Yiddishland: a promise of belonging

Journal of Modern Jewish Studies ISSN: (Print) (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cmjs20 Yiddishland: a promise of belonging Efrat Gal-Ed To cite this article: Efrat Gal-Ed (2021) Yiddishland: a promise of belonging, Journal of Modern Jewish Studies, 20:2, 141-169, DOI: 10.1080/14725886.2020.1853923 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/14725886.2020.1853923 Published online: 20 Apr 2021. Submit your article to this journal View related articles View Crossmark data Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=cmjs20 JOURNAL OF MODERN JEWISH STUDIES 2021, VOL. 20, NO. 2, 141–169 https://doi.org/10.1080/14725886.2020.1853923 Yiddishland: a promise of belonging Efrat Gal-Ed Yiddish Department, Institute of Jewish Studies, Heinrich Heine University, Düsseldorf, Germany ABSTRACT KEYWORDS Modernist Yiddish literature was an important part of the Yiddish-cultural response to the existential turmoil caused by the First World War. This “small literature,” to use Kafka’s phrase, came into being without the support of a nationstate and in an alien environment. In a 1922 edition of Warsaw’s avant-garde magazine Albatros, Yiddish poets reflected on their “wandering through various centres of their Jewish extraterritoriality.” Five years later, in 1927, when stateless Yiddish literature became a member of the International PEN Club, this existential extraterritoriality underwent a bold reinterpretation with the new concept of “Yiddishland.” My paper reconstructs the discourse that led to the transformation of the existential concept of eksteritoryalishkayt along with the creation of the cosmopolitan cultural project originally called “dos land yidish,” and later “Yiddishland:” a republic of words that unified the Yiddish speakers globally via literature and arts. Yiddishland; cultural autonomy; modern Yiddish literature; Perets Markish; Nakhmen Meisel; Shmuel Niger The Yiddish “kleine Literatur” Modernist Yiddish literature was a crucial part of the Yiddish cultural response to the existential turmoil caused by the First World War. This “small literature,” to use Kafka’s phrase,1 came into being without the support of a nation-state and in alien environments. It emerged from geographically fragmented, yet linguistically and ideationally linked territories. It thereby created a worldwide cultural space, later to be called “the Land Yiddish” or “Yiddishland.” The expansion of modern Yiddish literature was accompanied by the question of belonging. How was the cohesiveness of Yiddish cultural islands to be assured? How could Yiddish-speaking culture producers take part in the processes of the dominant cultures in which they lived? What did Yiddish literature have to accomplish to belong to world literature? Based on statements and actions of writers and cultural activists, this essay reconstructs the fundamental features of their image of the world and of their self-conceptions. It attempts to show how their wide-ranging cultural CONTACT Efrat Gal-Ed [email protected] Yiddish Department, Institute of Jewish Studies, Heinrich Heine University, Universitätsstr. 1, 40225 Düsseldorf, Germany © 2020 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group 142 E. GAL-ED expectations were aimed at an autonomously constructed historical metamorphosis of the Yiddish-speaking collective, and of its position in the community of peoples. ‫עקסטעריטָאריַאלישקייט‬, extraterritoriality In the first volume of the avant-garde journal ‫ זשורנאַל פֿאַר דעם נײַעם‬:‫אַלבאַטראָס‬ Albatros: Journal for the New Expression of] ‫דיכטער־ און קינסטלער־אויסדרוק‬ Poets and Artists] published in September 1922 in Warsaw, the young poet Uri Zvi Grinberg – at that time still writing in Yiddish – reflected on the needs and goals of Yiddish poetics in the living conditions of Yiddish poets. In his anonymously published ”‫[ „פּראָקלאמירוּנג‬A Proclamation] he urged: ‫ אין זייער‬,‫ דיכֿטער־יחידים‬,‫ פֿיר ווענט און א בּאַלקן פֿאַר די היימלאָזע‬,‫„אַ בּריק‬ ‫פֿרעמדלענדערישער אוּמוואָגלוּנג אין די פֿאַרשידענע צענטערן פֿוּן יידיש־פֿאָלקישער‬ ”.‫[ עקסטעריטאָריאַלישקייט‬A floor, four walls, and a roof for the unhoused poetindividuals, wandering like outlanders in the varied centres of their Jewishethnic extraterritoriality].2 Understanding the notion “extraterritorial” literally, he lamented the dispersed character of Jewish existence outside a territory it could call its own.3 Extraterritorial Yiddish literature suffered, said Grinberg, from a centrifugal drift, resulting from its geographical fragmentation.4 He saw in its being unhoused, in its lacking a common centre, the cause of all the artistic difficulties he wished to put an end to by his manifesto. In an expressionist manner, he set himself against “pseudo-expressionism” and “shund,” called for “renewal,” “awakening,” and a “revolution of the spirit.” He saw the path of liberation of the ‫אַלבאַטראָסן פֿון דער יונג־ייִדישער‬ ‫[ דיכטונג‬Albatrosses of Young-Yiddish poetry], as he called it, as located in “chants,” “savage, chaotic, bleeding,” in “free, naked human expression.”5 With its call for aesthetic autonomy, designed to revolutionize the whole Jewish way of life, to transport it into a utopian-aesthetic space, the manifesto was squarely in the tradition of the European avant-garde.6 Like other avantgarde manifestos, Grinberg’s proclamation of a new order was meant as a counter-concept to the existing circumstances7 and as the engine of a radical project, – here the project of the Yiddish Modern,8 which was also part of the Jewish Renaissance.9 The diversity of the proposals notwithstanding, they all believed that large segments of the Jewish collective could transform themselves, and thereby bring into being new ways of living and new societal structures. How this much lamented existential extraterritoriality was to be lived, what effects it had on the development of Yiddish culture and what consequences it had for this community were questions that occupied Yiddish intellectuals worldwide. In May 1922, the New York review Di tsukunft [Future] published a long essay by the critic Shmuel Niger on the question of the widely dispersed JOURNAL OF MODERN JEWISH STUDIES 143 “regions” of Yiddish literature. In it, he argued against the notion that the Jewish people and its literature were extraterritorial: ‫אין דער אמת‘ן זיינען מיר אינאיינעם מיט אונזער שפּראַך און ליטעראַטור און אונזער גאַנצען גייסטיגען‬ ‫ מיר זיינען ניט אפּגעריסען פון‬,‫ מיר שוועבען ניט אין דער לופטען‬.‫ ה‬.‫ ד‬,‫פארמעגען — פּאָליטעריטאָריאַל‬ ‫ געפינען זיך אונטער דעם‬,‫ מיר ציהען די חיונה פון פארשיידענע באָדענס‬,‫ פערקעהרט‬,‫ נאר‬,‫באָדען‬ ‫ זייערע אַלעמענס ווירקונגען בעגעגענען‬.‫ פארשיידענע סביבה‘ס‬,‫איינפלוס פון פארשיידענע קלימאַטען‬ ‫ שטויסן זיך צוזאַמען אדער בעהעפטען זיך אין אונזער אַלגעמיין נאַציאָנאַלען‬,‫ קומען זיך צונויף‬,‫זיך‬ ‫ עס בלייבט נאר‬,‫ אָרטיגע קרעפטען‬,‫ אין סך הכל ווערען בטל די שורות פון די בעזונדערע‬.‫שאַפען‬ ‫ ווען עס רעדט זיך וועגען אונזער‬,‫ זייער אונטערשטע שורה; אבער דאס איז‬,‫זייער פאראייניגונג‬ ‫שפּראַך אדער ליטעראַטור אדער קולטור אינגאַנצען גענומען; טהיילען זייערע זיינען צו איין‬ ‫ ווי צו אַלע אַנדערע; טהיילען‬,‫ צו איין פיזישער און היסטאָרישער סביבה מעהר צוגעבונדען‬,‫געגענד‬ ,‫ וויכטיג צו וויסען‬,‫ דערפאַר‬,‫ און עס איז‬.‫פון דעם אידישען פאָלק און זיין שאַפען זיינען טעריטאָריעל‬ ‫וואס פאר א חלק עס האט אין אונזער גייסטיגער און ספּעציעל ליטעראַרישער נחלה די אדער יענע פון‬ .‫די דאָזיגע טעריטאָריעלע גרופּעס‬ In truth we are, along with our language, our literature, and our whole intellectual capacity polyterritorial, that is, we are not afloat in the air, not uprooted from the ground; on the contrary, we draw nurture from various soils, are under the influence of various climate zones, various surroundings. The effects of these all meet one another, join together, come into conflict or unite with our common national work. On the whole the lists of particular local energies become null and void; what remains is only their unification, their final result. But this draws on our language, literature, or culture as a whole. The parts are bound more strongly to one particular region, one physical and historical milieu, than to other regions and milieux. Parts of the Jewish people and its creativity are territorial. Hence it is important to know what share in our intellectual and in particular our literary estate one or another of these territorial groups might have.10 Niger is not seeking a unity of nation and state; rather he uses the adjective “territorial” in the sense of belonging to a geographical domain and its local minority culture. He stresses the accomplishment of Yiddish language and literature, which come into being in diverse processes of cultural transfer and in various localities, and which fuse their “polyterritorial” components into a genuine culture.11 Modern Yiddish culture was formed within the framework of particular hegemonic structures, in the form of a non-territorial cultural autonomy, extended in all directions as a network of geographically severed cultural spaces.12 Such a fragmented condition sought the formation of connectedness, within the individual spaces and between them. The necessary cohesive force, the inner consistency, was to be provided by the Yiddish language. Khayim Zhitlowsky, socialist and pioneering thinker about Jewish cultural autonomy, had already used the term “Yiddish culture” in 1898 for the first time: ‫ וועט ער פֿאַרעפֿענטליכן אויף‬,‫אַלץ וואָס ]…[ ]דער יונגער דור[ וועט אויפֿטאָן אין וויסנשאַפֿט און קונסט‬ ‫ די ייִדישע בילדונג וועט אַלץ וואַקסן אָן אַן אויפֿהער און וועט ווערן אַ‬,‫ און די ייִדישע קולטור‬,‫ייִדיש‬ ‫ נאָר‬,‫ וואָס וועט צונויפֿבינדן אין איינעם ניט נאָר די געבילדעטע מיט דעם פֿאָלק‬,‫מוראדיקע קראַפֿט‬ .‫אויך אַלע ייִדן פֿון אַלע לענדער‬ 144 E. GAL-ED Everything that […] [the younger generation] will accomplish in learning and art, it will publish in Yiddish; and Yiddish culture and Yiddish education will continuously expand, becoming a mighty power that will bind together not only scholars with the people but also Jews of all lands with one another.13 It was Zhitlowsky who in 1908 pushed, at the First Transnational Yiddish Language Conference in Czernowitz, the debate on the status of Yiddish as a language, especially in relation to Hebrew as a national language. This debate supplanted the official agenda, heated tempers, and almost brought the conference to a standstill. The resolution which finally passed, recognizing Yiddish as a Jewish national language, was revolutionary. For the first time in Jewish history, it put a lingua franca14 on an equal footing with Hebrew. Furthermore, Yiddish, often despised as “jargon” or “corrupt German,” was accorded the status of a European cultural language.15 Less interested in formulating ideological declarations than in the practical dimension of cultural work, the Yiddish writer Yitskhok Leyb Peretz spoke at this same conference on behalf of an alternative concept to that of a national state, in the form of a transnational network of Yiddish cultural activities, and thereby offered a first blueprint for what later became “The Land Yiddish.” He compared the state to Moloch, to whom children had once been sacrificed, and now in their place small and weak peoples; and he proposed: ‫ נישט דאָס פֿאַטערלאַנד! און‬,‫ איז דאָס מאָדערנע וואָרט! די נאַציאָן‬,‫ נישט דער שטאַט‬,”‫דאָס „פֿאָלק‬ … ‫ נישט גרענעצן מיט יעגער בּאַוואַכן דאָס אייגנאַרטיגע פֿעלקער־לעבּן‬,‫אייגנאַרטיגע קולטור‬ The “folk,” not the state, is the modern word! The nation, not the fatherland! And an independent culture, not borders with soldiers guarding the peculiar life of individual peoples. […]16 Peretz was not only proclaiming the transformation of these power relations by means of the unfolding of Jewish culture in the people’s own language, i.e. Yiddish; on the second day of the conference he also disseminated a plan for a worldwide linked Yiddish cultural institution, which he called “The Central Bureau of the Yiddish Language Conference.”17 The central office, with its branches in eastern and western Europe was, by the foundation and coordination of publishing houses, libraries, schools, theaters, and artists’ associations, to further and organize Yiddish education and culture. Peretz described a nonstate institution, financed by its members’ contributions, a sort of transnational ministry of culture, which in its initiatives and coordination was to lay the groundwork for the then lacking but necessary infrastructure, to guarantee the status of Yiddish culture producers, and to advance and strengthen the practical work of cultural development. Peretz’s proposal was rooted in his belief in the existence of a global community of all culture nations, which he called, metaphorically, ”‫[ „וועלט־געוועב‬world JOURNAL OF MODERN JEWISH STUDIES 145 fabric] or ”‫[ „וועלט־האַרמאָניע‬world harmony]. Depending on the choice of metaphor, Yiddish culture would create its own thread or sonority.18 Peretz’s large conception and particular metaphors are echoed in later comments on the Land of Yiddish and Yiddishland.19 In Czernowitz, to be sure, his proposal met with intense resistance; but the highly dynamic construction of Yiddish culture after World War I reveals features of his conception, and attests its effects as an orienting model.20 Zhitlowsky shared this image of a global culture community, observing in 1920 that language is the material from which the people “spins” its whole culture,21 and that Yiddish literature is the centre and support of a new “national consciousness,” whose progressive force has constructed a deep connection with all other culture-producing humanity.22 He thereby defined, for Yiddish, distinctness as a precondition for participation in world literature. The development of one’s own literature was accompanied by a process of integration into a transnational literary community. Characteristic for the younger generation of Yiddish modernists was its high degree of mobility. They travelled through Europe, sojourned for a while in various urban centres, maintained international contact with diverse groups of artists, and were familiar with the literary traditions of the cultures surrounding them. For the young modernist poet Perets Markish (1895–1952) there was in this mode of existence, in the Yiddish vandergayst, precisely the potential for an original and also a universal literature, as he noted with some irony in Khalyastre in that same year: ‫ אַן‬,‫ געבן אַן אייבערמענטשלעכע‬,‫ אַזאַ בראָדיאַגעשאַפֿט‬,‫אפֿשר קאָן אַ מאָל אַזאַ אומרויִקער וואַנדערגײַסט‬ ?‫אינטערנאַציאָנאַלע קולטור אויף עפּעס אַ בראָדיאַגישן לשון‬ Perhaps one day so restless an intellectual wanderer, such a vagabondage can yield a superhuman, international culture in Vagabondish?23 Markish clarified his conception in December of 1924, in a talk at the Vilne Philharmonic: ‫„אפֿשר אין דער קללה פון אונזער בּאָדנלאָזיקייט נעסטיקט זיך די בּרכה פון‬ Perhaps in the curse of our countrylessness is concealed] ”[…] ‫איבּערבּאָדנקייט‬ the blessing of hypercountryfication].24 The ensuing “international spirit of the Jewish People,” he argued, had fertilized other peoples and cultures, and been fertilized by them as well, and would be – ,‫]דער אינטערנאַציאָנאַלער גײַסט פון ייִדישן פאָלק[ ]…[ אין צונויפפּאָרונג מיט דער ייִדישער שפּראַך‬ ‫ מוזן פירן צו דער אַנטפּלעקונג פון דאָס‬,‫וואָס איז אויך עלעמענטנווייז אינטערשפּראַכלעך‬ .‫אוניווערסאַלע און אלגמיין מענטשלעכע אין דער ליטעראַטור‬ The pairing [of the international Jewish spirit] […] with the Yiddish language, which in its components is also interlingual, will lead inevitably to the revelation in literature of what is universal and broadly human.25 146 E. GAL-ED In Markish’s view, the particular conditions of “countrylessness” had shaped a spirit that could accomplish its own processes of transmission and of cultural transfer, and that could thus “transnationalize” itself. The expressive instrument of this spirit, the Yiddish language, which Markish calls ‫אינטערשפּראַכלעך‬ “interlingual” because of its genesis in contact with the languages of the surrounding cultures, is – he argues – especially able, and obliged, to bring forth a literature, in which what comes to expression is not particularities but universals. Since Markish recognized the intellectual potential in these particular life conditions, he rejected the call made by some critics to emphasize the national element of Yiddish art and literature by reconfiguring tradition and the past. ‫ אַז ער צווינגט אונדז‬,‫דער פּחד פֿאַר זעלבסטפֿאַרלירן זיך אין דער גײַסטיקער באָדנלאָזיקייט איז אַזוי גרויס‬ ‫ אונדזערע טראַדיציעס אויף שטריק פֿון‬,‫ אונדזער נאַציאָנאַליטעט‬,‫צובינדן צו זיך אונדזער קולטור‬ :‫ פּונקט ווי די בערגשטײַגער בינדן זיך צו איינער צום אַנדערן מיט שטריק אין זייער שטײַגונג‬,‫אײַנבילדונג‬ ‫ וואָס מיר קאָנען‬,‫ אַז דאָס‬,‫ פֿאַרגעסנדיק דערבײַ‬,’‫אַזוי ווילן מיר צובינדן צו זיך אונדזערע גײַסטיקע ’איך’ן‬ ‫ איז‬,‫ איז נישטאָ‬,‫ וואָס מיר ווילן צובינדן‬,‫ אין אונדזער שטײַגן זעלבסט און דאָס‬,‫ איז אין אונדז גופֿא‬,‫צובינדן‬ .‫אויסער אונדז‬ The fear of losing oneself in this intellectual countrylessness is so great that it compels us to bind our culture, our nationality, our traditions to a rope of imagination, as mountain climbers use rope to bind themselves together. So we bind our “selves” together, and forget thereby that what we can bind together exists in us, in our climbing, exists in se. And what we want to bind together does not exist, it is outside us.26 Contrary to the aestheticization of the national, Markish, in the spirit of the European avant-garde, set against this the autonomy of the creative process, and so proceeded dialectically: ‫ נאָר וועגן שאַפֿן; די פֿראַגע איז נישט וועגן‬,‫דערפֿאַר איז די פֿראַגע נישט וועגן סטיליזירן און באַאַרבעטן‬ […] .‫ נאָר זוכן און גראָבן אין זיך זעלבסט‬.‫זוכן אויסער זיך‬ ‫ די טראַדיציעס אין אונדזער גראַניט־‬,‫ גראָבן מיר במילא די פֿאַרגאַנגענהייט‬,‫ווײַל זוכנדיק אין זיך זעלבסט‬ .‫ ווײַל זיי זענען אין אונדז‬,‫עפּאָכע‬ ?‫ זייער לעבעדיקסטער רעזולטאַט‬,‫ווײַל וואָס דען זענען מיר אויב נישט זייער לעבעדיקסטער אויסדרוק‬ So the question is not about stylizing and adapting, but about creating; not about a search outside oneself, but about searching and digging deep within oneself. […] For if one searches within oneself, one digs up the past, the traditions of our Granite Age – for they are within us. What are we if not their most truly living expression, their most truly living result?27 JOURNAL OF MODERN JEWISH STUDIES 147 “‫”דָאס לַאנד יִידיש‬, the Land “Yiddish” The project of the Yiddish Modern was carried out by engaged writers, artists, scholars, patrons, by organizations bound to parties and organizations that transcended parties. Their conceptions of Yiddish secular culture were as different as were the ideologies by which they were stamped. The target group of the culture producers and activists was above all the broad, Yiddish-speaking working class, and the lower middle class in the great cities. The leading actors in shaping the Yiddish Modern were the writers, and the chief role in the project was played by an emerging Yiddish literature. That literature did not just embody the geographically fragmented cultural realm; it guaranteed, by means of the Yiddish language, the means of holding that realm together: “Language and text became a portable homeland, cultural production worked to shape community, and Yiddish writers spoke of themselves as a family, a ‫שרײַבער־משפחה‬.”28 An extremely heterogeneous family, to be sure! Its members were arguing in 1925, for example, over the question of which of the Yiddish literary centres – Warsaw, New York, or Moscow – deserved primacy. At issue was “hegemony over the whole of Yiddish literature […] the location of the chief centre, above all the future of Yiddish artistic creation,” as the journalist Nakhmen Meisel29 summed it up. He then argued or even pleaded: ‫ ]…[ דאָס פאַרלאַנגט‬.‫ מיר זיינען אויסער מלוכה־גרענעצן און לענדער מיט אונזער יידישן שאפן‬,‫פאַרפאַלן‬ ‫ וועלכע מיר אַלע דינען און צו‬,‫ דאָס אַלוועלטלעכע יידישע שאַפן‬,‫די איינהייטליכע יידישע ליטעראַטור‬ .‫וועלכע מיר אַלע שטרעבּן‬ It’s hopeless! We with our Yiddish works are outside state boundaries and countries […] This demands a united Yiddish literature, a worldwide Yiddish creativity, which we all serve and towards which we all are striving.30 With his interjection farfaln [it’s hopeless!], Meisel expresses not only indignation, but also acceptance of the peculiar position of Yiddish literature, with its genesis outside of nation-state borders and beyond state affiliations. The problematic aspect of the situation will not, for him, be dealt with by establishing a “chief centre”; rather he calls for the unification of all the Yiddish literary production of all the places in the world. Instead of a hierarchy, that is, Meisel aims at a solidarity and cohesion of the far-flung literary fields. The Yiddish minority literature developed globally, through various nation states and in constant contact with the majority cultures surrounding it. Where it existed it was foreign, conditioned by the tension between cultural difference and the authors’ own confident sense of transculturality. The aesthetic programme, the connection to values and models of the European Modern, aimed at belonging to world literature. But such belonging required external reinforcement, a recognition of the small literature by a European institution. Such recognition came to Yiddish literature when on June 148 E. GAL-ED 20th, 1927, the International PEN Congress approved the application submitted by the Warsaw Association of Yiddish Writers and journalists, and accepted this stateless “Jewish literature,” in Hebrew and in Yiddish, as a full member of the organization.31 Melekh Ravitch, then the Association secretary, reported later in his memoirs that during the negotiations with PEN a question came from London: where was the geographical centre of Yiddish literature? What country would the Yiddish authors represent? In response to this, after long debates in the Association lokal at Tłomackie 13, the applicants responded: “Yiddish.” With this word, appearing in English at the end of the list of nations associated with PEN, the literature without a country became a Republic of Letters. In the summer of 1926 Ravitch conveyed the initiative of the association to the readers of the weekly Literarishe bleter, arguing that […] .‫ האָבן אַ שפּראַך און אַ ליטעראַטור און — זענען עקסטעריטאָריאַל‬,‫מיר זענען אַ פֿאָלק‬ .‫ אויב נאַציע דאַרף זײַן די דערגרײכונג אירע‬,‫וועלט דאַרף זײַן דאָס ציל פֿון יעדער ליטעראַטור‬ ,‫ ]…[ לאָמיר מוּטיק אויפֿהוֹיבּן די קעפּ אוּן באַווייזן זיי אין פענסטער‬.‫דאָס פֿענסטער צו אייראָפּע איז אָפֿן‬ — ‫ מסתּמא איז די שטוּב אוֹיך פּוסט‬,‫ דאָס פֿענסטער איז פּוסט‬:‫איידער מען וועט זאָגן פֿון יענער זייט‬ We are a people, have a language and a literature and – are extraterritorial […] [The] world must be the goal of every literature, if the nation is to be its accomplishment. The window to Europe is open. […] Let us courageously lift up our heads and show them in that window, before those on the other side of the window say, The window is empty, probably the house is too – 32 Like Markish before him, Ravitch saw in a universalist orientation the path towards a development of a genuine national literature. Are both authors presuming the universalizability of the particular? Or do they regard languagespecific cultural distinctiveness and the universal inventory of motifs, aesthetic forms, poetic procedures as complementary? Unmistakeable in Ravitch’s argument are echoes of the Viennese discourse on the nationalities question, and of Karl Renner’s conception of nationalcultural autonomy. Ravitch transfers the Viennese model of a multiethnic state to the whole of Europe and follows Renner’s understanding of the nation as an “intellectual and cultural community, with a noteworthy national literature expressing this community.”33 A literature, says Ravitch, is only constitutive of nation and therefore “noteworthy” when it both preserves cultural specificity and also is oriented to the “world,” i.e. open to the world and aimed at the universal. The notion comes into play also in his later reflections on this period: JOURNAL OF MODERN JEWISH STUDIES 149 ‫אין יענע יאָרן — צווישן ביידע וועלט־מלחמות — איז אין פּוילן געווען דער צענטער פון דער ייִדישער‬ ‫ דער סימן מובהק פון אַ‬,‫ און דער יסוד פון דעם צענטער איז דאָך די ליטעראַטור‬.‫וועלטקולטור‬ .‫קולטורפאלק און פאלקסקולטור‬ In those years – between the two world wars – the centre of Yiddish world culture was in Poland. And at the heart of the centre was ultimately literature, the distinguishing characteristic of a cultural people and a people’s culture.34 With the acceptance of this stateless literature in PEN, the often lamented extraterritorial condition of Yiddish was surprisingly and audaciously re-evaluated. The recognition meant as much as a territory would have,35 a fact symbolized by the new national name. In this sense, “Yiddish” was now an innovatively used expression. The adjective, originally meaning “Jewish,” though also indicating the Yiddish language and what was created in it, became in 1927 the name of a country that no map would show. A metaphor, therefore, but also the birth of a utopian project, a spatial counter-world, in which for some years the connection between cultural difference and cosmopolitan Weltanschauung could not only be thought but also, apparently, could be lived: a Yiddish republic of letters as the national literature of Jews.36 In his memoirs Ravitch recalls what the land Yiddish meant to him and his colleagues: ‫ אַז משיח‬,‫ אַ מאָל‬,‫ אַז אַ מאָל‬,‫ אַן אָנזאָג‬.‫ לויטער גייסט‬.‫ אָן ערדישע גרענעצן‬,‫ אַ מיסטעריעז לאַנד‬. . . ‫ייִדיש‬ ‫ און יעדעס פאָלק מיט זיין‬.‫ און שלום צווישן אַלע פעלקער‬,‫ וועלן אַלע לענדער זיין גן ־ עדנס‬,‫וועט קומען‬ ‫ און די ייִדישע‬.‫ און יעדע ליטעראַטור — אַ וועלט ־ ליטעראַטור בזעיר אנפּין‬.‫לשון און זיין ליטעראַטור‬ ‫ וואָס פירט די צעקריגטע‬,‫ליטעראַטור וועט סימבאָליזירן דאָס ייִנגעלע פון דעם נביאס משיח ־ וויזיע‬ .‫בעלי ־ חיים צו שלום און גליק‬ Yiddish . . . a mysterious country, with no earthly boundaries. [A country of] pure spirit. A sign, that one day, when the Messiah has arrived, all countries will be paradises, peace will reign between all peoples, and every people with its language and literature and every literature will be world literature en miniature, and Yiddish literature will symbolize the young boy of the prophet’s messianic vision, leading estranged creatures to peace and joy.37 Ravitch’s having recourse to eschatological imagery not only bears witness to the culture-generating force of the translation of traditional sources by secular intellectuals. It also points to the high value of this cultural work in their eyes. The “land Yiddish” was the central creation of the Yiddish Modern: a project aiming at perfection in this world. In the New York daily ‫[ דער טאָג‬The Day] the journalist Shmuel Niger reported to his American Yiddish readers on the events in Europe, and made clear that Yiddish literature was the only member of PEN having the privilege, because of its extraterritorial situation, of having not one but several representatives. This he considered a great victory.38 In accord with PEN’s specifications, three Yiddish centres were opened: Vilna (1927), Warsaw (1927), and New York (1928), chaired respectively by 150 E. GAL-ED Moyshe Kulbak, Zusman Segalovitsch and Dovid Pinski. The Warsaw office was located in one of the rooms of the Association of Writers and Journalists at 13 Tłomackie Street. Among its members were some Hebrew- and Polishlanguage writers. The Yiddish PEN-Club, though, accepted only Yiddishlanguage authors. Meisel reports in his memoir that the office, the ‘territory’ of the exclusively Yiddish-language institution, was soon called “Yiddishland.”39 The new word was at first only part of the local writers’ jargon. In print, people continue referring to the “Land Yiddish.”40 That republic was both national and transnational. Its mode of being connected across state boundaries was called alveltlekh or allendish.41 To give one example of many: In a formal welcome for Niger presented in Kaunas in 1931, the then high school teacher Yudl Mark characterized the land Yiddish as ‫ וואָס איז אוּמעטוּמיק אוּן אינטערטעריטאָריאַל אוּן פאַראייניקט דאָס גאַנצע יידישע‬,‫„דאָס לאַנד‬ ”.‫[ פאָלק‬The country that is everywhere present and interterritorial and which unites the whole Jewish people].42 The “interterritorial” country of literature, henceforth internationally recognized as ‘the Land Yiddish,’ was treated in the press as a state. It had a capital (though what the capital was held to be varied with one’s perspective),43 a president,44 ministers45 and consuls. In 1933, for example, the writer Daniel Charney, Niger’s younger brother, who had been living for some years in Berlin, was referred to as ”‫[ „דער בערלינער אַמבאַסאַדאָר פֿון ייִדיש‬the Ambassador of “Yiddish” to Berlin].46 The similarly titled article, on the occasion of Charney’s 25-year literary jubilee, sets out the self-conception of Yiddishland’s citizens together with its most recent history: ‫ דאָס לשון פון‬,‫ זי האָט אַריינגענומען יידיש‬.‫די פּען־אָרגאַניזאַציע האָט געמאַכט די אָפיציעלע התחלה‬ ,‫ אין דער אינטערנאַציאָנאַלער ליטעראַרישער משפּחה‬,‫ צעשפּרייטע אויף גאָר די וועלט‬,‫מיליאָנען יידן‬ .‫ איר געגעבן אַ תיקון‬,‫דערהויבּן די יידישע ליטעראַטור צו אַ גלייכבאַרעכטיקטער מדרגה‬ ‫ אָן אַן אייגענער‬,‫ פּונקט ווי ס‘איז פאַראַן אַ יידיש פאָלק אָן אַ באַשטימטער מלוכה־פאָרם‬:‫די וועלט ווייסט‬ ‫ וואָס‬,‫ און ס‘לעבּט אַ שפּראַך מיט אַ ליטעראַטור‬,‫זעלבשטענדיקער טעריטאָריע — פּונקט אַזוי איז דאָ‬ ‫ נאָר‬,‫ האָט נישט קיין באַשטימטן און אָפּגעצוימטן וועלט־טייל‬,‫ און אָט די דאָזיקע שפּראך‬.‫הייסט יידיש‬ .‫ ווו יידן שפּאַרן אָן‬,‫ אין אַלע וועלט־עקן און ווינקלעך‬,‫איז אַ קנין פון מיליאָנען מענטשן אומעטום‬ — ‫ געשאַפן אַ לאַנד‬.‫ געגעבּן דעם לשון יידיש אַלע רעכט‬.‫די פּען־אָרגאַניזאַציע האָט געמאַכט אַן אויסנאַם‬ … ‫יידיש‬ ,‫ האָט נאָך פאַר דער אָפיציעלער אָנערקענונג פון דער אויסערלעכער וועלט‬,‫אָבּער דאָס ’לאַנד’ יידיש‬ ,‫ בּאָטשאַפטער און גענעראַל־קאָנסולן‬,‫ געזאַנדשאַפטן‬,‫געהאַט אייגענע ’דיפּלאָמאַטישע’ פאַרטרעטער‬ ,‫ געשטאַנען אויף דער וואַך‬,‫וואָס האָבן פרייוויליק גענומען אויף זיך די יידישע מלוכה־דינסט‬ .‫ ווו זיי האָבּן נאָר אָנגעשפּאַרט ]…[ און בּלב ובּנפש טריי געדינט דעם ’לאַנד’ יידיש‬,‫אומעטום‬ ‫ האָט כשר פאַרדינט דעם גרעסטן‬,‫ דער בּערלינער פאַרטרעטער פון ’לאַנד’ יידיש‬,‫]…[ דניאל טשאַרני‬ ‫ ווי ער שטייט אין דינסט פון דער יידישער‬,‫ יאָר‬25 ‫ שוין‬.‫ אַמבּאַסאַדאָר‬,‫דיפּלאָמאַטישן טיטל‬ ‫ מיטגעשאַפן די מאָדערנע‬,‫ און אַליין מיטגעבּויט‬,‫ געהאָלפן בּיי דער שווערסטער אַרבעט‬,‫ליטעראַטור‬ .‫יידישע ליטעראַטור‬ JOURNAL OF MODERN JEWISH STUDIES 151 PEN made the official beginning. It took Yiddish, the language of millions of Jews all over the world, into the international family of literature, and raised Yiddish literature to a place of equality and restored honors. The world knows: just as there is a Jewish people that has no set form of state, no independent territory of its own, just so is there a living language and a literature called Yiddish. And this language has no defined, bounded sector of the world, is rather the possession of millions everywhere, in every remote corner of the world to which Jews have come. PEN made an exception. Gave all rights to the Yiddish language. Brought forth a Land: Yiddish … But the ‘Land’ Yiddish had, even before its official recognition by the outside world, its own ‘diplomatic’ representatives, envoys, ambassaors, and general consuls, who took upon themselves the voluntary service of the Yiddish state, in every far place they came to […] who stood watch and served the ‘country’ Yiddish with faithful hearts. Daniel Charney, the Berlin representative of the ‘Land’ Yiddish, deserves the highest of diplomatic titles: ambassador. He has been for 25 years in the service of Yiddish literature, and helped in the most difficult task, namely, to bring forth and develop modern Yiddish literature.47 Volunteer cooperation was the central factor in the project of the Yiddish Republic,48 which demanded a multitude of functions from its agents, for – as the diction of the article suggests – the Republic was established, maintained, represented, and guarded by literati. The non-territorial Land of Yiddish, whose citizens joined it of their own free will, functioned as a transnational culture space, with educational institutions, publishing houses, theatres, and artists’ associations, all dynamically linked together. Actors, writers, scholars were abundant travellers, appearing in the various centres. A significant agent in the process was the Yiddish press, read locally but also often globally, which offered an important source of support for Yiddish authors. The New York Tog was read in Warsaw, and in New York people read the Vilner tog and the Tshernovitser bleter. In columns of literary announcements readers found not only local news but also, and principally, accounts of Yiddish literary events in other great and small centres. Thus informed, readers took part in the joys and disappointments of remote yet connected communities.49 The weekly Literarishe bleter, edited by Nakhmen Meisel, constituted the most important platform for the diasporic Yiddish intelligentsia from Buenos Aires to Berlin to Johannesburg. It was the only European weekly published continuously from 1924 to 1939, with subscribers all over the world. More than any other publication, it embodied the transnational Yiddish republic of letters.50 It was self-affirming to read accounts of appearances made by Yiddish delegates at international events, e.g. the participation of the Yiddish press at 152 E. GAL-ED the international press exposition in Cologne in the summer of 1928. Two hundred and ninety-sevenYiddish periodicals were published in 17 countries, 44 of them daily newspapers. In the Soviet Union there were 24 journals for some 3 million Jews; in Poland with 3 millions Jews 145 journals, 19 newspapers among them, and in the United States, with 4 million Jews, 58 journals, 11 of them newspapers.51 The aesthetic discourse An exploration of terms, concepts and their usage in programmatic texts of the 1920s indicates that early theorizations of literature were instruments of cultural and political aesthetics. A major concept in that discourse was ‫וועלט־‬ ‫[ ליטעראַטור‬world literature]. What did the concept of “world literature” mean for the project of Yiddish modernism, and what did Yiddish literature have to accomplish to become part of it? The new participation in International PEN activities and discussions revealed all too vividly the tension between nationalism and internationalism, between an ideal country and a concrete cultural community, between the isolation of a minority culture and the wish to belong to the community of hegemonic cultures constituting the notion of the “world.” Shmuel Niger focused on the question of what was national literature, what was world literature, what tasks were implied for Yiddish literature, in a series of articles published first in the New York journal Der tog and then, in expanded form, in Literarishe bleter.52 In the first of these articles he notes that in the new situation, Yiddish literature is “the instrument of our whole national culture,” and that it was now necessary to pose the “question of universalism”: ‫ אַ נאַציאָנאַלע ליטעראַטור‬.‫אַ נאַציאָנאַלע ליטעראַטור קאָן נישט און וויל נישט זײַן קיין געטאָ־ליטעראַטור‬ .‫ דריקט אויס איר וועלט־אָנשויונג‬,‫ אויף וועלכער אַ נאַציע שפילט אויס איר וועלט־ניגון‬,‫דאָס איז די כלי‬ ‫ אזוי ווי‬,‫נאַציאָנאַלע ליטעראַטור און וועלט־ליטעראַטור זענען נישט קיין צוויי גאָר באַזונדערע זאַכען‬ ‫ נאַציאָנאַלע ליטעראַטור דאָס איז אַ געוויסע‬.‫נאַציע און וועלט זענען נישט קיין צוויי באַזונדערע זאַכן‬ ‫ מוז אין איינעם מיט דער נאַציאָנאַלער ראָלע פון‬.‫מדרגה און אַ געוויסע פאָרם פון וועלט־ליטעראַטור‬ ‫ אויב זי איז שוין‬.‫דער יידישער וואָרט־שאַפונג קלאָר ווערן איר אַלגעמיין מענטשלעכער ווערט‬ .‫ מוז זי שוין זיין אויך אַ טייל פון דער וועלט־ליטעראַטור‬,‫באמת אַ נאַציאָנאַלע ליטעראַטור‬ A national literature can not and does not want to be a ghetto literature. A national literature is that instrument on which the nation plays its world melody, expresses its Weltanschauung. National and world literature are not two sundered things, just as nation and world are not. National literature is a particular stage, a particular form of world literature. So through the national role of Yiddish literary creativity its general human value must become clear. If it is in fact a national literature, it must already be part of world literature.53 By these reflections Niger further developed the ideas of Peretz and Zhitlowsky discussed previously. In Niger’s view, authors of national literary works created them from a particular folk life and folk tradition, from the culture in which JOURNAL OF MODERN JEWISH STUDIES 153 they were rooted. These works would be therefore neither untranslatable nor incomprehensible for other cultures, for their deep roots extended down to the root of all humanity, to the universal foundation, ‫„צו די אוּרקוואַלן פוּן‬ ”‫[ אוּנזער קיוּם‬to the origins of our human existence]. Such works ‫„רעדן צוּ דער‬ ,”‫[ מענטשהייט דוּרך זייער פאָלק‬speak to humanity through their individual peoples]. Niger seems to be presupposing an archetypical repository of collective forms and motifs, which in such works are shaped in a culturally specific way. Hence the fact that works of world literature are “comprehensible and valuable for members of diverse peoples and cultures.” ‫„אָבער אין דער טיפֿעניש‬ ‫ אויף איר העכסטער מדרגה‬,‫פֿון זײַן נשמה איז יעדעס פֿאָלק דער שורש פֿון דער מענטשהייט‬ ” … ‫[ איז יעדע נאַציע אַ זײַל פֿון דער וועלט‬In the depth of its soul, every people is the root of humanity generally, and at its highest level every nation is a pillar of the world].54 Like Goethe, Niger saw in world literature the processes of culture-transcending reception and communication, motivated by curiosity, interest, or admiration.55 Curiosity and interest Niger considered period-specific phenomena, sustained in part by extra-literary factors. Admiration, on the other hand, for the aesthetic quality of literary works beyond the boundaries of a language, a nation, a culture, seemed to him to establish their timeless rum [renown] as works of world literature.56 As for the Yiddish literature now coming into being, which had become part of the international literary community, Niger expressed the wish that it not only evoke curiosity and interest, but also put down strong roots, which would reach “the foundation of the world,” and from these deep springs bring forth works compelling admiration. The aesthetic of Yiddish works was to result from the interplay between the particular and the general.57 An early mode of thinking ‘glocally.’ ,‫ ווי מיט די‬,‫די וועלט וועט זיך גיכער פֿאַראינטערעסירן מיט אונדזערע נאַציאָנאַל־סבֿיבֿהדיקע שרײַבער‬ ‫ אין ייִדישן לעבנס־באָדן‬,‫ די אין ייִדישע פֿאַרבן אײַנגעטונקטע‬.‫וואָס זענען אָנסבֿיבֿהדיק און אַנאַציאָנאַל‬ ‫ ווי די‬,‫אײַנגעוואָרצלטע שרײַבער קאָנען גיכער האָבן אין זיך פֿאַרבאָרגן אַלגעמיין מענטשלעכע ווערטן‬ .‫אָנקאָלירנדיקע אויסגעוואָרצלטע ייִדישע ליטעראַטן‬ The world will take greater interest in our national-local authors than for those authors without a local and national connection. Authors steeped in Jewish colours, rooted in a Jewish ground of being, are better able to harbor general human values than colourless, rootless Jewish literati.58 Niger’s reflections on the relation between Yiddish literature and world literature came in relation to a particular occasion: the Geneva-based International Institute for Intellectual Cooperation proposed to the Yiddish PEN-Club to submit a list of the twenty best works of that literature, to be translated for the international market. Commissions were formed in Warsaw, Vilna, and New York to collect proposals for inclusion. Nakhmen Meisel weighed in with the question: ?‫מיט וועלכע ווערק דאַרפן מיר קוּמען צו דער וועלט־ליטעראַטוּר‬ 154 E. GAL-ED [With which works should we enter into world literature?]59 He, like Niger, speaks against quasi-universal works in favour of authentic Yiddish ones: ‫ אוּן‬.‫מיר ווערן איצט גלייכבּאַרעכטיקטע בּירגער אין דער אינטערנאַציאָנאַלער וועלט פוּן ליטעראַטור‬ […] .‫לאָמיר וויסן ווי אָפּצושאַצן אָט די נייע ווענדוּנג אין דער וועלט־ליטעראַטוּר־סביבה‬ ,‫ גלאטיקע‬,‫ נישט די איינפאַכע‬.‫ ’אוּניווערסאַלע’ שאַפוּנגען‬,‫ פּשוטע‬,‫לאָמיר זיך נישט יאָגן מיט גלאַטע‬ […] .‫ וועלן אינטערעסירן דאָרט‬,‫ אָן אַן אייגענעם פּרצוף־פּנים‬,‫ליטעראַריש־אָפּגעטאַקטע ווערק אוּנזערע‬ ‫ אייגנאַרטיקן‬,‫ וועלכע האָבּן אַן אייגענעם‬,‫צו דער וועלט דאַרפן מיר קוּמען נאָר מיט אַזעלכע יידישע ווערק‬ .‫ פאָרם אוּן אינהאַלט‬,‫ סטיל‬,‫כאַראַקטער‬ We are now becoming full citizens of the international literary world. And let us be aware of how this new turn on the world literary environment is to be esteemed. Let us not be too hasty, with smooth, simple, ‘universal’ works. Not our simple, literarily overpolished works, with no distinctive look to them, will interest readers there. We must come to the world with Yiddish works that have their own, unique character, style, form and content.60 Meisel called for an aesthetic and also a thematic distinctiveness in Yiddish literature as a condition of its being related to other literatures in the context of world literature. His claim rested on the notion, widely disseminated among Yiddish writers, that in contrast with works of assimilated, non-Yiddishwriting Jewish authors, and right next to Hebrew literature, Yiddish literature was the national literature of Jews.61 These reflections gave rise to an identity discourse that was also instantiated in Yiddish poetry; extraordinarily many Yiddish poems are devoted to the reflections of the poets on the meaning of their writing in Yiddish, and on their situation as Yiddish writers in a world shaped by hegemonic cultures.62 Yiddishland63 In 1935, YIVO invited scholars, artists, writers, and cultural activists from Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Romania, Austria, Palestine, the United States, Argentina, and Mexico to a gathering in Vilna. One hundred and twenty delegates assembled there, among them the historian Simon Dubnow and the painter Marc Chagall. At that conference Yiddishland was a buzzword. The author Elias Schulman, from Slutsk in Belarus and living in New York, wrote: .‫ ווען כ‘האָב פֿאַרלאָזן ניו־יאָרק‬,‫ האָב איך ערשט פֿאַרשטאַנען‬,”‫ווי ריכטיק ס‘איז דער באַגריף „ייִדישלאַנד‬ ‫ אַז עס עקזיסטירט‬,‫ פּאַריז — האָב איך געזען דײַטלעך‬,‫שוין זײַענדיק אין דער קאָסמאָפּאָליטישער שטאָט‬ ‫ אין די קאַפֿייען‬.‫ אויף די שיינע פּאַריזער בולוואַרן הערט מען אונזער ייִדיש‬:”‫אַזאַ מין לאַנד ווי „ייִדישלאַנד‬ ‫ אין די קיאָסקן זענען אויפֿגעהאַנגען ייִדישע‬.‫אויפֿן מאָנפּאַרנאַס קלינגט היימיש אוּנזער ייִדיש לשון‬ ‫ אין אָט דער גרויסער וועלט־שטאָט האָב איך געטראָפֿן ייִדישע‬.‫ וואָס דערשײַנען אין פּאַריז‬,‫צײַטונגען‬ ‫ די ייִדישיסטן אין ניו־‬,‫ וואָס ווייטיקן מיט די זעלבע פּראָבלעמען וואָס מיר‬,‫ ייִדישע מענטשן‬,‫שרײַבער‬ .‫יאָרק‬ JOURNAL OF MODERN JEWISH STUDIES 155 ‫ ווי נאָר ער פֿאָרט אַרײַן אין וואַרשע — די‬,‫דער בירגער פֿון „ייִדישלאַנד” פֿילט זיך גלײַך זייער היימיש‬ .‫ וואָס איז איינע פֿון אונזערע דרײַ הויפּטשטאָט‬,‫שטאָט‬ ‫ צום ערשטן מאָל אין‬,‫ דאָ האָב איך‬.‫אָבער גאָר באַצויבערנד פֿאַרן בירגער פֿון „ייִדישלאַנד” איז ווילנע‬ ‫ איך האָב שפּאַצירט אויף די‬.‫ דערהערט ווי קליינע קינדערלעך רעדן צווישן זיך ייִדיש‬,‫פֿופֿצן יאָר‬ ‫ ווי יונגע פֿריילינס און בחורים רעדן צווישן זיך ייִדיש — אַ זאַך‬,‫הויפּט־גאַסן פֿוּן ווילנע און געהערט‬ .‫וואָס איז אַ זעלטנהייט בײַ אונז אין ניו־יאָרק‬ How apt a term ‘Yiddishland’ is I only understood when I left New York. Once in cosmopolitan Paris, I saw clearly how Yiddishland can exist. On the beautiful Paris boulevards our Yiddish is heard. In the Montparnasse cafés our Yiddish language sounds at home. In the kiosks there are Yiddish newspapers on display, published in Paris. In this great metropolis I met Yiddish writers, Yiddish people, who are afflicted by the same problems as are we Yiddishists in New York. The citizen of Yiddishland feels at home as soon as he arrives in Warsaw, one of our three capitals. But Vilna is especially magical for the Yiddishland citizen. It was here that I heard, for the first time in fifteen years, young children talking in Yiddish. I went walking on the main streets of Vilna and heard young women and men talking in Yiddish – a rarity in New York.64 At the first plenary, an appeal was handed to the chair; it was signed by seventy of the delegates, among them Chagall, the actor Kurt Katsch, who had been expelled from Germany, and the Warsaw historian Emanuel Ringelblum. The appeal proposed the establishment of a “Yiddish League,”65 which would join the International Writers’ Congress, recently founded in Paris, and defend endangered Yiddish culture. At issue above all was the growing persecution of Jews in Poland, Romania, Lithuania, and Latvia, manifested in no small way by targeted hostility to Yiddish cultural institutions. But the delegates were of several minds on the matter; and Max Weinreich, one of YIVO’s cofounders, asked that YIVO remain a purely scholarly institute.66 In the debate over protecting Yiddish culture, which eventually led to the first Transnational Yiddish Cultural Congress held in Paris in September 1937, the cosmopolitan figure of thought constituted by ‘Yiddishland’ took on a clearer shape. Yiddishland was a territory of the mind. It embodied a transnational mode of thought and life called, in Yiddish, alveltlekh, by which was meant the coherence of a heterogeneous Yiddish culture across diverse nations and state boundaries. In this diasporic space-concept, one remained housed in language despite all persecution and migration. The hybridity of that language, making possible both distinction from the given majority culture and proximity to it, was determinative for cultural self-comprehension. The inner enemies of Yiddishland, then, were Zionism and assimilation; in both modes of life the Yiddish elements were suppressed. In the mid-1930s Yiddishland was no longer a promise but a lived dynamic, holding together networks of the geographically fragmented literature and 156 E. GAL-ED culture of the marginalized minority threatened by the increasing persecution of European Jews. In September 1937, by legal and half-legal means, Yiddishists from twentythree countries arrived in Paris for the First Transnational Yiddish Cultural Congress: writers, journalists, scholars, artists, culture activists. One hundred and one voting delegates represented 677 Yiddish cultural organizations. At the solemn opening ceremony on September 17th there were some 4,000 people in the magnificent Wagram Hall.67 Given that the Congress had met with opposition in bourgeois and socialist circles alike, and in particular from the Bund, it was a great success. Those who nevertheless came to Paris and took advantage of the occasion to visit the World’s Fair, with Picasso’s Guernica and Albert Speer’s German Pavilion, no doubt also saw the first Pavilion of Yiddish Culture – right next door. In it, one could see maps of the world’s Jewish population, and displays of the history of Yiddish language, literature, journalism and workers’ movements. In the International Pavilion a sign in big red letters, in both Yiddish and French, proclaimed that “11 million people speak Yiddish.”68 The jurist Khayim Sloves, Secretary of the Paris Organizing Committee, greeted the delegates at the ceremony as follows: ‫די איינהייט פֿון אַלע לעבעדיקע ייִדישע קולטור־כּוחות איז ניט בלויז דאָס הייליקסטע געבאָט פון דער‬ ‫ צעשפּליטערטע קולטור־‬,‫ נאָר אויך דער איינציקער מיטל ווי אַזוי צו שאַפֿן פֿון אָפּגעריסענע‬,‫שעה‬ .‫ פֿול־בלוטיקע און פֿול־ווירקנדיקע ייִדישע קולטור‬,‫ מעכטיקע‬,‫ווערטן איין גרויסע‬ ‫ וואָס איז געבויט און אויסגעטראָגן דורך די ברייטסטע ייִדישע פֿאָלקס־‬,‫]…[ די יידיש־וועלטלעכע קולטור‬ ‫ די דאגות און‬,‫ די צילן‬.‫ ווו זי שאַפֿט זיך‬,‫ איז אין איר מהות איינע און דיזעלבע אין אַלע לענדער‬,‫מאַסן‬ ‫ דעריבער איז‬.‫זאָרגן פון יידישן קולטור־שאַפֿער און קולטור־טוער זענען די זעלבע אין גאָר דער וועלט‬ .‫ בלויז אַ פֿראַגע פֿון צײַט‬,‫ פֿון אַלע אָן אויסנאַם‬,‫די איינהייט פֿון די ייִדיש־וועלטלעכע קולטור־כּוחות‬ ‫ אויב מיר‬,‫ ער וועט זי שאַפֿן‬.‫דער הײַנטיקער קאָנגרעס וועט דאַרפֿן העלפֿן שאַפֿן אָט די דאָזיקע איינהייט‬ ‫ בײַם ייִדישן‬,‫ אויב מיר ווילן בײַם יידישן שריפֿטשטעלער‬,‫ אַז די ייִדישע קולטור זאָל לעבן‬,‫ווילן‬ ‫ בײַם ייִדישן אַקטיאָר און בײַם ייִדישן וויסנשאַפֿטלער פֿאַרוואַנדלען‬,‫ בײַם ייִדישן לערער‬,‫קינסטלער‬ .‫ די אָפּהענטיקייט אין שעפֿערישער ענערגיע‬,‫ די פֿאַרצווייפלונג אין מוט‬,‫דעם יאוש אין גלויבן‬ The unity of all vital Yiddish cultural forces is not only the holiest commandment of the hour, but also the only means to create a great, powerful, dynamic, and influential Yiddish culture out of the cultural values now separated and splintered. […] Yiddish-secular culture, built and borne by the broad Yiddish masses, is in all the countries in which it has come into being essentially the same. The goals, the troubles, the problems of Yiddish culture creators and culture activists are the same the world over. Wherefore the unity of all Yiddish-secular cultural forces, all and without exception, is only a question of time. Today’s Congress must help create this unity. It will bring it into being because it must bring it into being if we want Yiddish culture to live, if we want Yiddish writers, artists, teachers, actors, and scholars to see despair transformed into confidence, dejection into courage, helplessness into creative energy.69 JOURNAL OF MODERN JEWISH STUDIES 157 The new self-assurance in the depiction of unified Yiddish culture as a secular, progressive, popular culture provided the switch points for the deliberately border-transcending connections among all those dispersed at the grassroots level and thus for their belonging to the international, progressive forces of the culture front and the world. One of the more eminent delegates, the novelist Yoysef Opatoshu, born in Poland in 1886 and resident in New York since 1907, sketched Yiddishland and its values with remarkable confidence in his welcome speech, creating a radical equation between the traditional term “Ashkenaz” and the neologism “Yiddishland”: ‫ ס‘איז געוואָרן‬,‫ ס‘איז געוואָרן אַן אידעישער‬,‫„אשכנז” האָט אויפגעהערט צו זיין אַ געאָגראַפישער באַגריף‬ .”‫„יידישלאַנד‬ ‫ ווי צו‬,‫ „ייִדיש־לאַנד” איז א העכערע מדרגה‬.‫[ אין ייִדיש־לאַנד גייט קיינמאָל די זון נישט אונטער‬. . .] ‫ ער הערט זיך שוין אָבער אין דער‬,‫ עס איז נאָך אַ נייער באַגריף‬.‫ פּאַספּאָרטן‬,‫ גרענצן‬,‫האָבן אַרמייען‬ :‫ ס‘איז גענוג אַ טראַכט צו טאָן‬.‫פֿאָלקס־סימפֿאָניע‬ ‫ צענדליק‬,‫ טויזנטער‬,‫ צענדליק טויזנטער שטעט‬,‫ אויסטראַליע — טויזנטער‬,‫ אַפֿריקע‬,‫ אַזיע‬,‫אייראָפּע‬ ‫ דער‬,‫ פֿיר און צוואַנציק שעה אין מעת־לעת‬,‫ ווו ס‘גייט אויף‬,‫ פעלדער‬,‫ וועלדער‬,‫ ימען‬,‫טויזנטער מייל‬ ‫ וואָס גלויבט אין‬,‫ ס‘לשון פֿון דעם אינטערנאַציאָנאלן ייִדישן פֿאָלק‬,‫ פון אונזער לשון‬,‫קלאַנג פון ייִדיש‬ ‫ צווישן פאָלק און‬,‫ וואָס וועט אָפּשאַפֿן שׂנאה און האַס צווישן מענטש און מענטש‬,‫דער גערעכטיקייט‬ .‫ צווישן ראַסע און ראַסע‬,‫נאַציע‬ Ashkenaz has stopped being a geographical notion; it has become an ideal, it has become “Yiddishland.” […] In Yiddishland the sun never sets. “Yiddishland” is at a higher level than that of the possession of armies, borders, and passports. The concept is still new, but is distinctly audible in the symphony of peoples. Consider only this: Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia – thousands and tens of thousands of cities, thousands and tens of thousands of miles, seas, forests, fields, where around the clock is heard the sound of Yiddish, of our language, of the language of the international Jewish people, which believes in justice, which will do away with hate between man and man, people and nation, among the races.70 In Opatoshu’s presentation of Yiddishland we find unmistakeable features of the vision and rhetoric of Peretz, Markish, and Ravitch. A striking feature of the presentation is Opatoshu’s emphasis on what he describes as the spatially and temporally worldspanning presence of this minority language. The goal of his emphasis is to strengthen the writers and readers of this small and geographically fragmented literature, and to give courage to the citizens of now existentially threatened Yiddishland. Yiddishland after the khurbn As early as 1941, the poet Moyshe Nadir, born in eastern Galicia, resident in New York since 1898, wrote in a public letter to Itzik Manger, born in 158 E. GAL-ED Czernowitz, living in his London exile. In this letter he predicted the death of modern Yiddish literature: ‫ איז שווערער נאָך ווי דאָס פיזישע‬,‫ איציק מאַנגער‬,‫ אונדזער ווערטערן לעבן‬,‫אונדזער פּאַפּירן יידיש לעבן‬ .‫לעבן פון אונדזער פאָלק‬ .‫און מיר שטאַרבן אזוי שווער‬ ‫מיטן טויט פון יעדן יידישן לעזער גייען מיר א קאַפּעטשקע אויף אונדזער אייגענער לויה — אויף דער לויה‬ .‫ וואָס מיר האָבן דערהויבן פון א שפלער שפחה כמעט־כמעט צו אַ הויכער האַרנטע‬,‫פון דער שפּראַך‬ ‫ וועלכע‬,‫ שווער איז דאָס אָפּשטאַרבן פון אַ יונגער ליטעראַטור‬,‫שווער איז דער טויט פון אַ יונגן מענטשן‬ .‫האָט נאָך גאָרניט געלעבט‬ […] .‫ נאָר אַ סך אַ סך טראַגישער‬,‫ניט ווי גריכיש און לאַטיין גייט אויס אונדזער שפּראַך‬ ‫ געטראָגן ווערן אויף די הענט‬,‫ דו איציק מאַנגער‬,‫ וועסטו‬,‫אַז מע וועט אַמאָל אויסגראָבן אונדזער שפּראַך‬ !‫ גלייב עס מיר‬,‫— העכער פון האָמערן‬ ‫ אָבער ביי וועמען זאָל מען מאָנען ? מיר האָבן א‬.‫ איציק מאַנגער‬,‫ דו האָסט אַ בעסער גורל פאַרדינט‬,‫יאָ‬ ‫ איז‬,‫ אָבער אַ מאַמע אויף וועמענס אַקסל זיך אויסצוּוויינען‬,‫ אַ זיס־טערפּקע מאַמע־לשון‬,‫מוטערשפראַך‬ .‫ קינדער פון מאַמע־לשון זיינען דאָך לעבעדיקע יתומים‬,‫ ]…[ מיר‬.‫ניטאָ‬ Our Yiddish life on paper, in words, Itzik Manger, is even harder than the physical life of our people. And we die so hard. With the death of each of our readers we go bit by bit towards our own burial – to the burial of the language that we raised from a lowly maid almost to a high-born lady. Hard is the death of a young person, hard is the dying of a young literature, which has not yet lived. Our language dies not as Greek and Latin died but far, far more tragically […] If someday they exhume our language, you, Itzik Manger, will be lifted aloft– higher than Homer, believe me! Yes, you deserve a better fate, Itzik Manger. But of whom should one demand it? We have a mother tongue, a sweet-sour mother tongue, but as for a mother on whose shoulder one could cry and cry, there is none […] We, the children of our mother tongue, are living orphans.71 The notion of Yiddishland survived the khurbn, but its meaning gradually shifted. So long as the Yiddish culture centres of eastern Europe were the heart of Yiddishland, cities like Montreal and Buenos Aires were secondary. With the destruction of the Jewish world of eastern Europe, these secondary centres, which offered European immigrants a secure dwelling-place, became important nexus-points in the transnational Yiddish network. The Yiddish cultural metropolises were now New York and Buenos Aires. Yiddishland was fundamentally changed, and not only in geography and demography. In the new JOURNAL OF MODERN JEWISH STUDIES 159 spaces, the Yiddish minority culture was not persecuted; but it was worn away by the acceptance of majority language and by the supremacy of Hebrew within Zionism.72 Yiddish authors were not unaware that the marginalization of Yiddish in New York meant the destruction of Yiddishland. In 1953, Melech Ravitch published an epic poem called ‫[ די קרוינונג פֿון אַ יונגן יידישן דיכטער אין אַמעריקע‬The Coronoation of a Young Yiddish Poet in America]. In the foreword, Ravitch, who calls himself a “World-Jew,”73 acknowledges his belief in the “Yiddish WorldPeople” and in the mission of American Jews to hold fast to the Yiddish vision, so as to prevent the spiritual and physical destruction of Jews in all the world.74 Ten years later, the poet and essayist Yankev Glatshteyn spoke of the American Yiddish writers’ resistance to assimilation as being the struggle against ”‫[ „פרייוויליקע ליקווידאַציע‬voluntary liquidation].75 Involuntary liquidation in the Soviet Union culminated in the persecution and execution of Yiddish wrtiers. Moyshe Kulbak was murdered in 1937; Dovid Bergelson, Perets Markish, and four additional writers were executed on August 12th, 1952. The language that had lost its speakers through khurbn, Stalinist purges, and assimilation now embodied not a territory and a home, but only the past.76 After the khurbn, Yiddishland became again a utopia, and finally an aporia. That Yiddishland, even at its best times, did not belong to the world was noted in 1943 by Isaac Bashevis Singer, who said that there was a contradiction in the existence of Yiddish literature which was, he said, ‫„געטלעך אָן אַ גאָט און וועלטלעך אָן‬ ”‫[ אַ וועלט‬godly without God and worldly without a world].77 Of the project of Yiddishland, only a lieu de mémoire remained. What does the word mean? In Weinreich’s dictionary (1968) there is no entry for the term. Not until Neuberg’s Yiddish-German dictionary (forthcoming) is the word defined: “the historical or imagined territory of the Yiddish language.” This apt formulation clarifies both the problematic character of the concept and its vagueness for today’s users.78 The colloquial notion of the term identifies Yiddishland with the eastern European habitat of Yiddish-speaking Jews, with its centre in Poland and the Russian Pale of Settlement. The map with which Gérard Silvain and Henri Minczeles preface their impressive 1999 collection of post cards from the region provides an excellent model.79 The idea of Yiddishland as a lieu de mémoire, is characteristic of this perspective and widely disseminated, especially since the khurbn.80 Opposing the notion of Yiddishland as a site of memory, Jeffrey Shandler argues, in Adventures in Yiddishland,81 for a definition not determined by geography. He defines Yiddishland as “a virtual locus construed in terms of the presence or usage of the Yiddish language, especially – though not exclusively – in its spoken form.”82 This formulation also reveals a post-khurbn perspective; Yiddishland as a potential, imaginable space presupposes the 160 E. GAL-ED destruction of the Yiddish-speaking inhabitants of eastern Europe and of their dwelling-places with them. By defining Yiddishland as “post-vernacular language and culture” Shandler maintains the relevance of the concept even where Yiddish has been abandoned as the medium of Jewish secular culture and no longer functions as a day-to-day language. These examples document the historically and socially determined transformation of a relatively recent concept. Beginning as a neologism in 1927 in Warsaw, Yiddishland named and at the same time shaped a spatial counterworld to the historical-political reality of the time; but it was no castle in the air utopia, rather a lived culture in which for some years the connection between cultural difference and cosmopolitan Weltanschauung could not only be thought but also, apparently, lived: a Yiddish republic of letters as the national literature of Jews. Since the agents of this mode of life and thought were constantly striving to perfect the praxis of their portentous culture nation without a state, however it can be understood as a utopian project, a work always in progress. As such it went through four phases: vision, realization, institutionalization, and destruction, the last of these coming entirely from outside. Translated by Lawrence Rosenwald Notes 1. It was by way of the Yiddish actor Yizchok Löwy [Jacques Levy] that in 1911 Franz Kafka encountered “der gegenwärtigen jüdischen Litteratur in Warschau” [presentday Jewish (Yiddish) literature in Warsaw] (Kafka, Tagebücher, [312]). Thinking of both Yiddish and Czech literature, he reflected on the relations among culture, politics, and a nation of small literatures. Among their effects, for Kafka, were “der Stolz und der Rückhalt, den die Nation durch eine Literatur für sich und gegenüber der feindlichen Umwelt erhält” [the pride and the support that the nation gets from a literature, for itself and in relation to the hostile world around it] (Diary entry of 25th, 26th and 27th December 1911, ibid. [312]–[326], here [313]). The term appears in the title of the last passage of the entry of December 27th (ibid. [326]): “Schema zur Charakteristik kleiner Litteraturen” [Scheme for the characterization of small literatures]. In Kafka. Pour une littérature mineure [Kafka: on behalf of a minor literature] (1975, 29), Deleuze and Guattari render “klein” as “mineure”, by which they shift the meaning from a “small” literature to the tendentiously “minor” literature, possibly the literature of a minority, but also implying inferiority in relation to an established majority literature; this shift from “small” to “minor” is a shift from quantity to quality, and implies a pejorative judgment (cf. Casanova, Republic of Letters, 203–4. She points out that Deleuze and Guattari draw on Marthe Robert’s French translation of 1964, ibid., 383 n. 56; cf. also the translator’s note to the German version of Deleuze and Guattari’s essay, Kleine Literatur, 24). Moreover, the authors’ observation “Une littérature mineure n’est pas celle d’une langue mineure, plutôt celle qu’une minorité fait dans une langue majeure” [a minor literature is not the literature of a minor language, rather the literature that a minority creates in a major language] (ibid., JOURNAL OF MODERN JEWISH STUDIES 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 161 29), ignores Kafka’s explicit comment that his reflections refer to the Jewish, here Yiddish, literature in Warsaw, and to Czech literature, not to the German-language writing of the Jewish minority in Prague (cf. Casanova, Republic of Letters, 200–3, Thirouin, “Kafka als Schutzpatron”). On Kafka’s encounter with Yiddish theater and Yiddish literature cf. Lauer, “Die Erfindung.” Grinberg, Albatros, 3. ‘Eksteritorial’ is common in Yiddish both in this sense and as meaning “the status of persons living in a foreign country but not subject to its laws” (“extraterritoriality” in Oxford English Dictionary, https://oed.com/view/Entry/67138; accessed June 7, 2020). Grinberg was not alone in this opinion. In 1924, for example, Moyshe Litvakov (1875/ 80–1939), the literary critic then editor-in-chief of the communist Yiddish daily Der emes [The Truth], lamented the fact that the “Jewish proletariat,” a “class of extraterritorial people,” was “like [an] island scattered among other national majorities,” making “the development of a national culture difficult” (Litvakov, “Di shprakh”). Grinberg, Albatros, 3. Cf. Asholt and Fähnders, “Einleitung”, xv–xxx; Hjartarson, Visionen des Neuen, 5. Cf. Hjartarson, Visionen des Neuen, 64–8. In 1922 the poets Uri Zvi Grinberg, Perets Markish and Melech Ravitsch founded the new poetry group Khalyastre [Band] in Warsaw. Each of its members published a journal in 1922: Markish Khalyastre, Grinberg Albatros and Ravitch Di vog [The Scale]. These short-lived publications with their manifesto-like texts constituted Yiddish modernism in Warsaw. See Wolitz, “Between Folk and Freedom”; Cohen, Sefer, sofer ve‘itton, 37–51; Vakhrushova, “To Hell with Futurism, Too!”; Modernist journals and anthologies began to appear immediately after the First World War, including Eygns [One’s Own], Kiev, 1918 and 1920; Der inzel [The Island], New York, 1918; Yung-idish [Young Yiddish], Lodz, 1919; Oyfgang [Ascent], Kiev, 1919; In zikh [Inside the Self or Introspection], New York, 1920–1940; Ringen [Rings], Warsaw, 1921–1922; Glokn [Bells], Warsaw, 1921. The Yiddish modern, as a territorially discontinuous cultural space, constituted a counter-model to the European, territorially continuous, unitary states. On the notion of “multiple modernities,” see Eisenstadt “Multiple Modernities.” Cf. Fishman, Never Say Die, 16–23; Biemann, “Renaissance.” Cf. also Leo Kenig’s commentary on the Jewish Renaissance in his introductory article “Renesansmotivn” in the booklet Renesans, No. 1, 1920, edited by him; cf. also Melech Ravitch’s plea for a transnational association of Yiddish writers (Ravitch, “shriftshteler-veltbund”). On the Russian-revolutionary strand of the Jewish Renaissance cf. Moss, Jewish Renaissance. Niger, “gegent-frage,” 308, Emphasis in original. Shmuel Niger, born in 1883 in Dukora near Minsk and died in 1955 in New York, is considered the most important Yiddish literary critic. He was, in this essay, responding to Bal Makhshoves’s study, ”‫ יארהונדערט‬19 ‫„דאס דרום־יודענטהום און די אידישע ליטעראַטור אין‬, [The Jewry of the South [Eastern Europe] and Yiddish Literature in the 19th century], Tsukunft, 1922, 1–3. However, the cultural transfer was one-sided, as only a few Yiddish works were translated into other languages in the interwar period. Cf. Gal-Ed, Niemandssprache, 39. Cf. my own “Jiddischland,” Niemandssprache, 44–55. By the fourth meeting of the Bund (May 24–27 1901), a program of “national-cultural autonomy,” not referring to a specific territory, had been officially adopted (Aronson et al. 1960, 184). Cf. also Hiden, “Europäischer Nationalitätenkongress” and Gechtman, “Nationalitätenfrage.” 162 E. GAL-ED 13. Zhitlowsky, “Tsiyonizm oder sotsyalizm,” 72. The essay “Zionism or Socialism,” was first published in Idisher arbeiter 6, 1898. 14. In 1900, the total Jewish population amounted to 10.6 million (DellaPergola, “Demographie”). The approximate number of non-assimilated, Yiddish-speaking Jews was in 1900 some 7, in 1925 8.2 million (Ruppin, Soziologie der Juden, 130); in 1939, the total Jewish population was estimated at 16.6 million, of whom some 11 million spoke Yiddish (Weinreich, “Yiddish Language,” 332). 15. See Fishman, “Tshernovits Conference Revisited,” 326f. 16. YIVO, Yidishe shprakh-konferents, 75. 17. Ibid., 86; Peretz’ blueprint of the “Central Bureau,” ibid., 85–7. 18. Peretz, “yidishkayt,” 164, first published in 1911. On Peretz’s concept of Yiddish culture, see Vakhrushova, “Yiddish Modernism.” 19. Ravitch commented on this in his memoirs: ‫ ייִדישע וועלטפאָלק‬,‫ וועלטלעכע‬,‫„דאָס מאָדערנע‬ ‫ די‬.‫האָט אָנגעהויבן זיך צו געפינען אין די רעמען פון דער נייער וועלט וואָס ווערט איצט נײַ־געבוירן‬ ”.‫ — יצחק לייבוש פּרץ איז איר אידעאָלאָג‬,‫אידעאָלאָגיע איז דאָ‬ [The modern, secular Yiddish/Jewish people began to locate itself in the framework of the new world just coming to birth. The ideology is there, and Peretz is its ideologue.] (Ravitch, Maysebukh 3, 10) and cf. also ibid., 290. 20. For example in the Kultur-Lige (“Culture League”), founded in April 1918 in Kiev, then the capital of the short-lived Ukrainian People’s Republic. After the Soviet takeover in 1920, it could no longer pursue its Yiddishist program, but became the model for similarly named organization in other European cities, among them Kaunas, Warsaw, Bucharest, Paris, Berlin, and Amsterdam. Cf. Estraikh, “The Yiddish Kultur-Lige.” 21. Zhitlowsky, using this same word spinen, refers even at the linguistic level to Peretz’s large conception. 22. First published 1920. Zhitlowsky, “Natsyonal-progresive badaytung,” 243, 264, 275. 23. Markish, “Refleksn.” On Markish’s claim regarding the importance of cultural contacts in the early 1920s, see Vakhrushova, “Soviet Yiddish Literati.” 24. S–K, “Tsvishn tsvey literarishe doyres.” 25. Ibid. 26. Markish, “Tsvey virklekhkaytn.” 27. Ibid. 28. Gal-Ed, Niemandssprache, 43. 29. Nachmen Meisel was born in 1887 on an estate near Kiev, and died in 1966, on Kibbutz Alonim in Israel. He was co-founder of the Polish kultur-lige and editor of the Warsaw weekly Literarishe bleter [Literary Pages]. In 1938 he became editor of the New York monthly Yidishe kultur [Yiddish Culture]. 30. Meisel, “Varshe, nyu york, moskve,” 264. The debate heated up in 1926 (e.g. Zeitlin, “Tsentrale figurn”; Bergelson, “Dray tsentren”), but the issue had been addressed earlier (e.g. Ravitch, “Vu iz der tsenter”; Niger, “On a tsenter”) and was also addressed later (e.g. Hirschbein, “Vegn un sheydvegn”; Ravitch “Shtam un zvaygn”). On the dispute, see Cohen, Sefer, sofer ve-‘itton, 113–25; cf. Weiser “Capital of ‘Yiddishland’.” 31. Cf. Cohen, Sefer, sofer ve-‘itton, 70–3; Schachter, Diasporic Modernisms, 3–5. 32. Ravitch, “fenster tsu Eyrope,” 362, 363. 33. “[…] geistige und culturelle Gemeinschaft mit einer nennenswerten Nationalliteratur als Ausdruck dieser Culturgemeinschaft,” as quoted in Gechtman, “Nationalitätenfrage.” 34. Ravitch, Maysebukh 3, 257. JOURNAL OF MODERN JEWISH STUDIES 163 35. Cf. Borekh Rivkin’s conception of modern Yiddish as kemoy-teritorye [quasi territory]: ‫ אַז זי דאַרף‬,‫פוּן סאַמע אָנהייבּ — פוּן מענדעלען אָן — האָט די יידישע ליטעראַטור געוווּסט‬ ‫ פון וואַנען האָט זי עס געוווּסט? די יידישע גרונט־סיטואַציע האָט איר‬.‫כּמו־טעריטאָריש זיין‬ — ‫ האָט זי געהאַט אַ מוסטער פאַר אירע אויגן אין איר פאָרגייערין‬,‫ צוויטנס‬.‫ ערשטעס‬,‫אוּנטערזאָגט‬ ‫ זי‬:‫ וואָס האָט אויף דער זעלבּיקער גרוּנט־סיטואַציע אָפּגעענפערט פּונקט אַזוי‬,‫דער יידישע רעליגיע‬ […] ‫האָט זיך אויפגעהויבּן ווי אַ כּמו־טעריטאָריע אין דער לופטן‬ [From the very beginning, from Mendele on, Yiddish literature has known that it has to be only quasi-territorial. How did it come to know this? The fundamental situation of Yiddish has given it its cue, for one thing. Second, it has had a pattern before its eyes in its predecessor, i.e. Jewish religion, which responded to the same fundamental situation in just the same way; it raised itself up as a quasi-territory in the air] (Rivkin, “Kmoy-teritoryalizm,” 430). 36. The concept of a res publica lit[t]eraria is attested to as early as the seventeenth century, e.g. in the magazine title Nouvelles de la République des Lettres [News from the Republic of Letters] (1684). Cf. Pascale Casanova’s definition of the “world republic of letters” as an “international literary space” in contrast to “world literature.” She argues that “what needs to be described is not a contemporary state of the world of letters, but a long historical process through which international literature – literary creation, freed from its political and national dependencies – has progressively invented itself” (Casanova, Republic of Letters, xii). 37. Ravitch, Maysebukh 3, 273 f. Cf. also ibid., 324. Moyshe Knaphais in this context characterizes the “distinctive literature of Yiddishland” as “cosmopolitan” and “transnational” (alveltlekh) (Knaphais, Guf un neshome, 172). Ravitch writes elsewhere of the ”‫[ „ייִדיש־ייִדישער ליטעראַטור‬Yiddish-Jewish literature] as ”‫„אַ וועלט־ליטעראַטור בזעיר־אנפּין‬ [world literature en miniature] or as world literature (Ravitch, Maysebukh 3, 13, 19, 111 and elsewhere). 38. Niger, “Idishe literatur, 1928.” 39. Meisel, Geven amol a leben, 278; cf. also Rozhanski, “Z. Segalovitsh. Tlomatske 13,” 245. 40. E.g. Literarishe bleter (Warschau) 05.07.1929, 515; 25.08.1933, 550; 19.07.1935, 464; Folks blat (Kaunas) 06.10.1930, 4; 31.03.1931, 2. We find an exception in Arn Mark’s interview with Zalmen Reyzn on Jewish cultural life in America, in which Reyzn tells of ”‫[ „גרויסן יידיש־לאַנד‬the great Yiddishland], by which is meant the Yiddish cultural space in North America (Mark, “Shmues mit Zalmen Reyzn”). Since 1934, Nachmen Meisel, an eminent figure among the non-party-linked activists, had been an advocate of a transnational Yiddish organization which would coordinate Yiddish cultural activity in the face of growing anti-Jewish persecution. In this context the term “Yiddishland,” though there are no textual instances of it in the Yiddish press in the 1920s, occurs frequently in print and for the most part in quotation marks: Yidish 1, Januar 1935; Botoșanski “Hoyptshtot fun ‘yidishland.’” For earlier appearances, see, e.g. Leyeles, Poeme, 55. 41. At the International Writers’ Congress for the Defence of Culture, Paris 1935, Shmuel-Leyb Shnayderman introduced himself as a “citizen of the land Yiddish” and declared ”.‫„דער בּירגער פּונם לַאנד יידיש איז דער בּירגער פּון דער וועלט‬ [The citizen of the land Yiddish is the citizen of the world] (Shnayderman, 1935). 42. Min, “Der banket lekoved.” 43. E.g. Botoșanski, “Hoyptshtot fun ‘yidishland’”; Shulman “Nyu york – Vilne.” 44. In the Chicago journal ‫“( יידיש‬Yiddish”) Khayim Zhitlowsky is characterized as “the President of Yiddishland” (Yidish 1, Januar 1935). 164 E. GAL-ED 45. In Kaunas Shmuel Niger was called ”‫[ „דער מיניסטער אין לאנד יידיש‬Minister in the Land Yiddish] (Folks blat, 16.04.1931). 46. Lewi, “Berliner ambasador fun yidish.” Ravitch in 1951 was still calling the writer Joseph Leftwich ”‫ן־אַמבאַסאַדאָר פון ייִדיש־לאַנד אין לאָנדאָן‬.‫ע‬.‫[ „פ‬The PEN Ambassador of Yiddish] (Ravitch, Mayn leksikon 4.2, 57). 47. Ibid., cf. also Kitai, Unzere shrayber un kinstler, 159; Shalit, Daniel Tsharni-bukh, 139, 127, 140, 145. 48. This was in accord with the self-perception of these agents, as, for example, the description of the journalist and translator Moyshe Mikhl Kitai in the Folks-blat during his visit to Kaunas makes vividly clear: ‫ אַקטיווער פריינד פוּן‬,‫„קיטאי איז אַ הייסער‬ ‫ פילט‬,‫ וואָס ווייס ניט פוּן קיין גרענעצן‬,‫ אינם לאַנד יידיש‬.‫דער מאָדערנער יידיש־וועלטלעכער קוּלטוּר‬ ‫ער זיך אַ תּושב אוּן דערפאַר איז אַזוי לייכט בּיי אים צוּ נעמען אין אַ מיטן מיטוואָך דעם רענצל אין‬ ”.‫[ האַנט אוּן זיך אַוועקלאָזן אויף אַ נסיעה‬Kitay is a keen and active friend of secular modern Yiddish culture. A confident citizen of the land of Yiddish, which knows no boundaries, he can easily enough spontaneously pack his bag and go on a journey] (Mink “M. Kitay”). 49. For Daniel Charney the press marked the boundaries of the country: ,‫„מיר ]מאָרעװסקי‬ ‫ װו די‬,”‫בירגער פון דעם אַזױ גערופענעם „ייִדישלאַנד‬-‫ שאַליט און טשאַרני[ זענען געװען װעלט‬,‫שאַגאַל‬ ,‫סלופּעס” זענען געװען די הונדערטער צײטונגען‬-‫ אונדזערע „גרעניץ‬.‫זון גײט קײנמאָל נישט אונטער‬ ‫ װאָס פלעגן אונדז טאָג אײן — טאָג אױס ברענגען גרוסן פון אמעריקע און‬,‫זשורנאַלן און ביכער‬ ,‫ישראל און ביראָבידזשאַן‬-‫ פון ארץ‬,‫ פון קובא און מעקסיקאָ‬,‫ פון אַפריקע און אױסטראַליע‬,‫אַרגענטינע‬ ” … ‫װײטער און ביז גאָר נאָענטער ליטע‬-‫[ װי אױך אַפילו — פון דער װײטער‬We [Morewsky, Chagall, Shalit, and Charney] were world citizens of ‘Yiddishland,’ as it is called, where the sun never sets. Our ‘boundary stakes’ were the hundreds of newspapers, journals, and books, bringing us greetings every day from [North] America and Argentina, from Africa and Australia, from Cuba and Mexico, from the land of Israel and Birobidzhan, and also from far and near Lithuania …] Charney, Vilne. (Memuarn), 241. 50. The writer Leyb Malekh calls Literarishe bleter a worldwide ”‫[ „סיגנאַל־ווייזער‬guidepost] and adds: ‫ אין די‬,‫ בלעטער’ אין די ווייטעסטע לענדער‬.‫„די לייענער פוּן די ’ליט‬ ”.’‫ זענען די אַמבּאַסאַדאָרן פוּן ’לאַנד יידיש‬,‫[ פאַרוואָרפנסטע ווינקלעך‬The readers of Literarishe bleter in the furthest pleaces, the most remote corners are the ambassadors of the ‘land Yiddish’] (Malekh, “Di ‘Literarishe bleter’”). Not everyone shared this view (Riger, “Di imperye ‘Yidish’”). 51. Anonymous, “Literarishe nayes.” 52. Der tog, December 17. 24, and 31. 1928; Literarishe bleter, January 18 and 25, February 8, 15, and 22 February 1929. 53. Niger, “Idishe literatur, 1928,” emphasis in the original. 54. Niger, “Idishe literatur, 1929.” 55. Ibid., 147. On Goethe’s ‘Weltliteratur’ cf. Lamping, Die Idee der Weltliteratur, 23, 62f. 56. Ibid., 148. 57. Ibid. 58. Niger, “Idishe literatur, 1928.” 59. Meisel, “Mit velkhe verk,” 125. 60. Ibid. 61. The language quarrel within the Jewish community, between Hebrew and Yiddish, cannot be considered within the framework of this article. Cf. Gal-Ed, Niemandssprache, 328–30; Döblin, Reise in Polen, 84. JOURNAL OF MODERN JEWISH STUDIES 165 62. For example, Leyeles, Poeme, 57; Shnaper, Bloe verter, 81; Leivik, Ale verk. Lider, 258; Rivkin, Lider, 32; Feinberg, Yidish. Poeme. The phenomenon of identity discourse carried out by poetic means cannot be developed within the framework of this article. 63. This and the following chapter contain material from the subchapter “Yiddishland,” Gal-Ed, Niemandssprache, 44–55. 64. Literarishe bleter, August 23 1935, 578. 65. Meisel, “Kultur-kongres,” 496. The appeal is reprinted in ibid., 497–9. 66. Ibid., 501. On the YIVO congress, see YIVO, Der alveltlekher tsuzamenfor. 67. See Cultural Congress 1937 and the accounts in the worldwide Yiddish press. 68. On August 15 1937, the Paris newspaper Naye prese devoted page 5 to accounts of the first Yiddish Pavilion, among them “11 Million People Speak Yiddish (A Visit to the Yiddish Culture-Pavilion)” and “A Stroll in the Land called ‘Yiddish.’” See also Winogura, “Der jidisher kultur-pavilion.” 69. Cultural Congress, 1937: 15. 70. Cultural Congress, 1937: 26, 30. Cf. ”‫[ „די מאַפּע פון יידיש־לאַנד‬the map of Yiddishland] (Kahan, Yidish-meksikanish, 17–20); Charney, Vilne. (Memuarn), 241. 71. “A Belated Letter to Itzik Manger,” Idisher kemfer (New York), March 13, 1942. In 1947 the letter was reprinted in the Bukharester zamelbikher (161–4), and on June 1, 1961 in Der veker, 7f. 72. Cf. Howe, World of our Fathers, 417–551; Margolis, Yiddish Culture in Montreal; Michels, Yiddish Socialists in New York; Lederhendler, New York Jews, 12–35, 69– 78. On transnational Ashkenaz and Yiddish literature in the United States after the khurbn cf. Schwarz, Survivers and Exiles. 73. Ravitch, Mayn leksikon 3, 176. 74. Ravitch, Di kroynung, v–vii. 75. Glatshteyn, Prost un poshet, 404. 76. Cf. Lederhendler, New York Jews, 69–78. 77. Bashevis, “Yidishe literatur in Poyln,” 471. 78. Cf. Silber, “Yidishland” and the new online dictionary Jiddisch-Nederlandse woordenboek (JNW), edited by Justus van de Kamp et al.: https://www.jiddischwoordenboek. nl/search/?q=‫&יידישלאנד‬type=woordenboekapp.Trefregel#detail. Abgerufen am 23. Juni 2020. 79. Silvain and Minczeles, Yiddishland, 36f. Cf. also the explanation of the concept in French Wikipedia, https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yiddishland, accessed June 7, 2020. 80. Cf. the site “Yiddishland: Countries, Cities, Towns, Rivers” at YIVO, https://www. yivo.org/Yiddishland, accessed June 7, 2020. 81. Shandler, Adventures in Yiddishland. 82. Ibid., 33. Disclosure statement No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s). Notes on contributor Efrat Gal-Ed is Professor in the Department of Jewish Studies, Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf. She holds a Ph.D in Yiddish Literature (2009). Recent Publications: Niemandssprache: Itzik Manger – ein europäischer Dichter. Berlin: Suhrkamp Verlag, 2016. Das Buch der Jüdischen Jahresfeste. Berlin: Suhrkamp Verlag, 22021. Crossing the Border: An Anthology 166 E. GAL-ED of Modern Yiddish Short Stories (in Yiddish), edited by Efrat Gal-Ed, Simon Neuberg and Daria Vakhrushova. Berlin: düsseldorf university press / De Gruyter, 2021 (forthcoming). In their Surroundings: Localizing Modern Jewish Literatures in Eastern Europe, edited by Efrat Gal-Ed, Natasha Gordinsky, Sabine Koller and Yfaat Weiss. Göttingen: Vanderhoeck & Ruprecht, 2021 (forthcoming). Bibliography Anonymous. “Literarishe nayes: Tsifern vegn der idisher prese.” Der tog, June 25, 1928. Asholt, Wolfgang, and Walter Fähnders, eds. Manifeste und Proklamationen der europäischen Avantgarde (1909–1938). 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