The Ashkenazi Revolution

993A decisive turn, in the New Hebrew Literature, occurred with theappearance of Mendele the Book Peddler. Mendele introduced two novelelements to this literature, linguistic and political. The authors of the NewHebrew Literature were always stuck in an unnatural Sisyphean Labor ofsearching for Hebrew words and expressions, in order to express images ofa desirous life in a language that is, in practice, only a holy language.Mendele, crafty and practical, brought to this work a new and much morehelpful method. He wrote his main books in Yiddish and then translatedthem into Hebrew. Writing in Yiddish made it possible to describe moreeffectively the life of the Ashkenazi masses of Eastern Europe. Thetranslation of the books to Hebrew eased the finding of Hebrew linguisticcurrency. Mendele, the great writer of prose, who describes the modernlife of the Ashkenazi People, removed Hebrew Literature from its narrowcorner and bequeathed to it a strong public status. However, specificallythis status, which largely comes from the linguistic technicalities ofMendele, demanded a political permutation of far-reaching consequences.In the formal, external, sense, Mendele put Hebrew Literature in the samecategory as other modern literatures. The sect of Hebrew authors claimsthat it is no different than groups of authors of other types of literature, butthis claim placed upon itself a clear political obligation. The literature ofother peoples was, in this period, clearly political literature, bearing thestamp of national and social activism and serving the ideals of nationalyearnings and social justice. The recognized authors were political leaderswho did their work with their pens. They stood at the front of the national,and social, liberation movements and the lives of many of them were livesof suffering and heroism of romantic warriors. Political romance was oftencombined with personal romance, and the demise of two of the greatestRussian poets, Pushkin and Ramontov, who were killed in romantic duelsin the peak of their lives, can serve as examples of the high price thatauthors paid for faithfulness to their convictions. Dostoyevski was amongthe Russian Decembrists, was sentenced to death and, on the edge of the