The Literary Varshe of the Zynger Siblings from 1908 to the Great War1
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Alicia RAMOS-GONZÁLEZ Universidad de Granada THE LITERARY VARSHE OF THE ZYNGER SIBLINGS FROM 1908 TO THE GREAT WAR1 (Part One) RÉSUMÉ Cet article porte sur le monde littéraire et culturel des Juifs polonais de Varsovie et sur le rôle joué par cette ville dans la littérature yiddish de l’Europe ashkénaze au début du XXe siècle. En 1900, apparaît la «Varshe» littéraire: c’est un centre artistique important qui, dans les décennies suivantes, donne naissance à de nombreux groupes littéraires, à d’importants mouvements d’avant-garde, à des prosateurs, des poètes et des dramaturges yiddish de premier plan, et à une série de familles littéraires extraordinaires. Parmi ces dernières, figurent les Zynger. Leur histoire familiale est parallèle à l’histoire de ce creuset culturel qu’est la capitale de la Pologne; c’est là que se déroulent la formation artistique de trois membres de la famille — les frères et sœurs Zynger: Ester, Yisroel et Yitskhok — et leur carrière littéraire. La première partie de la recherche porte sur la période comprise entre 1908, l’année de l’arrivée des Zynger à Varsovie, et 1914, l’année où éclate la Première Guerre mondiale; elle examine aussi les origines de la communauté juive de la ville, et elle étudie les principaux changements qui eurent lieu dans le paysage artistique et culturel de Varsovie. Enfin, elle considère la Varsovie yiddish comme une métropole littéraire juive où la figure du maître et patron Yitskhok Leybush Perets et sa maison servirent de guide pour une nouvelle culture yiddish dans les nombreux salons artistiques et littéraires de la ville. ABSTRACT This article explores the literary and cultural world of Polish Jews in Warsaw and the role of the city in the Yiddish literature of Ashkenazi Europe during the early twentieth century. In 1900 literary Varshe emerged as an important artistic 1. This work has been supported by the projects De Sefarad a Yiddishland: escritoras judías en Europa y sus Diásporas [From Sefarad to Yiddishland:Jewish Women Writers in Europe and its Diasporas] and CuRe. Cuerpos Re-escritos: dolor y violencia en escritoras y personajes femeninos de la literatura de mujeres [Re-written Bodies: Pain and Violence in Women Writers and Female Characters of Literature by Women], both of which received grants from the Ministry of Economy, Innovation and Science of the Regional Government of Andalusia. Revue des études juives, 171 (3-4), juillet-décembre 2012, pp. 351-379. doi: 10.2143/REJ.171.3.2184709 995711_REJ_2012/3-4_04_Ramos.indd5711_REJ_2012/3-4_04_Ramos.indd 351351 55/12/12/12/12 113:513:51 352 THE LITERARY VARSHE OF THE ZYNGER SIBLINGS centre that would give rise in later decades to numerous literary groups, important avant-garde movements, outstanding writers of Yiddish prose, poetry and drama, and a series of extraordinary literary families. Among the latter are the Zyngers, whose family history runs parallel to that of this important cultural hub. The Polish capital provided the setting for the artistic formation of three of its members — the Zynger siblings, Ester, Yisroel and Yitskhok — and for the consolidation of their literary careers. The first part of the article focuses on the period between 1908, when the Zyngers arrived in Warsaw, and 1914, the beginning of the Great War; it also examines the origins of the city’s Jewish community and studies the prin- cipal changes that took place in the Warsaw’s cultural and artistic landscape. Finally it considers Yiddish Warsaw as a Jewish literary metropolis in which both the figure of the master and patron Yitskhok Leybush Perets and his home served as guides for a new Yiddish culture in the city’s proliferating artistic and literary salons. 1. The Old Jewish Warsaw Between the 15th and 18th centuries, life in Jewish Warsaw — which dated back to the 14th century — was complicated, and there had been episodes over these four hundred years in which Jews had been denied residence permits, expelled from the city or attacked by the Polish population.2 Even so, at the end of the 18th century there were almost 6000 Jews living in Warsaw3, many of them in the city’s jurydyki Warszawy.4 Although in the early decades of the 19th century the animosity and dis- trust felt by Poles towards the Jewish residents remained significant and Jews depended on daily passes to be able to live and do business in Warsaw, the first Jewish quarter was established in 1809, when the Jewish population represented 19% of the city’s inhabitants. However, not until the second half of the century would a significant improvement be perceived in the situation faced by the Jews in the Polish capital, and their improved position brought with it an increase in the activity 2. One of the best sources for studying this period is E. RINGELBLUM, Zydzi w Warszawie od czasów najdawniejszych do ostatniego wygnania w 1527 roku, doctoral thesis, Warsaw, 1932. 3. See C. SHMERUK, “Aspects of the History of Warsaw as a Yiddish Literary Centre”, Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry, 3, The Jews of Warsaw, 2004, p. 142. Shmeruk takes this figure from S. KIENIEWICZ, Warszawa w latach 1795-1914, Warsaw, 1976, p. 76. 4. “Jurisdictions”, private areas within the city that were exempt from the legal control of the municipal administration because they were owned by nobles or the Church. See S. KIENIEWICZ, “The Jews of Warsaw, Polish Society and the Partitioning Powers 1795-1861”, in A. POLONSKY (ed.), Studies from Polin. Fron Shtetl to Socialism, London-Washington, 1993, p. 84-85. 995711_REJ_2012/3-4_04_Ramos.indd5711_REJ_2012/3-4_04_Ramos.indd 352352 55/12/12/12/12 113:513:51 THE LITERARY VARSHE OF THE ZYNGER SIBLINGS 353 of Jewish Warsaw in subsequent decades. Its streets were filled with a mixture of devout Jews and erudite wise men, rich bankers, industrialists, merchants, alcohol smugglers, humble artisans, shopkeepers and itinerant salesmen. The Jewish community had multiplied by eight — representing at this point a third of the city’s population — and in the streets of Warsaw mikvoes proliferated. The year 1878 would see the founding on T¥omackie Street of the Great Synagogue, the largest and most important in Warsaw and next to it the Yudaistishe Bibliotek, one of the greatest temples of Jewish books in all of Ashkenazi Europe, would soon open — later it would have a collection of over 40,000 volumes. Before the end of the century, the construction of the orthodox synagogue on Twarda Street would begin, on land granted by Zalmen ben Menashe Nozyk and his wife Rivke bas Moshe, wealthy merchants from the city. Following the inauguration of the syna- gogue, its beautiful music would be heard throughout the streets of the Jewish quarter. While it is true that in the final decades of the century two thirds of the shtiblekh [prayer houses] in Warsaw were Hasidic, it is also a fact that the spread of enlightened and emancipationist ideas had turned Warsaw into an important centre of reformist thought by Polish Jews. As a consequence, a small part of the Jewish community was giving up its customs and tradi- tions to open up to gentile society and participate in the city’s cultural and political life. Some sectors of Jewish society were slowly becoming secu- larised, the sons of the most assimilated Jews no longer attended Jewish schools and instead went to government schools and, later, to universities, and their daughters now studied literature, music and languages. The num- ber of conversions increased greatly in Warsaw during these years, and the city had the highest number of apostate Jews in all of Ashkenazi Europe. The Jewish proletariat was deeply affected by the revolutionary ideas of the radical movements and the city began to receive a high number of young unemployed Jewish girls who emigrated from the shtetlekh to work as domestic employees in the homes of well-off Jews or in small workshops, where they learned sewing and socialism.5 At the end of 1881 a pogrom took place in the Polish capital, an echo of the ones triggered by Czar Alexander II’s assassination in Russia at the end of April of that year and which had reached more than thirty villages and cities like Odessa and Kiev. The attacks produced a large number of 5. These young people represent a considerable percentage of the internal Jewish migration that from 1880 to 1910 would take almost fifty thousand Jews from all over Congress Poland to Warsaw. 995711_REJ_2012/3-4_04_Ramos.indd5711_REJ_2012/3-4_04_Ramos.indd 353353 55/12/12/12/12 113:513:51 354 THE LITERARY VARSHE OF THE ZYNGER SIBLINGS displaced people and marked the beginning of a great migratory movement of Ashkenazi Jews, especially Russians and Hungarians, to North America, Palestine and South Africa. But in Warsaw Jewish life did not come to a halt as a result of aggression by the population that accused the Jews of the growing Russification of Poland, nor did such aggression put an end to the massive arrival of new members to the community, now increased by 150,000 Jews from Lithuania, Byelorussia and the Ukraine. 2. The Origins of Literary Varshe In 1814 the first Jewish printing press opened its doors in Warsaw6 and many similar workshops would appear shortly thereafter. After just a few decades there would be almost ten, most of them owned by Jewish printers. Thanks to their arrival, books in the leshon ha-qodesh and in the Jewish vernacular language began to be published and circulate in Warsaw: most of them were texts of the Holy Tradition and reprints of tkhines and Yiddish- language morality books for women from the 17th and 18th century.