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For us, this is neither a phrase, nor bragging. We do not mean to monopolize Peretz, or to ‘requisition’ him. We are simply stating a fact, we are setting down definitively what is reality.

And the fact is, that Peretz blended in harmoniously with the Jewish Labor Movement, he became a vital force there – our festival, our inspiration.

Because Peretz as the first and only one in his time, who gave Yiddish literature a might shove, pushing it out of its old, moldering quagmire. Aggressively and stormily he tore it out of the tiny, impoverished conveyance of Reb Mendele, out of Sholom Aleichem's refined-timid royal pedestal. He was the first to lead Yiddish literature out onto the broad European byways of humanity – and world problems, and lashed it to the rhythm of our times.

Because Peretz was the first and only one in Yiddish literature who felt the suffering and need in the life of a worker. Not the need of Glupsk and Kavzansk, not the suffering of the intimidated community of scurrying insects, but the need of the worker, and the suffering of the worker. Because from those works, for the first time in Yiddish, we heard our thirst for justice and our cry for restitution.

Because Peretz was the first and only one in Yiddish literature who gave it an idea, created a purpose for it, and raised it to the level of a culture.

How harmoniously the times brought them together. They, the builders and creators of the material culture, the people, who need, desire and suckle, people who had been degraded to the level of beasts of burden, being used only for ‘hands,’ and him – the stormy one, the creator of the spiritual culture, the writer of the ‘Bontcheh Shweigs,’ of the Yohanan the Water-carriers, of the Satya the Fishermen, and other ‘silent souls.’

In their urgency and need, they met each other in a new existence. They understood each other with just a wink, and embraced each other for all time. Peretz became the eruption, the sunrise, the awakened energy of the masses of Jewish workers.

Every creative period weaves together the awakened masses and the creative personalities – even if they are at a great social distance from each other.

The years of the 90's of the past century was such a creative period. In pain and hurt, they gave birth to the Jewish working class. A new class with new ideals, a proud self-awareness with creative aspirations. And the birth of this very class, its striving and struggles, its heroic wrestling and lofty ideals, made possible the birth of three personalities: I. L. Peretz, Vladimir Medes, and the Vilna shoemaker, Hirsch Lekert.

All of these three, so set apart, express in themselves, the completeness, and full color of that newly born, proud, creative and harmonious Jewish person, the Jew as a fighter, the Jew as a Socialist. Peretz breathed a new soul into Yiddish culture, and in the process, he opened the way for the cultural awakening of the Jewish working masses, who has sundered themselves from the Jewish Middle Ages, based on the culture of the Bet HaMedrash, with the milk-drip of the old traditions. Peretz brought the Jewish worker a cultural resurrection.

He brought them back from the dead, mechanical assimilation, he freed them from the compulsion to conform themselves to others, and he opened vast possibilities for them of a personal national human cultural creativity.

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Peretz's proud words still ring freshly and energetically for us today, which he throw out at us in the conference in Czernowitz in 1908:

‘Yiddish is our language and in our language we will experience life, and create our cultural territory, re-awaken our soul once more, and we will serve no one. The location of nations cannot create a cultural territory for us. Let Yiddish become a formally recognized language among the languages of the nations. Then we will have our independent motif among the symphony of nations.’

And Peretz, beautifully and so completely, so humanly, so stormily and traumatically, sang out this motif for us, in his rich and creative life.

And this very motif continues to play in our souls 10 years after his death, and he has not been silenced. The rich treasures of his great, warm heart are assembled in thousands of longing, self-torn hearts.

Or souls burn from being ignited by the great light of Peretz, and are not extinguished; pervaded by his boiling and bubbling song, our hearts [continue to] sing.

And today, at the 10^th anniversary of his Yahrzeit, we do not weep, and we do not sorrow, because we know: he lives, he lives, and influences us, he. Our Peretz. Our melody, our ecstasy, our resurrection!

Author's footnote:

1. This article was published by B. Mikhalevich in the illustrated Peretz Supplement of the ‘Volkszeitung’ that appeared at the tenth anniversary of the death of I. L. Peretz, in Warsaw, April 1925. Return

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A picture by David Tushinsky		A picture created by Bruleau

Peretz – the relentless rager, the mouthpiece, that shakes up the complacency (it is not for nothing that one finds all the new directions of the new Yiddish literature in Peretz), the father of the new spoken word, at the very least, the spokesperson – it was particularly him who was the ‘Rebbe’ of the young boys in the Bet HaMedrash and the shtibl, the director of the ranks of the tailors and shoemakers, of the Jewish sweepers and weavers; the flame, that drew to it those who returned to their Jewishness. Those who recognized that it is not Europe that is missing in us, but as Jews….only Yiddish is missing, Hebrew is missing – all these rallied around Peretz, not the Peretz of Zamość, but the Peretz of Safed, of Cordoba, of Amsterdam, of Prague, of Düsseldorf, of Vilna, of Kotzk – that Peretz, who was prepared to knock down centuries old pillars that had interred Jewish thought, and the Jewish soul.

Those revealed well springs struck with such a stunning light, that the Jewish person was temporarily blinded, and could not see, how Yitzhak Leibusz Peretz guided Jewish thinking to worldliness and other-worldliness.

Peretz did not approach the young man in the Bet HaMedrash with compassion, and had not sympathy for the ranks of the tailors, or with the person who was returning to his Jewishness.

The young boy, even the one who had been seized by apostasy, read through Peretz, and came to understand that there was nothing laughable about the Bialer Rebbe or the Kabbalist of Amshinov [also Amszynow in Polish – JSB]. The life that surrounded him, this young man's, which he had attempted to choke off within himself, this live, with one sudden impulse was released within him, and became dear to him. The one, who had returned [to the fold] from the far away, saw, that to warm one's self at alien fires, causes Jewish souls to be incinerated.

The people learned from Peretz, that their father the water-carrier, the woodcutter, the laborer, they all can be considered equally human, at parity with scholars, with the wealthy, with those who got their education outside, who offer opinions, and take up space at the Eastern Wall.

Peretz, who placed his intellectual intuition at the disposal of the common wisdom of Jewish literature, specifically him, with one single push, went to the street, to the marketplace. With the joy of a kinsman, he searched out old abandoned ideas, in the far-flung Jewish settlements, which had lain dormant. He opened up these abandoned ideas in the middle of the marketplace, called to everyone, the young boy in the Bet HaMedrash, the laborer, all of the people:

– Jews, come to drink; It is very convivial to drink together!

Peretz is to be sought – in groups, in nations, in historical categories. Peretz is among the very few authors, who found a justification in Jewish life. R' Yehuda HaLevi was such an author. Such authors carry not only the world within themselves. They also carry a responsibility for the world. Their world does not consist solely of what the eye sees, what the ear hears – it also consists of soul and responsibility.

Yiddishkeit, social justice was to them the driving force to unite themselves with past generations, with the human gestalt, with eternity. This was the way of Yitzhak Leibusz Peretz.

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Peretz was the very first Jewish artisan from whom it was possible to learn something. We continue to learn from him to this day, and we will continue to learn [from him]. As the thinking man says: ‘Peretz always was our head, even at those times when he protested against all our plans and thinking.’

Without Peretz we would have had a different literature. To this day, the significant Yiddish authors continue to go along the path of Peretz. We live in Peretz, and he -- in us. Through us, Peretz reveals himself in his true light, in the light of every generation separately. And if one digs deeper, one sees that without Peretz we would have had talented people, but we would not have had a Yiddish literature. And if one will confront you with various signs and indicators, that Peretz's artistic way is not pure, it is not the white flour of rolls, that it is flour mixed with bran, you should remember that it was from precisely this kind of a flour that the prophets baked bread, when they went off into the desert to speak with God.

It is a hundred years, since Yitzhak Leibusz Peretz was born, and thirty-six years since he left us, leaving in the middle of his work, when he was preparing to build a renewed Yiddishkeit, a Yiddishkeit rooted in ‘The Congregation of the Lord,’ in ‘The Community of God,’ that is rooted in the Covenant of Sinai, in the Prophets, in the return of Ezra, in the Tana'im, in Yehuda HaLevi. This Peretz-Year, which we are proclaiming today is no monument. How does the Gemara say it: ‘One doesn't create souls for the righteous, their words are their eternal legacy.’ For us, the Peretz-Year has to be one of the ‘Ten Precepts,’ it had to be a signpost, that we must continue Peretz's work, as he had continued the work of prior generations.

And what did Peretz continue? Jews such as Yitzhak Leibusz Peretz, who within themselves carried the sorrow and the ache of Jeremiah, the goodness of a Hillel, the fire of a R' Avika, such Jews could not give any consideration to pure form. In Yehuda HaLevi, in Peretz, the Jew and the non-Jew constantly struggled with one another, that which attracts them from idolatry and Christendom.

Peretz, who left us at the beginning of the First World War, felt that a bitter fate is closing in on Jews. He know, that we are the children of a pursued and murdered people. The enemy wishes to tear us out by the roots. Only the truth, the absolute human truth, can save us. And Peretz, for his whole life, was one shout: ‘let us forge that very truth within ourselves, that very strength, let us personally feel, that to be a Jew, someone who is persecuted, is a privilege.’

That bitter fate has, indeed befallen us. Like awful dreams that pass before our eyes – the destruction of Poland, the destruction of Lithuania, the destruction of the Ukraine. And as we recite the Kaddish (and do so every year), the brilliant form of Yitzhak Leibusz Peretz rises from the desolation. And not only from the desolation. It also rises up from within us, from our pain-ridden hearts, and when we, the mourners, ask one another:

– What is the Yiddish literature to become?
– Peretz answers:

– It must be the tongue and consciousness of a pursued and persecuted people. It has to be the thousand-year reservoir – where there is faith, where there is comfort – the energies that teach us, our children, that to be a Jew, one who is persecuted, is a privilege.

The reader is referred to the original text for this seven page list, which has entries in five languages.

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The Frontispiece from Two of Beckerman's Works[1]

Would you have believe that Yitzhak Leibusz Peretz – the future classical genius – also needed to put up with such an ‘inquisition?’ And – the essence – would you have believed that a baker from Zamość sent in a poem to the very same book of collected works to which Peretz sent a poem of his, and – the baker's poem was printed, and Peretz's poem was returned? But it is a ‘fact,’ which was told to me by the very same baker, and everybody knows his poem, which is printed in that collection, whose name I will reveal later on.

It is not necessary to tell who Peretz was: hundreds of books, journals and articles have been written about him, and all of the material about him hasn't yet been exhausted. You would only want to add that our city Zamość did much to give the Jewish world a genius such as Yitzhak Leibusz Peretz – apart from many others like Rosa Luxembourg, (born in Zamość on December 25, 1870; murdered by German officers in Berlin, and thrown into a canal in 1918); the violin virtuoso Bronislaw Huberman; Alexander Zederbaum, editor of ‘Kol Mevaser,’ and ‘HaMelitz’ (born in Zamość in 1816; died in St. Petersburg in 1893); the Maskil Feivel Szyfer (1871-1890); the great Jewish researcher Yaakov Reifman (1818 - 1893); Shlomo Ettinger (1800 - 1856); the folklorist and ardent Zionist, Dr. Yitzhak Geliebter, educational director of the Workman's Circle (died in New York in 1935), and many others. It is also of interest that our city of Zamość was called ‘the little Paris.’

Zamość was the place where the cradle of our genius stood; the territory where the author made his first effort; the wellspring from which Peretz drew the largest portion of material for his later-to-be-written ‘Hasidism,’ and the place that, ever since the Six Days of Creation, had been prepared for that latter-day classicist and prophet…Zamość, with its surrounding ponds, fields, forests and orchards; the very construct of the physical city itself, with its enchanting little plantings in the middle of the marketplace; the magic of its covered walkways, with their labyrinthine offshoots, the discarded and pulverized fragments of the former great fortress, spread out and scattered outside the city, [all of this], makes a wondrous impression…. something secret and hidden lies within it all… a sanctum sanctorum….

We may perhaps say, with some certainty, that were it not for this place, perhaps we would never had a great Peretz…

As previously stated, I will not pause about Peretz. But I will offer an response to the question that I posed : ‘Who Is The Baker?’ His name was Berish Beckerman – a name that must not be omitted by future historians of Yiddish literature, in the area of song and poetry, as well as drama and operetta.

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Berish Beckerman had designations by those of us in the city: 1. ‘The Town Atheist;’ 2. ‘The Mocker;’ and 3. ‘The Self-aggrandizer.’ And how many of these names were justified? Well, let us see:

‘The Town Atheist’ – because he would shave his beard; he would never pray, and in general, had a low opinion of ‘Jewish divertimentos.’

‘The Mocker’ – Because he would continuously make sport of the institutions of the city, of its leadership, the community servants, important people, and other Defenders of the Faith, and in order to attain his objective, he would have printed – at his own expense – collections and brochures, which he edited himself and distributed, in which he would make a laughingstock of everything and everybody. And, thanks to the Almighty, there was certainly enough to make fun of…

In his first collection, ‘Der Yiddisher Spiegel,’ (Warsaw 5655 [1895]), he kibbitzes about the balebatim of Zamość, and even in the reporting, he does not miss the chance to skewer a number of highly prominent people.

Here is merely an example of how he characterized only a few of the notables:

‘Here in our city – he writes there – we have a Gabbai, a foolish egotist with a fat belly; a hoarse cantor, with the voice of a calf;’ a hunchbacked singer with the voice of a shiksa; pious Hasidic traditionalists, who slap the Eastern Wall with great religious fervor; a Rabbi who is a fool, Laban's grandson; a blind Shammes, a big bag of shit; a Hevra-Kadisha comprised of uncouth young people from the better families; a host of idlers behind the oven in the Bet HaMedrash,’ etc…’

Do understand, that those he picked on, considered themselves insulted: ‘Some nerve he has, that busybody!’ They were not used to that kind of chutzpah, and they started making all sorts of complaints and threats…

Beckerman, however, was not intimidated by these kind of ‘little minds:’ as quickly as he could gather up a few rubles, he put out a 20 page little book (including the frontispiece), under the name, ‘R' Bezalel'keh the Melamed,’ and on the frontispiece, he had printed ‘a few words to my fellow townsfolk,’ in which he made use of the anecdote ‘anyone who is in here, let him vacate the bath,’ and then asked them: ‘Who asked you for an opinion? You were not identified by name, and if you had not reacted, no one would have been able to find out what fools you really are….’

Quite separately, this reminds me of his ‘R'Chaim'l the Water-carrier,’ – a realistic portrait which mad a special impression on my memory. It is suffused with poetry and literary artistry.

‘The Self-aggrandizer’ – Because he deliberately held himself in a haughty manner. He would seldom be seen in the street. If, perchance he was observed outside, then he was on his way to the ‘German,’ minyan. That's the way the place was called, because that is where our ‘all-rightniks’ would gather for ‘prayer…’ he would appear in a rich fur mantle, with a wide fur collar and hat. He more closely resembled a Russian merchant, sooner than be taken for a Jew.

As previously mentioned, Berish Beckerman was a baker of ‘decorated’ baked goods. From his hard work, he had to support his family, and enable his children to grow up and become educated people. Nevertheless, this did not prevent him from leaving – in the middle of the day – his dough, the oven, and the two workers that he employed, to closet himself in his bedroom, and to write, write, and write… stories, songs, dramas, and operettas. He produced a couple of his dramatic works on his own, in Zamość. He personally performed in them, as an amateur, and other of his works were performed in Warsaw, under his direction.

This is talking about his dramatic work. What does one do with the operettas? It is necessary to have music. However, this was not a problem for Beckerman: he created the music himself, à la Goldfadn, as it were. He couldn't write a note of music, or read it. But [as the saying goes], a Jew takes his own counsel: he would sit down next to 14 year-old

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Moshe'leh, who at that time already played the clarinet, and sang whatever came into his head. Moshe'leh wrote all of this down in the form of notes, and then he played it back on the clarinet. Beckerman would listen to it, make improvements: indicating a place where something needed to be erased, to add something in another spot, and – a number of tunes, which I remember to this day – weren't so bad….

If it happened that a troupe of ‘wandering stars’ should happen to stray into Zamość, they immediately rode over to Beckerman, and Beckerman would – pushing the lekakh with the bread-paddle into the oven – set up rehearsals with them: singing songs, playing out entire scenes, etc. Beckerman had already provisioned our Jewish people – the theater lovers – with productions, and the poor ‘artists,’ – with ‘goodies’….

A ‘little detail’ comes to mind: a fire broke out in the Town Hall. Beckerman just happened to be in that building at the time, which was very tall, and there was no way to save one's self, except to jump out of a window, which meant certain death.

Beckerman has no fear: He finds an umbrella somewhere, opens it, and jumps right out… and – miracles from heaven: he was unscathed…

Don't even ask what happened afterwards: All of Zamość went topsy-turvy: No small thing! ‘He flies like The Evil One, may God have mercy on us!’

This baker was once struck by the following thought: the late Mordechai Spector, at that time, had produced his renown collected works, ‘House-Friend.’ Beckerman found out that his young friend Peretz had sent off a poem to Spector. Why not, after all, test one's own skill?

No sooner said than done: He immediately composed a poem and sent it to Spector. It is easy to imagine what this baker – this small-town author – went through at that time!… this undoubtedly meant extraordinary emotional torture and intolerable waiting…

Several weeks go by, and – here comes the postman and hands him a small envelope and a letter.

Beckerman opens the package: a book, the ‘House-Friend,’ and in the letter, Spector writes: ‘We thank you for your poem, which you will find printed in the enclosed book. As an expression of our gratitude, we are sending you a sample copy of our ‘House-Friend.’ Send us something additional.’

Peretz, who later would become great and renown, also received a copy of ‘House-Friend,’ but with the comment: ‘regrettably, your poem cannot be printed,’…

Berish Beckerman's poem is called ‘The Weekly Dream,’ and takes up two sides of ‘House-Friend.’ (Volume 1, appeared in 1888, and 4 more volumes until 1896).

This story was told to me personally by Beckerman, before I emigrated from Zamość at the end of 1909. Years later, when he came to America, he corresponded with me from New York. I then sent him a copy of the article, which I had printed – in an abridged form – in the Philadelphia ‘Die Yiddishe Velt,’ where I had been a steady employee, under the editorial direction of Moshe Katz (not to be confused with M. Katz, an employee of ‘The Morning Freiheit’) and he confirmed every word. All he had to say was: (I cite from his letter, in his handwriting).

‘You have interpreted the name ‘Baker’ a bit illogically. The word ‘baker,’ is not in as much sympathy as with other lines of work. And when one comes to saying ‘baker’ already, that connotes a baker of bread, rolls, challahs, etc. But I am designated not only as a ‘baker,’ but [also] ‘cake baker,’ or ‘fancy cake baker,’ or at the highest level, ‘conditeur.’ Because a ‘conditeur’ can produce from chocolate or sugar, exactly what a sculptor can produce from stone, and I possess these very attributes, because I studied conditorie in Warsaw.’

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I immediately recognized our Beckerman the ‘self-aggrandizer:’ it was not acceptable for him to be called ‘baker.’

But for me, the mark always hung there: is this true?

We must remember that in those years, Peretz was no longer a new face on the scene. Peretz had already published his masterpiece, ‘Monish,’ at that time, in Sholom Aleichem's ‘Volks Bibliotek,’ so how is it possible that Mordechai Spector would refuse to publish a Peretz poem?

True: In that period (1888-1895) Peretz carried a bit of a grudge against Spector. But this was not because Spector had done anything against Peretz. It was because Spector had treated Yaakov Dinensohn (Peretz's closest friend) in an unfriendly manner, and that elicited an antipathy out of Peretz for Mordechai Spector.

So I continuously search for a way to disclose the truth about this very serious incident, and I made my way to Shmuel Neiger. His answer was: ‘Impossible!’

It happened that I was in Miami Beach (Florida), and I visit the renown critic Dr. Alexander Mokdony (Kappel). We spent several hours [together], and Dr. Mokdony looked through a variety of books, journals, and newspapers, and in the end came out with the conclusion: ‘Yes, – it is very possible!’

Yes, – I thought to myself – it is very possible. As I said before, there was ‘bad blood’ between Mordechai Spector and I. L. Peretz, and it could very possibly be that Spector wanted to ‘get even’ with his ‘enemy’ – and not print his poem….

Nevertheless, the same question continues to gnaw: which one of these literary experts is right? Do understand, I do not presume to take on the burden of deciding on so important a question. I leave this for our Yiddish literature history writers. However, I would have liked to round out the portrait of ‘Berish Beckerman,’ and say here that Berish Beckerman (now deceased) was not a well-educated person: he had very little education, and for sure was not a musician. He had a natural desire to write – stories, poems and song, to which he personally adapted the music, with the help of his son, Moshe'leh.

Beckerman suffered quite a bit here in America. In his letters to me, he kept on complaining, that he is worn out from running around to the theater-managers and producers, and that ‘all the doors are closed to me,’ – more about this – later.

A handwritten letter from Beckerman to the writer of this article.

Facsimile of Beckerman's ‘The Fortunate Trousers

When you read through these three works, you immediately see that the orthography, the punctuation, syntax and etymology is far from being literary and grammatically [correct]. But if we take into account the time when they were written, we can certainly forgive him all of these shortcomings. Who, at that time wrote any differently, apart from such classicists as Sholom Aleichem and his ilk?

If we page through ‘the History of Yiddish Literature,’ by Dr. M. Pines, edited by the renown critic and thinker (Dr. Israel Eliashev), which appeared in Warsaw, 1911 under B. Shimin Verlag, we see that Mordechai Spector

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‘was not familiar with foreign literature,’ and that he had principally devoted himself to ‘that which has to do with folk-novels,’ while thanks to them, he was able to ‘increase the intrigues, and always introduce new events, enlarging his novels to whatever length he chose, and easily fill the lines of his page.’

And further: ‘Spector…makes use of those melodramatic effects in his novels, which remind one of Shomer's novels,’ and ‘… the informed reader is overwhelmed by the artificial portrayal of the people, and the portrayal of love is as foolish and overdrawn as it is in Shomer's novels, and the portrayals of nature are equally artificial and premeditated.’

At that time, Mordechai Spector already had a significant reputation, which he achieved through his ‘Hose Friend,’ and with his novels, ‘The Jewish Peasant,’ ‘Rebbe Treitel,’ ‘Paupers and the Poor,’ ‘A World of Small Worlds,’ ‘The Cripples,’ and others. Despite this, he was quite far from the later writers in theme, and in portraying what was ‘artificial and premeditated’…

I therefore believe, with total conviction that the future historian of Yiddish literature will not be able to ignore our landsman, Berish Beckerman, ע”ה, who died a few years ago in New York.

As previously mentioned, Beckerman suffered a great deal in America, and in his letter to me (dated on the last day of Passover, 1918), he writes:

‘…for the first three years, I could not even consider taking a pen in hand because I lacked the means to make a living, and I was still fresh here. And now, I have begun to re-copy my plays on one-sided paper, which I brought with me from Europe, And when I have completed re-copying them, then I will begin to apply myself to the theater. My plays are the following: ‘The Conversos of Spain,’ (already performed in Warsaw); ‘The Murderess,’ (a drama performed in Warsaw); ‘Samson,’ (operetta); ‘Deborah the Prophetess,’ (operetta), and ‘Jephtha of Gilead,’ (operetta), and ‘From Prison to the Throne’ (Operetta). Since this is not the time to sell plays, I will wait until the summer is over.’

And later (in the same letter): ‘I send you a poem for ‘The Yiddishe Velt,’ and ask of the editor if he is willing to send me his newspaper, I will each week send him something new…:

Signed: B. Beckerman – 719 East 5^th Street, New York.

Here is his poem:

Springtime Spring has made green and revived the fields Birdsong twitters all around; The banks and the forests have already come alive, The buds, the lilies, the roses and the flowers. The butterflies hum about like a song of joy, They alight silently, like leaves on a tree, And all wingèd creatures dance and leap about, Springtime has awakened them with great feeling. And look how the singers bow their heads, Like for holy prayer, like ‘Barkhu’ in Schul, As if they wanted to overcome silence itself, As if their effort is only for human purposes. And the waters cascade with gay abandon, They wash the shores that still lie asleep. And the sun mildly looks at its reflection in the water, And bestows its warm rays of energy. Oh, shine your rays upon us too, our dear one! Light up our world with the joy of Spring. Enough, enough victims have fallen already, Oh, Springtime! My Springtime! Only Peace is missing.

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I cannot remember what happened at that time: did I turn over this poem to my dear friend Moshe Katz, and he didn't print it; or, was I personally not moved by this poem, and I didn't give it to him.

His urge to write, nevertheless, held on, and he writes as follows to me (October 23, 1918): ‘…If you have the intention to produce something in printed form, I will immediately become a partner to you,’ and ‘…I have over a hundred new Zionist poems, about fifteen declamatory writings. Many stories, skits and monologues, etc. I had the desire to put out a weekly periodical, under the name, ‘The Zionist Beam.’ However, a single person is nothing. Here in America, I am isolated…and in this manner, I wait for the Messiah to come…’

Later on , in the same letter: ‘…and also know and feel, that you, my dear Leibeleh, could be my greatest good fortune. But how does one get there?’ And, ‘…I received word that you had worshiped there during the High Holy Days, and I was greatly pleased to hear this…’

After this letter. There was a brief cessation (why, I now no longer remember), and on May 23, 1924, he complains yet again:

‘…my continuing work exhausts me. I only want to sit, and my foot is bothering me.’

He immediately forgets about his ailing foot, and reminds me again about ‘I have in my possession about 50 new stories – a dozen one-act [plays] – about 200 poems – about 30 biblical and historical declamatory writings – eight 4-act operettas – about 30 seminars – several novels, all of which is waiting to be made public…’

In one of my letters, I made him aware that since I was retained by the ‘Tog,’ and I have an intention of writing about him, if he has some important material, that he should send it to me immediately. Here is a short article which he sent to me. And, it is very interesting:

‘My dear Leibeleh! I am sending you a little bit of stuff for the other article that you have in mind to write about me and Yitzhak Leibusz Peretz.

Leibeleh and I (that's the way Peretz was called when he was little) studied in Heder when we were about 9 or 10 years old. We lived togther like two loyal, small brothers.

Quite often, we would test our skills on each other, reciting rhymes: he would, for example [say]: shtayn, and I would have to recite all those words that rhyme with it, like: tzayn, khrayn, bayn, gayn, fayn, rayn, zayn, gayn, kayn, vayn, mayn, and if I had forgotten any, then Leibeleh would remind me of an added rhyme, like klayn, and I would bet boxed three times quickly in the nose.

And then I would pose just a word-rhyme to him, and in this fashion we would rhyme back and forth and box each other on the nose…

Additionally, we would also tell each other stories that we had fabricated in our heads, that is to say, stories that we thought up, about thieves, of magical places with stones that would open up with a verbal command, as well as a hat that when you put it on, you became invisible, but could see everyone else. We would tell all these stories to many of our Heder boys, so seriously, as if we had been in these places ourselves.

Leibeleh's character as a boy was nothing to praise, but even so, as a ten year-old boy, he already exhibited a very high degree of compassion, he would ask me why nobody ever brought me any ‘heated victuals,’ in Heder? (In the small towns of Russian Poland, the house servant brings each child something to eat at the Heder before the noon hour – B. B.), and I related to him that my father had died, and my mother was in Warsaw, and I am here with a poor aunt who earns 60 kopecks a week for flicking feathers. And when Leibeleh heard of my plight, he would then, every day, bring me a specially wrapped dry lunch, consisting of all manner of good things, and he would sit down with me under the Wohl (a grassy place) and there, with a smile, he would watch how I would eat [chewing] with both of my cheeks….

[Page 249]

One day, his mother Riveleh (or Rivkeleh – L.G.), confronted him, demanding that he tell her to whom he takes such a package every day, full of food, and Leibeleh, said fearlessly: that he gives it to his poor comrade Bereleh Zlateh's (Berish Beckerman, the son of Zlateh – L.G.), who is an orphan, and has nothing to eat.

Hearing these words of compassion from her own son, she ordered him to bring me to the house, so that I would regularly eat with Leibeleh together, but I, being a shy little boy, did not accept the invitation, and indeed, that same week, I took a tearful leave from my dear friend, Leibeleh, and I told him that an uncle of mine (a wagon driver), is taking me to Warsaw, a journey of ten days, on a coach. Here, I was making this trip to locate where my dear mother was in Warsaw, and not finding my mother, a terrifying want and hunger began for me.

And for a long time, a long time, I carried the yoke of a homeless orphan, these hard and bitter times continued further, and further, until I received an order that I have to present myself for conscription.

Oh, how quickly my young years flew by, with nothing to show for them. Already 10-12 years had passed, and I am now ready to travel home, to stand for conscription, and to whom am I know traveling? I didn't have anyone there anymore, except for my friend, Leibeleh Peretz. And oh, how hard it will be for me to meet with him now! He, he about whom I have been told, that he had been educated by all of the best Gemara teachers. After that, attending gymnasium, became educated, and already has a diploma as a lawyer….

And I?… oh, my heart weeps inside of me for how cruel fate has cheated me of my youthful expectations, with what sort of speech will I now be able to speak to my comrade Leibeleh? He will recognize that I am coarse, uneducated… Leibeleh my friend is a lawyer, and I … have become a cake baker, or a conditeur that makes artistic sculptural works out of chocolate and sugar. Yes, it is true, it is a fine line of work… but not what I had hoped to become according to my emotions…

The shame penetrated deeply into me, and I decided within me, not to meet with my friend Leibeleh, until I will be able to catch up to him with a bit of knowledge, and then I will be able to converse with him briefly. And I became strongly satisfied, when I heard that Yitzhak Leibusz Peretz had moved to Warsaw, and that he will remain there as an employee of the Warsaw Jewish Community. Only then was I able to remain at peace in my home town of Zamość, until the times took me and my entire household to the ‘Goldeneh Medina’ in America.

In the end, I became exhausted, scratching my way up the ladder of education, and remained halfway up the ladder trying to pull myself up, but with no strength…it would appear, that in order to climb the ladder of education, one should climb with young feet, and then it is possible to arrive at the highest rung, the level that my immortal friend Yitzhak Leibusz Peretz achieved.’

A footnote accompanies this letter: ‘You may edit this for improvement in accordance with your own taste.’

I wish only to add her that I turned over all of this material exactly as he wrote it: with his orthography, punctuation and language.

We can see from this material that Beckerman portrays himself in a not-too-favorable light: he communicates secrets about his childhood years and – thinking perhaps that this would not be printed in written form, he gives me permission to improve it ‘according to my taste’… and to this effect, he adds himself – even as late as 1924 – that he is still not rich in a literary sense. It can be seen from his orthography, syntax and etymology.

Regrettably, I do not have copies of the letter that I wrote to him. However, from his letter, written June 1924, we can imagine that I probably made some comments about this, and he answers me:

[Page 250]

‘…I am at the point now, where I want to allay any of your dismay about the matter of my poor orthography and punctuation. I am actually greatly pleased that you, my friend, had been able to detect a number of errors in my writing: but, I am equally disappointed that at the same time you didn't understand the reason for this, even though I had previously revealed half of my secrets.’ And he has an additional issue with me, in that I ‘should have responded in a more sympathetic tone’ and that ‘I was not ashamed to write out my memories for you, that I had studied until the age of 8 or 9 years in a Heder on the side, and that afterwards the large city of Warsaw swallowed me up under very hard and struggle-filled circumstances…’ and that ‘the bitter luck of being isolated and in ignorance accompanied me all the way to the wedding canopy…’

Berish Beckerman had always sought ways to educate himself. He understood very well, that witho9ut education, he would not get very far. So, what did he do in this regard? Let us permit him to tell us about this. In the same letter, he tells me that:

‘…I immediately hired a teacher for my little 5 year-old daughter, Etteleh, ע”ה, and he taught her to write and read Yiddish, and this latter person, paying no mind to anyone, I focused on with such an intensity and such a fire, that every word that the teacher said became woven into the strands of my memory…’

He had another issue with me (all in the same letter), he writes:

‘…I have the right to make an occasional mistake in my writing. But this is not permitted to you, because your mind is sufficiently instructed by the best Gemara teachers and other teachers. And me – by whom?’

For those who take an interest in Yiddish literature, the following clarifications will be of interest (all from the same letter), which were unknown even to me at that point, for example:

1. ‘Der Yiddisher Spiegel’ failed after its first edition. The second edition never appeared. Why? The second edition was to be titled, ‘The Orphan of the World.’ However, it remained with the censor, because I spoke somewhat cavalierly about Czar Nicholas…’
2. Bovshover's poem, ‘My Lady Friend,’ (printed in the first edition of ‘Spiegel’), he obtained from America from a friend of his, ‘a former director of the Yiddish theater, David Tanzman, ע”ה.’
3. In the same edition, he printed ‘A spirit and its father’ – a satirical telling ‘from one, A. M. Krivonoy, who was a soldier, a Hebraist, who served in Zamość.’
4. A poem, ‘Yisrulik in Jerusalem,’ by Alter Hershkes. Who is he? He clarifies for me that this was ‘the very same Krivonoy, who wrote under a variety of pseudonyms.’
5. A certain Mendel Messer, writes ‘A Letter from America,’ there, in which he relates very interesting material about the immigrants of that time. Already in that time – over 60 years ago – the writer bemoans the fact that there are machines that ‘throw thousands of workers out of the factories, and they literally expire from hunger.’ Of great interest, he also relates facts about the plan of Baron Hirsch to settle Jews in Argentina. But who is this Mendel Messer? I learn – indeed from his letter – that he is ‘the son of Abraham Einbinder of Zamość, who lives in New York today.’
6. Apart from the fact that I had a strong interest in knowing who these writers were, and how they came to him, I was most interested to know how he came to Abraham Cahan^[2], who (in the ‘Speigel’) had two full chapters about ‘The Spanish Inquisition,’ with a ‘following introduction.’ Also, this clarifies for me [the origin] of Abraham Cahan's ‘The

Inquisition,’ with pictures, that I received from a periodical. ‘The Forward𔃻 is in front of me. How could I not remember.’

I believe that Beckerman has made an error here: the first edition of the Forverts appeared on April 22, 1897. It is self-explanatory that Beckerman could not have made use of the Forverts in 1897.

In the same letter, he also confirmed an announcement in the ‘Morgen Zhurnal’ in which he advised:

‘Partner or manager needed, for modern concerts, of strictly new literary not yet heard works. A new program every week. Assembled and registered by the oldest Warsaw actor, master baker, write to the ‘Morgen Zhurnal,’ Box 1300.’

Regrettably, I do not know if anything ever came of this. One thing is certain: if something had come of it, I would have seen it in the news periodicals. It indicates that he never rested, and always sought ways to do something with his writings.

After this long letter – in which he enclosed two poems, and asked me to print them in ‘Die Yiddishe Velt,’ he sent me a short little letter, in which he also enclosed a card from ‘Young's Gap House,’ in Parksville, Sullivan County, N.Y. Where he had taken a job as the baker for the summer, and immediately afterwards – July 17, 1924 – I received a longer letter from Liberty, N. Y., in which he tells me, among other things, that:

‘Even in childhood, I began to feel that mt thoughts were occupied by the creative forces of what we call ‘The Muse,’ or literature…

My first ideal was the theater, and I can rightly say that I was one of the first pioneers that 50 years ago founded the Yiddish theater (I have an article about the ‘memories of the Yiddish theater 50 years ago’ – B. B.). However, good fortune regrettably could not come to my assistance and help me overcome my bad circumstances that occur quite often in human life. It is true that I saw my first two production achieve success. However, they did not have good luck, because it is necessary to have good luck more than to have talent.

Here, in America, it is much easier to sell bad pieces from a well-known writer than the best piece of someone who is unknown, and today one has to be thick-skinned to withstand and outlast the kibitzing of the claque, and since I have already had the opportunity once to hear from a director that biblical and historic operettas are not worth producing, because the stage scenery will be too expensive to make, and it has therefore occurred to me, that I have nowhere to turn to. Brother Gross, one has to have luck!’

Along this he provides me with a fact that ‘thirty years ago, I created my [play] ‘Samson,’ a biblical operetta in 4 acts, with song and dance,' and it lay with him for 8 or 10 years, until ‘a new king arose, a new writer and he made a ‘Samson,’ and it was performed in Warsaw for a number of years.’ And his piece still lays in one of his boxes, and ‘rests on its bones.’ He recalls other biblical works that are waiting until ‘a Messiah of some sort will come. And I will be able to trot them out onto the stage.’

That is why he set himself first to produce his one-act plays, poems, and declamations. But this will now be ‘only my seasonal work,’ and become the ‘director of the Warsaw concert Troupe.’ He will play – he writes – in New York, in Brownsville, in Brooklyn. In the Bronx, etc.

He also took it upon himself to approach Morris Guest, because, ‘one needs deep pockets for such operettas, and no one but Morris Guest has this.’

And at the end of the letter he writes:

[Page 252]

‘You can see already, that I didn't want to set down the vowels and markings, because it is more that certainly possible that I am not putting them in the right place, because in those days, 50 years ago, when I learned to write without the help of a teacher, very little was known then about modern punctuation, and believe me, friend, it is possible to write a good piece not only with a more beautiful fountain pen but also with a more legible penmanship, and if my markings will not be proper, then the typesetter will fix them.’

I received one more short letter from him. And that was on October 15, 1924. In that letter, he told me that he is receiving ‘letters from managers,’ and he doesn't know what will come of this yet (his ad in the ‘Morgen Zhurnal’).

After this short letter, there was a halt until August 11, 1933. I then received a letter from him, in which he invited me to come to him in his house. He had already moved away from 5th Street, and had moved to 565 193rd Street. Regrettably, I no longer remember whether I traveled to see him, or not. However, later, I received the sad news that he had died.

And in this way, we lost yet another talent from Zamość, that perhaps might have been able to develop, and become one of the great men, that Zamość has given to the world.

As a footnote to the bibliographic work of Louis Gross about Berish Beckerman, we insert the following excerpt from Zalman Zilberzweig's ‘Lexicon of the Jewish Theater,’ in which he write about Berish Beckerman. (New York, 1931, pp. 195-197).

[Page 253]

Berish Beckerman

As Beckerman tells it, this ‘theater’ was located in the second yard of the same house, in a garden. This ‘theater’ consisted of a wooden building. In which there was a specially made curved gallery of boards. The scene: a straight platform, on which an actor would come out, with two singers, one each side of him, wile the other singers and actors would sing from behind the ‘background.’

The troupe consisted of the actors Aharon Tager (the director), Kopkeh Dubinskym Shmulyak, Heimovich, Max Blumenfeld and of the choristers (the later actors) Berel Bernstein, Max Goldberg, Abraham-Yitzhak Tanzman, Shliferstein, and Berish Beckerman.

A ticket cost 5 kopecks. Every week they put on a different program.

To the extent that Beckerman can recall, on the outside wall of the ‘theater’ there was a program hung, with the following content:

‘I Am Ashamed to Say,’ sung by Aharon Tager.
‘Borkhi Nafshi,’ sung by Shmulyak.
‘The Mirror and the Clock,’ sung by Heimovich and Aharon Tager.
‘Oz Yashir,’ sung by Max Blumenfeld.
‘I Should Only Have a Beard,’ sung by Heimovich.
‘The Hassid and the ‘German’,’ sung by Shmulyak and Tager.
‘Four Porcelain Plates;’ ‘The Heroes of Israel:’ ‘The Three Deaf People:’ and ‘The Matches’ – played and sung by the entire troupe.

The performances were so well attended that the price of a ticket was quickly doubled. A short while thereafter, the troupe performed ‘Shmendrick,’ later, ‘The Grandmother and the Grandchild,’ ‘The Witch,’ ‘Both Kuni-Lemel,’ and moved from Wolf Litvak's little garden to the theater on Moranover Platz.

Beckerman goes to Grander after the ‘Broder Singers,’ who puts together a troupe (Israel and Anita Grander, Berel Bernstein, Tanzman, Shliferman, Joseph Taubers, Max Goldberg) for the province. Here, Beckaerman appears in parts under the pseudonym B. Berkovich. For family reasons, however, he leaves the troupe, and travels back to Zamość, where he opens a conditorei, and writes ‘In Times Past,’ novels, stories, etc.

According to the tradition from ‘Peretz's Pages,’ Beckerman produced ‘Der Yiddisheh Spiegel,’ a collection of various outputs of Dovberish HaLevi Beckerman, Volume One, Warsaw, 5655 (1885). The volume contains 64 pages, 2 folios of 16°, under his own name, as well as the pseudonym, Dr. Bo'ee BeShalom, The Chief Baker, Berkovich, and in passing, Beckerman prints there his stories, poems, jokes, translations and feuilletons. A year later, B. Beckerman published original collections under the name ‘Flowers to the Jewish Mirror,’ apart from which he presented ‘R' Bezalel'keh Melamed,’ a story set in Warsaw about the current year, 1895, compiled by Dovberish HaLevi Beckerman, Warsaw 5654 (18 pages, 16°) and ‘The Happy Trousers,’ a tale about fabric, composed by Dovberish HaLevi Beckerman of Zamość, Warsaw 5655 (1885) (23 pages 16°). In Spector's second book, ‘The House Friend,’ Beckerman also published a poem, ‘A Weekly Dream,’ and anecdotes.

[Page 254]

At Kaminsky's initiative, who comes to Zamość to perform with his troupe, Beckerman works over a novel of his own into a play, under the name, ‘Die Frumeh Merderin,’ a comic-drama, which plays in Warsaw for a number of years, by Kaminsky's troupe, and Kompanietz. Because of the bad business in Zamość, Kaminsky also works out that Beckerman should appear in his plays a number of times in his performed Goldfadn repertoire.

On September 30, 190… Beckerman's classic operetta, ‘The Conversos of Spain,’ in 4 acts and 5 scenes, was presented under the direction of A. G. Kompanietz at the Warsaw Moranover Theater.

Beckerman came to America in 1914, where he was employed as a fancy baker. On November 1, 1926, Beckerman produces the first edition of ‘The Immigrant Sentinel,’ a monthly journal, first edition, produced by B. Beckerman. The entire edition was filled with Beckerman's own compositions. Among other items, he presents ‘Mendel and Genendel’ there (in theater form), and ‘The Divorced Bride,’ a life's portrait in one act, from the Immigrant Sentinel (unfinished).

Beckerman has in manuscript form, ‘Deborah the Prophetess,’ a biblical operetta; ‘Jephthah of Gilead;’ a biblical operetta; ‘From Prison to the Throne, an historic operetta’; ‘The New God,’ historical operetta. The ne act plays: ‘The Second Judith;’ ‘The Woman convert’ and the one act comedies: ‘My First Groom,’ ‘A Bomb in the Rebbe's Attic,’ ‘Swapped Wives,’ ‘A Diamond Ring,’ ‘Fish the Water Carrier,’ and ‘Ladies First.’

Translator's footnotes:

1. These pages indicate that his full name was Dov Ber HaLevi Beckerman. His double Hebrew-Yiddish name is shown fused, with a Slavic ending: Dovberish. The Hebrew part of his name, apparently is dropped in the idiomatic usage of the times, yielding Berish. Return
2. Abraham Cahan (1860-1951) was the first editor of The Jewish Daily Forward (Der Forverts) Return

[Page 255]

Rosa Luxembourg

A city, a town, like tens or hundreds of Jewish towns, in the one-time, in the Russian Poland of the past.

A city with a special street of Sephardic Jews, whom the patron of the city – Jan Zamoyski – whose name the city bears – brought in the year 1588, from Turkey, with the explicit condition that none of them may undertake the “gentile” trade – of shoemaking. A city of special renaissance buildings, and a city that had one of the first printing presses in Poland.

A pleasant little river flows near the city, which serves not only for Tashlikh, or to formalize a Jewish Divorce – but also as a source of inspiration for writers and lovers. Fields and woods can be found near the town, that extend nearly to the renown forests of Szczebrzeszyn. And outside the city, one can also find the renown Zamość fortress, which withstood the sieges of the Mongols, Swedes, Napoleon, etc., and which played such an important role in the Polish uprising of 1863. Not far from the fortress, a palace, built by the Zamoyskis of old, and is suffused with mysteriousness.

The city is not far from the German-Austrian border, and German culture has just as strong an influence here as does the Polish; Goethe and Schiller are as well-known among the intelligentsia as Adam Miczkiewicz^[1] and Ciprian Norwied.

Such a city and its surroundings has an influence on the character and disposition of people; such a city moves you, and is destined to produce great and interesting personalities.

Out of these interesting personalities, we will cite only three: the first turned himself to the past – to what had transpired. There, he sought treasures and pearls and he introduced them into his Yiddish folk creations.

– His name was Shlomo Ettinger.

And the second, storm-tossed and boiling – like his name – Peretz, sought to break a window into Jewish life, in order to admit the rays of light from the Europe of that era.

And the third – more appropriately third (feminine form), went out to the nations of the world; carried with her a great dream, about breaking down the borders between nations, and making one great elevated people out of these nations; with this dream, she raised herself, and forcibly tore out the masses, taking them with her – she became a she-eagle, until a malevolent, perverted spirit broke off her wings and destroyed her.

Her name was Rosa Luxembourg.

And it is about this wondrous she-eagle, about this stormy wonder-bird, that we will attempt to tell about here.

[Page 256]

A. Childhood and Young Years

Despite the fact that a very elaborate literature has been created about the personality of Rosa Luxembourg, in many languages, this nevertheless is relevant to her later social activism and especially to her tragic death. However, there are rather few biographical treatments of just her alone, especially about her childhood and period of young years.

All we know is that she was born in 1870^[2] in the city of Zamość, and raised in stormy times that were out of the ordinary, and indeed, it was these stormy times that tore her out of the quiet, subdued, half-dreamy Zamość, at the age of four years, and carried her to heaving, and stormy Warsaw, and later to a variety of capitol cities in Europe.

Rosa Luxembourg came to live and make an impact in one of the most interesting periods of human history. It was a time when nations awakened, when ideas and movements arose, and became relevant to the times.

She was born in the second half of the nineteenth century, which enters the annals of human history as an epoch of transition – since it was a transition period from the end of the Middle Ages, to the beginning of modern times.

It was the time of the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. In the time when “His Majesty the Machine” came upon the arena of society, and placed a stamp on that society, and then transformed that society.

If, in the thirties, there was an active resistance to the rise of steam power, a resistance that is known under the rubric of “the machine wreckers,” in Germany, and in the neo-Luddite movement in England (also in Polish Lodz, there were attempts to break the machines), then in the second half of the previous century, it became clear to everyone, that it was irrational to oppose the irresistible forces of progress. In its place, the thought was placed that it is not the machine that is the enemy of the people, but rather the opposite, the machine needs to be used for the good of humanity and for the good of the working classes.

The modern socialist movements begins to take form.

This movement travels in a direction opposite to that of the sun – it goes from west to east.

The industrialization begins in England (the ancestral patriarchs of socialism think that England will be the first socialist state) passes through France and Germany, and reaches the borders of the once isolated semi-feudal Czarist Russia, and in the front row, to the Poland of that time.

Poland of that era came to play a rather important and interesting role in the geography of Europe; Poland lies on the border between east and west; Poland is famous for its history for being the land which halted the advance of the Mongols, the Tatars, of the Turks and other Asiatics, and semi-barbarous tribes in various kingdoms.

Also, from the perspective of industrialization, Poland stood far ahead in comparison with the Russia of that time. Poland, broken up and quartered among three kingdoms, was nevertheless much more advanced than Russia to the east; in this respect, Poland stood closer to the west than the east. In the year 1874, Russian Poland accounted for more than 19 of all steam-powered machinery of Russia at that time, and in Poland – especially in Lodz, Pabianice, Zyrardów, and Warsaw, formidable factories begin to rise, which employ thousands of workers.

Also the Polish labor movement was a lot older and more assertive than its Russian counterpart. If in Russia, until the late nineties, held onto the movement which mainly supported the muzhik^[3] and the landless peasant, in Poland there already was a socialist labor movement. Already by 1862, a group of Social Democrats existed in Poland, which took part in the founding of the First International, and in the year 1881, creates the first Polish Socialist Party, under the name of the first “Proletariat.”

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The various people's movements and revolutions which took place in Europe in the 19^th century, had a deep and powerful echo in Poland; The Chartist Movement in England, the Revolutions of 1848 in France and in Central Europe, the heroic uprising of the Paris Commune in 1871, resonated mightily in Poland. Which itself carried through two revolutions in the past century – the revolutions of 1830 and 1863 – revolutions that was put down bloodily by the Czarist Cossacks, but also elicited deeply flowing undercurrents from within the Polish nation.

These referenced undercurrents and transformations, brought many residents from the villages and the shtetlach and from the smaller settlements within the larger cities, to look for work and bread and also brought the family of Rosa Luxembourg from small Zamość to large Warsaw.

To the extent that is known, Rosa Luxembourg's father, Edouard Luxembourg, was an enlightened, assimilated Jew, who did not have any special relationship to his Jewishness. In his youth, he studied in the commercial schools of Berlin and Bromberg. It is also known that Edouard Luxembourg studied for a period of time at the Teachers Seminary in Warsaw – despite the fact that in life, he was at a distance from pedagogy and from all appearances, did not have much luck as a merchant... Rosa Luxembourg's mother, Lena, was an intelligent, enlightened woman, who had an ardent love for the Bible, and the German poet Schiller – as Rosa Luxembourg herself tells in her famous letters from prison.

One of her grandfathers, on her father's side, was one of the most prominent merchants of Zamość, having dealt in Danzig, Leipzig, and other cities out of the country. On her maternal grandfather's side, there are a slew of Rabbis and apparently also the famous Gaon of Lemberg “Pene Yehoshua.”^[4] She also had a great-grandfather who took an active part in the Polish revolutionary movement of 1846 in Krakow^[5] and at that time released a call “to the Jewish citizens of Krakow” – and it looks like the genius, and revolutionary spirit of her grandfathers and uncles, were embodied brilliantly in Rosa.

Rosa was the youngest child of her parents – the youngest, and the most talented. The Latin saying that “A Healthy Soul is found in a Healthy Body,” did not apply to Rosa Luxembourg; from earliest childhood, she suffered from a variety of ailments, and from one of these bouts of illness, she remained with a permanent limp for her entire life, but – as the doctor of that time is reputed to have said – “she certainly won't limp intellectually...”

It is indeed because of these ailments that she begins to attend school late, but even before she enters school, she can read, write, and sketch (she had a special weakness for sketching and drawing), her beloved heroes are Spartacus, The Brothers Gracchi, and other warriors for justice. She keeps a diary, writes letters to her mother, to her girlfriends, to her canary.... from all appearances, she was a master letter-writer, not only in prison, but also when she was free, and not only in her later years, but also in childhood.

She is one of the most talented students at school, she is in the second grade, and knows more than most students in the fifth grade.... her girlfriends call her “Globus,” because of this, because she seems to carry all the world's problems on her head. Her reactionary Russified teachers hate her – but guide her skills.

At that time, the Polish socialist organization, “Proletariat” is founded. At the head of this organization stand such wondrous personalities such as the legendary Ludwig Varinsky – who is later thrown into a Czarist prison, Stanislaw Mendelson, Shimon Dickstein – known by the pseudonym “Jan Mlot,” and the author of the famous brochure, “What One Lives By,” and a whole host of other interesting and wondrous personalities.

Rosa Luxembourg was all of 13 years old when she entered one of the circles of “Proletariat” – by appearance, she looks much younger – however, it doesn't much time before she attracts everyone's attention; the soaring trajectory of the young she-eagle is recognized!

[Page 258]

The Czarist regime falls on the “Proletariat” organization with special cruelty. A large part of its leadership are hanged, a wave of informants cascades over the organization, and many of its members are arrested. Rosa doesn't sleep at home, prints calls to action, brochures, translates Karl Kautsky's brochure “The Division of Wealth in the Future Order,” into Polish and at that time, she receives an order from the remaining party leaders, that she must leave Poland, go to Switzerland and assume the leadership of the organization.

At the time she left Poland, at the time she fled over the border, she is followed by the border guards. Her companion – a shingle maker from Posen, shoves her into a church. There, he tells the priest that she has in mind to convert to Christianity, the priest helps save them, and to get over the border undetected...

Rosa Luxembourg was twenty years old when she went across the Polish border and also the border into a new, stormy world.^[6]

A facsimile of one of Rosa Luxembourg's Letters from prison

In Zurich, she met [the man] who would become her friend and life-long companion, Leo Jogiches (also known as “Tiszka,” “Grozovsky,” etc. – a son of wealthy Jewish parents from Vilna, who had been expelled from gymnasium because of political activism. His entire life was dedicated to the labor movement. Every hour that he did not dedicate to party work, he thought of as “stolen minutes.^[7]”).

In the year 1893, together with Leo Jogiches and Juliusz Markhlevsky (Jan Karski), she founded the Polish Social-Democratic Party, for which she is not only the founder – but at times also the entire party. This party, known by the initials S.D.K.P.L. – later the communist party of Poland, carried on a sharp struggle against the second Polish Party, P.P.S., for its nationalism and separatism, this battle is carried out by Luxembourg in the name of pure Marxism – and it is not for nothing that she is later designated as the “mother” of Polish Marxism.

She made her first appearances in the public eye in the venue of the Austrian-German socialist “Eintracht.” Her first offerings were far from being a success; she was very nervous, and simply was unable to put the words together, and so she groped about, and it was hard to imagine that a short time later, she would mature, as an effective public speaker, who would be able to sway thousands of listeners.

In that time, she edited the Polish S. D. Sprava Rabotniva (The Labor-Issue), produces an array of brochures under various names, about The first of May, and about “Independence and the Labor-Issue,” where she develops the concept that “a freedom for humanity will come, and not a Polish freedom.” In the year 1896, she prints her first article in Kautsky's “Neue Zeit,” about social-patriotism in Poland. In that same year, she takes part in the coming together of the socialist International, which took place in London. There, she appears sharply in opposition to the P. P. S. delegate Ignaz Daszinski and against the P. P. S. doctrine of separatism, creates a large number of enemies and also many adherents.

On the trip back from London, she spends a few months in Paris. She becomes acquainted with the French Socialist leadership, foremost, Zishl Ged and Jean Jaurès, with whom she has disagreements over many matters. She is impressed by his oratorical talent and his struggle for peace, to which she is also a strong adherent. At the congress of

[Page 259]

the Socialist International, which took place four years later in Paris, she conducts the debate about “peace for the nations, about militarism and the permanent army.”

During her visit to Paris – and later in other European capitols – she also visits various museums, acquainting herself with art treasures, visits The Louvre, and the art exhibits of the Impressionists. Within Rosa Luxembourg there lived not only a great politician, but also a great artist.

In 1897, after submitting her university thesis about “The Industrial Development of Poland,” which is considered by all the professors as brilliant work – she moves to Germany, in order to settle there and realize her ambitions. She is drawn to Germany for two reasons: first, Germany at that time had the strongest labor movement, and her knowledge of the German language. In order to be able to be politically active, she must become a German citizen, so she has a fictional wedding with the son of a German socialist and obtains the name, “Frau Liebeck.”

In September 1898 she directs the socialist organ in Dresden, and protrudes ever further out in the top ranks, as a brilliant orator, a brilliant writer, and as a sharp uncompromising warrior against reformism, which in that time had come to the fore, with the well-known theory of Edouard Bernstein about revisionism. It is against this theory that she writes her famous book, “Reform or Revolution.”

Rosa Luxembourg had her own path and her own way in the socialist movement. She came out, not only against Bernstein and later against Kautsky, but also against Lenin, with whom she agreed on many things, but disagreed with him on many more things. The same can be said in connection with Plekhanov, for whom she had a great deal of respect, as the father of Russian Social-Democracy, but against whom she – and even more so her husband Leo Jogiches — carried on a bitter fight.

She takes an active role in the Socialist International, where she represents the extreme left wing, taking an interest in all affairs which come out in the Polish and Russian socialist movement and also takes an active part in the election campaign of the German Socialists in the year 1903. For a sharp speech that she gives against militarism, she is arrested – but later set free.

And in this manner, tightly involved with German workers and the German socialist movement, news of the 1905 revolution in Russia reaches her, and Rosa Luxembourg realizes that she has to be there.

The entire, vast land of Russia is caught up in a boiling revolutionary wave; the entire country is one giant battlefield. In Petersburg and in Lodz, in Baku and in Warsaw, in Odessa and in Riga, barricades are being erected; workers pour out, soldiers, sailors, peasants, students – all Russian peoples, and Rosa Luxembourg finds herself there.

She comes under a false name – Anna Matckko – and under this name, she is active for a long time, until the Russian reaction succeeds in choking the people's uprising and the citizen Anna Matchko is arrested and thrown into the usual prison, together with ordinary criminals and crazies.

However, while she was in prisons, she composes three brochures, which are smuggled out and printed. On a certain evening, she is blindfolded and she is taken out of the cell. She believes that this her end has arrived, and “and I was ashamed – she admitted years later – because I thought I had gone pale.”

After leaving prison, she makes a small break in her political activity and travels together with Louisa Kautsky to Italy – to rest her shot nerves.

She had to have such short rest periods, breath-catching opportunities, after active incidents; [but] such rest was in itself a prison for her, and a second pause, to travel to sunny Italy in the year 1911, arouses in her a desire to draw, which she had a weakness for since childhood.

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It is hard to know, how such an obviously frail and sickly woman could do so much; It is a fact that she participated in Polish Social-Democracy, in the German and Russian Labor Movements, in [The Socialist] International. She was everywhere in word and deed, appeared everywhere, and wrote everywhere and thereby demonstrated to produce such important capital works as the previously mentioned “Reform and Revolution” and her even more important work, “The Accumulation of Capital,” which many consider to be the single most important socialist book, after Marx's “Das Kapital.”

And in this fashion, her life continued on, with activity, until the bloody world war in the year 1914.

This chapter will be especially short; Rosa Luxembourg belonged to that class of people that cannot be circumscribed within boundaries, or in the ranges of a specific national group. She dreamed of creating one nation out of all nations, and did not even think of herself as Polish – in fact, she was what at one time was understood to be a cosmopolitan person, in the best sense of that word.

Also her family – as we have already mentioned – did not have any relationship to Jews, despite the fact that they came from such a genuinely Jewish ambience, which is what the city of Zamość was at that time. They were assimilated and at most, they thought of themselves as “Poles of the Mosaic faith.”

The Jewish moments were however, indirect, and came from the other side. All those who fought against her, never forgot to remind everyone of her Jewish origin. In hindsight, it seems appropriate to cite what was written about her by the former Polish radical and freethinker, and later black marketeer, Andzhei Niemayevski.

In his journal, Misl Niepodliega (Independent Thought), he writes:

“ The Jews incite the workers to make all of socialism an enemy of the Fatherland... that, along with what Rosa Luxembourg and her followers – these heirs of the one-time saloon keepers – they nourish the workers, with all the attributes of [sic: intoxicating] literary drink... This destructive devil's work, carried out by these Jewish louts, under the guise of ameliorating the plight of the laboring classes, really emerges as having the true objective to full the hearts of the workers with hate towards Poland. It is to win them over to the view that Poland is dead. To use them, in the end, for ameliorating the interests of Jewish petit-bourgeoisie. This is because the Jews are “anti-gentile,” and the Luxembourg Social-Democrats – inherent enemies of Poland...”

However, she also had certain positive Jewish moments. As told by Jean Mille (one of the pioneers of the Bund), in his book, “Pioneers and Builders,” in defense of the Jewish labor organizations in Russia and Poland, against the attacks of the P. P. S. and even later, when the Bund was already 3-4 years in existence, and had already shown, according to its point of view, signs of the so-called “nationalistic sickness,” she asked of him if he would write up an overview of the Jewish socialist movement, for the popular scientific journal, “Psheglond Sozial-Democratichnii.” that she edited at that time. Since the evidence showed that Jean did not undertake to produce this work, someone else prepared it.

As the same Jean Mille relates, in the previously cited book, Rosa Luxembourg, together with her husband, Leo Jogiches, staged “four speeches of Jewish workers,” which took place on May 1, 1892 in Vilna, and can be thought of the beginning of the organized Jewish labor movement. – Despite the fact that the Vilna organization was not satisfied with the way in which the speeches subsequently were printed.

No further Jewish moment connected to Rosa Luxembourg are known, and quite properly, no more could be expected.

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D. In Prisons and Out Free

No one less than her great friend and sharer of ideals, Karl Liebknecht, wrote in his renown letters from prison, that he would like to live twice: once “at leisure” in prison, in order to become familiar with certain things, and a second time, free, in order to be able to make an impact and fight.

Regrettably, he did not even live one complete life, and it was a murderous bullet from a reactionary Junker that ended his young life.

The larger part of revolutionary life was a double-life – in prison and out of prison, free.

Rosa Luxembourg also lived such a double-life, being in prison and out free. In the year 1890, she flees Poland, in order not to be incarcerated in some Czarist prison. According to one version – supported by B. Mark, in his work about I. L. Peretz – Rosa Luxembourg served time in the Paviak in the year 1889, together with I. L. Peretz (In our opinion, this version is not correct. At that time, Rosa Luxembourg was already in Switzerland). In the year 1903, she is arrested in Germany because of her pointed election speeches. She is freed on the basis of an amnesty, which was proclaimed at the occasion of the King of Saxony. Rosa Luxembourg refuses to accept the benefit of the amnesty. Consequently, she is literally thrown out of the cell where she was incarcerated.

In March 1907, she again gets a taste of a Czarist prison, as we have previously described.

In the year 1914, when the clouds of war began to thicken in the European skies, she appears actively against the impending war. In an array of meetings, she calls on the German workers and German soldiers, “not to take up their arms against our French brethren,” A trial is conducted against her, and she is sentenced to 11 months conditional imprisonment.

The government attempts to put her on trial yet again, because in one of her speeches, she mentioned corporal punishment that was meted out in the German army. “She has insulted the officer corps, the non-commissioned officers, and the soldiers.” But 1013 victims of this corporal punishment present themselves as witnesses and the government pulls back.

And when the bloody war breaks out, and the largest part of the socialists in various countries are drawn into the maelstrom of the war, Rosa Luxembourg is one of the few who holds high the banner of struggle against the war, helps to call together the Zimmerwald Conference and carries on vigorous anti-war activities.

In March 1915, she is thrown into prison, where she remains until February 1916. However, from prison, she edits the periodical “The International,” along with Franz Mehring, Leo Jogiches, and others, and writes her brochure about “Crisis in the German Social-Democracy.”

After a short interlude of freedom, she is incarcerated yet again in July 1916, and is interred in prisons in Berlin, Wronka and Breslau – and she remains there until she is liberated by the German revolution at the end of the war.

Indeed, it is from these imprisonments that her famous “prison letters” come to us, in which one can get a sense of the profound soul possessed by the one who wrote such letters.

If Rosa Luxembourg had created only these letters in her life, and nothing else, for this alone she would have to be crowned as a great, pure, feeling, poetic soul – with a great human heart and with a true poetic talent.

It was a time when the walls of a prison were not so stifling as they have recently become; it was still possible to write something there and tell something, and Rosa Luxembourg told a great deal: she told about her great love for art, for music, for genuine folk literature, for the singing bird; she portrays her enormous compassion for a roach that has been

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bitten apart, to a captured Rumanian ox, who is a “captive” and dreams there about how, after the bloody war, she will rest and live out her life on the island of Corsica, etc.

From all the predictions she made in her letters, only one came true. That “she hoped to die at her post: in the battlefield of the streets or in prison...”

On November 9, 1918, the revolutionary storm breaks out in Berlin and other cities of Germany. [Kaiser] Wilhelm II flees to Holland. On the same day, the workers of Breslau break down the gates of the prison, and free Rosa Luxembourg, carrying her out on their hands, to the cathedral square.

But this was not for long, because at the rear, evil forces lay in ambush. They sought the life of this revolutionary leader, as they generally sought to undermine the upcoming German republic -------

And on a cold-black January night, reactionary German Junkers – the very same ones who later brought Hitlerism to Germany – seized Rosa Luxembourg, and in a terrifying manner, they murdered her and threw her body into a dirty canal.

However, the memory of this proud and substantive she-eagle will live for a long time, she, who flew out of the small town of Zamość, flying through the heavens of all Europe, leaving a bright contrail of light behind her.

Biographical Notes

A northern part of the Rynek (Marketplace) – Ormianska Gasse 24-30

* * *

Leib Jogiches was born in Vilna on July 17, 1867 to a wealthy Jewish family.

Among his ancestors, we know his paternal grandfather, Yaakov ben Joseph Jogiches, a very wealthy magnate, a scholarly Jew, and one of the leaders of the Vilna community (This, for example, is confirmed by what was communicated by the Vilna community by the teacher Levin Lionder) such that on October 10, 1823, there are signatures of the community leaders Morgenstern, Jogiches, Kassel and Gershany.

Yaakov Jogiches owned a large watermill on 1329 Poplaves, and four large yards. In one of these yards, at Number 1 Shavler Gasse (once called Jedmanski Zavelik), he established a big building that still exists (meaning up to the year 1931 — Ed.), under the name of Jogiches Building; in his will, he made a special point of warning, that no matter what happens to the land property of the yard, the building must not be allowed to fall into disuse, and thanks to that one of the later owners of the yard property who sought to demolish the building, lost out in the process. His religious piety is attested to by the fact that he did not allow himself to be photographed. He died in 1848, in his dacha, during the time of a cholera attack; he was, at that time, over 80 years old.

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After his death, his watermill was transferred to his son, Shmuel-Gershon, the father of Leib Jogiches. Like all the children of Yaakov ben Joseph, he was already an enlightened person, but still comported himself with the stature of a Jew, to the extent that his son, Leib (the youngest of the family) obtained what can be called a Jewish upbringing.

In general, very little is known about his childhood years. The following episode is characteristic of the young Leib, which is told in the family:

One day, after noon, a servant came in and informed Madame Jogiches that a pauper was begging for alms. Mrs. Jogiches declined to give anything. The 8 year-old Leibl asked his mother at that time, if she had eaten lunch that day, and when she replied in return with a question, as to what it was that he wanted, since everyone had just finished eating lunch, he asked her:

– And it is possible that the pauper has not yet had a midday meal ....

* * *

Zalman Reisen presents many interesting facts about the part played by L. Jogiches in the beginning of the labor movement in Vilna. He takes these facts from the memories of the people who were active at that time, who were the pioneers either in the Jewish labor movement of the Bund, or of the general socialist movement (Tz. Koppelsohn-Timofei; Abraham Gordon-“Rezchik”; Fati Srednitskaya-Kremer; Arkady Kremer; Feliks Cohen; Max Hochdorf; Sh. Gozhansky-Lano; Dr. Sh. Peskin; Markhalevsky, and others).

From all of this information, the following picture emerges:

As a young Gymnasium student, Liovka, as he was then called within the circle of his acquaintances, was already suffused with revolutionary tendencies, and carried on social-revolutionary agitation among his school comrades. In order to completely dedicate himself to this work, he left the 4^th and 5^th class of the Gymnasium.

It appears that he began to organize the first conspiratorial cells about 1885. Jogiches began his revolutionary activity among the first Jewish labor circles, and according to one version, while it was among the Jewish stocking makers, L. Jogiches was not drawn to the work of Jews, he later went over to work among non-Jews.

L. Jogiches had only a weak command of Yiddish, and his entire demeanor was an assimilated one – or better said, a cosmopolitan one. At the time when his contemporary pioneers were particularly drawn into the Jewish-Socialist creation effort, he didn't have an interest.

When the extensively branched Jewish labor groups came on the scene, strike cells, the first group of Jewish Social Democrats, from which the Bund later emerged, L. Jogiches was already far removed from the Jewish milieu, and was out of the country.

In order to have access to the workers in the factories, L. Jogiches began to learn the trade of locksmith. For a long time, also engraving. Later on, he made the acquaintance of Russian officers and among them, he organized a circle.

On September 14, 1888 Jogiches was arrested and incarcerated in “The 14^th Number,” of the former Vilna Citadel. On November 21 he was released on the parole of his mother, Sophia Jogiches. On May 11, 1889 he was again imprisoned, and on September 11 he is released under police surveillance until September 11, 1890.

He is then taken as a soldier (he was required to present himself to the draft in 1888), but as a political operative, not seeing the possibility of carrying out revolutionary work from within the military, and also out of fear that his hot temperament will cause him to be put into a disciplinary battalion, he fled a night from the “concentration point,” to his brother, Pavel Jogiches, and from there to Wilkomir, to his relatives, from where he fled to Switzerland.

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After fleeing Vilna, the connection between L. Jogiches and the Jewish labor movement is broken. In Switzerland, L. Jogiches (under the pseudonym Grazovsky) makes the acquaintance of Rosa Luxembourg, and ties himself to her for life, as her constant helper and adviser.

Jogiches never came out against the Bund, quite the opposite, in the first efforts of this party, he was attached to it, but taken in general, he already didn't have any special interest in the organized party of the Jewish proletariat; he did not believe in the independent power of the Jewish labor movement. Together with Rosa Luxembourg, in 1893, he was the founder and leader, under the pseudonym of Jan Tiszka, of the “Social-Democracy in the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania.” (Known by the initials, S. D. K. P. L.)

After the outbreak of the Russian revolution (1905-1906), Tiszka-Jogiches, together with Rosa Luxembourg, came to Warsaw. They were, however, immediately arrested, and sentenced to hard labor. He, however, found an opportunity to escape from the prison at Makatow.

At the London gathering of the Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party, Tiszka was elected in the presidium as the Chairman of the S. D. K. P. L. (Lenin – from the Bolsheviks; T. Ran – from the Mensheviks; V. Meres – from the Bund; Azis – from the Latvians).

In the years 1907-1913, Jogiches worked in the Polish and Russian party. In time, he also began to play a role in the German left-wing socialist movement. He belong to the group of Karl Liebknecht, Rosa Luxembourg, and Franz Mehring, and the Spartacists.

After the January strike of 1918 in Germany, he was arrested and was released in November 1918. In January 1919 he was again arrested and when he escaped from prison, Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxembourg were no longer alive. He then became a co-editor of “Die Rote Fohne” (The Red Flag). But on March 12, 1919, he was arrested again. On the same day, he was killed in a horrible way.

* * *

How similar they were in their lives and their activities; in their struggle and in their demise: – Rosa Luxembourg and Leib Jogiches-Grozovsky-Tiszka.

At the end, it is worth adding a further detail.

The first May Day celebration in Czarist Russia took place in 1892 in Vilna. It was at that time, at a secret May Day celebration held in a forest, that the famous Four Speeches of Jewish Workers were given.

The speakers were:

Fanya Levin-Resnick, a seamstress (her husband was a teacher, Akiva Resnick). She died in 1896 in Brisk.

Yelena Gelfand-Druskin, also a seamstress (her husband later became a doctor). In the year 1939, she was living in Leningrad. Both of these speeches were given in Russian.

Mottel Meisel, a jeweler; he gave his speech in Yiddish. In 1939 he was living in Israel.

Reuven Gershovsky, “Yaakov,” a quilt maker, who later became a dentist and in the year 1939 lived in Vilna. He gave his speech in Russian.

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As is noted by the editorial staff of the third volume of Historical Writings of YIVO (Paris-Vilna 1939), which is dedicated to The Jewish Socialist Movement Up to the founding of the Bund, the compiler of the 25 page introduction to these speeches was Lev Jogiches (Grozovsky Tiszka), the producer of the brochure. The editorial staff adds that Rosa Luxembourg contributed to this as well.

In the referenced volume of the Historical Writings from YIVO, we find the Four Speeches translated into Yiddish. In the course of the long years, the “Four Speeches,” were among the most popular propaganda material in the illegal revolutionary movement of the Bund.

Translator's footnotes:

1. Adam Miczkiewicz (1798-1855), author of “Pan Tadeusz”, also known in Poland as “The National Poet of Poland.”. Return
2. The historical literature gives this date variously, as 1870 or 1871. Return
3. 'Farming Peasant,' in Russian. Return
4. Joshua-Höschel Falk b. Joseph (author of “Maginne Shelomoh” and “Pene Yehoshua”; d. in Krakow 1648). Return
5. The prior footnote gives a generational insight into how a branch of her family came to Krakow. Return
6. History gives the date of this event as 1889. This would have made her eighteen or nineteen years of age. Return
7. Author's Footnote: See the biographical details about Leo Jogiches later on. Return

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