https://forward.com/yiddish/448886/a-poet-in-exile-a-tear-on-vladecks-grave/
This Article was originally published November 11, 1938
(This is my amateur translation hopefully without too many errors. Still a work in progress! JL)
Except for Abe Kahan himself, Baruch Nachman Vladek was the most important business figure in the Forward’s administration. A poet and revolutionary in Russia, he came to America in 1908 and soon became a member of the Forward.
From 1918 until his sudden passing in 1938 he was the Editor-in-Chief of the newspaper and Kahan’s right hand.
He was also twice a member of the New York State Assembly (originally as a Socialist from 1917 to 1921, and afterwards as a deputy from the American Worker Party from 1937 until his passing.)
As an activist and politician he was active in developing housing for poor workers and immigrants and was the head steward and leader of the “Yiddish Workers Committee.” His elder brothers were the literary critic Shmuel (Samuel) Charney and the poet Daniel Charney.
When Vladek died suddenly on the 30th of October, 500,000 people came to accompany him on his last journey. At his funeral the New York Governor, Herbert Lehman spoke, as did the New York City Mayor Fiorello La Guardia, Senator Robert Wagner and the Socialist leader Norman Thomas.
In his essay written shortly after Vladek’s passing, his friend A. Ginsburg related how Vladek was different from most activists, whom he, Ginsburg, held to be egoists.
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Article by Jordan Kutzik — listed in Muckrack as a Deputy Editor of the Forward. (Presumably the English language Forward.) He is online - can be googled.
https://muckrack.com/jordan-kutzik/articles
But the following appeared in the same issue as he above.
Again, this is my translation and hopefully not with too many mistakes.
It is printed in Yiddish here:
https://forward.com/yiddish/448886/a-poet-in-exile-a-tear-on-vladecks-grave/
Again, this is JDL's translation and hopefully without too many errors:
A Poet in Exile: a Tear on Vladek’s Grave.
I must admit that I don’t listen to those who are enamored with activism or activists. I don’t know. Perhaps indeed the world cannot exist without activists, but as it says in the Gemara: “The world cannot exist without spice dealers and tanners, but woe is the one that is a tanner.” In my eyes all activities are imperfect occupations.
It is a shame to say, but I don’t trust the community leaders.
I am suspicious of their motives. Often it seems to me that being an activist is, for certain people, a means, no more than an easy means, to gain honor and for themselves alone.
It is a means, and at the same time also a sort of mask to wear and to conceal more simply personal ambition and interest. The well-being of the community is not the purpose of their activity, but the personal “ego” that seeks such a means to find expression and to win recognition for themselves.
In the best case— even when motives of the activist are the best and the most honorable, free from personal calculation and ambition — even then I am not so sure of him, even then I fear him.
The trouble with the activist is, that he is so eager to be with everyone, that he totally forgets the details.
Because of the forest, he doesn’t see the trees.
Because of “humanity,” he doesn’t see the people.
He speaks of “peoplehood,” he speaks of “folks,” that substantially do not have their own existence, that are in importance no more than abstractions, and he forgets totally without concrete, living folk, that are called “people.”
The activist is so taken up with the activism, that he is subject to forgetting the living and suffering people and he is subject to forgetting the living and suffering people.
He forgets that the people, the foundation, are in the end humanity, and “is in the end humanity, and and both from humanity and from people as without the people there is no “humanity.”
A whole other kind of activity was that of my prematurely deceased friend Baruch N. Vladeck.
He was an activist and a most important one. But his activism was not for him a goal in order to display his ego at the foreground. He didn’t need that. His personality was rich enough, strong enough, and talented enough that he could find a way for himself in the very first ranks of different areas of knowledge.
He was — he became — an activist, but this was not the ambition of his life. He had not strived for that. His soul had not lived for that. That did not bring him joy. He had ambition, each one of us had ambition, but his true inner ambition was the ambition of a writer, the ambition of a poet, the ambition of a word-master.
He became an activist, but his activism was a sacrifice, a hard sacrifice, that he brought to the altar of our frightful and cruel time. Under other circumstances, sooner or later, we would have had in Vladeck one our our outstanding journalists and poets.
Vladek was a poet, driven by time and circumstances into the ranks of the activists. He was a poet in exile.
Vladeck became an activist. With the entire fervor of his poetic soul thrown into this work into this work, he did not know otherwise, but he never forgot that the people were the reason for all reasons.
His journalist’s soul would not let him tolerate the pain and suffering of the community.
He had not forgotten the individual for the sake of “mankind,” and for the sake of “the people” he had not forgotten the individual, so totally united.
He worked for the community, but even more he worked with detail.
He had for each one of the hundreds, that came to him found a kindly smile, a friendly word and, when it was possible also material help.
Vladeck the mentsch, the warm, good-hearted mentsch, was not lost and not 4engulfed in his activism. He remained true to himself and to his soul, the soul of a poet in exile.
My tears on his fresh grave. Author A. Ginsburg
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