The Nation State and the Promised Land: An American Yiddish Writer in Israel, 1949, by Solomon Simon. English translation, 2024, by David R. Forman. All rights reserved.
Page numbers from Medines Yisroel un Erets Yisroel, 1950, Farlag Matones (NY), are included for those who wish to follow along with the original Yiddish, below.
To begin with the Introduction, click here.
Yiddish is spoken in the State of Israel. It was my impression that Yiddish is spoken as much as Hebrew is spoken, and possibly more. You certainly hear more Yiddish on the bus from Tel-Aviv to Ra’Anana, then you would on the trolley cars or buses in Jewish neighborhoods such as Brownsville and East Flatbush.
Giving a talk in Yiddish bothers no one. I gave lectures in Yiddish in kibbutz Ein Harod and in Moshav Givat Hen. After the talk, a lot of audience members asked questions in Yiddish, while others asked in Hebrew.
Still, the prognosis for Yiddish in the State of Israel is not good. I did not meet a single person there who believes that Yiddish should be taught in the schools, even in the upper levels of the high schools. I did not find a single Jew (and I looked) who wasn’t proud of the fact that the younger generation, the Sabras, do not know any Yiddish; even though, by the way, this is not completely true. Obviously, the few professional Yiddishists are an exception.
To what can the fate of Yiddish in the State of Israel be compared? To the fate of a sick, old provincial mother, who is being supported by her rich, educated, and aristocratic children. Of course, you cannot put her out into the street nor even, heaven forbid, shame her. But she may not impose herself on the running of the household. One sees to it that she does not…
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show herself when important guests are in the house. The children absolutely do not lose any sleep over providing her with a future. An old, sick mother is going to die eventually. But one does not ask for her death to come.
As in the days of Isaac Meyer Dik, people want to improve the old mother’s manners. In government offices, in shops and in general whenever someone might speak to an ‘educated’ person, he would speak to you half ‘Datsh’ with paseks[1]. Surely German immigration played a role here and, to a certain degree, the pasek-laden Hebrew, but Jews from Kovno and Vilna would speak to me in ‘Datsh’ until I called their attention to their strange language, or until the conversation became heated. Then they began speaking a rich, luscious Yiddish.
Daily newspapers are published in many languages in Israel. I saw and touched daily newspapers in Polish, German, Hungarian, Rumanian, and English. No Yiddish language daily paper is published.
I heard in America that the government of the Israel has not given permission for there to be a Yiddish newspaper. I do not believe it. Anyone who has been in the State of Israel for even a short time knows that the government would not dare do such a thing. Someone who applied for a permit and did not get it could easily raise a racket and a commotion, and the government would have to give in merely out of embarrassment.
Perhaps the simplest explanation is that there is no Yiddish enthusiast in the present-day State of Israel with the necessary stubbornness, who has a couple of thousand pounds and wants to invest it in a publishing a Yiddish daily paper. The atmosphere here is such that no one champions ‘Zhargon’[2], and no one is interested in distributing a Yiddish paper or any other kind of Yiddish publication. The publisher would have to go against public opinion, and against the leadership of the kibbutzim and the workers collectives who distribute the newspapers. Only a principled and die-hard Yiddishist could initiate such a battle. Such a well-off Yiddishist has not been found in today’s Israel. So, a political party ought to publish such a newspaper. But no party in Israel would dare put out a Yiddish daily paper.
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Because Hebrew is accepted as the national language, the greater part of the middle-aged generation in the State of Israel is effectively mute, and a significant portion of that generation is ignorant. The generation of the first Aliyah, let’s say up until “Grabski’s Aliyah”[3] admittedly knew Hebrew, though it was an acquired language. The speech of the middle-aged generation lacks naturalness. It speaks Hebrew exactly the way our immigrant generation [in America] speaks English. When someone starts to get angry, he starts speaking in Yiddish. When they want to express love or rage, they use Yiddish. Calculations are done in Yiddish. It’s more than a little funny to see them counting. You go onto a bus. Of course, the driver speaks Hebrew, unless you address him in Yiddish. But if you give him paper money and he has to give you change, he counts it into your hand in Yiddish.
The extent to which this current generation is muted can be seen in the humorlessness of the Jews of the State of Israel. The youth is full of humor, but the middle-aged do not joke. Heated debates are conducted on the bus and on the street, but they are never spiced up with a joke or a saying. If a joke is told, it is usually in Yiddish.
I walked on the streets of Tel-Aviv, Jerusalem, Haifa, and Ra’Anana, and listened to the people’s speech. When it came to something weighty, they switched to Yiddish. The same is true in the kibbutzim.
I remember one early morning in Tel-Aviv. I heard a furniture truck arrive outside my window. The driver and his two helpers came down from the cab and began figuring out how they were going to carry a heavy sofa up to the third floor. After a brief conference I heard noise. I stuck my head out and saw that they had secured a dolly and had begun pulling up the sofa. One worker pulled the rope, the second one steered, and the third made sure everything was going correctly. Suddenly I heard the worker who was making sure everything went right began to yell in a rich Besarabian accent with ‘kometses’[4].
“A flaming brand in your guts, Motele Gonif. What, do you want to leave your pretty one a young widow? Give yourself a shake. Be careful with the bend.
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“Lat, lat (slowly, slowly)! Look at what clumsy paws he has, like they were kneaded out of clay!”
The workers did not just take it in silence, but answered with words too colorful to be put down on paper. But it is interesting that as soon as the danger was past, they switched back into Hebrew: “Yemine! Shmoal! Lat! Lat! Kol bseder! (Right, left, slowly, Good!).
But if [the immigrants in] that crowd, let’s say up to the late 20s of this century, were self-consciously Zionists and Hebraists, those who came later were simply Jews, who could not speak any Hebrew. This element has remained fairly ignorant. They have learned to speak Hebrew, I would say a “basic” Hebrew. But they cannot read a book or a newspaper. In my opinion, people in general read the news very shallowly. I rarely heard regular Israelis discussing an article or a poem. And absolutely not a book.
My words might ring strange. Someone might ask: “How can that be? Ten newspapers circulate in Israel (until recently, eleven Hebrew papers. One afternoon paper closed two months ago), and magazines flood the market! And books!”
It should be remembered, though, that only two of the morning newspapers pay for themselves, and only one of them is published in part by a private individual. Of the three afternoon papers, two are merely collections of well-edited political proclamations, or typical tabloid newspapers. The third afternoon paper is put out by Mapai.
All ten newspapers have a circulation of 150 thousand. The seven morning papers, eighty thousand, and the three afternoon papers, around sixty or seventy thousand. It would be interesting to see how many papers would be published independently. It’s no great achievement to use party funds, collected worldwide, and publish newspapers.
With magazines, it is worse still. All of them without exception are published by parties. The way it was told to me, only the…
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illustrated weekly pays for itself. Others deny even that. Books, with a few exceptions, are published by the parties. I would be important to know how many books and magazines the Yishuv could publish itself, without the help of party money.
The flavor of the Yishuv is given by our East-European, Yiddish-speaking Jews. The leadership is also in their hands. Until recently, the Oriental Jews were a very small minority. It would have been a lot easier to teach this minority Yiddish than to teach everyone Hebrew. It’s also not true that the Yemini Jews know Hebrew. They speak an Arabic dialect and very few of them know Hebrew when they arrive in the country. A man I discussed this with gave me the real key to why Hebrew was adopted. He said:
“It’s true what you are saying, but what Jew who does not already know Zhargon would want to take the trouble to learn Zhargon?”
This contempt towards Yiddish comes from the fact that those who built this country hated the exile and ran away from it. They did not want to maintain the language that developed in exile. They wanted a total break with the exile, a return to long ago. They were ready to make all kinds of sacrifices and in fact made those sacrifices. They took a partial muting and ‘languagelessness’ uponn themselves. Their children will be more able, in fact already are able. One of the first Zionists tells it:
“We were young and wanted to express ourselves, but our Hebrew was foreign, stammering, and incapable of expressing things precisely. And the children were babies, crawling in sand. We squirmed and struggled and finally decided “k’tshorto”, the devil with it! When they grow up, they will arrange it they way they want to arrange it. For them it will be a living language for real. And our…
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salvation will rely on that which is in our heart and in our mouth.”[5]
We ought to understand that courage is required not only to drain swamps, to plant in the wilderness and to be ready to die from malaria, but there’s also courage and superhuman determination in reviving a language. To revive a language, and to take on a new pronunciation while doing so, is no trivial thing. The Irish have been struggling to revive the Irish language for as long as the Jews in the State of Israel have been wrestling with Hebrew, and have not succeeded in revitalizing their Irish tongue. It should have been easier for them, because they do have a portion of their people who never gave up the language. Still people speak English in Ireland almost exclusively. They were lacking in Jewish stubbornness. The Welsh succeded even less than the Irish. It’s understandable that those who proved to have the kind of stubbornness needed to renew a language had to develop a certain enmity and contempt for their mother tongue, Yiddish. We cannot reproach them for it. As a teacher in Israel said to me:
“You Yiddishists are reproaching us? You ought to bury your faces in mud out of shame and humiliation (in Hebrew, flowery language seems to flow even in everyday speech). We exhausted ourselves and revived a dead language. We installed an artificial tongue in our mouths, and you tore out a living tongue from yours. It was easier for you to speak Yiddish to your children than it was for us to speak Hebrew to ours. But you busted your tongues to speak, of all things, English. We prevailed out of stubbornness. So, now you want us to cry over your failure? No, we will not wail over your misfortune. Moreover, Yiddish is still not dead, and we should keep it. Once, we broke the windows of print shops for printing a Yiddish journal. Now we do not do that, because we are sure of ourselves. Let a couple of journals be published, for appearances sake. But we are supposed to put out a daily newspaper and teach Yiddish in our schools? Absolutely no way. When Yiddish is completely dead as a spoken language, say, like Aramaic, we will teach and study it in our universities. And even in high school.”
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And therefore, even though a lot of Yiddish is spoken here, almost no books are published in Yiddish in Israel. I was told that a year ago no more than two or three books of Yiddish poetry came out in Israel.
Yes there is even a Yiddish radio program. A quarter past ten in the evening the day’s news is broadcast in Yiddish. Before the news is read, the announcer says, “This is a program for the diaspora.”
Yiddish folk songs are sung in Hebrew. In the three months that I was in Israel, I heard a Yiddish song only once: Cantor Goldstone was visiting the country, and he sang a Yiddish song.
People speak Yiddish, but they do not want to read Yiddish. Several libraries have holdings of old Yiddish books, but no one borrows them. Certainly, few books are bought. Here’s one example:
A shopkeeper lives near my brother’s house. He is not a poor man, and he loves to read Yiddish. His friends from Argentina and from America send him Yiddish books. He said to me:
“Perhaps you brought Yefroykin’s Khesbm Hanefesh with you?[6] I have heard it’s a very good book, and I would like to read it.”
“You can get that book,” I answered him, “for a pound (three dollars). I know that you can afford the luxury.”
The man answered me. “For a pound I can buy a fine book in Hebrew.”
That is the old zealots’ relationship to Yiddish. They are principled Hebraists. The crowd that is arriving now is not concerned about the fate of Yiddish. This is an element that is not overly interested in cultural values in general. The tragedy is that of the older generation that came to Israel. I will never forget the old-timer in kibbutz R-H:
The chronicler, the kibbutz shoemaker/writer, told me that his father is here on the kibbutz. He has been in Israel for not more than…
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two years. He, the son, brought him over from Germany. The old man is a remarkable person. In his old age, he has begun shaping figures out of clay. But he is very lonely here. He would be happy to meet a Yiddish writer, and to get to hear a word or two in Yiddish.
I went to see the man. Truly an exceptional character. I am no expert on sculpture, but the figures that he sculpted seemed very artfully made.
He lived in a passable room, in a good building. On the table were several editions of the three-day-a-week Yiddish newspaper, a four-page pamphlet published by the Left-Zionists, a volume of Sholem Aleichem, a prayer book, a volume of Peretz, and Mendele’s Kliatshe. A strange sadness lay upon the man’s face. I asked him:
“So, you ought to be in seventh heaven now. After all your troubles, you are here in the State of Israel with your son. What is it you are missing?”
He sighed heavily. “Absolutely, yes. But it is hard for me to live here, very hard. Often a horrible thought occurs to me: Was it worth saving myself?
“What is it? You don’t have what you need here?”
“Heaven forbid. They support me and treat me with respect. And I am still able to earn my daily bread. I am a tailor. Can still work a few hours a day. But in my old age, foolish thoughts crawl into my head. I really shouldn’t talk this way. I have it good, but if only I could be among our Jews…”
I could not get more out of him. I only grasped the real meaning of what he was saying in another kibbutz, in the Jordan Valley, when I spoke to another of our Jews.
That man was a Brooklynite. He had come to the kibbutz to be with his son. He was a member of the Yidish Natsionaler Arbeter Farband[7]. He is a passionate Zionist. He sat with me and described the wonder of the kibbutz, the miracles of the recent war, and the beauty of living in the State of Israel. When he was done, a deep sigh escaped from him.
“For one of our Jews it is hard to live here. If I did not receive the Yidishe Kemfer every week, I would not be able to stand it.”
I looked at him with astonishment. He saw my surprise and explained to me:
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“A Jew like me is used to having a Yiddish newspaper and a Yiddish journal. Here I can just barely get through the headlines with great effort. Between you and me, it’s the same with a lot of people younger than I am. At home, I went to meetings, got excited, and had a say. Here, I am silenced. Of course, I am permitted to speak Yiddish during gatherings. But, first of all, it is not pleasant to speak Yiddish when everyone else is speaking Hebrew. And second, I don’t always understand what they are saying, especially when Sabras are talking. When they speak Hebrew, it does not even sound like a Jewish language. God spare me for saying so, but their Hebrew sounds more like Italian. For a Jew like me, it would have been better to live out my life in Brooklyn among my friends from the Farband. But my children are here. What wouldn’t a father do to be near his children?”
Yiddish is alive in the State of Israel, but it’s a life tolerated under duress. No one wants the language or worries about it. The parties employ it when it is necessary, for example at election time. The state used it during the war, when they had to put out reading material for the army. The state uses it now, too, when they have to talk to the public. But there is no longer fear of Yiddish. Hebrew is secure, deeply rooted in the country. In all of Israel, I never heard anyone agitate for Hebrew. Only in the ‘Yiddishist’ Safed, I saw a sign at the bus station, “Speak Hebrew”. But even there, when I spoke to them in Yiddish, they answered me in Yiddish.
Can you reproach someone? There is no one. Those who originally came to build the country oriented themselves to Hebrew. What complaint could be made against them now? But I want it to be clear that all the rumors going around, about how there is a better relationship to Yiddish now, are false.
The Yishuv knows practically nothing, I repeat, practically nothing of American Yiddish literature, nor of the literature that bloomed in Poland and in the remnants of Soviet Russia. Our greatest giants could come to the State of Israel and travel the length and breadth of the community under their own names, and almost…
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no one would know who they are. Naturally, it sometimes happens that a new arrival will recognize their name, or someone will remember them from long ago, but you can take it as a general rule that the longer someone has lived in the State of Israel, the longer it has been since he has read any Yiddish book or newspaper. And this is not true only of the masses. I have been told that Hebrew writers have not opened any Yiddish books for years. Just as with us in America, Hebrew literature stopped with Judah Leib Gordon for the old maskilim[8], so for everyone in the State of Israel, Yiddish literature stopped on the day that he arrived in the land.
That is the situation. We cannot complain to them as long as the status of Yiddish is not raised among us in America. It’s foolish to expect them to revive Yiddish in the mouths of their children as long as the language is dead in the mouths of our own youth. If Yiddish became a greater cultural factor in Jewish America, then maybe (and I mean, maybe) Yiddish would be more respected there. We can influence them with deeds, but not with complaints.
That is the true situation. And let us not fool ourselves. To say that there is a better relationship to Yiddish now is not true. Yiddish is a poor cousin in the State of Israel. This may be because its status is no better among us or among our children.
A note afterward: Recently, claims have been made that the Government will not issue a permit for any Yiddish daily newspaper. But permission is granted for papers to appear three times a week. So, I repeat: If a die-hard Yiddishist could be found who was willing to contribute ten or twenty thousand pounds, he could put out a paper three days a week in the morning and another three days a week in the afternoon, and there would be a daily paper. Under the same inopportune conditions, Hebraists would figure something out. It’s sad that one would have to resort to such tricks to get past officials in a Jewish. But the Jewish government can take this kind of antagonistic stance towards Yiddish, because they know that neither the Jews in the diaspora nor the Jews in the State of Israel will fight for Yiddish when Hebrew occupies its place.
[1] Isaac Meyer Dik (1807-1893), a Yiddish writer, who nonetheless considered Yiddish to be inferior to the more “modern”, higher status European languages, such as German. “Datsh” with paseks. ‘Daytsh’ is the Yiddish word for German. A pasek is a vowel sound approximately as the first vowel in the English ‘father’. So, Simon uses “half ‘Datsh’” here to mean an affected way of speaking Yiddish, influenced by modern Hebrew .
[2] ‘Zhargon’, or ‘jargon’, is a pejorative name that the late 18th and 19th century enlightenment Jews gave to Yiddish, when they were trying to convince Jews to learn and use the languages of their host nations. The name persisted among those who held Yiddish in low esteem.
[3] Named after Władysław Grabski, Prime Minster of Poland, whose taxation system, implemented in 1924, imposed a severe burden on Jewish merchants and shopkeepers and was the impetus for a significant increase in emigration to Israel.
[4] ‘Kometses’. Modern Hebrew pronounces the two vowels komets-alef and pasek-alef equivalently, while they differ in Yiddish (roughly ‘aw’ and ‘ah’, respectively). In Southeastern Yiddish, a dialect group that includes Besarabian Yiddish, kometses are shifted still farther from the pasek-alef, to ‘oo’.
[5] Simon first quotes this account in Hebrew, then translates it. The English here is translated from the Yiddish translation. In our heart and in our mouth, is from Deuteronomy 30:11, and represents an assurance that God’s commandments are not impossible to carry out.
[6] A kheshbm hanefesh, (An Accounting of the Soul), by Israel Yefroykin, was published in Paris in 1948.
[7] Jewish National Workers Alliance. A leftist Zionist, Yiddish organization, affiliated with the Poale Zion political party. In the US, its activities included a mutual aid society, a school system, a summer camp, and publishing (including the weekly journal Yidishe Kemfer).
[8] ‘the old maskilim’. Proponents of the Haskala, the Jewish enlightenment. For those who came of age at the end of the 19th or the very beginning of the 20th century in Eastern Europe (where the enlightenment arrived later than in Western Europe), Modern Hebrew literature and Yiddish literature were equally new, and young intellectuals often read both avidly. Gordon (a Hebrew poet) died in 1892.
The Nation State and the Promised Land 