Yehoshua Ozjasz Thon on the Revival of Hebrew Literature: From Revolutionism to a Moderate Conservatism

Yehoshua Ozjasz Thon was one of the leading personalities of Polish Jewry in the first half of the twentieth century. He was an educator, a man of letters, a Zionist thinker, a philosopher, a publicist, a preacher and rabbi of the Progressive Tempel synagogue in Kraków for many years, and a member of the Polish parliament from 1919 until 1935, the year before his death.¹ He had an enormously active intellectual and political life, and his ideas encompassed many fields: literature, philosophy, sociology, ideology, politics, and religion. In this essay I would like to concentrate on his role in the development of modern Hebrew literature.

In 1891, when Thon was 21, he left his home town Lviv and moved to Berlin to continue his studies. He studied philosophy at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität (today the Humboldt-Universität) and Jewish studies at the Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums. He lived in Berlin till 1897, when he was offered the position of preacher and subsequently rabbi in the Progressive synagogue in Kraków.

In 1893, with his close childhood friend from Lviv Marcus (Mordechai) Ehrenpreis,² who was also a student in Berlin, he made contact with the Hebrew writer Mikhah Yosef Berdichevsky (Berdyczewski).³ The three men founded a group whose aim was to change the character of Hebrew literature, seeking to integrate the values of Jewish and European culture and to introduce modernism to the Hebrew literature of the time. This group of young writers was called simply Tse'irim, the 'Young Ones'. With the passionate enthusiasm and charisma of Berdichevsky, who was already known as a Hebrew writer, they wanted to present a new method for reviving Hebrew literature through their own writings and by establishing a new Hebrew literary periodical, Hateḥiyah.⁴

Their beliefs concerning the character of the new Hebrew literature were published in 1896–7 in a series of sharply polemical articles in the first volume of Hashilo'aḥ,⁵ a Hebrew periodical established in Berlin by the eminent and most influential Zionist thinker Asher Ginzberg, known as Ahad Ha'am. The founding editor of the new literary monthly turned out to be a sharp opponent of the Tse'irim's vision of the emerging Hebrew literature. Although the polemic involved only four persons (Berdichevsky, Ehrenpreis, Thon, and Ahad Ha'am), it has often been seen as a milestone in the history of modern Hebrew literature. The dispute was about the character of Hebrew literature, the subjects it should treat, what genres it should develop and which path it should take, its role, and its aims.

The polemic of Ahad Ha'am with the Tse'irim has sometimes been perceived as an important and even decisive event in the history of Hebrew literature.⁶ Yosef Oren argues that it was the most important literary dispute in the history of modern Hebrew literature.⁷ Against this, scholars such as Avner Holtzman and Avidov Lipsker argue that this view is much exaggerated, since Tse'irim was more an idea than an organized group which could rebel against the Hebrew literary hegemony at that time.⁸ Moreover, Holtzman argues that the polemic was primarily a dispute between Ahad Ha'am and Berdichevsky, the others being marginal figures.⁹ Indeed, when Thon's views are examined carefully, it can be observed how with time they became closer to those of Ahad Ha'am, whom he greatly appreciated and respected,¹⁰ although he was unsparing in his criticism of his world view regarding the revival of the Jewish nation.¹¹ Yet, in spite of the different views concerning the significance of the dispute, the Tse'irim polemic was certainly a stimulating and exciting re-examination of the revival of Hebrew literature.

Tse'irim

In 1893 Ahad Ha'am met the three friends in Berlin; they discussed the creation of a new Hebrew periodical.¹² The Tse'irim hoped that the new periodical would be an expression of a new movement in Hebrew literature that could build a...