L.L. Zamenhof and Zionism

The other day, walking through a small park in the district of Pietà on my way to Valletta, I was surprised to see a bust of L.L. Zamenhof, the creator of the international auxiliary language known as Esperanto. My first thought was, I didn't know he had a connection with Malta. And, as it happens, he didn't!

Zamenhof was born in what was then the Russian Empire and spent most of his life in the city of Warsaw. For reasons I have yet to fathom (but which probably relate to Malta's somewhat fraught linguistic ecology) Zamenhof's ideas took root here and some five decades ago the local Esperanto Society saw fit to devote funds to the creation of a public monument.

It's not a great work of art and the awkwardly-truncated arms are a little distracting. But this memorial is not bad as such projects go, and certainly a good deal less ugly than many of the official commemorative sculptures and monuments I have seen on this island.

Despite my lack of interest in Esperanto (the very notion of a constructed international auxiliary language is ill-conceived, in my opinion), I quite like the monument. Its scale and proportions are perfect and there is no nonsense or pomposity about it.

Zamenhof was a physician by profession, specialising in ophthalmology, and not an academic linguist. His main linguistic project was inspired by the naive belief that, if the peoples of the world shared a common language, peace would reign. Basically Zamenhof was a religious rather than a political thinker; his social philosophy was based on Rabbinic Judaism, specifically on the ideas of Hillel the Elder and his school.

Responding to the rise of violence against Jews within the Russian Empire which followed the assassination of the Tsar (Alexander II) in 1881, Zamenhof became involved with proto-Zionist groups, founding the Warsaw chapter of Hibbat Zion. He soon had doubts, however, and withdrew from the movement.

Zamenhof was convinced that Zionism, as he saw it developing in the later years of the 19th century and into the 20th, was fatally flawed and would not serve the true interests of the Jewish people.

In a work published in Russian in 1901, Zamenhof gave three reasons why Zionism was unrealizable: "firstly, because the Hebrew language is not alive, and if the Jewish religion did not exist, it would have died a long time ago; secondly, Zionism is wrong in its conception of Jewish nationalistic feeling: the Jews of various countries have no common ground apart from the religious one; thirdly, Palestine is too small – it will contain approximately only two million – so the whole Jewish question will not be solved."

Note his emphasis on the Jewish religion as the key driver of Jewish identity. This makes sense to me. His views on nationalism, on the other hand, I have reservations about.

In 1914 he wrote: "I am deeply convinced that all nationalism represents only the greatest misfortune for humanity, and that the aim of all people should be: to create a harmonious humanity. It is true that the nationalism of oppressed nations – as a natural self-defense reaction – is much more forgivable than the nationalism of oppressing nations; but, if the nationalism of the strong is ignoble, the nationalism of the weak is imprudent; both give birth to and support each other, and present a vicious circle of misfortunes, from which mankind will never emerge, if each of us will not sacrifice his group self-love and will not try to stand on completely neutral ground."

There is real insight here; the logic is consistent and, within limits, compelling. The problem, as I see it, is with Zamenhof's assumptions: his Enlightenment-inspired, "blank slate" view of human nature; and his implicit conflation of nation and nation-state.

Zamenhof ignores the fact that "group self-love" is a perennial human reality. Certainly it can get out of hand and generate xenophobia and violence, but it also plays a positive – in fact an essential – role in encouraging cooperative behaviour within groups.

The Zionist movement understood this and rejected Zamenhof's dogmatic and naive internationalism. So far, so good.

What the Zionists didn't grasp, however, is that combining their views on the importance of group identity with a perspective on nationhood shaped by Romantic political myths would only lead to trouble. Given the complexities of ethnic and cultural divides, seeing the nation-state as a universal solution, as the only way to satisfy ethnically-based yearnings and feelings of group identity is both confused and dangerous.

Such an approach leads inevitably to "a vicious circle of misfortunes" (as Zamenhof put it), to an unending cycle of conflict and violence.

More on culture and language

I recently set out some of my basic beliefs and assumptions about what there is and about what makes a person.

"Biology and culture. Culture and biology. That’s not all there is, but – with the inorganic world within which biological organisms evolved and within which they exist – that’s enough to make a human being..."

And, in a recent podcast, I talked about Gottlob Frege's beliefs and assumptions about life and language, views which I endorse to a large extent. Frege saw human thought and language in fundamentally organic and holistic terms.

 

I am adding here a few general thoughts on culture and language. My sense is that these various fragments are compatible with one another and form (potentially at least) a more-or-less coherent whole.

Language is probably the most basic cultural element for two reasons: it bridges biology and culture in ways that other cultural elements do not; and it is the foundation or at least a sine qua non for the development of many other cultural forms and practices, from religion and politics to mathematics.

Culture is undoubtedly real but a culture is impossible to define in a precise way. The same applies to language and languages. Just as each of us deploys a unique linguistic system (idiolect) which is different in various ways – scope and details of lexicon, aspects of syntax, pronunciation, etc. – from the linguistic systems deployed by others within our language group, so each of us embodies a unique cultural mix.

This idea obviously relates to the idea of individualism and, I think, justifies taking individualism seriously as a potential way of dealing with social problems related to various kinds of identity politics and stereotyping.

Degrees of overlap vary between individuals but, because cultural elements are so diverse, there is no single measure of commonality. Some cultural elements are easily isolated and compared but most are not.

Take language. Though the idiolect notion is (in my opinion) central to any truly scientific approach to language, for practical purposes it is useful – necessary in fact – to distinguish between languages or dialects. This inevitably involves abstraction and simplification – but then so does most of our ordinary, day-to-day thinking.

Religion is another fairly clearly identifiable cultural element, at least in the sense that the churches and sects and religious movements of the modern world can be defined and demarcated in both social and doctrinal terms. Complications arise, however, when you start to look at how participating individuals envisage and justify their participation. Congregations may be gathered together physically, but each individual will have a unique perspective on what they are doing and why.

I am conceding that identifying and drawing cultural distinctions within certain defined areas is not only possible but inevitable and necessary. But defining and drawing these distinctions is difficult to do in a rigorous way. And, if one is talking about a culture in a general sense, that task becomes well-nigh impossible.

The notion of a national culture is particularly problematic. Where there can be said to be such a thing, it is of necessity imposed and artificial – in contrast to regional cultures, for example, which are shaped over long periods of time by local conditions and practices.

Generally, it makes more sense to talk of national myths and ideologies rather than national cultures, I think. Perhaps if one is looking at a fully-fledged totalitarian state in which the natural course of cultural history has been totally blocked or perverted by a central authority, leaving the population with no other culture than that which has been imposed upon them by their ideologically-driven overlords, you could talk about a national culture. But, even in such cases, pockets of resistance will inevitably arise, complicating the picture.

Ideology and political myth, I am saying, need to be distinguished from (and are always in tension with) the more spontaneous and organic forms of thought and action which derive from the activities of small groups, families and individuals pursuing their personal goals.