Jewish Public Culture in the Late Russian Empire

1 The Jews of This World

a 1 b The Jews of This World In 1910, Jewish cultural critic A. Mukdoyni (Alexander Kapel, 1878– 1958) wrote of the “this-worldnik” (Yiddish: oylem ha-zenik) who “takes advantage of and enjoys with great appetite all the pleasures of life.”1 “The old generation with its great asceticism has died out,” he declared “and a new generation has arisen, new people with little desire to struggle against the pleasures of this world.”2 During the turbulent revolutionary period that marked the last two decades of the Russian Empire, as hope engendered by the promise of the tsar’s 1905 manifesto was tempered by the violence and destruction of the pogroms that followed, many of the five million Jews across the vast Russian Empire abandoned the messianic faith that had inspired Jews for generations. Many traded in messianic longings rooted in rabbinic, kabalistic, and folkloric traditions for new forms of eschatology. Some believed that the working class would usher in a new utopian world, destroying the old in its wake. Others placed their faith in the “ingathering of the exiles,” the mass migration of Jews to Palestine, where they would rebuild the land of Zion and in turn be remade themselves. But the “this-worldniks,” the Jews of this world, rejected all projects of utopian reconstruction. For them, happiness was not to be found in any world to come but rather was to be sought in this world. The “thisworldniks ” accused their fellow Jews of suffering silently on this earth like Yitskhok Leybush Peretz’s (1851–1915) fictional protagonist Bontshe the Silent, who had become so docile in life that he could only ask for a fresh roll of bread and butter upon reaching the heavenly world to come. The Jews of this world, by contrast, focused their energies on bettering this world through institution-building, cultural enrichment, leisure, and self-edification. When they looked to the biblical prophets, they drew inspiration not from the messianic and apocalyptic dreams that ignited the imaginations of the Zionists and socialist revolutionaries but rather to Jeremiah’s exhortations to the Babylonian exiles about quotidian life: Build houses and dwell in them, plant gardens and eat the fruit they produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, so that they may bear 2 Jewish Public Culture in the Late Russian Empire sons and daughters; multiply there and do not decrease. And seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the LORD on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare. For thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel: Do not let the prophets and diviners who are among you deceive you, and do not listen to the dreams that they dream, for it is a lie that they are prophesying to you in my name. I did not send them, says the LORD.3 Just as Jeremiah urged the Babylonian exiles to ignore the apocalyptic prophets and instead to build houses and plant gardens, the Jews of this world urged their followers to live life to its fullest in the here and now. Jewish learning had traditionally denigrated entertainment and leisure for its own sake as a waste of time that could have been spent studying Torah. Both homiletic literature of the yeshiva and works of Hasidic pietism urged readers to abstain from worldly pleasures. Bitl toyre, literally the annulment of Torah but a term that was more broadly used to refer to any activity other than Torah study and divine service, was regarded as among the most troubling—and most prevalent—of sins. Young people were always considered to be particularly susceptible to the sin of bitl toyre, and ethical literature repeatedly reminded parents of the obligation to keep their children away from external temptations. The still-widely-read twelfth-century Seyfer khsidim warned against socializing with friends and engaging in amusements.4 The Kitser shulkhan arukh, or condensed code of Jewish law, stated that “all the necessities of life should be performed for the sake of serving your Creator, or for the purpose of doing something that will bring about the performance of His service.”5 The enormously popular Mesiles yeshorim (Path of the Upright) declared that “there is no worldly pleasure that is not followed by some sin in its wake.”6 The writings of twentieth-century Galician rabbi Hanokh Teitelbaum warned of the gravitational...