Tseror perahim (A Bouquet of Flowers)

I

I had recently published my work Ḥeker davar, and for other reasons, I was compelled to seek out the city of my birth, Vilna, and the city of Warsaw—and a golden opportunity presented itself to me, during my journey, to cast a critical eye over the situation of our Jewish brethren in these places; whatever I witnessed personally, I have put into print, and it is this that I shall be presenting before you today, precious reader.

Now I am not about to travel with you from city to city and from district to district, as the sheets of my manuscript will be too few to incorporate it all, and the scribal pen will make heavy progress in depicting all the events in the lives of the Jews—those resident in the small towns—because these folk have not yet aroused themselves from their stupor of folly, which the lapse of more than a thousand years has cast upon them, and the soul of the writer is weary of the constant apparitions and sights of archaic customs that have undergone no change or alteration. The poverty and oppression that are weighing down the residents of those districts will cause the Jews to sink still further into the depths of folly, and will kill off within them that spirit of strength and might possessed by the residents of Walachia and of Bessarabia. In general, I will tell you: everything that you hear, by way of news every morning, from the informants in the newspapers to the effect that these places are now filled with understanding, that the Jews have cast off the “worn-out frying pans” with which they covered themselves for protection for so long—all such notions are but figments of the imagination; in reality, there is no change or alteration, there is no movement and sensation of a fresh way of life within the habitations of the Jews. As to those living in the small towns—they are in an eternal sleep, and who knows when they will awaken? [ . . . ] They lie there amid the filth and the mire, and their slumber is pleasant to them . . . however, in just a brief moment I shall transport you and bring you to the large cities: to Vilna, the capital of Lithuania, and to Warsaw, the capital of Poland, and we shall see how our Jewish brethren there are faring.

You will undoubtedly wish to know what the effects of the popular schools which the government set up for the Jews are—be silent then, and listen! It was entirely futile for the government to have ordered that all the Jewish people should seek out these schools, with no one being exempt; those rabbinic authorities arriving recently will endeavor, with all their might, that the feet of their children should not step into them; the deceitful ones will hunt their prey, with all the force at their disposal, so as to ensure that the laborious exertions of the government will remain a breach of faith. Admittedly, I cannot keep concealed under my tongue the fact that there are many who do attend the popular schools, but how these pale into insignificance against the vast number of Jews within this city! Not even one in a hundred goes there! The cause of this, in my view, is attributable to the teachers, who stand like a fortified wall between the Jews and the Enlightenment. This malignant plague of leprosy will destroy every goodly portion of ground among us, and who knows when we will escape the oppression of the enemies of the Enlightenment and of those who trouble the soul, as they do? In what way are we distinguished from all the nations on earth? Is there any nation or kingdom amid whom there is a root bearing gall and wormwood like us? And when did this plague commence among us? Is it not the case that the Jewish people had schools from time immemorial, so when was it, then, that the teachers increased so abundantly among us? We would be most reluctant to claim that these teachers are charlatans and base fellows, evil and sinful like the Jesuits, Heaven forbid! On the contrary, we know that the majority of them are straightforward and upright men and that all their activities and deeds are genuinely bound up with the feelings within their hearts and souls; but in spite of all this, they are as evil and destructive as the Jesuits, and indeed even worse than them; for once we lay bare the deceitfulness of the latter-day rabbinic authorities, we are surely able to be wary of them—but that is not the case with the teachers! Those who hate the Enlightenment not out of love for themselves, but out of a surfeit of false belief—such individuals are capable of causing harm at all times! Accordingly, what we are saying all boils down to the same thing! It would, however, be futile for the government to gird itself, with all its remaining strength, to breathe the spirit of Enlightenment into the Jews, but it should rather give the teachers the opportunity to lessen, within the hearts of the youth, the zeal and antagonism directed against all kinds of knowledge and wisdom. The worst form of distress that the government can cause us in its attempt to attract us to the Enlightenment would be keeping the teachers at a safe distance from the environs of Jewry. We would indeed have schools, at primary, intermediate, and high levels, but the feet of the teachers would not enter our domain; and without teachers, all hope would be lost.

Despite all this, the popular schools have brought no small benefit to the teachers, who have completed their fixed terms in the rabbinic bet midrash and are now among the guard of teachers in these schools; and had this governmental enactment only been made exclusively for the benefit of the teachers, that would have been sufficient—for, truth to tell, the lot of those who complete their fixed term in the rabbinic bet midrash in the capacity of teachers, and who do not subsequently seek out the academies of the secular sciences, is an evil and bitter one; and although they would not be amusing themselves with an abundance of luxuries at the present moment, they would nonetheless enjoy a modicum of support, though even there, a really horrific lack of proper gradation exists: those possessing the highest levels of intellect are at the bottom of the ladder, while those at the lowest intellectual levels find themselves at the top. By dint of this the small number of students who are present there are burdened and endure suffering . . .

II

[ . . . ] Here is the appropriate place to take note of numerous complaints which have been reiterated two or three times in various writings concerning the young maskilim, who have completed their fixed term of study in the rabbinic bet midrash, or who have sought out the academies of secular wisdom, to the effect that they have distanced themselves from the Hebrew language; in my view, they are doing the correct thing, for what is the lot of those who write in the Hebrew language, and what benefit accrues to them from their labor? Is it not poverty and deprivation, anger and pain, a lack of honor, and seven enemies in the soul for each sorrow they experience and for each step taken by them? How, therefore, can we blame these people, whose souls are precious in their estimation and who are seeking another form of livelihood, and aiming at a more solid goal? . . .

Besides all these factors, Hebrew literature, while affording a significant benefit to those who are in a state of stasis, is responsible for a great amount of harm to those who are moving up. How much worthy talent has gone to waste: how many days, nay years, have so many people lost as a result of their poetic compositions in the Hebrew language, the taste of which is that of the juice of mallows, and of works on grammar lacking any orderly arrangement, on researches and expositions, commentaries and interpretations, all of which are founded upon emptiness! And in all this, it was solely the Hebrew language that awakened their perception and thereby brought them to this pass. Men who were genuinely great, who were capable of doing a vast amount for the benefit of the Jews, wasted their supremely precious time on composition of flowery verses and poems bereft of any sound ideas, constructing a dialogue of vanity and delusion on the basis of the Hebrew language, and it was owing to this false dream of theirs—that they would be performing good deeds for the advantage of the nation—that they lived their whole lives in a state of error. On the other hand, the “little foxes” converted the Hebrew language into a tool whereby to demonstrate proficiency, and into a cause for boasting. These individuals, bereft, as they are, of all wisdom and knowledge, of any novel ideas and in understanding of the world, in their desire to be displayed as a banner at the entry gates, will read the Hebrew language as a token of victory, will beautify themselves with alien plumage, and the consensus view of the community, which does not know how to evaluate each thing in accordance with its worth, will be to welcome these elegant versifiers and poets with both hands, and to glorify itself in them. In order that you should be aware of, and appreciate, the extent to which the Hebrew language can destroy the intellect of the writers, I shall cite for you the words of a certain didactic individual, one Mr. [ḥayim Tsevi ben Todros] Lerner (to whose name mentally deficient youth accord honor, as his name is lauded and blessed from the rising of the sun unto its setting) who, in the preface to his work Moreh ha-lashon, declared as follows: “Truly, all our labor is exclusively for the purpose of crowning it (the Hebrew language) with a priestly diadem. Albeit one writer comes along with his commentaries, another with his poems, another with his essays and yet another with his critique of the works of others, is not the name of the Hebrew language displayed upon the banner of them all? And all of them revere and sanctify the name of ‘the Mistress,’ and they all entreat her favor with a gift!” Precious reader, have you ever heard such empty words as these in contemporary literature? I swear by my life that this author, in composing words such as these, had no feeling whatsoever for what he had written—and authors of this kind are like machines, their hands writing out what their hearts do not understand. What is the Hebrew language per se? Is it indeed a “Mistress”? Surely it is comprised, as are all languages, of dead letters, with no inherent sanctity within them, and it is only the sacred words written in this language that can justly be called “sacred”—and that being the case, why should the name of the Hebrew language be displayed as a banner over all the authors, like the cover over the Holy of Holies, so as to prevent a visitor from presumptuously entering within?