Progress: The Meaning of Passover

Once again, following our custom of addressing readers [of the weekly journal Jutrzenka (Dawn), April 3, 1863] in view of the upcoming celebrations, we open the book of books, our holy Torah, in order to draw from it one of the great principles by which the world has hitherto been ruled.

The forty centuries that have elapsed since it was composed have not yet covered the book with the dust of archaeology, with the mildew of antiquity. It retains a modern freshness and contains almost contemporary facts, principles of all societies, reflections of the laws and institutions from all countries of the world.

We are celebrating Passover this evening, the memorable day commemorating the passage of the eastern tribe from a nomadic state into one of nationhood. The journey claimed many victims, not only due to external obstacles that hindered the forging nation from acquiring land for eternity, but also because of a lack of inner perfection in a tribe of shepherds, who had for centuries been under the subjection of the Pharaohs.

Oh how much superhuman effort, how many ways of incentivizing through miracles, instigation, and examples was Moses forced to employ before he succeeded in convincing this unfortunate people that they could become a structured society, before they believed his words that he would lead them to the Promised Land. [ . . . ]

Move forth, children of Israel, we still repeat today; Israel only lives through progress, every halting of it is backwardness; “Forward!” is the motto of Israel. [ . . . ]

Life awakens across the nation, as all the Christian youth are gathering under the banners of enlightenment, all the estates [i.e., social classes], civic, artisan, noble, and even quiescent peasants. Scientific institutions are sated with Christians, while we—we still have our dark heders, and in them, fanaticism is clogging up all the crevices through which, despite the tightly closed doors and windows, a ray of enlightenment might have squeezed; the rags it uses to tamp these crevices are the poor brethren, erring impulsive dreamers—we are constantly discoursing about enlightenment, while the entire country has merely ten elementary schools, and merely three nurseries—and we fill the columns of periodical magazines with braggadocio about our commitment and we boast with a drop of water that we offer to our brethren when they are truly in need of an ocean. Yet, the spirit of the time says to us: What’s the yelling for! What’s the prattle for! Take up, instead, the work of enlightenment, the act of eradicating fanaticism. . . . Tell the sons of Israel: “Move forth!”

The dark cavern of fanaticism, with sinister ghosts performing ludicrous gesticulations, growling meaninglessly; in the darkest recess of this dungeon sits a vampire, with a pair of wide black wings, his snout still soaking in blood sucked out of his victim, dormant under the waft of his wings [ . . . ] and at his call, the poor, emaciated sons of Israel gather from the towns and hamlets of the Polish countryside, everyone carrying a bundle with a tribute for the vampire in one hand, the heavy sweat of the haggard wife doing toilsome labor, and in the other, a mug that fills now and then with an abominable intoxicant that is called, apparently mockingly, aqua vitae and not aqua mortis; from the mug, the distressed are drinking the oblivions of their wretchedness and their humiliation, fomenting artificial joviality on their foreheads, artificial blushes on their pale faces—from all the towns and hamlets there are gathering the unfortunate pariahs of Polish society, who exclude themselves from the gaieties of the world, suicidally pushing away the generous hand of their brethren in the faith, who would wish to lift them up from the muck, closing their eyes for fear of ceasing to be blind, covering their ears in fear of a voice of conscience—they gather from all the Polish towns and hamlets at the call of the vampire from the cavern of obscurantism, at the voice of the prophets of Ba‘al, who base their mission upon a falsified mandate, allegedly obtained from the hands of the God of Israel, which centuries ago sounded in the Arabian wilderness: Tell the sons of Israel: “Move forth!” “Arrive with the redemption!”

But we turn again to address those false prophets; speaking to them once again in the words of Isaiah: “Why are you harassing my people?” What are these unfortunate ones guilty of, for you to set on their annihilation, on their humiliation? What is this hospitable country guilty of, so that you deprive it of the agricultural labor of the talented part of the nation, whom you hold back on its way to progress? Before whom do you close the gate of the temple of science? For whom do you obstruct the path to agriculture, to the crafts, to worthy work? Whom do you imbue with a toxin for daydreaming about things ridiculous, harmful?

We have divined your ignoble designs. The progress of the populace is your downfall. Social enlightenment will open these people’s eyes and they will cease worshiping you like a deity, once they have recognized your nothingness. Farm work, manual work, doesn’t provide those better-than-expected profits that speculation may offer; the agricultural populace would not be able to bring gifts to you from their fixed but quite modest incomes. This is why you hold back the people from enlightenment; this is why you withhold farming from them; and this is why the spirit of the time speaks to us in the words of Moses: Tell those unworthy sons of Israel: “Move forth!” “Get out of this country!”

Half a million of our population, half a million talented, assiduous, and artful people languish in towns large and small, feeding on a piece of dry pabulum for the whole of the week, dressing themselves in tatters picked up from rubbish pits, and, being a burden to themselves and the society, smothering, pushing each other off, wilting ignominiously.

Take a look at the other countries of Western Europe, at Germany, France, at the inconspicuous small Flemish land, which look entirely like a delightful Eden, like a meticulously cultivated vegetable garden, where you do not find a span of ground not verdant with lush vegetation, where the people, densely concentrated, live in abundance and happiness, with no jaundice or competition, attached to the country and the family thatch.

In our place, areas impenetrable to the eye lie fallow: sandy dunes, where no vegetation delights the eye, quagmires and whirlpools exhale venomous miasmas, pestilence to human health, uninhabited steppes clad with useless weeds.

For there is no satisfactory number of hands to do the labor, there is no necessary discretion and reasonableness to utilize these unserviceable and noxious areas to the benefit of those who work and for the good of the country, since these hands and these heads are preoccupied with abject commerce, industry, and begging, which barely provide the exigencies of life, exposing industrious citizens to scorn. [ . . . ]

Abandon the cubit and the scales, Israel; abandon the city with its dust storms and fumes; quit the spoiled atmosphere of industry and petty trade, unknown to our great lawgiver, condemned by our seer-bards, who saw the prospect for developing national life only in agriculture, knowing that true nationality is based only on the cultivation of land that demands attachment and sacrifice for it.