Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 08.047 August 30, 1998 90 yorikn yoyvl fun der ershter yidisher shprakh-konferents in Tshernovits Part I 1) Introduction (Iosif Vaisman) 2) Venue (Iosif Vaisman) 3) The Conference Per Se (Shikl Fishman) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 26 Aug 1998 21:01:23 -0400 (EDT) From: Iosif Vaisman Subject: Introduction The First Conference for the Yiddish Language, also known as Tshernovits <*> Conference, opened on Sunday, August 30, 1908. The Conference was convened to discuss very important topics, formulated in the ten point Conference agenda. To what extent the Conference succeeded in finding the solutions to any of these ten problems has been a subject of discussions (sometimes quite fierce) ever since. A simple look at the agenda is sufficient to see that many issues have yet to be resolved: 1. Yiddish spelling 2. Yiddish grammar 3. Foreign words and new words 4. A Yiddish dictionary 5. Jewish youth and the Yiddish language 6. The Yiddish press 7. The Yiddish theater and Yiddish actors 8. The economic status of Yiddish writers 9. The economic status of Yiddish actors 10. Recognition for the Yiddish language (Interestingly, some recent and ongoing discussions in Mendele echo the arguments that were first voiced in Tshernovits virtually verbatim.) It has become a good tradition in the Yiddish world to celebrate the anniversaries of the Tshernovits Conference. Today Mendele joins the celebration of the ninetieth anniversary with a series of special issues dedicated to some of the Conference's highlights and the figures of several key participants. The "Tshernovits" issues of Mendele are accompanied by a Web site (http://sunsite.unc.edu/yiddish/Tshernovits) that contains many pictures of places and personages described below and a number of additional documents. <*> Note: The names Tshernovits (Yid), Czernowitz (Ger), Cernauti (Rom), Chernovtsy (Rus), Chernivtsi (Ukr) , and their spelling variations in other languages, all refer to a single entity - a town in Central Europe at 48o 18' N latitude and 25o 56' E longitude. Capital of Bukovina, the land that shunned sovereignty for more than ten centuries, the town at various times was a part of Galician-Volhynian Principality, Principality of Moldavia, Poland, Lithuania, Walachia, Ottoman Empire, Russia, Austria-Hungary, Western Ukrainian National Republic, Romania, Soviet Union, and Ukraine, which partly explains the toponymical assortment. All Mendele posts retain the authors' spellings or use contextual spellings of proper names. Iosif Vaisman 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 26 Aug 1998 21:29:14 -0400 (EDT) From: Iosif Vaisman Subject: Venue Every morning and afternoon in the late 1960's, walking with one of my parents to and from kindergarten in a quiet residential neighborhood in Chernovtsy, I passed by a stately building on the Ukrainska Street that at the time housed the City Teachers' Club. Built for the Ukrainian National House at the very end of nineteenth century, in a fashionable then pseudoclassical style, the structure did not make the list of the city's most important architectural landmarks. Not until much later did I learn that the building occupies one of the most important places on the map of the Yiddish Universe. In that building, from the podium on a slightly raised stage of the Assembly Hall, ninety years ago Yiddish was proclaimed a national language of the Jewish people. The beginning of my love affair with my hometown can be easily traced to my father's influence. He never missed an opportunity to talk about Czernowitz's rich history and splendid architecture during our walks. Why didn't he tell me that the Yiddish Language Conference, which was a topic of many our conversations, took place in the building we saw twice every day? Because, like many others, he thought that the Conference was held in the much larger, centrally located, and seemingly more appropriate for the ocasion Jewish National House. And indeed, the organizers planned the conference in the brand new, imposing Baroque building whose entablatures are supported by four Atlantes in various stages of straightening up their backs. Born in 1908, these Czernowitz Jewish Atlantes, on their way from the house of slavery to the redemption in the new old Homeland, were perhaps the first major architectural manifestation of the Zionist aspirations. I don't know whether it was the architect or the community leaders who decided to employ polytheistic deities as a symbol of the revival of Jewish people, but the facade of "Das Judische Nationalhaus" was not a bit more oxymoronic than any other detail of the Czernowitz Jewish landscape. And the idea of hosting a Yiddish language conference did not play well with the Czernowitz Jewish establishment (creating a precedent for many other Jewish establishments for many years to come). Under the pretext of unfinished construction, the Jewish House was closed. As a result, the conference started in the Concert Hall of the Czernowitz Music Society on Rudolfplatz and then moved to the Ukrainian National House on Josefgasse. Why did the conference take place in Czernowitz? This question seems to have earnestly interest scholars and commentators for nine decades. Many answers based on geographical, political, and other serious considerations were offered, and most of them are definitely valid. Czernowitz was very conveniently located. People in Czernowitz enjoyed much greater political freedoms than their neighbors across the borders. The proportion of what we would call "middle class" in the Czernowitz Jewish population was several times higher than in any other major Jewish center in Europe. Czernowitz was famous for what was known as "Czernowitz Toleranz", which can be illustrated by the fact that by 1908 Czernowitz was the only city in European history, where the mayor, the city's representative to the Parliament, and the Rector of the University, were Jews. However, one very important reason escaped most observers. Czernowitz has always had an ability to produce and attract a disproportionate number of "unconventional" personalities, people, for whom Yiddish has borrowed a wonderful word "tshudakes". Unlike the English "eccentric" that incorporates negation, "tshudak" shares the root with the word "chudo", which means "miracle"... The list of Czernowitz "tshudakes" is long. A grandson of the Great Maggid, the last of the great hasidic masters and a distinguished expounder of the Torah, who surrounded himself by the ceremonials and luxury unheard of among the hasidim, and was known as a "king in Israel". The most gifted of his six sons, who ran away from home, and for a time joined the militant maskilim in Czernowitz. One of the founding fathers of modern molecular biology, known for the discovery of the rules of DNA composition, is also known as an astute cultural and social critic and also as an excellent poet. A grandson of the Czernowitz Chief Rabbi, who became one of the foremost Muslim theologians and ideologues of this century, close friend of Saudi royals and a cabinet minister in the newly independent Pakistan. An outstanding psychologist, whose attempts to combine world revolution, cosmic energy of orgasm, and capitalist business practices ended tragically for him. A brilliant Yiddish poet, who played not only with words, but also with his own identity. The mastermind of the 1908 Conference, Nathan Birnbaum deserves a place in this enumeration. A product of an intermarriage between a galitsian hasid and a daughter of a mitnagid rabbi, Birnbaum during his life embraced many disparate views and persuasions. A towering intellectual figure, a political leader who coined the terms Zionism and Yiddishism and founded the movements described by these terms, he played a pivotal role in shaping the Jewsih ideological and cultural landscape of this century. Birnbaum's move to Czernowitz in 1908 and his decision to convene the Coference there was not an accident. He had chosen the place that was fit for the task. Iosif Vaisman 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 28 Aug 1998 09:48:09 -0700 (PDT) From: Joshua Fishman Subject: The Conference Per Se The Conference began on Sunday, August 30, 1908, and lasted for a little under a week. A quarter after ten in the morning there walked onto the stage Nosn Birnboym in the company of Y. L. Perets, S. Ash, Dr. Kh. Zhitlovski and other distinguished guests... Dr. N. Birnboym opens the Conference reading his first speech in Yiddish fluently from his notes... He reads his speech in the Galician dialect. (_Rasvet_, September 1908: quoted from _Afn shvel_ 1968) Birnbaum stressed the fact that this was the first world-wide effort on behalf of Yiddish, sponsored by its greatest writers ("respected even by the opponents of Yiddish") and the beginning of a long chain of efforts yet to come. These opening remarks caused a sensation among local Tshernovitsians. Everyone knew that he [Birnbaum] doesn^Ot speak Yiddish and that the speech would be translated from German. However, all were eager to hear how the ^Ocoarse^O words would sound coming from the mouth of Dr. Birnbaum who was known as an excellent German speaker... However at the festive banquet in honor of the esteemed guests... he spoke superbly in German, the way only he could. (Vays 1937) Indeed, a speaker^Os ability to speak Yiddish well and the very fact that Yiddish could be spoken as befitted a world conference, i.e., in a cultivated, learned, disciplined fashion in conjunction with modern concerns, never ceased to impress those who had never before heard it so spoken. Zhitlovski made the greatest impression on all the delegates and guests, both at the Conference and at the banquet (which was a great event for Yiddish culture that was still so unknown to most of those in attendance). "That kind of Yiddish is more beautiful than French!" was a comment heard from all quarters and particularly from circles that had hitherto rejected Yiddish from a "purely esthetic" point of view (Vays 1937). Yiddish used adeptly in an H function was itself a triumph for Tshernovits, almost regardless of what was said. But of course a great deal was said substantively as well. The linguistic issues were "covered" by Ayznshtat, Sotek, and Mizes. Whereas the first two were roundly ignored, the third caused a storm, of protests when, in the midst of a paper on fusion languages and their hybrid-like strength, creativity, and vigor, he also attacked loshn-koydesh for being dead, stultifying, and decaying. Only Perets's intervention saved Mizes' paper for the record as "the first scientific paper in Yiddish on Yiddish" (Anon. 1931). Obviously, the tenth agenda item stubbornly refused to wait its place in line and constantly came to the fore in the form of an increasingly growing antagonism between those (primarily Bundists) who wanted to declare Yiddish as the ethnonational Jewish language (Hebrew/loshn-koydesh - being a classical tongue rather than a mother tongue - could not, in their view, qualify as such) and those (primarily Zionists and traditionalists) who, at best, would go no further than to declare Yiddish as an ethnonational Jewish language, so that the role of Hebrew/loshn-koydesh - past, present and future - would remain unsullied. In the midst of this fundamental argument, more primitive views still surfaced as a result of the presence of so many ideologically unmodernized guests. One of the delegates recounts the following tale: ...(T)here suddenly appears on the stage a man with a long, red beard, wearing a traditional black _kapote_ (kaftan) and _yarmelke_ (skull-cap). He begins speaking by saying "I will tell you a story". The hall is full of quiet expectancy. We all listened carefully in order to hear a good, folksy anecdote. The man recounts in great detail a story about how two Jews once sued each other in court because of a _shoyfer_ (ritual ram^Os horn) that had been stolen from the _beys-medresh_ (house of study and prayer). With great difficulty they explained to the gentile judge what a _shoyfer_ is. Finally the judge asked: "In one word a trumpet?" At this point the litigants shuddered and one shouted to the other: "I ask you: is a _shoyfer_ a trumpet?" The assembled participants in the hall were ready to smile at this ^Oanecdote^O which had long been well known, when the man suddenly began to shout at the top of his lungs: "You keep on talking about language, but is Yiddish (_zhargon_) a language?" (Kisman 1958) The compromise formulation penned by Nomberg ("_an_ ethnonational Jewish language") was finally adopted, thanks only to the insistence of Perets, Birnbaum, and Zhitlovski, and over the vociferous opposition of both left-wing and right-wing extremists who either favored an exclusive role for Yiddish ("_the_ ethnonational Jewish language") or who wanted no resolutions at all on political topics. Very little time was devoted to organizational or implementational issues such as whether the Conference itself should sponsor "cultural work", convene a second conference within a reasonable time, or even establish a permanent office (secretariat) and membership organization. Although the last two recommendations were adopted (the first was rejected due to unified left-wing and right-wing disenchantment with the Conference's stance regarding the "_the_ or _an_" ethnonational language issue), and although Birnbaum and two young assistants were elected to be the executive officers and to establish a central office, very little was actually done along these lines. At any rate, the tasks entrusted to the secretariat were minimal and innocuous ones indeed. In addition, Birnbaum soon moved ever-closer to unreconstructed Orthodoxy and to its stress on matters "above and beyond language". At any rate, he was not an administrator/executive but an ideologue. He was, as always, penniless, and the funds that were required for an office and for his salary never materialized. Zhitlovski returned to America and threw himself into efforts there to start Yiddish supplementary schools and to restrain Jewish socialists from sacrificing their own Jewishness and the Jewish people as a whole on the altar of Americanization disguised as proletarian brotherhood. Perets did undertake one fund-raising trip to St. Petersburg where Shimen Dubnov (1860-1941), the distinguished historian and ideologist of cultural autonomy in the diaspora and himself a recent convert to the value of Yiddish, had convened a small group of wealthy but Russified potential donors. The latter greeted Perets with such cold cynicism that he "told them off" ("our salvation will come from the poor but warm-hearted Jews of the Pale rather than from the rich but cold-hearted Jews of St. Petersburg") and "slammed the door". Thus, for various reasons, no office was ever really established in Tshernovits and even the minutes of the Conference remained unpublished. Although S. A. Birnbaum helped prepare them for publication by editing out as many Germanisms as possible, they were subsequently misplaced or lost and had to be reconstructed more than two decades later from press clippings and memoirs (Anon. 1931). Intellectuals (and even an intelligentsia) alone can rarely establish a movement. Intellectuals can reify language and react to it as a powerful symbol, as the bearer and actualizer of cultural values, behaviors, traditions, goals. However, for an L to spread into H functions, more concrete considerations (jobs, funds, influence, status, control, power) are involved. Only the Yiddishist left wing had in mind an economic, political, and cultural revolution that would have placed Yiddish on top. But that left did not even control the Tshernovits Conference, to say nothing of the hard, cruel world that surrounded it. Shikl Fishman Reprinted from: Joshua A. Fishman, Ideology, society & language : the odyssey of Nathan Birnbaum / Ann Arbor, Mich. : Karoma, 1987. ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol. 08.047 Address for the postings to Mendele: mendele@lists.yale.edu Address for the list commands: listproc@lists.yale.edu Mendele on the Web: http://www2.trincoll.edu/~mendele http://sunsite.unc.edu/yiddish/mendele.html