Microsoft Word llz-bio-En doc

II. Early Influences 

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Zamenhof's mother tongue was Russian, however. He was educated in that language 

and used it at home and in his family circle throughout his life. As a child, he even 

dreamt of writing poetry in Russian and, at the age of ten, wrote a five-act classical 

tragedy in that language. This dual cultural heritage – Russian and Jewish –  was shared 

with his father, Mark. Unlike most Russian Jews of his time, who were tradespeople, 

merchants or doctors

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, Mark Zamenhof had opted for scholarly pursuits. After moving to 

Bialystock, Mark worked as bookkeeper and language instructor to the wealthy 

Zabłudowski family. Later, he co-founded a school for Jewish girls, in which he taught 

languages. Among his scholarly pursuits, Mark authored two textbooks while living in 

Bialystock, An Introductory Course in General Geography for Elementary Schools 

(Warsaw, 1869) and A Textbook of the German Language for Russian Young People 

(Warsaw, 1871). 

In January of 1863, little more than three years after Ludovic Zamenhof's birth, the 

Polish regions of the Russian Empire erupted as the Poles sought independence from 

Russian control. Although the Litvak Jews had their origin in the former Litva region, 

where the rebellion was centred, the majority of them, including the Zamenhofs, did not 

support the rebels. The rebellion was severely suppressed by the Russian authorities and 

lasted little more than a year. The Litvak Jews’ loyalty to the Russian Empire earned 

them the good graces of the authorities. Consequently, following the rebellion, Mark 

Zamenhof was granted a teaching post at a state-run school for Jews and thereby joined 

the ranks of the Russian civil service, which gave him both a good salary and a stable 

career. Indeed he was later (1883) appointed to the position of censor with responsibility 

for vetting German newspapers, and later also Hebrew and Yiddish publications. 

Mark Zamenhof attempted to combine his ethnic-religious and his national 

identities. Nachum Sokolov, editor of the Warsaw Hebrew-language newspaper Hacefira 

(also spelled Hazefirah, which means “time” or “the dawn”) and later secretary general 

and president of the World Zionism Organization, accurately described Mark's cultural 

duality when he wrote: 

[He] belonged to two worlds: to the patriarchal, orthodox and traditionalist 

world through his customary daily life, but also to that of a conscious 

assimilationist tendency with which he sympathized. This inner conflict 

between the two cultural tendencies and between the two ways of life made 

him, the father, a tragic figure... He was highly educated in the area of 

Judaism – he was a brilliant Hebrew stylist and an erudite Talmudic scholar 

– yet he adhered to the cultural movement of the “Maskilim” (the 

Enlightened Ones)

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, who promoted the assimilation of the Jewish 

populations into the reigning culture, preserving only the religious 

difference. (Kohen-Cedek, Zamenhof kaj la Aramea Lingvo 199) 

 

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