A Word to Jews and Slavs

Conclusion

But you, West Slavic Jews, you who are so proud of your intelligence and education, you who are so proud of the sciences that you tend like exotic plants [ . . . ] I ask whether you are so weighed down by oppression that you must wait until someone elevates you and approaches you!

I ask whether you are also proud to be almost the last among your coreligionists in Europe to firmly, closely and joyfully affiliate with a European nationality! While the blame for this lapse is only in small part yours, and the obstacles you must overcome are great, very great, then so much greater must be your efforts and endurance, in order to reach such a glorious goal.

Among the members of your faith, you are known for being witty and perceptive. Because of that, it is not so long ago that the vast majority of Europe’s Israelite communities appointed their teachers and rabbis from your midst. Does your heart not swell when, in awareness of your power, you realize that your art and science could be nurtured and cultivated in the language and the ethos of your countrymen, and that men of yours could also be leaders among their learned and wise and, through their blessed gifts, spread light, drive away darkness, and with that the prejudice against you?

Does your heart not swell, when you realize that apart from your great missions and tasks, which you regard as unfinished, you could be called upon to implement the highest and most noble ideals? Called to transmit the spirit from Western and Eastern Europe and called, like the other Western Slavs, to the spiritual dominion over those people who will be the flag-bearers of European education for the people of the Orient?

Your brethren in Germany thought this way and proceeded accordingly; you however—you could accomplish ten times more than they. Others would not view the benefits and advantages you might so acquire with hostility or envy: no, they would bless you for joining in the effort and helping to reach the lofty goal. Ha! What a benefit for art and science, what a benefit for both Jewish and Christian Slavs, if you, almost to a man, would pursue Slavic literature with the same zeal as you now apply to the Talmudic, one that is presently so little known and one-sided.

Unlike all the other harshly oppressed, of whom not one has suffered comparably, you have not surrendered yourselves to uncontrolled sensual pleasures in order to find comfort and numbness in misfortune; unlike all the other slaves, you did not become dull and insensitive: no, your spirit is serene and alert, your heart remains warm and sensitive because you have conquered and preserved a realm, although elsewhere excluded and confined to a narrow Judengasse [Jewish lane] in which you can freely joust.

And so you, you who would be respected, unlike animals and those deprived of human rights, you have always esteemed and protected the divine spark in men, the spirit, and have never let it be suppressed: the greatest hero of Slavic literature, one of the most exalted poets and noblest combatants for justice and truth, is thought to be one of your blood. May he be a bright star who illuminates a new path for you, and may he provide brilliant evidence to your Christian compatriots that your blood, too, is a knightly and noble one.

His forefathers were oppressed and scorned like you. But in your case, here and now, idle words will not suffice. You must become actively involved, sacrifice much and tear down much in order to achieve more greatly, to build more splendidly. You must put aside and slough off everything that is foreign in your appearance. If the honorable costume of the ancient Sarmatians makes their descendants objects of mockery, then you must cast it off; why should you, of all people, cling to it so faithfully? If the man’s beard, as an emblem of Judaism, has become a cause for laughter, then you must cut it off. Nothing from your side, including your appearance, can be allowed to separate you from your Christian brethren, to impede socialization.

The wish that Slavic languages be taught in your schools is one that some of you share: you must now try to make this a reality. The time will then come when you must no longer go begging to your brethren in Germany to quench your oft stirring thirst for European knowledge and culture. Then you, as well as your far less numerous brethren in Holland, Belgium, Denmark and North America—as it is in France, England, and especially in Germany—would have your own publications for your religious and social settings, for all academic faculties, and for the branches of your history and literature.

If, presently, it also came to pass that in your synagogues your rabbis and preachers would let the word of God ring out each week in the language of the country, this too might play a part as an exceptional element that would stimulate some national and spiritual interests, bring you esteem and prestige, and promote a convergence that would be of equal, mutual benefit to both parties.