Chapter II

^{9 9} Chapter markings don’t appear in the Yiddish text until Chapter III; I follow Zucker in marking the first chapter break here (see Shlomo Zucker’s Hebrew translation in Ehud Luz, ed., Patzifizm LeOr HaTorah, Jerusalem: Dinur Center, Hebrew University, 1992). The development of his inborn aesthetic and moral sense was enhanced, on one hand, by the beautiful atmosphere of the village setting —the green fields and blooming orchards that provided the backdrop for his upbringing—and on the other hand, by the tragic circumstances of his parents’ lives—refined Jews who made their home in a large village full of half-wild goyim. The natural beauty of the rural environment affected his aesthetic sensibilities in a positive manner, by weaving his spirit into the forests and the fields. And the lonely predicament of a refined Jew in an environment full of boorish goyim who interacted in a hard and coarse manner even amongst themselves, and all the more so toward a Jew, a “heathen” (although the snakelike anti-Semitism of our “civilized” era was as of yet unknown to the naive peasants of the boy’s early years), affected his sentimental sensibilities in a negative manner, i.e., caused him to hate rudeness and mean-spiritedness. Most of all, he was turned against human malice by the troubles inflicted upon him by the peasant boys and their dogs on his walk through the long village each day in order to reach the cheder in the nearby town.

In addition, the contrast that the boy perceived between the raw character and rude behavior of the Gentile neighbors, as opposed to the delicate character and refined behavior of his parents, and the fact that the latter was intertwined with a strict observance of the religious laws—had no small impact on his religious feeling; it caused him to become quite pious, and planted within him a deep enthusiasm for yidishkeyt.

His religious disposition was also influenced by the Sabbaths and holidays that he experienced in his parents’ home. The indescribable Sabbath-spirit that hovered in the small cottage of a genteel, lonely Jew in the midst of a great village of boorish goyim; the indescribable Sabbath-idyll, which descended upon their little house suddenly as if from Heaven itself every Friday evening, when his mother, after an entire week of tumult with the goyim in the aqua vitae business, of wearing herself out to scrape together a few groschen for Sabbath delicacies, used to sweep out the house and spread the floor with yellow sand, bless the Sabbath candles with a quiet, fervent prayer, and blot out the existence of the accursed tavern for the duration of the Sabbath . . . An hour later, his father would return from the beys-medresh in town and make a devout kiddush. And the Sabbath meal, the way the special Sabbath dishes alternated with apt passages from the Zohar, which he studied by the table with his father, who explained the exalted words in Yiddish—all of this transported the sensitive child straight to paradise.

However, the shy youngster’s Eden was occasionally disturbed by the presence of a neighbor, a goy who—out of pure curiosity—would enter in the middle of the meal, sit himself down, and puff on his pipe until the entire house filled with smoke, looking upon the scene with something close to reverence.

Chapter III

Despite his parents’ isolation among the goyim, and his own troubles at the hands of their offspring, the boy harbored no animosity towards the Gentiles of the village, and in fact was on quite intimate terms with a few of them. In the summertime he used to sit in one of the neighbors’ courtyards near his barn, reading his Talmud lesson while the neighbor stacked sheaves or threshed in the barn.

During the Russo-Turkish War, this same neighbor received notice that his son had been killed in battle. The fallen soldier’s mother wept bitterly at the news—and the little Jewish boy wept with her. From that moment on, the boy’s consciousness was consumed by an awareness of the depravity of war. The same woman had a painting from the war hanging in her house, which depicted Russian soldiers attacking the Turks with bayonets. The boy used to stand glued to the image for hours on end, bewildered by the idea that human beings could become accustomed to such acts, and wondering how the soldiers could endure such dreadful circumstances. He was also quite astonished that the bereaved mother could tolerate having such an image in her home, compelling her always to look upon the cursed event which had left so many mothers bereaved.

As mentioned above, the existence of evil in the world tormented him from a young age—man’s maltreatment of his fellow man. But at that time, his concept of “the oppressor” was limited to “the goy,” considering his daily encounters with the village peasants, their wild progeny, and their ill-tempered hounds. And “the oppressed”—were Jews only, as far as he could conclude from his own and his father’s state ^{10 10} [Sic] —it is not clear why he excludes his mother here, considering that he includes her in the previous chapter; perhaps he is envisioning the archetypes of “oppressor” and “oppressed” here chiefly in terms of males acting in the public and/or political sphere. of isolation in the village.

Later on, when he was about thirteen or fourteen and could learn on his own in the Maltsher beys-medresh, he caught wind of a rumor that a secret society existed in Saint Petersburg, called “the shoshalists,” ^{11 11} ציציליסטן —A corruption of the word “socialist,” as spoken by rural people who did not know what the word meant, or with a mildly mocking connotation (see for example the usage in “Nakhes fun Kinder” by Joseph Tunkel). Here Tamares seems to be representing the word as it sounded to him the first time he heard it as a young teenager. who “wished to overthrow the Czar because he oppressed the people.” Some Jews were counted among the “shoshalists,” but most members were Gentile. “Could it be that goyim are sometimes also persecuted?” the boy wondered, astonished. He then quickly came up with an example, remembering the fallen soldier whose death he had mourned for several years alongside his unfortunate neighbor.

The young man came more and more to see war as the epitome of evil and slavery. Even all the constraints that Jews faced (and not only Jews in villages who suffered at the hands of the goyim, but also, as he had learned by then, Jews in the cities who suffered at the hands of the “nachal’stvo” ^{12 12} начальство, Russian, “authorities.” ) were, in his mind, as naught in comparison with the gruesome notion of stationing men in an open field and exposing them to a hail of bullets and shrapnel, not to mention the ignominious fact that the soldiers were conscripts who had been dragged there by force, like rams to a slaughterhouse.

When he was about nineteen, he traveled to Kovno to the Kollel HaPerushim, ^{13 13} Established by Rabbi Yisrael Salanter, founder of the musar movement. where he studied Talmud diligently. But in his free moments—unlike all the other young scholars, who used to discuss practical matters, such as rabbinic ordination and which cities had vacant rabbinic posts—he (and a few other scatterbrained dreamers he had collected in order to expound before them) spoke only of the slavery and evil afoot in the land, and the need to fight against them. By “slavery and evil,” he meant, again, war. And by “fight against them,” he did not mean terrorism—he did not advise throwing a bomb under some official’s stagecoach: firstly, because that would contradict the spirit of the Talmud, and secondly, because that in and of itself would be an act of war. Rather, the most desirable strategy was to educate the public: to instil in people the ability to differentiate between good and evil.

Once while walking in the city of Kovno, he passed a company of soldiers with switches tucked under their arms, on their way to a bathhouse. ^{14 14} For the purpose of gentle flagellation in the bathhouse, in order to open pores and enhance circulation. “Woe, woe,” he mourned their predicament in his heart, “they’re on their way to be massacred, yet meanwhile the poor things drag themselves to the bathhouse, just as if they were living men who could expect to have a future . . . ”

Another time he encountered a throng of soldiers singing as they marched across a bridge. “Tfui! May their memory be blotted out, the harebrained lot of them,” he thought to himself. “Tomorrow they’ll be lined up underneath a rain of shrapnel with only their skulls to protect them, and yet they spend today carousing in the streets.” They really did seem to have a screw or two loose, which only strengthened his conviction that education was the answer—half the problem was that people had terrible taste . . .

In 1890, he left Kovno for Volozhin, where he spent two years in the yeshiva, advanced further in his studies, and was deeply affected by the passion for Torah that characterized the atmosphere there. He also caught a whiff of Haskalah, and acquired some knowledge of the Russian language.

In 1893, without the least bit of effort on his part, he was hired as the rabbi of Milejczyce, succeeding his father-in-law, ^{15 15} It is interesting that Tamares does not choose to mention his wife or his family life as an adult anywhere else in this “biography,” aside from this quite oblique reference and one other (see part 2, chapter IX). who had passed away. But the struggle for freedom interested him more than the rabbinate; what interested him was not bringing harmony to his congregation, but rather bringing harmony to the world . . . .

And he did not lack the courage to dream of something as grand as “repairing the world,” despite the materially weak position of the Jewish people in the wider society, and his own materially weak position amongst the Jews.

Firstly, by that time his inborn tendency toward beauty and purity had fully ripened, and he was steel-willed in his pursuit of justice and integrity. In addition, he was by then worldly-wise: he had a deep, penetrating insight into the psychology of man, and therefore could orient himself with respect to society’s complications.

Secondly, his sense of vocation to “repair the world,” to fight for its liberation, rested primarily upon the merits of his ancestral nation, the Jewish people. For if according to his conception the problem must be confronted not by means of bombs but rather with “enlightenment” and moral education—who, then, is more fit for this task than the People of the Prophets and the Tannaim, ^{16 16}Tannaim: the rabbis whose debates were recorded in the Mishna (ca. 0-200 CE). a people whose history is fraught with martyrology?

Thirdly, vocation or no vocation, what did it matter? Either way, he was burdened, together with his tendency toward spiritual purity, with a fiery temperament that allowed him no rest as long as his most sacred values were being trodden underfoot. Had the world ever asked him what he wanted? Of course not! So why should he start asking the world for permission?

Chapter IV

Insofar as the Jewish people was, in his opinion, called by duty to purify the entire world—then his first task was to purify the Jewish world itself. He treated every rabbinic sermon as an opportunity to awaken his audience to the necessity of moral improvement. But the town was small, and local propaganda could bear only a negligible amount of fruit—so he also began to write for the newspapers. He became an author because the needs of the hour drove him to pour out his soul before the world, despite the fact that he had not yet had any training in the profession, and in fact had a poor command of Hebrew and had never even learned any grammar (later on he perfected his Hebrew and also acquired a certain amount of secular education). But the fire that burned within him forged its own language. His internal volcano, with its eruptions of sarcastic reproof against stupidity and evil, drew its lava from his mental warehouse of Torah: Talmudic aphorisms, Mishnaic expressions, Biblical flourishes. Those were the raw materials which he soldered into a unique style, and with which he cleared a pathway for himself into the public eye.

If the force behind his writing was a volcano, then it goes without saying that the articles themselves were made of fire. Those who were of the same mind warmed themselves at the flames and glowed with pleasure. As for the others—they gnashed their teeth.

At that time he encountered one of the spiritual impurities blighting the Jewish community: the habit of “sin-seeking,” or “Jesuitism.” ^{17 17} Jesuitism: hypocrisy, holier-than-thou behavior. The use of “Jesuit” to mean “hypocrite, sly manipulator” has been widespread in English as well during certain time periods (see the 1832 edition of Webster’s Dictionary, for example). He began to rail against this despicable phenomenon. Despite his fervent love for Torah and yidishkeyt, which he believed to be the best sources for the uplift of the spirit, he nevertheless considered compulsory piety to be an abomination. To presume to barge into someone else’s private space in order to sniff out a “posele tsitse” ^{18 18} A fringe on the corner of a garment (in accordance with Jewish law, as based on Numbers 15:38-39) that is invalid for a ritual reason. —this he considered to be an act of utter vulgarity and swinishness—the kind of barbarism that would be most likely to tarnish yidishkeyt in the eyes of the younger generation.

Chapter V

A little later, in 1897 and thereafter, the Zionist movement appeared on the scene: Herzl, congresses, Max Nordau on the platform lecturing down to his audience; his accusations against the nations and their governments in response to their persecution of Jews; and his demand: that they provide reparations for their wrongdoings by granting the Jews the Land of Israel. (Why they should make recompense for their wrongdoings by handing over foreign property, Ottoman land—this was a question which it did not occur to anyone to pose at that juncture….)

The aforementioned rabbi threw himself body and soul into this young movement, because he believed that Zionism was a movement devoted to freedom and justice, to the struggle against enslavement and evil. It was Nordau’s speeches that misled him thus . . . because he had not yet developed the insight necessary to evaluate the calls for “justice” which were ever-present on the lips of the Zionist activists—those activists who fought for the redemption not of people but of territories—or the copious tears which they shed over “stolen liberties” despite not yet having won independence, i.e., the opportunity to lord it over others. Unfortunately, he was not yet equipped to appraise the value of these antics, particularly since it was too early then to observe what would become of these dainty do-gooders once they got a taste of their preferred kind of “freedom” . . . the way the poor creatures would come to wring their hands and choke on the plague known as “freedom” . . .

At that time, the Sensitive Rabbi also believed that Zionism would provide an avenue for the spiritual uplift of the Jewish people and the revival of Jewish culture. He was misled on this count by the slogan “Merkaz Ruchani,” ^{19 19} “Spiritual center”: slogan of religious Zionism and source of the acronym “HaMizrahi” (religious Zionist party founded in 1902). which had just then emerged on the Jewish political scene, and which, aided by the polished, enthralling style of its author, captured the hearts of all of the Maskilic yeshiva students, ^{20 20} Although Tamares does not explain this explicitly in the essay, we know from other sources that he first became involved in religious Zionism during his time in the Volozhin Yeshiva. This appears to be an allusion to that period. for whom such a style—due to their unfamiliarity with European literature—was still a thrilling novelty. They were blinded by the brilliance of the style, and failed to recognize that it disguised an absence of content—it is a choice spirituality, a fine Judaism indeed that is dependent on possession of “our own courtyard.”

The moderates among the Orthodox ^{21 21} I.e., religious, as opposed to secular or Reform. population were similarly misled by the sycophantic kloyznikes, ^{22 22} Religious scholars; men whose occupation was to study in the beys-medresh—meant pejoratively, with the connotation “idler, good-for-nothing.” the well-known breed of kloyznik who is enamored of “Europeanism” in general and the title “Doctor” in particular. So as soon as “Herzl the European,” “Herzl the Doctor” deigned to descend from his elevated spheres into the “Jewish street,” ^{23 23} The Yiddish expression “di yidishe gas” (lit. “the Jewish street”) refers to the general public political and cultural realm of the Jewish community. and expressed his readiness to serve as its mayor—the kloyznikes jumped at the chance to become his lackeys. They pledged themselves to his service, along with all that was holy to them. Their propaganda was replete with lofty Bible verses and purple Rabbinic prose, which they showered upon the Zionist movement and upon its “great leader” (who, shortly prior to that, had had talks with a cardinal in Vienna about “repainting” ^{24 24} This probably refers to Herzl’s meeting with Antonio Agliardi, the papal nuncio in Vienna, in 1896, as part of the process of trying to recruit Vatican support for Jewish territorial control in Palestine. Later, in 1904, Herzl went to Rome to meet with Pope Pius X. The Pope’s response was notoriously unsympathetic: “ . . . if you come to Palestine and settle your people there, we shall have churches and priests ready to baptize all of you” (see Paul Charles Merkley, Christian Attitudes Towards the State of Israel, Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2001, p. 138). The implication here is that Herzl is willing to “turn the Jews over to the Pope” in return for territorial control in Palestine, an accusation that is not unfounded: Herzl once envisioned mass conversion as a road to full assimilation (see Jacques Kornberg, Theodor Herzl: From Assimilation to Zionism, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993, pp. 115-116), and considered suggesting it to the Pope as a bargaining chip for support of the Zionist project (see Merkley, 137). Here Tamares uses the image of “repainting” both to represent the idea of Jews who are willing to betray their “true colors” for the sake of Zionism, and to evoke the aspergillum, an implement similar in form to a paint brush which is used to sprinkle water during the Catholic rite of baptism. See also Tamares’s use of the same image below in Chapter VIII (third paragraph). the entire Jewish people) . . . In this way, the kloyznikes captured many hearts, including the better part of Orthodoxy.

Additionally, the Sensitive Rabbi was also drawn deeper into Zionism by the fact that the old guard of Orthodoxy had taken a stand against Zionism in the name of “sin-seeking,” a pursuit towards which this proponent of purification of the religious milieu was already quite ill-disposed from previous experience. And what’s more, he thought to himself, how dare these “God’s policemen” impose their “sin-inspections” upon the heroes who have set forth to redeem the world?

In short, it was too much. So he came out with fiery articles under the title “Recompense for the Controversy of Zion” ^{25 25} See Isaiah 34:8. (in HaMelitz, 1899 ^{26 26} Vol. 39: Nos. 56-70, excluding No. 61 (19-23, 29-31 March and 4-7, 9-10 April 1899). See also his second series of articles published under the same title, also in HaMelitz: Vol. 40: Nos. 14-29 (30-31 January and 1-2, 4-9, 11-16 February 1900). ), signed as “One of the Sensitive.” ^{27 27} Author’s footnote: “This is how he signed the first of his articles in the series ‘Recompense for the Controversy of Zion,’ in order to conceal the fact that the author was a rabbi, and also in order to emphasize that the reader should not expect a polished style or scientific proof, but rather the sentiments that gush forth from a pumping heart. However, the editorial board of HaMelitz revealed that the author was a rabbi, out of a desire to heighten the effect of the article. Therefore, in the subsequent articles, the author did not feel the need to conceal his profession, and signed the articles ‘One of the Sensitive Rabbis,’ which remained his standard alias thereafter.” In the articles, he aimed a much-deserved tongue-lashing at the “Orthodox Jesuits,” and at the same time showered the Zionist “idealists” with the customary praise.

At that time he was still young and inexperienced. As a result he believed that “Jesuitism” was a peculiarity of Orthodoxy; ^{28 28} I.e., specifically the organized religious Jewish community as it existed as a political force in his era, rather than orthodoxy as an abstract sociocultural or theological generality. he did not yet know that all ruling parties demonstrate such a tendency, and that the Orthodox exhibited “Jesuitism” only because it was they who ruled over the “Jewish street” at the time.

The reading public seized upon his articles and devoured them with great anticipation. There were readers who did not have the patience to wait for the postman, and ran straight to the post office to pick up the next installment.

After HaMelitz ran the aforementioned series of articles, the Sensitive Rabbi received a request from the Kovno Zionists for permission to reprint the articles in pamphlet-form. He gave his permission.