Source: M. J. Olgin: Leader and Teacher, compiled and edited by the staff of the Morning Freiheit. New York, Workers Library Publishers, 1939.
Transcribed: Mitch Abidor for the Marxists Internet Archive in 2005
HTML Markup: David Walters
Public Domain: Marxists Internet Archive (marxists.org) 2005. You can freely copy, distribute, display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit the Marxists Internet Archive as your source, include the url to this work, and note the transcribers & proofreaders above.
“Ah, what do I care about Yiddish! I am an American and that’s enough for me!”
This is the typical attitude of a great many young Jewish men and women; this is their “confession of faith” when confronted with the problems of Jewish life and Jewish culture.
It is an incorrect attitude, It is an unhealthy confession. It ignores the facts.
Hardly anyone among the “I-don’t-care” Jewish youth will dare say or think that Jewish life as such is no business of theirs at the present historical juncture. Jewish life is a momentous problem now not only for the Jews but for progressive mankind as a whole. Fascism is intent on destroying the Jewish people. Anti-Semitism, the sharp weapon of reaction and fascism, is out to make Jewish life a curse. Progressive mankind must resist. The Jews must resist.
Resistance to the enemy, counter-attack against anti-Semitism will be effective only when the Jewish people unite their forces. To unite forces the people must understand each other. They must have common ground. They must, at east, be on speaking grounds. And are they on speaking terms when so many Jewish youth declare: “I don’t care about Yiddish”?
Yiddish, don’t you see, happens to be a part of the life of the Jewish masses. It is their language. It is the instrument of their self-expression. It is the instrument of the culture of millions of Jews in this country and abroad, and the culture created in that language is equal to the cultures created in other languages. There is no way of separating the Jewish people from the Yiddish language. There is no way of separating culture in Yiddish from Jewish life.
A young Jewish man or woman wishing to function in the present historical era as part of the progressive forces against anti-Semitism and fascism cannot have the “I-don’t-care” attitude towards the Yiddish language and culture, whether he or she speaks Yiddish or not.
There is another angle to the situation. The “I-don’t-care” mentality is just what anti-Semitism endeavors to develop among the Jews. What can be better for anti-Semitism than indifference or disdain on the part of the younger Jews to what large masses of the Jewish people consider their cherished inheritance and precious possession?
It is with the desire to overcome this attitude that a conference of young Jewish men and women met recently under the auspices of the World Alliance for Jewish Culture (Y.C.U.F.), American Section. The conference adopted a declaration which says that “particularly alarming is the situation of Jewish youth in America, a large part of which is little connected with the life of the Jewish people and with Jewish culture.” The conference declared that the assembled intended to help create a closer bond between Jewish youth and the Jewish people.
The Y.C.U.F. is not a political but a cultural organization. It looks upon progressive secular culture as the platform on which most of the Jewish forces can unite. It proceeds from the correct assumption that a cultural unification of the Jewish people will make them stronger and more capable to resist attacks from without and from within. The Youth group organized at the conference makes it its aim to help heal the breach between the younger and the older generations. Their program calls for work both among the Yiddish-speaking and among the English-speaking youth…
The newly created Youth Group deserves the greatest attention of progressive Jewish youth.