Our future lies in our own hands and we shall arrive at our goal if we will. Upon us, and us alone, does this depend. Then will disappear, as if by magic, all that tragic picture which impels the young and sturdy element to abandon the land to the stooped and lame old men and women whose destiny is but to swell the number
of graves. We shall not endure that a single energy escape us; everything shall revive and invigorate itself under our influence; new, healthy energies will espouseour cause. Our ancient fatherland willblossom forth afresh and the vernal daysshall once again return to it and its people.
AMONG the numerous remarkable things that are now taking place in Russia belongs the fact that the Jewish “democrats” have opened a campaign against the Hebrew language and in favor of Yiddish.
The quarrel over the question "Hebrew or Jargon" began years ago in the Jewish press, but then the point at issue was not whether the Yiddish language alone, which is spoken by millions of Jews, should be the national language of the Jewish people, but whether in connection with the Hebrew, at least temporarily, the Jargon, the golus language, be made a literary language. In this discussion I expressed myself as opposed to those fanatic over Hebrew, for the simple reason that the actual presence of the Jargon, as the only language in which we address a large portion of our people, is a stubborn fact with which we must reckon. Besides we cannot deny that the hope that in the Diaspora Hebrew may become the popular mother tongue of the nationalistic Jews, still nothing but a hope. So far we must unfortunately agree that only a minority among us would learn Hebrew thoroly enough to find in this tongue a means of expressing their national sentiments.
The Hebrew tongue, although only a literary language, has, in the first place, the advantage that thru a knowledge of it the whole national literature of our people is rendered available. I have already, in other connection,
called attention to the remarkable phe-nomeonn in our history that great and important books about Judaism, composed in any foreign language, could be of cultural or historical importance only if early translated into Hebrew. On the other hand, books originally written in Hebrew, because of the loss of the original Hebrew, as a result of various causes, have never struck root among our people—the translation in these cases has not been able to take the place of the original Hebrew. As example I may mention the first two Books of the Maccabees, the Wisdom of Ben Sira and Josephus's History of the Judeo-Roman Wars. Here we have an argument against using any foreign language, in Jewish literature in particular. The Christian historian Ewald has made a keen observation in this connection. In Alexandrian times educated Jews hoped to bring heathens into the Jewish world and to make them friendly towards the Jewish people and Judaism, thru treating of Judaism in the Greek language. But as soon as Greeks and Romans became acquainted with Judaism in this wise there broke out a furious hatred against Judaism. This apt expression of Ewald may be illustrated with an example from very recent history. Zunz, too, was of the opinion that we ought to write of Jewish science in a modern language, for only in this way could the nations come to respect the Jews and be satisfied with their civil emancipation. It is not necessary