 54, 62, 77, 86, 88f, 91,

Riis, Jacob, 60

117, 122, 124, 166, 177f

Rilke, R. M., 212

Mendelssohn, Moses, 16

Robinson, E. A., 215

Mestel, Jacob, 216

Rolnick,

Mieses, Matthias, 176

Joseph,

197,

202-205,

209

Millay, E. V., 215

Rosenblatt, H., 197-202, 205, 209

Miller, Louis, 61

Rosenfeld, Morris, 132, 136, 138

Molière, 41

143, 148, 199

Morris, William, 137

Most, Johann, 133

Sapirstein, Jacob, 60 Sarah bas Tovim, 15f, 111

Nadir, Moshe, 209

Sarasohn, K. Z., 59

Nadson, S. Y., 132, 210

Schiller, Friedrich, 151

Nekrassov, N. A., 132, 145

Schneour, Zalman, 60, 157

Nicholas I, Czar, 32, 34, 53

Schnitzler, Arthur, 128, 210

Niger, S., 163

Schulman, Kalman, 83

Nomberg, 176f H. D.,157 56, 118,

,

Schwartz, I. I., 209 Schwartz, Maurice, 33, 149, 155f, 161, 228

Onokhi, Z. I., 157

Seifert, Moshe, 156

Ostrovsky, A. N., 151

Shaikevitch,

N.

M.,

77,

83-86,

149f

Peretz, Y. L., 56, 83, 86, 88f, 98 118,

120,

122,

149,

175-178, 200, 210

156f,

162f,

Shakespeare,

William,

151, 215 Shelley, P. B., 121, 135

41,

136,

Index

246

Sholom 73,

Aleichem,

75,

85f,

17f, 55f, 61,

88-97,

102,

Uhland, Ludwig, 212

117,

122, 124, 159, 165f, 175, 177f

Vaisenberg, I. M., 118

Singer, I. I., 60, 149

Varshavsky, Mark, 55, 65, 72-75 Veiter, A., 162-164

Slonim, Joel, 209

Vinchevsky, Moritz, 54, 60,

Shomer, 77, 83-86, 149f

Smolenskin, Peretz, 80

136-139

Sologub, Fedor, 212 Spector,

Mordecai,

132,

Vladeck, Baruch, 147

55,

86,

89,

117, 166

Whitman, Walt, 136, 145

Spivak, C. D., 190

Wiener, Leo, 140

Steffens, Lincoln, 60

Wiernik, Peter, 60

Stendhal, 120

Wilde, Oscar, 119, 200

Strindberg, August, 151 Sudermann, Hermann, 151, 153

Yehoash, 61, 190-199, 205, 209

Sue, Eugene, 83

Syrkin, Nachman, 58, 61

Zbarzher, Velvel, 37, 63 Zederbaum, Alexander, 23, 53-56,

Tagore, Rabindranath, 162

89

Tchernowitz, Chaim, 166

Zeitlin, Hillel, 157

Thomashefsky, Boris, 149, 151

Zhitlovsky, Chaim, 61,

Tolstoy, Leo, 20, 133, 151, 212 Trotzky, Leon, 60

Zola, Emile, 20, 94

Tsivyon, 61 Tucker, B. R., 136

Zunser, Eliakum,

Turgenev, Ivan, 20

Tyuchev, F. L., 145

165,

169

177, 214

63,89

17-19,

37, 54,