The Ashkenazi Revolution

100gallows, the noose was lowered from his neck by virtue of a clemencydecree from the Czar. Mitzkevitz was a rebel and wandered his whole life.Even Freidrich Heina lived the life of a modern and romantic exile in Parisfar from his German birthplace. In placing Hebrew Literature in the samecategory as the literature of other nations, the Hebrew authors wererequired to count themselves among the international order of literatureelites, who fought at the forefront of national and social war.However, a feeling of great political mission was completely foreign to theauthors of Hebrew Literature, and it is doubtful if there ever was a group ofintellectuals that was as far from this sentiment. When they were tied toyeshiva benches, they flew the banner of great religious romanticism, butwhen they abandoned this banner they turned into defeatists who distancedthemselves from any rebellion and they limited their creative sources tothose close to personal interests. Many of them continued to keep theassets they had acquired in the rabbinical world, not because they wished toremain loyal to it, but because these assets were engraved with their bloodto an extent that they were unable to free themselves from them.Moreover: There is no doubt that the painful disruption, involved with atearing away from the rabbinical world, brought many of these Hebrewauthors to the brink of psychological collapse, wounded souls, and aninclination toward depression and self-hatred. Above all: It is fairly clearthat an affiliation with the group of Hebrew authors, and intellectuals whoencouraged them, was determined through negative selection. Modernelements and those who craved activism, among Jewish youth thatabandoned the yeshivas, flocked to non-Jewish and Jewish revolutionarymovements such as the “Bund”. But those of weak character, whoremained in depression, preferred the frozen world of Hebrew Literaturethat lacked revolution and revolts except for non-stop ruminations throughwords and anecdotes.From the time that Hebrew Literature finally crystallized, at the end of the19 th century, and from the time that it acquired the decisive and moderndimension of Mendele’s prose, which described the day-to-day life ofAshkenaz, it was confronted with ever stronger demands to fulfill the