Kalman Weiser A Tale of Two Pryłuckis: On the Origins of the Warsaw Yiddish Press The history of the modern Yiddish-language press in Poland is inextricably entwined with the careers of two Ukrainian Jews — Zwi Pryłucki, founder of Warsaw’s first Yiddish daily, Der Veg (1905y1907) and editor of Der Moment (1910y39), and his son Noah, best known for his work in Yiddish philology and leadership of the interwar Folkspartey. One of two journalistic families to dominate the Warsaw Yiddish newspaper scene (the other was the ‘family’ of Samuel Jackan, publisher of Haynt),1 the Pryłuckis helped to build the Yiddish press into the most effective means for the diffusion of Jewish politics and culture to a mass audience. Father and son typified the new breed of Jewish cultural leader — part ideologist, part entrepreneur — that laid the foundations of modern Jewish culture in Congress Poland. Their experiences illuminate not only the sociocultural currents within Polish Jewry during the early decades of the twentieth century but also the transformative role of Yiddish newspapers as both products of modernity and modernizing agents. * Zwi (Hirsch-Scholem) Pryłucki (1862y1942) was educated in the Volhynian town of Krzemieniec, long a center of the haskalah movement, where the noted maskil Isaac Baer Levinsohn had been active earlier in the century. His father, Nahman, had been Levinsohn’s personal friend. Nahman Pryłucki subscribed to the Russian press and to Jewish newspapers in Hebrew, * 1 Thanks to the editors of Gal-Ed and to the anonymous readers for their assistance. Nathan Cohen, ‘An Ugly and Repulsive Idler or a Talented and Seasoned Editor: S. Y. Yatzkan and the Beginnings of the Popular Yiddish Press in Warsaw,’ Jews in Russia and Eastern Europe 1y2 [54y55] (2005):28y53. Gal-Ed 22 (2010) 89 Kalman Weiser Polish, and Russian.2 He also enjoyed cordial relations with local tsarist officials, most notably military officers, who discussed politics and current events in his store.3 Zwi Pryłucki studied both traditional Jewish subjects and European languages in his native town. In 1880 he began auditing courses at the Universities of Kiev and Berlin. That same year he contributed an article entitled ‘Shivat Tsiyon’ (Return to Zion), inspired by Byron’s ‘Hebrew Melodies,’ to the Hebrew journal HaBoker Or. Shortly thereafter he became the leading spirit of the local Hibbat-Tsiyon society, promoting Jewish colonization in Palestine and the cultivation of Hebrew as a modern literary language and spoken idiom. During the early 1890s he regularly hosted the Safah Berurah society, which promoted quotidian Hebrew conversation in the Sefardic pronunciation.4 He also worked to organize modern Jewish schools in which practical subjects and trades would be taught in addition to traditional religious subjects. In recognition of these endeavors he was inducted into Bnei Moshe, the elite Zionist coterie founded by Ahad Ha’am in 1889.5 Zwi Pryłucki took great pains to inculcate a passion for Jewish history and Hebrew in Noah, his first-born son. Although in his memoirs the elder Pryłucki revealed little about his family life, he mentioned Noah frequently and with pride. Though born in Berdichev, Noah (1882y1941) returned to Krzemieniec for schooling, attending a state school between 1891y94, where he excelled in Russian language and literature. At the same time his father and other tutors taught him Hebrew, Bible, and Jewish history.6 As he later recalled, it was under the influence of this milieu that he composed his first publicistic article, about Jewish colonization in Argentina, in Hebrew at age 10.7 After completing the Krzemieniec elementary school, Noah remained at 2 3 4 5 6 7 90 Marian Fuks, ‘Poczet publicystów i dziennikarzy żydowskich,’ Biuletyn Żydowskiego Instytutu Historycznego 1y2/133y134 (1985): 69. Memoirs of Zwi Pryłucki, Yad Vashem Archives, Jerusalem, M10/175, I, 144. On this society see Benjamin Harshav, Language in Time of Revolution, Berkeley 1993, p. 84. On Pryłucki’s involvement see H. Hoykhgelernter, ‘Kurtse geshikhte fun Kremenits,’ in Kremenits, Vizshgorodek un Potshayev yizker-bukh. Buenos Aires 1965, p. 59; Noyekh Prilutski, ‘Koshere asimilatorn,’ in idem., Barg-aroyf. Warsaw 1917, pp. 166y88. Letters betwen Pryłucki and other members of Bnei Moshe are found in the Bnei Moshe collection (A35/89), Central Zionist Archives, Jerusalem. B. Khilinovitsh, ‘Noyekh Prilutski,’ in Noyekh Prilutski, In Poyln: Kimat a publitsist togbukh, 1905y1911, Warsaw, 1921, pp. IyIV. ‘Noyekh Prilutski,’ Literarishe bleter 18 (1931):329. A Tale of Two Pryłuckis home for a year, studying Talmud, Bible, and Hebrew grammar under the tutelage of a respected local scholar. In 1896 he moved to Sandomierz, where he registered for a course that would prepare him for admission to a gymnasium. Thus began his first extended stay in Congress Poland, which led eventually to intimate acquaintance with Polish Jewry and Polish society. He later recalled that during his two years there he became more familiar than before with the so-called folksmasn (the popular Yiddish term for the Jewish masses, especially those segments lacking higher secular or religious education), including their manner of speaking and their unique jokes. He also viewed his first purim-shpil (a subject he later revisited as a scholar) and transcribed the play in a notebook.8 After completing the preparatory course with distinction in 1898, Noah Pryłucki entered Warsaw’s Third Gymnasium.9 That year also inaugurated four decades of journalistic collaboration between father and son. The collaboration began when, after some bad business dealings, Zwi Pryłucki abandoned his dry goods store and itinerant Zionist activism, moved to St. Petersburg, and joined the staff of the Hebrew daily HaMelits. Soon he became the newspaper’s editor for political affairs, writing a regular column entitled Pinkas Katan. Simultaneously he wrote for the Russian Jewish journal Budushchnost’ and contributed sporadically to the Hebrew publications HaZeman and HaTsefirah.10 With his journalistic career launched, Zwi suggested to his eighteen-yearold son that he contribute to a new Yiddish publication, Bleter fun a togbukh, for which the father had also written. The suggestion was curious for two reasons. In the first place, like many of his contemporary east European Jewish intellectuals, Noah Pryłucki had hitherto expressed distaste for Yiddish.11 Although as an adult he was celebrated for the ‘folksy’ quality of his Yiddish speech, Pryłucki did not consider himself a native Yiddish speaker. ‘My true mother tongue,’ he recalled in a 1930 autobiographical sketch, ‘was Russian, the second, Hebrew, in which I tried for years to feel at home. My Yiddish, on the other hand, was poor and raw.’12 Indeed, although there is Noyekh Prilutskis zamlbikher far yidishn folklor, filologye un kultur-geshikhte. Warsaw 1912. 9 Khilinovitsh, “Noyekh Prilutski,” p. IV. 10 Dovid Druk, Tsu der geshikhte fun der yidisher prese, Warsaw 1920, p. 23; Marian Fuks, Prasa żydowska w Warszawie 1823y1939, Warsaw 1979, p. 70. 11 Khilinovitsh, ‘Noyekh Prilutski,’ p. II 12 Noyekh Prilutski, ‘“Der veg”: A bintl zikhroynes,’ Der moment 176 (15 August 1930). 8 91 Kalman Weiser testimonial evidence that Yiddish was spoken in the Pryłucki home, the young Noah had not consciously cultivated the language in the way he had worked to master the Russian and Hebrew literary idioms.13 Until adolescence he was undoubtedly accustomed to hearing, speaking, and perhaps even reading Yiddish in informal settings, but he did not consider using it for ‘higher’ intellectual purposes. Such ostensibly higher purposes included journalism. At the time, the Yiddish press in the Russian Empire was sparse. Although Aleksander Zederbaum, founder of HaMelits, had published two newspapers in Yiddish, Kol mevaser (1862y71) and Dos Yudishe Folksblat (1882y90), Russian officials routinely rejected applications to establish additional Yiddish periodicals on the grounds that Russian censors were ignorant of the Jewish vernacular and that the applicants were politically unreliable. One way around this effective ban was to publish journals on an irregular schedule, which placed them in the category of books instead of newspapers. Bleter fun a togbukh, to which both Pryłuckis contributed, began to appear on such a basis in 1900. It featured popular scientific articles, a genre then very much in vogue among Jewish youth seeking knowledge of the natural and non-Jewish worlds, while avoiding politics and reportage in order to pass tsarist censors more easily. Another stratagem was to import periodicals produced abroad. Toward the end of the nineteenth century two new Yiddish newspapers edited in Warsaw — Der yud (1899y1903) and Yidishe Folkstsaytung (1902y1903) — were printed across the Austrian border in Kraków, then mailed back to Russia to be inspected by the imperial censor and distributed to subscribers. However, these encumbrances meant that it took at least two weeks for articles to reach readers. These newspapers were primarily literary and theatre reviews; like Bleter, they contained little news or publicistic material.14 Hence, in the first decade of the twentieth 13 According to Eliyahu Pryłucki, a relative who lived in Zwi Pryłucki’s home in Warsaw in 1932y33, the Pryłucki household was decidedly a Yiddish-speaking one. Interview with Eliyahu Prylucki, Haifa, 1999. See also Nathan Cohen, ‘Zikhronot Tsvi Prilutski: Te’udah merateket leHeker itonut yidish beVarshah,’ in D. Assaf et al, eds., MiVilna liYrushalayim: Mehkarim beToldoteihem veTarbutam shel yehudei mizrah eiropah, mugashim leProfesor Shmuel Verses, Jerusalem 2002, pp. 385y402; Priluckis, Noachas, ‘Anketa,’ 11 December 1940, Vilnius University Papers, F. R856, Ap.2, B. 1123, Lietuvos Valystubės Archyvas, Vilnius. 14 David Fishman, ‘The Politics of Yiddish in Tsarist Russia,’ in Jacob Neusner et al, eds., From Ancient Israel to Modern Judaism: Intellect in Quest of Understanding: Essays in Honor of Marvin Fox, Providence 1989, pp. 161y62; Fuks, Prasa żydowska, p. 130. 92 A Tale of Two Pryłuckis century a Yiddish newspaper that could react immediately to local events in the Russian Empire remained an acute need for the Empire’s Jews. In Congress Poland the need was especially clear. Before 1905 the Jewish press there was dominated by the Hebrew HaTsefirah and the Polish-language Izraelita, both linguistically inaccessible and ideologically foreign to the vast majority of Polish Jews, who spoke Yiddish and were traditionally religious. Recognizing the commercial and cultural potential of a Yiddish daily in the Polish capital, Zwi Pryłucki addressed a memorandum to Russian Interior Minister Vyacheslav Plehve in 1902, arguing that a Yiddish periodical did not necessarily need to be subversive. Content, not language, he maintained, determined whether a printed item brought beneficial or harmful consequences. Indeed, he pointed out, no one had ever suggested banning Russian in order to prevent revolutionary newspapers from appearing in that language. He also asserted that the Russian censor for Jewish publications would be able to verify the content of a Yiddish newspaper.15 Evidently Plehve’s interest was piqued by the prospect of using Yiddish as an instrument to combat revolutionary activity among Jews, specifically to counter the influence of the underground Bundist press.16 Perhaps swayed by Prylucki’s arguments, Plehve approved new ‘test’ concessions for two Yiddish and two Hebrew newspapers. However, by the time Pryłucki learned of his decision, all four concessions had already been claimed.17 15 Druk, Tsu der geshikhte, Warsaw 1920, pp. 23y24. Fishman, ‘Politics,’ pp. 161y63; Shaul Ginzburg, ‘Ershte yidishe tsaytung in rusland, “Der fraynd”,’ in idem., Amolike peterburg, New York 1944, 186y89. 16 Fishman, ‘Politics,’ p. 162. Ginzburg, ‘Ershte yidishe tsaytung,’ p. 187, suggests that Plehve hoped to use a Yiddish newspaper in order to agitate for mass Jewish immigration from Russia. 17 One Yiddish concession was awarded to Shabtai Rappoport, a partner in HaMelits, who established Imperial Russia’s first Yiddish daily, Der Fraynd, in St. Petersburg in January 1903. The second, granted to Natan Golubov, official translator for the Warsaw Provincial Polish Administration, initially went unused after the governor general of the city refused to confirm it (purportedly because of Golubov’s Zionist sympathies). It was quickly snatched, however, by Leon Rabinowicz, editor of HaMelits and Bleter fun a togbukh, who founded Der Tog in St. Petersburg in 1904, moving it a year later to Wilno, where it billed itself as ‘the first Yiddish daily in the Jewish Pale.” The Hebrew concessions went to Ben Zion Katz for HaZeman (St. Petersburg) and E. E. Friedman for HaTsofeh (Warsaw). For a study of Der fraynd, see Sarah Abrevaya Stein, Making Jews Modern: The Yiddish and Ladino Press in the Russian and Ottoman Empires, Bloomington 2004; Simkhe Lev, ‘Tsu der geshikhte fun der yidisher prese in poyln,’ in idem., Prokim yidishe geshikhte, Brooklyn 1941, p. 179; Druk, Tsu der geshikhte, p. 93 Kalman Weiser Zwi Pryłucki nevertheless soon became editor of a Yiddish daily, when a Jew from Lithuania approached him for assistance in obtaining a concession for a Yiddish newspaper. This anonymous ‘Litvak,’ as he is identified in Noah Pryłucki’s recollections, was most likely an illegal resident of St. Petersburg who earned his living as an agent for members of the Russian aristocracy seeking to conceal their financial speculations. Eager for the broker’s fees he could collect by leasing a newspaper concession under his own name, he explained the undertaking to his titled clients as a way to rescue himself from financial straights. As a result he received their eager backing. Yet despite his clients’ political connections, he needed someone with the name and experience of the elder Pryłucki as well. He hoped that Pryłucki, who had recently left HaMelits and was then unemployed, would help him navigate the appropriate government channels and overcome potential objections from Plehve, who had come to regret having permitted even a single Yiddish newspaper.18 Pryłucki might have overcome Plehve’s resistance, but an assassin ended the interior minister’s life in July 1904. In hopes of deflecting mounting revolutionary unrest, Plehve’s successors became more amenable to reforms, including reconsideration of restrictions on the Yiddish press. Accordingly, on 17 April 1905, Pryłucki’s patron was authorized to publish a Yiddish daily. Though the initial plan called for the newspaper to appear in St. Petersburg, Pryłucki and his patron managed to have the concession transferred to Warsaw, closer to the demographic center of its intended readership.19 On 1 August 1905 the first edition of Der Veg appeared, catalyzing Warsaw’s emergence as the “metropolis of the Yiddish press in eastern Europe.”20 24; Fuks, Prasa żydowska, pp. 130y31; A. Kirzhnits, Di yidishe prese in der gevezener rusisher imperye (1823y1916), Moscow 1930. 18 Noyekh Prilutski, ‘Der “veg”: A bintl zikhroynes,” Der moment 176 (15 August 1930). 19 A postcard from Noah Pryłucki to Zionist leader Menahem Ussishin, sent during Passover 1905, suggests that the transfer was the idea of Prylucki père: ‘I report to you that my father received a permit to publish here a daily newspaper in the jargon language. Its name is “The Way” (Der veg). The permit was given for Petersburg, but my father wishes to transfer the newspaper to the Pale of Settlement.’ Central Zionist Archives, Jerusalem (henceforth CZA), A24/117/II. In his reminiscences, Noah Prylucki attributed the decision to himself; Prilutski, ‘Der “veg”.’ 20 Khone Shmeruk, ‘Strikhn tsu der geshikhte fun dem yidishn literarishn tsenter in varshe,” in idem., Prokim fun der yidisher literatur-geshikhte. Tel-Aviv 1988, p. 304. On the founding of Der Veg, see Druk, Tsu der geshikhte, pp. 33y34; Fuks, Prasa żydowska, p. 135; Prilutski, ‘Der “veg’.” 94 A Tale of Two Pryłuckis * When he came to Warsaw in 1905, Zwi Pryłucki encountered a Jewish community far larger and more diverse than the one he had known in St. Petersburg, where the roughly twenty thousand highly acculturated Jews made up less than two percent of the city’s population. In Warsaw, by contrast, Jews composed more than a third of the population and were overwhelmingly Yiddish-speaking and Orthodox. Warsaw Jewry was also economically and socially variegated and politically divided into rival and often mutually hostile factions, including a growing segment of Jews who, mobilized by the socialist Bund and various Zionist parties, identified themselves as members of a modern secular Jewish nation. Moreover, the Jews of Warsaw were caught in the midst of a political and cultural struggle between the imperial regime and Polish society. In particular, most Polish political parties were alarmed by calls to recognize Jews as a nation, seeing in them a challenge to their preference for a culturally homogeneous Poland. They preferred the more Polonized Jews who called themselves Assimilationists, who from 1867 until after the First World War held a majority of seats in the Warsaw Jewish community board (kehile). Despite Orthodox leaders’ principled opposition to them as bearers of modern and secular currents, the Assimilationists and the Orthodox (especially the city’s hasidic Jews) agreed that Jews constituted a religious group, not a national one. Thus they generally preferred to cooperate with one another in kehile affairs against nationally-minded Jewish political parties In this context the latter parties made vigorous use of the Jewish and especially the Yiddish press. They did so in order to help Jews cultivate a modern political consciousness and a sense of nationhood. At the time Poland’s largely traditional Jewish readers, accustomed to perusing religious texts at specified times, were still acquiring modern reading habits, and Warsaw’s Jews were largely unaccustomed to reading Yiddish. A Yiddish readership had begun to take shape in the preceding century through newspapers like Kol mevaser and Yiddish popular novels, but it reached a critical mass only in the early twentieth century. Until then the genres of literature and news reporting, with their specialized vocabularies and styles, remained largely unfamiliar to readers. Moreover, 95 Kalman Weiser a secular press that asked Jews to turn to it for guidance in daily life faced opposition from religious leaders for undermining traditional values and rabbinic authority.21 Much credit in preparing a readership for the Yiddish press in Poland must go to Zwi Pryłucki. Though an advocate of the revival of Hebrew, he came to value Yiddish greatly as a vehicle for popular education and spreading the ‘Jewish national renaissance’.22 Accordingly he developed the art known as lezhanke-politik, a style of writing about politics in a folksy manner suited to traditional Jewish males unschooled in contemporary affairs.23 That style helped draw a huge Orthodox readership, including hasidim, to his newspaper despite religious strictures. The fact that he had been raised in affluence and embodied bourgeois Jewish sensibilities appealed to conservative readers as well. Indeed, the memoirs of contemporaries frequently described him as a person who sought to avoid conflict. As writer and journalist Melech Rawicz put it, ‘For Zwi Pryłucki the entire world was, or ought to have been, like a room in the softened light of an abat-jour. And everyone around him is supposed to go about in slippers. There is no reason to get excited.’24 Pryłucki envisioned Der veg as a general encyclopedia compiled by a team of experts with a mission to educate the Jewish public. He and his printer, the engineer Y. B. Ippo, outfitted the newspaper’s offices in grand style. The offices occupied an entire floor and a garden on Leszno Street. According to Pryłucki, Ippo maintained that Jews and non-Jews alike would be impressed with the offices and thus thus be more inclined to advertise in the paper and subscribe to it.25 Indeed, the newspaper became a tourist attraction for curious locals. 21 Shmeruk, ‘Strikhn,’ p. 307; Tony Michels, A Fire in their Hearts: Yiddish Socialists 22 23 24 25 96 in New York, Cambridge, MA 2005, pp. 109y10; Scott Ury, Red Banner, Blue Star: Radical Politics, Democratic Institutions and Collective Identity Among Jews in Warsaw, 1904y1907, unpublished PhD dissertation, Hebrew University, Jerusalem, 2006, p. 175. See, for example, Pi (Tsvi Prilutski), Vos dertseyln di khanuke-likhtlekh? Warsaw 1913. See the observations by A. Mukdoni, In varshe un in lodzh, p. 232. The term lezhanke denotes the oven itself around which men gathered ‘on cold winter nights... in the synagogue.’ Melech Rawicz, Mayn leksikon: Yidishe shraybers, kinstlers, aktyorn, oykh klal-tuers in di Amerikes un andere lender, Tel Aviv 1980y82, 2:137. On the other hand, he did not compromise his principles. He engaged in debates about politics in the press and stood trial more than once for fomenting sedition by spreading provocative and false information as an editor. On his trials as editor of Der veg, see, for example, Memoirs of Zevi Prylucki, Yad Vashem Archives, M10/175, III, 1y16 (henceforth Pryłucki memoirs). Pryłucki memoirs, I, 7. A Tale of Two Pryłuckis Nevertheless, the newspaper’s ideological orientation and the fact that it published in Yiddish invited enmity from Warsaw’s other newspapers. Nearly all contributors to Der veg were Zionists or sympathetic to Zionist aspirations, and the daily bore a populist-Zionist coloring, although it never became a party organ.26 The paper adopted an aggressive line against the Polish Progressives, who, while supporting Jewish civil rights, opposed granting them national rights. It also opposed the antisemitic National Democratic Party (Endecja) and the Jewish Assimilationists.27 Except for the moderate Kurier Warszawski, Polish newspapers were unwilling to publish advertisements for Der veg.28 Similarly, except for the then-socialists Wacław Sieroszewski and Stanisław Kempner, an Assimilationist and principled opponent of preserving Yiddish among Jews, editors of Polish newspapers would not speak with Pryłucki at a meeting convened by the tsarist censor committee in late 1905. Pryłucki was especially offended by this snubbing, unfamiliar to him from St. Petersburg, especially because he had begun to study Polish specifically in order to communicate with Polish-speaking colleagues.29 Like Der fraynd, the model for Yiddish newspapers in this period, Der veg resembled a Russian newspaper in its layout and its emphasis on literature. The first sixty issues featured a galaxy of the best-known Jewish authors of the time, including the classic figures of Yiddish literature — Mendele Moykher Sforim, Sholem Aleichem, and Y. L. Peretz — and younger authors then debuting, like Isaac Meir Weissenberg, Sholem Asch, Lamed Shapiro, Yente Serdatski, Moshe Taytsh, David Einhorn, David Druk, Aleksander 26 Nevertheless, the newspaper appears to have been eager to receive Zionist financial support and willing to become a party organ. See the correspondence between Pryłucki and Menachem Ussishkin, CZA, A24/117/II. 27 Noyekh Prilutski, ‘“Der veg”,’ Der moment 176. 28 Kurier Warszawski was long owned by Salomon Lewental (Franciszek Salezy, 1841?y1902). A bookseller and publisher active in Jewish community affairs, Lewenthal was a graduate of the Warsaw rabbinical seminary who converted to Catholicism. His wife Hortensja, daughter of the Warsaw Jewish philanthropist Mathias Bersohn, became the newspaper’s owner after his death. Lewental, Salomon (Franciszek Salezy),” Polski Słownik Biograficzny 17:220y21; Stephen D. Corrsin, Warsaw Before the First World War: Poles and Jews in the Third City of the Russian Empire, 1880y1914, Boulder, CO 1989, p. 36. Initially reluctant to advertise Der veg, Kurjer Warszawski agreed to announce the arrival of the newspaper in Latin but not Hebrew letters, allegedly because doing so would oblige it on principle to publish announcements in Russian too. Pryłucki memoirs, I, 18y19. 29 Pryłucki memoirs, I, 28y29. 97 Kalman Weiser Kapel, and A. Orbach. The editorial board included such established literary names as Isidor Eliashev (Bal-Makhshoves), Hersh-David Nomberg, and A. L. Jakubowicz. Although its contributors were often close to high political circles in the capital, news was seldom fresh and little could be published of current public affairs, monthly bribes of 25 rubles notwithstanding. A rather zealous censor in Warsaw, to whom all galleys had to be brought before going to press, tended to discover seditious content even where no such intent was present. Still, the periodical enjoyed great popularity among Jewish readers, both because of its high-quality literary section and because Der fraynd arrived from St. Petersburg with a two-day delay. Der fraynd was also more interested in political affairs in exotic locales like South Africa and America than in events in Congress Poland, a reflection of a Russocentrism that understandably did not appeal to Polish Jews.30 After initial success, Der veg’s fortunes took a turn for the worse. Government repressions, libel and sedition suits, changes in content dictated by the preventive censor,31 and manifold difficulties of distribution were bad for business. In Warsaw the sale of individual newspapers was poorly organized, and vendors were reluctant to carry them, deeming their sale for profit shameful or fearing that the conspicuous sale of Jewish newspapers might discourage purchasers of other publications. It was necessary to acquire permits from Polish governors in order to sell Warsaw Yiddish newspapers in provincial bookstores. Because existing bookstores were initially reluctant to carry Yiddish newspapers, permits also had to be obtained to open new ones. The heavy cost of traveling representatives and sales agents (who often considered their work a favor to the publishers and refrained from submitting monies they collected) further depleted the newspaper’s capital base. Advertisements did not generate major revenue, so subscriptions 30 Druk, Tsu der geshikhte, pp. 39y42; Stein, Making Jews Modern, pp. 34y35. 31 Both the printed word and theatre fell under the purview of the Warsaw Censorship Board, which implemented Empire-wide censorship statutes. It decided what could be published or printed in Poland, as well as what could be imported from abroad. For more about censorship in Poland during this period, see Zenon Kmiecik, ‘Prasa polska w królestwie polskim i imperium rosyjskim w latach 1865y1904,’ in Zenon Kmiecik et al, Prasa polska w latach 1864y1918, Warsaw 1976, pp. 11y13; Michael Jerry Ochs, St. Petersburg and the Jews of Russian Poland, 1862y1905, unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard University, 1986, pp. 122y23. 98 A Tale of Two Pryłuckis remained the primary source of income for Der veg, whose newsstand price was two kopeks.32 The strikes accompanying the revolutionary events of October 1905 forced Der veg to suspend publication. It resumed after a brief hiatus with a two-page edition. Yet contact with provincial areas was impaired, sales dropped, and several associates ceased work. Fearful that Poland’s first Yiddish daily would go under, Noah Pryłucki took over the duties of both day and night editor. Still, personal frictions between the editorial board and the paper’s business managers, along with poor finances, caused Der veg to close only three months after its founding. It was, however, revived in a smaller, more attractive format, including a new masthead, and with a reduced regular staff in late November 1905. In its new incarnation it adopted a more pronounced political orientation, as heralded on the cover page of the renewed series’s first issue: ‘Our slogan is self-sufficiency, civil and national rights for our people, freedom, social and economic justice for the broad folksmasn. We deem securing and broadening our position in Palestine, our historic homeland, one of the most important tasks of Jewry.’33 Indeed, taking advantage of the unclear postrevolutionary censorship regulations, the revived Der veg devoted more space to current political and economic issues than it had before. Noah Pryłucki profited from his position on the newspaper’s staff to refine his political views and sharpen his writing skills. During his time at Der veg he also made pioneering contributions as a theatre critic. A profilic writer, he occasionally penned as many four articles a day on issues close to his heart, such as the 1905 Zionist Congress in Basel, Jews and unrest in the universities, the need for chairs in the minority languages and literatures of the Russian Empire (including Yiddish) at the University of Warsaw, and the effects of the 1905 school strike upon Jewish youth.34 His publicistic articles and literary overviews were popular with readers, whom he sought to educate toward national awareness.35 He also caused a sensation when, disguised as a 32 Fuks, Prasa żydowska, p. 137; Druk, Tsu der geshikhte, pp. 38y39; Pryłucki memoirs, I, 19y21. 33 Der veg 67 (7 December / 24 November 1905) 34 Noyekh Prilutski, ‘“Der veg”;’ Noyekh Prilutski, ‘Tsu der frage vegn varshever universitet,’ Der veg, 26 April 1906. 35 “Noyekh Prilutski,” in Zalmen Reisen, Leksikon fun der yidisher literatur, prese un filologye, Wilno 1930, 3:218. 99 Kalman Weiser railway official, he gained entrance to Siedlce for a daring scoop on the 1906 pogrom in that city.36 Nevertheless, despite increased revenue from advertising and the newspaper’s popularity, especially during the Duma elections in 1906, financial woes and government repression again undermined its wellbeing. When reaction set in following the October Manifesto, censorship tightened even more than earlier, and the sale of newspapers was suspended throughout Poland. Newspaper issues were confiscated for such offenses as criticism of public officials, expression of allegedly excessive enthusiasm on Polish patriotic holidays, and calls by Leftists to support class struggle. Editors judged guilty of such infractions were arrested and fined and their publications suspended (though the journals often reappeared under new titles).37 Newspaper boys and hawkers were dissuaded from carrying the paper by beatings and imprisonment. In this climate the circulation of Der veg declined significantly.38 Attempts were made to prop up Der veg’s sagging financial base by creating an evening edition. Issue 118, appearing on the evening of 10 June 1906, was the first of its kind in the Jewish press. Another strategy was to share profits from a sister Hebrew newspaper to be printed on the same machinery. That publication, HaYom, was founded with the expectation that Jewish notables would contribute funds to a new Hebrew newspaper after the closing of HaTsefirah left Warsaw without a Hebrew daily. These strategies proved insufficient, however, in the face of competition from the city’s first one-kopek paper, Shmuel Jackan’s sensationalist Yidishes tageblat. Consequently, Der veg, whose price had increased to three kopeks, closed finally in January 1907. Earlier, in August 1906, facing the paper’s impending liquidation and expecting to withdraw from the enterprise in light of friction with the publishers, Zwi Pryłucki founded his own short-lived 36 Pryłucki memoirs, I, 32; M. K-ski, ‘Di yoyvl-fayerung fun Noyekh Prilutski,’ Der moment 106 (8 May 1931). 37 Corrsin, Warsaw Before the First World War, p. 71. Noah Pryłucki convinced his father to cease paying bribes to the censor, who eventually ‘took vengeance.’ Noyekh Prilutski, ‘“Der veg”;’ Pryłucki memoirs, III, 1y16. 38 As estimated by Zwi Prylucki, circulation declined from 16y18,000 on weekdays and 25,000 on the weekend in summer 1906 to 13y14,000 daily. Zwi Pryłucki to Ussishkin, 13 November 1906, CZA, A24/117/II. Fuks, citing the figures of the Warsaw Censor Committee, offered the more modest circulation figure of 9,000 for 1906; Fuks, Prasa żydowska, Appendix 2. 100 A Tale of Two Pryłuckis daily, Di naye tsaytung. This venture lasted only three months.39 Around the same time, before the final closing of Der veg, he began to contribute publicistic materials to Fraytik, Mordechai Spektor’s attempt to provide Warsaw a serious weekly newspaper and literary journal modeled on the Russian Ponedelnik. It too failed to survive the competition, lasting only eight issues from January to March 1907.40 He also played host in his home on Warsaw’s Długa Street to literary ‘Friday evenings’ (fraytiktsunakhtsn), attended regularly by Peretz, Nomberg, Abraham Reisen, Sholem Asch, and other prominent Jewish writers and intellectuals. It was the custom that authors read aloud from their newest literary works, which often resulted in sharp critiques and arguments.41 Those Friday evenings no doubt played an important role in Noah Pryłucki’s development. When visiting his parents in Warsaw, Noah would join them for a Sabbath meal of fish and wine. Surely the young student and budding journalist was influenced by the political, cultural, and stylistic tastes of his father’s distinguished guests and newspaper colleagues. In particular, Peretz, around whose person much of the energies and activities of the modernized Jewish intelligentsia of the time were focused, provided a model for Noah’s later cultural endeavors. The young Pryłucki also became acquainted at this time with Nomberg, a future co-founder of the Folksparty. * Following Der veg’s closing, an idea circulated among the newspaper’s former staff to launch a new publication, one founded as a cooperative rather than financed by an individual. Mordechai Spektor approached Zwi Pryłucki with a plan to draw Saul Hochberg, the publisher of Fraytik, into the new enterprise. The three contributed fifty rubles apiece, and Unzer lebn was born on 3 March 1907. Spektor served as its ‘sitting editor,’ the person who would assume legal responsibility for the contents of the publication and face trial and possible imprisonment in case of legal infringements. Zwi Pryłucki edited the paper de facto.42 The paper was officially “non-party,” presenting a variety of political 39 Druk, Tsu der geshikhte, pp. 42y44, 45y49; Noyekh Prilutski, ‘“Der veg”;’ Fuks, Prasa żydowska, p. 137; Reisen, ‘Tsvi Prilutski,’ p. 969. 40 Fuks, 138. Druk, 79y80. 41 Pryłucki memoirs, I, 35y38. 42 Druk, Tsu der geshikhte, pp. 79y80; Pryłucki memoirs, I, 59y60. 101 Kalman Weiser viewpoints so that each reader could, in Hochberg’s words, ‘find something for himself.’ Nonetheless, because of the personal inclinations of its writers and editors, it expressed a largely pro-Zionist stance. Like Der veg, it published discussions of the latest political events (chiefly in Zwi Pryłucki’s unsigned column, ‘Der moment’) along with government news; telegrams from abroad; news about Warsaw Jewish life; reportage; feuilletons; local and provincial news; surveys of the Russian, Polish, and Jewish press; stock quotations; and advertisements. It also published belle-lettres in installments, including Sholem Aleichem’s novel Der mabl. Its contributors included some of the best known Yiddish writers of the time, like Hillel Zeitlin and David Zagorodski. Noah Pryłucki, who had taken up legal studies in St. Petersburg, served as the newspaper’s Duma correspondent. He also contributed original research into the history of Yiddish theatre in the Russian Empire.43 The dominant large-format newspaper of its time, Unzer lebn faced its first serious challenge in 1908, when the Pryłuckis’ longtime rival Jackan, a Lithuanian yeshiva graduate and ordained rabbi turned brash Hebrew and Yiddish journalist, embarked upon a new venture. Sensing that his small-format Yidishes tageblat was too limited in scope to satisfy the political and cultural needs of the tens of thousands of readers he sought to attract, Jackan, with the financial support of Warsaw merchants Chaim and Nehemiah Finkelstein, launched Haynt, a larger and more expensive newspaper. While initially unable to dislodge Unzer lebn from its perch on the newspaper market, the two-Kopek Haynt won great popularity with its formulaic potboiler novels and Jackan’s own fiery articles, written in a frank, folksy tone. The publication of the serialized shund (lowbrow) novel Di nets fun zind (The Web of Sin) in 1910 reportedly expanded its circulation from 15,000 to 35,000.44 In contrast with Unzer lebn, which concentrated chiefly on events in Warsaw and the Polish provinces, Haynt styled itself a newspaper for Jews throughout the tsarist empire.45 It revolutionized the Yiddish press with its large format and innovative regular columns and thematic sections. As suggested by its title (‘Today’), it gave priority to current news items. It also sensationalized the news. Indeed, the pejorative term Jackanizm entered the 43 See, for example, ‘Fir yor yidish teater in rusland un poyln,’ Unzer lebn 37 (1910), reprinted in Noyekh Prilutski, Yidish teater 1901y1921, Bialystok 1921, pp. 31y62. 44 Druk, Tsu der geshikhte, p. 88. 45 Mendl Mozes, ‘Der moment,’ Fun noentn over 2 (1956):243. 102 A Tale of Two Pryłuckis Polish and Yiddish lexicons to describe a penchant for journalistic scandal and sensation.46 The paper’s early popularity was also spurred by a series by Hillel Zeitlin entitled Brivelekh tsu der yidisher yugnt (‘Letters to Jewish Youth’), which discussed noncoercive approaches to religious observance. Zeitlin’s treatment of contemporary problems facing religious Jewish youth in Poland and his explorations of moral philosophy contrasted with the otherwise plebeian tone of the paper, which distinguished it sharply from Zwi Pryłucki’s “respectable” newspaper, aimed at petit bourgeois and hasidic readers.47 Haynt, which identified with the territorialist movement, crusaded against Unzer lebn, its major competitor. In order to keep pace, Unzer lebn began printing feuilletons and pictures, but it did not see the need to publish fresh news dispatches and foreign correspondence as Haynt did. In any event, internal frictions began before long to undermine Unzer lebn. Although founded as a cooperative, Hochberg transformed it into a private possession, arousing great dissatisfaction in the editorial board, administration, and print offices.48 Disputes and financial difficulties soon led Spektor and Y. H. Zagorodski to create a new newspaper, Di naye velt, in July 1909.49 The three-way competition among Warsaw Jewish papers at the time was described bitingly by the writer Yitshak Dov Berkowitz: A desolate competition blazed between the newspapers. They sought to grab the reader not only with a shund novel of the worst variety, but also with a lowly, dark tone that was supposed to destroy the progressive spirit that ruled the secular Jewish world since its first days. The newspapers were published in Warsaw, in the very heart of the rebbe-centric (gut-yidish) ‘Itshe-Mayer’ hasidim, so they turned to the hasidic shtiblekh in Warsaw and [the heavily Jewish suburb] Praga, lowered themselves to the concepts and beliefs of those environs, flattered and lied to them in an affected, excessively conservative language, with all the movements and grimaces of the hasidic slobs.... Each newspaper strove to outdo the others with its falsely pious, 46 Y. Regev, ‘Itonim yomiyim,’ in Yitshak Grünbaum, ed., Entsiklopediyah shel galuyot: Varshah, Jerusalem 1959, 1:499. 47 Druk, Tsu der geshikhte, pp. 87y88, 103; Mozes, ‘Der moment,’ p. 242. 48 Noyekh Prilutski, ‘Di grindung fun “Moment”,’ in Der moment 265 (19 November 1920); Pryłucki memoirs, I, 64y65 49 Pryłucki memoirs, I, 66y67. 103 Kalman Weiser religious-ecstatic language.... The most skillful of them was in those days Haynt.... After Haynt, the ignorant Unzer lebn danced clumsily. Between the two stood the confused and lost Di naye velt.50 * This was the atmosphere that Noah Pryłucki entered when he returned to Warsaw in 1909 after completing his legal studies. Though he thought to pursue a legal career as an assistant attorney (pomoshchnik prisiazhnogo povierennogo — Jews were seldom fully licensed as attorneys in late Imperial Russia), his budding philological interests and continued journalistic work distracted him from his practice.51 Indeed, he continued to write for Unzer lebn, both under his own name and various pseudonyms.52 His name would soon become widely known on several Jewish cultural and political fronts. Once active in circles dedicated to the revival of spoken Hebrew, Noah Pryłucki now devoted himself with ever growing vigor to the defense and promotion of Yiddish. At the First Yiddish Language Conference, held in Czernowitz in 1908, he served as a member of the Committee of Seven that formulated a resolution on behalf of Yiddish as a national language of the Jewish people. On the pages of Yiddish publications he regularly combated the abuse and disparagement of Yiddish by Jewish Assimilationists, Polish chauvinists, and Hebraists alike.53 In his view, ‘Jews who call themselves Poles’ on one hand and Yiddish-speaking ‘Jewish Jews’ (yidishe yidn) on the other constituted two separate nations. He faulted the younger generation of Assimilationists for failing to maintain even the slightest connection with Jewish life or to contribute to Jewish philanthropic causes, unlike their parents.54 He also militantly demanded that Poles cease regarding Jews as 50 Y. D. Berkovitsh, Undzere rishoynim, Tel Aviv 1966, p. 20. 51 Elkhonen Zeitlin, In a literarisher shtub, Buenos Aires 1946, p. 169. Pryłucki regularly advertised in a number of newspapers his readiness to accept ‘special criminal cases, matters regarding military service, bills of exchange, and legalization of statuses.’ See, for example, Der fraynd (Warsaw) 130 (21 June 1911). 52 For a list, see ‘Noyekh Prilutski,’ in Shmuel Niger and Yankev Shatski, eds., Leksikon fun der nayer yidisher literatur, New York 1956y1981, 7:218. 53 Noyekh Prilutski, ‘Koshere asimilatorn,’ Unzer lebn 1y6 (14y20 January 1910), reprinted in idem., Barg-aroyf, pp. 166y88; ‘Akhod haom vegn zhargon,’ Unzer lebn 67y73 (19, 22y27 March 1910), reprinted in Barg-aroyf, pp. 189y211. 54 Noyekh Prilutski, ‘Farzhaverte shverd,’ Unzer lebn (18 March 1910), reprinted in idem., In poyln, pp. 173y78. 104 A Tale of Two Pryłuckis ‘foreigners’ despite centuries of residence in Poland and instead both treat them as equals and recognize their Yiddish language and culture.55 As a keen student of European literature and culture (especially Russian), Pryłucki understood the processes by which national movements in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries reworked folk idioms into standardized languages and fashioned impressive literary canons. Taking the history of Russian, German, and French cultures as his models, he sought to telescope cultural transformations that unfolded over decades among other peoples into a single generation among the Jews in order to transform them into a modern, secular European nation. During an era when language was deemed the hallmark of nationhood, the Jews of eastern Europe were commonly denied national recognition because of their use of multiple tongues, one of which was often regarded as less than legitimate. Pryłucki therefore perceived his philological work as a national mission and used his research to refute claims denying Yiddish the status of a full-fledged, independent language. In the years prior to the First World War Pryłucki worked to establish Yiddish linguistics, literature, and folklore as independent fields of academic inquiry rather than a subset of German philology. He was the first researcher to print dialect studies in Yiddish instead of in ‘respectable’ languages like French, German, Russian, or Polish.56 Much of his research about the history of the Yiddish language and its secular literature appeared in popularized versions in the Yiddish press in order to awaken pride among Jews in their cultural heritage and to counter linguistic assimilation. Pryłucki also founded folklore and linguistic journals in Yiddish, thereby contributing to the creation of a secular scholarly tradition in the east European Jewish vernacular. While Peretz’s salon was certainly the most prestigious literary address in Jewish Warsaw, both Hillel Zeitlin and Noah Pryłucki also opened their homes to dozens of aspiring writers and intellectuals after 1908. In general, the two salons, especially Pryłucki’s, attracted those writers who lacked the courage to stand the challenge of Peretz’ legendarily acerbic critique or who refused to be discouraged despite having already been branded deficient in talent by the éminence grise of Warsaw Jewish letters. These writers were joined by others who simply desired to sample the atmosphere of other 55 Noyekh Prilutski, ‘Vegn poylishn kongres in vashington,’ Unzer lebn, 31 May 1910, reprinted in ibid., pp. 179y84. 56 Yudl Mark, ‘Noyekh prilutski (1882y1944),’ YIVO-bleter 26 (1945):82. 105 Kalman Weiser circles or to bask in their own glory once Peretz had already conferred upon them citizenship in the Yiddish literary republic.57 With his imposing patriarchal figure, the tall mystic Zeitlin appealed especially to religiously- and philosophically-inclined youth impressed by his ethical and intellectual ruminations. In contrast, ‘Noyekh,’ as he was affectionately called by protégés, was considered a comrade and peer despite his reported efforts to cultivate an air of stiffness and formality.58 Unlike Peretz, whose notorious mood swings and devastating, laconic critique terrified callow writers, Pryłucki was extremely encouraging in his reviews of literature and theatre. His literary daring, as demonstrated in the scandal surrounding the publication of his 1908 volume of erotic poetry, Farn mizbeyakh, was one of the qualities that drew writers into his sphere.59 Further, he exercised his influence to help those in whom he recognized artistic potential to be published in magazines and the daily press, including those edited by his father.60 He offered an outlet to poets and belletristic writers including Jonah Rosenfeld, Joel Mastenbaum, Moshe Taytsh, Moshe Stavski, Shlomo Gilbert, Yehoshua Perle, and A. M. Weissenberg in two literary anthologies, Der yunger gayst and Goldene funken, which he edited and published in 1909 at his own expense. These collections also included works by his wife, whom he was helping to master Yiddish, along with his own poems and critical essays on the works of his protégés and others. In particular, in a lengthy article (‘Dos bisl yidishe shriftn,’ in Goldene Funken) he polemicized with the unswerving Hebraist Josef Klausner’s pronouncements denying the viability and quality of Yiddish literature. While pundits mocked Pryłucki’s poetry, the literary and cultural value of his two anthologies, which were suffused with a positive outlook and youthful hope for the future, was duly recognized. Pryłucki also drew praise as a publisher and editor, in no small measure because he paid writers 57 A. Almi, ‘Fun amolikn varshe,’ Der poylisher yid 2 (1944):28y29. 58 Ibid., p. 29. 59 While retrospectively deemed naı̈ve and modest by memoirists in comparison with the more daring Yiddish poetry of the interwar period, Farn mizbeyakh was considered by many at the time the last word in pornography and dissoluteness. As Hillel Zeitlin’s son Elkhonen, a child at the time, recalled, critics ‘argued about every poem, interpreted ambiguously every word, laughed, made fun, got angry, cursed the author — repeated from memory verses from Farn mizbeyakh.’ Zeitlin, In a literarisher shtub, p. 171. 60 A. Almi, Mentshn un ideen, Warsaw 1933, pp. 200y202. 106 A Tale of Two Pryłuckis honoraria.61 He distinguished himself with his unparalleled skills as a public speaker at literary evenings, silencing his hecklers and winning female hearts with his well-modulated voice despite a noticeable nervous tick.62 In return for his services as a patron and mentor, Noah Prylucki requested that writers collect folklore — songs, tkhines (prayers composed in Yiddish addressing women’s concerns), stories, and jokes — and even offered remuneration for both collectors and informants. The writer Avrom Zak recalled Pryłucki ‘exploiting’ everyone he knew for material, ‘both the young writers, who used to come to him for literary advice, and simply Jewish men and women from Warsaw and the provinces who came to him in the capacity of a lawyer for legal counsel. Pryłucki used to draw them into extraneous chats and obtain from them certain proverbs and turns of phrase for his collections.’63 Affectionately remembering his mentor, A. Almi told of risking personal safety, held captive for hours by the angry management of a bordello, as a naive adolescent sent to collect folksongs in the Jewish underworld at Pryłucki’s request.64 In the words of linguist Yudel Mark, in the years before the founding of YIVO in 1925 Pryłucki ‘was a one man center for folklore and dialectological research in Warsaw.’65 In journalism, too, he became a preeminent figure as the guiding spirit behind the daily Der moment. Dissatisfied with both the honoraria he personally received from Unzer lebn and his father’s treatment by Hochberg, whom he thought wanted to rid the enterprise of its old partners, Noah Pryłucki conceived a plan to create his own platform on cooperative foundations. He discussed the matter with David Druk and Hillel Zeitlin. Like a number of contemporary intellectuals, the two writers were appalled by what they deemed the low quality of a Yiddish press ruled by vulgar street tastes, and they desired to edify the public with a newspaper free of what they deemed falsifications, scandal, and sensuality. Since the staff of Unzer lebn was rife with discontent, additional support for their plan was easily found.66 61 Zeitlin, In a literarisher shtub, p. 171. 62 Zeitlin noted that ‘Pryłucki was considered one of the best, if not actually the best, 63 64 65 66 speakers of Yiddish literary Warsaw.’ Ibid., p. 175. Avrom Zak, In onheyb fun a friling, Buenos Aires 1962, p. 113. A. Almi, Momentn fun a lebn, Buenos Aires 1948, pp. 121y28. Mark, ‘Noyekh Prilutski,’ p. 81. Druk, Tsu der geshikhte, p. 105. Zwi Pryłucki noted that Hillel Zeitlin was dismayed by the ‘pornographic stories’ printed in Haynt. Pryłucki memoirs, I, 65y71. 107 Kalman Weiser Characteristically disinclined to conflict and risk, Zwi Pryłucki, now nearing 50, was skeptical of the plan and not eager to abandon Unzer lebn, to which he had devoted so much of his time and energy. After a decade of experiences in the newspaper world he recognized the difficulty inherent in his son’s idea and the stiff competition a new newspaper would face in a potentially saturated market. At the time four Yiddish dailies were being published in Warsaw: Unzer lebn, Haynt, Der fraynd (relocated to Warsaw in December 1909), and Di naye velt. Though dissatisfied, he informed Spektor and Zagorodski, who sought to lure him over to Di naye velt, that he would continue his duties under Hochberg as long as the publisher did not interfere with the newspaper’s content.67 At first unable to find a financial backer willing to accept all of the typesetters and writers who would leave Unzer lebn as partners in a new paper, Noah Pryłucki collected 5,000 rubles from among them (including money awarded the typesetters by a court of arbitration) to found a cooperative. Shortly afterwards, a Wilno lumber merchant agreed to back the new paper provided the typesetters, though sharing in the profits of the enterprise, would not be full partners. Noah Pryłucki then successfully petitioned to convert an earlier unused concession for a weekly publication into one for a daily newspaper.68 Seeking to capitalize on the popularity of Zwi Pryłucki’s popular daily column in Unzer lebn, the new paper adopted Der moment as its title. The first issue of Der moment appeared on 18 November 1910. With the financial backing for a new paper assured, the ever-cautious Zwi Pryłucki then agreed to assume responsibilities as editor-in-chief. Eventually, a deal was struck for Der moment to absorb Di naye velt, including its printing machinery, premises at Nalewki 38, and editorial board.69 Der moment was officially a non-partisan forum in which expressions of 67 Pryłucki memoirs, I, 66; Noyekh Prilutski, ‘Di grindung fun “moment”;’ Druk, Tsu der geshikhte, pp. 102y107. According to Druk, he, Noah Pryłucki, and Hillel Zeitlin hatched the plan to create a new daily long before Der fraynd transferred to Warsaw in December 1909. 68 Thanks to the relative ease of obtaining newspaper concessions at this time, many potential publishers and editors stockpiled them, creating a reserve for later use. Fuks, Prasa żydowska, p. 143n47. 69 Prylucki memoirs, I, 72y75; Noyekh Prilutski, ‘Di grindung fun “moment”;’ Druk, Tsu der geshikhte, p. 107. Unzer lebn continued to be published in Warsaw until 1912, when it moved to Odessa, continuing there until 1917. 108 A Tale of Two Pryłuckis all Jewish political and cultural orientations except Assimilationism were welcome in principle. The Yiddish actor and director Michael Weichert later recalled its variety: Among the article writers, each one marched to the beat of his own drummer. The Friday edition was like a tramway, where everyone sits together but each person enters at a different station and travels to a different destination. The publishers intended in this way to interest the broadest possible reading circles so that each one would find something for himself and purchase a newspaper. I could not believe that there were readers who read everything. But other contributors swore by beard and peyes that there are Jews who read the Friday edition from cover to cover.70 Despite this seeming lack of ideological consistency, Der moment before 1916 largely reflected the Zionist sympathies of Zwi Pryłucki and a number of other contributors. The elder Pryłucki directed the political segment of the paper, while Noah headed its publicistic and belle-lettres divisions. Noah also regularly stood in for his father as editor when the former was prevented from fulfilling his duties (e.g. when traveling outside Warsaw or entertaining visiting notables) and, along with one-time friend and colleague in the Zionist movement, Yitshak Grünbaum, defended the newspaper in legal battles.71 Magnus Krinski, who operated a Jewish commercial school in Warsaw (which Noah’s brother Nahman attended and to whose parents’ association Zwi belonged), supervised the preparation of the Friday humor section and wrote about pedagogic issues. Active primarily as a publicist, Hillel Zeitlin (or ‘Reb Hillel,’ as he was respectfully known among the paper’s staff for his religious piety and personal integrity)72 continued his popular ‘Letters to Jewish Youth’ in the newspaper and ardently wrote against assimilation. Additional materials were drawn from writers hired outside the regular editorial board.73 Der moment soon attained a circulation of approximately 10,000 issues on weekdays in Warsaw and the provinces and 15,000 on Friday. Those numbers were adequate to keep the newspaper afloat but insufficient to 70 71 72 73 Michael Weichert, Zikhroynes: Varshe, Tel-Aviv 1960y1970, p. 53. Pryłucki memoirs, I, 134. Itzhak Borenstein, Varshe fun nekhtn, São Paulo 1967, p. 75. Mozes, ‘Der moment,’ p. 245. 109 Kalman Weiser compete with Haynt. Ironically, Der moment’s financial salvation came not from the journalistic or literary endeavors of its contributors but from a move undertaken in response to a pressing social problem: the Warsaw housing shortage. In 1911 Der moment announced that it had purchased a large plot of land near Warsaw where it would erect a garden city to remedy Jews’ unhealthy alienation from nature and cramped city living. Parcels of the land, it promised, would be allotted to winners of a lottery among its readers, and cheap credit would be furnished them in order to build homes and gardens. The interest of both poor Jews and affluent burghers was piqued by this novel campaign, and the newspaper’s circulation climbed to around 20,000. Although the plan was never realized, the circulation of Der moment grew from then on, enabling it to remain competitive with Haynt over the next three decades.74 By 1912 Der moment could afford to expand its number of contributing editors, adding Spektor, Zagorodski, B. Yeushzon, Josef Tunkl, and Shlomo Janowski to its staff. It also began publishing serialized novels. The rivalry between ‘Chłodno Street’ (Haynt) and ‘Nalewki’ (Der moment) — in no small measure a personal rivalry between Shmuel Jackan and the Pryłuckis — became legendary thanks to regular mud-slinging between Warsaw’s two most prominent Yiddish newspapers. More than one slander trial was convened; as early as 1910 community leaders organized an honor court to save Jewish society from disgrace when mutual denunciations and insults hurled between the two ‘families’ came to the attention of the Polish press. The first scandal involving the two newspapers surrounded the figure of Hillel Zeitlin, a popular member of the Haynt team before his ‘defection’ to Der moment in 1910. Zeitlin was spotted by a Haynt correspondent allegedly eating pork at a train station (he was actually eating an egg).75 Jackan’s daily barrages discrediting the influential writer were countered by Der moment’s 74 According to Aleksander Hafftka, it regularly sold 60,000 copies on weekdays and 90,000 on Fridays in Warsaw and the Polish provinces prior to the First World War, with circulation reaching perhaps as high as 150,000 in 1913 during the Beilis blood libel trial in Kiev (to which it sent a team of correspondents, including Noah Pryłucki). Aleksander Hafftka, ‘Prasa żydowska w Polsce (do 1918 r.),’ in Ignacy Schiper, A. Tartakower, Aleksander Hafftka, eds., Żydzi w Polsce Odrodzonej Warsaw 1932y35, 2:157. In his memoirs Zwi Pryłucki placed the newspaper’s circulation at 100,000 on weekdays and at even higher on Friday nights. Pryłucki memoirs, I, 77y78, 114y121, 125. See also Mozes, ‘Der moment,’ pp. 246y47. 75 Zeitlin, In a literarisher shtub, p. 74. 110 A Tale of Two Pryłuckis feuilletonist Yeushzon with base accusations until Zwi Pryłucki, in Vienna at the time, put an end to the skirmish.76 The incident recalled accusations the previous year that Zeitlin violated Sabbath prohibitions by writing his articles on Saturdays.77 * The Warsaw Yiddish press also faced more serious social and political tasks, however. The popularity of Haynt and Der moment reflected a major demographic shift in Warsaw Jewry — the so-called Litvak invasion — that would have profound political consequences in the decade before the establishment of the Second Polish Republic. The Pryłuckis, along with Jackan, Hillel Zeitlin, and scores of other residents of Warsaw active in the propagation of modern Jewish culture in Hebrew and Yiddish, belonged to a category of Jews popularly called ‘Litvaks’ (Litwacy). Strictly speaking, the designation refers to Jews from the Lithuanian and Belorussian provinces of the Russian Empire, where hasidism, with some notable exceptions, failed to become firmly entrenched.78 In Poland the term eventually came to be applied derisively to almost any Jew originating in a part of the Russian Empire beyond Congress Poland. Indeed, observed the Polish-Yiddish translator and journalist Samuel Hirszhorn mockingly in 1906, ‘a true Warsaw chauvinist calls all Jews who 76 According to Elhanan Zeitlin, the Jackan-Zeitlin scandal did not cease until it was interrupted by the Beilis trial. Zeitlin, In a literarisher shtub, p. 166. See also Pryłucki memoirs, I, 114. In defending Haynt’s publishers in 1912 against accusations that it had repeatedly insulted Krinski as revenge for his partnership in Moment, attorney Yitzhak Grünbaum offered the following explanation for Jackan’s tone: ‘It is true that in Jackan’s articles against Krinski many sharp expressions are found that must be deemed defamatory by intelligent people. One must, however, recall that Haynt is a boulevard-newspaper, a street rag for the simple rabble, and a salon-style is not relevant in such a newspaper. Haynt has a style of its own. The defamations in such a newspaper are not defamations. One must also know Jackan and in what kind of environment he grew up and lived. There was no other style in Jackan’s environment. Jackan was raised on the Talmud, and Talmudic scholars, when they quarrel with each other, use the most abusive language.’ Quoted in Mozes, ‘Der moment,’ pp. 247y49. 77 Moshe Arye-Leon Waldoks, Hillel Zeitlin: the Early Years (1894y1919), unpublished Ph.d dissertation, Brandeis University, 1984, p. 99. 78 The region is called ‘Lite’ in Yiddish and associated with a Yiddish dialect and cultural stereotypes distinct from those belonging to Poland or Ukraine. Among these stereotypes is a penchant for cold rationalism and skepticism supposedly foreign to the more ‘emotional’ hasidic Jews of Poland and Galicia. 111 Kalman Weiser do not live in Warsaw Litvaks, not excluding the inhabitants of the [Warsaw] suburb of Praga.’79 Litvaks included refugees fleeing anti-Jewish excesses and oppressive measures in other parts of the Russian Empire as well as individuals seeking economic and cultural opportunities in Congress Poland. The pogroms of 1881, the ruinous May Laws of 1882, and the expulsion of 20,000 illegal Jewish residents from Moscow in 1891 were among the chief causes for their migration. Military service was also less arduous in Congress Poland than in the Pale of Settlement, and rights of residence in this relatively prosperous part of the Empire were easily acquired.80 The arrival of the Litvaks was cause for widespread dissatisfaction among both Polish Jews and ethnic Poles.81 Different from the Polish Jews in speech, dress, and habit, the Litvaks were regarded as keen competitors in the already overcrowded manufacturing and artisan sectors of the economy, as well as in the housing market. Often fleeing poverty and economic ruin, they frequently arrived without the burden of families and were satisfied with lower wages than Polish Jews. Further, they were perceived as less stringent in their religious observance and beliefs: they did not pay homage to the miracle-working Hasidic rebbes, pronounced Hebrew and Yiddish differently, and were suspected of walking with heads uncovered at home. To the extent that they adopted elements of a non-Jewish culture, their orientation was a Russian and not a Polish one — a profound insult to supporters of the Polish national cause. Significantly, while frequently unfamiliar with the Polish language and local ways, they were equipped with a valuable knowledge of both the imperial language and Russian markets. As Zionist leader Shmarya Levin observed, ‘their language was Russian; and without any desire to help the Russian administration in its violent campaign of Russification, they became an instrument in the hands of the anti-Polish authorities.’82 Typically more accepting of secular education than 79 Samuel Hirszhorn, ‘Litwaki,’ Głos Żydowski, 29 April 1906, quoted in Corrsin, Warsaw Before the First World War, p. 34. 80 François Guesnet, ‘Migration et Stéréotype: Le cas des juifs russes au Royaume de Pologne à la fin du XIXe siècle,’ Cahier du Monde Russe 41 (2000):505y18. 81 ‘The prejudices and attitudes of the Warsaw Jews toward Litvaks were almost the same as those of Poles toward Jews in general.’ Almi, Momentn fun a lebn, pp. 183y87. 82 Shmarya Levin, The Autobiography of Shmarya Levin, translated and edited by Maurice Samuel, Philadelphia 1967, p. 262. 112 A Tale of Two Pryłuckis the largely hasidic Polish Jews,83 they were inclined to send their children to Russian-language gymnasia long before Polish Jews and were blamed for the spread of ideas and practices many Polish Jews regarded as dangerous or subversive.84 Despite varying degrees of secularization and Russification, however, Litvaks did not typically espouse the abandonment of a distinctly Jewish identity. Nor did they seek to isolate themselves from broader Jewish society. To the contrary, they were identified as the primary bearers of secular nationalist ideologies, most notably Zionism and Bundism. Unlike Polish Jews, for whom secularization implied Polonization, Litvaks, in particular those truly originating in Lithuania and Belorussia, came from multiethnic regions where no local urban culture exerted such a strong attraction on them as Polish culture did on Polish Jews. Hence there was no dominant neighboring culture into which integration or assimilation was desirable. While education and secularization for Litvaks often meant the adoption of the hegemonic Russian language as a vehicle for social and economic advancement, it did not imply identification with the Russian people. In general, the confrontation between deeply-rooted Jewish identity and western liberal ideas resulted in the creation of a modern particularistic Jewish identity more readily among them than among Polish Jews. Apart from providing much of the leadership for Jewish socialist and nationalist movements, Litvaks included numerous scholars, teachers, and journalists prominent in the creation of the Hebrew and Yiddish presses and the movement to revive Hebrew as a spoken tongue. Yitshak Dov Berkowitz observed that, around 1906, ‘among the Warsaw writers, more than a good half came from Lite and southern Russia. The Warsaw publishing houses and newspapers were also published mainly by Litvaks, and even the readers of the Warsaw newspapers and published books originated more often in Lite and the southern provinces than in Poland itself.’85 83 A popular Yiddish proverb relates that ‘a Litvak has a cross in his head’ (a litvak hot a tseylem in kop), an allusion to the purported tendency to embrace heretical ideas. 84 See Piotr Wróbel, ‘Jewish Warsaw before the First World War,’ in Władysław T. Bartoszewski and Antony Polonsky, eds., The Jews in Warsaw: A History, Oxford 1991, p. 252. The Polish-Jewish writer A. M. Weissenberg, who was possessed by a bitter hatred of Litvaks inspired by his own insecurities, mocked Litvak intellectuals and students like Noah Pryłucki, who had come to study in Warsaw, as delicate and effeminate. Almi, Momentn fun a lebn, pp. 184y85. 85 Berkovitsh, Undzere rishoynim, p. 66. 113 Kalman Weiser Among the Litvaks were financially successful, university-educated men like the Pryłuckis, who were not ashamed to speak Yiddish among themselves or in public. They provided a model for Polish Jews disillusioned with the apparent bankruptcy of Assimilationism in the face of increasingly virulent antisemitism and challenged the notion that a Jew must devote himself to Polish culture in order to become a modern European intellectual.86 Litvaks provided a convenient target for Poles to express their dissatisfaction with Jews in general while disclaiming antisemitic tendencies.87 In the eyes of Polish nationalists, Litvaks and, by extension, all Yiddish-speaking Jews employed both a corrupt German dialect and the tongue of the tsarist oppressor. This perception led to paradoxical accusations that Jewish nationalists were not only Russifiers maliciously dispatched by Moscow and bent on infecting politically tractable Polish Jewry with the ‘foreign’ contagions of socialism and Jewish nationalism but Germanizers as well, their support for Polish independence and their persistent refusal to identify with either of the imperial powers notwithstanding.88 Noah Prylucki, for one, rejected such charges as patently absurd and offensive to Jewish national ideals.89 He mockingly dismissed Polish fears of a Litvak ‘invasion’ as unjustified as long as the one-time champion of Jewish integration, the writer Aleksander Świȩtochowski, who had warned of its allegedly deleterious effects, ‘still does not wear peyes, [and] the vaudeville theatres are not yet playing “Dos pintele yid”.’90 His aggressive Jewish nationalist stance earned him condemnation in Izraelita as an arrogant 86 See François Guesnet, Polnische Juden im 19. Jahrhundert, Köln 1998, pp. 61y78. 87 Theodore R. Weeks, ‘Fanning the Flames: Jews in the Warsaw Press, 1905y1912,’ East European Jewish Affairs 28 (1998y99): 75. 88 Ibid., p. 66. See also François Guesnet, ‘“Wir müssen Warschau unbedingt russisch machen:” Die Mythologisierung der russisch-jüdischen Zuwanderung ins Königreich Polen zu Beginn unseres Jahrhunderts am Beispiel eines polnischen Trivialromans,’ in Eva Behring, Ludwig Richter und Wolfgang F. Schwarz, eds., Geschichtliche Mythen in den Literaturen und Kulturen Ostmittel- und Suedosteuropas, Stuttgart 1999; Yakov Vigodski, ‘Di “litvakes” in poyln,’ ‘Haynt’ yoyvl-bukh (1908y1938), Warsaw 1938, pp. 219y22. 89 Noyekh Prilutski, ‘Tsi zenen di “zhargonistn” gemanizatorn?’ Der moment 15 (31 January 1911); ‘Votslavker “simulyatse”’ Der moment 86 (28 April 1911); ‘Yidn tsi daytshn,’ Der moment 20 (6 February 1911); ‘Vegn der kloymershter sine fun di yidn tsum poylishn folk,’ Der moment 24 (10 February 1911). All reprinted in idem., In poyln, pp. 226y28, 242y46, 232y34, 235y38. 90 Quoted in Lambda, ‘Żargonówcy miȩdzy soba˛,’ Izraelita 5 January 1912. 114 A Tale of Two Pryłuckis chauvinist endangering Polish-Jewish relations.91 Hoping to use the Yiddish press to dissuade its readers from Jewish nationalism, representatives of the Assimilationist camp approached the management of Der moment with the promise of a substantial subsidy if the newspaper would allow publication of articles written from its perspective. When the effort failed, an offer was made to purchase the newspaper, also to no avail.92 The thought of an Assimilationist newspaper in Yiddish seems anomalous, and rightly so. Indeed, the familiarity with imperial press culture that the Pryłuckis and other Litvaks brought to Warsaw, together with their strong Jewish national consciousness and entrepreneurial instincts, was essential in establishing a Yiddish daily. Having overcome common prejudices toward the language, both father and son played important roles in popularizing the ideal of the Jewish national ‘revival’ via an idiom accessible to the vast majority of Jews. Moreover, as the most far-reaching instrument of mass culture among Jews, the Yiddish press labored to politicize the traditionally religious Jews of Poland in the early twentieth century, to educate them about the wider world, and to transmit to them new secular ideologies intended to revolutionize Jewish society. It achieved great success in marshaling Jewish public opinion in support of a Jewish nationalist position and, together with the Polish press, in concretizing ethnolinguistic divisions in society. More than any other factor, it prepared Polish Jewry for the campaign for national minority rights in the decades following the First World War under the banner of national self-determination. Though frequently pandering to popular tastes and indulging petty personal grudges, it helped to articulate expectations and to project an idealized image of how the high culture of a Yiddish-speaking society should look through its publication of literature and reviews of theatre and art. It also served as a primary instrument for independent Jewish political mobilization. By the outbreak of the First World War several Warsaw Yiddish dailies, each espousing a political orientation, boasted a combined circulation in excess of 200,000 copies in Warsaw and beyond.93 In 1916 Noah Pryłucki and several other members of the Association of Jewish Writers and Journalists — most notably his fellow Moment writers H. D. Nomberg, 91 Ibid. 92 Pryłucki memoirs, I, 81y84. 93 Stephen D. Corrsin, ‘Language Use in Cultural and Political Change in pre-1914 Warsaw: Poles, Jews, and Russification,’ Slavonic and East European Review 68 (1990):81. Nathan Cohen has placed the circulation of Der moment at between 20,000 and 25,000 copies 115 Kalman Weiser Hillel Zeitlin, Saul Stupnicki, and Samuel Hirszhorn — formed the Jewish nationalist Folkspartey in time for the Warsaw City Council elections, the first free elections in Poland in more than a century. Its diaspora nationalist platform rooted in the political ideology of the seminal Jewish historian Simon Dubnow, the party campaigned for national-cultural autonomy for the Jews in Poland, to be expressed in modern, secular institutions in which Yiddish would serve as the primary language. It was active in creating these institutions, most notably a system of secular Yiddish schools. At the disposal of the Folkspartey stood Der moment, which by then had become Warsaw’s leading daily. The newspaper supported the Folkists even though its editor, Zwi Pryłucki, never abandoned Hebraism and Zionism as ideals and, in the recesses of his heart, likely rued his son’s defection from them.94 Zionists, the chief political rivals of the Folkists, relied heavily on Jackan’s Haynt to agitate among the masses. The two largest-circulation Yiddish dailies in Poland, the bitter rivals Haynt and Der moment, thus transformed the face of Yiddish journalism. They continued to dominate the Jewish press and to shape Jewish politics and culture in Poland until the outbreak of the Second World War. * The explosive growth of the Yiddish press beginning in the tumultuous summer of 1905 educated Yiddish journalists and writers through practical work and for the first time furnished a real economic base for Jewish writers and intellectuals in eastern Europe.95 Because of the Russification of the educational system in Russian Poland, non-Russian scholars, both Jews and Poles, had great difficulty in finding academic or other suitable posts. Generally speaking, they turned to office jobs that left them time and energy for their cultural and scholarly pursuits.96 The builders of Polish culture also daily in the late 1920s. Nathan Cohen, ‘Der Moment,’ YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe, 2:1193. 94 According to Elhanan Zeitlin, ‘The “old man” also likely regretted, deep in his heart, his son’s departure from Zionism, but before outsiders, in front of strangers, he did not show any resentment. On the contrary, he doggedly supported and defended Noah.’ Zeitlin reported that Zwi Prylucki believed his son would become a ‘second Herzl.’ Zeitlin, In a literarisher shtub, p. 169. 95 Khone Shmeruk, ‘Strikhn tsu der geshikhte fun dem yidishn literarishn tsenter in varshe,’ in idem., Prokim fun der yidisher literatur-geshikhte, Tel-Aviv 1988, p. 304. 96 A famous example in the Jewish context is Y. L. Peretz, who spent most of his 116 A Tale of Two Pryłuckis often found patrons in the persons of wealthy Poles and Polonized Jews. Jewish intellectuals, however, received little financial support from the latter group and none from the former. Nor could they find employment, like their Polish counterparts, in quasi-governmental organizations like the railroads. For them the Yiddish press provided an opportunity to support themselves from their creative endeavors. It also helped to provide a milieu and a forum in which the emerging Jewish nationalist intelligentsia could gather and shape its unique values and ideas. Had Noah Pryłucki found the success in Russian letters to which he aspired in his youth, he would perhaps not have invested his energies so intensively in cultural production in the Yiddish language. Be that as it may, Pryłucki turned to Yiddish, a language whose speakers hungered for new leaders and heroes, to satisfy his personal ambitions and to promote his vision of a modernized Jewish people. By duplicating and adapting contemporary European ideologies and cultural institutions to a Jewish context, Noah Pryłucki, together with his father Zwi, became a primary contributor to the construction of a new Jewish culture on the foundations of traditional religious life. kweiser@yorku.ca professional life as an employee of the Warsaw kehile. See Ruth R. Wisse, I.L. Peretz and the Making of Modern Jewish Culture, Seattle 1991. Similarly, the Discount Bank was sometimes called the ‘Polish Academy of Sciences’ and the Commerical Bank ‘the Polish Literary Club.’ Both firms were owned by Polonized Jews. In the same vein, the Warsaw-Vienna railway was at times referred to an ‘asylum for Polish learning.’ Corrsin, Warsaw Before the First World War, pp. 60y61. 117