LETTERS
To the Editor,
In his essay "Contemporary
Hebrew Literature" in
Partisan
Review
(Number 1, 1982), Amos
Oz makes a few statements that
simply startle-and cause one to
reflect on how alienated contempo–
rary Hebrew writers are from
Yiddish literature. There was a
time, not long ago, when Hebrew
writers felt at home in the Yiddish
literary world, and Yiddish writers
in the Hebrew literary world-and
now, it seems, the break between
Hebrew writers and Yiddish writ–
ers is so complete.
Amos Oz calls a number of
Hebrew writers madmen and des–
perados-because "They were
after all excellent writers. All of
them could easily write in Yiddish
which at that time was still the lan–
guage of millions and which inci–
dentally was the native tongue of
them all."
He then asks: Why did the
writers reconstruct the Jewish
world "which was still alive in
Yiddish, and still creative and
vivacious in Yiddish, and still blos–
soming in Yiddish-" in Hebrew
and not in
Yiddish.
He asks point
blank, "Why and how did they do
all this in Hebrew rather than in
Yiddish?" And who are the writ–
ers-who, according to Oz,
ignored Yiddish and wrote in
Hebrew? They are, he enumer–
ates, Mendele, Berdichevsky,
Bialik, Brenner, and Gnessin.
Well, Mendele, or Mendele
Mokher Sforim (S. J. Abramo-
witch) was the founder of modern
Yiddish literature. He began writ–
ing in Hebrew, but in 1862 turned
to Yiddish, renewing and refresh–
ing Yiddish literature. His twenty
volumes of Yiddish prose constI–
tute a major achievement for him
and for Yiddish literature.
Bialik was primarily a
Hebrew poet-but he wrote
poems in Yiddish, and translated
into Yiddish poems by Yehuda
Halevi and Heinrich Heine.
Together with his collaborator
Ravnitsky, he translated and
edited in Yiddish the old Talmudic
Legends, and with Mendele and
Ravnitsky he began to translate
the Bible into Yiddish. Unfortu–
nately the project was abandoned
at the outbreak of World War
I.
Berdichevsky contributed sto–
ries and monologues to the mili–
tant-Yiddishist and anti-Hebraist
weekly
Dos Yidishe Vort,
which
the Yiddish poet and short story
writer Abraham Raisen published
in Cracow in 1905. Berdichevsky's
Yiddish stories were published in
six volumes in 1924, and recent–
ly the Hebrew University in
Jerusalem published
~ s~lec
tion of his Yiddish stones
In
a
special edition for students of
Yiddish literature.
The only one from the group
who did not write in Yiddish was
Gnessin. But he died in 1913 at the
age of 34. Had he lived longer,
perhaps he would start also to
write in Yiddish.
Elias Schulman
Editor,
Der
uecker
New York, New York
