How Does One Produce Culture?

When the [Yiddish language] culture conference gathered in Czernowitz [in September, 1908], I was against it. When the culture conference gathered in Berlin,¹ I voiced my doubts about it. Now that a culture conference is gathering in Kiev,² I am again unhappy.

Am I such a vile sinner? Do I want to disturb what others are building? Am I possibly one of those who simply like to be contrary? Do I hate the Holy Tongue? Do I not know, then, the value of creating culture? Do I not feel in the deepest depths of my soul the seriousness of the present moment, the spiritual threat, the threat of apostasy? Do I then not know that a great hellish fire is surrounding all of Jewry, and that we have to save what we can still save?

I know this all and feel it all, and still I am ice cold regarding all sorts of culture congresses and conferences. They don’t speak to my heart, they don’t speak to my soul, and they say nothing more to me than the rabbinic gatherings of their time.

I am strongly convinced that congresses and conferences do not create culture. Culture congresses and culture conferences are useful only when there is some cultural effort in the community, and not when we mean to create something through them. . . .

They were harmless in the past; and they are harmful when we bind to them specific hopes, movements, and aspirations if we believe that being busy with conferences is also cultural work, when we rely on them and fulfill our obligations with them. [ . . . ]

From day to day the Holy Tongue is forgotten, the Holy Tongue of our fathers, the language of our four-thousand-year-old culture, the language that is bound to our national psyche, the language of the best, the most beautiful, the unique, and the deepest within us. Why then do we need to learn the Holy Tongue? Why do we have to teach our children the Holy Tongue? Why do we need to spread it, beautify it, deepen it, revive it, raise it up? It is enough that we have handed out resolutions in Berlin and other places. . . .

From day to day, our Torah is also being forgotten—the Torah which is the meaning of our entire lives, of our eternal suffering and eternal hopes, the Torah for which we are exiled, hounded, persecuted by all. The Torah for which we fight the entire world, and for which we are fought against by the entire world, the Torah which we raise up high after reading from it, for which we say to the entire world (as Gabriel Riesser³ expressed famously): this is our strength, our defense, our sword, our strong wall. [ . . . ]

And that is how the congresses and conferences and gatherings create only dead resolutions, letters, brochures, printed paper—but where is the life? Where the activity? Where the creativity? Where the fiery soul? Where the spiritual energy? Where then does the voice of Jacob ring? Where do you then see the true signs of an old-new Jewish culture? What do you hear beyond words, phrases, discussions, and gatherings? [ . . . ]

See further! We Jews have also lived through a period of Haskalah. We have lived through times when everyone talked and stormed about culture, about scholarship, about light. What remains of this? Are our broad masses not more ignorant now than decades ago?

Then, a couple of decades ago, they had within them at least an inkling of Torah. What, however, do they have within them today?

Why is it like this? Why do our broad, simple masses, who are generally very talented, serious, and gifted, possess now so much less culture than all the other masses? [ . . . ]

Once [Moses] Lilienblum complained in his [1876 autobiography] Ḥatot ne‘urim [Sins of Youth]: “A Jew has nothing in his world beyond a penny and a moldy page of Talmud.” And today, what does a Jew have in his world? A penny and a fairy tale, with innumerable problems. . . .

Why is it like this? Why did the broad simple Jewish masses remain so backward regarding culture during the entire tumult of our maskilim, party members, and culture-bearers of all sorts? [ . . . ]

Our maskilim from the Haskalah only wrote poems in honor of the Jewish enlightenment, or they became doctors and demanded respect from the people and snatched money . . .

Our later culture-bearers just stormed and made noise, wanted nothing, and gave nothing.

The present culture-bearers mean to fill their obligation with congresses and conferences and gatherings.

Is that how we create culture? What can resolutions accomplish when what we need is action? What do the gatherings achieve, when we need daily work with the people? How can dead letters help where we need life?