Ludwig Lazar ZamenhofFootnote ¹ is known first and foremost as the creator of Esperanto, an international artificial language. Although “Dr. Esperanto,” as Zamenhof called himself, and his linguistic work are quite familiar to popular culture, they have drawn little scholarly attention. Zamenhof's struggle with his own Jewishness and his initial response to the so-called Jewish question that haunted Europe in his lifetime have been equally neglected. Little research has been conducted, and also, as Andreas Künzli points out, the subject itself has become taboo. Künzli's study is the first work devoted entirely to this interesting topic. We can certainly gain a new understanding of both Esperanto and other projects of Zamenhof by learning of the context in which they originated. In a monograph consisting of thirty-five sections (excluding bibliography and appendices), Künzli points out the Jewish context of Esperanto's life, work, and legacy.

Künzli presents Zamenhof's biography chronologically, starting with the subject's childhood in the multiethnic and multilingual city of Bialystok, and likening the city to a modern version of the tower of Babel. Künzli speculates about how the environment influenced Zamenhof's personal and ideological development (69–76), leading him to search idealistically for a suitable mode of peaceful coexistence, a search that ultimately resulted in the invention of Esperanto as well as other projects. The author sheds light on little-known facts about Zamenhof's life, including a flirtation with Zionist ideology and an engagement with the proto-Zionist movement after he had studied medicine in Russia (107–13). Künzli meticulously reconstructs the course of Zamenhof's life in Russia and in the Kingdom of Poland, noting the first successes of Esperanto, the growth of the Esperanto movement, Zamenhof's international recognition in Europe, and his later pursuits. The author is careful never to lose sight of the Jewish context of these works and ideology, and he continues Zamenhof's story even beyond his death in 1917, showing how the “Jewish question” influenced the fate of his family when they were faced with the Nazis' “final solution” (331–40).

Beyond Esperanto, the originality of Zamenhof's thought is most clearly evident in his utopian religious and national projects. These included Hillelism, named for Hillel the Elder, and Homaranism, a term created from the Esperanto word homarano—literally, “a member of humankind.” Hillelism began as a system of reforms that were to improve the situation of Jews and Judaism, and it eventually evolved into Homaranism, a “neutral” religion and nationality that would be open to anyone regardless of a person's original ethnicity, nationality, language, or confession.

This project indicates Zamenhof's unique perspective on solving the “Jewish question.” While his contemporaries suggested solutions that either required Jews to reform themselves, or—less often—demanded non-Jews to change, Dr. Esperanto in his bold vision proposed yet something else. He believed that neither Jews nor non-Jews needed transformation, and offered to both groups an anational and areligous platform on which they could meet, creating one common identity of homaranos. This utopian concept was subjected to many changes, and Zamenhof reworked it again and again to respond to criticism and meet the practical needs of his followers.

The great asset of this book is its rich use of Esperantist sources. Not only does Künzli quote from a variety of Zamenhof's works, but he also supplements the text with several appendices presenting the key elements of the program, including rich graphic materials (mainly photographs). Those interested in further studies on Dr. Esperanto will definitely benefit from the detailed thematic lists of primary and secondary sources that include, for example, anthologies of Zamenhof's texts, his biographies, or references to lexicons and encyclopedia entries devoted to him and his work.

The weaker points of the book, however, are found in its wide geographical and thematic scope, an aspect that I initially considered one of its strongest points. Although Künzli is truly competent in dealing with the general story of Zamenhof, his presentation of the “Jewish” side of the biography seems superficial. Chapter 23, “Ideengeschichtliche Verwandtschaft: Versuch eines Vergleichs” (Ideological relations: An attempt at comparison), will serve as an example (223–39). In the section of this chapter titled “Jüdische Denker” (229–39), the author explores possible relations between Zamenhof's ideas and those of his contemporary Jewish thinkers. It is difficult to believe that after volumes of scholarly works have been written on such figures as Theodor Herzl, Ahad ha-Am, Simon Dubnow, and others mentioned in this section, Künzli's main source is just a biographical lexicon, namely Andreas Kilcher's Lexikon jüdischer Philosophen. Footnote ²

This chapter is problematic for another reason as well. After presenting a schematic overview of thinkers who might have—or might not have—influenced Dr. Esperanto, he concludes that there is no evidence of any direct inspiration upon Zamenhof from the sources he mentions. If this is the case, was a full chapter necessary for the discussion? I will note here that some of the thinkers or writers whom Künzli brings here to illustrate ideengeschichtliche Verwandtschaft (relationship through history of ideas) must be considered extremely “distant relatives” of Zamenhof. An example is Andrzej Frycz Modrzewski, a sixteenth-century Polish poet, reformer, and political writer whose effect in the second half of the nineteenth century was minimal, even on Polish intellectuals who were not Jewish.

This example points to the flaw of the book's lack of analytical depth. Although Künzli is meticulous in presenting Zamenhof's entanglement in the “Jewish question,” he does not take a critical approach to the studied material. The reader who decided to wade across this more than 500 page book is left with practically no analytical conclusion. The book definitely does not represent the “thick” description approach, to use the term of Ryle/Geertz, and sometimes does not go far beyond mere description. It is not a work written sine ira et studio either. There are places in which the author avoids critical analysis and is more inclined to pass judgment, approving or disapproving, about certain decisions made by historical agents whose story he presents.

To conclude, Andreas Künzli's study on L. L. Zamenhof brings to scholarly attention an interesting and original voice that supplements the hitherto known panorama of Jewish responses to the so-called Jewish question in Eastern and Western Europe. Although Zamenhof's own program never achieved the popularity of other contemporary ideas, it remains nevertheless one of the most original. Künzli's book reminds us that the last quarter of the nineteenth and the early twentieth century were times of open possibilities and constant ideological flux, with different programs and utopian visions at hand. Beyond those that materialized, some others—without bearing any fruit—were born from exactly the same dreams, fears, and aspirations. This study, breaking the taboo about Zamenhof's Jewishness, could serve to initiate others and, in this sense, should be considered a pioneering work.