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Today I received a photocopy of this article in the mail from an old
friend. It's about how the struggle with the Jewish Question was at the
root of everything Zamenhof did from first to last. Esperanto is only one
aspect of Zamenhof's overall cultural struggle. This much is known by
most people who have a basic knowledge of Zamenhof's life and work, as
are known Zamenhof's early involvement with and later rejection of the
Zionist movement, his attempts to reform Judaism, resulting in Hilelismo,
later universalizing it to Homaranismo. Fewer people know about
Zamenhof's attempt to standardize Yiddish. But rarely for the general
reader and almost never in English does one find an article chronicling
and explaining the evolution of Zamenhof's perspective and
interventions.<br><br>
Schor's article is exactly the talk I would deliver in commemoration of
Zamenhof's 150th and the Washington UK centennial. Or I should say, a
substantial part of it. (My project regarding the Universala Kongreso of
1910 is much broader, but the deep background behind Zamenhof's
"Lando de Libereco" speech renders it more comprehensible.) I
like the connections she draws between Hilelismo and Ethical Culture and
Reconstructionism (not that I know much of anything about the latter).
Schor describes Zamenhof's perspectives on Zionism, language and
religious reform. Her narrative is really good as far as it goes, but it
does leave out various arguments and severe judgments Zamenhof makes
about the past, present, and future of the Jewish people, some of which
might displease a number of readers. <br><br>
One's eyes will be opened by reading Zamenhof's argument for Hilelismo
(1901, Homo Sum) and his "Alvoko al la Juda Intelektularo",
both written in Russian and translated by Adolf Hauzhaus from the
manuscripts and self-published in bilingual editions. One's image of
mild-mannered Zamenhof could change from reading his anguished,
passionate, and at times severe discourse on the Jewish question. You
will learn the basis of Zamenhof's eccentric view that language and
religion are the two significant sources of social conflict. It was
precisely these two factors that for Zamenhof defined the basis of
cohesion of peoples, and the people he was concerned about was the Jewish
people. At the same time, Zamenhof, though motivated by the suffering of
the Jews and little else, refused to the Jews any special status or
characteristics apart from any other peoples or religions. His arguments
all serve to demystify the Jewish question in ways that are not often
heard, though of late certain dissident Israeli scholars are engaging
similar arguments, whether on a sound basis or no and whether to a sound
purpose or no. Zamenhof rejects the notion of undiluted continuity
between the inhabitants of ancient Judaea and today's (1901) Jews. He
expresses considerable skepticism about the cultural commonality of the
Jews in various nations, who have adapted to their local cultural
environments despite the hostility of their neighbors. <br><br>
There are several arguments leading to the conclusion that the only
solution is a reform of the Jewish religion, which Zamenhof considers
obsolete in its inherited form. He even refers to the Jews as a
"pseudopopolo", mired in an absurd existence, living out a
nostalgic fantasy for a vanished peoplehood, its intellectuals allowing
themselves to be martyred out of loyalty to an outmoded religion they
don't really believe in. He also does not want the intellectuals to
become isolated from the common people, and he rejects assimilationism.
He does not see Yiddish, a mere "jargon" though a beloved one,
as a tenable unifying instrument, and since he can locate no other
unifying factor, he settles on a religion as the factor explaining the
cultural cohesion of the Jewish people, particularly the nationalistic
character of the Jewish religion. This, along with outmoded customs and
superstitions, Zamenhof wishes to change. Hence the creation of Hilelismo
as the vehicle of a modernized, "neutrale-homa" people.
<br><br>
There are some bizarre twists and turns in this line of argument.
Zamenhof further evolved "Hilelismo" into Homaranismo as a
future "neutrale-homa" religion for everyone, based on a
nebulous adherence to some higher power or ethical order in which all
peoples and all religionists could participate, and atheists, too.
<br><br>
It's not hard to see why the project dearest to Zamenhof was stillborn,
nay, aborted from its conception. It is nonetheless interesting as one
forgotten possibility, one configuration of ideas in a complex network of
debates. It is both avant-garde and archaic in its thinking. Perhaps the
strangest omission is Zamenhof's total disregard of politics, economics,
forms of government, or organized opposition to an autocratic police
state. His vision seems to be a semi-secular messianic cultural movement
propagated as an ideal--of course, the ideal of a universal language many
people wanted and a universal religion nobody would have anything to do
with. <br><br>
I don't know what other culturalists were thinking at the time; I haven't
begun to research this angle, though of course I know there was a
flowering of secular Yiddish culture. There is one thing I did not
understand about Zamenhof's argument. I may or may not understand it if I
re-read it. It would seem that the most logical option, given Zamenhof's
rejection of Zionism and traditional Judaism, would be an embrace of
secular Yiddish culture as the unifying force and the way to go. But
Zamenhof rejects this option, for reasons I failed to grasp at first
reading. Nor do I understand how he thought a "nenormala"
people could be converted to a normal one once it miraculously altered
its self-concept and self-presentation. This picture makes no sense to
me.<br><br>
Schor doesn't discuss several of these aspects of Zamenhof's arguments,
and I imagine they could muddy an introductory presentation of the
subject. And then who knows how one's primary audience would react? I
know a couple of individuals in the Zamenhofologo community who are
revolted by Hilelismo. I know that if some of us were put in the same
room to argue, somebody might wring somebody's neck, I won't say who on
either end of the transaction.<br><br>
Aside from purely cultural redefinition, a comparative analysis would
have to take in alternative political pathways. The logical place to
begin is the Jewish Labor Bund, which rejected Zionism, rejected
political nation-building, embraced socialism and secularism, but also
insisted on cultural and organizational autonomy, in this respect
opposing the Bolsheviks. If any Bundist ever had anything to say about
Esperanto, I sure don't know about it, but I'm putting that on my 'to
research' list.<br><br>
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“Scholars of Wisdom have no rest in this world or in the world to
come.” -- <i>Talmud<br>
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