Summary Of Awake My People By Judah Leib Gordon

A brief glance at Jewish history is all that is needed to reveal the eclectic nature of the religion. The constant settlement and exiling that the Jews faced throughout history led to the multi-cultural influence upon the religion. One influential area was Eastern Europe as it became the location of “the Jewish Enlightenment.” During this period of Enlightenment, Jewish scholars – such as Judah Leib Gordon – expressed many facets of attitudes and perspectives that emerged with the onset of Jewish modernity. Judah Leib Gordon was known for his Hebrew poetry, most notably “Awake my People!” which presented an embracement of the surrounding culture in contrast to “For Whom Do I Toil?” which he wrote much later, and called for a return to traditional

education; both messages supported by the larger historical context presented in The Jews: A History.
In 1866, the year Judah Leib Gordon’s poem, “Awake my People!” was released, it was said to be a time of “splintering of easter European jewry” (The Jews 288).

In Judah Leib Gordon’s poem, the speaker expresses a favorable tone toward his Eastern European partners while criticizing the traditional Jewish education system, one popular idea that assisted the divide in Jewry. Gordon pointedly states, “This land of Eden [Russia],” bringing forth a clear analogy of Russia to Eden, which emphasizes the respect he shows towards Russia. He further emphasizes that “already [the people of Russia] have removed the weight of suffering from [the Jewish] shoulder” (Awake My People!). Through his sentimental appeals, he asks the Jewish people to realize that the land that they are in and the people they are surrounded by are those who have helped the Jewish people reach a land of safety much like

Eden.
However, Gordon pushes for more than just appreciation but rather tells the masses to “become an enlightened people, and speak their language [Russian]” while being “a brother to [their] countrymen and a servant to [their] king…” a clear push towards assimilation to Russian society. Another aspect is that if the Jewish people undertook the Russian language and customs such as “those who are brave should serve in the army,” acceptance and equality between Russian natives and Russian Jews would be easier to attain. This was significant because at the time the poem was published, the Russian Haskalah was entering “into its most radical period” (The Jews 309). At this time “the shtetl (town), where the majority of Jews lived, had begun to go into economic decline” (309). Also, “Eastern European ideologues…displayed a nagging sense of Jewish inferiority” with writers at the time being “profoundly influenced by contemporary Russian literary and political trends” (304/309). Due to such diverging thoughts, there arose internal conflicts. Traditional Jewish education was criticized and ridiculed due to its old –fashioned and narrow-minded notions which Gordon believed that such traditionalist ideology was stifling the progress of Judaism.
Despite the teachings that Jews should embrace Russian culture from Gordon and other similar writers, such actions spurred fear amongst the very same writers later on, as portrayed in “For Whom do I Toil?” The fear inspired theoretical confrontations such as that a son would “scorn the aged mother” and say “’abandon that language whose hour has passed’” and “from their youth on they will be strangers to [the Jews]” (For Whom do I Toil?).

Though Gordon advocated for the embracement of Russian culture, he was also very adamant of the preservation of Jewish practices, that one should “be a man abroad and a Jew in[their] tent” (Awake My People!). However, with the Russian Haskalah, people “who became most radicalized tended to gravitate toward Russian language and culture, rejecting both Hebrew and Yiddish” (The Jews 309). Gordon utilizes fear tactic through his poetry as he displays the disgraceful act of one “scorning” their elder and a new generation that is unrecognizable to the Jewish community. Gordon ends the poem with a question that “perhaps [he is] the last of Zion’s poets; and [us], the last readers?” (For Whom do I Toil?). The original language in which the document was written in, which was Hebrew, creates a deeper meaning to Gordon’s final question. During 1871, the Haskalah was presenting itself more and more radically with the concept diverging from coexistence and to the rejection of Jewish culture, and especially language. This trend caused anxiety amongst the

Jewish community that their way of life would perish, “Even the Maskilic champions of Hebrew began to despair for the future of the language” (The Jews 309). Gordon’s last line points out the decline of Hebrew knowledge already present at that time and how many Jewish youths would not be able to even read his poetry, and the mourning of the loss of general Jewish education as well.
CONCLUSION TO COME