[Membroj] Esther Schor on Zamenhof in The New Republic

[Ralph Dumain]

L.L. Zamenhof and the Shadow People
The amazing story of how Esperanto came to be.
<http://www.tnr.com/article/books-and-arts/ll-zamenhof-and-the-shadow-people#>Esther 
Schor
The New Republic
December 30, 2009
http://www.tnr.com/article/books-and-arts/ll-zamenhof-and-the-shadow-people

By now many of you have probably seen this. I wouldn't call Zamenhof 
my household god, but otherwise I am very pleased to see this 
article, in which Esperanto takes second place to Zamenhof, meaning 
that the picture of Zamenhof--his underlying motivations, what he 
tried to accomplish in the various phases of his life--has finally 
migrated from the small world of Zamenhof Esperanto scholars that 
have emerged since the 1970s to the non-Esperantist public at large. 
Esther Schor has been engaging the general public on a number of 
fronts, and if she speaks on this theme at the DC kongreso in May, 
then I won't have to, since she has already accomplished with 
Zamenhof what I only recently set out to do.

The "shadow people" were the Jews of Eastern Europe, and "Hilelismo" 
was a key phase in Zamenhof's overall trajectory, wherein the Jewish 
question and the quest for a universal language again merge. Schor 
focuses on this phase, but also covers the various twists and turns 
of Zamenhof's personal trajectory as well as of the Esperanto 
movement, showing the English-speaking public how complex was the 
terrain that Zamenhof sought to navigate and makes sense out of his 
strategic maneuvers.  She also illustrates the important point about 
how the twists and turns of history elude our various attempts to get 
a grip on it. This was as true for the various political and cultural 
positions taken by East European Jewry as it was for the Esperantists 
seeking the universal adoption of their language. A century ago who 
could have imagined the twisted course the 20th century would take?

It turns out that Esther Schor and I already crossed paths, though 
she wouldn't know it. I attended her talk on her book on Emma Lazarus 
at the DC Jewish Community Center a few years ago, which was pretty 
inspiring. Then I had no idea she was interested in Zamenhof or Esperanto.  
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