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HOW MANY WOULD WANT
TO SI ASSIMILATED?
By BEN AMU
IT 'Soviet Jews were given the
opportunity to change their Jew
ish national affiliation with ease,
I believe that many would do so,
though it is very difficult to say
how many. They would try to as
similate completely, forget the
past, and commit themselves and
their children to total assimila
tion, to a path from which there
would be no turning back.
But this statement must be
carefully qualified.
First, there is the matter of
agei Few if any of the synagogue
Jews, or of the older Jews gen
erally, would flee from their
status as Jewish nationals. None of
the pious old Jews would follow
this course, for it would be tan
tamount to announcing that they
weren’t Jews and this they would
never do. And those non-religious
old Jews who lived as Jews for
the greater part of their lives
would also refuse to cast off their
Jewishness as if it were an old
garment, despite their having suf
fered for it all their lives.
The number of young and mid
dle-aged Jews who would be
ready to assimilate is far greater,
but even they would not do it
with ease. Many of the Jews who
witnessed the Second World War
and the Holocaust, as well as
many of the younger Jews who
grew up after Stalin’s days, have
developed Jewish feelings and
sensitivities whose roots are so
deep, precisely because they had
no way out of their Jewishness,
that they would regard a change
of status as an act of treachery
to themselves and to their way of
life.
There would be Jews who
would want to revert to the sit
uation that prevailed in early rev
olutionary days, when they used
Yiddish a3 their own official lan
guage and had their own culture.
Though it was communist in con
tent, it was a rich culture, with
its own schools, newspapers, thea
ters, publishing'houses, tmtfSO on-
The greatest problem would be
that of leadership.
i After the hard blows inflicted
upon the Jewish intellectual elite,
no new leadership has appeared
that seems capable of rebuilding
Yiddish culture. The survivors of
the previous generation are too
old, too shattered, too tired to
start afresh. It is quite possible
that there are young Jews in the
Baltic countries, and in Bulovina
and Moldavia, who would under
take not only to keep Yiddish
alive but also to transform it once
again into a living tongue and
culture. If such people could be
found and, if according to my as
sumptions, they were given the
tools with which to carry out
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their mission, then tons’of thous
ands of Jews would undoubtedly
come to their aid and help them
to revive Yiddish culture.
If the Jews were given an op
portunity to teach their children
Yiddish, even on a part-time basis
like the American Sunday School,
many would do so with joy.
Furthermore, as in the oase of
established Western Jewish com
munities in England, France, the
United States, South America, and
other lands of the Diaspora, the
Soviet Jews would want to teach
their children Hebrew and would
regard it as their second lang
uage. If the Soviet authorities
would open the door to the study
of Hebrew, I have no doubt that
modem Hebrew would be studied
by thousands of Jewish youths in
the Soviet Union.
There would be a renewed cre-
aatiytty in Jewish literature, poetry,
history, and so on—in Kussian.
There was a varied and flourish
ing Russian Jewish literature be
fore the revolution, and there is
no reason to doubt that it could
revive under favorable conditions.
The possibility of religious re
vival would present serious dif
ficulties. The few surviving rabbis
are too old and would not have
the energy to inaugurate a re
ligious revival or to set up nation
wide religious institutions and
organizations. To renew and
maintain Jewish religious and
cultural life in the Soviet Union,
ties would first have to be es
tablished with the centers of
Jewry outside the Soviet Union,
particularly with Israel. Only
then would the Soviet Jews be
able to train Yiddish and Hebrew
teachers for a network of Jew
ish schools; only then could they
begin to raise a new generation
of religious leaders.
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