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An appeal to those in charge of the relief work for East European Jewry to give attention to the problem of preserving the Jewish school systems whose existence is being threatened in Poland, Roumania, Lithuania, etc., is made by Vladimir Jabotinsky, in an article entitled “The Light That Threatens To Fail,” to be released this week to the Jewish press of American.
“It is much more than just a network of schools: it is the only bright island in an ocean of misery and humiliation,” Mr. Jabotinsky writes. “Jewish life in the vast territory stretching between Kovno, Lithuania, and Kishinev, Bessrabia–about 6,000,000 tortured souls of Israel–is now literally bare of any comforting influence, devoid even of hope. Their economic plight seems to be past redemption, owing not only to wilful oppressing, but also to the competition of the young, but fast growing, Christian bourgeoisie. Their political condition is determined by an unprecedented outburst of local nationalisms. There is no joy in their life, but in the only old refuge of the Jew–in the field of spiritual activity.
“Yet, now it is no longer the Beth Hamidrash: it is the modern Jewish school work. Roughly speaking, about 100,000 Jewish children of that whole region went, a year ago, to Hebrew schools, half that number to Yiddish schools. In Poland alone there are twelve Hebrew and three Yiddish high schools; 194 Hebrew and 101 Yiddish elementary schools–apart from kindergartens.
“Yet, unfortunately, that necessary and, in many respects, admirable network of schools is now actually tottering. The Roumanian government seems, despite all the minority clauses of the peace treaties to have set its heart on exterminating both the Hebrew and the Yiddish languages of instruction in Bessarabia. In Lithuania, the Jewish communities have been deprived of their rights of self-taxation; American help has practically ceased; the parents are destitute; as a result, 15 per cent of the Hebrew elementary schools are already closed, the remainder in a precarious position. The situation in Poland, including Galicia, is hardly brighter.
“One hears so much just now about the physical hunger of the East European Jew; yet for our people, with its tremendous tradition of learning, the collapse of the Hebrew and Yiddish schools would be no less a tragedy. Let it be hoped that relief workers will not overlook this side of the problem. It is a terrible thing for a poverty-stricken mass to lose the only spiritual ray (apart from religion, whose magnetism is no longer what it used to be) illuminating its darkness!”
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
