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“Our Shtetl, Tel Aviv, Must and Will Become the Metropolis of Yiddish”: Tel Aviv—a Center of Yiddish Culture?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 April 2017

Gali Drucker Bar-Am
Gali Drucker Bar-Am*
Affiliation:
Tel Aviv University
*
gali.druckerbar@mail.huji.ac.il

Abstract

The remnant of the eastern European Jews that arrived in Israel after the Holocaust established a vibrant center of Yiddish culture in Tel Aviv. This paper tells its story. It spotlights the uniqueness of the Tel Aviv center in comparison with similar cultural centers established by eastern European Jews in other cities around the world, both before and after the Holocaust. It portrays the Jewish cultural activists and leaders that composed the Tel Aviv Yiddish center, the special conditions that awaited them in Israel, the institutions that they established, and their aftermath. Finally, it considers the Tel Aviv Yiddish cultural center as a test case for examining the social role of the Jewish cultural center after the Holocaust.

Information

Type
Jews and Cities
Information
AJS Review , Volume 41 , Issue 1 , April 2017 , pp. 111 - 132
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Jewish Studies 2017 

Avrom Sutzkever,Footnote 1 widely considered the last giant of modern Yiddish poetry, was the founder and editor of Di goldene keyt, the celebrated Yiddish literary journal published in Tel Aviv (from 1949 to 1995). The journal was widely read in centers of Yiddish culture throughout the world. In 1959, during a visit to Montreal, a vibrant center of Yiddish culture at the time, Sutzkever wrote a report to his colleague Mordkhe Tsanin,Footnote 2 the founder and editor of the Tel Aviv–based Yiddish daily newspaper Letste nayes, conveying his enthusiastic impressions: “Only here have I come to realize, once again, how important is our Tel Aviv–based work in Yiddish. Our shtetl, Tel Aviv, must and will become the Metropolis of Yiddish.”Footnote 3

Jewish emigration from Europe, from the second part of the nineteenth century to the last significant wave of refugees who arrived in Israel just after the founding of the state, created centers of modern Yiddish culture in the major cities to which these migrants came. Producers of Yiddish culture viewed their collective work as the product of these centers. This perception was most apparent during the interwar years, when New York, Warsaw, and Moscow flourished as the most vibrant Yiddish cultural centers.Footnote 4 Yiddish culture was, of course, also being created at this time in other locations (such as Łódz, Vilna, Minsk, Kiev, Berlin, Paris, London, Buenos Aires, Montreal, Johannesburg, and also in Tel Aviv), albeit not to the same extent nor with the same impact as in New York, Warsaw, and Moscow.

During these years Yiddish writers debated the question of where their culture could best endure.Footnote 5 And this question, almost inadvertently, became the question of which of the three centers one should join. Positions adopted during the course of this debate were generally shaped by the personal experience of the writers involved, in particular those who regularly moved between the various centers in the interwar period in search of a stable and nourishing environment that would facilitate a productive life, one that had a readership eager to read their works and an institutional network that would enable their distribution. Alongside the obvious advantages, each center also presented considerable drawbacks, political difficulties, unique economic challenges, and ideological restrictions. The United States, to note one example, suffered severely in the worldwide economic crisis between the two world wars, and this had caused it to radically change its immigration policy. This restricted considerably the opportunities for cultural growth in the New York center.Footnote 6 1930s Warsaw felt the effects of ongoing emigration westward, and of cultural-linguistic assimilation,Footnote 7 while in Moscow the signs of ideological restrictions on writing imposed by the Stalinist dictatorship were becoming evident.Footnote 8

World War II constituted a watershed in modern Yiddish culture. Before the war, eastern Europe was considered the living (if decaying) center of Jewish life, its unquestionable source. After the war writers worldwide frequently described themselves as orphans, or branches that had no stem. Only the periphery was left. The worldwide map of Yiddish culture was thus radically transformed. New York and Buenos Aires received the impossible task of replacing Warsaw. Montreal, Paris, and several other cities around the world became considerably more significant by default, simply by the scores of Jewish refugees that arrived there.

Thus, when Sutzkever, in the above-quoted statement, referred to Tel Aviv of the late 1950s as the leading center of Yiddish of that period (and he was not the only Yiddish cultural activist to claim so),Footnote 9 his contention was not merely an expression of sentimental optimism (a characteristic of his work). In fact, during Israel's first two decades Tel Aviv was a bustling center of Yiddish culture that possessed unique features.Footnote 10 These characteristics reflect the particular composition of its population (“the masses” of Jews), the singular goals entertained by its intelligentsia, and the unusual ideological horizon that Israel of that time offered to Yiddish culture following the devastation of Jewish eastern Europe.

And yet, despite the overwhelming demographic advantages Tel Aviv possessed as a Yiddish cultural center vis-à-vis most other such centers around the world (with the exception of New York), it was unable to endure for very long. A major reason for Tel Aviv's short-lived renaissance is that Yiddish cultural centers typically emerged within, and were nourished by, the liminal social, political, and intellectual climate of the transition from a prenational to a national culture, and from a so-called “nonterritorial” nationalism to the nationalism of a modern nation-state. (In fact, Yiddish-based nonterritorial nationalism did have an informal territory—eastern Europe.) This liminal experience could no longer be sustained in the world in general, and in contemporary Israel in particular. This is what eventually determined the fate of Yiddish literary culture in Tel Aviv, its last stronghold.

In many of the studies of Yiddish in prestate and the early years of Israel, the attitude of the national Israeli cultural establishment toward Yiddish and its writers features prominently.Footnote 11 Few scholars concentrate on how producers of Yiddish culture viewed their own activity in Israel “from below” and as part of the longue durée of the culture they brought with them.Footnote 12 Moreover, most studies of Yiddish in Israel devote considerable attention to the “language war” that raged between supporters of Hebrew and supporters of Yiddish, whether in concrete terms of the series of acts of violence and vandalism perpetrated in the 1920s, or figuratively speaking of the declared or implicit “melting pot” policy toward Yiddish-speaking immigrants espoused by prestate and state institutions and organizations.Footnote 13 It is true that as in numerous other nation-states, the newly arrived were required to “forget” the language and culture they brought with them and to adopt the language and culture of their new absorbing nation. However, this is only one side of the complex story before us: it blurs the fact that, like all immigration destinations, Mandatory Palestine (and Israel in the early years of the state) was a multilingual sphere that exemplified rich and lively cultural polyphony.Footnote 14 A focus on absorbing institutions tempts researchers to ignore this cultural vigorousness and the complexity of the cultural challenges posed to these establishments by producers and consumers of Yiddish culture in the Israeli sphere.

A constant and ongoing process of negotiation, where the public seeks to express its cultural and structural variety, while governing institutions generally seek to unite it, enables individuals and groups to flourish within the nation-state. The confrontation between these opposing forces defines modernity better than does the focus on each of them separately. Examining the social reality in a newly established country allows scholars to expose the polyphony that seeks expression in an unfamiliar environment. It allows us to discern the broad diversity of ways in which different groups related to a particular formal policy, on the one hand, alongside a range of policies applied by various institutions at different times, on the other. Focusing on the social dimension of culture reveals the stark disparities between the declared policy of various institutional forces and its implementation, as well as the discrepancies between the attitude of formal national institutions toward minority languages and their culture and that of independent cultural bodies that do not apply the hegemonic policy, even if they do not necessarily oppose it.

The story of the Yiddish cultural center that emerged in Tel Aviv thus illustrates the range of intellectual, practical, and political options available to Yiddish cultural activists, as well as the idea that the term “cultural center” represents: the possibility of maintaining some form of cultural autonomy within a hegemonic nation-state. In comparison to the United States, Canada, Argentina, or Australia, Israel constituted a singular environment in that its hegemonic culture was likewise Jewish, and further, that it sought to redefine Jewishness in a way that excluded Yiddish and its culture as failing to belong to the evolving Zionist ethos and its “new Jew.” Furthermore, Israel was engaged in an ongoing war over its very existence. This enhanced the existential need for a cohesive national identity that would hardly tolerate internal differences.

Telling the unique story of the rise and fall of Tel Aviv as a Yiddish cultural center requires us first to outline four rudimentary prerequisites for any major cultural center: (1) a public, a critical mass of cultural consumers, who form a cohesive social group with a more or less cohesive cultural and linguistic identity; (2) a capable group of cultural activists and leaders, a so-called “intelligentsia” eager to lead the way; (3) an infrastructure comprising economic and media-related resources, a set of institutions that assures the livelihood of the cultural activists, and facilitates their successful communication with the rest of the public. Such institutions emerge from and address their public, as a social aggregate, with an articulated vision; and finally (4) an ethos, a promised future to strive for, an ideological horizon. The public with the help of the intelligentsia needs to define its immediate environment in a more or less conscious manner. This equips members of such a cultural community with a sense of cohesive identity and direction, a meaningful existence. It is this shared horizon and its promises that drives individuals to wish to belong to their community. The cultural life in Tel Aviv during Israel's early years fits this framework.

The Public: Di masn

After the Second World War, about two-thirds of all Holocaust survivors moved to Israel.Footnote 15 These newcomers, numbering almost half a million, engendered a major demographic transformation in the nascent Israeli society. Since only 650,000 Jews resided in Palestine before 1948, this new population of refugees and immigrants radically transformed the young country's social makeup, distinguishing it markedly from all other countries where other survivors settled. The survivors amounted to about 70 percent of all Jewish newcomers to Israel during the first two years of the state's existence.Footnote 16 Even after the mass migration of Jews from Middle Eastern countries to Israel during the 1950s, one out of every four Jews in Israel in 1960 was a Holocaust survivor.Footnote 17 These numbers amounted to a considerable cultural presence, which presented an obvious cultural challenge (perhaps even a threat) to any national hegemony.

The vast majority of Holocaust survivors both in Israel and elsewhere spoke Yiddish.Footnote 18 The demographer Roberto Bachi investigated the question of Hebrew-language usage and other languages used in Palestine and Israel between 1917 and 1954. His study revealed that Yiddish speakers accounted for 47 percent of all non-Hebrew speakers in the country in the mid-1950s and that Yiddish was one of the three most widely spoken languages apart from Hebrew.Footnote 19 It is thus not surprising that the economist and historian Jacob Lestchinsky (Ya‘akov/Yankev Leshtshinski) asserted in 1960 that “Israel is the most ‘Yiddish country’ in the entire world…. Yiddish is, after Hebrew, the second most prevalent language in the country, and also the second language as far as the press and literature are concerned.”Footnote 20 The presence of masses of Yiddish speakers who came from all over eastern Europe was one of the major characteristics of the cities that functioned as leading centers of Yiddish culture prior to the Holocaust, Warsaw and New York in particular. Avraham Novershtern described these cities as “a meeting place and melting pot of Jewish eastern Europe.”Footnote 21

Demographically speaking, most of the survivor-immigrants were younger (mainly aged 15–59) than the Jewish average in Israel, and had young families.Footnote 22 They were slightly less well educated than their fellow Ashkenazic citizens of Israel, because of the war. They were mostly an urban group: prior to World War II, the great majority had lived in towns or cities. Their vocational qualifications likewise suited the urban setting: they were trained in areas such as crafts and industry, administration, and specialized clerical work. Upon arrival in Israel, most of the immigrants retained these patterns to the extent they were able to do so.Footnote 23

The majority of survivor-immigrants were raised in independent Poland. Interwar Poland was an ideologically and culturally vibrant environment. Polish Jews often enthusiastically participated in reshaping their traditional lifestyles by means of modern ideologies: nationalism, socialism, and even anarchist cosmopolitanism had been prevalent and characteristic practices and views.Footnote 24 The cultural awareness associated with these patterns was echoed among those who arrived in postwar Mandatory Palestine and Israel. Immigrants rapidly created a considerable demand for modern Yiddish cultural media in all forms, such as newspapers, literature, and theater, and at various levels (highbrow as well as more popular). In this respect, their arrival enhanced and broadened Israel's cultural repertoire.

The survivors generally did not consider their preference for Yiddish as an ideological dissent from Zionism. They were often confused to discover that these seemed discordant to the Israeli establishment. Indeed, they regarded Yiddish as a mark of their unique ethnic-national character. Indeed their war experiences had often strengthened their Zionist resolve, which they interpreted in terms of preserving and kindling their culture. Yisrael Gutman noted that Zionism among survivors was often not “the fruit of ideological conviction … but [rather] stemmed primarily from harsh and brutal experience[s].”Footnote 25 Another scholar writing on this period, Hagit Lavsky, aptly termed this form of postwar nationalistic enthusiasm “spontaneous Zionism.”Footnote 26 Israel, then, was conceived by “spontaneous Zionists” as receiving the historical role of preserving the vestiges of their culture after the war. And they viewed their cultural heritage as complementing their newly acquired Israeli identity: “Because we are Zionists,” wrote Yosef Rotnberg,Footnote 27 the manager of the Tel Aviv–based Y. L. Peretz Public Library, “we have crossbred Yiddish-love with patriotism for Israel … Those who wish to exploit Yiddish in order to spurn Israel … are doing evil, and are also sabotaging the struggle for Yiddish [in Israel].”Footnote 28

Cultural Activists and Leaders: Di yidishe shraybers

The arrival of several hundred thousand survivors was a significant factor in drawing dozens of Yiddish journalists and authors to Israel over established centers of Yiddish culture, primarily New York and Buenos Aires. Rokhl Oyerbakh,Footnote 29 a well-known author and publicist, one of the few surviving members of the Oyneg Shabes clandestine archive in the Warsaw ghetto, and later a prominent Holocaust researcher, wrote in 1950: “A Yiddish writer should be where the Yiddish crowds are. Yiddish writers who come to Israel to remain here for better and for worse, in good fortune and bad, to share the Jewish fate in all its forms, have no doubt about this.”Footnote 30 She continued: “Here in Israel, … where Yiddish has been mourned and eulogized so often, books in Yiddish are being bought and sold in numbers that do not fall short of those that are being sold in the United States. … After the war, I happened to pass through a good number of metropolises in Europe, with a considerable Jewish populace. Nowhere have I heard Yiddish being spoken so regularly all over [as in Tel Aviv]!”Footnote 31

This fondness for the broad Jewish public and identification with them on the part of producers of modern Yiddish culture is not a trivial matter. The interwar New York Jewish intelligentsia tended to view the mass public as holding back the flourishing of Yiddish culture,”Footnote 32 owing to its lowbrow cultural taste that encouraged vulgarization of the culture and impeded the development of refined modernist trends. Influenced by English and American modernist literature, New York Yiddish authors, and particularly the poets among them, adopted an elitist approach toward the “masses,” in reaction to and in compensation for the sorry fact that their modernist works attained practically no readership. By contrast to this “Anglo-American model,” a very different model evolved in eastern Europe, under the influence of Slavic cultures and the significant presence of ideologies that related negatively or with reservation to those overtly individualistic intellectual positions typical of modernism. They developed the ethos of “the people” and of Yiddish literature as the “people's literature,” the literature of “the mass public” (yidishe folksmasn).Footnote 33 Yet in eastern Europe as well, the image of “the people” and their story were shaped and told by the intelligentsia, not always favorably and from a sympathetic perspective. Cultural phenomena such as Mendele Moykher Sforim, the Folkist party (Jewish populism), or YIVO—Yidisher Visnshaftlekher Institut (Yiddish/Jewish scientific institute) well demonstrate the complex and dynamic relationship between the mass of “the people” and the producers of culture in eastern Europe, which persisted a fortiori when the latter migrated to the United States.Footnote 34 The brief and dense history of the modern Jewish culture that evolved in eastern Europe reveals that this renewed identification on the part of culture producers with the “masses,” their language and culture, that emerges from the words of Rokhl Oyerbakh characterized the periods following outbreaks of violence in which Jews were harmed. This altered orientation was, for example, part of the disillusionment of educated Jews in Russia after the events of 1882, prior to which they had sought to differentiate and distance themselves from “the ignorant Jewish masses,” in some cases to the extent of disassociating themselves from them completely.Footnote 35 After this turning point many of them turned the idea of “going to the Jewish people” (to borrow Jonathan Frankel's term), and to its language and culture, into the core of their artistic and ideological-political engagement.Footnote 36

The typical Yiddish cultural activist was born in the first two decades of the twentieth century (Oyerbakh in 1903, Tsanin in 1906, Sutzkever in 1913, and Rotnberg in 1914) into a traditional and modest background, either in a Jewish town or a city in the Russian Empire (Lanowitz, Sokolov Podolsky, Smorgon, and Łódź). His childhood and adolescence were spent in Poland, in a political setting marked by a growth of both Polish and Jewish national sentiment.Footnote 37 The first quarter of the twentieth century was the high point of modern Yiddish culture. The Yiddish cultural activists carried with them, to borrow Gershon Hundert's term, “a positive east European Jewish identity.”Footnote 38 On top of these considerations, most of them bore the imprint of events of the 1930s, such as the economic crisis and growing expressions of antisemitism. During WWII some had found refuge in the Soviet Union,Footnote 39 while others had endured imprisonment and forced labor in ghettos;Footnote 40 some had then been deported to labor camps and death camps.Footnote 41 A few escaped the ghetto and survived hiding in villages, or under assumed identities in cities. Some joined the partisans, or the Soviet or Polish armies, and so spent parts of the war as soldiers. In short, they shared the fate of their crowds. Many of the writers continued to create during the difficult years: Avrom Sutzkever in the Vilna ghetto, Rokhl Oyerbakh in the Warsaw ghetto, and Yeshaye Shpigl in the Łódź ghetto. A few began to write in the ghetto, inspired by the extensive cultural activity conducted there, as did Rivke Kviatkovski-Pinkhasik in Łódź. Others began to write only in the displaced persons camps, or in the British detention camps in Cyprus, once they discovered that they no longer had relatives to whom to write letters, as did Tsvi Ayznman.

Typically, after the war Yiddish activists openly expressed their longing for a national home, a safe haven. However, being the last vestige of a rich and unique culture that had been remarkably vibrant only a decade earlier, they also wished to preserve whatever they could of its treasures. This entailed assuming the position of public healers, who, through their art, were to provide other Holocaust survivors with a collective means of mourning and reconciliation. They felt called upon to facilitate the outlet of public mourning.Footnote 42 More subtly, perhaps, in their role as conservers of a heritage, they appeared to seek ideological balance or closure, where other intellectual movements (indeed—they themselves, in former times) might have relished the task of spearheading an avant-garde.Footnote 43

Tel Aviv, the first modern Hebrew city, greatly appealed to these Yiddish activists. Most of them settled there, and it seemed to them the natural choice for Jewish modern cultural activists. Jerusalem and Beer Sheva, for comparison, were available to settle in, but their names evoked biblical images, not those of modern city life, and indeed living conditions in these cities were typically less modern. Haifa was a modern city too, but significantly, almost all major Hebrew cultural and economic institutions had established their base in Tel Aviv. Appropriately, then, Yiddish activists felt that they too should partake in this vibrant scene. They never planned to become minor contributors to the emerging Israeli culture. Indeed, strikingly, virtually all major Yiddish cultural institutions in Israel in its first two decades were established in Tel Aviv.

Cultural Institutions of the Yiddish-Metropolye and Their Challenges

Upon their arrival survivors quickly created a dense cultural infrastructure in Tel Aviv. They established literary journals and daily newspapers, cultural clubs, reading circles and women's circles, libraries, and theatrical troupes. Three publishing houses were established: Y. L. Peretz farlag, Menorah, and Yisroel-bukh. They published everything from prose and poetry to scholarly works and criticism. By the early 1960s, Tel Aviv, the “first Hebrew city,” had become the world's leading publishing center of works in Yiddish. Jewish crowds in budding Israel were multilingual and many viewed this as desirable rather than as the inevitable default of an immigrant society.Footnote 44 But multilingualism appeared as a threat to the programmatic cultural ideals of policy makers. They responded to it defensively, outlawing the teaching of Yiddish in secular public schools and kindergartens.Footnote 45 This effectively prevented the secular Yiddish-speaking community from renewing itself; despite all the remarkable achievements of Yiddish culture in Tel Aviv, this ban would eventually decide its fate.

Alongside schools, the most important institution for the proliferation of a culture is its daily newspaper. Scholars have often noted a close correlation between the number of major daily newspapers that are published in a city and its centrality to a given culture.Footnote 46 The press was not only a major source of livelihood for the community's cultural activists, it was also, and significantly in our case, the principal binding mechanism for the community.Footnote 47 In Israel's early years, the daily paper functioned as an orientation and socialization medium for new immigrants who had survived the Holocaust: it enabled readers to access wanted ads, missing-persons inquiries, calls for political organization, discussions about the groups' agenda, etc. In many ways, it served to introduce immigrants to their new country, its customs, and the details of everyday life. It not only reported news—it allowed a lively discussion concerning present and future communal identity.

In 1949, Letste nayes (Latest news), the last secular Yiddish daily newspaper to be founded anywhere in the world, was inaugurated in Tel Aviv.Footnote 48 It was edited by the tireless publicist Mordkhe Tsanin and was originally conceived as a weekly. Demand quickly exceeded expectations and two months after its first issue, it became a biweekly.Footnote 49 Shortly thereafter it began to appear three times a week.Footnote 50 However, attempts to turn it into a daily paper were repeatedly thwarted by the Ministry of Interior. As in the case of the ban against schools teaching in Yiddish, this was clearly a political decision. For the sake of illustration: two daily newspapers in German were approved for publication in those years in Israel. Needless to say, German-speaking immigrants formed a considerably smaller minority.Footnote 51 Tsanin refused to give in. Realizing that he could not win the approval of the Interior Ministry for a daily paper, in 1953 he applied for permission to publish an additional, seemingly competing, newspaper called the Yidishe tsaytung (Yiddish/Jewish newspaper).Footnote 52 Under his well-orchestrated editorship, the two papers functioned as a single daily paper: they employed the same journalists, targeted the same readers, and even published the same serial novels, consecutively, day-in and day-out. Together they distributed thirty thousand copies of weekend editions, at the time an unprecedented number for a non-Hebrew-language paper in Israel.Footnote 53 This somewhat surreal arrangement persisted for six years until, in 1959, Letste nayes was finally licensed for daily publication.Footnote 54 In order to understand that this was not necessarily a change of policy we should note that a few months later, the joint paper, now called explicitly Letste nayes, was bought by Mapai. Elections were near (the tensest elections in Israel until that point in time)Footnote 55 and soon the paper included a new supplement advancing Mapai's agenda. Letste nayes had become a vehicle for reaching out to potential Yiddish-speaking supporters.

Setting this political supplement aside, the transfer had little influence on Letste nayes’s other content: it continued to weave together criticism of the Israeli establishment and expressions of gratitude for its very existence. Like other Yiddish publications around the world, it was an immigrant newspaper, and, accordingly, its major role remained helping immigrants adjust to their new life, especially in the wake of the Holocaust. This often entailed uniting them towards achievable sociopolitical campaigns. But since it appeared in Tel Aviv, in the heart of the new Jewish national project, overly harsh immigrant absorption policies were often tempered willingly by editor and writers alike with sheer gratitude and genuine enthusiasm.

Unlike the daily Yiddish newspaper, and Yiddish public education, Yiddish high culture did not seem to threaten policy makers in Israel. Already in the winter of 1949, Di goldene keyt: Fertlyorshrift far literatur un gezelshaftlekhe problemen (The golden chain: A quarterly for literature and social problems) was founded in Tel Aviv. It quickly became the leading literary periodical in the Yiddish world. Each issue contained some 200 pages, and was published in 1,500 copies. The literary monthly Mo'znayim, published by the Hebrew Writers Association, had a press run of 2,500 copies.Footnote 56 The first Hebrew city now had a “thick” Yiddish monthly of its own.Footnote 57 Whereas the daily Letste nayes appealed to the “masses,” the literary journal explicitly belonged to the elite: it was aimed at an educated readership not only in Israel but also around the world. It was also important to policy makers in Israel, since it ensured the backing (financial and other) of American supporters. Indeed, Di goldene keyt was cast in the mold of the aforementioned Anglo-American elitist and modernist literary model.

The journal's subtitle, “A Quarterly for Literature and Social Problems,” reflected Sutzkever's need to maneuver carefully between his own aspirations for a high-profile journal with a poetic and aesthetic focus, and those of his patron—the Histadrut (the General Federation of Jewish Labor in Israel), which had a socialist agenda.Footnote 58 However, the coupling of aesthetic and social aims was not unusual: before World War II Yiddish periodicals in eastern Europe and North America commonly fused them, as did the New York–based monthly Di tsukunft (The future), which was the leading literary monthly before the rise of Di goldene keyt.Footnote 59

When Sutzkever assumed the editorial role he was already a celebrated poet. Indeed he was so celebrated as to have been able to condition his very coming to Israel on the promise of official support for his planned literary journal.Footnote 60 Supporting Di goldene keyt, then, was a way of showcasing Israel as a safe haven for Jewish culture throughout the Jewish Diaspora. The Histadrut continually fostered its organizational and cultural ties with Diaspora Jewry, in particular with those closely associated with Mapai's historical precursor/counterpart, the Labor Zionists (Po‘alei Ẓiyon), who supported the Israeli labor federation both financially and by other means.Footnote 61

Over time, the journal focused increasingly on the sphere of Yiddish letters and paid less attention to Israel's social and political problems. This transition began in 1955 with the death of Avraham Levinson, director of the Histadrut's center for education and culture, and one of the first coeditors of Di goldene keyt (an in-house editorial supervisor, as it were).Footnote 62 Already unwell upon taking this position, he was frequently unable to participate in many of the activities of the editorial board. Sutzkever, then, was gradually freer to focus on his own vision for Di goldene keyt, at the expense of the political ideals of his partners. The journal quickly gained the status of a prestigious and sought-after platform for Yiddish writers in Israel and around the world. Virtually all leading Yiddish writers of the time sought to publish their works in its pages.Footnote 63 But its contribution to the propagation of the language in Tel Aviv and its periphery was marginal. Di goldene keyt gradually became the Masada of a dwindling elite rather than the means for rekindling a declining culture.Footnote 64 Sutzkever made some admirable efforts in this direction too, most notably becoming the patron of a writing group that comprised young Israeli Yiddish writers, known as Yung Yisroel (young Israel). Di goldene keyt became their cultural platform.Footnote 65 He even succeeded in converting some authors who had abandoned Yiddish and begun to write in Hebrew: he convinced them to occasionally return to write (and publish) in Yiddish. Dov Sadan is perhaps the most notable example here.

Sutzkever, then, was no doubt aiming for the rehabilitation of Yiddish culture in Israel, but his elitist sentiment restricted his contribution in this respect; indeed he often seemed indifferent to the fact that his audience was continually dwindling in numbers. In 1951 he wrote:

When in the future a historian refers to … DGK, he will perhaps realize that the periodical's principal importance was that the golden chain was formed … during the epos of our third resurrection. … This was not merely a case of ambition or stubbornness. No, this was my innermost conviction that alongside the rebuilding of the people and its ascent to the old homely soil—the Yiddish word must ring out. And the flowering, injured, poisoned letters that were carried to us from the conflagration in Europe—must find here their home, their repair. … I regard the ongoing reality of the resurrection of the dead as the Land of Israel's greatest miracle. Not in the sense of a symbol, but in actuality. Not in the valley of death of Majdanek did the dead arise again, but in the Valley of Jezreel of the living. … Yet the resurrection of the people of Israel in its land cannot and does not seek to limit itself merely to a renewed physical resurrection, merely to an ingathering of the exiles measured and calculated in numbers. … We must bring [about] also … the cultural treasures of our great people, which were cracked open and dispersed among all the foreign lands. … Let the builders not become tired of these stones … let these stones not be forgotten.Footnote 66

Like a prophet with no followers, Sutzkever was content to note what was wrong and what must be done in order to correct it. He seldom joined other Yiddish activists in influencing Israel's policies on cultural matters. He seems to have enjoyed his unquestionable status as the last giant on the Yiddish Olympus. Firmly based in Tel Aviv ideologically, he could just as well have been based in New York in all matters practical.

Tel Aviv was also the home of the curious Bund-affiliated Lebns-fragn: Sotsialistishe khoydesh-shrift far politik, virtshaft un kultur (Life questions: A socialist monthly on politics, economy and culture), which first appeared in 1951.Footnote 67 The Israeli establishment's attitude toward this periodical, and indeed towards the Bund in general, was less than welcoming. The Bund centered on helping Jews worldwide, rather than on Israeli Jews, and was openly critical towards Zionist ideology. One anecdote that exemplifies the unique challenges of Lebns-fragn is that its back page noted that its editor was Ben Tsiyon (Bentsl) Tsalevitsh (1885–1962, founder of the ’Ereẓ-Yisra'el/Palestine Bund). Yet it was in effect edited by Y. Artuski.Footnote 68 On the journal's fifteenth anniversary, Artuski revealed that Tsalevitsh had been officially appointed editor in order to enable the journal's publication,Footnote 69 because the Interior Ministry stipulated that an editor had to have academic training or be a professional journalist.Footnote 70 This, it should be noted, was meant to make publication difficult, rather than to ensure high standards. Artuski, as it happened, could not satisfy either of these conditions: his studies at Moscow University had been cut short when an informant branded him as anti-Communist, and Yiddish journalists were unable at the time to join the Association of Hebrew Journalists and thereby acquire an official status.Footnote 71 Curiously, Tsalevitsh did not meet these professional criteria either, but he was a veteran resident of the country and a member of Tel Aviv's influential labor council. The support that facilitated the monthly's publication came from an unexpected source and constituted a further link in the chain of paradoxes associated with the existence of Yiddish in Israel in general, and the existence of the Bund in Israel in particular. Haim Moshe Shapira,Footnote 72 the Interior Minister, despite belonging to the Mizraḥi, a Religious Zionist party and thus an ostensible foe of the Bund's militant secularism and its historically anti-Zionist stance, was well acquainted with and respected the Bund's and Tsalevitsh's social activism in eastern Europe. Shapira therefore granted his approval, thereby facilitating the journal's publication.Footnote 73 Thus, paradoxically (and ironically), Di goldene keyt, a journal championing the use of Yiddish as a language of high culture, was published by the Hebrew labor movement, whereas Lebns-fragn, a journal that promoted the cause of Yiddish as a medium for secular and socialist culture, was published thanks to a member of a religious nationalist right-wing party. In 1962 following Tsalevitsh's death, Artuski became Lebns-fragn’s official editor for the next decade, until his death.

Like Di goldene keyt, Lebns-fragn also targeted a particular, and admittedly rather small sector within Jewish society. Bund members were purists, not elitists. They sought to continue the work of the Warsaw Yiddish Bundist press, which addressed the Jewish working class, seeking to heighten their sophistication and integrate such readers within the Bund's cultural and political fold.Footnote 74 Yet in post-Holocaust Israel the working class was drawn toward national ideas of the new state. The only “nationality” that the Bund recognized was that of the working Jew, wherever he was. The monthly no longer targeted the masses now, but rather only those among them who shared not only its ideas, but also its language. Accessible only to Yiddish speakers, the journal could neither achieve significant influence, nor broaden the ranks of the movement by recruiting potential ideological partners among Jews of Middle Eastern and North African origin (Mizrahim) or Israeli Arabs, despite sharing significant challenges with these groups. As a journal that catered to migrants and refugees who had found new homes in Israel, its editorial stance was extremely complex. In contrast to Letste nayes and Di goldene keyt, Lebns-fragn opposed a national Jewish identity based on Jewish religious heritage.Footnote 75 Continuing the Bund's ideological line from prewar days, the journal called on its readers to establish a modern national identity based on secular culture and to support the separation of state from religion. It nevertheless acknowledged the significance of living in a nation-state among a Jewish majority, in an environment free of antisemitism.Footnote 76

The periodical's most important and most outspoken campaign revolved around the topic of education. In this they seemed to have been more open-eyed than all other Yiddish culture activists in Tel Aviv. More than any other Yiddish organization in the country, the Bund's Israeli branch fought for the inclusion of Yiddish as the second (or third) language to be taught in public schools, alongside Arabic and English.Footnote 77 Such acceptance into the educational system might have allowed Yiddish in Israel some future. However, the journal's campaign met with very limited success. In the fall of 1955, a private afternoon school began to operate at the movement's Tel Aviv center, at which children (not only those of eastern European origin!) studied Yiddish.Footnote 78 In 1960, another branch of this school opened in Beer Sheva, and, in 1963, a third branch opened in Haifa.Footnote 79 During the summer, the children attended subsidized kinder-kolonyes (summer camps) held in Yiddish. Like other activities of the Bund in Israel, its educational work was funded privately, by its members in Israel and abroad, with a large proportion coming from the Yidisher Arbeter Komitet, the Jewish Labor Committee, in New York.Footnote 80 Israeli authorities refused to help. The Bund activists protested the fact that the government was subsidizing 80 percent of the budgets of the Yiddish haredi school system of ’Agudat Yisra'el, but not the far smaller (and so considerably cheaper to assist) secular Yiddish education that they offered.Footnote 81 The haredi Israeli community was at the time a small minority and their schools were not seen as a serious challenge to the prevailing Zionist ethos. In contrast, the secular Yiddish-speaking community was still regarded as a cultural and political threat and was consequently dealt with accordingly.

In 1959 the Israeli Bund had become a political party and participated in the election for the fourth Knesset. Its platform presented a singular hybrid of traditional Bund ideology modified by the reality pertaining in the postwar Jewish world and the new Israeli society, with Yiddish and its culture still prominently featured.Footnote 82 Like the other immigrant parties that contested the election that year, the Bund party failed to pass the electoral minimum.Footnote 83 The attempt to become part of the Israeli political leadership indicates a change from the Bund's original opposition to the existence of a Jewish nation-state to a desire to influence its character. But its failure in the election demonstrated an inability to expand its electoral base because of the limitations set upon its Yiddish-oriented activities by the establishment.

Israeli Yiddish Culture and Its Ethos

When Avrom Sutzkever addressed his 1959 letter to Mordekhe Tsanin, a citation from which appears at the beginning of this article, a decade of ongoing debates over the role of Yiddish in Israel and worldwide had passed. Yiddish cultural activists around the world sought to rehabilitate their culture while tending to the trauma of the Holocaust. The new national identity that Israel offered, that of the sabra without an immediate past, presented them with their challenge. Indeed, after the war, they recognized almost unfailingly Israel's indispensable role as the solution to the Jewish question. But they insisted on celebrating their subculture, and assigned it a central role in the budding Israeli culture, whose new national identity, they well knew, was grounded in hegemonic Hebrew.Footnote 84 They thus offered a new function for Yiddish in Israel: that of attenuating the claims of the sabra to have been born out of thin air, out of the waves of the sea and the sands of the desert. Yiddish, they argued, could enrich the Israeli ethos, give it depth, a connection to tradition that is not necessarily mediated by religion.Footnote 85 Sutzkever ironically termed this unique function nusakh Yisroel, Footnote 86 thus contrasting it with the traditional use of the term nusakh, which refers to prayer. Yiddish culture, activists argued, could broaden Israel's Zionist ethos by instilling it with its immediate modern east European roots. Instead of the romantic Zionist ideal of one nation speaking a single language and settling a distinct geographical space, a homeland, they advanced the ideal of respect for one's immediate cultural history: a single nation settling a distinct land but offering its residents an enriching cultural pluralism. Since Tel Aviv was the epitome of a bustling Hebrew city appearing out of the blue, they justly recognized that it should be the center of their campaign. Tel Aviv, they recognized, was where the battle should be won, and this is the gist of Sutzkever's aforementioned quote.

To that end, Sutzkever fervently sought to bridge the biblical ethos, with its well-known imagery, which was much in use by the Zionist establishment and writers of the time, and the imagery of his own art. He also encouraged young writers he mentored to set themselves this artistic task. Yiddish culture, for example, is habitually presented in his poetry as the embodiment of Ezekiel's vision of the dry bones. And he encouraged the translation and publication of works of the leading Hebrew writers of the time, Avraham Shlonsky, Leah Goldberg, S. Y. Agnon, Natan Alterman, as well as young S. Yizhar, Ḥaim Guri, and Aharon Meged in Di goldene keyt. Their works appeared regularly alongside works of canonic east European Yiddish writers such as Y. L. Peretz, H. Leyvik, and Bialik, the “national poet” who represented for Yiddish activists the achievements of bilingual writing. The works of Yung Yisroel completed his utopian literary salon. It was his very own cultural interpretation of the messianic prophecy of the gathering of exiles.

In contrast to this prophetic mode, and its characteristic air of unabashed high culture, Mordekhe Tsanin and Y. Artuski engaged in far more prosaic challenges and political struggles. But their message was strikingly similar: from Israel's earliest days and throughout the 1950s, both men maintained that Yiddish was not in competition with Hebrew and that their campaign on behalf of the rights of Yiddish-speaking citizens of Israel was driven by their hope to enrich the nascent Israeli identity.Footnote 87 “Negation of exile,” they argued, became obsolete with the arrival of hundreds of thousands of immigrants, including Holocaust survivors. It can no longer be practically maintained. And acquaintance with secular modern Yiddish culture, they argued, is especially beneficial for Israeli youth, since it could temper their ignorance, their zeal to forget where they came from. They were particularly sensitive about the widespread contention that Diaspora Jews had “gone like lambs to the slaughter,” during World War II. They regarded it not only a degrading untruth, but also a damaging misunderstanding of the meaning of bravery. It also fostered in the sabras a sense of superiority towards new immigrants, survivors in particular. In essence, they argued, this sense of superiority is no more than a parochial form of chauvinistic hubris, which ultimately would cut the vital tie between Diaspora Jews and Israeli youths.

“If I have complete and openly declared freedom and full rights,” wrote Tsanin, “I have every right to publish a paper in my language, [a paper] that respects the culture that made us a people equal to other peoples in eastern Europe.”Footnote 88 “The slogan, ‘one people, one country, one language,’ is nationalistic and harmful,” asserted Artuski. “It is furthermore essentially anti-democratic. It cannot be applied in a democratic manner.”Footnote 89 It was precisely due to their offered improvement of the national ethos that Yiddish “loyalists” were regarded as a threat to the Jewish Israeli consensus. They regarded themselves as equal contributors to a new cultural space, one that should not be built without their indispensable aid. But the Israeli establishment of the 1950s had little sympathy for such aspirations.

* * * * *

In terms of infrastructure as well as cultural activity, Tel Aviv housed an impressive Yiddish cultural center during the 1950s and early 60s. Its central ethos was bilingual Zionism, and the integration of secular east European Yiddish cultural treasures with the then-forming Israeli curricula. Yiddish-speaking newcomers possessed a distinctive and cohesive communal identity, manifested in numerous literary works, in which they described their uniquely charged and often ambivalent point of view toward their harsh yet “promised” land. Sutzkever and Tsanin expressed genuine and justified enthusiasm with respect to their cultural achievements, but this was mixed with a considerable amount of sentimental naïveté. On his visit to the established Yiddish centers across North America in the 1950s, Sutzkever clearly realized that they were displaying signs of erosion and disintegration, as the younger generations were becoming progressively less interested and involved in preserving and reviving their heritage. In comparison to these centers, Tel Aviv at that time still was indeed a bustling venue that boasted far more vigorous Yiddish creativity and greater enthusiasm. This was not merely due to the overwhelming numbers of Yiddish speakers, relative to the Hebrew speakers living in Israel at the time. Yiddish “loyalists” in Israel were mostly refugees and immigrants “fresh off the boat.” They were a new generation of readers and writers, younger and closer to the European milieu than their older counterparts, who were already settled and living for decades in the Americas. Their memories of “Yiddishland” were still fresh, and they had an acute need to communicate them. They cared passionately about their almost obliterated cultural life, and had yet to find a suitable replacement for it.

Despite all these remarkable starting points, some two decades after its outstanding rise, the Tel Aviv–based Yiddish cultural center gave way to the hegemonic Hebrew-Israeli culture. The hope held by Yiddish activists worldwide that Israel would shelter, foster, and embrace Yiddish culture was dashed. Di goldene keyt appeared until 1995, but its readership rapidly dwindled during the 1970s. This was also the case with the readership of Letste nayes (which remarkably appeared until 2006). As the Yiddish readership shrunk, Sutzkever and Tsanin became less involved, less known, and less relevant to Israel's cultural agenda. They put most of their zeal and skill into their own writing. Artuski edited Lebns-fragn until his sudden death in 1971. Though the periodical remarkably survived for another forty years (2014), it too was known in its last decades only to a selected few. It was possibly the sophisticated and fragile ambivalence of the message offered by Israeli Yiddish cultural activists that deflected them from focusing single-mindedly on their most crucial cultural challenge: organizing themselves politically to gain public support for their efforts to promote and rejuvenate their culture. Many of the Yiddish activists, for example, hoped to see their children grow up as sabra natives.Footnote 90 Yet, as we have just seen, they frequently lamented the relatively shallow roots of their new culture, which unjustly dismissed their old and rich Diaspora heritage as decadent or moribund. It must have been clear to them that their lively Tel Aviv–based Yiddish center would not survive for long without Yiddish schools and kindergartens. They would surely have realized that in the absence of a coherent political agenda, without uniting as a political force, their immigrant culture would eventually become diffuse and disappear. Perhaps not even that sort of mobilized energy would have sufficed, in the long run, if we are to judge by the experience of similar immigrant-generation cultural milieus elsewhere in the world. Given the level of activity that they were able to maintain, perhaps all that they could hope for was a few decades of creativity.

Footnotes

This paper was conceived and written while I was a member of the Jews and Cities group at Mandel Scholion—Interdisciplinary Research Center in the Humanities and Jewish Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (2009–12). I wish to thank all members of the group—Sidra DeKoven Ezrahi, Aziza Khazzoom, Eli Lederhendler, Scott Ury, Dimitry Shumsky, Michael Silber, Yakir Englander, Naama Meishar, Dvir Tzur, and Sara Yanovsky for their insightful comments. I am especially grateful to Professor Lederhendler, a mentsh and a mentor. All translations from Yiddish are by the author, unless otherwise stated. Yiddish names and titles of all sources comply with the standard YIVO transcription. Abbreviations: DGK= Di goldene keyt; LN= Letste nayes; LF= Lebns-fragn.

References

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2. The prominent journalist, editor, and Yiddish activist Mordkhe Ishaye Tsanin (Tsukerman) was born in 1906 in Sokolov Podolsky. He began publishing his work in the late 1920s. During World War II he initially escaped to Lithuania and from there proceeded eastward. He reached Japan and India, arriving in Tel Aviv in 1942. He died there in 2009.

3. Letter from Avrom Sutzkever, Montreal, to Mordekhe Tsanin, Tel Aviv, 15 April 1959, Tsanin archive 2558/15504, Genazim Institute. The recording of the reception held on the occasion of Sutzkever's visit to Montreal is now available online at the Yiddish Book Center's Frances Brandt Online Yiddish Audio Library: https://archive.org/details/AbrahamSutzkeverReceptionPart1april17th1959.

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49. From issue number 18, February 27, 1950.

50. From issue number 45, June 9, 1950.

51. Yedi‘ot ḥadashot and Yedi‘ot ha-yom. According to the data of the Central Bureau of Statistics (1973, board 3), in the years 1948–54 only 3.2 percent (10,842) of all newcomers to Israel were born in Germany and Austria, while 32 percent of them were born in Poland (106,414). Lissak, Moshe, Ha-‘aliyah ha-gedolah bi-shenot ha-ḥamishim: Kishlono shel kur ha-hitukh ha-yisra'eli (Jerusalem: Mosad Bialik, 1999), 8Google Scholar.

52. On this matter see the announcement that Tsanin placed in his paper: “Yidishe tsaytung, as Letste nayes, will appear under the editorship of M. Tsanin on days on which Letste nayes is not printed,” LN, August 7, 1953, 1. On Tsanin's struggle to turn Letste nayes into a daily paper, see Tsanin, Mordekhe, Zumershney (Tel Aviv: H. Leyvik farlag, 1992), 174–78Google Scholar. In this source Tsanin refers to Yidishe tsaytung as Hayntike nayes. This is, of course, an error (as evidenced by the titles of the hundreds of editions of Yidishe tsaytung). Yet this is an interesting error. Hayntike nayes was the new name given to a newspaper called Letste nayes that appeared in Warsaw in the interwar years. Tsanin's (presumably inadvertent) choice of this name points to his intention to perpetuate the Warsaw Letste nayes by establishing a paper with the same name in Tel Aviv.

53. On the state of the Yiddish press in Israel on the eve of its founding and on the circulation of Leste nayes in comparison to that of other foreign language papers in Israel, see Bar-Am, Gali Drucker, “The Holy Tongue and the Tongue of the Martyrs: The Eichmann Trial as Reflected in Letste-nayes ”, Dapim: Studies on the Shoah 28, no. 1 (2014): 17–37 Google Scholar. The circulation of the leading dailies in Israel in January 1950 was as follows: Ma‘ariv – 33,000 copies; Davar – 25,000; Haaretz – 23,500; Yedi‘ot ’aḥaronot – 21,000; Jerusalem Post (English) – 24,000 copies; Yedi‘ot ḥadashot (German) – 18,500; Yedi‘ot ha-yom (German) – 11,500; Uj Kelet (Hungarian) – 6,800; Al Yaum (Arabic) – 6,000; and L'echo d'Israel (French) – 1,000. Naor, Mordeḥay, “ Ha-‘itonut be-shnot ha-ḥamishim, ” in He-‘asor ha-ri'shon: 1948–1958, ed. Zameret, Zvi and Yablonka, Hana (Jerusalem: Yad Ben-Zvi, 1998), 220Google Scholar.

54. Tsanin, Zumershney, 178.

55. These elections were the immediate effect of the Lavon affair. A further effect was the final retirement of David Ben-Gurion from political activity. Weitz, Yeḥiam, “’Avi ’avot ha-konẓenzus: Levi Eshkol- ha-’ish ve-zemano”, in He-’asor ha-sheni: 1958–1968, ed. Zameret, Zvi and Yablonka, Hana (Jerusalem: Yad Ben-Zvi, 2000), 171–77Google Scholar.

56. See the letter from the editorial board of Di goldene keyt to Yehiel Dinur, dated 31 August 1948, The Dinur archive 9743/7 – 523, Genazim Institute. On the number of copies printed, see the letter written by Ya‘akov Sharpstein, the journal's financial director, to Ms. Hermona Grau (of the Ministry of Education's Culture Administration), 9 March 1992, Suzkever Archive 4°.1565, DGK file, The National Library. Fraenkel, Josef, The Jewish Press of the World (London: Cultural Department of the World Jewish Congress, 1961), 44Google Scholar.

57. Yiddish literary journals were also printed in prestate Palestine, but they did not hold to the high standards of Di golden keyt. See Drucker Bar-Am, “The Holy Tongue and the Tongue of the Martyrs,” 20 n. 9; On “thick monthlies” see Sluẓki, Yehuda, Ha-‘itonut ha-yehudit-rusit be-me'ah ha-tesha’-‘esre (Jerusalem: Mosad Bialik, 1975), 284–85Google Scholar; Moss, Kenneth B., Jewish Renaissance in the Russian Revolution (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009), 77Google Scholar. On the emergence of “high culture” publications in modern Yiddish culture, see Moss, Kenneth, “Jewish Culture between Renaissance and Decadence: Literarishe Monatsshriften and Its Critical Reception”, Jewish Social Studies 8, no. 1 (2001): 153–98Google Scholar.

58. In his book, Avraham Novershtern cites correspondence between Sutzkever and Shmuel Niger, the prominent Yiddish literature critic of the time, that illustrates the difficulty in treading a fine line between the demands of the Yiddish world and those of the Histadrut, which were largely incompatible, particularly during the journal's initial years. See Novershtern, Avraham, Avraham Sutzkever bi-melo’t lo shiv‘im (Jerusalem: Bet Ha-sefarim Ha-le'umi Ve-ha-’universita'i, 1984), 78Google Scholar.

59. Novershtern, Ka’n gar, 18.

60. Novershtern, Avraham Sutzkever bi-melo't lo shiv‘im, 69.

61. In an internal memo, Di goldene keyt was described as something meant for “Diaspora Yiddish,” that is primarily for distribution abroad. Memo from the Finance Department of the Executive Committee to Avraham Levinson and Avrom Sutzkever, 5 August 1948, the Sutzkever archive 4°.1565, Histadrut ha-‘ovdim ha-‘ivrim be-’Ereẓ-Yisra'el file, the National Library of Israel. This memo further stated that the funding for the founding of the periodical (2,600 liras) was provided for one year only, and that the editors should not hire tenured employees to work on the journal. On the debate between pragmatism and linguistic pluralism held by the Executive Committee with regard to Di goldene keyt, see Yablonka, ’Aḥim zarim, 253–54.

62. Avraham Levinson was born in Łódź in 1891. He made Aliyah to ’Ereẓ Yisra'el in 1936 and died in Jerusalem in 1955. He was a prominent Zionist activist, an attorney and writer, who wrote in Hebrew, Yiddish, Polish, and Russian, as well as an editor and translator.

63. For example, Sholem Asch, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Chaim Grade, H. Leyvik, Yankev Glatshtein, Arn Glanz-Leyeles, Yosef Opatoshu, Itsik Manger, Shmuel Niger, and many others.

64. On the image of Masada in Sutzkever's long poem “Gaystike erd” see Bar-Am, Gali Drucker, “ Gaystike erd by Avrom Sutzkever: Between Personal Mythology and National Ideology”, Journal of Jewish Studies 67, no. 1 (2016): 180–81Google Scholar.

65. See Drucker Bar-Am, Am I Your Dust?, 87–90.

66. Sutzkever, Avrom, “Tsvey yor di goldene keyt”, DGK 9 (1951): 214–15Google Scholar.

67. On this journal see Yitskhok Luden and Gali Drucker Bar-Am, “Lebns-fragn,” The Historical Jewish Press website, http://web.nli.org.il/sites/JPress/English/Pages/Lebens-Fragen.aspx.

68. Y. Artuski, or “khaver [comrade] Oscar” are the underground names of Yisokher Aykhnboym. He was born in Warsaw in 1903. At the height of WWI he lost both his parents and lived in a monastery. Initially a communist, he subsequently embraced socialist Marxism. He studied political economy at Moscow University. Aykhnboym joined the Bund's youth movement Tsukunft in Warsaw and became one of the Bund press's prominent essayists. Upon the outbreak of war he sought to escape to the USSR but returned to Warsaw. From there he tried to escape to Vilna, but was arrested on the border of the Soviet Union and imprisoned after someone informed on him. Upon his release he was sent to a labor camp. At the end of 1941 he was released and made his way to Tashkent and on to Tehran. His wife and daughter who remained in Warsaw were murdered. He arrived to Tel Aviv in 1943, but left for Paris to continue his work for the party. In 1950 he was sent to Israel by the Bund's Coordination Committee (Koordinir-Komitet) to bolster the center opened in Tel Aviv. He died in Tel Aviv in 1971. Luden, Yitskhok, “Y. Artuski iz nishto”, in Yid, Mentsh, Sotsialist: Y. Artuski ondenk-bukh, ed. Artuski, Y. bukh-komitet (Tel Aviv: Lebns-fragn farlag, 1976), 412–15Google Scholar.

69. Aykhnboym, Y., “Undzer basheydener yubiley: 15 yor Bundishe organizatsye un lebns-fragn in Yisroel”, LF 173 (1966): 5Google Scholar.

70. Aykhnboym, “Undzer basheydener yubiley,” 5.

71. Aykhnboym, “Undzer basheydener yubiley,” 5.

72. Haim Moshe Shapira was born in Grodno in 1902, arrived in Mandatory Palestine in 1925 and died in Jerusalem in 1970. He was the political leader of religious Zionism, first as member of the Mizraḥi Party and later of the National Religious Party. He served as a member of the Knesset and as a minister in the government from 1948 until his death.

73. Aykhnboym, “Undzer basheydener yubiley,” 5.

74. David Fishman noted that “The commitment of the Jewish Workers' Bund to Yiddish emerged gradually, and its relationship towards modern Yiddish literatures was complexly ambivalent.” Fishman, David E., The Rise of Modern Yiddish Culture (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2005), viiiGoogle Scholar.

75. See, for example in the first editorial: [Artuski, Y.], “in an akhrayesfuler tsayt,” LF 1 (1951): 2Google Scholar, as well as the editorial that marks a decade to Lebns-fragn: [Artuski, Y.], “Tsen yor,” LF 111–12 (1961): 1–3 Google Scholar.

76. In the third international convention of the Bund after the Holocaust (Montreal 1955), a formal resolution was made regarding the Bund's relation to Israel. The movement withdrew from its fundamental rejection of Israel (stated in 1947), and declared that “Israel is a significant factor in Jewish life.” Slucki, David, The International Jewish Labor Bund after 1945: Toward a Global History (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2012), 207Google Scholar.

77. See, for example: Merlin, D. [Y. Artuski], “Vegn shul-vezn in yisroel,” LF 51 (1955): 5Google Scholar.

78. Merlin, D. [Y. Artuski], “Yidish limed far kinder,” LF 52 (1955): 14Google Scholar.

79. Grin, M., “Undzer naye dergreykhung”, LF 136–37 (1963): 11Google Scholar.

80. [Artuski, Y.], “Arbeter ring in Yisroel efnt an opru-hoyz far kinder,” LF 129–30 (1962): 21Google Scholar.

81. Grin, M., “Tsen yor yidishe nokhmitog-shul in Tel-Aviv”, LF 162–63 (1965): 12Google Scholar. Joshua and David Fishman indicate the following figures: 5,000 pupils studied in ultra-Orthodox schools in 1962–63 versus 100 pupils in the Bund schools in Tel Aviv and Beer Sheva (apparently in the early 1970s). Fishman, Joshua A. and Fishman, David E., “Yiddish in Israel: The Press, Radio, Theater and Book Publishing”, Yiddish 1, no. 2 (1973): 14Google Scholar.

82. The Bund party's platform included the following elements, among others: equal rights for all the citizens of the state, irrespective of race, religion, nationality, ethnic group, or language; abrogation of military rule in Arab towns and villages; separation of religion from the state and the enactment of secular civil legislation; abrogation of censorship of the Hebrew and Yiddish press; granting Yiddish and its culture the same conditions enjoyed by Hebrew culture with regard to support from the state; introduction of the teaching of Yiddish and its literature into the educational system. See [Artuski, Y.], “Val-platform fun bund: vos vil der bund in yisroel?,” LF 95 (1959): 2Google Scholar. On the Israeli Bund see Gali Drucker Bar-Am, “The Bund in Israel: Searching for Jewish Working Class Secular Brotherhood in Zion,” (forthcoming).

83. On the results of the 1959 elections, see LN, November 6, 1959, 1.

84. See the discussions held at the symposium “Yisroel, der yidisher shrayber un di yidishe velt”, DGK 19 (1954): 222–24Google Scholar.

85. See, for example: Artuski, Y., “Di lektsie fun yidishn khurbn”, LF 92 (1959): 4–5 Google Scholar.

86. “Here, in our state, we need to create a new form [nusakh]: nusakh Yisroel, as was the Polish form [nusakh Polin]. We are not step-citizens nor step-writers. Our Yiddish word is the holiest of what we own.” Sutzkever, Avrom, “Yisroel, der yidisher shrayber un di yidishe velt”, DGK 19 (1954): 223Google Scholar. By terming Yiddish culture in Israel nusakh Yisroel, Sutzkever renewed the terms nusakh ’Ashkenaz and nusakh Sefard (both refer to the style of Jewish religious service). Sutzkever portrays nusakh Yisroel as the secular and national metamorphosis of the earlier forms.

87. M. Tsanin, “Revolutsie un kontrarevolutsie,” LN, January 28, 1955, 1; Artuski, Y., “Toda'a yehudit tsi heimland-gefil? Oder unvegn fun der yisroelisher yugnt”, LF 79 (1958): 7Google Scholar.

88. Tsanin, Zumershney, 175.

89. Artuski, Y., “Tsi darf un tsi muz yidish untergeyn in yisroel?”, LF 70–71 (1957): 8–10 Google Scholar.

90. Cultural historian Peter Burke indeed points out two rival explanations for the decline of languages: pressure from outside or a change of mind from within: “Political explanations stress deliberate acts by governments … Social explanations, by contrast, stress the agency of ordinary speakers, who may internalize the idea that their language is inferior. Especially important is the pressure of parents on children to learn and use a more prestigious language that offers more opportunities for social mobility than their own.” Burke, Peter, Languages and Communities in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 72Google Scholar.