Jews and Diaspora Nationalism

Writings on Jewish Peoplehood in Europe and the United States

Simon Rabinovitch

• Publisher: Brandeis University Press
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781611683622
• Topic: Sozialwissenschaften
• Subtopic: Soziologie

The question of how to preserve, construct or transform Jewish peoplehood consumed Jewish intellectuals in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Despite a rich array of writing from Jewish nationalists, liberals, and socialists about the vitality of Jewish existence in the diaspora, the key works have never been collected in a single volume, and few reliable English translations exist. This anthology brings together a variety of thinkers who offered competing visions of peoplehood within the established and developing Jewish diaspora centers of Europe and America. Writing in Russian, Yiddish, Hebrew, French, and English, these Jewish intellectuals sought to recast Jewish existence, whether within multiethnic empires, liberal democracies, or socialist forms of government, in national terms. Volume editor Simon Rabinovitch provides an introductory essay, as well as short introductions and annotations to each document that contextualize and make accessible this wealth of primary sources for scholars and students.

Index

Abramovich, S. Y., 56

agada, 198, 198n63

Aleichem, Sholem. See Rabinovich, Sholem

Alliance Israélite Universelle, 35

Americanization, 155, 164, 171

American Jewish Committee, 207n77

American Jewish Conference, 209–10, 210n81

American Jewish Congress, 207, 207n77

American Zionist Organization, 207

Ansky, Semyon, 81

antisemitism: absence of rationality with, 42; anti-assimilation as response to, 39–40; emancipation relationship with, 21–22, 21n23; eternality of, 230; German liberalism and, 50; Israel as refuge from, xxxiv–xxxv; Jewish professional trades as vehicle for, 95–96; Jewish Question and, 83–84; national autonomy and, 53–54; Odessa violence of 1871, 4; pressure to assimilate, 10–13; reactionary patriotism and, 35n36; socialist theories of, xxvii; spread of European antisemitism, 207–8

Argentina, 118–19

Asch, Sholem, 138, 138n45, 196, 196n51

Ashkenazi Jews, xix

assimilation: overview, 37–41; as abandonment of Jewishness, 66–69; Americanization movement in the U.S., 155, 164, 171; assimilationist nationalism, 95–96; civic solidarity and, 35–36; class mobility and, 11, 16n1, 82, 157–58, 165; as condition of citizenship, 10–13; family influences and, 40; “feeling for Jewishness” as alternative, 213–15; generational progression toward, 118; integration in the U.S., 208–9; latent otherness and, 186–87; melting pot image of, xv–xvi, 156, 161; national vs. civic rights and, 24, 44; national/cultural unity and, 165–66; as “national suicide,” xxvii, xxxix (n25), 36–37; opposition of the wealthy to, 6–8; pragmatist assimilation, 39–40; religious Judaism and, 222; resistance to assimilation, xvi–xvii, xxxiii–xxxiv, 18–19, 18n19, 115, 187–88; socialist advocacy of, 81–82; “straight-hearted” opposition to, 11; as suppression of national rights, 16, 38–41; Zionism development and, xxxii. See also religious reform

Austria: autonomy movement in, 52–54; civic solidarity in, 34; cultural pluralism in, 167; diaspora cultural center in, xxi, xxix–xxxi; eq...