An Esperanto of Ideas
The French effort to pursue a strategy strictly limited to the language itself was undoubtedly a wise position—to extricate the Esperantists from the condition of a powerless minority of idealistic dreamers, to avoid limit- ing the attractiveness of Esperanto to the downtrodden, to disseminate the language among the practical-minded middle class of Europe and to deprive the governments of any easy pretext for persecution. At the same time, the French rationalism in no way excluded the possibility that people of the most diverse world views might adopt Esperanto—people who did indeed connect it with their ideals or their more or less real- istic ideas. While the French leadership emphasized Esperantos utility for commerce, tourism and science and found a responsiveness in those circles, as of 1905 more and more of the people joining the movement saw Esperanto as a way of advancing their political struggle, namely paci- fists, socialists and anarchists.81
Such people found in Esperanto something that could support them in advancing their idealism: they had before them the model of Zamenhof himself.
We have seen how Zamenhof supported the movement's strategy of keeping Esperanto accessible to as many people as possible, regardless of their national origin or political or religious convictions. He did not want only minority groups to support it: he wanted to win over the majority. On the other hand, Zamenhof continued to ruminate on the problem of the Jews. Esperanto was offered to everyone, but it was impossible to for- get its origin as a means of protest against the discrimination of a minor- ity. In one of his explanations of the reasons for creating his language, Zamenhof said that he felt it necessary to have a language 'which on the one hand would not be the exclusive property of a given nation, but on the other might be freely used by oppressed people lacking a language'.[75]In other words, Esperanto should be entirely neutral, but at the same time it might have a special utility for the Jews.
From Zamenhof's letters we know how much he was preoccupied with the search for a solution to the Jewish problem. To his friend Abram Kofman he wrote: 'For as long as the Hebrews have no language they will be obliged in practice to play the role of "Russians", "Poles" and so on— they will be forever looked down on and the Jewish problem will never be solved.'[76] Equally upsetting was the religious isolation of the Jews,[77] and in his letters he confessed that in fact Esperanto represented only part of his ideals. In addition to the neutralization of conflicts by way of language, he also dreamed of the 'creation of a moral bridge by which all peoples and religions might be unified as brothers'. The realization of this plan through 'a neutrally human, philosophically pure religion' was for him a kind of ful- fillment of the historic mission of the Jews, 'which both Moses and Christ dreamed of'.[78] In 1901 Zamenhof tried to publish his contribution to the solution of the Jewish question, a Russian-language booklet under the title Hilelismo,[79] in which he proposed that, to 'neutralize' the divisive effect of religious difference (and to overcome the religious nationalism of the Jews) humanity should agree to accept the principles of 'Hillelist belief', namely an acknowledgment of the idea that, in listening to the voice of conscience, one could discover the laws of God.87
The booklet was not distributed,88 nor did Zamenhof ever speak in public about the special importance of Esperanto for the Jews. His comments were confined to personal letters that became known only after the Second World War.[80] He was always reluctant to put too much emphasis on his own ideals, aware that the movement was vulnerable simply by virtue of the fact that he was a Jew. He did not wish to put the dissemination of Esperanto in danger, and he also feared that the public would not believe that a Jew working for the unity of humankind could possibly be doing so out of altruism.[81] A wish to help his unfortunate fel- low Jews was a constant in Zamenhof's life, but he remained uncertain as to the best way of doing so, often feeling torn between solidarity with the Jews and an inclination toward humanity as a whole (Fig. 1.1).[82]
On the other hand, by the middle of the first decade of the new cen- tury it seemed that the movement was stable enough in several countries and no longer needed to depend on the person of Zamenhof. The suc- cessful first congress of 1905, which all Esperantists seemed to regard as the exhilarating culmination of their efforts up to that point, caused him to feel that one of his dreams was already realized and that, going forward, he could dedicate himself to uniting people across religions. At the opening of the congress he recited his 'Prayer under the Green Flag' (Prego sub la verda standardo), by which he sought to express the 'natural religion of the human heart' (naturan religion de la homa koro).[83] The ovation that he received after the presentation of the Prayer took the French leadership by surprise. They neither anticipated that Zamenhof
Fig. 1.1 Lazar Zamenhof, by Robert Kastor c. 1905. Text: 'When the peoples can freely understand one another, then they will cease to hate one another.'
would speak like 'a Jewish prophet'9 3 nor foresaw the almost religious atmosphere that reigned in the congress.
Even the Jewish Esperantists among the French tried to slow Zamenhof down; they felt little in common with the eastern Jews and, in any case, they were confident that, following the rehabilitation of Dreyfus in 1906, people would no longer dare to question their connection to the French nation. Emile Javal, Zamenhof's friend, pointed out to him that Hillelism had no chance of acceptance in France; if people felt that it was still necessary to hide Zamenhof's Jewish ancestry 'as long as the great struggle was still not won', it was all the more dangerous, not to say fatal, to talk about Hillelism.[84] Reacting to Javal's warning, Zamenhof assured him that he would 'act very cautiously' and would not publicly campaign for Hillelism until he was 'fully certain that such a step would not have a negative effect on Esperanto'.[85]