The Yiddish language in my day was an empty vessel, containing nothing but slang and trite, meaningless phrases . . . The women and the poor would read Yiddish without understanding it, while the rest of the people, even if they didn't know how to read another language, were ashamed to be caught reading Yiddish, lest this private folly of theirs become public knowledge. . . .

Those of our writers who know Hebrew, our holy tongue, and continue to write in it, do not care whether or not the people understand it. These writers look down on Yiddish and greatly scorn it. And if one out of many occasionally remembered the cursed jargon and wrote a few lines in it, he kept his works hidden, so as to escape criticism and ridicule. How perplexed I was then, when I thought of writing in Yiddish, for I feared it would entail the ruin of my reputation -- so my friends in the Hebrew literature movement warned me. But my love for the useful defeated false pride, and I decided to take pity on the much-scorned language and do what I could for my people. . . . I was soon inspired to write my first story in Yiddish . . . and other stories and books followed.

My first story made a big impact on the Jewish masses and was soon published in a third edition . . . and then a fourth edition. . . . That story laid the cornerstone of modern Yiddish literature. From then on, my soul desired only Yiddish, and I dedicated myself entirely to it.