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Max Weinreich, assimilation and the social politics of Jewish nation-building

2011; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 41; Issue: 1-2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/13501674.2011.587651

1743-971X

Kamil Kijek,

European history and politics

Abstract Through an analysis of the methodological and theoretical writings of Max Weinreich that were devoted to the inter-war Jewish youth research programme at the Jewish Scientific Institute (YIVO), this article discusses the ideological and political assumptions that lay behind this scientific project. Deconstructing the main research categories of the project, the author presents ways in which Weinreich and his associates constructed the Jewish nation and its place in the new inter-war political and social reality. This reality was seen in a complex manner, as a simultaneous chance for Jewish modernisation, upward mobility, productivisation, and as a response to the threat of modern state institutions that were introducing discriminatory policies, and, most importantly, assimilation. The last process was seen as the biggest danger, which could fragment and finally even dissolve the essentialist, secular and national model of Jewish community as envisioned by Max Weinreich and YIVO. The author shows how the essentialist vision of the nation omnipotent in inter-war Poland (among both Polish and Jewish communities) introduced unresolved tension between the need for social and cultural integration of the Jews, which was important for Weinreich and his circle, and the simultaneous aim of building a culturally and politically coherent Jewish nation. Further discussion shows how this kind of perception of social reality transformed a scientific research project into a kind of social intervention and nation-building programme, comparable to the ideologies of Jewish national secularist political parties. While presenting itself as a universal, national institution and addressing its call to all Jewish youth, YIVO promoted a particular political view of the Jewish nation and its tradition, history and religion. By engaging Jewish youth in a research programme devoted to its "personality," one of the hidden aims of the project was to influence the political and social consciousness of Eastern Europe's Jewish youth. Keywords: Max WeinreichYIVOYugforautobiographysocial researchyouthassimilationacculturationnationalism doikeyt language Acknowledgements This article was completed during an internship in the Bucerius Institute for the Research of Contemporary German History and Society, at the University of Haifa, Israel. Its translation was financed by the Zeit-Stiftung Foundation. Notes Until now only two anthologies of the YIVO autobiographies have been published: Shandler, Awakening Lives; Cała, Ostatnie Pokolenie. A third volume is currently being prepared, in Hebrew, by Ido Bassok. The name was taken from an analogous study of children and young adults carried out in Vienna. "Research Project on Jewish Youth" was translated as "Yugfor" by Max Weinreich himself; see YIVO Archive, New York City, RG 584 #64 (no pagination), "Research Project on Jewish Youth." On Max Weinreich, see Dawidowicz "Max Weinreich"; Glasser, "Weinreich." For personal memoirs on Weinreich, see Abramovich, "Zichroynes vegn dr Max Weinreich." For a bibliography of Weinreich's publications, see Kahn, "Bibliography of Max Weinreich's Writings." This aspect of the institute's youth research project has been described in recent studies. Barbara Kirshenblat-Gimblett wrote about the "transference" of the openly articulated "politics" to the sphere of psychological and sociological investigation of Jewish youth, seemingly devoid of the particularities of politics; see Shandler, Awakening Lives, 25; Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, "Coming of Age in the Thirties," 89–91. The aim of this article is to follow and further that line of enquiry but also to uncover new aspects of the Yugfor project. The relations that Yugfor and YIVO wanted to build with young people can be treated as an intent to impose political control through seemingly non-political, cultural measures. While striving for power, potential elites often need to create a new, attractive cultural repertoire; see Even-Zohar "Factors and Dependence in Culture." The fullest analysis of the context of the institute's creation, its historical legacy and its operation during the inter-war period is offered in Kuznitz, The Origins of Yiddish Scholarship and the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research. For basic information on YIVO, see Kuznitz's entry "YIVO" in The YIVO Encyclopedia of the Jews in Eastern Europe, and the introduction in Web and Mohrer, Guide to the YIVO Archives. For a synthetic description of the formation of modern Yiddish culture in the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century, see Fishman, Rise of the Modern Yiddish Culture, 4–79; Katz, Words on Fire, 173–223; Harshav, The Meaning of Yiddish, 119–38; Goldsmith, Architects of Yiddishism at the Beginning of Twentieth Century. The main controversy was the issue of whether the institute should officially act in line with one or two Jewish socialist parties: Left Poalei Zion and the Bund. The non-partisan stance won out among YIVO members, but it did follow that many of the institute's activities were without political character and meaning. On the political conflicts affecting the institute, see Kuznitz, The Origins of Yiddish Scholarship and the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, 171, 184–93, 205–20, 262–4. On political and other differences among YIVO's historians see Dobroszycki, "YIVO in Interwar Poland"; Kassow, Who Will Write Our History?, 39–43. On the Bund in inter-war Poland, see Pickhan, "Gegen den Strom"; Jacobs, Bundist Counterculture in Interwar Poland; on Left Poalei Zion, see Kassow, "The Left Poalei Zion in Inter-War Poland"; on the Territorialist movement, see Rochelson, A Jew in the Public Arena. Niger, "Yidishe-visnshaft un yidishe visnshaft," 5. These goals had been decreed at the first general YIVO conference in 1929. Niger, "Yidishe-visnshaft un yidishe visnshaft," 3–7. Already in a memorandum of October 1924, which was basically YIVO's founding document, written by Nachum Shtif, the tasks of the institute were determined as "investigating works in the language of the people, [carried out] with the people, for its material and intellectual survival." From its very beginnings, YIVO opted for a populist and activist rhetoric; see Shtif, Vegn a Yidishn akademishn institut, 78. See also YIVO Archive, RG 584 #252, Declaration of the Organisational Committee of the Jewish Scientific Institute; Kuznitz's entry "YIVO" in The YIVO Encyclopedia of the Jews in Eastern Europe, 2091; Dawidowicz, From that Place and Time, 25. Paradoxically, the political goals behind YIVO's doikeyt ideology and the social philosophy at its base linked YIVO to its ideological enemy, the Zionist movement. This interesting similarity of the two projects still awaits serious research. On the scientific imperialism of "Jewish science" formed by the end of nineteenth century, and its relations to the Zionist movement in the first decades of the twentieth century, see Hart, Social Science and Politics of Modern Jewish Identity. The similarity between the research philosophy of Zionist and YIVO researchers is striking here. For how Zionist "Jewish science" resembled the characteristics of the YIVO program, see Hart, Social Science and Politics of Modern Jewish Identity, esp. 29–31, 33, 36, 38, 40–1. Katz, Words on Fire, 3. It should be noted that, in the period discussed here, the major figures of Polish sociology, like Stefan Czarnowski and Ludwik Krzywicki, Chair of the Institute of Social Economy (Instytut Gospodarstwa Społecznego), combined scientific activity with political commitment and a reform-oriented "social policy." This kind of combined scientific and political activity was similar to that of YIVO circles; see Szacki, Sto lat socjologii polskiej od Supińskiego do Szczepańskiego, 91. It seems the connections of the Yugfor project to the achievements of inter-war Polish sociology went beyond the inspiration of sociological autobiographical research methodology which is usually mentioned in the literature. The problem awaits further study. Max Weinreich's personal documents prove his close relations with these representatives (and the legacy) of Polish sociology. For example, a letter dated 13 January 1936, from Weinreich to Stefan Czarnowski, contains the information on Czarnowski's PhD student, "Sztejberżanka, MA," who used the autobiographies from the 1932 and 1934 YIVO contests in her dissertation: YIVO Archive, RG 4, #3885, letter from Max Weinreich to Stefan Czarnowski, 13 January 1936. Chane Man, a postgraduate student of YIVO's while working in 1939 on the organisation and analysis of the third contest for Jewish youth autobiographies, relates with great precision the recent studies accomplished in the Polish sociological world in her quarterly reports for Weinreich. Relations between Polish sociologists and workers, the political influence they had through research, seemed to be a model for YIVO. It is surprising how the doikeyt ideology, formulated before 1914, and shaped in the drastically different political conditions of Tsarist Russia and the Jewish world of the Pale of Settlement, drew its inspiration from the legacy of the Polish left in the circumstances of inter-war Poland. See the letter of Chane Man to Max Weinreich (Report for March–May 1939), YIVO Archive RG 64 #3880, 3–6. Moses Kligsberg, a postgraduate colleague of Man's, studied the autobiographies and made use of work A. (?) Oberfeldówna "Młodzież przedmieścia (z badań ankietowych na Ochocie)". According to the Kligsberg's notes Oberfeldówna was connected to the most liberal of Polish academic institutions, Wolna Wszechnica Polska; see YIVO Archive RG 719 #482, Kligsberg's notes. On Weinreich's stay at Yale, see Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, "Coming of Age in the Thirties," 1–103. Weinreich used his stay in the US not only to read the most recent literature and to write the theoretical and methodological framework of his project. He also found time for a number of research trips analysing the issues of discrimination, acculturation and integration facing some American minorities. He was particularly interested in "the Negro question" in the US, which he perceived to be analogous to "the Jewish question" in Eastern Europe in many aspects. Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, "Coming of Age in the Thirties," 6, 11. See also Max Weinreich's letter to Edward Sapir and John Dollard, 22 January 1933, YIVO Archive RG 64 #345. See also Weinreich, Der Veg tsu undzer yugnt, 172. Weinreich, Der Veg tsu undzer yugnt. This work is an ideological and methodological outline of the Yugfor investigation, and Weinreich underlines the fact that the project would not have come into being without the aid of the Rockefeller Foundation. As his most important teachers, he cites Edward Sapir, John Dollard and Siegfried Bernfeld (3). After his return from the US, and before his trip to Vienna, on 8 September 1933 Weinreich took part in a YIVO conference where he presented an outline of the Yugfor project; see Yedies fun YIVO 4–5, nos 45–6 (1934): 1. Unlike Bühler, however, Weinreich preferred contest autobiographies, written under the guidelines of investigators, to diaries. See Weinreich "Studium o młodzieży żydowskiej," 45–6. On Max Weinreich's American and Viennese period, see Shandler, Awakening Lives, xviii–xix; Kirchenblatt-Gimblett, "Coming of Age in the Thirties," 3–4. See Max Weinreich, "Culture and Personality Studies among the Eastern European Jews and Their Relation to the General Problems of Social Science," YIVO Archive, RG 584 #64 (no pagination); Weinreich, "Studium o młodzieży żydowskiej," 20–7; Moses Kligsberg, "Di frage-shtelung fun der arbet vegn antviklung fun sotsyale gefiln bay kinder un yugnt" [Questionnaire for the investigation on the development of social emotions among children and adolescents], YIVO Archive, RG 719 #482, 2 pages of manuscript. For a detailed description of the theoretical and methodological basis of the Yugfor project, see Kijek, "Między uniwersalną nauką a narodową polityką." Weinreich, "Studium o młodzieży żydowskiej," 31–4. See also Weinreich, Der Veg tsu undzer yugnt, 20. See Max Weireich "Ershter proyekt far a gliderung fun der yugnt-forshung" [The first project on organiszation of youth research programme], YIVO Archive RG 4 #3881 (doc. no. 150751). See also Weinreich, Der Veg tsu undzer yugnt, 129–30; Weinreich, "Studium o młodzieży żydowskiej," 43–9; "Oysforshung vegn der antviklung fun der yidisher yugnt (Yugfor)" [Study of the development of jewish youth] YIVO Archive RG 4 #3881, doc. no. 150752; YIVO Archive RG 4 #3881 doc. no. 150752, 2; "Opzukh-boygn farn perzenlekhn dokumentn" [Personal documents questionnaire], YIVO Archive, RG 4 #3881; Weinreich, "Yidishe Yugnt-Forshung"; 18–19; Weinreich, "Studium o młodzieży żydowskiej," 19–20. See YIVO Archive, RG 584 #64 (no pagination), Appendix 1 [to] "Culture and Personality Studies among the Eastern European Jews and Their Relation to the General Problems of Social Science," 11–13. For more information about additional research programmes that were to be undertaken within the framework of the Yugfor project and its methodology, see Kijek, "Między uniwersalną nauką a narodową polityką." It seems that Weinreich took this notion, along with a particular postulation on the social role of research, from Florian Znaniecki, editor of a magazine in which the Yugfor founder published his text; see Szacki, Sto lat socjologii polskiej od Supińskiego do Szczepańskiego, 83. See Weinreich, "Studium o młodzieży żydowskiej," 50–4. "Oysforshung vegn der antviklung fun der yidisher yugnt (Yugfor)," YIVO Archive RG 4 #3881 doc. no. 150752: 1. The framework of Weinreich's scientific perspective was formed during his US and Viennese studies, and can be described as "cultural social psychology." Weinreich "Yidishe yugnt-forshung," 13, 18–19. Weinreich, "Studium o młodzieży żydowskiej," 4. Ibid., 21. See also Weinreich, Der Veg tsu undzer yugnt, 17. Weinreich referred here to Hersch, "Farbrekherishkayt fun yidn un nit yidn in Poyln", published in English as "Jewish and Non-Jewish Criminality in Poland"; see also "Der farbrekherishkayt fun der yidisher un nit yidisher bafelkerung fun der poylisher republic" [Criminality in Jewish and non-Jewish communities in the Republic of Poland], Ekonomishe Shriftn fun YIVO 2 (1932): 174–202; and Hersch's report presented at the YIVO conference in Vilna in 1935. Results of these and later studies of the inter-war period were published in YIVO Bleter in 1942. See Weinreich, Der Veg tsu undzer yugnt, 179–80. In the Yiddish text, Weinreich unambiguously asserted that Jews were a modern national community: "Thus we call the Eastern European Jews a national community, regardless of the political, direct and indirect associations that come with it." Yedies fun YIVO 4–5, nos 45–6 (1934): 1. Weinreich, Der Veg tsu undzer yugnt, 26. Ido Bassok sees Weinreich's approach as typical of Eastern European intellectuals in this period who were not interested in defining clear boundaries between political ideologies and social science. See Bassok, "Le she'alat erchan ha'histori shel otobiografiot bnei noar me osaf YIVO," 141, 143. The PPS was the strongest left-wing political party in inter-war Poland and the only Polish political party to engage, although reluctantly, with Jewish parties. Its programme advocated Jewish assimilation; see Brumberg, "The Bund and the Polish Socialist Party in the late 1930s." The KPP was illegal in inter-war Poland, but it obtained political directives from the Soviet Union and promoted division among Jewish left-wing parties. Among its ranks were many former activists from Left Poalei Zion and the Bund. It treated the PPS as one of its biggest political enemies, though it also advocated assimilation for Jews. On the KPP and its Jewish policy see Mishkinsky, "The Communist Party of Poland and the Jews." The Folkist Party, like Left Poalei Zion and the Bund, was a Yiddishist nationalist party. Unlike the other two, however, it was not socialist and it saw itself as the defender of the Jewish lower-middle classes; see Kiel, "The Ideology of the Folks-Partey." The basic goals of Yugfor, clearly linked to the nationalist goals of YIVO, can be found in Weinreich, "Yidishe yugnt-forshung," 4. The study of youth was supposed to be primarily a reaction against the national crisis among young people, their lack of attachment and devotion to the struggle of building their own modern culture. Weinreich, Der Veg tsu undzer yugnt, 186–9. The basic emotion experienced by Jewish children in this situation was fear of strangers and the forces they represented, as well as a sense of belonging to a weaker, defenceless group. Weinreich mostly cited descriptions of post-war pogroms. Another context of the "first attack of Jewishness" is the culture clash between the foreign (not national Jewish) school and the values of the traditional world represented by the original environment of the child. This conflict provokes an internal psychological conflict and has a disintegrating influence on the child's personality. In the Polish, abridged version of his work, Weinreich completely omitted the issue of anti-Jewish violence in the Second Polish Republic. See YIVO Archive, RG 584 #64 (no pagination), "Culture and Personality Studies among the Eastern European Jews and Their Relation to the General Problems of Social Science," 5–6; Weinreich, Der Veg tsu undzer yugnt, 203–7. It should be noted that the vision of the inter-war period as a moment of crisis of the Eastern European Jewish world, threatening young people and thus the future of nation, is part of a centuries-long Jewish tradition of viewing the present as a moment of "crisis." See Rawidowicz, "Israel – the Ever-Dying People"; a useful analysis of visions of nineteenth-century Eastern European Jewish crisis and "crisis research paradigms" is provided by Nathans, Beyond the Pale, 7–15. See YIVO Archive, RG 584 #64 (no pagination), "Research Project on Jewish Youth," 7. "Oysforshung vegn der antviklung fun der yidisher yugnt (Yugfor)," YIVO Archive, RG 4 #3881 doc. no. 150752: 4. YIVO Archive, RG 584 #64 (no pagination), "Research Project on Jewish Youth," 7–9. On the "old and new" forms of compensation, see also Weinreich, "Studium o młodzieży żydowskiej," 9–10; Weinreich Der Veg tsu undzer yugnt, 193–7. Shandler, Awakening Lives, xiii. See YIVO Archive, RG 584 #64 (no pagination), "Culture and Personality Studies among the Eastern European Jews and Their Relation to the General Problems of Social Science," 2; Weinreich, "Studium o młodzieży żydowskiej," 5. The very use of the term "capitalism," instead of the more neutral "industrialism," says a lot about Weinreich's views. As we saw above, modern society was symbolised by the symbol of "Cronus" "eating his own children." The Vilna researcher was against the direct involvement of YIVO researchers in party politics, but the political values of the Yugfor project – Yiddish national and cultural autonomy, progress, collectivism and a deep critique of capitalist society – made it congruent with the main stipulations of the Bund's programme. The experience of the First World War and its influence on personality was supposed to be a separate field of study at Yugfor. See YIVO Archive, RG 584 #64 (no pagination), "Culture and Personality Studies among the Eastern European Jews and Their Relation to the General Problems of Social Science," 6. On YIVO viewed by its creators as an important response to the crisis provoked by the world war, see also Kuznitz, The Origins of Yiddish Scholarship and the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, 30–1. Weinreich saw the development of the Jewish nation in the categories of Bund socialism. In the sphere of economic structure it would mean, among other things, its growing diversification and the creation of previously non-existent "classes," a Jewish industrial proletariat and working intelligentsia. Weinreich, "Studium o młodzieży żydowskiej," 6. Ibid. On the inter-war period as a time of a profound crisis for the Eastern European Jewish community, see ibid., 2–3. Ibid., 6–7. See also Weinreich, Der Veg tsu undzer yugnt, 180–2. The "Jewish nation's struggle for survival," a reaction to the permanent crisis affecting the Jewish community, was one of the basic elements of YIVO rhetoric. The eminent ethnographer, journalist and former Folkist party member Noah Prilucki compared the institute to a "military campaign headquarters" at the 2nd General YIVO Conference in 1935. See Kuznitz, The Origins of Yiddish Scholarship and the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, 255. Weinreich, "Studium o młodzieży żydowskiej," 8. Which was dominated by the so-called "general Zionists" at the time. Weinreich, Der Veg tsu undzer yugnt, 8–10, 12. See YIVO Archive RG 584 #148 (no pagination), manuscript in Yiddish, untitled. See Weinreich, Der Veg tsu undzer yugnt, 295–8. Kirchenblatt-Gimblett "Coming of Age in the Thirties," 70–4. At this stage, Weinreich's private opinions differed from YIVO's outlook. The institute, in accordance with its radical modernist outlook, a belief in historical determinism and the atrophy of religious beliefs and backward forms of tradition, did not consider orthodox circles (and their most important representative, Agudas Isroel) to be a threat. From YIVO's point of view, Zionism was the internal threat to the nationalism of the Diaspora. The Psychological–Pedagogical Section, in which Weinreich played an important role, even began collaborating with the most important activist of orthodox education, Alexander Zisya Friedman. See Kuznitz, The Origins of Yiddish Scholarship and the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, 217–19. On how far from reality was the fatalist image of Agudas Isroel's actions in inter-war Poland, see the monograph on the movement by Bacon, The Politics of Tradition. For similar opinions on the Zionist influence on young people, see the statement of Weinreich's colleague, the eminent economist and demographer Jacob Leshtchinski that was published in the New York Yiddish magazine Forverts: YIVO Archive, RG 584 #148 (no pagination), press clipping from Forverts, Jacob Leshtchinski's letter to the editor, 30 August 1934. Frost, Schooling as a Socio-political Expression, 31. See Weinreich, Der Veg tsu undzer yugnt, 186–8. Yedies fun YIVO 4–5, nos 45–6 (1934): 1. Apart from discrimination, and a difficult economic situation, Yiddish and Polish bilingualism and different modes of education are mentioned. In his notes, in which he tried to develop the notion of "Jewish psychology," Weinreich was particularly insistent on the unassimilative nature of the Jewish nation. He based Jewish specificity and the necessity of a separate study on the basic historiosophic idea according to which Jews, despite being a small (and thus more susceptible to influence) minority, had lived among other people for thousands of years without becoming assimilated. Note in Yiddish, no date or title (in all probability coming from Weinreich's stay in the US), YIVO Archive, RG 64 #148, 1–4. YIVO Archive RG 64 #148, "Culture and Personality Studies among the Eastern European Jews and Their Relation to the General Problems of Social Science," 4. See also Weinrech, "Studium o młodzieży żydowskiej," 7–8. On the Jewish press in inter-war Poland, see World Federation of Jewish Journalists, The Jewish Press that Was; Glikson, Preliminary Inventory of the Jewish Daily and Periodicals Press Published in the Polish Language; Szeintuch, Preliminary Inventory of Yiddish Dailies and Periodicals Published in Poland between the Two World Wars; Fuks, "Jewish Press in Interwar Poland"; Steinlauf, "The Polish-Jewish Daily Press"; Paczkowski, "The Jewish Press in the Political Life of the Second Polish Republic"; Paczkowski, "Prasa żydowska w II Rzeczypospolitej." On the problems of interpreting of the national censuses in the Second Polish Republic, see Mendelsohn, The Jews of East Central Europe between the World Wars, 29–32. According to Mendelsohn, certainly more than 12% of the people declaring themselves as members of the Jewish creed used the Polish language on a daily basis. In 1931, the Polish authorities removed the question on nationality from the national census, which provoked an outcry from representatives of ethnic minorities. Jewish parties encouraged Jews to declare Yiddish or Hebrew languages as their mother tongue, even if the language that they spoke daily was Polish. The language declaration was treated rather as a declaration of nationality. In 1937, 87% of Jewish young people of school age attended state schools. See Bacon, "National Revival Ongoing Acculturation," 76. According to the avowedly leftist Zionist and Jewish private schooling partisan Arie Tartakower (who simultaneously collaborated with the liberal government Institute for National Issues), in the 1925–6 school year, state schools were attended by 235,400 Jewish children, while in 1934–5 the number was 343,700, which made up 7.6% of all students of those schools and an 84% of Jewish students of that age. See Mauersberger, Szkolnictwo Powszechne dla mniejszości narodowych w Polsce, 163–4. See also Trzebiatowski, Szkolnictwo powszechne w Polsce w latach, 179. Frost, Schooling as a Socio-political Expression, 31, 39, 49–50; Bacon, The Politics of Tradition, 153–4; Schmeruk, "Hebrew–Yiddish–Polish," 293; Levin, "Observations on the State as a Factor in the History of Private Jewish Elementary Schooling in the Second Polish Republic"; Główny Urza¸d Statystyczny – Mały Rocznik Statystyczny 1939, 319; Chmielewski, "Stan Szkolnictwa wśród Żydów w Polsce." Arieh Tartakover named economic reasons as the main cause of parents choosing public schools. See Zineman, Almanach szkolnictwa żydowskiego. It should be remembered that this opinion was enunciated by a supporter of Jewish national autonomy and of one of its main elements, autonomous schooling. There were also reasons other than economic why Jewish parents chose Polish state schools for their children. Knowledge of Polish enhanced broadly understood life opportunities, not only among the intelligentsia, but also among merchants, artisans and workers, especially in larger towns. It is particularly striking that traditional or orthodox circles were apprehensive about an overbearing Polish acculturation, which might provoke children to discard traditional Jewish social norms. Parents from such circles often preferred state schools to the government-supervised Szabasówki, or private Jewish schools, fearing the nefarious influence of Jewish secularists on the children. The choice of middle school was a different matter. In a national middle school, Jewish children had to go to school on Saturdays. Usually they had to leave their parents' home and live in a different town or city. The age of high-school students predisposed them to greater independence. All of these factors, together with the attractiveness of secular high urban culture, were seen by a large group of parents as a threat to children's observance of Jewish tradition. See, for example, YIVO Archive RG 64 #148, "Culture and Personality Studies among the Eastern European Jews and Their Relation to the General Problems of Social Science," 8; Kirchenblatt-Gimblett, "Coming of Age in the Thirties," 31. Weinreich, "Studium o młodzieży żydowskiej," 9. YIVO Bleter editor Zelig Kalmanowitch was one of the few people in the YIVO circle who openly expressed his view on the essentially utopian character of radical Yiddishism. According to Lucy Dawidowicz, a postgraduate student at YIVO, "He opposed Yiddishism as ideology, which offered a solution to the anomaly of Jewish existence [but not Yiddishism as such; Kalmanowitch was a territorialist and was convinced that Jews could only build an autonomous national culture on the basis of a densely populated, ethnic territory]. 'It's bankrupt,' he used to say. 'What kind of movement is it, if its programme consists of reading a book in Yiddish once in a while, or a visit to a Jewish theatre?' He attacked the movement convinced that it would only be acceptable for people with literary interests. What is more, Yiddishism meant an unspoken, silent acceptance of bilingualism. Jews needed to know the language of the country [that they lived in]. 'They need to buy bread, fix their shoes and work; they need to do that in the language of the country they are living in,' he claimed. Eventually, he would conclude triumphantly, with a shy smile: 'The only solution for Jews is having their own territory, where they can lead a normal life.'" Dawidowicz, From that Place and Time, 99. For Kalmanovitch's reassessment of Yiddishism during the Second World War, see Karlip "At the Crossroads between War and Genocide." Weinreich, "Di problemen fun tsveyshprakhikayt." Ibid. This article raises some questions that will develop further with the construction of the Yugfor project. Participation in an "alien" culture (this being, after all, a state culture) led to psychological problems for children with an ethnic minority background. It should also be remembered that Weinreich was a philologist by education. At the beginning of the 1930s, bilingualism issues seemed to have been of particular interest to Weinreich, not solely in connection to children's education in post-war Poland. See, e.g., Weinreich's articles in YIVO Bleter 3, no. 13 (1932): 228–39; 3, no. 2 (1932): 166–78. Such an ambivalent view of bilingualism, a disbelief that it could become a permanent quality of a community and simultaneously a fear that it was but a step on the way to linguistic assimilation, connected Weinreich to the avowed supporter of the process (according to whom it would in fact put an end to Jewish discrimination), Franz Boas. The latter woul