being manipulated quite consciously by individuals in various places, it was difficult to determine who was pulling the strings, and so the process managed to avoid seeming imposed and artificial.
Beginning in 1904, another wave of immigration from Europe, the second aliya, brought thousands more Jews to Palestine, many of them from Russia, where another bout of violent pogroms was under way. They were fired up on socialism and full of optimistic energy. Office clerks and doctors learned to plow soil and shovel manure on the newly established collective farms. Teachers and accountants built roads and laid foundations for new Jewish towns. These immigrants were willing to change their lives in dramatic ways, and many of them (but by no means all of them) were willing to change their language, too.
They made Hebrew the language of formal education in kindergartens and schools throughout Palestine. There were still a number of schools that used French, English, or German, but after the 1914 “language wars,” when teachers from schools across the land went on strike to protest the decision that German, not Hebrew, would be the language of instruction at the Technion (a modern technical school recently established by a German Jewish charitable organization), Hebrew became the dominant language of education. The kids took it from there. As modern studies of the development of Creoles from pidgins, or of native sign languages from home sign systems, have shown, a generation (or two) of children can turn the effortfully produced, inconsistent input of the adults around them into a fully fledged, effortless native vernacular. The children of the second aliya were exposed to Hebrew early enough, and in a natural enough manner, that they were able to do this.
What accounts for the success of the revival of Hebrew? It certainly wasn’t efforts on the part of any official institution. Putting a language into the schools or onto street signs is no guarantee of success (as illustrated by the Irish example). Nor was it a sense of cultural pride in the language. Maori (the native language of New Zealand) and Hawaiian fail to flourish, despite large-scale government support and a hearty emotional response from the people who are supposed to be reviving the languages (but aren’t). In dozens of movements struggling to bring dying languages back to life, there have been people with passionate conviction working very hard. The revival of a language doesn’t depend on one inspired crusader, or even a group of them. How do you get people to speak a language they don’t speak? Invented or otherwise?
One thing that seems to be very important is circumstances—as in right time, right place. If the Jews had decided to establish a nation in Uganda or Texas (both serious proposals at the time), would they be speaking Hebrew today? Probably not. If the situation in Europe hadn’t sent a second wave of immigrants to Palestine, would the small movement that Ben-Yehuda established have petered out? Perhaps.
Hebrew and Esperanto are very different languages with very different origins. But their successes—that of revival for Hebrew and that of being brought to life in the first place for Esperanto—overlapped in their timing and in their reasons for occurring. Esperanto also benefited from circumstances. If Zamenhof hadn’t come on the scene just as the Volapilkists were jumping ship, would anyone have paid attention? If the situation in Europe hadn’t highlighted the violent perils of nationalism, would so many have been attracted to his message of unity? If both the Hebrew revival and the Esperanto movements hadn’t begun during the golden age of socialism, when the prospects for grand social-engineering experiments looked so bright, would the Jewish immigrants have so willingly believed that it was possible to overhaul the language habits of an entire society? Would enough people have believed in the utopian dream of a universal language to try to make it happen?
Only it didn’t happen. Esperanto did not become a universal language. It became instead a particular language of a particular community.
Crank Pride
After World War II, there was a push to rid the Esperanto movement of its eccentricities, spearheaded by Ivo Lapenna, a Yugoslavian Esperantist and academic lawyer. He held important positions: professor of international law at Zagreb University, counsel-advocate at the International Court of Justice at The Hague, and professor of Soviet and East European law at the London School of Economics. Peter Forster, in his book
One woman with green stockings explained to me that every lady Esperantist should wear only green stockings for propaganda purposes. One came to the ball in a dress, like a nightdress, with masses of green stars, large, medium and small. I saw a loud yellow tie with an even louder green star woven into it. In general, one could see stars everywhere; on the chest, in the hair, on belts, rings, etc.
People will say again that everyone has the right to dress as he wishes. Certainly; but could we not kindly request such cranks not to hinder the spread of Esperanto by their standpoint and external appearance? If that does not work, have we not at least the right to make a mockery of them, since they make a mockery of Esperanto?
War’s end had ushered in a new era of international communication and organization, and Lapenna did not want Esperanto to sabotage once again its chance to enter the world stage in an official capacity. Proposals for Esperanto endorsement after World War I had received serious consideration at the League of Nations. There was enough opposition (the most vocal from the French delegation, which claimed that French was already the universal language) to prevent the League from taking up the cause of Esperanto, though it did accept a resolution to recommend that it be considered a regular language, rather than a code, in the determination of fees for telegraph messages.
The dislocations of World War II convinced Lapenna, among others, that there was a fresh chance for Esperanto, and after a petition bearing the signatures of more than 500,000 people and 450 organizations was submitted to the United Nations, UNESCO began to look into the matter. With great hopes for success, La-penna presented an eloquent case for Esperanto. Ultimately, the UNESCO delegates adopted a resolution expressing affinity between the goals of Esperanto and the goals of UNESCO. The Esperanto community celebrated this as a victory, but no concrete measures had really been endorsed. UNESCO essentially only agreed that, yes, Esperanto is a nice idea.
Lapenna’s attempts to put a respectable face on Esperanto were not appreciated by everyone, and the cranks had an ardent voice in John Leslie, a.k.a. Verdiro (truth teller), the secretary of the British Esperanto Association. Leslie is described in Forster’s book as “an ‘anarchist, freethinking, patriotic Scot’ … He objected to supporting UNESCO, regarding it as a bulwark of financial capitalism … He also opposed formality in dress and defended deviations … He praised the informal equality among Esperantists of all walks of life and criticized the importance attached to attracting those famous in other spheres.” In direct opposition to Lapenna, Leslie promoted an attitude of crank pride among the green-stocking crowd.
The 1947 congress that Lapenna found so disturbing was also important in the life of a young Hungarian named George Soros. His father, Tivadar, was an active Esperantist and had changed the family name from Schwartz to Soros, an Esperanto verb meaning “will soar.” Tivadar had escaped from a Siberian prison during World War I and managed to keep his family away from the Nazis during World War II. When the communists took over in 1947, Tivadar and George escaped to Switzerland, where they attended the Esperanto universal congress in Bern. Afterward, the father returned to Hungary and the son went on to Ipswich, England, for the annual world youth congress. Young George decided he wanted to stay in England, but he had only a tourist visa. He appealed to his fellow Esperantists for help, and it was Verdiro (Leslie), through a relative in the British parliament, who arranged
