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Arcadian Dreams of David Bergelson and His Berlin Circle

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Arcadian Dreams of David Bergelson and His Berlin Circle STUDIA ROSENTHALIANAARCADIAN 41 (2009), DEAMS 141-171 OF DAVID BERGELSON AND H doi:IS B ERLIN10.2143/SR.41.0.2033470 CIRCLE 141 Arcadian Dreams of David Bergelson and His Berlin Circle G E N N A D Y E S T R A I K H Territorialism Yiddishism is a widely employed term, though its definition remains as a rule rather vague, meaning cultural, political, or simply sentimental attachment to the vernacular of the Ashkenazim. Despite the fact that many people could not distinguish a coherent Yiddishist program,1 the movement found an intense following in the late Russian Empire and, to a lesser degree, in other countries of the East and Central European Jewish diaspora. Yiddishists rejected assimilation and sought a national route to modernization, but either completely dismissed Zionist projects or regarded them as a partial or later-stage solution to vital problems of Jewish civilization. In 1907-14, Yiddishist ranks became particularly strong. During this period of political repression in Russia, Jewish so- cialist parties were deserted by the vast majority of their members, and many of the “deserters” became activists in social, cultural, and educa- tional fields.2 Yiddishists were usually occupied with the conceit that non-ritual, non-covenantal culture could substitute for religion as the new cement I want to thank Dr. Joachim Schlör (Moses Mendelssohn Zentrum, Potsdam), Dr Marion Neiss (Zentrum für Antisemitismusforschung, Berlin), and Ms Ingedore Rüdlin (Solomon Birnbaum Yiddish Society, Hamburg) whose generous help enabled my access to many of the sources consulted. 1. E. Frenkel, ‘Oyfn rand fun Ben-Adirs tsavoe-briv,’ in Ben-Adir, An ofener briv tsu undzer yidishistisher inteligents (Bucharest 1947), p. 21. 2. D. Charney, Barg aroyf: bletelekh fun a lebn (Warsaw 1935), p. 131-138; C. Gassenschmidt, Jewish Liberal Politics in Tsarist Russia, 1900-14: The Modernization of Russian Jewry (Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire 1995), p. 70. 1084-08_St.Rosen_08_Estraikh 141 09-01-2009, 14:48 142 GENNADY ESTRAIKH of a modern, secular Jewish nation. If the textual culture of Torah and Talmud could, generation after generation, preserve Jewry in inhospita- ble, repressive surroundings, then – the Yiddishists asserted – highly de- veloped literature, press, theater, fine arts, scholarship, and education should secure the Jewish people’s endurance in the coming egalitarian commonwealth of nations. Although secular intellectuals no longer re- garded Jews as God’s chosen people, they usually agreed with the apothegm of the Vilna man-of-letters Shmaryahu Gorelik that ‘national culture equals national self-preservation’3 and, generally, insisted on the exceptional role of culture in the Jews’ historical destiny. Nathan Birnbaum, the German-speaking paladin of Yiddishism in Austro-Hun- gary, argued that Jewish culture did not belong to the various forms of ‘common-to-all-mankind’ (klal-mentshlekhe) or ‘content’ (inhaltlekhe) cultures. Echoing the historian Simon Dubnov’s postulate that the Jew- ish people embodied the highest type of a cultural-historic or spiritual nation, Birnbaum saw in Jewish culture more significant distinctive fea- tures than only its form or content. To him, it was a faith-based ‘abso- lute culture’, the main source of unalloyed national pride. Such a cul- ture had to have its own linguistic medium, preferably Yiddish.4 Although a considerable number of Jewish intellectuals maintained that Ashkenazic civilization had to preserve its traditional bilingual, Yiddish/ Hebrew, cultural tradition, militant forms of Yiddishism and Hebraism took hold of Jewish political life. Yiddishism differed in such sundry movements as Bundism, Folk- ism, Labor Zionism, Communism, and Territorialism. Yet across the spectrum, Yiddishism often came to ‘Ashkenazism’, or Jewish national- ism aimed at preservation, or at least representation, of Ashkenazic Jews as an independent nation in the dynamically changing world of the twentieth century. Territorialism, or a quest for a Yiddish-speaking Jew- ish homeland outside Palestine, became one of the most consistent doc- trines of Ashkenazic nationalism and had many thousands of followers, particularly in the 1910s and 1920s. Territorialists treasured the millen- nium-long ‘golden chain’ of Ashkenazic cultural tradition, being little 3. Sh. Gorelik, ‘Kunst un natsyonale oyslebn’, Der yidisher almanakh (Kiev 1910), p. 85. 4. N. Birnbaum, ‘Di absolute idee fun yidntum un di yidishe shprakh’, Di yidishe velt 1 (1912), p. 45-52. For Birnbaum, see J. A. Fishman, Yiddish: Turning to Life (Amsterdam 1991). 1084-08_St.Rosen_08_Estraikh 142 09-01-2009, 14:48 ARCADIAN DEAMS OF DAVID BERGELSON AND HIS BERLIN CIRCLE 143 interested in creating a melting pot for all Jewish ethnic groups. Israel Zangwill, the best-selling English writer (whose play ‘The Melting Pot’ provided a metaphor for advocates of multiethnic immigrant societies) and the founder of Territorialism, regarded Jews as a compound of many nations, each with its own nationalism. He believed that ‘any Jew- ish nationalism outside an own territory is unpractical and unjustifi- able’.5 At the same time, Zangwill and his followers were free of Zion- ists’ Oriental romanticism and did not believe that God or history deeded Palestine to contemporary Jews. In Eastern Europe, Kiev became a center of Territorialism, when in the fall of 1903 a few intellectuals formed the Vozrozhdenie (‘renais- sance’) group there. Its ideology combined Marxism with Israel Zang- will’s bourgeois territorialism, Nokhum Syrkin’s proletarian Zionism, Chaim Zhitlowsky’s secular nationalism, and Simon Dubnov’s folkist diasporism. The ‘Russian salad’ of their outlook was observable, for in- stance to Dubnov’s daughter, Sofia, when Simon Dobin, a linchpin of the Kiev Territorialist circles, gave a paper, analyzing the Maccabean pe- riod from the point of view of historical materialism and class struggle.6 In 1904, the Vozrozhdenie group split when some of its members founded in Odessa the territorialist Zionist Socialist Workers’ Party. In the United States, the most significant territorialist group was called the Socialist Territorialists, who outnumbered the Anarchists Territorialists and Socialist Revolutionary Territorialists. In Kiev, in April 1906, an- other faction of the group changed into the Jewish Socialist Workers’ Party (also known as the ‘Seymists’), which was ideologically close to the Russian Socialist-Revolutionary Party.7 In May 1917, both offshoots of the Vozrozhdenie group amalgamated into the Fareynikte Partey (‘United Party’) and played a central role in the short-lived Jewish autonomy in Ukraine, which became the promised land in the eyes of many 5. I. Zangwill, ‘Vegn der yidisher natsionalitet’, Renesans 2/1 (1920), p. 15-16; translation here and, unless otherwise specified, elsewhere mine. 6. S. Dubnova-Erlikh, ‘Yosef Leshtshinsky (Y. Khmurner): zayn lebn un shafn’, in Kmurner- bukh (New York 1958), p. 64. 7. See, in particular, A.G. Druker, ‘Introduction: The Theories of Ber Borochov and Their Place in the History of the Jewish Labor Movement’, in B. Borochov, Nationalism and the Class Struggle (New York 1937), p. 32; A. L. Patkin, The Origins of the Russian-Jewish Labour Movement (Melbourne and London 1947). 1084-08_St.Rosen_08_Estraikh 143 09-01-2009, 14:48 144 GENNADY ESTRAIKH Yiddishists. From September 1917 the Fareynikte Partey began to publish in Kiev its daily newspaper Naye Tsayt (“New Times”), edited by Ben- Adir (Abraham Rosin), Moyshe Silberfarb, Moyshe Katz, Moyshe Litvakov, Yankev Leshtsinsky, Moyshe Shats-Anin, and David Bergel- son. All of them will appear as characters or extras in our story. Ukraine’s political and cultural surroundings lent boldness to the Kiev enthusiasts of Yiddish. It was particularly inspiring to see how Ukrainian became a state language after centuries of being treated as a ‘barbarian jargon’ of Russian. All the main parties that cherished Yid- dish – the Fareynikte Partey, the Bund, the Labor Zionists, and the Folkspartey – agreed to delegate their cultural activities to the Kultur Lige (‘Culture League’), established in Kiev in January 1918. The League, which became a Jewish culture ministry of sorts, aimed at developing and promoting secular Yiddish culture, based on democratic values. Among the League’s founders were two former Sorbonnists – Moyshe Litvakov, a pioneer Labor Zionist who later reinvented himself as a lead- ing Territorialist, and Yekhezkel Dobrushin, a poet and literary critic; and two close friends, home-educated scions of rich merchant families – Nakhman Mayzl (Meisel), a Yiddish publisher and literary critic, and David Bergelson, the star of the Kiev Yiddish literary scene.8 Although the two issues of the literary almanac Eygns (‘our own’), sponsored and distributed by the Culture League, went little noticed at the time of their publication in Kiev in 1918 and 1920, they occupy a remarkable place in Yiddish literary history as fora of the trend-setting Kiev, or Eygns, Group of Yiddish Writers. In their choice of the alma- nac’s name, the Eygns editors could conceivably allude to the leftwing German psychoanalyst Otto Gross, who tied in any new culture build- ing with liberation of die Eigenen (‘one’s own’).9 Ideologically, Eygns con- tinued the tradition of pre-First World War literary axis Vilna-Kiev, par- ticularly the erudite Vilna journal Literarishe Monatsshriftn (‘literary monthly’, 1908), edited by the talented trio of literati – Shmuel Niger, 8. Z. Melamed, ‘Bergelson der gezelshaftler’,
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