Zamenhof interview: Esperanto & Jewish Ideals

Now on my web site:

“Esperanto and Jewish Ideals,” Interview for the Jewish Chronicle with Dr. Zamenhof, The Jewish Chronicle, September 6, 1907, pp. 16-18. Note also the advertisement for "kakao" (cocoa).

With Zamenhof’s translation of ‘La Gaja Migranto’ (published in Fundamenta Krestomatio de la Lingvo Esperanto, 1903), mentioned in the interview.

This interview was translated into Esperanto and published in two parts. Note that R. I. [ = Isidore?] Harris is given as the interviewer:

Intervjuo kun d-ro Zamenhof de R. I. HARRIS, elangligis N. Z. MAIMON, La nica literatura revuo 6/3 (n-ro 33), Januaro-Februaro 1961, p. 82-89.

Intervjuo kun d-ro Zamenhof (fino) de R. I. HARRIS, elangligis N. Z. MAIMON, La nica literatura revuo 6/4 (n-ro 34), Marto-Aprilo 1961, p. 121-127.

Here I noticed interesting details about Zamenhof's thoughts on the Jewish question that I don't recall from other statements. For example, when he describes his attempt to create a new Judaism for the 20th century, he makes two curious assertions: (1) he almost blames his fellow Jews for isolating themselves within the nations in which they find themselves, but (2) he rejects Reform Judaism for excessive accommodation to the gentiles, who don't accept Jews anyway, Zamenhof thus abjures assimilationism as lacking self-respect. His project of Hilelismo (Hillelism, which later morphed into Homaranismo, no longer Jewish-specific and somewhat akin to Ethical Culture) was meant to reject an obsolete territorial (and superstitious) traditional conception of Judaism and modernize it to reflect the ethical ideal (of which monotheism is a part) incorporated in it.

Zamenhof's conception of the causes and cure of ethnic conflict betray an incredible lack of political sophistication. This can be seen most clearly in his paper “International Language” presented to the First Universal Races Congress in 1911. Denying economic causes for national conflict, Zamenhof curiously argues:

Can we say, for instance, that so many millions of poor Russians hate the millions of poor Chinese on economic grounds, when they shed their blood so willingly to defend their Russian oppressors against the attacks of foreigners? Assuredly not, for the Russian soldier knows very well, when he kills a Chinese soldier, that the man would never do him as much harm as the "mailed fist" of his own compatriots. It is not economic causes that give rise to national hatreds.

There is a glimpse of political consciousness in the reference to a group's own oppressors, which immediately disappears. His entire argument is abstract. While correctly denying intrinsic, ineluctable differences between peoples at the basis of animosity, Zamenhof exhibits not an ounce of political or historical consciousness in understanding how these problems came to be or what drives them. What he does show in his various statements is his intimate familiarity with Eastern Europe and the dilemma of Jews in this hostile environment.

This interview in English is invaluable, as the most extensive documentation of Zamenhof's engagement with the Jewish question, outside of his writings in Russian, is in Esperanto. But again, his political cluelessness comes to the forefront.

Zamenhof, soberly and with absolutely no self-aggrandizement, proposed the most far-reaching ambitious projects, all of which failed except for Esperanto, which succeeded in creating an international community of speakers that has survived 130 years, including the century following Zamenhof's death. Zamenhof projected into the future on a grand scale, from the vantage point of a provincial Eastern European Jew chafing at the ghettoization and discrimination that he suffered.

L.L. Zamenhof's 150th birthday

Ludwig Lazarus Zamenhof (1859-1917), is best known as creator of the Esperanto language. December 15 marks the 150th anniversary of his birth. Tonight I will get to meet his great-granddaughter, whose very existence is a near miracle.

I will broach the subject by enumerating three recent bibliographies/web guides I've compiled. Incidentally, I've learned, not much to my surprise though indeed to my disgust, that I can't bring up the subject of Jews in any context without being immediately assaulted by bigots. These additional bibliographies reveal more of the extent of my interests.

My first bibliography:

Marxism & the Jewish Question: Selected Bibliography
http://www.autodidactproject.org/bib/jews-marxism.html

This material is testing ground for a number of projects. Not only in terms of overt politics, but conceptually, how was historical materialism sufficiently evolved or not at any given stage or within any given tendency to explain exactly what bound the Jewish people--specifically of Europe (and more specifically of Eastern Europe, where conditions were worst)--as a people? Could historical materialism adequately encompass culture, and conversely, what did the culturalists leave out in their conceptualization of their situation?

On the plane of overt politics, one will find an emphasis here on the conceptions and policies of the Bolsheviks as compared to the Jewish Bundists (on which there is a thought-provoking new book out).

This is, however, only a portion of the elements needed for a full analysis. The late 19th century and early 20th century were filled with schemes of religious, cultural, linguistic, and political reform and radicalism. There were currents not only of socialism and Marxism, but of assimilationism, Zionism, cultural autonomism, liberalism, Haskalah (the Jewish Enlightenment)--formulated and argued by Jewish intellectuals, all involving different conceptions of the nature of the past and contemporaneous communities of European Jews and prospects and programs for their future. I attempted to cover as many of these currents as I could in my second bibliography:

L. L. Zamenhof & the Cultural, Religious, Professional & Political Context of 19th-20th Century Eastern European Jewish Intellectuals:
Selected Bibliography
http://autodidactproject.org/bib/jews-19thcent.html

Juxtaposing these two bibliographies suggests the extensiveness and complexity of the ideological ferment of the time, a topic which stands on its own, though the intellectually vacuous, ideologically degenerate, and juvenile politics of the present would gain some perspective from a study of this past.

Finally, all of this is related to a specific project. December 15 will mark the 150th birthday of the creator of the Esperanto language, L. L. Zamenhof, a product of this ferment. Tonight I will have the opportunity to meet Zamenhof's great-granddaughter, itself a remarkable occasion, all the more amazing because all of Zamenhof's children were murdered by the Nazis, and his grandson, a child at the time, escaped their clutches twice by a hairsbreadth (once under the protection of a Catholic priest), to eventually produce two daughters. Though Zamenhof is known mostly for the creation of Esperanto, underlying that project was a more general program of cultural and religious reform, all stemming from Zamenhof's preoccupation with the Jewish question.

Traumatized by the pogroms of 1881, Zamenhof, still a medical student, joined the early Zionist movement and embroiled himself in its debates. At the time various options--all utopian--were considered. Zamenhof opposed establishing settlements in the territory that is now Israel, and favored settlement in America. Ultimately he rejected Zionism altogether, and argued vigorously for years afterward that the project of settling in the Middle East would be either impracticable or disastrous. Another project involved the reform and standardization of Yiddish. (Zamenhof was born in the same year as Sholem Aleichem.) He gave up on that as well. In 1887 he published his first book outlining the basics of Esperanto. As the Esperanto movement took off internationally, he published two treatises in Russian under a pseudonym, in 1901, outlining a program for religious reform and a doctrine called "Hilelismo", inspired by Rabbi Hillel's famous aphorism concerning the golden rule as the essence of religion. Here the influence of Enlightenment thought (Haskalah) is evident, as Zamenhof rejects ancient superstitions and outmoded practices. However, Zamenhof's arguments were even more trenchant. Not only does he demolish the case for Zionism in every way possible, but he engages in a merciless demystification of the Jewish people, questioning the continuity that allegedly connects the Jewish people of today with their ancient homeland, and even questions the basis of their commonality across different nations and regions in the present.

Zamenhof enquires as to what binds peoples together in general, and in the case of Jews in particular. He settles on language and religion as the two shaping principles of peoplehood. This is the very obverse of historical materialism, as Zamenhof completely ignores material factors and concentrates all of his attention on cultural issues (I suppose what is now called by some "imagined communities"). Zamenhof rejects nationalism and in particular nationalistic religion. But curiously, he also pooh-poohs the culturalist Yiddishist option, which would be the logical choice for secularists who reject assimilation (as did Zamenhof). Yiddish is now just a "jargon" in his eyes; Hebrew is not (in 1901) a living language, and the Jews are a "pseudo-people", martyring themselves for a faith they can no longer believe in, and immersed in a nostalgia for a lost civilization with which they no longer have a substantial connection. Hence, a radical cultural reform is necessary, with a radically reformed religion for modern times, sustaining a connection between the intellectuals and the masses, aiming to create a modern, "neutrally-human" people for a cosmopolitan world. By this time Zamenhof sees Esperanto as the binding language, not a reformed Yiddish.

These ideas got Zamenhof into hot water with all parties concerned, both in Jewish circles and in the Esperanto movement, now internationally established, with its center of gravity having shifted from Eastern Europe to France. Within a few years his project underwent another transformation, and "Hilelismo" for the Jews was generalized to "Homaranismo" for everyone. ("Homaranismo" is not literally translatable but means being a member of the human family). Homaranismo bears similarities to Ethical Culture or Unitarianism, but has its own spin, intended as a mediator between inherited traditions and modern secularized consciousness, and between members of different religious traditions. While Esperanto thrived, Homaranismo sank like a stone. Zamenhof's prospective for either the Jews or of all of humanity based on linguistic and religious reform belongs to an alternative history, a timeline in a parallel universe for a strategy that had no chance in this one.

Zamenhof attempted a few other types of public interventions, a contribution to the Universal Races Congress of 1911, and a call to diplomats in 1915, proposing what nations should look like after the war. Zamenhof died in 1917.

There is a postscript to this story. Following the war, a separate workers' Esperanto movement sprang up and remained vigorous, until it was largely killed off by Hitler and Stalin. There arose within it two major factions--the anarchists/anationalists and the Soviets and their supporters. Zamenhof's idealist notions of society were criticized by Soviet Esperantists using the analytical tools provided by Soviet Marxism. They did not, however, wrestle with the Jewish question or delve into Zamenhof's specific arguments with respect to it. In any case, Zamenhof's Jewish origin was such a sensitive topic up to that time that scholars only delved into it substantively decades later.

Thus my third bibliography:

Zamenhof & Zamenhof Studies Web Guide (Zamenhof kaj Zamenhofologio)
http://autodidactproject.org/bib/zamenhofologio.html

Only a smattering of documents listed are in English, but some do tell this story, particularly in the sections on Hilelismo/Homaranismo & Jewish affairs.

Pursuing any portion of the intellectual terrain mapped out by these three bibliographies/web guides can be related to a number of conceptual issues.

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“Scholars of Wisdom have no rest in this world or in the world to come.” -- Talmud

Ĉu Judismo aŭ Daoismo?

Born to Kvetch: Yiddish Language and Culture in All of Its Moods [Naskite por Plendaĉi: Jida Lingvo kaj Kulturo en Ĉiaj Humoroj] de Michael Wex elstaras sur la bretoj de usonaj librovendejoj. La titolo estas nerezistebla. Mi ne scias ĝuste kial, kvankam mi povas diveni, kial la temo de plendaĉado estas tiel forte ligata kun judeco, fakte elstara temo en amaskulturo. Kompreneble, estas multaj libroj, gazetoj, ktp. kiuj dependas de diversaj stereotipaĵoj por komikaj celoj. Ekz.:

David M. Bader, Zen Judaism: For You, A Little Enlightenment [Zen-Judismo: Por Vi, Iomete da Enlumiĝo]. Enestas la kutimaj stereotipoj, sed mia favorata saĝero estas la jena:

La Dao ne parolas.
La Dao ne akuzas.
La Dao ne tendencas.
La Dao nenion antaŭsupozas.
La Dao postulas nenion de aliaj homoj.
La Dao ne estas juda.

Nu, la judan vojon mi preferas.