?װאָס טאָן דו טראַכסט

I am talking to those who struggle to secure cultural rights, the right to create Jewish cultural values - it is not enough to talk Yiddish. You must have something to say!
If you have nothing to say, you may talk Yiddish from the cradle to the grave, you may talk it everywhere, at home, in the street, in the synagogue during Reading of the Law, in the street, in the Philharmonia, in the middle of a concert, in the theater, at the opera - what you say will not be Jewish, because it will not mean anything real, it will be an imitation, dead.
We stand firm like a wall for Yiddish! We are ready to give our lives for Yiddish! Yet before our eyes the Jewish content, what is essentially Jewish disappears, the Jewish soul dies. We are flooded with plagiarisms, with substitutes, with spurious goals and false trademarks.
And the people are happy about it - they say it's European. Where is the original, the distinctively, genuinely Jewish?...
Creation is the elevation of the soul. Only the Jewish soul can be the Jewish writer's Shekinah, his holy spirit, his one inspiration and creative force. It must be the eye in his head, with which he sees the world, its past, present and future. He must live and die for the Jewish soul, for the Jewish spirit.
- Y.L. Peretz