Simon Dubnow's New Judaism : Diaspora Nationalism and the World History of the Jews [1 ed.] 9789004260672, 9789004260528

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Simon Dubnow’s “New Judaism”

Supplements to The Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy Edited by

Elliot R. Wolfson (New York University) Christian Wiese (University of Frankfurt) Hartwig Wiedebach (University of Zurich)

VOLUME 21

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/sjjt

1. Dubnow, as a young man. Used with the permission of the Archives of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, New York.

2. Dubnow, Odessa 1913. Used with the permission of the Archives of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, New York.

Simon Dubnow’s “New Judaism” Diaspora Nationalism and the World History of the Jews By

Robert M. Seltzer

Leiden • boston 2014

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Seltzer, Robert M., author.  Simon Dubnow’s “new Judaism” : diaspora nationalism and the world history of the Jews / by Robert M. Seltzer.   p. cm. — (Supplements to the Journal of Jewish thought and philosophy, ISSN 1873-9008; volume 21)  Includes bibliographical references and index.  ISBN 978-90-04-26052-8 (hardback : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-90-04-26067-2 (e-book) 1. Dubnow, Simon, 1860–1941. 2. Jewish historians—Russia—Biography. 3. Dubnow, Simon, 1860–1941— Political activity. 4. Jews—Russia—History—19th century. 5. Jews—Russia—Social conditions— 19th century. 6. Russia—Ethnic relations—History—19th century. I. Title : Simon Dubnow’s “New Judaism”. II. Title: Diaspora nationalism and the world history of the Jews. DS115.9.D8S45 2014 909’.04924007202—dc23 [B]

2013032477

This publication has been typeset in the multilingual “Brill” typeface. With over 5,100 characters covering Latin, IPA, Greek, and Cyrillic, this typeface is especially suitable for use in the humanities. For more information, please see www.brill.com/brill-typeface. ISSN 1873-9008 ISBN 978-90-04-26052-8 (hardback) ISBN 978-90-04-26067-2 (e-book) Copyright 2014 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Global Oriental, Hotei Publishing, IDC Publishers and Martinus Nijhoff Publishers. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. This book is printed on acid-free paper.

CONTENTS Preface ............................................................................................................... Note ....................................................................................................................

xi xvii

Part one

Breaking with the Past, 1860–1886 Chapter One Leaving the Shtetl ............................................................ . Russian Jewry in the Reign of Alexander II ...................................... . Dubnow’s “First World” ........................................................................... . The Vilna Haskalah and the Beginning of Simon’s Rebellion ....

3 3 8 16

Chapter Two From Haskalah to Positivism ....................................... . The Search for a Secular Education .................................................... . The Impact of Radical Maskilim, Russian Nihilists, and their  Western Exemplars ............................................................................. . Dubnow’s Self-Image in his Early Twenties .....................................

27 27

Chapter Three Young Dubnow as a Jewish Positivist ..................... . The Jewish Press in Nineteenth-Century Russia ............................. . The Budding Career of a Russian-Jewish Critic ............................... . Kritikus/Externus on the Backwardness of Russian Jewry ...........

47 47 54 61

34 38

Part two

Reconsidering the Past, 1886–1897 Chapter Four Coping with New Realities ........................................... . Rejection ...................................................................................................... . In and Out of an Emotional Crisis ...................................................... . Discovering History ..................................................................................

81 81 87 99

Chapter Five Romantic Positivism ....................................................... . The Influence of Renan and Graetz .................................................... . The Influence of Lavrov and Mikhailovsky ...................................... . Historical Integratsia Dushi ...................................................................

107 108 118 123

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contents Part three

the Exigencies of the Present, 1897–1907 Chapter Six The Historian Becomes a Nationalist ........................... . Activism ....................................................................................................... . The Odessa Circle ..................................................................................... . Autonomism ...............................................................................................

133 133 142 155

Chapter Seven From the Nineteenth to the Twentieth Century . . The Letters on Old and New Judaism ................................................... . On Dubnow’s Historiography ................................................................ . From Vilna to St. Petersburg/Petrograd to Berlin to Riga ............

165 166 182 191

Chapter Eight Reconsiderations ............................................................ . Are the Jews a Nation? ............................................................................ . Defensive Nationalism ............................................................................ . Dubnow, Then and Now ........................................................................

199 200 211 222

Bibliography .................................................................................................... Dubnow’s “Auto Bibliography” .................................................................. Index ..................................................................................................................

227 243 273

Preface Simon Dubnow’s intellectual development is a microcosm of the modernization of East European Jewish identity during more than a half-century of challenge and crisis. Noted for his ideology of diaspora nationalism and what he called his “sociological” approach to the study of the Jewish past, Dubnow was the author of a remarkable oeuvre of essays and scholarly articles of high quality that included a pioneering history of Hasidism, studies of Jewish writers in Yiddish and other languages, a comprehensive ten-volume his­tory of the Jewish people, and one of the great Jewish autobiographies of modern times. Dubnow’s reputation rests on a position he had begun to articulate fully in 1897, an auspicious year in Jewish history that witnessed the creation of the World Zionist Organization and the Jewish Workers Bund of Russia, Poland, and Lithuania. His Letters on Old and New Judaism (collected and published as a book in 1907) is a classic argument on behalf of a stance that resonated among adherents of Jewish diaspora nationalism and well beyond to all those who adhered to alternative views of Jewish peoplehood. He remained faithful to this ideology until his death in Riga in 1941—that is, his murder in the Holocaust at the age of eighty-one. What we will call “Dubnovism” took shape in Dubnow’s mid-forties after a literary career that had begun twenty years earlier when his views were those of a cosmopolitan liberal of the mid-nineteenth century. Most of what has been written about Dubnow concentrates on the latter part of his life, but it is the first part, when he gradually formulated his worldview, that offers insight into a metamorphosis paralleling the reorientation of modern Jewish thought, politics, and historiography in that part of the world and elsewhere. Dubnow was born in 1860 in Mstislavl, a town in what is now Belarus, during the reign of the reforming tsar Alexander II. Rejecting traditional religion during his adolescence, Dubnow embraced, first, the Haskalah (the Hebrew Enlightenment) and then the Russian version of the Positivism of August Comte, John Stuart Mill, and Herbert Spencer. As a budding journalist for Russian-Jewish periodicals, he advocated sweeping Jewish reforms as those that had been done by acculturated German Jews. Although he wrote only for Jewish publications, he saw himself as a cosmopolitan in his interests and perspective. Because of the pogroms of 1881–1882 and the restrictions imposed in their aftermath by the ­reactionary Tsar ­Alexander III,

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the appeal of this optimistic program had drastically declined among many spokespeople for the modernization of Russian-Jewish life. After a while, Dubnow changed his point of view also. He never had much use for formal religion. He eventually integrated some of the central values of Judaism into a secular liberalism that remained rooted in the European Enlightenment as updated in the nineteenth century. In his middle twenties he experienced an emotional crisis which we will examine in some detail. He was increasingly drawn to Jewish history, which led to efforts to further the study of the East European Jewish past. Like others of his cohort but in his own way, by the end of the century he had become a Jewish nationalist. Unlike them he was also by then an accomplished amateur historian. Dubnovism can be considered a nineteenth-century version of Enlightenment Judaism in an age of rampant nationalism and intense historical consciousness. Dubnow’s intellectual biography illustrates a decisive shift in nineteenth-century Jewish thought from preoccupation with the universalistic teachings of Judaism to the particularistic nature of the Jewish people. He had rejected the “Old Judaism” of his upbringing (which he came to call “the thesis” in his version of the dialectic of modern Judaism). Later he came to see the limitations of the now old-fashioned cosmopolitan Enlightenment (the “antithesis” in his terminology). The solution for him was a “New Judaism” that would be a “synthesis” of the old and new, better able to cope with rising anti-Semitism and the pressures of nationalist turmoil among the ethnic groups in Eastern Europe and to preserve what he felt were the finest aspects of historical Judaism. Up to that point young Dubnow had not found a place for himself either in Russian society or in the secular elite that was emerging within Russian Jewry. Reflecting on the situation of the Jews in a multi-cultural environment during an era of drastic economic change and social unrest, Dubnow formulated his position on a desirable future of Russian Jewry “after the revolution,” a revolution that would, he hoped, produce a democratic multi-national Russia. Among the various competing nationalist movements in the tsarist empire, the Jews stood out as not having a distinct territorial base, leading to his doctrine of non-territorial nationalism. This odyssey permits a “psycho-historical” analysis of the formation of a new self-image. This analysis is possible because Dubnow’s development reflects the impact of events on his generation and social class. Dubnow can hardly be located in the avant-garde of European thought that had posited by then revolutionary new perspectives on society and culture. He put together in his own way ideas that were for the most part already



preface

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in circulation, having been a Positivist and later a nationalist after these movements had already carved out a place in the realm of modern ideas. He was a member of a distinct category of intellectuals that emerged in many lands—historians with a mission—who played an important role in the proliferation of nationalism in nineteenth-century East Europe and ­elsewhere. Dubnow had some of the traits of a gentleman of the Victorian Age—he was dignified, discreet, sentimental, and above all earnest. A man of moral integrity, his reasoning was clear and consistent. Almost completely selfeducated, he passionately loved learning. A major theme of his inner world was what he called integratsiia dushi, integration of soul, self-integration, a preoccupation through which he sought to give his life consistency and unity. Dubnow’s personality, therefore, makes him an ideal subject for a study in the growth of a self-image. In his characteristically methodical way, Dubnow left excellent sources for such a study. In the first decades of his career, that is, between 1880 and 1907, he published over one hundred-fifty articles and several books, totaling more than five thousand pages. His voluminous production and insistent thoughtfulness enable us to synthesize his development against the background of his time and place. In the 1930s he published his autobiography, a work intended to be a source for the future understanding of his time. It included reflections on his own writings, copious citations from the journal he had kept since youth, and reflections on the notable people he knew in St. Petersburg, Odessa, Vilna, Berlin, and elsewhere. In his autobiography Dubnow carefully narrates his life chronologically, which has been elaborated in his daughter’s lovely biography of him. The importance of his work was driven home in Koppel Pinson’s fine introduction to the English translation of a selection of Dubnow’s essays published after World War II. The present study will not duplicate theirs but rather will trace his intellectual development in a somewhat zig-zag fashion. Biographical narrative will play an ancillary role in the process of examining the basic themes in the evolution of his thinking in the larger context of Russian and Jewish history and his gradually changing perception of himself in relation to others of significance to him—his version of “Jewish identity,” a concept which has been much in vogue in recent decades. Dubnow’s life was somewhat cloistered until he was drawn into involvement in Jewish communal and political affairs. Therefore biography and thought will not be treated separately; his viewpoint is interesting primarily as a studied response to the conditions and problems he encountered at various stages.

xiv

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This work is divided into three parts. The first deals with the self-education of Dubnow as a young Positivist. The second traces the emotional and ideological turmoil that led him to turn from a “­universalist” point of view idealizing the supposed lessons of natural science to prioritizing history. The third part describes his evolution from individualism to a liberal form of nationalism. A chapter is therefore devoted to his Letters on Old and New Judaism and his historiography. After a brief account of the later years of his life, this work concludes with reflections on “what is living and what is dead” (to borrow the title of Benedetto Croce’s evaluation of Hegel) in Dubnovism from the perspective of a century later and a different continent—a half century since my initial encounter with his work. This book originated as my PhD dissertation when I was a student in the History Department of Columbia University, majoring in Jewish and Russian history. My interest in Dubnow had been aroused when I read his history while doing research for my master’s thesis at the Hebrew Union ­College-Jewish Institute of Religion in Cincinnati. The subject of that thesis was the Toldot Yaakov Yosef of Yaakov Yosef of Poloyne, a main source for the origins of Beshtian Hasidism in eighteenth-century Poland. ­Dubnow’s Toldot ha-Hasidut (History of Hasidism) was of immense help, leading me to Russian-Jewish history and therefore to study of the Russian language, literature, and history. I chose Simon Dubnow as the subject of my doctoral dissertation because his conceptions of Judaism and of Jewish history were so intertwined. Although I have published articles on Dubnow, my teaching at Hunter College concentrated on Jewish intellectual history and world history. I would like to think that I followed in Dubnow’s footsteps by offering survey courses that covered the entirety of the history of the Jewish people and its culture. Recently we have offered a new course in the history of Russian and Soviet Jewry that also covers the history of Jews in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth through Russian Jewry up to and since the end of the USSR. This course not only has attracted students whose families came here from the former Soviet Union but also has interested a wide range of other students. Even though my personal orientation to Judaism is different than Dubnow’s (I am by education a Reform rabbi as well as a professor), I continued to draw inspiration from his achievements. In the course of compiling various versions of this work I have many people to thank, more than I can mention here. My MA thesis on the origins



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of Hasidism was written under the supervision of Professor Ellis Rivkin of the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, whose analytic imagination greatly stimulated my interest in historical scholarship. For reading early versions of this work I should like to express my gratitude to Carl Seltzer, Irving Levitas, Marcel Teitler, Jack Bemporad, Sonya Bemporad, and Joel Sachs. My sister, Frances Mendlow, graciously typed a draft of that early version. During my graduate student years at Columbia University, Dubnow’s grandson, Alexander Erlich of the Economics Department there discussed with me the history of the Bund and the personality of his grandfather. Later, at an event of the Bund, I met Dubnow’s grandson and Alexander’s brother Victor Erlich, a distinguished professor of Russian literature at Yale. The YIVO Institute for Jewish Research provided microfilms of rare issues of Voskhod. My Columbia University PhD advisors, Marc Raeff and Gerson Cohen, were most helpful. Special thanks to Edward Schecter of Temple Beth Shalom of Hastingson-Hudson, New York for being my rabbi and friend for lo these many years. I am grateful to my former student and good friend Leonard Petlakh, who awakened in me once again my interest in the history of Russian Jewry, and my student Brian Smollett, who read and commented on several sections. Colleagues who have especially sustained me at Hunter are Naomi W. Cohen, Naomi Miller, Barbara Welter, and Richard Belsky. For this version I am especially appreciative of the encouragement I received from Christian Wiese, Martin Buber Professor at the University of Frankfurt, and the friendship of Roberta Newman, my former student who is now a staff member of that invaluable institution, YIVO. Thanks are due to Krysia Fisher, YIVO’s photo archivist, who found pictures of Dubnow younger than those seen elsewhere. I am very appreciative of the efficient and gracious aid I received from Brill’s Boston office: Jennifer Pavelko, Judy Pereira, and Julia Berick. The text of my dissertation has been considerably revised and amplified but most of the footnotes from original sources remain the same. I have expanded the bibliography to include valuable works that have appeared since, from which I have learned much. I wrote in the preface of the first version, my debt to my wife, Cheryl, was beyond words. That is still the case, al ahat kama ve-khamah (even more so). My daughters Nomi and Anna have been inspirations in their own special ways. I hope that my grandson James Samuel Wilson (born May 2012) will in his way continue the pursuit of truth and ­understanding.

NOTE The following abbreviations will be used: KZ: Simon Dubnow. Kniga zhizni [Book of Life: Reminiscences and Reflections, Material for the History of My Time]. Vol. I (to 1903), Riga, 1934. Vol. II (1903–22), Riga, 1935. Vol. III (1922–33), Riga, 1940; republished, New York, 1957. Pis’ma: Simon Dubnow. Pis’ma o starom i novom evreistve [Letters on Old and New Judaism]. St. Petersburg, 1907. Sefer Dubnow: Simon Rawidowicz, ed. Sefer Shimon Dubnow [Simon Dubnow, In Memoriam: Essays and Letters]. London: Ararat Publishing Co., 1954. Dubnow, Man and Work: Aaron Steinberg, ed. Simon Dubnow: The Man and His Work (A Memorial Volume on the Occasion of the Centenary of his Birth). Paris: World Jewish Congress, 1963. Dubnow’s published articles are cited in the footnotes according to the numbers he assigned to them in his “Auto Bibliography” included at the end of the third volume of Kniga zhizni and republished in Dubnow, Man and Work. (For those articles extending over two or more issues of a journal, the specific month will be cited in each footnote.) JE: Jewish Encyclopedia. 12 vols. New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1901–1906. EE: Evreiskaia entsiklopediia. 16 vols. St. Petersburg: Obshchestvo dlya nauchnikh evreiskikh izdani, [1906–1913].

This passage from Dubnow’s favorite poet Victor Hugo echoes Dubnow’s “historism” and reminds us that the audience he directly addressed no longer resides in ha-Olam ha-Zeh (This World). Passons; car c’est la loi; nul ne peut s’y soustraire; Tout penche; et ce grand siècle avec tous ses rayons Entre en cette ombre immense où pâles nous fuyons. . . .  We move on; it is the Law from which none can escape. All things decline; that glorious age in all its radiance, is falling into the immense shadow where we, pale souls, are fleeing. Victor Hugo, “A Théophile Gautier” Paraphrase with thanks to Barbara Welter and Joyce Kaplan

Part One

Breaking with the Past, 1860–1886

Chapter One

Leaving the Shtetl Russian Jewry and the Reign of Alexander II In the 1860s and 1870s it appeared to some Jews that Russian Jewry was finally on the course that had been achieved by Jewish communities to the west, especially after the legal emancipation of German Jews in 1871. As a result, growing up during those decades was for many RussianJewish youth a different experience than it had been for their parents and grandparents. With hindsight, however, we can see that Russian Jewry had features which precluded simply following the Western pattern of integration—primarily the nature of Russia itself. Russian Jewry was much larger than German Jewry, hitherto the biggest diaspora community to be emancipated. The nineteenth century had witnessed an extraordinary growth in the Russian-Jewish population. At the beginning of the century there were perhaps 800,000; fifty years later, there were 2,350,000, and by 1897 about 5,175,000—an increase of over 600% in a hundred years.1 In the early twentieth century, there were about 100,000 Jews in France (0.22% of the population), 600,000 Jews living in Germany (about 1% of the national population),2 but more than five million Russian Jews3 comprised 4.13% of the total population of the Russian Empire. The vast majority of Russian Jews lived in twenty-five provinces known informally as the “Pale of Settlement” as defined in a series of legal 1  B.Z. Dinur, “The Historical Image of Russian Jewry and Problems Connected with its Study” [in Hebrew], Zion, XXII (1957), 94–95. Furthermore, 530,000 Russian Jews left for the United States by 1900 (Elias Tcherikower, The Early Jewish Labor Movement in the United States [New York: YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, 1961], p. 352). The United States received “well over 70 percent” of Jewish ex­patriates (Salo Baron, The Russian Jew under Tsars and Soviets [New York: Macmillan Co., 1964], p. 88). Were this vast emigration taken into account, the increase of Russian Jews might exceed 700 percent. 2 Estimates of the Jewish population of each country at the beginning of the twentieth century are summarized in Arthur Ruppin, The Jews of Today (New York: Henry Holt, 1913), pp. 36–44. 3 Raspredelenie naseleniia imperii po glavnym veroispovedaniiam [Classification of the Population of the Empire by Principal Religions]. The Central Statistical Committee of the Ministry of Internal Affairs from the Census of 1897, [St. Petersburg], 1901.

4

chapter one

r­ estrictions on Jewish habitation imposed after these areas had been annexed from Poland.4 In the Pale they formed 11.6% of the total population. Legal barriers confined them primarily to urban areas. One and a half million Jews lived in 700 cities and towns; 800,000 lived in twelve main cities, accounting for over a third of the population in each.5 The extent of Russian-Jewish urbanization is strikingly apparent when compared to that of the general Russian population. In 1915, 97% of all Russian Jews lived in cities and towns but only about 15% of all Russians.6 This geographical concentration went hand-in-hand with social isolation. Throughout much of the nineteenth century the Jewish masses acted as middlemen between the peasants and nobles or served the Jewish community and worked, for the most part, as tailors, cob­blers, ­jewelers, wagoners, merchants, and taverners.7 Beginning in the 1860s, this pattern began to change with the appearance of more Jewish capitalists (often on a very small level), more industrial workers (only in certain fields), and increasingly widespread poverty. Nevertheless, concentration in some areas of the economy continued to reinforce the social cohesion of ­Russian Jewry. For much of the nineteenth century Russian Jewry’s traditional institutions retained their vitality. Although the kahal (the organized local Jewish community) had been officially abolished in 1844 by the government, religious and charitable societies absorbed their functions on a more

4 The term “Pale of Settlement” is used for the areas where Jews could legally reside, that is, areas which remained free from restric­tions and limitations on Jewish residence. The basis of the Pale was formalized in 1791 when Catherine prohibited Russian Jews from joining merchant or artisan guilds outside the areas taken over by the Russian Empire since 1772. This included the former part of the Polish state until the partitions, and the southwest provinces known as “New Russia.” The elaborate, fluctuating prohibitions on Jewish residence within and without the fifteen provinces of the Pale are summarized in JE, IX, 468–70; EE, VII, 590–99; Yu. I. Gessen, Evrei v rossii [The Jews in Russia] St. Petersburg: [A.G. Rozen], 1906), pp. 353–58; Alexis Goldenweiser, “Legal Status of the Jews in Russia,” Russian Jewry (1860–1917), ed. Jacob Frumkin, Gregor Aronson, and Alexis Goldenweiser (New York: Thomas Yoseloff, 1966), pp. 85–119. 5 Dinur, loc. cit., pp. 95–97. 6 There were about 100,000 Jews in agriculture by 1900, 2.33 percent of the Jewish population (Baron, op. cit., p. 96, p. 117). Tcherikower, op. cit., gives estimates based on numbers of Jews gainfully employed. The urban population of Russia was three times as large in 1914 as in 1863, so that its share of the total population increased from under 10 percent in 1863 to about 15 percent in 1914 (W.H. Parker, An Historical Geography of Russia [Chicago: Aldine Publishing Co., 1968, pp. 314–15). 7 Baron, op. cit., pp. 90–118; Tcherikower, op. cit., pp. 4–5.



leaving the shtetl

5

informal basis.8 The so-called dukhovnyi (spiritual) rabbinate retained its authority and prestige in spite of a government-instituted system of kazyennyi (state-recognized) rabbis in 1835. Traditional Jewish schools continued to pro­vide elementary education for the vast majority of Jews, and rabbinical academies of varying size and eminence still attracted students. Hasidism, the eighteenth-century mystical movement, retained its appeal and may even have expanded. The market for Hebrew and Yiddish books flourished.9 The Jewish community on the whole remained culturally distinct from its immediate neighbors, who were Poles, Ukrainians, Belarusians, Latvians, Lithuanians but not Russians. At the end of the nineteenth century 98% of the Jews of the Pale declared that Yiddish was their principal spoken language.10 During the reign of Nicholas I (1825–1855) the Russian government had sporadically taken steps designed to break down Jewish “isolation” (such as the abolition of the kahal just mentioned). These measures had the ­opposite result. Bonuses failed to attract large numbers of Jews to Christianity. The imposition of an army quota on the Jewish community in 1827 and the dragooning of large numbers of Jewish children into military cantonist schools generated tremendous hostility among Jews towards the government.11 The special Jewish kazennyi (state) schools founded by Minister of Education Sergey Uvarov in 1844 were viewed by the traditional Jewish leadership as an attempt by government to convert Jewish children to Orthodox Christianity.12 The most effective step the government could have taken to stimulate faster integration would have been

  8 Isaac Levitats, The Jewish Community in Russia, 1772–1844 (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1943), p. 269; Dinur, loc. cit., pp. 102–103.   9 Dinur, loc. cit., pp. 107–110, notes that we have the titles of over six thousand Hebrew books (not including prayer books and other works for purely religious purposes) printed within the borders of Russia during the nineteenth century. 10 Yehudah Sloutsky, “The Rise of the Russian-Jewish Intelligentsia,” Zion, XXV (1960), 212; Jacob Lestschinsky, “Dubnow’s Autonomism and His Letters on Old and New Judaism,” Dubnow: Man and Work, p. 86. Lestschinsky notes that in 1897 91 percent of the Jews of Kiev declared that Yiddish was their mother tongue, and 90 percent of the Jews of Odessa did like­wise (ibid.). 11  Elias Tcherikower, Yehudim be’itot mahpekhah [ Jews during Periods of Revolution], trans. from the Yiddish by Hanokh Kal’i (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 1957), pp. 109–16. 12 Max Lilienthal, Uvarov’s appointee to set up the new school system, was warned by Jewish elders of this aspect of the government’s enlightened intentions (Max Lilienthal, “My Travels in Russia,” Max Lilienthal, Am­erican Rabbi; Life and Writings, ed. David Philipson [New York: Bloch Publishing Co., 1915], pp. 159–366; Saul Ginsberg, “Max Lilienthal’s Activities in Russia: New Documents,” Publications of the American Jewish Historical Society, XXXV [1939], 45).

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the abolition of the Pale of Settlement, but that was not considered and was indeed inconceivable given imperial policies.13 The autocracy was hardly disposed to endow all its subjects with civil rights or to minimize the role of Russian Orthodoxy in the official ideology. Even when serfdom was abolished in 1862, the tsarist government never entertained the notion of Jewish emancipation, which was widely discussed in the West and on its way to happening there.14 Nevertheless, by the 1860s the regime of the new tsar, Alexander II, embarked on measures in the direction of limited reforms, which brought sweeping changes in the economy, the military, the judicial system, local government, and so forth. The Crimean War (1854–1855) revealed the pressing need for Russian modernization, and in the first part of Alexander’s reign the government instituted a series of measures to that end: emancipation of the serfs (1861), establishment of zemstvos (county boards), a comprehensive judiciary system for all Russian subjects (1864), changes in municipal government (1870), and so forth. Several concessions were made to the Jewish community. Having abolished the brutal recruitment of Jewish children for the cantonist schools (followed by 25 years of army service) in 1857, the government now re­laxed its restrictions on habitation to a very limited extent. Certain “useful” classes of Jews were permitted to reside outside the Pale—merchants of the first guild who paid taxes of more than 1,000 rubles annually, graduates of institutes of higher learning, and artisans.15 The latter group was limited 13 The secularization and Russification of the Jews in Odessa seems to indicate what the abolition of the Pale could have accomplished. See below, Chapter 6, pp. 176–77. As a consequence of the Pale restrictions, four-fifths of Russian Jews remained in non-Russian ethnic areas of the empire. Russification for them entailed assimilation to the language and culture of the state and not the locality. Because the local ethnic groups on the whole did not offer Jews a direct path to European civili­zation, few Jews embraced Lithuanian, Belarusian, Latvian, or Ukrainian languages and culture. Even in the Polish provinces the number of Polish-speaking Jews in the nineteenth century was small in comparison to the Jewish population as a whole (Sloutsky, loc. cit., p. 213). 14 Five of the provincial committees set up in September and October 1881 to discuss the Jewish question advocated abolishing the Pale. This opinion was, of course, ignored (S.M. Dubnow, History of the Jews in Russia and Poland [Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1918], II, 275). 15 In 1857–58 Jews were again allowed to live in the frontier zones of the western provinces. Exemption to merchants of the first guild was granted in 1859. In 1861 Jewish graduates of higher institutes of learn­ing were made eligible for government service throughout Russia. The government abolished the Pale for artisans and their families in 1865 (Louis Greenberg, The Jews in Russia [New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1944], I, 75–76). The judicial reform of 1864 created the Russian bar to which Jews were particularly attracted (Samuel Kucherov, “Jews in the Russian Bar,” Russian Jews, ed. Frumkin et al., pp. 219–52). These



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to skilled craftsmen with property and the effect of its liberation was minimal. The concession to prosperous merchants had a bigger effect, as they were usually accompanied by their families, servants, and assistants. The exemption granted to graduates has been called, albeit with exaggeration, “the emancipation manifesto of the Russian-Jewish intelligentsia.”16 It was extended later to include men employed in medical, pharmaceuti­cal, and public health professions and led to a substantial increase in Jews trained for these fields. There had been growth in Jewish attendance at state schools during the sixties. A spur to secular education for Russian-Jewish youth was the new military recruitment law of 1874, which made universal military service obligatory but granted deferments to students and reduced time of service to graduates. Jews learned Russian while serving in the army.17 Even pious Jewish parents were persuaded of the advantages of secular education for their children. It was also then that more articulate members of the Jewish community began to look on Russification as a means to greater integration.18 These factors converged to cause an increase in the tempo of Jewish acculturation, so that by the end of the nineteenth century there was a sizeable Russian-speaking Jewish population.19 Alexander II’s reign saw changes in the Russian economy and hence in the economic profile which had previously characterized Russian Jewry. In the early nine­teenth century there had been a few wealthy Russian­Jewish international merchants and leasers of the state liquor monopoly,20 but industrializa­tion made possible the rise of Jewish capitalists. Jews reforms were piecemeal and restrictions were often imposed later: “two steps forward, one step back.” 16  Sloutsky, loc. cit., pp. 224–25. 17  Ibid., pp. 225–27. 18  Yehezkel Kaufmann, Gola ve-nekhar [In Exile and Alien Lands: an Historical-­Sociological Study on the Fate of the Jewish People from Ancient Times to the Present] (2 vols.; 2nd ed.; Tel Aviv: Dvir, 1950, II, 87–90. Exemplars of this new trend will be discussed below in chapters 2 and 3. Previously the most advanced segments of Russian Jewry had been oriented toward German culture and language (Sloutsky, loc. cit., pp. 215–16). In 1863 the Society for the Promotion of Enlightenment among Jews was founded in St. Petersburg to promote knowledge of the Russian lan­guage among Jews, to subsidize poor Jewish students in the general schools, and to publish books on useful knowledge (EE, XIII, 59–62). 19  Sloutsky, loc. cit., pp. 236–37, estimates that one-fourth of the Jewish population knew some Russian at the end of the century. In 1897 67,000 Jews declared that Russian was the language of their home. 20 The state liquor monopoly was introduced in 1827. The aktsizniks or liquor farmers became railroad men, supply merchants, and contractors after 1861 when the leasing of the right to sell liquor was abolished (S.M. Dubnow, History of the Jews of Russia and Poland, II, 186).

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became active in railway building, sugar refining, banking, agricul­tural export, and the lumber trade. The fortunes founded by the Polyakovs, Brodskys, Günzbergs, and others during the sixties and seventies seemed to indicate that possibilities had opened for personal initiative and social mobility. Yet these same measures of economic liberalization and reform, while they created a Jewish bourgeoisie, pauperized the Jewish masses. The growth of railways undermined the position of those Jews engaged in small-scale transport. Emancipation of the serfs and the unsuccessful Polish revolt of 1863 led to a decline in the Jewish position as middlemen in the north-west provinces especially. The first phases of industrialization created more competition from non-Jews in small trading and handicrafts.21 Driven by poverty and stimulated by hopeful expectations, increasing numbers of young Jews sought to break away from the traditional Jewish way of life in the Pale. The need to escape was felt more and more strongly by the young. Simon Dubnow, born on September 10, 1860, was one of the first of that generation that grew up without any direct ex­perience of the repressive Nicholaevan period and infected with the optimistic belief that it had a place in the future of Russian life.22 Dubnow’s “First World” In his autobiographical story Safiah (Aftergrowth), the poet Hayyim Nahman Bialik uses the term “first world” to describe “that primal, archetypal universe which I brought out of the village with me, and which still lies hidden in some special nook of my heart’s secret place.”23 The memory of this world was a fundamental factor in the psy­chology of many of Dubnow’s generation who moved from the traditional milieu of East European Jewry to what was then modern secularity. As an adolescent, Dubnow rebelled against this “first world”; later in life its indelible 21  Baron, op. cit., pp. 105–118; Tcherikower, Early Jewish Labor Move­ment in the United States, pp. 12–17; Israel Tsinberg, Istoria evreiskoi pechati v Rossii [History of the Jewish Press in Russia in Connection with Social Move­ments] (Petrograd, 1915), p. 153; I.M. Dijur, “Jews in the Russian Eco­nomy,” Russian Jewry, ed. Frumkin et al., pp. 120–43. 22 The Jews regarded Alexander the Second as a king who reigned in justice” (Shmarya Levin, Childhood in Exile [New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1929], p. 247. Also, Mark Aldanov, “Russian Jews of the 1870s and 1880s,” Russian Jewry, ed. Frumkin et al., pp. 11–12. 23 Hayyim Nahman Bialik, Kol kitvei H.N. Bialik [The Complete Works of Hayyim Nahman Bialik] (Tel Aviv: Dvir, 5698 [1937/38]), p. 161.



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impression re-surfaced as the nostalgic theme of his private recherche du temps perdu and profoundly influenced his conception of Jewish history and nationality. Dubnow’s “first world” was the town of Mstislavl in the province of ­Mogilev, where historical and geographical conditions had preserved many old social and cultural patterns. Before 1917 that area (now Belarus) was part of what was sometimes referred to as the “north-west region,” and had been a borderland between Muscovy and Poland. Most of it had been under Polish control until the first partition of Poland in 1772. Remote from the main centers of Polish life, some town growth occurred in the sixteenth century when the Jewish communities were founded. The expansion of the szlachta’s power (the Polish nobility) in the seventeenth century had diminished the independence and importance of the city population, so that Belarusian so­ciety remained predominantly rural. By Dubnow’s time most of the Polish nobility had either emigrated or been Russified. They were, like all Poles, Roman Catholic; the bulk of the population in that area—perhaps four-fifths—were Greek Orthodox peasants.24 Belorussia first was a geographical rather than an ethnic concept. In the late eighteenth century, it had been used by the Russian government to designate several provinces “torn away from Russia and returned.”25 Only toward the end of the nineteenth century was it applied to a group of twenty peasant dialects which were distinguished from Russian, Polish, and Ukrainian by a combination of phonetic characteristics which singly could be found in other Slavic vernaculars.26 Indeed, it was not until 1918 that the first Belorussian grammar was published. The Belarusians were one of the last ethnic groups in East Europe to develop an intelligentsia and a nationalist movement.27 Much of Belorussia was marsh or heavy forest. Their agriculture remained traditional; industry conducted on a very small scale.28 In this more backward and isolated area, the social structure

24 Nicholas P. Vakar, Belorussia, the Making of a Nation (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1956), pp. 25–27, 33. 25 Ibid., p. 3. 26 Ibid., pp. 6–7. 27 Ibid., pp. 28, 78, 91. 28 On the eve of the Russian revolution, 87 percent of the Belarusians could be considered peasants (ibid., p. 17; Parker, op. cit., p. 237; Peter I. Lyashchenko, History of the National Economy of Russia [New York: Macmillan, 1949], pp. 341–42; Jean Gottmann, A Geography of Europe [New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1962]; 3rd ed., pp. 692–96; N.N. Baransky, Economic Geography of the U.S.S.R. [Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1956], pp. 310–18).

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of the Jewish communities remained typical of the old East European pattern throughout the century. In 1897, the Jewish population was 203,947 or 12% of the total population of Mogilev province. Jews comprised 3.4% of the rural population, 52.6% of the city dwellers, and 57.2% of the small town inhabitants. Merchants made up 2.77% of the Jewish population, yet constituted nine-tenths of all the merchants in the province. While 15% of the Jewish population were craftsmen, they constituted 80% of the provincial artisans.29 Marriage statistics corroborate the endurance of what was referred to as “the patriarchal Jewish structure” until the very end of the nineteenth century: at this date there still seems to have been a high percentage of early Jewish marriages.30 Almost 17% of the Jewish families in Mogilev province (18.8% of Jews in the Pale) needed substantial help from charitable organizations at the beginning of the twentieth century.31 The slow cultural and economic development of Jewish Belorussia caused substantial numbers of Jews to migrate from Lithuania and White Russia to the more prosperous areas in the south and southwest.32 And increasingly to emigrate—to Western Europe if possible, to Argentina, South Africa, Palestine, but mainly to the United States. Dubnow’s birthplace, Mstislavl, was a market center for peasants and the administrative center of the surrounding district. A rather sleepy town off the main road, in 1897 it contained 5,876 Jews out of a total population of 8,154.33 Located 88 kilometers west of the city of Mogilev and about the same distance southeast from Smolensk, in Dubnow’s youth it took a day’s ride in a horse-drawn wagon to reach the nearest railway station. Dubnow nostalgically described Mstislavl as the most beautiful town in Mogilev province, nestled peacefully among birch and pine forests and fields of rye. The Vichra River alongside the town was bridged only by a wooden raft and there was a village green surrounded by the homes of the well-to-

29 The total population of the province in 1897 was 1,688,573 (Raspredelenie naseleniia, p. 14; EE, XI, 149–50). 30 EE, XI, 150–151. 31  EE, XI, 152; JE, X, 539. 32 Dinur, loc. cit., p. 96. Belarus had the highest concentration of Jewish residents anywhere in Russia. Sixty percent of the Jews lived in White Russian settlements where in each they were a majority of the population (ibid., p. 97). Jews predominated in all branches of in­dustry which were primarily based on forestry and agriculture. For ex­ample, more than half the saw mills were owned by Jews (EE, XI, 152; Gottmann, op. cit., p. 692). 33 EE, XI, 357.



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do Jewish merchants and Russian officials. Most of the Jewish population lived in the area called the “Shulef ” (Shulhof ) which surrounded the large main synagogue and a cluster of small prayer houses. There were several adjacent settlements inhabited by peasants with vege­table gardens and one, the Vorshtadt, by lower-class Jews who ran taverns and inns and loaned money to the peasants in exchange for a share of their crops. In the center of town were a Russian Orthodox cathedral and a seminary for priests; on the highest hill stood an old Roman Catholic church. However, there seems to have been no traces of Polish culture left in Mstislavl.34 By the time Simon Dubnow was born, Jews had lived in the town for over two and a half centuries.35 Simon was the sixth generation of Dubnows in Mstislavl; his family had been prominent in the town for a century before his birth.36 His grandfather, Benzion (1805–1892) was a pillar of Mstislavl’s Jewish community. A merchant, he had retired from business affairs around the age of forty and dedicated his life to study.37 Every weekday morning Benzion Dubnow lectured on talmudic sub­jects in the main synagogue and, as his reputation spread, he attracted students from

34 KZ, I, 21–22; Hayyira Lipshitz, “Amtshislav,” He-Avar, VIII (May, 1961), 81–97. 35 The most historic incident associated with Mstislavl and still a part of the living memory of the adults during Dubnow’s youth was the Jewish “revolt” of 1843–44. A market scuffle over contraband goods was reported by the local authorities as a provocative demonstration of re­sistance to authority. Only an appeal by a noted Jewish shtadlan (in­tercessor), Isaac Zelkin, to Count Benckendorff of the Third Section of the Czar’s staff, followed by a report favorable to the Jews by Count Trubetskoi, prevented the local administration from sending a large por­tion of the Jewish males of Mstislavl to the army. This event was cele­brated yearly with a fast day and a festival when a scroll narrating the events was read in the synagogue. Dubnow described this “revolt” in his article #145 and in HeAvar, I (St. Petersburg, 1918). Also see EE, XI, 358–59; Tcherikower, “The Jewish masses, the maskilim and the state during the reign of Nicholas I,” Yehudim be’itot mahpekhah, pp. 113–14. 36 As the family name indicates, the Dubnows traced their origins to the Volhynian city of Dubno where the most illustrious early member of the family, the ascetic kabbalist Joseph Yoske had settled in the last decade of the seventeenth century. He was the author of a moralistic work, Yesod Yosef, which formed the basis of the well-known book Kav ha-yashar (KZ, I, 1–7; Joseph Meisel, “The Life of Simon Dubnow,” Sefer Dubnow, p. 24; S.A. Horodetsky, “The Genealogy of Simon Dubnow,” YIVO Annual of Jewish Social Science, VI [1951], 9–18). Dubnow remarked on the alternation of generations in his family be­tween business affairs and scholarship. The first Dubnow in Mstislavl, Benzion Chatzkelevich, is mentioned in the record book of the community in 1761; he was well-to-do and illegally owned land with serfs, which he was forced to sell during the reign of Alexander I. By 1815, at the latest, he was deceased. The new head of the family, Zeev Wolf, living solely on the payments for this land, devoted himself to lecturing on the Talmud and rabbinic literature. Vigdor, the head of the third generation, was a merchant with business connections in Moscow and died around 1840. His son was Dubnow’s grandfather (KZ, I, 8). 37 Ibid., pp. 10–11.

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all parts of White Russia.38 His income had been the rent he received for offices and storehouses in his large stone building in the center of town, but when this property was badly damaged by fire in 1858 and 1863, he was forced to accept small, secret subventions from the community. Simon Dubnow’s grandfather epitomized the “Litvak” (Lithuanian) Judaism of the area, known for its talmudic intellectualism and its op­position to Hasidic mysticism. (Mstislavl contained one small kloyz [place of study] of the Habad branch of Hasidism.)39 Benzion Dubnow despised the rich Hasidic rabbis, took no interest in mysticism, and instead empha­sized the plain meaning of the text and commentaries in his talmudic teaching.40 He deliberately avoided the elaborate dialectics known as pilpul, for which East European rabbinic academies had been famous since the sixteenth century.41 Dubnow described his grandfather as a man of great piety and never doubted the sincerity and depth of his religiosity. When chanting the Yom Kippur afternoon Avodah service, Benzion was “the image of the High Priest” in the ancient Jerusalem Temple.42 A man of great tact and dignity, he was the figure of authority in the family. In spite of the social prestige they enjoyed through his grandfather’s reputation, the Dubnows were on the lower edge of the middle class. ­Genteel near-poverty was one of Dubnow’s key childhood memories.43 After the destruction of their stone building they moved from one rented house to another, but with great pride they hid, as much as possible, their usual state of financial need. Dubnow’s father Meir Jacob (1833–1887)44 was in the lumber business of his rich but stingy father-in-law and lived at home only during the autumn. In the late fall he hired men to cut down trees in the White Russian forest, and then supervised dragging the logs to the river

38 Ibid., p. 49. 39 Lipshitz, loc. cit., pp. 81–84; KZ, I, 13. 40 Ibid., p. 10. 41  Benzion’s ideal seems to have been the famous Rabbi Elijah ben Solomon Zalman, the “Vilna Gaon” (1720–97). On the importance of the Vilna Gaon’s method of talmudic interpretation and its relationship to his personality, see Louis Ginzberg, Students, Scholars and Saints (Phila­delphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1928), pp. 125–44; Hayyim Hillel Ben-Sasson, “The Personality of Elijah, Gaon of Vilna and His Historical Influence,” Zion, XXXI (1966), 197–216. On his concern for effective pedagogy, see Israel Tsinberg, Toledot sifrut Yisrael [History of Jewish Literature], trans. Shlomo Zalman Ariel, David Kena’ani, and Baruch Kero (6 vols.; Merhavyah: Sifriat ha-po’alim, 1959–60), III, 293. 42 KZ, I, 13–14. 43 Ibid., pp. 46–47. 44 Ibid., p. 15.



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where they were made into temporary rafts, floated down to the Dnieper, ­navigated through the hazardous rapids and guided to their final destination at Ekaterinoslav or Kherson. During the summer months Meir Jacob sold the lumber to wholesalers and merchants.45 When his father-in-law ­liquidated this enterprise, he retired to Mstislavl and, with his bonus, built a small house. Unfortunately, the damp, cold, primitive surroundings in which he had worked for most of his life left him with a persistent cough which developed into bronchitis, and he died at the age of fifty-four.46 At home, the family spoke Yiddish and observed religious law. Dubnow remembered his mother, Sheyne, as a “typical Jewish woman of the old style” who worried constantly about the family’s debts for rent, clothes, food, and teachers, and supplemented her husband’s income with earnings from a small china shop which did almost all its business just before the spring Passover season.47 She had five sons and five daughters. One son died in childhood.48 Simon’s oldest brother, Isaac, became a talmudic scholar; after marrying he tried business without success and died at an early age in Moscow.49 His sister Risa, full of lively and romantic inclinations, had an unhappy love affair which resulted in a still-born illegitimate child, and a later marriage ended in divorce.50 Wolf, a year and a half older than Simon, was his constant companion in their youth.51 Isaac and Risa had been unable to break away from the traditional milieu and establish successful new lives. Simon, with Wolf ’s help, did. The image of the “first world” created in autobiographies and novels about East European Judaism is replete with the atmosphere of the old Jewish education. Elementary schooling was virtually universal: education of sons was a sacred duty and almost all Jewish boys achieved at least mini­mum literacy in Hebrew and Yiddish. The most common form of elementary schooling was the private heder (literally, room) run by a melamed (teach­er) who earned a small income instructing a handful of 45 Ibid., pp. 15–17. On the role of Jews in the lumber business, see Dinur, loc. cit., p. 100; and Frumkin, et al., Russian Jewry, p. 131. 46 KZ, I, 17, 213. 47 Ibid., p. 17. She died in 1901 (ibid., p. 381). 48 Ibid., p. 18. 49 Ibid., p. 19. 50 Ibid., pp. 19, 84. 51  There was a younger brother not mentioned in Dubnow’s autobiography who was born in 1886 and settled in Palestine in 1912 (Lipshitz, loc. cit., p. 105).

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students in his home. The student was enrolled in heder for six months at a time and the melamed used the short spring and fall vacations during the Passover and Sukkot festivals to visit families and enlist new students. Wealthier families often hired a private melamed and the community provided a Talmud Torah for the orphans and very poor. The second step in the educational ladder was the yeshiva (rabbinic academy). Boys often left home and traveled great distances if there were no such institution in their place of birth; attracted by the fame of certain teachers, they usually moved freely from academy to academy. In each locality the community provided meals for those students without means. This voluntary network of schools made available to the poorest boy, with a modicum of ambition and talent, a rigorous intellectual training. These institutions played a crucial role in the survival of traditional Jewish life.52 The heder’s course of study was confined to the sacred literature and commentaries. In the medieval world, children everywhere were treated like miniature adults,53 and until the last part of the nineteenth century East European Jewish education employed very simple pedagogical methods. (Students learned by rote drill, supplemented by the “rod of chastisement.”) The melamed was frequently poor and not too well edu­cated. Study started early in the morning and lasted until nine or ten at night. The child began with the passages from the Torah (the Pentateuch) and some other sections of the Bible, moving as soon as possible to the legal portions of the Talmud. The heder was intended to prepare the child to attend the yeshiva, sometimes at the age of eleven or twelve. Jewish education, if successful, equipped the child to think like a traditional scholar. A Hebrew novelist of the late 1870s commented on the effects of intense talmudic study on the “tender and sensitive mind” of his hero: “On the one hand it gave his power of comprehension free reign and on the other it bound it inextricably in fetters.”54 The ingenious subtleties of con­tradiction 52 David Patterson, The Hebrew Novel in Czarist Russia (Edinburgh: Edinburgh Univ. Press, 1954), p. 173. On the role of the heder in the “incubation of a Weltanschauung,” see Ginzberg, op. cit., pp. 1–34; Abraham Golomb, “Traditional Education,” Jewish People Past and Present (New York: Jewish Encyclopedic Handbooks, 1948),” II, 102–18; Abraham Menes, “The Yeshivot in Eastern Europe,” Jewish People Past and Present (New York: Jewish Encyclopedic Handbooks, 1968), II, 108–18; Abraham Menes, “Patterns of Jewish Scholarship in Eastern Europe,” The Jews: Their History, Culture and Religion, ed. Louis Finkelstein (3rd ed.; New York: Harper and Row, 1960), I, 376–426. 53 Philippe Aries, Centuries of Childhood; a Social History of Family Life, trans. Robert Baldick (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1962), pp. 137–336. 54 R.A. Braudes, Ha-dat ve-ha-hayyim [Religion and Life] (Lemberg, 1885), Part I, p. 25; quoted in Patterson, op. cit., p. 172.



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and reconciliation in talmudic discussion sharpened the student’s mind but focused it in a definite and narrow direction. This system of education was successful for a very long time in socializing the Jewish child to feel part of the Jewish people (am Yisra’el) in the traditional sense. The average Jewish student, through his familiarity with the Bible and prayer book, internalized the central myths of Judaism and acquired explanations for the paradoxical situation of the Jewish people. The idea that the Jews were chosen by God to follow His Torah and perpetually await the messiah to redeem them and reassemble them in the Holy Land seemed to explain their isolation and oppression. Simon’s schooling up to the age of thirteen followed the traditional form and curriculum.55 His family sent him to a series of four tiny hadarim. The first melamed taught the six-year-olds the Hebrew alphabet and the Pentateuchal stories.56 The second drilled his charges in the talmudic tractate Betzah, which deals primarily with the kinds of work prohibited on the festivals.57 The third instructed nine-year-olds in the prophetic books, supplemented by a traditional commentary, and ela­borated for their edification moral lessons about lying, laziness, and disobedience.58 The fourth concentrated his efforts on the legal respon­sibilities for damages as discussed in the talmudic tractate Bava Kamma.59 Simon’s family expected him to attend his grandfather’s classes after he became bar mitzvah. He attended lectures irregularly, as the subject of study, the talmudic tractate on divorce (Gittin), bored him. Instead, he desultorily skimmed various talmudic folios, reading mainly the legends and moral teachings and searching for the sections concerned with sexual matters.60 Dubnow later claimed that as a child he had disliked the heder; along with many other critics of traditional Jewish education he deplored the crude methods and limited content. In his writings he frequently mentions the long discussion in Betzah of “the egg laid on the festival” as an example of the futile dialectical sport of the sages which left him with “a life-long antipathy to any kind of casuistry.”61 While still thirteen he broke into open rebellion; he and Wolf declared that they wanted a secular 55 When Dubnow was ten, his grandfather influenced the local educators to exempt him from attendance at the government school (KZ, I, 278). 56 Ibid., pp. 23–24. 57 Ibid., pp. 25–26. 58 Ibid., pp. 31–33. 59 Ibid., p. 40. 60 Ibid., pp. 49–50. 61  Ibid., pp. 27–28.

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­education and began the study of Russian and arithmetic. The failure of the hadarim to mold the two boys into the traditional behavioral pattern can to some extent be attributed to the more influential informal education that they were receiving through the literature of the Haskalah. The Vilna Haskalah and the Beginning of Simon’s Rebellion The Haskalah (the Jewish Enlightenment) spans the century of Hebrew literature beginning in the 1770s and ending in the early 1880s.62 Through its advocates, the maskilim (enlighteners), various currents of modern European thought were conveyed to readers of Hebrew interested in new ideas beginning with the eighteenth-century Enlightenment. The maskilim formed a literary movement in the broadest sense, similar to Peter Gay’s description of the philosophes as a “loose, informal, wholly unorganized coalition of cultural critics.”63 Throughout the century, different literary forms gained currency at various times, but almost all Haskalah literature con­tained didactic and reformist themes. The social support of the Haskalah was to a great extent the new Jewish bourgeoisie, which emerged with the spread of capitalistic economic forms in central and east Europe. The movement developed in those trading centers that connected east with west and flourished where society was on the verge of major changes such as the emancipation of serfs and the aboli­tion of medieval-like class distinctions and privileges. Thus, the Haskalah appeared where the Jews had begun to be affected by economic modernization, but had not been fully emancipated or linguistically assimilated. The maskilim were almost all literary amateurs; they depended for their livelihood on teaching, Jewish communal posts, private patronage or were themselves well-to-do. They were conscious of the world beyond Judaism to a degree that few Jewish writers had been before. They called upon Jewry to lower its traditional

62 Shaanan agrees with Klausner that the Hebrew writers of seventeenth- and e­ ighteenth-century Italy and Holland (such as the poet Moses Hayyim Luzzatto) should be considered as forming a separate, pre-Haskalah period of modern Hebrew literature because of the kabbalistic motifs in their work (Avraham Shaanan, Ha-sifrut ha-ivrit hahadashah le-zerameha [Modern Hebrew Literature According to Its Movements] [4 vols.; Tel Aviv: Masada, 1962–67], pp. 22–32; Joseph Klausner, Historiah shel ha-sifrut ha-ivrit ha-hadashah [History of Modern Hebrew Literature] [2nd ed.; Jerusalem: Ahiasaf, 1955–63], I, 12; P. Lachover, Toledot ha-sifrut ha-ivrit ha-hadashah [History of Modern Hebrew Literature] [4 vols.; Tel Aviv: Dvir, 1946–493], I, 1–4). 63 Peter Gay, The Enlightenment: An Interpretation, Vol. I: The Rise of Modern Paganism (New York: [Alfred A. Knopf and Random House, 1968]), p. 3.



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barriers and energetically transform itself: to learn modern languages and purify its own literary language; to study secular sciences and rediscover the significance of those periods in its past when philosophy and science had flourished; to change the Jewish appearance, education, and economic profile in order to disabuse the non-Jewish world of its anti-Jewish caricatures.64 Above all, the maskilim attempted to create a new relationship be­tween “religion and life.” Although they were not always religious skeptics, their belief in reason and common sense inevitably led them to reject as irrational and out-of-date some sanctified dogmas. This was an implicit challenge to both the authority of Torah to structure the ideal Jewish life and the ultimate spiritual authority of the traditional Jewish scholars to inter­pret its application. The rabbinical class, by virtue of its knowledge, training, and ordination, considered itself to be God’s earthly jurist, and traced this responsibility back through successive generations of scholars to the revelation at Mount Sinai. The hostility of the traditional rabbis to the Haskalah indicates the danger they felt it posed. Among the Haskalah’s principal targets in Eastern Europe were the tzaddikim (Hasidic rebbis), believed by their followers to be intermediaries between heaven and earth. The enlighteners were, obviously, an elite rather than a mass movement, and saw themselves fighting the Kulturkampf of modernity against medievalism.65

64 On the social base of the Haskalah in Galicia, see Raphael Mahler, Ha-hasidut veha-haskalah [Hasidism and Haskalah in Galicia and the Con­gress Kingdom of Poland in the First Half of the Nineteenth Century] (Merhavyah: Sifriat po’alim, 1961), pp. 47–77. Isaac Levitats, op. cit., p. 82, criticizes Mahler and notes that the maskilim cut across class lines. Regardless of the motives and background of the individuals, the spread of the new ideas was closely related to economic changes. The Haskalah entered southern Russia through the influence of the Austrian trading center of Brody (Tsinberg, Toledot, VI, 161), just as Shklov was a center for Jewish merchants trading between Germany and Russia, and hence became a point for the diffusion of new ideas (ibid., V, 140 and Mahler, Divrei yemei Yisrael, dorot aharonim [History of the Jewish People in Modern Times, 1780–1815] [4 vols.; Merhavyah: Sifriat po’alim, 1952–56], IV, 53–68). Jacob Katz argues that the formation of an enlightened “spiritual elite” in eighteenth-century Prussia created a new sort of social iden­tification between the enlightened Jews and their non-Jewish counterparts, while making a clear distinction in the minds of the maskilim between themselves and the Jewish masses (Tradition and Crisis: Jewish Society at the End of the Middle Ages [New York: The Free Press of Glencoe, 1961], p. 253). Therefore, the Jewish attachment to a few social occupations seemed to the maskilim an anomaly (ibid., p. 261). 65 Katz, op. cit., p. 246, suggests that the maskil claimed not only the right of existence as a new social type but the privilege of leader­ship. On their orientation to European culture, see Isaac Eisenstein-Barzilay, “The Background of the Berlin Haskalah,” Essays on Jewish Life and Thought Presented in Honor of Salo Baron, ed. Joseph L. Blau et al. (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1959), pp. 195–96.

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The first phase of the Haskalah is usually referred to as the Berlin or Mendelssohnian school. Moses Mendelssohn, whose major works were written in German, was the model for the maskilim of the 1780s and 1790s whose literary organ was the journal Ha-Me’assef (The Gatherer). Ha-Me’assef consciously rejected the rabbinical and mystical literary style and ad­vocated a return to biblical Hebrew as a pure classical language. It was responsible for inaugurating the flowery poetical diction which came to be called melitzah and which symbolized “good taste” and a more aesthetic approach to life.66 The ideas of the Berlin Haskalah stem largely from the German Aufklärung, and the maskilim remained loyal to this wing of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment after most prominent German writers had turned to Ro­manticism. While not against religion, the Me’assefim were rationalist and cosmopolitan; they praised tolerance, extolled human perfectibility, and admired the natural goodness of God’s world. They looked to enlightened rulers everywhere to improve the situation of the Jews. The emancipa­tion of the French Jews in 1791 was enthusiastically received as a favorable omen for the future of world Jewry.67 The Austrian Haskalah, which flourished in the 1820s and 1830s, ­contained two distinct branches. The first was represented by several historians and philosophers devoted to Hokhmat Yisrael, the Hebrew version of the Wissenschaft des Judentums that had emerged in Germany in the 1820s. The work of these writers reflected, in their way, a romantic reaction to the rationalist and anti-medieval sentiments of the Berlin ­Haskalah.68 The second was primarily composed of Galician writers who 66 Katz suggests that the maskilic turn to the Bible reflected a new awareness of the non-Jewish world and the biblical teachings on the equal­ity of all mankind (Exclusiveness and Tolerance: Studies in Jewish-Gentile Relations in Medieval and Modern Times [New York; Schocken Books, 1962], p. 185). On melitzah, see David Patterson, Abraham Mapu: The Creator of the Mod­ern Hebrew Novel (London: East and West Library, 1964), pp. 71, 88–89. 67 Shaanan, op. cit., I, 45–46. Naphtali Herz Wessely (1725–1805) wrote a well-known pamphlet Divrei shalom ve-emet [Words of Peace and Truth] wel­coming Joseph II’s Edict of Toleration and advocating modernization of Jewish education (Klausner, op. cit., I, 120–34; Lachover, op. cit., pp. 65–77). Isaac Eisenstein-Barzilay discusses the rationalism of the Me’assefim (“The Ideology of the Berlin Haskalah,” Proceedings of the American Aca­demy of Jewish Research, XXV [1956], 1–141. Their “pragmatic” deism be­came more radical in the 1790s (Isaac Eisenstein-Barzilay, “The Treatment of the Jewish Religion in the Literature of the Berlin Haskalah,” Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research, XXIV [1955], 50). On the influence of the Aufklärung theology and the ideology of the Me’assefim, see Michael Meyer, The Origins of the Modern Jew; Jewish Identity and European Culture in Germany, 1749–1824 (Detroit: Wayne State Univ. Press, 1967), pp. 19, 116–19. 68 Samuel David Luzzatto (1800–1865), the philologist, biblical scholar and expert in medieval synagogue poetry, vigorously opposed “Atticism” and what he considered the excessively Hellenistic interpretation of Jud­aism by Maimonides and several other



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were far more radical and aggressive than previous maskilim. They wrote anti-Hasidic satires and introduced the romantic image of the idyllic existence of an idealized Jewish farmer.69 The main figures of the first generation of Russian maskilim, Isaac Baer Levinsohn of Volhynia and Mordecai Günzburg of Vilna, combined features of both groups. They defended Judaism against its detractors, advocated reforms in Jewish education— especially the study of modern languages and science—and the “productivization” of the Jews through crafts and agriculture.70 Following them, and working primarily from the forties to the mid-sixties, were the Vilna writers who were to be a profound influence on young Dubnow. This group of maskilim absorbed the principal attitudes of earlier stages of the Haskalah, especially cosmopolitanism, an interest in Jewish history, and an antipathy toward Hasidism, and made important innovations in literary style and form. The Vilna Haskalah established Romanticism in Hebrew literature. The works produced by its writers contained abundant sentiment, a certain amount of subjectivism, and some traces of Utopian socialism. Kalman Shulman’s rendition of Eugene Sue’s Les Mystères de Paris and Le Juif errant were widely read through the Pale.71 ­medieval Jewish philosophers (Noah H. Rosenbloom, Luzzatto’s Ethico-Psychological Interpretation of Judaism [“Studies in Torah Judaism Series”] [New York: Yeshiva Univ. Press, 1965], pp. 27–39). Solomon Judah Rapoport (1790–1867) of Prague published a series of biographical studies of the heroes of traditional Judaism. Nachman Krochmal (1785–1840) of Galicia achieved posthumous fame with his philosophy of Jewish history, strongly influenced by Absolute Idealism. 69 Megalle temirin and bohen tzeddek by Josef Perl (1773–1839), Ha-tzofeh le-bet Yisrael by Isaac Erter (1792–1851), and ‘Emek refa’im by the Russian maskil Isaac Levinsohn. See Shalom Spiegel, Hebrew Reborn (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1930), pp. 126–31; Klausner, op. cit., II, 283–248; Lachover, op. cit., I, Book 2, 1–22. On the image of the Jewish farmer in these writings, see Shaanan, op. cit., I, 181. 70 The writings of Isaac Baer Levinsohn (1788–1860) and his influence are discussed in Louis S. Greenberg, A Critical Investigation of the Works of Rabbi Isaac Baer Levinsohn (New York: Bloch Publishing Co., 1930). Levinsohn’s work attacking the blood libel was translated into several European languages, e.g., by L. Loewe: Efes dammim; a Series of Conversations at Jerusalem . . . Concerning the Malicious Charge against the Jews of using Christian Blood (London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Long­mans, 1841). Mordecai Aaron Günzburg (1795–1846) published original and translated works in general and Jewish fields, including an important autobiography describing Jewish school life in Lithuania. Shaanan, op. cit., I, 184–95, describes the characteristics shared by the two men. 71  Kalman Shulman (1819–1899) settled in Vilna in 1843, and taught in the state school connected with the government-sponsored Vilna Rabbinical Seminary. He published over sixteen original works and translations—fiction, geography, and history. Miztorei Pariz was first published in four parts between 1854 and 1860. On his work see Klausner, op. cit., III, 361–88; Tsinberg, op. cit., VI, 247–48; Shaanan, op. cit., I, 219–21. In­cidentally Les Mystères de Paris attracted the attention of Karl Marx, who uses the characters and plot of the book to attack Sue’s Christian moralizing (The Holy Family [Moscow: Foreign ­Languages Pub-

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Abraham Mapu, influenced by Sue and Dumas père, published the first original Hebrew novels, two of which were set in biblical times and one in contemporary Lithuania. Despite—or perhaps due to—their torturously complicated plots, primitive characterization, and extreme moralizing, these novels enjoyed tremendous popularity.72 The most gifted of the Vilna writers was Micah Joseph Lebenson. Mikhal, as he was known from the acronym of his name, had a modern education, read German literature, and had studied briefly under Schelling in Berlin. He died at the age of twenty-four, leaving two volumes of historical ballads and lyric poetry. It has been suggested that Mikhal’s work shows the first real evidence of individualism in modern Hebrew literature, for he not only reinterprets biblical heroes from his own point of view, but his poems often poignantly reflect the conscious knowledge of his own impending death.73 Dubnow claimed in his autobiography that as a child, even though he was bored with the legal discussions of the ancient rabbis, he was captivated by the biblical narratives and legends in the Talmud.74 At the age of eight, he discovered in his grandfather’s library a copy of Yosippon, the medieval Hebrew version of Josephus’s history, and was stirred by the

lishing House, 1956], pp. 217–75). The impact of Shulman’s book on young Jewish boys in the Pale is often mentioned in autobiographies: Moshe Leib Lilienblum, Kol kitvei Moshe Leib Lilienblum [The Collected Works of M.L. Lilienblum] (Cracow: Joseph Fischer, 5672–73 [1911/12–1912/13], II, 249; Ahad Ha-Am, Kol kitvei Ahad Ha-Am [The Complete Works of Ahad Ha-Am] (Tel Aviv: Dvir, 5725 [1964/65]), p. 494. See Patterson, The Hebrew Novel, p. 223; and Mapu, p. 103. The influence of French literature on the Vilna Haskalah is discussed by Shaanan, Iyunim be-sifrut ha-haskalah [Studies in the Literature of the Haskalah] (Merhavyah: Sifriat Po’alim, 1952), pp. 141–59. On the growth of the Haskalah in Vilna, see Jacob Shatzky, Kultur-Geschichte fun der Haskole in Lita [Cultural History of the Haskalah in Lithuania] (Buenos Aires: Tzentral-Farband fun Poilishe Yidn in Argentina, 1950), pp. 111–52. 72 Abraham Mapu (1808–1867) lived in various places in Lithuania, pri­marily in Kovno, where after 1848 he had a teaching post in a government school. On Mapu’s influence, see Patterson, Mapu, pp. 28, 40, 87; Jacob Fichman, “Abraham Mapu: His Life and Work” [in Hebrew], Kol kitvei Avraham Mapu [The Complete Writings of Abraham Mapu] (Tel Aviv: Dvir, 5699 [1937/38]), pp. 3–23; Klausner, op. cit., III, 269–360; Lachover, op. cit., I, Book 2, 136–62; Shaanan, Ha-sifrut ha-ivrit, I, 222–37. Mapu and Shulman’s works went through 26 and 21 reprintings respec­tively in nineteenth-century Russia (Dinur, op. cit., p. 110). 73 Micah Lebensohn’s father, Abraham Dov (1794–1878, known from his acronym as “Adam ha-Kohen”) taught in the Vilna Rabbinical Seminary and was a well-known poet. Mikhal (1828–52) was tubercular from an early age. On his indivi­dualism, see Shaanan, op. cit., I, 207–19; Lachover, op. cit., I, Book 2, 114–35; Klausner, op. cit., pp. 228–68; Jacob Fichman, “Micah Joseph Lebensohn, his Life and Poetry” [in Hebrew], Shirei Mikhal [The Poetry of Mikhal] (Tel Aviv: Dvir, 5724 [1963/64]), pp. 7–39. 74 Especially the book of Isaiah (KZ, I, 33).



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heroic stories of the Second Temple period.75 He became so enamored of the prophetic poetry that the following year he memorized many passages and conducted a class for his friends in the synagogue during the summer evenings.76 When he was ten, Simon received as a gift Shulman’s Shulamit, a travel description and history of the Near East,77 and two years later he borrowed and read Shulman’s Miztorei Pariz. This latter novel impressed Simon and his brother Wolf so strongly that the boys de­cided to copy the whole work by hand before returning it to the owner, and managed to do so for the whole first volume. Soon afterwards, Simon read Mapu’s two historical novels, Ashmat Shomron (The Guilt of Samaria) and Ahavat Tziyon (Love of Zion). Since the Dubnow boys could find in Mstislavl only the first volume of Mapu’s Ayit Tzavu’ah (The Hypocrite) which was a contemporary tale of the conflict between the maskilim and the tradi­tionalists, with great trepidation they went to a religious bookstore to order the remaining parts. Simon borrowed the deposit from a fellow heder student, and later he and Wolf filched money from the cashbox of his mother’s store to pay for the books.78 In 1873 Simon wrote an essay entitled “A Vision of the Holy Tongue” in the flowery melitzah style. The work concerns an allegorical creature, the Hebrew language, who attacks the obscurantists—a group that in­sists on the exclusive study of the Talmud, neglects the actual teachings of the Bible, and is hostile to the new Hebrew literature of the Haskalah.79 During his thirteenth year, Simon read Mikhal’s lyrics, his Hebrew version of the second book of the Aeneid, and his ballads on the young and old Solomon. Mikhal became the first of his personal heroes.80 At the same time, he began to read the bound volumes of Hebrew journals that appeared in Russia for the first time in the late fifties.81 That “bibliomania” was already part of his personality is well illustrated by Dubnow’s story about one article which entranced him so that he committed the “only theft” of his life and tore out the pages before returning the book to its owner. Dubnow called this the “sin of an insatiable mind.”82 75 Ibid., pp. 30–31. 76 Ibid., p. 33. 77 Ibid., p. 39. Shulamit was first published in Vilna, 1855. 78 Ibid., p. 43. 79 Ibid., pp. 44–45. 80 Ibid., pp. 54–55, 65. 81  This aspect of the Haskalah will be discussed in the next chapter as part of Dubnow’s adolescent development. 82 Ibid., pp. 53–54.

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chapter one

Soon, his reputation as a budding maskil began to spread around town. When a synagogue hanger-on informed Simon’s grandfather that the young boy was an epikorus (heretic), Simon wrote and distributed an ardent pamphlet against his enemies, whom he characterized as men of darkness who fought the light of knowledge.83 What was the darkness? An illustration can be found in Dub­now’s description of the Jewish folklore concerning death: the belief that a corpse feels needle-like pain as the worms gnaw,84 that poisonous bile is dropped in the mouth of the dying by the angel of death,85 and that terrifying spirits hover near the cemetery.86 Commenting in his autobiography on the role of the Haskalah in his upbringing, Dubnow wrote: A young soul cannot remain in the captivity of the other world; he wants new experiences fitting to his age, and if the surrounding world cannot give him satisfac­tion, he finds it in books.87 The reverse may have been at least as true; what he got from the books helped to dissolve the tradi­tional terrors and undermine the supernatural sanctions. Although in Dubnow’s youth the Mstislavl community was still deeply stirred by the sermons of the Kel’mskii maggid (preacher), who revived the fear of God “like a Jewish Savonarola,”88 Simon himself was on the way to a secular education. The values espoused by his readings, especially the novels, were those that young Simon seems to have absorbed as he entered adolescence. They advised him to learn Russian, love elegant biblical Hebrew, detest the heder, desire productive work, respond to the land­scape, and respect a rational Judaism. More basically, they shaped the way a thirteen-yearold child perceived and organized his self-image and his social environment. The novels offered vicar­ious adventure; they are replete with the surprises and twists of fate. More important, however, the novels had the ability to broaden the horizons of a Jew trapped in the nine­teenthcentury Pale by creating a psychological distance from it. The Mysteries of Paris, for example, offered the reader a view of a far­away metropolis where the relationships between the various strata of society did not involve Jews at all. Mapu’s historical novels present, as Abraham Klausner observed, a world both familiar and different to his readers. It was

83 Ibid., pp. 55–56. 84 Ibid., p. 35. The reference is to Talmud Berakhot 18b. 85 Ibid. (Babylonian Talmud Avodah Zarah 20b.) 86 Ibid., pp. 35–36. 87 Ibid., p. 38. 88 Ibid., pp. 36–37.



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the familiar ­biblical world, which formed the main subject of every child’s education, and Dubnow remembered that the background of Ashmat Shomron seemed completely real because the text was interlaced with a mosaic of phrases from Isaiah and Hosea.89 But, as Klausner pointed out, the world described is far freer than that of the Pale. The difference can be found in characters who lead an active and adventurous life, quite unlike that of the ­reader.90 The biblical world described in the novels contained very little of the traditional religious apparatus; no angels of death, no ­maggidim or talmudic discussions troubled the lives of the courtly or pastoral heroes and villains. These men spent their days snatching lovely damsels out of the jaws of lions rather than worrying whether their hen would lay an egg on a festival. The sharp division of the characters into heroes and villains had much influence on a young man’s changing perception of the world. Mapu’s three books all depict a struggle between the forces of good and evil. The former are represented by the altruistic champions of Enlightenment; the evil forces of society are embodied in the fanatically religious who are hypocrites, prepared to go to any lengths to further their selfish schemes.91 The Haskalah thus provided a young man with a ready-made pattern for rebellion so that the non-conformist had become an established social type within the still predominately traditional Jewish world. The idealism contained in the maskilic ideology assuaged feelings of guilt that might ordinarily have been associated with rebellion. Many localities in the 1860s already had a maskilic underground, a handful of Jews imbued with Jewish Enlightenment rationalism. Although Dubnow describes his conversion to Haskalah as the result solely of his natural inclinations and the books he read, there were several people in Mstislavl who undoubtedly exercised a strong in­fluence on him. A family living on the outskirts of town possessed a secret library of Haskalah literature from which he was able to borrow extensively.92 A group of young Jews whom he had befriended had begun a small collection of Russian books and provided strong moral and emotional support for his later sallies into secular education.93 Thus, Dubnow’s autobiographical portrait

89 Ibid., p. 42. 90 Klausner, op. cit., III, 294–97; Tsinberg, op. cit., VI, 262. 91  Patterson, Mapu, pp. 26–27. 92 KZ, I, 51–53. This family was viewed with suspicion by most of the Mstislavl Jewish community. 93 Ibid., p. 61.

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of a highly individualistic child holding aloft the banner of reason against the united forces of obscurantism may be to some extent a constructed memory—but not entirely so.94 His family never gave up on him and indeed provided considerable aid. Simon’s father had participated in a business enterprise of scope and capitalist innovation. Because his horizons were not limited to the outskirts of Mstislavl, his son’s ambitions for a broader education were not beyond his understanding. In some ways, Simon’s family provided ex­cellent conditions for raising this middle child as a young rebel. His grandfather, although a powerful symbol of the “old patriarchal” culture, was too distant to overwhelm Simon’s personality—but was apparently a caring person. His father, whose absence may have given Simon an unusual amount of freedom at home,95 was also rather remote emotionally; he remembers him as sometimes irritable, often gloomy and preoccupied. Nevertheless, Meir Jacob showed his son great tender­ness in later years and, although he worried about Simon’s increasing indifference to Jewish observance, always gave way to his dangerous yearnings and “experiments.” Throughout Simon’s various searches for schooling, he continued to support him with small sums of money.96 Simon’s “first world” gave him the emotional security to strike out on his own. Even though his environment was theocratic, its authority was neither cruel enough to crush him into submission nor so diffuse as to produce inner confusion. Dubnow had a self-confident and integrated personality capable of adjusting to adversity and disillusion­ment. His family never deprived him of sympathy. The pains of separa­tion were mitigated on both sides by constant affection.

94 The war between the religious and the maskilim was very bitter and a young maskil’s rebellion was certainly daring; however, the Haskalah had earned considerable suspicion from the masses for its tendency to look to the government to support and enforce its program. The “Berlinchiks,” as they were often called, appeared at times not to represent the interests of the Jews as a whole, but the narrower interests of the class of modernized intellectuals and wealthy merchants (Patterson, The Hebrew Novel, p. 158; Tcherikower, Yehudim, p. 123). The maskilim often scorned the attempts to use Yiddish as a means for popular education and did not appreciate the indigenous new developments within the religious sector, such as the Vilna Gaon’s moderate interest in secular subjects, or the musar (ethics) movement founded by Israel Salanter (EE, VI, 191; Ginzberg, op. cit., pp. 145–94). 95 KZ, I, 17, 41, 49. Simon was not supervised very closely during these childhood years. 96 For example, ibid., p. 105.



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In another sense too, Simon did not totally reject his “first world.” He did break with the forms of traditional Judaism, but internalized several of its most important values, in emulation of his grandfather. Dubnow recounts that when his grandfather’s property was badly damaged by fire, Benzion’s devotion to study was so great that he refused to in­terrupt his lessons to watch the disaster that was destroying his financial independence. More than fifty years later, Dubnow was to write his magnum opus in a freezing Petrograd apartment despite revolution, siege, and civil war raging outside in the streets. The outstanding characteristics of Simon’s grandfather were common sense, tact, intense but dignified spiritual passion, and total dedication to learning; these became, mutatis mutandis, the distinctive qualities of the mature Simon Dubnow. He claimed that as a child he glimpsed the “abyss of cosmic cold” while reading Ecclesiastes with his teacher under the Sukkah canopy on a windy hilltop,97 but he never really doubted the value of study as a means to understand a purposive universe.

97 Dubnow’s grandfather’s stoicism is described, ibid., pp. 11–12; Dubnow’s premonition of cosmic cold, ibid., pp. 27–28.

Chapter Two

From Haskalah to Positivism The Search for a Secular Education In an early chapter of his autobiography, Dubnow comments on the flight of several young Mstislavl girls to Kiev, where they hoped to enter the university: When I ask myself now: “What drove the fledglings from many Jewish nests and thrust them toward large university cities? Hunger and need?” I know the answer. They naturally were attracted by the new currents being carried in the air, a consciousness that it was impossible to live according to the old way, staying in that swamp, getting married or being married off, producing children, sitting in the store calling to customers, wheeling and dealing, pursuing a profit, hunt­ing for a miserable piece of bread. In effect [it was impossible] to remain on the lower levels of the social ladder when a new culture was pulling us from above. These were the birth pangs of a transitional age, bringing forth a new social class of intellectuals or semi-intellectuals. Some were thrown around by the winds, while others went consciously ahead to meet the new epoch.1

Between the ages of thirteen and twenty Simon struggled to enter this “new epoch.” His efforts to acquire a secular education met with one obstacle after another; in one of his moments of despair he wrote to his father, “I set out to navigate on the sea of life with hope shining on the high mast, but I have lost hope and have the horrible vision of my ship sinking to the bottom.”2 But Simon kept afloat; his efforts to gain a formal education revealed remarkable drive and tenacity. By the spring of 1874 Simon and Wolf, with the help of a young friend, had learned a certain amount of Russian, and they extracted from their mother and grandfather permission to attend the local Jewish state school. These special schools, part of the system set up decades earlier by Count Sergey Uvarov, had only recently begun to attract a significant number of Jewish youths.3 The staff was dedicated to Russifying their students. 1  KZ, I, 103. 2 Ibid., p. 77. 3 See below, p. 82.

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Simon’s first teacher, a graduate of the government-sponsored Vilna Rabbinical Seminary who later became a Christian missionary, spent most of his time drilling the students to speak Russian without a Jewish accent. Simon quickly climbed from class to class and by autumn was making excellent progress with his second teacher, studying Russian syntax and writing compositions in Russian. Then, as part of an educational reform supposedly intended to encourage young Jews to enroll in the general schools, the state Jewish schools were abruptly abolished.4 The Dubnow boys spent a few months in a parish school, but left at the beginning of 1875, Dubnow remembered, because of its slovenly and undisciplined atmosphere. On their own again, they resolved to speak only Russian to each other, even in the family’s presence, and secretly began the study of French.5 Ignoring the disapproval of their grandfather, Simon and Wolf decided in the spring of 1876 to apply for the new uezd (district) school in Mstislavl.6 Their parents, like many others, permitted the boys to attend because the military conscription law of 1874 would then exempt them from immediate military service.7 After several months of intensive preparation, Simon and Wolf took the entrance examination on August 7th; the head of the school, although a staunch conservative, treated them with consideration and let them enter at an advanced level.8 Soon at the top of their class, they were able to devote most of their time to reading avidly on their own and passed their final examinations with good grades in June 1877.9 Simon and Wolf once again faced the problem of how and where to con­tinue their education, and that summer, Simon’s four Wanderjahre commenced. Late in June, he left for Vilna to prepare himself to enter the new Jewish Teachers’ Institute which had been organized to replace the government-sponsored Vilna Rabbinical Seminary. At the admission examination, he was informed that men born before 1861 would be refused, since they would be liable for military service before finishing the four-year course.10 Simon returned home, and at the end of 4 KZ, I, 60. 5 Ibid., pp. 62–63.   6 Ibid., pp. 63–64.   7 Ibid., p. 65.   8 Ibid., pp. 66–67.   9 Ibid., p. 70. 10 Ibid., p. 76. Perhaps even more detrimental than Simon’s age was his lack of “protection.” Abraham Cahan relates that he was able to gain admission to the school by bribing an appropriate official (The Education of Abraham Cahan, vols. I–II of Bleter fun mein    



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October, the brothers set out for the city of Dinaburg to prepare to enter its Realschule.11 In Dinaburg there were overwhelming obstacles. They would have to wait until the following August to apply; a knowledge of drafting and drawing was required; there was no opportunity to support themselves by tutoring; and the teachers were reputedly hostile to Jews. The boys stayed there until the end of 1877, studying on their own, but when their meager supply of money ran out, they returned to Mstislavl suffering from incipient malnutrition.12 In May, 1878, Simon went alone to the city of Mogilev, where he had relatives, in order to prepare for the gimnaziia.13 He was informed that, although Greek and Latin were required for a diploma, he could obtain a certificate without these languages. Except for one month’s vacation at home and at his uncle’s in Propoisk in the fall of 1878, he spent the entire year in Mogilev studying the natural sciences, especially physics. When he appeared before the director of the school in May 1879, Simon’s interest in science and ignorance of classical languages were interpreted as signs of political radicalism, and it was made clear that he would fail the entrance examinations.14 After a month back home in Mstislavl, Simon decided to go to Smolensk (an illegal residence because it was outside the Jewish Pale of Settlement) in order to prepare for the gimnaziia again.15 He lived there from July 1879 through March 1880. Unfortunately, his letters to a young student who had been exiled to Mstislavl for suspicious political behavior came to the attention of the local police. Fearing that Simon could get into serious trouble with the Smolensk authorities, his father rushed to bring him home, and his plans to take the examinations were again abandoned.16

Leben, trans. Leon Stein, Abraham P. Conan, and Lynn Davison [Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1969], p. 104). 11  KZ, I, 79. Dinaburg, not far from Riga, was known for a while in Russian as Dvinsk; in present-day Latvia it is called Daugavpils. The Vilna and Dinaburg schools were widely known and attracted the attention of many young Jews of this generation. Shmarya Levin also tried to enter both institutions (Youth in Revolt, trans. Maurice Samuel [New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1930], pp. 83–89). 12 Ibid., pp. 83–84. 13 Ibid., p. 87. 14 Ibid., p. 96. 15 Ibid., pp. 97–98. 16 Ibid., p. 104.

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Three months later, Simon left home once more, this time to join Wolf in St. Petersburg.17 Arriving in the capital on June 20th, 1880, at the age of twenty, he began a new phase of his life. He made his first contacts with Russian-Jewish journalists and started to write for their publications.18 His long search for a diploma came to an end finally in May 1881, when he appeared for the entrance examination to a St. Petersburg gimnaziia. His “excessive reading and premature literary work,” the distractions following the assassination of Alex­ander II, and personal worries had disturbed his preparation, so that when he looked at the first question (on arithmetic) his mind went blank, and he walked out of the room without writing a word.19 Simon decided he had had enough of this torture; in the future he would rely only on himself to complete his education. In his autobiography, Dubnow relates that at about the age of twelve he decided to choose for himself a small selection of psalms to read in place of the usual Sabbath prayers,20 and that, away from home for the first time in Vilna, he felt no more than mild surprise when he ate pork by mistake.21 Even then he believed in only “several” of Maimonides’ thirteen principles of faith, and when he read Hermann Theodor Hettner’s History of French Literature in the Eighteenth Century, he decided that he was a deist.22 He soon abandoned deism for what was called materialism: that the only reality is physical matter. Dubnow’s informal education during these years, like that of his childhood, can be traced through the books he read. In Mstislavl, a group of friends was always ready to welcome him home from his wanderings and

17  Ibid., p. 92. 18  Ibid., pp. 109–110. Mordecai ben Hillel HaCohen describes Dubnow’s first appearance in St. Petersburg. Mordecai ben Hillel was the pen name of Marcus Kogen, who became a life-long friend of Dubnow (Mordecai ben Hillel HaCohen, Olami [My World] [4 vols.; Jerusalem: Defus ha-po’alim, 1926–27], I, 134–35). 19  KZ, I, 120. 20 Ibid., p. 60. These psalms are pleas to God for support and reassurance by the poet who feels himself surrounded by his enemies. Dubnow said that, while still a schoolboy in Mstislavl he preferred modern clothes, refused to let his side curls (peot) grow, and did not recite the daily prayers (ibid., p. 64). 21  Ibid., p. 75. 22 Ibid., pp. 85–86. Rene Wellek considers Hettner’s Literaturgeschichte des Achtzenten Jahrhunderts one of “the very few great achievements in literary history during the later nineteenth century” (A History of Modern Criticism, Vol. IV: The Later Nineteenth Century [New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1965], p. 297). This work appeared in three parts between 1856 and 1870 covering English, French, and German literature. For over ten years Dubnow was especially attracted to the eighteenth century.



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he exchanged ideas with them as well as with acquaintances and relatives in the various towns where he lived temporarily. But in Dinaburg he and Wolf were isolated, reading continuously; also in Smolensk, Simon lived “as a hermit,” making notes in his diary and drawing up vast plans for his future studies.23 More important than information, he acquired through his reading a series of personal culture heroes, and the stories of their lives provided a model for his own personal strug­gles and intellectual quests. These “idols,” as Simon called them, served to bridge the gap between his Jewish and Russian identities. While still in the Mstislavl uezd school, Simon claims to have been interested in the German-Jewish journalist Karl Ludwig Börne. Börne had been a witty and daring fighter for freedom of thought and for the political emancipation of the German Jews. After reading Börne’s Letters from Paris in Russian translation,24 Simon was impudent enough to quote him in a final examination. When his politically conservative teacher read the statement—“the noble man may be the slave of circumstances, but he who becomes the lackey of circumstances is an ignoble man”—Simon was suspected of revolutionary leanings and graded down accordingly.25 A few years later, his hero was Moses Mendelssohn; Simon especially admired the account of the youth who left his traditional home in search of modern knowledge in Berlin. At that time he also read Georges Bernard Depping’s History of the Jews in the Middle Ages and toyed with the notion of going to the Breslau Theological Seminary in order to become a rabbinical reformer of his people.26 After Mendelssohn, his other heroes came from the Russian radical pantheon. Dubnow was won over to mid-nineteenth-century Russian Positivism as a result of the turn that the Haskalah took during the reign of Alexander II. In the sixties and seventies a number of Hebrew writers optimistically felt that the doors into Russian life were opening for Jews. In a famous poem Judah Leib Gordon exhorted Russian Jewry: “Awaken, my people! How 23 KZ, I, 98. 24 Ibid., pp. 67–68. Börne (1786–1837) was baptized in 1818 to allow himself to engage in public activities in ways that he could not as a Jew. Dubnow defended Börne’s conversion in these terms throughout the 1880s. The first volume of Briefe aus Paris was published in 1832, the second in 1834. 25 KZ, I, 70. 26 Depping (1784–1853) taught and wrote in Paris after 1803. His work, Les Juifs dans le moyen age, essay sur leur état civil, commercial et littéraire, published in Paris, 1834, emphasizes the misfortunes generated by religious fanaticism (JE, IV, 524–25).

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long will you sleep? Night has taken flight; . . . become aware of time and place.”27 Influenced by the Russian positivists, these Jewish writers tried to expose the defects of Jewish life through critical realism. This theme first appeared in Mapu’s Ayit Tzavu’ah, and in a series of novels by other authors on contemporary subjects. Reuben Asher Braudes’ Ha-dat ve-hahayyim (Religion and Life), for instance, described the controversy over religious reform which raged in Lithuania between the years 1869 and 1871. His young hero, an outstanding talmudic scholar who acquired a secular education, confronts the older generation of rabbis who rigidly enforce Jewish religious law; their harsh attitude becomes the cause of disastrous financial and personal injury to innocent members of the Jewish community.28 After publishing several biblical idylls in the fifties, Judah Leib ­Gordon—the most talented of all the later Haskalah writers—produced a series of narrative poems denouncing the oppressive rule of the rabbis. In Tzidkiyahu be-vet ha-pekudot (Zedekiah in Prison), Gordon concludes that throughout history the Jewish people had been the victim of a spiritual leadership that ignored the realistic demands of “life.”29 For a brief period between 1866 and 1868 the enfant terrible of the Haskalah was Uri Kovner, who published two pamphlets attacking the melitzah style of the previous generation. Most of the Haskalah poets, he insisted, were pretentious versifiers who dabbled in meaningless phraseology; what was needed was a realistic Jewish literature devoted to useful knowledge and social improvement. Kovner openly concluded that there was no future for Hebrew literature.30 The judgment that the

27 Judah Leib Gordon, Kitvei Yehudah Lev Gordon [The Collected Writings of J.L. Gordon], Tel Aviv: Dvir, I960, I, 17. The poem was written in 1863 and published in 1866. On the background of this phase of the Haskalah, see Lachover, op. cit., I, Book 2, 179–246. 28 Braudes’ novel was first published in the periodical Ha-boker or in 1876–77. It was based upon the ideas and example of Moshe Leib Lilienblum (see below) and the synod of reform-oriented rabbis that convened in Leipzig in 1869 (Reuben Asher Braudes, Hadat ve-ha-hayyim [Religion and Life], ed. and abridged by Jeremiah Frankel [Jerusalem; Schocken, 1946], pp. 2, 158–60). Braudes (1851–1902) is discussed in Klausner (op. cit., V, 345–102), Shaanan (op. cit., II, 68–84), and Patterson (The Hebrew Novel, pp. 16–19). Dubnow read Braudes’ novel while residing in Vilna (KZ, I, 77). 29 On J.L. Gordon (1830–1892), see Lachover, op. cit., I, Book 2, 286–96; Klausner, op. cit., IV, 301–466; Shaanan, op. cit., I, 266–96. 30 On Uri Kovner (1842–1909), see Shaanan, op. cit., I, 253–61; Klausner, op. cit., IV, 139–75; S.L. Tsinberg, “A. Kovner: the Influence of Pisarev in Jewish Literature” [in Russian], Perezhitoe, II (1910), 130–59. The influence of the Russian critical realists on Kovner is illustrated by his attack on S.D. Luzzatto for occupying himself with idle questions of



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Haskalah was a dead end and that future Jewish generations would write in Russian, was implied by several of the more sensitive maskilim. In an oft-quoted stanza, Gordon asked, “For whom have I toiled all my best years, denying myself contentment and peace?” and wondered if he was the last of “Zion’s singers” and his readers the last to know Hebrew.31 Dubnow certainly read several of these writers in the bound volumes of Hebrew periodicals that he borrowed while still living in Mstislavl, but in this period of his personal development, the most influential figure was Moshe Leib Lilienblum.32 In 1866, Lilienblum began to publish articles which gradually became more and more daring. At first he merely asserted that the Talmud authorized improvements in Judaism “according to the spirit of the time,” then, that a new code of religious law was needed to replace the Shulhan Arukh, and finally, when he decided that this was quixotic, he began to dabble with socialist ideas.33 Lilienblum’s most important contribution to Hebrew literature—and to Dubnow’s ideological development—was his autobiographical novel, Hattot Ne’urim (The Sins of Youth). Hattot Ne’urim was not the first autobiography of note in modern Hebrew literature but was unique for its psychological self­analysis.34 Lilienblum’s Bildungsroman is narrated by a young maskil. The hero of the novel is a prodigy in talmudic law, but becomes a hated and persecuted village heretic for his denial, first of the validity of Jewish mysticism and folklore, then the authority of the Talmud, and finally revelation at Mount Sinai. A few enlightened protectors, attracted by his fiery articles for reform, send him to the “great city” (Odessa) for a university education. He ends up there as a menial office clerk, bitter, ignored, and despondent. The book closes with the hero’s pious young wife witnessing, with silent suffering, his total defection from religion, while the hero himself pines for a young woman back home whom he had loved years ago. In Lilienblum’s book the “sins of youth” are really the sins against youth, for the Enlightenment had provided the narrator no purpose in life. The author characterized both religion and the Haskalah as “drunken “archeology” and theology, thus inclining Jewish youth toward useless occupations (Spiegel, op. cit., pp. 197–99; Tsinberg, Istoria evreiskoi, pp. 206, 227). 31 J.L. Gordon, op. cit., I, 2. On this foreboding, see Shaanan, op. cit., I, 241, 267. 32 On Lilienblum (1843–1910), see Klausner, op. cit., IV, 190–300; and Shaanan, op. cit., II, 19–34. 33 In his Mishnah of Elisha ben Abuyah (1877), Lilienblum, op. cit., II, 180–200. See Spiegel, op. cit., pp. 199–205. 34 Hattot Ne’urim was first published in Vienna in 1876, and republished in M.L. Lilienblum, op. cit., pp. 205–410.

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fantasy,” and it seemed to Dubnow at the time that he clearly pointed the way to a new generation of Jews totally indifferent to Judaism.35 It has been argued that there is an even greater pathos reflected in the novel— the disenchantment with faith on the one hand and the inability to live without faith on the other.36 Later, Lilienblum himself found a new faith in Jewish nationalism, while Dubnow went on to “the religion of science and moral perfection.”37 The Impact of Radical Maskilim, Russian Nihilists, and their Western Exemplars The Russian intelligentsia had undergone developments in the first decade of Alexander II’s reign that made certain of its ideological tendencies appealing to a young critical Jew like Simon. Until the end of the reign of Nicholas I the progressive intellectuals of Russia had been largely from the nobility. During the period of reforms, however, the expanded student body of the universities came to include more young people not from the gentry, the upper social stratum. (The term intelligentsia was coined in Russia and comes from the radical component of this milieu.) One of the unintentional results of the reforms was, therefore, the acquisition by the new intelligentsia of a heightened degree of self-consciousness.38 Their secular education, preoccupation with “general ideals,” and moral opposition to the principle of autocracy created a special self-­consciousness of the intelligenty as a sector of society apart from the nobility, clergy, and peasants. The intelligentsia was one of the few Russian social elements to which a literate, enlightened young Russian Jew could relate.39 The Russian intelligentsia had been called “one of the most thorough and far-reaching rejections of past tradition in the history of modern Europe.”40 35 KZ, I, 77–79. 36 Lilienblum’s problem about faith, Shaanan, op. cit., II, 32. 37 Dubnow on “religion of science and moral perfection,” KZ, I, 99. 38 By the end of the sixties the term “intelligentsia” had come into general usage in Russia. This word is a Russian contribution to modern terminology. See Martin Malia, “What is the Intelligentsia?” The Russian Intelligentsia, ed. Richard Pipes (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1961), pp. 1–18; Richard Pipes, “The Historical Evolution of the Russian Intelligentsia,” ibid., pp. 47–62; Alan P. Pollard, “The Russian Intelligentsia: the Mind of Russia,” in California Slavic Studies, III (1964), 1–32. 39 See Sloutsky’s remarks on the relative ease with which the Russian progressive intelligentsia absorbed Jews, in contrast to the Baltic German and Polish intellectual circles (op. cit., pp. 234–35). 40 James Billington, The Icon and the Axe: An Interpretive History of Russian Culture (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1966), p. 385.



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In Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons the term “nihilist” was first used to describe the sharp break between the iconoclastic student youth of the sixties and the older intellectuals of the forties. In the novel, young Bazarov (for a while one of Dubnow’s heroes) blandly insists to an in­credulous elder that “at the present time rejection is the most beneficial of all things, and so we reject.”41 The “critical realists,” or “radical democrats” as they have been called, were not nihilists at all in the sense that they rejected all values; rather, they had definite, self-assured, even dogmatic, convictions and considered themselves the wave of the future. Their daring disrespect—as well as the air of martyrdom which came to hang over the major spokesmen of this movement—had a certain appeal to a Jewish boy, fighting to tear himself away from an oppressive old world and therefore attracted to an ideology which seemed to advocate the total reconstruction of society and thought. And rejection of him by them just because he was a Jew would in theory be implausible: prejudice would be a thing of the past among progressive “New Men.” To be sure, it was only another instance of the rejection by a new generation of its fathers. The break between the intellectuals of the sixties and those of the forties was in some ways more apparent than real. The critical realists drew, far more than they were willing to admit, on predispositions that had crystallized out of the experience of preceding generations of Russian intellectuals and remained constant despite changing philosophical and literary fashions. They had inherited a yearning for a comprehensive system of beliefs that would fully explain the “meaning of life,” and retained the sensitive social conscience which was intensified by the tenuous position of the critical thinker in the archaic Russian social system.42 Nevertheless, a feeling of discontinuity between the two generations began to appear in the mid-fifties. The military failure of the Nicholaevan regime during the Crimean War and the subsequent measures instituted by the new tsar, Alexander II, set in motion sweeping changes in Russian society mentioned earlier. At the same time, the break reflects the shift in

41  The Vintage Turgenev (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1950), p. 208. “A nihilist is a man who does not bow to any authorities, who does not take any principle on trust, no matter with what respect that principle is surrounded” (ibid., p. 183). On “nihilism” and its negations, see Charles Moser, Anti-Nihilism in the Russian Novel of the 1860s (The Hague: Mouton and Co., 1964), pp. 13–57. 42 For the origins of these attitudes, see Marc Raeff, Origins of the Russian Intelligentsia: The Eighteenth-Century Nobility (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, Inc., 1966), p. 171.

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European intellectual fashions in the late forties from philosophical idealism and romanticism to literary realism and materialism.43 The writings of Nicholas Chernyshevsky and Dmitry Pisarev shaped to a considerable extent the self-image of the young nihilist as the “New Man” (some women were included), who scorned slothful luxury, conventional etiquette, pretentious philosophizing, and idle belles lettres. The New Man was passionately devoted to the natural sciences, which he viewed as providing the only dependable knowledge of reality and the most important instrument of social betterment. While the New Man acknowledged that all people act out of self-interest and did not claim to do otherwise himself, Chernyshevsky insisted that if one clearly understood the principles of utilitarian rationalism, he would necessarily serve the best interests of society. Above all, the new man admired efficiency and desired constructive work. Prototypes of the new people in Chernyshevsky’s notorious novel What Is To Be Done? included the teacher dedicated to raising the intellectual level of the masses, and the medical student “with interesting cases” and a theory of nutrition that constituted “a complete revolution in the alimentary economy, . . . a discovery equal to Newton’s.”44 The hero of this novel (who was for a while Dubnow’s ideal) disciplined himself to withstand adversity and dedicated himself unswervingly to the advent of socialist Russia. Chernyshevsky and the other critical realists of the sixties thus made a substantial contribution to the mentality of the populist movement of the seventies and to the gradually crystallizing revolutionary tradition. At that point a limited number of young Russian Jews were drawn to the incipient populist and revolutionary movements by the nihilist writers. Dubnow was well-informed about political events45 and attended meetings of a revolutionary circle, but disapproved of terrorism46 and felt no personal duty to help the peasantry. Certainly his isolation and the brevity of his formal education kept him from being swept up in the social enthusiasm that in the mid-seventies affected Jewish students

43 That is, the shift from subjective imagination and transcendent selfhood to objective description and positive facts. These boundaries are, of course, very fluid. See Lilian R. Furst, Romanticism (London: Methuen, 1969), p. 62. 44 N. Chernyshevsky, What Is To Be Done?, trans. Benjamin R. Tucker; revised and edited by Ludmilla B. Turkevich (New York: Random House, 1961), pp. 177, 204, 287. 45 He followed the Vera Zasulich trial carefully (KZ, I, 87). Vera Zasulich attempted to assassinate a high-ranking Petersburg official in 1876 and was acquitted in the same year. 46 Ibid., p. 93.



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in the ­Mogilev gimnaziia, the Vilna Teachers’ Institute, and elsewhere.47 Dubnow’s main enemy was ignorance of what was then considered upto-date scientific truth and rigid allegiance to out-of-date “obscurantist” supernaturalism. Despite his educational frustrations, at this time, he did not see the Russian state as a monolithic agency opposed to the social mobility of the Jews. Dubnow remarked that the nihilists taught him the concept of “unlimited individual freedom.”48 Dmitri Pisarev seems to have been the most popular radical of the sixties among Russian Jews of Dubnow’s generation, perhaps because the anarchist aspect of his thought overwhelms the socialist.49 Even so, Dubnow observed that for him the Russian critics were primarily a bridge to European figures.50 Dubnow had become a deist and a committed rationalist in Dinaburg, after reading Henry Thomas Buckle’s History of Civilization in England,51 Hettner’s work on eighteenth-century philosophy, and John Draper’s Intellectual Development of Europe, virtually textbooks of his generation.52 In Mogilev, he studied Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons, Chernyshevsky’s What Is to Be Done, the “thick journals,” social novels, and civic poets of Russian radical culture, and read what he could of Pisarev.53 He composed an essay sketching an ideal education which would encompass “the cosmos, the earth, and man” beginning with astronomy and physics and culminating in psychology and sociology.54 In Smolensk, at the age of nineteen, he carefully studied essays by George Henry Lewes and John Stuart Mill on Auguste Comte.55 Lewes’ History of Philosophy described all the philosophical systems as stages to Positivism, which Dubnow concluded “alone offered the way to illuminate this labyrinth [the search for truth] with the electric sun of science.”56 Positivism freed him from “the thickets

47 Ibid., p. 95. 48 Ibid., p. 90. 49 For the influence of Pisarev, see Patterson, The Hebrew Novel, pp. 225–26. 50 KZ, I, 90. 51  Ibid., pp. 81–82. 52 Ibid., p. 86. 53 Ibid., pp. 90, 94. 54 Ibid., p. 94. 55 Ibid., pp. 99–100. G.H. Lewes (1817–78) ends his well-known Biographical History of Philosophy with the statement: “We have no hesitation in recording our conviction that the Cours de Philosophie Positive is the greatest work of our century, and will form one of the mighty landmarks in the history of opinion” (London: George Routledge and Sons, n.d.), p. 643. 56 KZ, I, 100.

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of theology” and “the slippery ground of metaphysics.”57 Since man cannot know the Absolute, Dubnow noted, there is “only one holy Bible . . . a Bible of relative truths,” which are the laws describing the relationships between phenomena, by means of which man can “rule over nature” and thereby “regulate human society.”58 He later observed that this picture of the world immunized against an “abyss of meaninglessness,” and therefore “saved the soul and gave it a strong basis for life, offering ‘much to the mind.’ ”59 Dubnow’s Self-Image in his Early Twenties At this point in his development, young Dubnow’s intellectual orientation, drawn from his Russian and Western sources, can be described as positivist individualism based on the scientific materialism and philosophical utilitarianism of that era. Dubnow absorbed the materialism advocated by the Russian radicals, which they had drawn from the German popularizers of science Jacob Moleschott, Karl Vogt, and above all Ludwig Büchner.60 In his widely read Force and Matter, Büchner presents a monist conception of reality which rejects the separate existences of spirit and matter, and insists that mind is an epiphenomenon of the human body. Büchner asserts that “whenever matter is arranged in a certain manner . . . the phenomenon of sensation and thought are produced.” He postulates that while the consti­tuent particles of the body are immortal, “what we call spirit, soul, consciousness,

57 Ibid., pp. 98–100. 58 Ibid. 59 Ibid., p. 99. See the remarks on the relationship between determinism and a “defiant, self-contained personality” in Rufus W. Mathewson, Jr., “The Hero and Society: the Literary Definitions, 1855–1865, 1934–1939,” Continuity and Change in Russian and Soviet Thought, ed. Ernest J. Simmons (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1955), p. 259. 60 Jacob Moleschott (1822–1893) was the author of Der Krieslauf des Lebens, Mainz, 1852. Karl Christoph Vogt (1817–1895) was the author of Lectures on Man: His Place in Creation and in the History of the Earth (English Edition), London, 1864. Ludwig Büchner (1824–1899) was a physician and writer. His Kraft und Stoff went through nine editions beginning with 1855. On the “materialist controversy” of the fifties in Germany generated by these men and their followers, see Lange, op. cit., pp. 262–84; John Theodor Merz, A History of European Thought in the Nineteenth Century (4 vols.; New York: Dover, 1965), II, 322–23. Büchner’s ideas did not have a very profound influence on academic circles in Germany, but had a large popular audience (Hajo Holborn, A History of Modern Germany (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1969), III, 120–21. See also The Vintage Turgenev, op. cit., pp. 203–204.



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disappears with the cessation of the individual combination of matter.”61 Alluding to the laws of the conservation of matter and energy, he concludes that “the universe . . . must have existed from and will exist to all eternity or, in other words, the universe cannot have been created.”62 The brilliant victories of science in all fields show that “nature knows neither a supernatural origin nor a supernatural continuation; she, the all-bearing and the all-devouring, is her own Alpha and Omega.”63 The sociologist and philosopher Thomas Masaryk observed that “in Russia, as elsewhere, materialism was an ultra-radical negation of the theocratic view of the universe and life.”64 The Russian radicals had to be more guarded in their published attacks on religion than their German mentors but were more simplistic in accepting the materialist argument as a total refutation of religion and philosophical idealism. Dubnow absorbed this antipathy to metaphysics; he considered German philosophy to be “fuzzy thinking”.65 He rejected that speculative reason provides knowledge of the world independent of the findings of the sciences. At this time Dubnow would probably have insisted that all genuine knowledge is based on sense experience and can be advanced only by means of observation and experiment. He therefore acquired a passion for exactitude and the systematic organization of facts—together with an impatience with epistemological questions that was characteristic also of the writings of the Russian Positivist critics. Pisarev, for example, had insisted that “manifestness is the best guarantee of reality” and that the “impossibility of manifestation excludes any reality of existence.”66 Chernyshevsky criticized Kant by arguing that the eyes “add nothing and subtract nothing from perception.”67 This naive realism remained with Dubnow all his life, even though it was later to be modified. 61  Ludwig Büchner, Force and Matter, or Principles of the Natural Order of the Universe with a System of Morality Based Thereon (New York: Peter Eckler, 1891), p. 52. 62 Ibid., p. 8. 63 Ibid., p. 171. 64 Thomas Garrigue Masaryk, The Spirit of Russia: Studies in History, Literature and Philosophy (2 vols.; 2nd ed.; London: George Allen & Unwin, 1955), II, 48. See also Frederick Albert Lange, The History of Materialism, and Criticism of its Present Importance (New York: the Humanities Press, 1950), p. xi. 65 KZ, I, 191. 66 Dmitry Pisarev, Selected Philosophical, Social and Political Essays (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1958), p. 104. See also his attack on Plato’s “colossal mistakes” (ibid., p. 66). 67 Chernyshevsky’s refutation of Kant’s transcendental deduction of the pure conceptions of the understanding is the reductio ad absurdum of this philosophical naiveté: “We see something, a tree, let us say. Somebody else is also looking at the same object. We look into his eyes. There we see the reflection of the tree in exactly the same form as

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At that time the fashionable ethical system most consistent with scientific materialism was Utilitarianism. The philosophical problem was to define and cope with the gap between “is” and “ought.” It started with the acknowledgement that the principle of utility rests on the assumption that a person’s most important goal in life is seeking pleasure and shunning pain. As a result, terms such as just and unjust, moral and immoral, good and bad can be resolved into pain and pleasure, without recourse to metaphysics. Jeremy Bentham, the father (or grandfather) of Utilitarianism derived from this his principle that actions were right as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the re­verse of happiness. Utilitarianism avoided any intuitive or transcendent source of moral authority. Bentham even rejected the concept of the natural rights of man, but was able to bring his system into harmony with democratic radicalism through the famous phrase that the goal was “the greatest good for the greatest number,” which meant that “everybody is to count for one, nobody for more than one.”68 In this way, the principle of utility did indeed provide the Russian radicals with a criterion for social criticism; the privileges of the Russian nobility did not ensure the greatest good for the greatest number.69 The personal implications of Utilitarianism, however, ultimately depended on what constituted pleasure.70 The Russian radicals had we see it. Well? Two pictures absolutely alike; one we see directly, the other we see mirrored in the pupils of that man’s eyes. That other picture is an exact copy of the first. Well? The eyes add nothing and subtract nothing.” (Selected Philosophical Essays [Moscow: Foreign Lan­guages Publishing House, 1953], pp. 559–60.) 68 Jeremy Bentham, “Principles of Legislation,” Introduction to Contemporary Civilization in the West: A Source Book (Prepared by the Contemporary Civilization Staff of Columbia College) (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1954), II, 313–15; John Stuart Mill, Selected Writings, ed. Maurice Cowling (New York: New American Library, 1968) p 249: Warner Fite, An Introductory Study of Ethics (New York: Longmans, Green and Co., 1903), p. 88. The dilemma of the utilitarian has been expressed by Elie Halévy: “If individuals must act with a distinct consciousness of the consequences of their action, why ought individuals, who are moreover aware that their sympathetic feelings are only transformations of egoism, to accomplish actions about which they only know that their consequences will be useful to others and perhaps harmful to themselves?” (The Growth of Philosophical Radicalism [Boston: Beacon Press, 1955], p. 473.) Bentham said that he was “as selfish a man as could be, but somehow or other selfishness had in him taken the form of benevolence” (Basil Willey, Nineteenth-Century Studies [New York: Harper and Row, 1966], p. 140). 69 Bentham himself had noted that he found his most enthusiastic disciples in Latin America, India, Spain, and especially Russia. Early in his career he had decided that Russia was a more congenial country than England, and said, “I could bring more of my ideas to bear there in a month than here in my whole life” (Gertrude Himmelfarb, Victorian Minds [New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1968], p. 286). 70 “Mill so interpreted utilitarianism as to include ‘duty’ in the category of ‘pleasure,’ and to make room for the pangs of conscience under the rubric of ‘pain’ (ibid., p. 287).



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a ­concept of pleasure which was both narrow and idealistic. They disavowed “frivolous pleasure” and hedonism, inclining toward the puritanical. They insisted that the principle of utility exposed the uselessness of much belles lettres and art, except as propaganda for good deeds.71 And they rejected the capitalist economics of Manchesterism that Bentham and his followers had espoused. The most durable pleasure was to work for the benefit of society and especially the oppressed. Thus, Utilitarianism was interpreted to fit the commitment of the Russian intelligentsia to social betterment and sharp criticism of the regime. Nevertheless, there was a feature of Russian life that offered hope for the future: the venerable old peasant commune, which would be a model for a better future than most western economists were propagating.72 Dubnow was not drawn into the social struggle that increasingly motivated the radical intelligentsia. For him the purpose of life was the fervent acquisition of scientific knowledge and the unceasing struggle for self-perfection. Unlike the Nihilists, he did not seek knowledge for utilitarian reasons; he really wanted to know everything.73 English Utilitarianism did satisfy his moral earnestness. Dubnow’s life-long hero was John Stuart Mill, whose “gospel of individualism” became his “model of clear, honest thinking.”74 Mill’s attack on the tyranny of social conformity provided the best justification for Simon’s rejection of his traditional past. He decided that he had been sacrificed by his parents to the despotism of public opinion and thus wrongly deprived of the general education he 71  Mill came to realize that “those only are happy . . . who have their minds fixed on some object other than their own happiness” (Autobiography [London: Oxford Univ. Press, 1924], p. 120). Windelband’s presentation of this dilemma seems to me more profound: “Theoretically this doctrine rests on the unfortunate inference of the associational psychology, that because every satisfied desire is accom­panied with pleasure, the expectation of the pleasure is, therefore, the ultimate motive of all willing, and every particular object is willed and valued only as a means for gaining this pleasure” (Wilhelm Windelband, A History of Philosophy, trans. James H. Tufts [2 vols.; New York: Macmillan Co., 1901], p. 662). Chernyshevsky defines art as “the reproduction of reality”; the beauty of art is inherently inferior to the beauty of life and nature. “Artistically an engraving is not superior to the picture from which it is copied, but much inferior to it; similarly works of art never attain the beauty and grandeur of reality” (op. cit., p. 365). See Rufus W. Mathewson, Jr., The Positive Hero in Russian Litera­ture (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1958), p. 86; Wellek, op. cit., IV, 257. 72 For Chernyshevsky’s distinction between frivolous and durable pleasure: op. cit., p. 129. 73 In What Is To Be Done? one of the heroes spends six months after his rebirth as a new man reading and then turns to revolutionary action (ibid., p. 231). 74 KZ, I, 100–102. Dubnow said that when he first read On Liberty in English during the winter of 1881–82, he felt he was reading the sacred scriptures in the original (ibid., p. 134).

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needed.75 Mill’s statement in his essay On Liberty was especially inspirational to Dubnow: “If all of mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.”76 Dubnow was never to lose his affection for Mill as his “most beloved teacher” and later he contrasted Mill’s liberal and calm individualism to that of Nietzsche: Mill’s thought was “the transparent air of the mountain heights,” far above “the foggy fumes of the lower swamps full of fever and harm.”77 Tensions resulting from combining materialism and individualism were resolved by an extremely optimistic concept of history which Dubnow culled from the Russian and Western Positivists. While the materialists dethroned the mind as an independent force, they believed in the ability of critical thinking to shape the future. As has been remarked about the eighteenth-century French philosopher, the Marquis de Condorcet, the materialists did not “consider the possibility of the future of mankind taking a form of which [they] would have disapproved.”78 There was nothing intrinsically interesting in the cultural achievements of the past except as stepping stones to the present, since ongoing progress in the sciences would result in the emancipation of humankind. Comte’s law of the three stages—the theological, metaphysical, and positive—in effect relegated the first two stages to anachronisms. Each sphere of real knowledge— spelled out in Comte’s law of the hierarchy of the sciences—was said to go through an evolution which culminated in positive knowledge of the invariable relationships between phenomena. The final science, Comte postulated, was sociology, which would reconcile order and progress and bring true freedom through rational submission to scientific laws.79 75 Ibid., p. 101. 76 Ibid. The quote is found in Mill, Selected Writings, p. 135. On Mill’s image as the “saint of rationalism” and as a defender of the elite against domination by mediocrity, see J.B. Schneewind, ed., Mill: A Collection of Critical Essays (Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1968), pp. 31, 336–37. 77 KZ, I, 102. 78 Patrick Gardiner, “Introduction,” Theories of History, ed. P. Gardiner (Glencoe, Illinois: Free Press, 1959), p. 5. See also the comment of J.B. Bury: “The study of the history of civilization has, in Condorcet’s eyes, two uses. It enables us to establish the fact of Pro­gress, and it should enable us to determine its direction in the future, and thereby to accelerate the rate of progress” (J.B. Bury, The Idea of Progress [New York: Macmillan Co., 1932], p. 211). Condorcet was one of Dubnow’s favorite subjects. 79 James Billington discusses the influence of Comte in Russia (“The Intelligentsia and the Religion of Humanity,” American Historical Review, LXV [July, 1960], 807–21). Because Comte’s law of the three stages de­scribes the evolution of human intelligence, his view of



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In the first half of his twenties Dubnow was sympathetic to the Comtean conception of history, with its sharp distinctions between ongoing periods of development. The Comtean view that progress was essentially the development of man’s intellectual life Dubnow found reinforced by the British historians Henry Thomas Buckle and John Draper, who insisted that rationalistic skepticism was the most powerful force in the forward movement of humanity.80 Dubnow also studied Herbert ­Spencer’s “synthetic philosophy,” remarking that he was proud to be a member of a generation “honored with the true philosophy.”81 Spencer’s vast work organized the biological and social sciences according to his version of the principle of evolutionary development.82 Although Dubnow later moved away from the Comtean version of Positivism to Spencer’s more gradualist view of progress, when he was twenty-one he rejected Spencer’s conclusion that the moving force of history was the struggle of feelings and emotions. He also rejected Marx’s doctrine that the struggle between classes was the major engine of change in history. The paradoxical result during Dubnow’s “period of rebellion” was that thought was a purely physiological reflex, but the key to history was the irreversible progress in man’s ideas. This was his rendition

history has been called a version of the history of religion (Frank E. Manuel, The Prophets of Paris: Turgot, Condorcet, Saint-Simon, Fourier, and Comte [New York: Harper and Row, 1965], pp. 276–77). Science, in Comte’s system, is completely subordinated to man’s social well-being: knowledge is not an end in itself (Edward Caird, The Social Philosophy and Religion of Comte [Glasgow: James Maclehose and Sons, 1885], pp. 3, 140–42). 80 Henry Thomas Buckle (1821–62) was the author of an unfinished but famous attempt to portray history as the development of civilization rather than the chronicle of political and military events (History of Civilization in England [2 vols.; London, 1857–61]; See Hans Kohn, “Introduction” to H.T. Buckle, History of Civilization in England, abridged by Clement Wood [New York: Ungar, 1964]). John Draper (1811–82) was an American scientist and writer. His History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, first published in 1862, was widely read in Russia. See Donald Fleming, John William Draper and the Religion of Science (Philadelphia: Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, 1950). 81  As Gertrude Himmelfarb says, “Spencer was the Victorian philosophe” (Darwin and the Darwinian Revolution [New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1968], p. 222). 82 Spencer’s famous definition was: “Evolution is an integration of matter and concomitant dissipation of motion; during which matter passes from an indefinite, incoherent homogeneity to a definite, coherent heterogeneity; and during which the retained motion undergoes a parallel transformation” (First Principles [Osnabruck: Otto Zeller, 1966], p. 321). Billington discusses Spencer’s influence in Russia (Mikhailovsky and Russian Populism [New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1958], pp. 30, 189). Spencer’s “synthetic philosophy” covers ten volumes: First Principles (1 vol.); Principles of Biology (2 vols.); Principles of Psychology (2 vols.); Principles of Sociology (3 vols.); and Principles of Ethics (2 vols.). For a convenient summary of this series—which itself runs to 650 pages—see F. Howard Collins, Epitome of the Synthetic Philosophy of Herbert Spencer (4th ed.; London: Williams and Norgate, 1897).

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of the disjunction of matter and mind that has been an ongoing motif of modern thought since at least Descartes.83 Dubnow’s blend of ideas from the Haskalah, Russian radicalism, and western liberalism can be seen in several incidents which he relates in the autobiographical account of his early twenties. From June 1880 to April 1884 Dubnow lived in St. Petersburg studying and writing. He returned home to Mstislavl briefly during that time, when he was twenty-one in order to resolve the question of his military service. He successfully obtained an exemption from the army doctors in Mogilev because of poor sight, which he called a “humiliating but not morally reprehensible” evasion.84 After this trip he was joined in the capital by his lady friend, Ida Freidlin, from his Mstislavl circle and one of the girls whose unsuccessful flight to Kiev had occasioned the comment which appears at the head of this chapter. Since Dubnow felt that a religious marriage was out of the question, and Russia had no civil marriage, they lived together without any ceremony. For that era this was a very daring step, not only with respect to our relatives in the provinces, but to our social circle in Petersburg it was no obstacle nor to me, since it was a matter of being true to my convictions.85

Before moving back to Mstislavl he reluctantly agreed to a Jewish wedding but insisted that no friends be present to witness his compromise with social convention and Jewish religious law. Dubnow lived in Mstislavl for about fifteen months, from May 1884 to August 1885, holding himself aloof from every religious practice. Once, after firmly refusing his grandfather’s polite pressure to attend worship services, Dubnow asked himself whether it might not be better to capitulate and avoid hurting his family and town; he concluded that to dissemble out of pity would be hypocritical.86 He could not go to a house of prayer and pretend to converse with a deity whose existence he did not acknowledge. This underlying attitude has been labeled “printsipialnost’ ”—that one’s private life must be an expression of one’s beliefs regardless of emotions

83 On Dubnow’s early attitude to Spencer, Buckle, Draper, and Marx, see KZ, I, 107–108. 84 Ibid., p. 133. 85 Ibid., p. 152. 86 Ibid., p. 176.



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and convenience.87 As Dubnow remarked, if people did not accept the practical consequences of their religion or philosophy, “the world would be full of lies, false religiosity, feigned convictions, and the great meaning of life—the sincere search for truth—would be lost.”88 With Mill’s doctrine of toleration in mind, he wrote in his diary for 1883 about this stubborn insistence on the unity of belief and action: There are two kinds of idealistic fanaticism. The first is desirable and even obligatory for a man of conviction; the second is absolutely dangerous. The first [fanatic] is a man with certain definite convictions who wants to fit his deeds to them. He demands that one’s actions always serve as an exact expression of one’s internal creed; for example, a Positivist or an atheist cannot swear by the name of God nor allow any church ceremony to be performed for his sake. He has to be a fanatic for his ideas, remaining at the same time tolerant of opposite opinions. . . . But there is another type of fanatic, who assumes that his way of thinking is the only true one, persecutes men of opposite ways of thinking, and tries by force and oppression to implant in them that which he considers to be true. This fanaticism, even if sincere, is dangerous and has to be eradicated.89

During these years Dubnow made his most organized attempt to educate himself in all general fields of knowledge. His model was the autodidact Thomas Henry Buckle who, he learned, had used the great sum of money in­herited from his father to purchase a library which became his “home university.”90 In the fall of 1884, after a summer spent reading Russian literature, Dubnow set out on the first cycle of his own “home university” plan, built on “Comte’s classification of the sciences with Spencer’s corrections.” He isolated himself in his study and set out to work thirteen hours a day. “Each day I was to study five subjects from the following disciplines: mathematics, science, sociology includ­ing history, philosophy including psychology and logic, and literature in various languages.”91 Although he rarely managed this schedule and had varied success in different fields, by the end of the winter he felt that he had made noticeable progress. “With special love” he studied Mill’s Logic in the English original and made

87 Abram Tertz defines printsipialnost’ as “a mental habit of referring every matter, however small, concrete or trivial, to lofty and abstract principles” (Abram Tertz [pseud.], On Socialist Realism, trans. George Dennis [New York: Pantheon Books, 1960], p. 31). 88 KZ, I, 176. 89 Ibid., pp. 152–53. 90 Ibid., p. 82. 91  Ibid., p. 177.

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detailed summaries.92 The section on in­duction, especially the chapter on causality, brought him “to ecstasy.” Herbert Spencer, “the new Aristotle,” was his constant reference.93 He devoured books on law, world history, and evolution; Fustel de Coulanges on ancient society, John Lubbock and Edward Tylor on primitive culture, Kuno Fischer on German philosophy, Renan’s Life of Jesus, the New Testament, G.D. Lewes’ Life of Goethe, and Dubnow’s beloved poets Byron, Shelley, Heine, and Victor Hugo.94 The pantheistic effusion of this encyclopedic search for truth is revealed in his thoughts on Robert Mayer’s theory of the preservation and transformation of energy: I remember that clear wintry day when, enflamed with these thoughts, I wandered in the quiet streets of the city and mused, have I not found a substitute for my lost faith in immortality? If the soul is a collectivity of forces and faculties of potential and kinetic energy, woven together with matter, then I will not die completely in the turnover of cosmic power. Later thoughts about the boundless cosmos and the millions of years of prehistoric life froze my new faith, but for some time it burned in my soul.95

In conjunction with this effort to acquire universal knowledge, he attempted to learn a craft: first, woodworking, but unfortunately could never learn to saw properly, and then book­binding, which became a lifelong avocation. Dubnow claims to have been inspired by the example of Spinoza the lens-grinder, Spencer’s teaching on the harmony of mental and physical education, Tolstoy’s doctrine of simplifying one’s life, and Rousseau on the natural life. He recalled the remark of a Jewish merchant in Mstislavl who saw him cutting wood on the veranda and exclaimed, “You wish to do work which any ‘Ivan’ can do?” Yes he did. Manual labor was at the same time a part of his search for self-perfection and a measure of his freedom from the conventions of Mstislavl.96

92 By “logic” Mill means “the science of proof or evidence” rather than an abstract mathematical system (John Passmore, A Hundred Years of Philosophy [London: Gerald Duckworth and Co., 1957], p. 15). 93 KZ, I, 177. Literally, “creator of a new Aristotelianism.” 94 Ibid., p. 178. 95 Ibid., Julius Robert Mayer (1811–1878) was a German physicist who is known as one of the formulators of the mechanical theory of heat. 96 Ibid., pp. 182–83.

Chapter Three

Young Dubnow as a Jewish Positivist The Jewish Press in Nineteenth-century Russia By the middle of 1882 Dubnow had settled down in St. Petersburg with his future wife and was writing regularly for the Russian-language Jewish periodicals. In January 1883 he became book review editor of Voskhod (Sunrise), a journal that was to provide him with a convenient and hospitable means of spreading his ideas for almost twenty-five years.1 Dubnow’s remark that “a whole generation of intellectuals was educated on this central organ of Russian-Jewish literature”2 calls attention to the importance of the ­nineteenth-century serious journal in shaping public opinion. There was no clear dividing line between political and literary journalism in Western Europe until the middle of the nineteenth century. In England, the eighteenth-century reviews had been identified with political positions; during the first quarter of the nine­teenth century, when the format of a modern journal was taking shape, the partisan loyalties of most of the influential magazines was patent. The major journals were either identified with the Whigs or were staunch­ly Tory; the Benthamites used their own magazines—especially the Westminster Review—as organs to propagate their liberal views.3 In Russia, as a result of the limitations on private and profes­sional organizations, public meetings, and the free expressions of opinion even in the universities, the “thick journals” were virtually the only channel ­beginning 1  Dubnow’s initiation into journalism came in 1880 when he wrote a short essay for Russkii Evrei on his home town (September 12, 1880, pp. 1H55–56; signed “S.D.”). This is not included in Dubnow’s “Auto Biblio­graphy.” In 1881 Russkii Evrei published his series “Several Stages in the Development of Jewish Thought,” article #1 of the “Auto Bibliography.” On his enthusiasm in writing this article, see YZ, I, 116–17; he later was amazed that they printed it (ibid., p. 123). At the same time he wrote a short story that was not accepted for publication (ibid., pp. 111–12). In 1881 and 1882 Dubnow published eight articles and one trans­lation in Raszvet and in July, 1881, his first article appeared in Voskhod. 2 KZ, I, 144. 3 On the ideology of the Westminster Review, see Elie Halévy, The Growth of Philosophic Radicalism, trans. Mary Morris (Boston: Beacon Press, 1955), pp. 483–85. On nineteenthcentury English journals, see also R.G. Cox, “The Reviews and Magazines,” The Pelican Guide to English Literature, ed. Boris Ford (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1958) VI, 188–204.

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in the 1830s and 1840s for publicizing any new directions of thought that had emerged in the intimate circles of the intelligentsia. In spite of a censorship which never abated, it was during the reign of Nicholas I that Russian journals became the leaders of public opinion and acquired the peculiar form and coloring they retained until the revolutions of 1917. The career of Vissarion Belinsky, the first in a notable list of journalists who exercised a decisive influence on Russian progressive opinion, was made possible by the magazines (Teleskop, Otechestvennye Zapiski, Sovremennik). Alexander Herzen had an impact on even the highest circles of the Russian administration during the preparatory period before the emancipation of the serfs, through his émigré journal Kolokol, which was officially prohibited but widely circulated in Russia. After the Crimean War the number of journals soared and certain key periodicals tied together the expanding intelligentsia and crystallized new ideologies. Precarious as was their existence, through the use of indirect allusions, “Aesopian language,” and tendentious book reviews, these magazines communicated the principles of critical thought to a public which carefully studied their pages for the hidden messages that were there. Chernychevsky and Dobrolyubov made their reputation through the Sovremennik, and Pisarev dominated the Russkoe Slovo; although these papers were shut down in 1866, the radicals found new outlets such as the revamped Otechestvennye Zapiski, which became the focus of populist ideas in the seventies. The university students who formed the main army of radi­calism were led by the literary press. As Martin Malia observed, “Before the emergence of political conspiracy in the 1870s, these journals were the intelligentsia’s sole means for making the ideal impinge on the real.”4 The history of the Hebrew press is virtually the story of the rise, development and subsequent transformation of the Haskalah. Although none of the early magazines (such as the Me’assef of the early German maskilim or the Bikurei Ha-Ittim of the Austrian maskilim) were long-lived organs for many writers who would hardly have had an audience otherwise;

4 Richard Pipes, ed., The Russian Intelligentsia, p. 14. A convenient summary of Russian radical journalism between 1855 and 1872 is given in Moser, op. cit., pp. 186–89. See also Bernard Pares, Russia Between Reform and Revolution (New York: Schocken Books, 1962), pp. 200–245.



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the bound ­volumes were read in East Europe for years afterwards.5 In Western Europe the Hebrew press had been succeeded by influential Jewish vernacular periodicals such as the London Jewish Chronicle and the Allgemeine Zeitung des Judentums. In Russia, however, the Hebrew and Russian-language press that emerged in the seven years after the Crimean War existed side by side and reflected in different ways the emergence of successive new generations of Russian-Jewish intellectuals and their ideologies. The four main Hebrew papers were at first very moderate and cautious with respect to the political and religious sensibilities of their Jewish readers (and Russian censors).6 The most influential of these papers, Ha-Melitz, had a typical motto: “A mediator between the government and the people, between faith and enlightenment.” These papers, founded by the older generation of maskilim and faithful to the principles of the Berlin Haskalah, provided some information on world affairs and popular scientific knowledge, and encouraged the learning of Russian. They adopted a tone extremely respectful of the government, seeking from the state those changes (especially educational reforms) that would enlighten Russian Jewry. In the early sixties the new generation of Russian-speaking maskilim began a more energetic campaign for Jewish modernization.7 Encouraged by the well-known educator N.I. Pirogov, the first Russian-Jewish paper, Raszvet (Dawn) was started in Odessa in 1861 with the motto “And God said, Let there be light.” Raszvet launched a campaign to encourage the study of Russian and combat Jewish “fanatical elements.” Nevertheless, the government was not enthusiastic. Although widely read, Raszvet did not attract a sufficient number of subscriptions and it closed after 5 On Ha-Me’assef, see Klausner, op. cit. I, 151–64. On Bikurei Ha-Ittim and the other Austrian Haskalah journals, ibid., II, 30–46. Bikurei Ha-Ittim reprinted many articles from Ha-Me’assef, and the whole first volume of Ha-Me’assef was reprinted between 1862 and 1865 (EE, X, 729–30). See also the survey of nineteenth-century Jewish periodicals in JE, IX, 602–40. 6 The first of these journals, Ha-Maggid, was founded in Lyck, Prussia in 1856 for the purpose of informing Russian Jewry of what was transpiring in both the general and Jewish worlds. Ha-Melitz was founded in Odessa in 1862, Ha-Karmel in Vilna during the same year, and the fourth important magazine, Ha-Tzefirah, in Warsaw in 1862. A convenient summary of the Russian-Jewish press in all of its languages is given in EE, XII, 436–40. On the attitudes of the first years of these journals, see S.L. Tsinberg’s Istoria evreiskoi pechati, pp. 30–34, 70–91; Dubnow, Pis’ma, pp. 205–207; Klausner, op. cit., IV, 111–28; Shaanan, op. cit., I, 249–53; Lachover, op. cit., I, Book 2, 194–95. 7 These men were educated in the government rabbinical seminaries of Vilna and Zhitomir and in the universities (Tsinberg, op. cit., p. 37).

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one year. It was immediately succeeded by Zion, an attempt by Odessa Jewish intellectuals to combat prejudice in a more scholarly way and acquaint the Russian public with the history of Judaism. Zion lasted only ten months. Its demise marked the end of the first period of RussianJewish journalism.8 In the late sixties, at the same time that the Hebrew press, especially HaMelitz, caused considerable controversy through Kovner’s arti­cles criticizing the literary style of the Haskalah and Lilienblum’s call for reform of Jewish law, a new Russian-Jewish weekly, the Odessa Den (The Day), appeared. Den enthusiastically supported Russification as the means to Jewish emancipation. Its motto was “the fusion of the interests of the Jews with the rest of the population,” which meant that only religion should differentiate the Jews in Russian society. Since the Jewish problem was approached not as a national, but a social and economic issue, Den contained articles emphasizing the economic advantage to Russia if the Pale were abolished. The magazine pointed out that the Jews were a practical people talented in trade and would foster the growth of capitalism throughout Russia if given the chance. Den was closed down after the Odessa pogrom of 1871.9 The Pisarevian ideas of the radical maskilim and the ideology of Den mark the high point in the optimistic faith of the modernized sector of Russian Jewry that it was moving in the direction of acceptance into Russian life, perhaps even the equivalent of the emancipation of the Jews occurring in the West. At the same time, the increased stress on critical realism and Russification indicates that the earlier Haskalah ideal of secular know­ledge peacefully harmonized with religion and Hebrew with modern lan­guages had lost its momentum. The middle seventies were a period of quiescence in the Russian-Jewish press. There was no Russian language Jewish periodical of consequence and several of the major Hebrew journals declined or were inactive. Nevertheless, new journalistic tendencies began to appear which set the stage for the totally different ideological atmosphere that emerged in the eighties after the pogroms. These slowly forming new attitudes were in large measure responsible for the animosity which greeted Dubnow’s early articles. 8 Tsinberg, op. cit., pp. 45–70. See also Moshe Perlmann, “Raszvet 1860–61: The Origins of the Russian-Jewish Press,” Jewish Social Studies, XXIV, No. 3 (July, 1962), 162–82. 9 On Den, see Alter Drujanow, Pinsker u-zemano (Jerusalem: Reuben Mass, 5713 [1952/53]), pp. 60–95; and Tsinberg, op. cit., pp. 172–83.



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In 1868 Peretz Smolenskin founded a monthly, Ha-Shahar (The Dawn), published in Vienna but directed primarily to the Russian-Jewish public. Smolen­skin’s early life was typical of those maskilim who matured in the sixties. He had a traditional yeshiva education and had embraced the Haskalah as an adolescent; after a few years with the Hasidim he made his way to Odessa, where he published some essays on Hebrew literature, apparently under the influence of the well-known Russian literary critic Vissarion Belinsky.10 Ha-Shahar’s announced aims included the furtherance of Haskalah and the Hebrew language. Smolenskin’s own novels, published serially in the monthly, were pessimistic descriptions of the ignorance and corruption of the old Jewish milieu, as seen by young heroes who “wandered in the paths of life” (the title of one of his books) searching for modern wisdom. However, in the seventies his series of essays indicate that he was groping for a new direction beyond the Haskalah. Smolenskin was an energetic polemicist whose ideas emerged as a result of what he opposed. His principal articles denounced the doctrine that the Jews were, in their respective countries, primarily a religious congregation. The idea that the essence of Judaism was religion, widely espoused in Germany, he attributed to Mendelssohn, insisting that the Mendelssohnian Haskalah would eventually cause the total dis­appearance of Judaism. The proponents of this concept, he asserted, by abandoning the messianic principle as particularistic, had destroyed the hope for redemption which symbolized the Jews’ sense of unity; by mini­mizing the importance of Hebrew the reformers had also undermined Jewry’s survival as a non-territorial “nation of the spirit.” Smolenskin main­tained that “without Hebrew there is no Torah, and without Torah there is no People of Israel.”11 Hebrew should be the language of Jewish scholarship which would transmit the unique nature of Jewish ethical monotheism and the Judaic mission. Smolenskin did not yet see the necessity for a practical realization of the idea of redemption nor did he advocate the use of Hebrew as a modern spoken language.

10 On Peretz Smolenskin (1842–1885) and Ha-Shahar see Klausner, op. cit., V, 11–229; Lachover, op. cit., II, Book 1, 12–22; Shaanan, pp. 36–66; Tsinberg, op. cit., pp. 192–205; Charles H. Freundlich, Peretz Smolenskin, His Life and Thought (New York: Bloch Publishing Co., 1965); EE, XIV, 402–407. Spiegel, op. cit., p. 225, discusses the Russian Positivists’ influence on Smolenskin. 11  Peretz ben Mosheh Smolenskin, Ma’amarim [Essays] (Jerusalem: Keren Smolenskin, 5685 [1924/25], I, 173.

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In Vienna he seemed to have taken special notice of the emerging Balkan and Czech nationalist revivals.12 In 1871 he made a trip to Romania under the auspices of the Alliance Israélite Universelle, where he observed the obvious vulnerability of Jews to persecution by the new Romanian state. Later in the decade, he began to emphasize “national feeling” instead of “Torah” and thus moved in the direction of a theory of diaspora nationalism not unlike that which Dubnow later espoused.13 Smolenskin was one of the first to reevaluate in a modern, secular form the particularist aspects of Jewish identity, which had been least appealing to the reformist mentality, but which still could be held to characterize most of East European Jewry.14 Meanwhile, in the late seventies, the influence of Russian radical thought had begun to appear in new ways. Aaron Lieberman, a contributor to Ha-Shahar, published a few issues of Ha-Emet (The Truth) which made an attempt to spread socialism in the Hebrew language. Soon afterwards, Morris Winchevsky did the same thing for a brief period through Asifat Hakhamim (Assembly of the Wise).15 Signs of growing disillusionment with the ideology of Russification, indicative of a lost faith in the imminent emancipation of Russian Jews and the impact of rising anti-Semitism throughout Europe began to appear in the revived Russian-Jewish press. Ha-Melitz resurfaced in a more modern form, and two new Russian language journals were founded in 1879. One of them, Raszvet staffed by a group of Russified Jewish intellectuals, had apparently been affected by the populist concept of the debt of the intelligentsia to the peasants and therefore emphasized in this journal the needs of the Jewish masses.16 Although Raszvet and the

12 Smolenskin seems to have felt the anomaly of the Jews caught between the two conflicting national sides during the Polish uprising of 1863 (Shaanan, op. cit., p. 43). He drew on the national movements of central Europe in the 1870s and on the writings of Moses Hess (ibid., pp. 48, 60–61). See also B.Z. Dinaburg [Dinur], “On Am Olam and its Influence” [in Hebrew], in Peretz ben Moshe Smolenskin, Ma’amarim [Essays] (Jerusalem: Keren Smolenskin, 5685 [1924/25]), I, xxxiii–xxxvi. 13 Freundlich, op. cit., p. 222. Yehezkel Kaufmann discusses the similarity between Smolenskin’s views and Dubnow’s later theory (Ben netivot [Between Paths: Chapters in the Study of National Thought] [2nd ed.; Haifa: Bet ha-sefer ha-re’ali, 1952], p. 39). 14 Another contributor to Ha-Shahar in the late seventies, Eliezar ben Yehudah, was even more clearly influenced by the nationalist ferment surrounding the Russo-Turkish war of 1877–78, and called for practical plans to colonize Palestine and use Hebrew as a modern spoken language (Tsinberg, op. cit., p. 235; Shaanan, op. cit., II, 126–32). 15 On Ha-Emet (1877) and Asifat Hakhamim (1878), see Shaanan, op. cit., II, 102–108; Tsinberg, op. cit. V, pp. 217–32. On Lieberman (1844–80) and his influence, see D. ­Weinryb, “A.B. Lieberman: the Development of His Convictions” [in Hebrew], Zion, IV (1939), 318–48. 16 Tcherikower, Yehudim, p. 376; Tsinberg, op. cit., pp. 239–40.



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second journal, Russkii Evrei (The Russian Jew), continued (in the tradition of Den) to advocate Russification as a means to emancipation, they also reemphasized the importance of Jewish agricultural training on a large scale.17 The watershed in the development of post-Haskalah thought came after the pogroms of 1881–82, which crystallized the new Jewish nationalist mood. These pogroms had a profound psychological impact on the Jewish intelligentsia. (By twentieth-century standards, the extent of the violence and the number of people murdered was relatively small.) Jewish students who had previously considered themselves secular Russians pub­licly proclaimed a return to their people, and a number of important figures were stirred into reevaluating their previous assumptions about European progress.18 Leon Pinsker, the Odessa physician who had been an editor of the short-lived Zion, published in September 1882 a historic pam­phlet, Self-Emancipation, which called for Jewish nationalterritorial rebirth. Pinsker had come to see this as the only solution to an ineradicable hatred generated by the abnormality of Jews who lived everywhere only as guests. Disturbed by the appearance of anti-Semitism in Germany and shaken by the vigor of Russian Judeophobia, he in­sisted that Jews without a homeland would remain both a terrifying specter and a powerless victim in the popular mind.19 Emigration swelled during the pogroms, and a small sector of it took on the character of a Jewish colonization move­ment. A number of student groups, calling themselves by the name of an essay by Smolenskin entitled “Am Olam” (The Eternal People), set out for America to establish

17 Tsinberg, op. cit., p. 243. Raszvet [Dawn, the second journal of this name] lasted from August, 1879 through January, 1883; Russkii Evrei [The Russian Jew] survived from August, 1879 to December, 1884. 18 On the response of the Jewish intellectuals to the pogroms and an attempt at selfdefense in Odessa, see Tcherikower, op. cit., pp. 375–82. On the pogroms, the policies of Ignatiev, and the general shock which they engendered among the Jews, see the series of articles published in He-Avar [The Past]: Vol. IX (September, 1962), 3–88; Vol. X (May, 1963), 5–149. 19 Leon Pinsker (1821–91) was the son of a distinguished Hebrew scholar. He received a medical degree from the University of Moscow and became a leading physician in Odessa, where he was active in the Society for the Spread of Enlightenment among Jews. He published his pamphlet anonymously in German. He had developed his views no later than March, 1882 when he had a conversation with Rabbi Adolf Jellinek in Vienna and expressed these new ideas (A. Druyanow, op. cit., pp. 149–50). For a comparison of ­Pinsker’s and Herzl’s views on anti-Semitism and Jewish nationalism, see Kaufmann, op. cit., pp. 53–85.

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a­ gricultural colonies.20 Several hundred students—including Dubnow’s brother Wolf—left for Palestine with the same intention.21 Associations for support of the settlements in Palestine began in many cities of the Pale and the Jewish press was preoccupied with the question of where emigration should be directed.22 Smolenskin, Pinsker, and Lilienblum advocated Palestine; Dubnow and Voskhod supported America. By 1884, an association of Hovevei Tsiyon (Lovers of Zion) was organized at a conference in Kattowitz (Katowice was at that time part of the German province of Silesia). The ideals of Hibbat Tsiyon (Love of Zion) were enthusiastically adopted by Raszvet and dominated the Hebrew press, especially Ha-Melitz, during the 1880s. Although Russification continued as a social process, as an ideology it was moribund. Voskhod, begun in 1881, did not support “Palestinophilism” (as Hibbat Tziyon was called in the RussianJewish press), but defended as best it could the ideas of civil emancipation and inner Jewish reform.23 The journal continued to promote the cosmopolitan critical realism, of which Dubnow became the chief exponent. The Budding Career of a Russian-Jewish Critic Dubnow was fortunate to make a connection with Voskhod early on. Although at this point he had nothing novel to say to the general public about Russian affairs, he did have a perspective which would attract the 20 On the Am Olam movement, see Abraham Menes, “The Am Olam Movement,” YIVO Annual of Jewish Social Science, IV (1949), 11: Menes notes that “the Am Olam movement regarded the Jewish problem as essentially socio-economic and political, not cultural and national.” See also, H. Turtel, “The Am Olam Movement,” He-Avar, X (May, 1963), 124–43. 21 For a comparison between the Am Olam and BILU groups, see Tcherikower, The Early Jewish Labor Movement, pp. 47–50. For Wolf Dubnow’s letters on his experiences in Pales­ tine, see Alter Druyanow, Ketavim le-toldot hibbat tsiyon [Sources for the History of the Love of Zion Movement] (Tel Aviv: Ahdut, 1932), III, 516–20, 525–30, 550–53, 560–52, 584–86, 593, 601–603, 612–14, 659–61. 22 On the impact of the pogroms on migration, see Mark Wischnitzer, To Dwell in Safety: The Story of Jewish Migration Since 1800 (Philadel­phia: The Jewish Publication Soci­ ety, 1948), pp. 37–66. Joel S. Geffen discusses the debate over the migration (“Whither: To Palestine or to America in the Pages of the Russian Hebrew Press Ha-Melitz and Ha-Yom? [1880–1890], an annotated documentary,” American Jewish Historical Quarterly LIX, No. 2 [December, 1969], 179–200). 23 Voskhod [Sunrise] appeared in 1881; the following year the Nedelnaia Khronika Vos­ khoda [Weekly Chronicle of Voskhod] was added. These two magazines continued pub­ lication (with the exception of suspen­sions by government edict) for twenty-six years. Voskhod’s program called for “progress outside and within Jewry. . . . Resolute and free expression as an instrument of struggle against all obstacles, external and internal, to the proper development of Rus­sian Jewry” (Frumkin, et al., eds., Russian Jewry, p. 261).



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attention of readers of that journal. He was fortunate to enter the Russian-Jewish literary world at the beginning of the eighties, as the revival of the Jewish press was making possible for the first time a class of professional Jewish writers. Almost none of the nineteenth-century maskilim had been able to depend on their writing for a major source of income. Modern Hebrew books were pri­vately printed, usually with the help of subventions from patrons, until the mid-nineties when the first professional publishing company, Ahiasaf, was established by the Hibbat Tsiyon movement.24 The way in which those major writers before Dubnow’s generation had moved back and forth from Hebrew to Russian whenever a new opportunity arose is indicative of the precarious nature of professional Jewish journalism.25 Ha-Melitz began to pay honoraria to its writers in 1883, the first East European Jewish publication to do so. By 1888 Hebrew journalism had developed so rapidly that both Ha-Melitz and Ha-Tzefirah became dailies.26 Voskhod, therefore, did for Dubnow what the Russian radical journalists of the sixties accomplished for those intellectuals who made their way to the university from non-noble social origins. Martin Malia noted that “if worse came to worst, a Bakunin or a Herzen could make it up with father and find refuge on the family estate; a Belinsky, a Chernyshevsky or a Dobrolyubov, if they wished to exist as ‘human beings’— that is, with dignity and self-respect—needed the freedom of a livelihood which permitted them to escape from the oppression of their origins yet which did not make them dependent on the state.”27 Paradoxically, the 24 Meyer Waxman, A History of Jewish Literature (Vol. IV, Part 2; 2nd ed. revised; New York: Thomas Yoseloff, 1960), pp. 130–31. See also his remarks in Vol. III, 333–34. There were, of course, many printers of Hebrew books which issued religious and some secular works. See, for example, the description of the famous Romm Publishing Company of Vilna in Israel Cohen, Vilna (“Jewish Communities Series”) (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1943), pp. 328–31. 25 Judah Gordon was the book review editor of Voskhod prior to Dubnow and then associate editor of Ha-Melitz. The career of J.L. Kantor (1849–1916) is even more striking in this regard. Kantor made his debut in Ha-Melitz in the seventies demanding the introduction of “good taste” into Hebrew literature. While in Berlin studying medicine, he assisted the editor of Ha-Tzefirah and wrote for Ha-Shahar. In the early eighties he edited the Russkii Evrei and a short-lived monthly Evreiskaia Obozrenie. He often contributed to Voskhod. In 1886 he started the first Hebrew daily Ha-Yom and the following year edited a Hebrew monthly. In 1890 he became assistant editor of Ha-Melitz. During the last part of his life he was a government rabbi in Libau (EE, IX, 244–45). 26 Waxman, op. cit., IV, Part I, 434–45. A further indication of the social development of the Hebrew press and its audience was the fact that Ha-Melitz and Ha-Tzefirah became dailies in the late 1880s. 27 Pipes, ed., The Russian Intelligentsia, p. 11.

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e­ conomic ­back­wardness of nineteenth-century Russia may have contributed favorably to the material circumstances of minor writers. Richard Pipes remarked that “because the country was predominantly agricultural, and also suffered from a large surplus rural population, the educated class was assured of cheap food and lodging, and servants.”28 The average Russian intellectual lived modestly, but could devote himself to the pursuit of knowledge. Voskhod enabled Dubnow to earn about sixty rubles a month in the 1880s, a minimum subsistence even when he moved back to ­Mstislavl (Dubnow remarked bitterly on his publisher’s stinginess), but until the age of forty he had no alternative source of income.29 Adolph Landau, the publisher of the monthly Voskhod and the weekly Chronicle of  Voskhod, was the second successful entrepreneur in the RussianJewish press. The first professional publisher was Alexander Tsederbaum, who started Ha-Melitz in 1860 in Odessa and three years later added a Yiddish supplement, Kol Mevasser (The Herald), the first important periodical in that language. In the seventies Tsederbaum moved to St. Petersburg, established his own printing press, and tried his hand at an unsuccessful Russian language paper before reviving Ha-Melitz at the end of the decade.30 Landau also owned the press on which his journal was printed, and like Tsederbaum, he wrote editorials on Russian-Jewish politics for the weekly Voskhod. Tsederbaum thought highly of his literary opinions; Landau prided himself on his political bravery. Through his contacts with some government figures, Landau was allowed to publish Voskhod without prior censorship, and he took advan­tage of this privilege to print articles somewhat critical of official policies. “Not rarely” he was called in to receive a warning.31 In 1891 Voskhod was suspended for six months.32 28 Ibid., p. 40. 29 KZ, I, 223. His last meeting with Landau, which recalled to him again the suffering of his youth and the opportunities Voskhod offered him, is described on pp. 395–96. Dubnow briefly attracted the patronage of a government censor who arranged for him to do some translations (KZ, I, 140, 142–43). He was also commissioned in 1884 to prepare a report on the history of Russian legislation concerning the Jews for the Pahlen Commission investigating the Jewish problem (ibid., pp. 163–65). 30 On Tsederbaum (1816–1893), see Israel Getzler, Martov, a Political Biography of a Russian Social Democrat (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1967) pp. 1–3. The well-known Menshevik leader Julius Martov was Tsederbaum’s grandson. See Klausner, op. cit., IV, 120–23; Tsinberg, op. cit., pp. 72–78, 95–110, 184–87; K, XV, 786–87. 31  KZ, I, 145. On Landau (1841–1902), see Saul M. Ginsburg, Amolike Peterburg [By-Gone Petersburg], Vol. I of Historishe Werk, New Series (New York: ‘Cyco’ Bicher Farlag, 1944), pp. 170–83; EE, X, 17–18. He had studied at the Vilna Rabbinical Seminary. 32 KZ, I, 258–59. It was suspended again in 1903 for six months. An issue of Voskhod was once held up so that certain pages of an article by Dubnow, held offensive by the censor, could be removed (ibid., p. 232).



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Voskhod was an impressive achievement by any standard. Its circulation was never high but the quantity and quality of the articles were.33 The first and largest section of the average monthly issue, often running to two hundred pages, contained sociological and historical studies, poetry, and serialized fiction. The second part, entitled “Contemporary Chronicle,” contained reports from Jewish centers outside Russia. The “Literary Chronicle” at the end of the magazine was composed of long essays and about a dozen short book reviews. Entire books were often published as supplements. Dubnow remarked that Landau “knew nothing about scientific and artistic questions” and did not edit the articles of his writers. He found the resulting freedom of expression gratifying, but later thought he would have been better served by an editor who would have restrained him from “formulas that were too sharp.”34 In 1883, Dubnow wrote a notorious article attacking traditional Jewish religion and nationhood which brought the cancellation of “five hundred subscribers” and a protesting deputation of St. Petersburg notables.35 Landau merely advised him to write under pseudonyms for a while;36 this he did for four years. Landau’s attitude may have been prompted by the fact that the monthly could not have appeared without Dubnow’s extensive contributions. His articles between 1880 and 1890 filled over two thousand pages of Voskhod, and he continued to supply articles at this rate until almost the end of the century.37 In the main part of the journal Dubnow frequently published essays on problems of contemporary Russian-Jewish life and studies of Jewish history, and for fifteen years hardly a month passed without one

33 For example, an announcement at the end of the December, 1887 issue indicates that there were 2,613 subscriptions to Voskhod. The first seven provinces accounted for more than half the subscriptions and they were areas outside the old areas of Jewish settlement: Kherson (300), Ekaterinoslav (225), Kiev (220), Petersburg (170), Taurida (169), Podol­ skaya (155), and Moscow (99). 34 KZ, I, 146. 35 Ibid., pp. 159, 180, 186. 36 Ibid., p. 166. Dubnow did not have complete freedom. There were a few times when Landau modified something he wrote; once he removed the word “great” from an article by Dubnow entitled “The Great French Revolution and the Jews” (ibid., p. 226). In Dub­ now’s article on Jewish school re­form, Landau eliminated the preface and added critical footnotes of his own (ibid., p. 180). Another time, Landau added a footnote rejecting the value of Yiddish literature (ibid., p. 225). Landau also added a patriotic phrase to an article by Dubnow (ibid., p. 257). 37 He published 272 reviews between 1883 and 1895; he reviewed 141 Hebrew books, 67 Russian, 26 German, 20 Yiddish, 11 French, and one Polish (Sloutsky, “Kritikus,” He-Avar, VIII, 43).

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of his long reviews or groups of short book notices in the back section of the magazine. In his first few years as a journalist, “Kritikus” (as Dubnow called himself ) was the most daring young exponent of Positivism in the Jewish press. He had absorbed some of the style and technique of Belinsky, Dobrolyubov and Pisarev, and became prolix,38 self-assured, tough-minded, indignant, and didactic. The self-assured tone of his reviews caused the Yiddish writer Jacob Dinenson to comment on first meeting Dubnow in person that he had expected Kritikus to be “extremely formidable and severe.”39 Dubnow’s early articles on historical themes often used the Aesopian language that Russian publicists devised to overtly hide and indirectly reveal the drift of their arguments. He was drawn to historical subjects because in this way he could avoid upsetting the censors; only a few sentences in the concluding paragraph of an article pinned down its relevance to “disturbing questions of the day.”40 (Later he minimized the intrinsic value of what he later called these “compilations,” but their preparation certainly contributed to his historical knowledge.)41 On the rare occa­sions when he wrote directly on political affairs, he used other standard “Aesopian” methods, as they were called, to damn the regime while ostensibly praising it.42 His book reviews also provided occasions for the discussion of general ideas and issues, where he could castigate retrogressive social tendencies and encourage progressive ones.43 As he remarked, “True to the tradition of Russian criticism . . . I developed my radical ideas, discussing more on the pretext of the book than on the books themselves.”44

38 A number of the reviews ran from fifteen to twenty pages. 39 KZ, I, 218–19. 40 His article on the French Revolution (#81) advocated emancipation of the Jews, as did his article on the settlement of Jews in America (#8). In his article on the Frankists (#14) he dealt with the question of needed religious reforms (see KZ, I, 154), and in his article on Shabbatai Zevi (#11) with the dangers of mysticism. 41  See Dubnow’s letter to Samuel Linick, who wrote a master’s essay on him (Sefer Dubnow, pp. 369–70). 42 His editorial on the May Laws (#10) and a commissioned article on the reign of Alexander III use obvious Aesopian devices (KZ, I, 137, 142–43). 43 For example: #19, #20, #21, #26, #32, #33, #54, #55, #69, all encourage progressive tendencies. 44 KZ, I, 147. “The writing of articles on literary criticism by its essence led me to ideological analysis” (ibid., p. 147).



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When Kritikus did address himself directly to the book being reviewed, his highest praise was to designate its contents “useful.”45 That is, utilitarian. A book was useful if it was solidly based on facts,46 if it offered statistics on the real conditions of economic and social life,47 and if it presented new and important documents from the archives.48 Facts were useful, however, only if they described a significant aspect of reality;49 nothing irritated Kritikus more than pedantry.50 Metaphysics was not useful. Germany philosophy, especially of the Hegelian school, Dubnow called a pretentious “inflation of words.”51 Modern educational methods especially interested Dubnow so that Kritikus carefully evaluated textbooks and stories for the young.52 In fiction Kritikus demanded clarity of style and realism of content. Novels were a “mirror to life”;53 the representative social types that appeared in novels should be accurate, their motivation consistent, and the conflicts between them illuminating.54 “Correct psychological analysis” was a sine qua non of good writing.55 In the tradition of Russian civic criticism, Dubnow sometimes discussed the characters in a novel as though they were real individuals and their fate exemplified the social process. The narrative poems of Judah Leib Gordon (whom Dubnow considered “the Jewish Nekrasov”) dramatized the shortsightedness of the traditionally religious;56 the Galician stories of Karl Emil Franzos illustrated the pathos in the rift between fathers and sons;57 the novels of Peretz Smolenskin demonstrated the hardships encountered in the search for a modern education;58 the pamphlet series published by Ben-Avigdor (the pen-name of Abraham Leib Shalkovich) revealed the “statics and dynamics of life.”59

45 #69 (December, 1887), pp. 14–15. Useless: #104, p. 26. Useful: #56 (March), p. 31; #56 (June), p. 22; #79 (April), p. 34. 46 (October, 1887), p. 22. #5, pp. 1418–20. 47 #47 (October, 1887), p. 1. 48 #22; also #54. 49 #22; also #54. 50 #20 (March, 1883), pp. 27–28. 51  KZ, I, 190–91; KZ, III, 147. #90 (February, 1890), p. 16. 52 #87 (October, 1889); #96 (October, 1890), #127 (July, 1894). 53 #85 (July, 1889), p. 32. 54 #124, pp. 14–15, illustrates this usage. 55 #75, p. 39. 56 #35 (July, 1884), p. 43. 57 #48. Karl Emil Franzos (1848–1904) wrote stories illustrating the life of Galician Jews. 58 #66. 59 #114, The title of #132 is “Literature of Statics and Dynamics.”

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Most of the literature that Kritikus reviewed was, he felt, so poorly constructed, slovenly in style, and faltering in conception, that he continually mourned “our poor belles lettres” and set out to “clean the Augean stables of Jewish literature.”60 He advised one unfortunate writer whom he called “the village fool of neo-Hebraic literature” to be silent forever.61 Dubnow corrected the faulty Russian grammar of some,62 advised Hebrew authors not to slavishly imitate biblical style but incorporate into their language the later Mishnaic vocabulary,63 and cautioned Yiddish writers to fit their style to the level of their audience.64 He insisted that Hebrew novels must not rely on coincidences and contrived suspense,65 and bemoaned the inability of Jewish essayists to write full and systematic monographs like those which appeared in the German-Jewish periodicals.66 Kritikus disliked defensive display by Jewish notables;67 he himself never hesitated to attack Jew-haters, regardless of their eminence. If he had to speak about the government in Aesopian language, he could openly rebuke Eduard von Hartmann, Nikolai Kostomarov, and Ivan Aksakov.68 When the rumor spread that Leo Tolstoy had called an irritating journalist a zhid (like the English kike it is a pejorative), Dubnow wrote an article asserting that Tolstoy could not have done this and thereby elicited a suitable denial from the master.69 In terms of the history of modern Jewish literature, Dubnow would seem to be the most important Jewish literary critic of the 1880s and early 1890s. One of his achievements was his recognition of emerging Yiddish literature. Despite his firm belief that the advanced Jewish intelligentsia would speak and write in Russian, Dubnow came to realize—over the objections of Landau and others—that Yiddish was a valuable medium for education and artistry. Kritikus accorded high praise to Shalom Jacob

60 #146, p. 128. KZ, I, 148. 61  #96, pp. 50–54. 62 #44, p. 32; #68, p. 28; #127, p. 42. 63 #64, p. 15. 64 #66, p. 30; #69, pp. 26–27; #85, p. 24. 65 Especially against the Yiddish writer Shomer: #63, p. 11; #93, pp. 36–37; against R.A. Braudes: #75, pp. 31–32; against I.M. Ge: #78, pp. 34–35. 66 #59, p. 9. 67 Bogrov told him that Jews should not advertise their Jewishness, KZ, I, 160. 68 On Hartman, #41; on Kostomarov, #28; on Aksakov, #60. Other anti-Semitic books reviewed include #29, #41, #84. Dubnow criticized any defensive interpretation of Jewish history; e.g. #37, p. 107. His opposi­tion to the idealization of Jewish history: #79, August, pp. 50–52. 69 KZ, I, 228–29.



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Abramovitch (Mendele Mokher Seforim, Mendele the Bookseller), the first of the great Yiddish writers as well as a master of Hebrew prose. Mendele’s classic portraits of both humorous and tragic characters of the Jewish shtetl Dubnow dubbed “collective types” on the order of Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin’s, a major Russian satirist.70 He singled out the first published story of Solomon Rabinowitz (Sholem Aleikhem) for enthusiastic acclaim; the author later acknowledged that this review encouraged him to continue his literary career.71 Dubnow reported in detail on all of Sholem Aleikhem’s early satirical writings. Dubnow was quite discriminating as long as a writer remained within the realistic tradition. He detested sentimental idealization of Jewish life as well as any veiled anti-Semitic caricature. However, Kritikus had no sympathy with non-realistic literary movements and dismissed the first appearances of literary modernism in Hebrew and Yiddish as pretentious and chaotic. His harsh words on this aspect of the early writings of Y.L. Peretz provoked a well-known coolness between them.72 It is fair to say, as Yehuda Slutsky concluded in his detailed study of Kritikus, that despite their historical importance the value of Dubnow’s review articles to critical theory is therefore not great.73 Kritikus/Externus on the Backwardness of Russian Jewry Between 1881 and 1884, Dubnow published five long essays which dealt with what he deemed were the irrational aspects and social defects of Judaism. In these essays, he advanced arguments for inner reform in 70 #112. (February–March), p. 50. Also #85, pp. 21–22; #93, pp. 27–29; #65, pp. 36–37. 71  Sh. Aleikhem, Hayyei adam [A Man’s Life], trans. Y.D. Berkovitz (2 vols.; Tel Aviv: Dvir, 1959), II, 580. See Niger-Charney, “Simon Dubnow as Literary Critic,” YIVO Annual of Jewish Social Science, I (1946), 312; I.D. Berkowitz, ed., Dos Sholem Aleikhem Buch (2nd ed. New York: Ikup farlag, 1958), pp. 176–78; He-Avar, VIII, 58. Dubnow carefully re­viewed Sholem Aleikhem’s other work: #67, pp. 12–13; #69, pp. 21–22; #77, pp. 19–22; #85, pp. 25–28; #93, pp. 23–27; #96, pp. 34–36. Dubnow later became good friends both with Mendele (c. 1836–1917) and Sholem Aleikhem (1859–1916), two of the greatest Jewish writers of his time. 72 Against Peretz: #126 (October, 1894), pp. 30–31; #39 (1887), p. 10. KZ, I, 208–209, 2.25; KZ, III, 124. Dubnow also attacked Berdichevski for the same modernist sins (#112, May, p. 34). On these polemics, see He-Avar, VIII, 59; Nachman Meisel, Yitshok Leibush Peretz un zein Dor Shreiber, [I.L. Peretz and Writers of his Generation] (New York: Yiddisher Kultur Farband, 1951, pp. 123–25, 333. On the “modernist” and “decadent” elements in Peretz’s writings, see Isaiah Rabinovich, Major Trends in Modern Hebrew Fiction, trans. M. Roston (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1968), pp. 25–26. 73 #112 (February–March), p. 50. Also #85, pp. 21–22; #93, pp. 27–29; #65, pp. 36–37.

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­ reparation for Jewish emancipa­tion, summarizing “several stages” in the p history of Jewish thought. He criticized Smolenskin’s views on the Haskalah, Pinsker’s concept of self-emancipation, and the nationalist ideas of the Hovevei Tziyon (Lovers of Zion).74 These themes appeared in his reviews and historical essays as well and constituted a coherent point of view representing a phase in Dubnow’s thought in which he attempted to apply a positivist conception of reason to religion and a positivist conception of progress to the future development of Russian Jewry. The pen name used during this time for one of his most important articles was “Externus,” chosen to convey his apparently disinterested stance. Believing that reason was the antithesis of faith, as a positivist Dubnow rejected the supernatural and historical authority of tradition and claimed to base his views of life on empirical observation and utilitarian calculation.75 Nevertheless, he agreed that without some “cosmologicalphilosophical” principles “the human mind would be subject to the play of the elements.” Religion “gives the majority of men, who are unable to rise above a generalization of a theological character, a world view . . . [that] allows one to orient oneself and define one’s relation to the outside.”76 More specifically, religion has “moral-ethical” function: For the majority of men who do not achieve the degree of spiritual development in which egotism and altruism balance themselves automatically . . . religion presents sanctions and a criterion of morality. . . . It inspires man’s elementary concepts of justice and injustice; it subjects his actions in this sphere to the higher control of the Force which religion proclaims as the reason for all existence. This control compels the majority of believers to refrain from too sharp manifestations of egotistical feelings at the expense of the altruistic.77 74 The five major articles are: #1, “Several Stages in the History of Jewish Thought,” Russkii Evrei, 1881; #16, “What Kind of Self-emancipation do the Jews need?” Voskhod, 1883; #23, “Palestinophilism and its Main Advocate (Smolenski) [sic],” Voskhod, 1883; #31, “A Last Word on the Condemned Jewry,” Voskhod, 1884; #39, “On the Reform of the Jewish School,” Voskhod, 1885. 75 Dubnow was so committed to the assumption that all valid knowledge should correspond to the methods of natural science that he strikingly misinterpreted Maimonides’ Aristotelianism. In praise of Maimonides, Dubnow asserted that, “According to Maimonides, the highest perfection consists in being an actualized thinker, that is, to know everything that a man can know about nature [Dubnow’s emphasis]. . . . If the reader will remember the generally accepted classification of sciences in the Middle Ages: grammar, rhetoric, etc., then he will be able to evaluate this genius who even in the twelfth century excluded all medieval rubbish from the sciences and proclaimed the necessity of studying mathematics and natural science” (#1, p. 1390). 76 #16 (May–June), p. 238. 77 Ibid., pp. 238–239.



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However, “the man in whom strength of thought and [moral] habits were virtually inborn” did not need the external “threat of punishment or hope of reward.”78 Dubnow viewed the “changing and national” cultic elements as the most deplorable aspect of historical religion; morality, he asserted, must be the universal essence of theo­logy. “The stronger the moral, the purer and higher is the religion.”79 He deduced from this hypothesis the idea that the kernel of Judaism “is close to philosophical deism.”80 An Enlightenment trope, Dubnow may have also been alluding to the Comtean “religion of humanity,” since he went on to emphasize that “whatever credo a man confesses—Christianity, Judaism or Positivism,”81 he can still appreciate this kernel: Perhaps the Positivists are right, that the religion of the future is rational religion; however, there is no reason to expect that Judaism will disappear. In its purified Westernized form Judaism is as rational and respectable as Christianity. Until the religion of the future appears, that the Positivists anticipate, there is no reason why Judaism, with its emphasis on reason and justice, is not worthy of finding adherents.82

His opinion of biblical Judaism was that of Spinoza qualified, to a cer­tain extent, by that of Moses Mendelssohn inasmuch as its validity has not elapsed since the end of the ancient Jewish commonwealth. “Mosaism,” Judaism’s “original, classical form,” he characterized as a “system of state laws based on the theocratic principle” with no “dogmatic elements such as a belief in life after death.” Biblical society was a “nomocracy” in which laws were either “national-demonstrative,” such as those regulating the holidays, or “social-juridical,” which actualized the principle of justice. Religion was, therefore, “purely utilitarian,” since the principle of Providence was used to sanctify the laws and buttress the authority of social and political institutions among “people of a low cultural level.”83 Nevertheless, Dubnow avers that biblical Judaism had represented a significant step forward for mankind. Polytheism had concluded that different classes of phenomena were directed by several distinct supernatural forces; “Monotheism is the result of the synthesizing aptitude developed 78 Ibid. 79 #36, p. 19. 80 #90 (February), p. 20; see also #95, p. 17. 81  #31 (January), p. 85. 82 Ibid., p. 2. “As a Positivist I believed that at some time both these heights of theological thinking would vanish, but I allowed that in the new religion of humanity the ethical elements of Judaism would occupy an important place” (KZ, I, 162). 83 #16 (May–June), pp. 228–29.

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by a nation when it [proceeds to] . . . concentrate all these powers in one undivided force.”84 For this reason Judaism could not fuse with GrecoRoman paganism. This physically weak tribe . . . was imbued with a higher idea . . . because of the historical law by which nations cannot go from ideas which are the result of superior intel­lectual activity to ideas which are worked out by a lower intellect. . . . Polytheistic nations by historical neces­sity have gradually developed monotheism and not the other way around. . . . The Jewish people could be completely destroyed, but it could not renounce a monotheistic world view.85

Dubnow, like Comte, accords monotheism a place as the highest stage of the “theological mode of thought,” but Dubnow probably also drew on the German-Jewish reformers’ concept of a continued “mission of Israel.”86 He asked the reader: Would you think that, having fulfilled to some extent the mission of spreading monotheism to the world, the Jews could continue this mission and be an example of religious rationalism?87

Unfortunately the answer at present seems to be no. The present generation of old-fashioned Russian Jews, Dubnow said, was completely blind to this universal task. Orthodox animosity to knowledge and rationalism, which characterizes our historical life in the last two or three centuries, has no connection to true Judaism, the achieve­ments of the people of ideas, infused with the spirit of free investigation.88

He accused religious Judaism of being “bemused by the babble” of talmudic casuistry and constricted by the burden of rabbinic law. [Talmudic legal casuistry] is something unexampled in the history of human thought, or better, of human nonsense. I do not deny that the talmudists discussed questions of a juridical character or even had their original metaphysics and morals . . . but the obligatory laws which come to us through the codices of the rabbis are a phenomenon unpre­cedented in the history

84 #1, p. 710. 85 Ibid. 86 Solomon Munk’s definition of the mission of Israel is quoted with approval (#95, p. 16). On Comte’s view of monotheism, see Auguste Comte, The Positive Philo­sophy of Auguste Comte, ed. and trans. Harriet Martineau (New York: Calvin Blanchard, 1855), p. 598. 87 #16 (July–August), pp. 17–18. 88 #1, p. 630.



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of ­religion. Thousands of genera­tions of men of serious demeanor studied the most nonsensical questions of ritual, never laughed at their strange work, asserted, “God chose us from among all peoples,” and then smiled at ­others.89

He replied to those who charged that the impulse to scholasticism was universal, that “neither Christian nor metaphysical scholasticism was as harmful as the religious scholasticism of the talmudists.”90 Christian scholasticism discussed theological problems, and metaphysical scholasticism dealt with problems which had a stronger basis and were less harmful to the soul than questions about Sabbath work, laws of food, cooking, the egg laid on the holiday, etc. . . . What does the question of “objects you can use on the Sabbath” or “Sabbath limits” say to your mind or heart?91

The present consequences of Jewish casuistry are most deplorable: The common division of human obligations in life, according to the rabbinical system, [apposes] obligations to God and obligations to one’s neighbor. Under obligations to God are subsumed the mass of rituals in the purely personal sphere, such as washing the hands, cooking a certain kind of food, and such sins as cooking a milk dish together with a meat dish, and touching a candlestick on the Sabbath. Therefore, the personal-individual sphere makes a man into an automaton: every movement is strictly regulated and put under the control of the terrifying Jehovah.92

This system had a “disastrous impact on the moral development of the Jewish people” and “a very unfortunate effect on Jewish ethics,” since a continual and complicated ritualism took the place not only of the philosophical, relatively rational, side of religion, but also of ethics and morals [Dubnow’s emphasis].93

The religious and social life of the Russian Jews, he said, shows “a complete submergence” of moral obligations by “external religiosity.” In reality it often happens that social opinion punishes much more strongly the neglect of small customs than the shocking evasion of obligations to one’s neighbor. For example, the community may know that a man has acquired his fortune by deceit or even by confiscating money given to him in trust for the support of an orphan, thereby leaving the child with­out means. . . . His

89 #16 (May–June), p. 236. 90 Ibid., p. 234. 91  Ibid. 92 #1, pp. 670–71. 93 Ibid., p. 236.

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Apparently remembering his own case as a non-conformist in a traditional environment, Dubnow added: But let any member of the Jewish community try to violate the smallest custom in public; for example, let him go into the street on the Sabbath with a stick in his hand, with his cigarette in his mouth, or let him carry a book or a hand­kerchief in a place where there is no Sabbath boundary, such a man thirty years ago, and in many places of the Pale even today, will be beaten half to death, or [at least] scorned and indirectly persecuted.95

If the Russian muzhik can be called essentially a “pagan” because he “worships his icon” and cannot “raise himself to the abstract idea of God,” the ordinary Russian Jew is also a pagan, “only a pagan sui generis.”96 The pious Jew honors the smallest unexplained rituals, not under­ standing the sense in them, for the simple reason that there is no sense in them. For the most part they do not express anything symbolic. . . . Yes, the Jew does not have a religion; he has only a system of customs verging on the absurd.

The religion of the traditional Jew is “naked ritualism,” Dubnow said. “Only with Confucius will you see a weak resemblance to this amazing [degree of] regimentation.”97 Rising to the height of indignation, he exclaimed: In the history of the long-suffering Jewish people there are matters the mere mention of which causes one to shudder: crusades, inquisitions, persecutions; but I do not know a more frightening word in Jewish history than “rabbinism.” It is for the Jews a hundred times worse and more devastating than the Inquisition. The latter killed men physically; the former killed men spiritually. The Inquisition acted at a certain time; rabbinism acted and continues to act.

How did Mosaic Judaism deteriorate so much? In order to ac­count for the apparently irrational development of post-biblical Judaism, young Dubnow offered his first reconstruction of the historical process. Until the time of Ezra and Nehemiah (in the mid-fifth century B.C.E.), he said, the masses were on a low level of spirituality and were unable to live up to the high demands of Mosaism. Ezra and his co-workers in 94 Ibid., p. 237. 95 Ibid. 96 Ibid., p. 239. 97 Ibid.



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the Great Assembly, however, possessed the ability to teach the Bible to the people and interpret it. Moreover, they added temporary laws and improvements so that when the Maccabean period began (in the 160s B.C.E.) the Jews were able to fight fanatically for “spiritual Judaism” against “sensual, anthropomorphic Hellenism.”98 The Sanhedrin continued what Ezra had done, adding more temporary “strict, repressive measures” against the Jewish Hellenists and other sectarians in accordance with the maxim, “Build a fence around the Law.” The turning point of Jewish history was the destruction of the Temple in 70 C.E., after which the Jews scattered throughout the Roman Empire and no longer possessed “real signs” of a nation (that is, a homeland and a government). In the interests of the “instinc­tual law of national self-preservation,” the leaders of Judaism resorted to “mental centralization” through “a multiplication of obligatory religious forms which served as a unifying force.”99 This “spiritual absolutism”100 surrounded each individual action with a religious law so that every minor national peculiarity was sanctified. Hadrian’s repressions against the Jewish religion furthered the withdrawal of the spiritual representatives of the people into themselves. They shut themselves up in the charmed circle of the halakhah. Without leaving the four walls of the academy to observe the needs of the people, they created numerous laws not just for the centralization of popular elements, but to separate them from the surrounding hostile world.101

According to the positivistic Dubnow, there was another factor involved in the peculiar development of traditional Judaism: in Mosaism “the state was the end and religiosity [revelation] the means for attaining that end.”102 But after the close of the biblical period, revealed Scripture became the primary authority, binding each subsequent generation more and more into a constricting pattern of exegesis. The early post-biblical teachers had insisted that their oral tradition was also given to Moses on Sinai.103 The casuistic method, that appeared during the time of Hillel and ­Shammai and that enabled teachers after 70 C.E. to root their legal enactments firmly in the Bible, earned Rabbi Akiba the dubious distinction of being able to pile mountains of law on every letter of the ­biblical text. The 98 #1, pp. 670–71. 99 Ibid., p. 710. 100 Ibid., p. 711. 101  Ibid., p. 946. 102 #16 (May–June), p. 230. 103 Ibid., pp. 231–32.

   

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r­ igidity of Jewish thought was intensified by Yohanan ben Zaccai’s ruling that a later court does not have the right to reverse the decision of a previous court;104 scholars not only had to bring their teachings in harmony with the Bible but with all previous generations of rabbis as well. By the time of the Talmud, Dubnow continued, this “obtuse servitude to the letter [of the Scripture] and passion for head-breaking mental gymnastics” had lost almost all connection with practical legislation and was pursued for “the love of the art.”105 The discussants in the Babylonian academies never expected that “their scholastic tournaments and innocent legal jokes” would become an obligatory force for succeeding ages. “The fathers played a dangerous game and the children paid for it,” with the result that “all this intellectual rubbish was surrounded by a halo of sanctity and untouchableness.”106 Thus, he explained, the future of ­rabbinism was determined: In the course of more than a thousand years after the conclusion of the Talmud, all the intellectual energy of [the medieval rabbis] was directed exclusively to the interpre­tation of the Bible and the Talmud, the interpretation of these interpretations, endlessly. . . . As a result the religious principle was lost in this monstrous mass of customs like a drop of water in the sea.107

Post-biblical Jewish history did, however, enjoy a few constructive moments. For instance, there was Elisha ben Abuya, a “universal man” with “the skepticism of an emotionless investigator,” whose “strong, cold mind and merciless logic” contrasted so vividly with his narrow-minded contemporary Rabbi Akiba, “a flaming patriot who worshipped the smallest tradition of Judaism and moved from the academy bench to the circle of the most fervent agitators against Roman power.”108 The vague and problematic figure of Elisha, called Aher (“the other one”) in the Talmud because of his alienation from the Torah, was an important mythic prototype for young Dubnow and several of his contemporaries. In his first published article Dubnow mused: There is something very tragic about the conflict of these two men [Aher and Akiba]. Like Elisha ben Abuya, there would be [the similar case of] Baruch Spinoza fifteen cen­turies later. What would have been the historical mission of the Jewish people had Elisha [and not Akiba] been its formative 104 #1, p. 945. 105 #16 (May–June), p. 232. Similarly, #1, p. 1071. 106 #16 (May–June), p. 233. 107 Ibid., p. 234. 108 #1, p. 948.



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element? Would it not have been broader and more universal? The sons of Israel would have been burned on the inquisitional pyres not as Jews but as Giordano Brunos and Galileos. Such a possibility is fruitful to think about.109

Dubnow then described the Karaites, who “protested against the extreme development of dry formalism” in the Talmud, but unfortunately interpreted the Bible too literally. He found the medieval Jewish philosophers more gratifying; this was “the brightest period in the history of the Jews.”110 When Dubnow’s narrative reached the Spanish Jews of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, he exclaimed: The path will be pleasant and happy, I assure the reader, who perhaps has wearily travelled with me through the dark thickets of Jewish history. Yes, reader, the path will be pleasant.111

The motto for Dubnow’s section on Maimonides was “Fiat Lux.”112 How­ ever, even the great Maimonides embodied an inconsistency: some­times he was the “free-thinking philosopher” but other times “the rabbi in him triumphed,” and his well-intentioned codex, the Mishneh Torah, was a “bad example for later generations.” Maimonides’ philosophy continued to find adherents in the following centuries, but even while his grave was still fresh in the first quarter of the thirteenth century, “there bloomed a flower which had an intoxicating and stupefying effect on the whole intellectual element of the Jewish people, an effect which is still too perceptible in the present time.” Dubnow was referring to the Kabbalah, whose mystical “baby talk” gradually became “feverish delirium,” a pathological symptom of “the tortured intellectual organism of the Jewish people.”113 Although there are shadows, darkness, and light in the two centuries after Maimonides, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries we see only shadows which completely cover the earlier spots of brightness. . . . The darkness deepened and reached its saturation in the eighteenth century. [Uriel] Acosta and Spinoza tried to waken the sleeping masses and paid a great price. . . . It was a deep lethargic sleep, but not a sweet one; the Jewish people 109 Ibid., p. 949. Such a possibility was too much for the editor of the Russkii Evrei, who inserted a footnote of his own at this point: “A one-sided view. Aher and Spinoza could not have been the dominant ele­ment in any people. Furthermore, Aher left very few traces in history. His work was negative; he did not create anything. He would not have had the strength to inspire and unite a persecuted, dispersed people during the course of many centuries” (ibid.). 110 Ibid., p. 1194. 111  Ibid., p. 1267. 112 Ibid., p. 1389. 113 Ibid., p. 1432.

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chapter three slept not as a sybarite, but slept a tortured troubled sleep, through the long cen­turies of sadness, of crusades, persecutions, inquisitional bonfires. . . . It had monstrous dreams: false messiahs, Shabbatai Zevis, Frankists, Beshts, kabbalistic demons, etc. . . . lulled by rabbinism’s extreme formalism on the one hand and the extreme practical expression of mysticism—dark, careless, slovenly Hasidism—on the other hand.114

The five centuries between Moses Maimonides and Moses Mendelssohn “are a blank in our [progressive] development.”115 The historic achieve­ ment of Mendelssohn and his school was to educate the Jews in a European spirit. The enlighteners opposed “caste isolation and social defects,” insisting only that Jews renounce those “special external characteristics which are peripheral and do not touch religion.”116 In retrospect, it would seem that the process of en­lightenment among Jews undermined for many both their reli­gious principles . . . and their desire to belong to the Jewish nation, but this is not the fault of those modest teachers of the Mendelssohnian school who gave us the ABC book of civilization. . . . The responsible factor in this process is simply education, . . . the circumstance that the Jews began to . . . come out of their musty mental ghetto.117

Dubnow’s spirited defense of the achievement of his youthful hero, Mendelssohn, was occasioned by Peretz Smolenskin’s statement that hitherto untouched and healthy Russian Jewry had entered on the destructive path of fusion and imitation which West European Jewry had already traversed. Since the cosmopolitanism espoused by the Haskalah was responsible for this process, Dubnow said, “Moses Mendelssohn is called [by ­Smolenskin] the perpetrator of all evil.”118 (Smolenskin’s negative views about ­Mendelssohn did represent a striking reversal of the esteem in which Mendelssohn was held in modern Jewish thought up to the 1880s.) Moreover, in 1883 Smolenskin had written that, after the pogroms, the Jews had completely lost their sense of honor and national worth; no other people, he charged, would be so passive and forgiving of its enemies. He concluded that “the terrible animosity of all peoples to Jews makes it necessary that Jews should divide themselves off into a living nation.”119 Dubnow answered Smolenskin’s criticism of the Haskalah, sarcastically 114 Ibid., pp. 1432–33. 115 #2, p. 1194. 116 #23, p. 30. 117 Ibid., pp. 30–31. 118 Ibid., pp. 24–25. 119 Ibid., p. 27.



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remarking that Smolenskin would probably be pleased if the Jews returned to the concepts of the fifteenth or six­teenth centuries. He labeled spiritual nationalism “ul’trayudofilstvo (super-Judaism),” since it involved the “excessive philosophical or historical idealiza­tion of Jewry and Judaism with respect to the past and future problems of both.”120 Dubnow admitted that these views “are quite fashionable in certain circles,” but characterized the new popularity of Jewish nationalism among religiously indifferent Jews (he was referring to the surge of interest in Hibbat Tziyon) as a response to “events which bear a character more medieval than contemporary.”121 In a severe attack on Leon Pinsker and the Lovers of Zion, Dubnow developed these ideas more fully. The notion of political rebirth, he said, is “an ephemeral theory” stimulated by events “the abnormality of which every unprejudiced person acknowledges.”122 Pinsker had insisted that hatred of the Jews is eternal. If this is so, Dubnow asked, How can you explain that as a result of the liberating tendencies of the last two centuries animosity toward the Jews has remarkably weakened in all countries, and has almost disappeared . . . in France, Holland, Italy, and England?123

Therefore, he concluded that the anti-Jewish movement of the previous five years had to be caused by circumstances which were temporary and unstable. The preachers of self-emancipation and especially their most influential wing, the Palestinists . . . want to estab­lish something like a law of regression in the development of humanity. . . . They have argued that there has been a triumph of the national principle, that Jews should fit themselves to the new conditions of culture, and separate themselves off as a living nation. [But this is] a super­ficial attitude toward history.124

He insisted that the new Jewish nationalists were misreading what was happening. On the one hand, the political rebirth of such nations as Romania, Bulgaria, and Serbia could simply be explained by the fact that they were unable to fuse culturally with Ottoman Turks; the intensity of their national spirit will certainly diminish after they enjoy their new autonomy. On the other hand, Dubnow argued, nationalism in ­present-day France 120 Ibid., p. 24. 121  Ibid., p. 33. 122 #16 (July–August), p. 24. 123 Ibid., p. 25. 124 Ibid.

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and Germany is the result of a growth of militarism, stimulated by the French desire for revanche against Germany and territorial reunification of Alsace and Lorraine (which Germany had annexed after the FrancoPrussian War). It does not shake “the law, based on the most elaborate induction, that in international as well as inter-human relationships, egotism slowly gives way to altruism.”125 Furthermore, Dubnow stated, the Jewish national idea as espoused by Hibbat Tziyon is impractical, since the religious will view the re-establishment of the Jewish state by natural means as a “crime against God,”126 and the modernized Jews will refuse to exchange a European culture for an Asiatic one.127 He concluded that the former will not follow the nationalists because this program indicates an insufficient faith; the latter as a consequence of their lack of faith.128 There was, Dubnow admitted, much to be said for the economic colonization of Palestine within the limits made possible by the current political conditions there, but educated Jews, in the last analysis, will “prefer the principle of moderate fusion to the principle of artificial Jewish nationalism.”129 It follows that the pattern for progress established in West Europe must hold true for Russia in the long run, despite the deplorable turn for the worse in the last few years: Many people have lost their spirit, and are in despair about the possibilities of any kind of decisive steps from the side of the government. They have given up as lost the hope for external legal reforms and they have given up the struggle for internal religious-cultural reforms. . . . This pessimism is as fruitless as it is unfair. . . . Anybody who is sufficiently serious and whose convictions are sufficiently firm not to be disturbed by the phenomenon of the hour, anyone who has not lost faith in the final triumph of progress and who has not fallen into the modish and fashionable pessimism of today—which often serves to hide indifference and the absence of energy— anyone [who has not done this], I say, must acknowledge that the present civil and legal situation of the Jews in Russia will have to change for the better. Yes, will have to [dolzhna].130

125 Ibid., p. 26. Nationalism was identified with egotism at this point in Dubnow’s view (#31, p. 104). 126 #23, p. 32. 127 Ibid., p. 34. 128 Ibid. 129 Ibid., p. 35. 130 #16 (May–June), pp. 243–45.



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He went on to insist that historical progress will lead to Jewish ­emancipation: The government must inevitably come to the conclusion that above all it is harming itself, harming the unity of the state organism, by limiting, to an impossible degree, the rights of the Jews . . . and forcibly isolating them from the native population. The system of limitations has reached a reductio ad absurdum and it is impossible to go any further in that direction. . . . Certainly the time will come—and it is not far off—when in Russia one will only remember with shuddering horror such acts as the administrative up­rooting from Kiev of two thousand Jewish families during the worst period of the pogroms, the existing temporary rules, the rules about Jewish physicians, the projects for limiting education, and hundreds of other events of the pogrom period. The state will finally acknowledge that it has made the Jews pariahs but that it can make them citizens, that it has strengthened their cultural isolation but that it can dissolve [this isolation]. . . . It will certainly acknowledge that for the sake of more humane relationships it can make the Jews useful economic workers, true patriots, un-hated and un-hating. Yes, sooner or later, legislation will take that step with respect to the Jews the necessity of which is so clear.131

To be sure, Dubnow believed, an active campaign against Jewish legal disabilities was necessary to insure progress; both in print and in private commissions he did what he could to further Jewish emancipation, following the dictum of his hero, Ludwig Börne, that “he who wants to act in the inter­ests of the Jews has to fuse their concerns with the demands for general freedom.”132 Unfortunately, the post-pogrom imposition of new and onerous restrictions on Jews was a step backward. In his article, “The Last Word on Condemned Jewry,” written on the occasion of the Pahlen Commission set up by the government two years after the restrictive, supposedly temporary May Laws of 1882 to reconsider the status of the Jews in Russia, Dubnow took up the case after the Jews “had already been sentenced by the temporary (May) rules.” Here, he asked: “What will be done by the court of high instance” to those people “guilty of having been the objects 131  Ibid. 132 KZ, I, 135. In 1882 Dubnow translated Börne’s article “The Eternal Jew,” and contrasted in his introduction the emotional philippics of Börne with the “sentimental verses which Heine conferred on Judaism” at that time (#13). In July, 1886, Dubnow reviewed a biography of Börne and lamented that Russian Jewry lacked a “mighty fighter” of Börne’s stature. He defended Börne’s baptism on the grounds that he wanted to tie himself closer to the German masses, and yet never denied his Jewish origins. He was a “Marrano of the new type” (#53, p. 9). When accused of being a Jew, Börne replied, “Because I was a slave, I appreciate freedom even more” (#53, p. H; also KZ, I, 200).

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of the south Russian pogroms?” The rightness of their cause, he said, should be clear to anyone and does not require “that one be a Jewish nationalist or feel any attraction to the Jews except the attraction felt by a man to suffering people.”133 Dubnow’s pen name, “Externus,” symbolized his refusal to defend the Jews as a particular group rather than as an instance of a general principle.” Externus proceeded to offer a utilitarian defense for Jewish emancipation in Russia. He was quick to point out that certain economic anomalies observable in the Pale were rooted in the deficiencies of the general Russian social structure and could be cured only by meas­ures covering the entire population, but that some defects were created by the ­existence of the Pale itself and could be rectified by allowing the Jews to settle elsewhere in Russia, especially in the backward areas to the east where they would be a useful force in developing trade. Jewish enterprise would then contribute to the well-being of the state and the whole population. The restrictions imposed on the Jews by the government were not at all in Russia’s interest, he asserted, because “the basic law in the development of Judaism” teaches that a rise in oppression from without leads to a strengthening of “inner religiosity or defensive oppression.”134 The achievements of West European Jews in the short time since their emancipation indicate that “the culture and general civiliza­tion of the Jews is always directly proportional to the degree of their civil emancipation and indirectly proportional to their civil isolation.”135 Even the modest improvements in Jewish status under Alexander II during the sixties and seventies noticeably decreased Jewish self-isolation; for the first time young Jews tried to create real relationships with Russians.136 The pogroms, the new barriers to general education, and obstacles to obtaining residence rights outside the Pale have, unfortunately, frustrated progress and placed a terrible moral strain on the Jewish intellectual who, with his religion of deism, can find no solace in the traditional concept of golus (exile).137 The 133 #31 (January), p. 86. “The author of these lines considers it necessary to state that he is not the defense counsel of the Jews; there is nothing in his convictions or motives which impels him to speak for the Jews, nothing which especially forces him to defend people of the Jewish faith or nation” (ibid.; KZ, I, 162). 134 #31 (January), p. 98. 135 #31 (May), p. 34. 136 Ibid., p. 51. 137 #31 (November), p. 22. Dubnow describes several examples from his own experience: the Jewish writer who must register as a lackey in order to reside in the capital; another writer who was given twenty-four hours to leave the city because he was a Jew; and the story of the Jewish girl who registered falsely as a prostitute in order to study in



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emotional impact of the pogroms was exacerbated by the government’s failure to express its open sympathy to those who suffered in the riots. Non-Jewish liberals added to this shock when they “took a neutral position with respect to the Judeophobes in the press.” This explains why Jews “whose watchword in the seventies had been Russification and fusion are now turning to Palestinophilism.”138 Turning to the Jewish community Dubnow averred that the Jewish question in Russia required a “religious, spiritual, and moral regeneration” which had to be carried out by the Jews themselves, helped to be sure by the government. Like his reform­ist predecessors in Germany and his Jewish contem­poraries in Russia, Dubnow demanded action. He wanted something to be done about the state of Jewry. He scorned the “quietists” who answered the question “what is to be done” with “laisser faire, laisser passer,” and “we have to wait for a different wind and they will give us equal rights, peace will come to the world, the Jewish question will disappear, etc.”139 There was much the modernized Jews could do now.140 Borrowing Pinsker’s term “self-emancipation” (autoemancipation) Dubnow answered the question “What kind of self-emancipation do we need?” by stating that Judaism required an immediate program of self-transformation and self-perfection.141 He proposed a “strong organization of the adherents of re­form in Russia as the first condition of agitation.” This would be composed of courageous laymen as there were no Russian equivalents to the German rabbinical reformers, “it being impossible for [our rabbis] to be on the side of even moderate reforms.”142 Although this organiza­tion would preface its platform with the caution that “religion, even religion with customs, is necessary,” its members would be ready to re­nounce in their private lives those practices which the new organization declared abolished. The elimination of useless ceremonies would be carried out in stages. First, to be dropped would be strict prohibitions concerning foods, clothing, the Sabbath, and holidays. Worship would be shortened and the

the capital and who was expelled when the police discovered that she was not following her official profession (ibid., pp. 23–21). 138 Ibid., p. 21. 139 #16 (May–June), p. 222. 140 “We could point to a country where, despite legal emancipation, stagnation and fanaticism rules among Jews in all its medieval colors: this is Galicia, that cesspool of rabbinical and Hasidic filth; even Russian Jews point out that this is something we should guard ourselves against” (#16 [July–August], p. 12). 141  #90 (February), p. 18. He used this term in a defense of his essay #16. 142 #16 (July–August), pp. 4–5.

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use of phylacteries abandoned by individuals, although not by leaders of worship.143 Later, less urgent but useful reforms could be promulgated, including abolition of non-biblical holidays and prayers referring to the messiah and the return to Jerusalem.144 “This would weaken religious despotism, destroying the tribal isolation sanctified by rabbinism” and facilitate the civil fusion of Jews with the surrounding population. Above all it would make possible the “end of the struggle between the fathers and the sons in the Jewish world.” The two sides are fighting each other and dealing terrible wounds, not because there is no love between them, but be­cause they do not understand each other. . . . If you intel­lectuals do not want this fateful war to continue, if you do not want this unnatural relationship between fathers and sons to survive several generations longer, then give your hand to the sons, give them some support, define for them the limits of their needs, stop this collapse, inspire in the future fathers an understanding of reason.145

The generation gap could be closed with this purified and rational Judaism only if it were accompanied by a substantially reformed system of Jewish education. In 1884 Dubnow published a critique of deleterious “intellectual, moral, physical, and practical” effects of the heder on children,146 stressing the pathetic situation of the child who discovers at the age of thirteen how completely unprepared he is for life.147 Measures taken by the government have been inadequate and indecisive. The Jewish state school system had had considerable impact only on a small percentage of Russian Jewish children and when it was abolished, nothing was established in its place specifically for young Jews wanting a secular education. On several occasions the government had decided to require certificates of general education from all melamdim and rabbis but after continuous postponement the idea seemed to be dropped.148 “The hadarim cannot be improved and should be abolished, Dubnow insisted. While admitting that such an action was repressive, it would nevertheless be legal and certainly morally justified for the sake of future generations and the general interests of the state.149 In place of the hadarim, he proposed a new ­net­work of

143 Ibid., p. 8. 144 Ibid. 145 Ibid., pp. 15–16. 146 #39 (June), pp. 11–12. 147 Ibid., p. 8. 148 #39 (July), pp. 1–3. 149 Ibid., p. 5.



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special elementary schools to teach Jewish children arithmetic, geometry, geography, history, and Russian, and, at the same time, provide a ration­al Jewish education. The curriculum should include Hebrew, the Bible in the original and in Russian translation, the history of the Jewish people, and a rational catechism of the Jewish faith.150 Dubnow’s acceptance of the use of government power as a means to accelerate Jewish cultural reforms was also instanced by his remarks on Hasidism: The government and the Jews should join hands to fight tzaddikism and the abuses of Hasidism . . . and it is impossible to fight this war without repressions. . . . The tzaddikist epidemic has not weakened, but is growing stronger and broader. . . . Measures must be taken immediately against it. . . . Repression cannot root out tzaddikism or its in­tellectual evils, but can paralyze its practical damage.151

He reflected an attitude common among the proponents of Jewish Enlightenment, whose faith in inevitable progress sometimes failed to extend to the ability of the Jews gradually to clean up their own “Augean stables.” Dubnow’s debate with the nationalists of the 1880s recalls the controversies be­tween the Westernizers and the Slavophiles in the 1840s. The Jewish nationalists had come to reject the pattern of Western Jewry and concluded that assimilation in Russia was both impossible and unnecessary. They believed that East European Jewry must find its own way to a healthy new life. On the contrary, Dubnow assumed that history followed a pattern which had been ideally exemplified in the West. Apparent deviations from this pattern might require explanation, but would not deflect the future from its appointed course in the long run. Nevertheless, the roots of his future intellectual changes are implicit in Dubnow’s positivist articles. It might seem inconsistent for someone unsympathetic to theology or metaphysics to call for the reform of religion on secular grounds; rather, Dubnow’s sociological view of Mosaism and his interpretation of rabbinic law as a mechanism for Jewish self-­preservation had more in common with nationalism than he realized. When the emotional evaluation of the concept of Jewish self-preservation changed, these arguments could be used for quite different ends. Nevertheless, during this period of his life, “Externus” yearned for the universal truths, not the particular. He had glimpsed the civilization of Europe stretching out 150 Ibid., pp. 10–11. 151  #16 (July–August), pp. 21–22.

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before him, and cried, “No, not back to the past, but forward to the future of humanity.”152 Zealously he preached the radical modernization of life: “Small breaches will not shake the Chinese wall. . . . The base of the wall is rotten and with a certain force the whole structure can be overthrown so that light will shine for all those millions who are sitting in darkness.”153

152 Ibid., p. 30. 153 #16 (May–June), pp. 242–43. Other matters needing reform were Jewish economic life, the training of rabbis, the position of women, and the disorganization of emigration. In general, he insisted on the application of European standards to Jewish literature (KZ, I, 209) and therefore in Russian-Jewish life as a whole.

Part two

Reconsidering the Past, 1886–1897

Chapter Four

Coping with New Realities Rejection After 1881, the Russian state attempted to reverse what seemed to be a decline of its authority which had accompanied the liberalization measures and social changes of the sixties and seventies. When Alexander III ascended the throne, he dropped Loris-Melikov’s proposal to widen the Council of State, a plan designed to broaden the consultative process and thus break down the government’s isolation from public opinion. Instead, Alexander instituted a series of measures which reinforced the distinctions between the old social estates: establishment of a Bank of the Nobility, replacement of elective justices of the peace by land captains selected from the local nobility, and promulgation of new electoral laws for the zemstvos and city councils which limited the franchise considerably. To bolster its ideological authority, the tsarist government relied on the Orthodox Church, and harassed the Buddhist cults in Siberia, the Catholics, Lutherans, and Russian sectarians. A policy of Russification was extended to the borderlands: the autonomy of Finland was reduced, Poles were excluded from the administration of the “Region of the Vistula”, and the use of Polish in the schools was curtailed. Even the Islamic clergy were ordered to learn Russian. Included in this policy was the increased legal isolation of the Jews. The “temporary” May Laws of 1882 attempted to segregate the Jews from the peasants in the Pale by tightening the ban on Jewish residence in the countryside. Later in the decade further restrictions were imposed, especially on the admission of Jews to the universities, as will be explained below. A series of expulsions by the police reached its height in 1891 when seventeen thousand Jewish artisans were forced to leave Moscow.1 The integration of Jews into Russian professional and political life was ­curtailed.

1 Dubnow discusses the expulsion from Moscow (History of the Jews in Russia and Poland, II, 339–406), and the exclusion of Jews from the municipal voting lists (ibid., pp. 425–26). Jews were expelled from Yalta in 1893 apparently because the Czar’s summer home was nearby (ibid., pp. 428–29).

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After 1889 Jews were no longer admitted to the Russian bar. In 1892 they were virtually excluded from the municipal voting lists in cities outside the Pale and the number of Jewish city councilors within the Pale was limited to ten percent. The shock that many Jewish intellectuals felt during the pogroms of 1881–82 was the result not only of the (re)appearance of virulent Judeophobia (a phenomenon associated with the Middle Ages), but of the discovery—borne out by legal measures—that the government had no intention of even moving slowly toward emancipation.2 Paradoxically, this discovery occurred at a time when Russification was making strides among middle-class Jews. The number of Jewish students in the gimnazii had grown from 4,674 to 9,225 between 1875 and 1886; in 1886 there were 5,200 Jewish girls in secondary schools and 18,000 Jewish students in Russian elementary schools. By the mid-eighties, Jews had come to make up fourteen percent of the Russian university student body.3 In 1887, however, the government established a series of quotas on Jews—ten percent of those admitted to secondary and higher education within the Pale, five percent outside the Pale, and three percent in Petersburg and Moscow— discriminating against those very Jews who had been prepared to abandon many of the defenses erected against the outside world by traditional Judaism. The justification of these measures sharpened the sense of rejection felt by Russian-Jewish intellectuals. In the previous decade, the anti-Semitic movement in Central and Western Europe, especially in Germany had held the Jews responsible for the malfunctioning of modern capitalism. In Russia some writers, even before the pogroms, had blamed Jewish enterprise for the disruptive side effects produced by economic and social changes in the wake of Alexander II’s reforms, especially the emancipation of the serfs. Dostoyevsky, in his Diary of a Writer, claimed that the Jews exploited the peasants far worse than their former masters;4 he even entertained the possibility that the Jews had “such an inner rigid organization as unites them into something solid and segregated.”5 In The Brothers Karamazov Alyosha “does not know” if the Jews murder Christian 2 Dubnow comments on his Petersburg friend Warshawski (KZ, I, 125), and his physician, Dr. Mandelstamm of Kiev, later a well-known Zionist (ibid., p. 215), who were both deeply disillusioned by the pogroms. 3 Sloutsky, op. cit., pp. 227–28. 4 F.M. Dostoyevsky, Dnevnik pisatelia za 1877 god [The Diary of a Writer for 1877] (Paris: YMCA Press, n.d.), p. 103. 5 Dostoyevsky, Dnevnik pisatelia, p. 110.



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children in their religious rites.6 But he favored equalization of rights only “because such is Christ’s law.”7 The upsurge of anti-Semitism allowed the government to explain the pogroms as the result of “the harmful impact of the economic activity of the Jews on the Christian population, their racial separatism, and religious fanaticism.”8 Even members of the populist movement were willing to interpret the pogroms as a protest against Jewish exploitation.9 The appearance both in the East and the West of a secular Judeophobia, tinged with venerable religious stereotypes, made it much more problematic for a Russian-Jewish intellectual like Dubnow, with strong ties to his family, community, and public, to disassociate himself from the bulk of the Jewish people. A change in his perception of the ongoing historical process could—and did—lead to a major reevaluation of his social identity. In his early articles Dubnow regarded anti-Semitism as a temporary atavism; in an 1883 review of an anonymous French anti-Semitic pamphlet he flippantly treated the writers as “jokers or buffoons.”10 In 1885, however, he wrote a long review of Eduard von Hartmann’s Das Judentum in Gegenwart und Zukunft. In this book Hartmann asserted that the Jews were striving for world domination through money and the press, and that the Jewish question was a result of the conflict between the Stamm­ gefühl of the Jews and the Nationalgefühl of the peoples among whom they lived as uninvited guests.11 Dubnow indignantly defended the sense of solidarity among Jews, which he said was rooted in the “natural sympathies between men of the same historical and religious group.”12 The following year he remarked, for the first time, that the “eternal” aspect of Judeophobia must be taken seriously.13 In 1887, Dubnow reviewed a book which asserted that the Rothschilds rule the world; he responded that the author was like Ivan the Terrible, who put people on the throne, ­costumed   6 Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, trans., Constance Garnett (New York: Random House, 1950), p. 710.   7 Ibid., p. 115.   8 Baron, op. cit., p. 55.   9 Tcherikower, Yehudim, p. 395. The Russian text and a Hebrew translation of the proclamation in support of the pogroms are given in Yitzhak Maor, “The AntiSemitic Proclamation of the Narodnaia Volia” [in Hebrew], Zion, XV (1950), 150–55. 10 #29, Weekly Voskhod, No. 35, 472. 11  #41 (September), p. 11. 12 Ibid., p. 19. Dubnow felt that this article was an important sign of maturity (KZ, I, 186). 13 #50, pp. 19, 26.

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and paid homage to them, and then had them tortured and killed. He concluded that “it is not amusing to mock paupers in this way.”14 During the course of the eighties, therefore, his articles were increasingly tinged with pessimism. In an article on Börne, Dubnow wrote: Around us is an ocean of hatred and animosity. We hope for better days but we seem to get further and further away from them. We stretch out our hand in brotherly call, but they reject us.15

This bitter mood crept into his literary criticism: one review in 1887 began “Things have been so tragic that there is no consolation,”16 while another ended “Literature is our only solace during these periods of troubled life.”17 By 1889, in his series on the French Revolution and the Jews, Dubnow asserted that while there was no doubt that Jewish emancipation would be carried out everywhere in the future, The friends and defenders of the Jews in those days [during the French Revolution] were many; the enemies and opponents were in the minority. In these days the fighters for the freedom of the Jews have gotten scarcer, while the enemies, anti-Semites and Judeophobes, seem to be multiplying with new strength.18

He observed that the emancipation of the French Jews had stimulated their patriotism for France because “love creates love—but hatred creates hatred.” He asked, “When will this terrible night disappear everywhere?” and added, in English, “That is the question.” During the late eighties, Dubnow came to perceive that the time in which he was living was far different from the one forecast by the Enlightenment. The Russian government was “like a boa-constrictor drawing itself around the unfortunate Pale”;19 the decree limiting the access of Jews to middle and high schools and the continuous expulsions made reading “a weekly Tisha B’Av” (day of mourning for the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple) and the newspaper his contemporary kinot (lamentations).

14 #68, p. 11. 15 #53, pp. 12–13. 16 #67, p. 8. 17 #69, p. 24. 18 #81 (April), p. 40. 19 KZ, I, 210.



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I am oppressed by the consciousness that it has been my fate to live in a period of the most horrible reaction whose end cannot be seen. Defying all idealistic ambitions, ruling by brute force and tsarist soldiers and police, persecuting ideas and oppressing conscience, half-Europe meets the centennial of that historic event, the French Revolution, with scorn and sticks to the head.

Reviewing a novel by Smolenskin in 1887, he commented on its images of a bygone world: In the novel set in the sixties the hero travelled to Petersburg, passed the university examination, finished the course, and was accepted into the corporation of lawyers. . . . [In our time] the hero would come to Petersburg and be taken to a police station where he would be ordered to leave the city in twenty-four hours since he does not have the right to live there. If he asked to take the examination, he would be told that there are no vacancies in the quota for Jewish students. Supposing that our hero has the good fortune to be accepted in a university and finished the course in the law faculty, he would request the council of barristers to register him. They would tell him that according to the new percent rule . . . his request cannot be approved. . . . This is the painful torture through which the sinful Jewish soul who desires an education has to pass before he reaches that moral hell in which the contemporary Jew now burns.20

In 1886 he wrote an article which concluded that there were two important and contrasting periods in Russian-Jewish history: the sixties and the eighties. During the great battle between the fathers and the sons twenty years ago “our literature had a certain optimistic tone”; now “we are waging a terrible struggle against the anti-Semitism concealed in the higher levels of Russian society,” a tragic struggle that “wastes the strength both of the Jew and the Russian.”21 In 1889 he contrasted the Russian social novelists of the sixties and seventies who had exposed the defects of society with contemporary writers who had turned to “self-praise” and Judeophobia in order to find an explanation for Russian social evils.22 By 1890 he was in deep despair. Previously, when the Russian-Jewish press considered emancipation on the way discussion centered on specifics about schools and taxes. At the present such details were beside the point because “we see a saturnalia of militant Judeophobia in the press,”

20 #66, pp. 24–25. 21  #78, pp. 27–28. 22 #84, p. 8.

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and hear “hellish Mephistophelian laughter” at those humanitarian principles of equality that Jews thought were elementary.23 Today we have to fight people who do not seem to have any conscience or acknowledge any laws of humanity, such as [the journalists of] Novoe Vremia and Grazhdanin. We now have to prove that the Jew is a man, not an animal. We have to fight not to improve the situation of the Jews but to prevent it from worsening.24

It was virtually impossible for a Jew to avoid being personally inconvenienced by the government’s measures and attitudes, and Dubnow’s story is a good instance thereof. In the course of the eighties, Dubnow’s residence in St. Petersburg had become more and more problematic. When Dubnow first went to the capital as a young man he had had no trouble acquiring papers as a watch repairer.25 In 1880, the police marked his passport to bar him from the capital due to an incident in which he was innocently implicated in his landlord’s shady dealings; his brother merely sent him a clean passport from Mstislavl. Dubnow quickly learned to bribe the precinct police so that they would leave him undisturbed.26 Between June 1880 and April 1884, Dubnow left the capital only once, in order to visit his family and obtain an exemption from military service. When he returned from this brief trip he registered as the domestic servant of a friend. His future wife, who joined him, enrolled in a course for midwives so that their residence rights would not be challenged.27 Expelled from the capital, the Dubnows returned to Mstislavl in May, 1884 where Simon embarked on his systematic attempt to educate himself in all fields. When impaired eyesight and domestic pandemonium surrounding the birth of their first child interfered with his solitude, he returned alone to Petersburg in August 1885. His stay in the capital from 1885 to 1886 was undisturbed only because the police had lost his passport and, fearful of repercussions from their superiors, waited until it expired.28 Dubnow returned to Msti­ slavl in May, 1886 and spent the next few years there, except for short trips to Kiev, Warsaw, and St. Petersburg. During this time he made several attempts to achieve bona fide legal residence in the capital. Late in 1886, after a two-month wait in St. Petersburg, his request was denied. He was 23 #90 (January), p. 21. 24 #90 (February), p. 19. 25 KZ, I, 106–107. 26 Ibid., pp. 155–16. 27 Ibid., p. 143. 28 Ibid., p. 201.



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ordered to leave the city within twenty-four hours. He went to Tsarskoe Selo for two days and remembered feeling tremendous anxiety. The snowdrifts among which he walked were “a symbol of frozen Russia, a lifeless country crushed under the Tsarist regime,” and “the sign of Cain, ‘Jew,’ follows me everywhere.”29 Returning to Petersburg he spent several nights sleeping in the office of Voskhod; later he recalled the intense “horror of having no rights.” He was a person “whom the police dogs could overtake in order to tear out his soul.”30 He awaited in Vilna the outcome of a new appeal; when this was rejected he returned again to Mstislavl. In 1888 Landau tried once more to legalize Dubnow’s residence in the capital, but after a long delay, Gresser, the governor of the city, refused.31 In 1890 Dubnow was told that as a writer “the north was dangerous for him”;32 he found distasteful Landau’s suggestion that he apply as a typesetter. He wrote in his diary of his final attempt, “Now I have to write a petition asking them to give me through graciousness that which a dog is given without applying.”33 Landau “brought in the heavy artillery” by asking Baron Horace Günzberg to recommend Dubnow personally, but even this appeal was turned down.34 In October 1890, the Dubnows, who now had three children, moved to Odessa. In and Out of an Emotional Crisis Looking around him at the problematic status of Russian Jewry, Dubnow decided that the nature and future of Judaism could be conceived in different terms than he had previously. At the same time he had a need for new beliefs because the old ones had broken down for reasons internal to his developing sense of identity. Dubnow wrote his Positivist critiques of Russian Jewry during the first half of the eighties when he was in his early twenties; he considered the second half of that decade, from the age of twenty-five to thirty, to be his major period of emotional crisis and intellectual perplexity. Even before he publicly expressed his lost faith in imminent progress, copious diary excerpts cited in his autobiography convey that he was experiencing a reshaping of earlier philosophical 29 Ibid., p. 202. 30 Ibid., p. 203. 31  Ibid., p. 226. 32 Ibid., p. 233. 33 Ibid., p. 242. 34 Ibid., p. 243.

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commitments. His ideological doubts contributed greatly to this changing awareness. Although growing anti-Semitism was very important in changing Dubnow’s views, his Positivism began to break down even before he perceived the worsening position of the Jews in Russia. Dubnow’s ideological shift, therefore, during these years must take into account how he came to perceive his personal limitations, deal with his family responsibilities, and define for himself a role that would allow him to be socially useful. The last is crucial because as a radical Russian intellectual (to be sure, Jewish version thereof) he insisted that beliefs and actions be thoroughly consistent. Therefore we will trace the changes in his ideas along with changes in his personal goals. At the end of the 1880s his refashioned concept of self and of the political milieu around him clarified his social identity and relieved his personal anxiety. At the age of twenty-four Dubnow began to feel that Positivism was inhibiting his future development. An early indication came in the summer of 1881 just before he opened his “home university,” when he devoted several months to literature, especially poetry, because he . . . awarded poetry the function of religion in the realm of the unknowable. A symbol of the unity of philosophy and poetry was the joint portraits of Mill and Shelley, which appeared on my writing desk for a number of years.35

This symbol represented in fact more than Dubnow at the time realized: Mill, the rationalist hero, had himself come to acknowledge the legitimacy of feeling and emotion; Shelley was the idealistic atheist invoking Prometheus to overthrow the despotism of Jupiter and usher in an age of freedom. The psychological security of Dubnow’s Positivism was rooted in a bifurcation between sense and nonsense, a sharp boundary which began to crumble when he became aware of areas of emotional meaning outside.36 In the summer of 1884 Dubnow decided that he had made “demands that were too severe” on literature when he insisted that it be concerned

35 KZ, I, 170. 36 On Shelley, ibid., p. 153. I assume that Dubnow was familiar with Shelley’s poem “Prometheus Unbound”, in which Prometheus overthrows the despot Jupiter by the force of love and “natural necessity” and inaugurates the age of free and creative humanity. Mill’s famous crisis in his mental life is described in Ch. V of his autobiography; see pp. 122–26 for his attraction to poetry. Coincidentally, Wylie Sypher remarks that “a poet like Shelley and a liberal like John Stuart Mill must be seen together if we are to get at the middle-class ideals of liberty permeating nineteenth-century thought” (Loss of Self in Mod­ ern Literature [New York: Random House, 1962], p. 22).



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only with “world problems and Weltschmerz.” He had thought that “­ordinary fiction was only for the masses which did not know anything about scientific or philosophical thinking,” and once went so far as to deny completely the validity of “emotional poetry.”37 Soon I was convinced that I had a more romantic temperament than I had previously thought. In these summer days I allowed myself to indulge in rereading the stories of Turgenev and the novels of Goncharov, which I had read in my early youth without sufficient attention. Once while reading Turgenev’s The Unhappy Woman, I buried my face in the pillow and cried. I was ashamed of the tears which brought me down to the level of the crowd and sentimental children, but it taught me a lesson: you cannot divide the sphere of Reason so sharply from that of Emotion. A true artistic production without a definite ideological foundation, as well as a good philosophical treatise, can be a source for deep thoughts.38

Dubnow regarded the theater, opera, and painting with indifference39 and was impressed with the moralistic views of Tolstoy’s “What is Art?”40 But he had a life-long fondness for lyric poetry, especially the works of Heine, Byron, Shelley, Pushkin, Lermontov and, above all, Victor Hugo.41 His emotional side also manifested itself in a love for wild landscapes, whose “healing force” was an important motif of the autobiography.42 In the spring of 1885 Dubnow began to experience a series of headaches. He had to rely upon others to read aloud to him, and, when they were not available, he sat in his dark study, shutters closed, alone with his personal worries.43 The condition worsened, so that the following year in St. Petersburg was one of the most distressing of his life; after only a few moments of reading he felt incapacitating pain in his temples.44 Dubnow’s inability to read and work without interruption intensified a growing melancholy and he felt prevented him from becoming financially independent of Landau and Voskhod.

37 KZ, I, 172. 38 Ibid. 39 Ibid., p. 171. 40 Ibid. 41  Ibid., p. 178. 42 The “healing force of nature” (KZ, I, 105); the freshness of the countryside after “suffocating Petersburg” (ibid., p. 198). Returning to Mstislavl is returning to a safe shore after the “shipwreck of the storms” (ibid., p. 205). On Dubnow’s antipathy to the filth of Warsaw (ibid., p. 215). 43 KZ, I, 180. 44 Perhaps some of his physical pain was the result of his mental suffering.

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His suffering, however, must have given him a greater sense of the physical limitations of concrete reality.45 In 1885, in Mstislavl, he described his feelings of sadness: Something was tearing in my soul, a kind of crack in my world view, and through it, anxiety came forth. . . . Just as once I had doubts about faith, now doubts emerged against all-powerful reason. . . . Positivism, which had been the catapult of my thinking, began to oppress me.46

In Petersburg a few months later he began regularly to keep a diary, possibly because he was conscious of greater discontinuity in his mental life. He observed despairingly, “This is the gravestone of my twenty-five year old life.” After reviewing the phases through which his world view had passed, he added: The nature of my present skepticism is not completely clear. Its general basis was purely emotional. Its characteristics are the following: hunger for faith not completely satisfied by the Positivist religion of humanity; thoughts on the unattainability of the most important secrets of existence, which disturb the mind despite the prohibitions of Positivism; doubts about the moral progress of man.47

Soon after, he made some notes on Job and Ecclesiastes and derived the following scheme, which he called the “psychological and ethical basis of pessimism”: first, there was “the yearning inherent in each man for the infinite, which is unobtainable in view of his finite nature”; then, a “war” between man’s “feeling and mind” and a struggle for existence in which “often not the moral but the physically stronger wins”; finally, in place of the Utilitarian concept of the greatest happiness, he concluded that one should substitute the principle that, since “suffering is the measure of life,” an increase in happiness is simply the result of a decrease in suffering. There were terrible moments when it seemed that I should carry out the logical conclusion of my beloved verses from Byron:   ‘Count over the joys thine hours have seen,   Count over the days from anguish free,   And know, whatever thou hast been   It is something better not to be.’ In these days I reviewed my whole world view and stood in horror before the abyss of life. I was seized by the fear of emptiness which ruled me in

45 Ibid., p. 292. He overcame this sickness in 1890 when he was given special lenses to correct his astigmatism (ibid., p. 237). 46 Ibid., p. 183. 47 Ibid., p. 192.



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that period of transition between one full phase of life and another which I had yet to fill.48

Dubnow’s ideological crisis expressed itself in a certain revival of interest in spiritual problems which he had earlier thought settled once and for all. He could not allow himself to return to traditional religion. Quite the contrary. His convictions would have made it “painful and distressing” to be present at his son’s bris (ceremony of circumcision)49—he recalled being glad that he was absent from Mstislavl at that time—and it was with great difficulty that he forced himself to recite the Kaddish at his father’s funeral. He could not go to the synagogue during the year of mourning to read the traditional prayers about God’s will because “I myself did not know whose will created that world where a poor wanderer [referring to his father] could not rest in his rebuilt family nest during his declining years.”50 In 1888, several years after this anti-Positivist mood had first seized him, he told the father superior of the Mstislavl monastery who had visited him to attempt his conversion that “I relate to all religions as an investigator and not as a participant.”51 In searching for a solution to his problem Dubnow turned to two men who represented “mixtures of complex, refined minds with simplicity and the elemental,” Leo Tolstoy and Ernest Renan.52 Later, Dubnow recalled: I still cannot forget what a staggering impression Tolstoy’s Confession made on me. I read it in 1888 in a lithographed copy, since the censor would not allow it to be printed. I was going through my own internal crisis, and the first moan of Tolstoy’s injured soul found a strong response in mine. The great artist displayed before me the problem of death with the clarity that the biblical Koheleth [Ecclesiastes], which I had known from my childhood, had not been able to do. I had earlier thought of the seer of Yasnaia Polania as the happiest man on earth: certainly the author of War and Peace and Anna Karenina ruled the mind of our generation and no one could compare to him in literary fame. Suddenly there was this cry of despair, a call for the complete review of one’s world view. It strengthened my temporary resignation even further. Tolstoy’s story, “The Death of Ivan Ilyich,” which I read soon after, was a somber artistic commentary to the philosophical Confession.53 48 Ibid., p. 194. 49 Ibid., I, 220. 50 Ibid., p. 213. 51  Ibid., p. 230. In a review written during his period of “resignation” Dubnow affirmed that he had no doubt that the “law of the physiological basis of human consciousness is true” (#79, pp. 37–38). 52 KZ, I, 221–22. 53 KZ, III, 160–161.

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Dubnow does not explain in more detail Tolstoy’s appeal to him at this time, but the parallel is clear. Tolstoy, too, had rejected faith and dedicated himself to self-perfection but later, shaken by the awareness of death and the meaninglessness of life, disavowed the natural sciences and philosophical speculation. Tolstoy searched for another faith, which would provide a bond between the finite and the infinite, based on the individual’s awareness of the life process as expressed in all of humanity—an attitude that Dubnow later accepted. Tolstoy’s ideal that one could find meaning in life through working for others also must have appealed considerably to Dubnow; later he insisted that Tolstoy’s thought had a Jewish character because it postulates the triumph of the moral over the aesthetic.54 Like Tolstoy’s, Ernest Renan’s life could be seen to parallel Dubnow’s in some regards. Renan had been educated in a Catholic seminary and had traversed the same path from dogmatic theology to scientific philosophy as I. . . . Then he went to the study of religious movements with a clear inclination to Godsearching. It was his yearning for lost faith that had brought Renan to the study of deep religious problems, but sorrowful skepticism, the fruit of consecutive disillusion with both Faith and Reason, held him on the border between these two warring elements of the soul. He was very close to the agnosticism which remained in my world view after the destruction of the orthodox Positivism of Comte.55

Dubnow believed that Renan was an “Olympian of the stature of Voltaire and Goethe”56 not only because of his literary versatility and skill but because of his scholarship. In his histories of religion Renan showed Dubnow that one could have a relationship with traditional faiths that did not contravene one’s firm rejection of their literal truth. When Dubnow called Renan “the Ecclesiastes of the nineteenth century,”57 he intended this as a great compliment, for he viewed Ecclesiastes as a more satisfactory philosophy than Job. He seems to have meant that Renan’s world view embodied moral seriousness without a belief in Providence. Renan did more, however, than express Dubnow’s dilemma; he provided a model by which Dubnow could move beyond “narrow 54 Dubnow’s article, “Yesod ha-Yahadut she-betorat Tolstoy [The Jewish Basis of ­Tolstoy’s Doctrines],” Ha-Shiloah (1911), pp. 627–28. 55 KZ, I, 221. 56 #123 (April), p. 31. 57 Ibid. Nevertheless, Dubnow did not acquire Renan’s irony. With Renan and Taine in mind, he wrote later that he could not bend “historical truth to a beautiful aphorism” (KZ, III, 160).



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s­ cientific materialism” and take a step back—a careful one—to his “first world.” The introduction to the first volume of Renan’s History of the Jew­ ish People brought Dubnow to “ecstasy” when he read that Religion and philosophical systems may lie, but religion and philosophy do not lie in themselves. . . . They have lived in the hearts of men and from there you cannot drive them out.58

Indeed, there was no reason to drive them out because, like lyric poetry, they could not be proven either true or false. There was, Dubnow believed, an infinite unknowable, but “ignoramus et ignorabimus, we do not know and we shall never know” what it is.59 The solution to Dubnow’s intellectual crisis, therefore, could be found through history if not in history. I reasoned thus: I am an agnostic in religion and philosophy to the extent to which they solve the riddles of the world, but I can know how mankind lived in the course of the millennia, by means of what paths it searched out truth and justice. I have lost faith in personal immortality, but history teaches me that there is a collective immortality.60

At the same time that Dubnow was groping his way to a revised world view and had turned, so to speak, from the future to the past, he was searching for a group that would provide intellectual peers and a more clearly defined audience for his writings. In adopting Positivism during the early eighties Dubnow had virtually isolated himself from all levels of Russian Jewry. In St. Petersburg, he had felt “morally and intellectually” separate from the other Russian-Jewish writers who worked there.61 He was the youngest of them and felt he was the only one interested in “general and eternal questions.” His earnestness made him scorn the “quietists” and ideologically uncommitted, yet he had no sympathy for the Palestinophilism which suddenly captivated most Jewish writers of the period. His brother Wolf had made aliyah (immigrated) to Palestine as a Biluist for several years in order to engage in agricultural work there.62

58 KZ, I, 222. 59 Ibid., p. 221. This phrase is attributed to the German physiologist Emil DuboisReymond (1818–1896), who warned against an arbitrary application of the principle of mechanical causality to the problems of inner human life (Hajo Holborn, A History of Mod­ ern Germany, III, 120). 60 KZ, I, 245. 61  Ibid., p. 131. 62 Wolf had planned to leave Russia forever but returned several years later after he was unable to take the hardships of the life there. He remained a convinced nationalist and argued with Simon about nationalism and cosmopolitanism (KZ, I, 135, 140, 182).

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Dubnow’s own projects for reform, as described in a previous chapter, were either decisively rejected or completely ignored.63 Because he was not satisfied with his limited circle of acquaintances in the capital, he did not regret leaving, but back home in the “lap of nature” he was even more lonely.64 In the provincial backwoods there was nobody to share the thoughts which were being born with my uninterrupted reading, and there was a great harvest of such thoughts. I wrote down [in my diary]: “How many times did the rapturous Eureka of the thinker echo among the empty four walls?”65

In Mstislavl he did not expect the townspeople to understand his views and, indeed, voluntarily isolated himself. At first Simon and Ida rented rooms in a house on the edge of town owned by a non-Jewish woman, where townspeople could not observe that they did not conform to Jewish religious law.66 When they moved to the house of Ida’s mother, Dubnow continued to hold himself severely aloof. He insisted on privacy, separated his section of the house from the rest, and appeared in the family circle only at meals. He wrote, “I created about myself an atmosphere of alienation as though the smallest contact was an interference with the freedom of my conscience.”67 He nevertheless—or therefore—became a local celebrity: If it had not been for the authority of my grandfather they would have thrown stones at me in the street. . . . . I received many disapproving glances when I went for a walk on the Sabbath during the hours of prayer with a stick in my hand, and occasionally the lads called at me . . . “Epikorus!” [Heretic] The reputation of the Mstislavl Aher [Elisha ben Abuya, the paradigmatic “Other” who rejected the Torah] spread throughout the whole area. Later when my eyes bothered me, the story was told that the apostate was punished with blindness.68

He virtually rejoiced in his romantic role as the local Aher,69 Spinoza, and Uriel Acosta considered as one, saying to himself, “Be as firm in your convictions as your opponents are in theirs”.70 63 See above, Chapter 3. 64 KZ, I, 166. When he returned to the capital for a visit in 1887, he “had the impression that our literary circle in St. Petersburg is submerged even deeper in the Nirvana of that dead period” (ibid., p. 219). 65 Ibid., pp. 178–179. 66 Ibid., p. 170. 67 Ibid., p. 174. 68 Ibid., I, 168. 69 The title of Chap. 19 of Dubnow’s autobiography is “Aher in his Home Town.” 70 KZ, I, 168.



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Autumn of 1883 saw the poignant climax of this conflict. Everyone was particularly concerned whether Dubnow would worship with the community on the Days of Awe. Just before the Jewish New Year Dubnow’s grandfather Benzion asked him to visit; at this meeting, which he remembered his whole life, he told his grandfather that he had not yet decided whether he would attend. When asked why, all he could think of by way of an answer was that he did not own a tallis (prayer shawl), and “in the spirit of the reformists” that this attire was established not by the Torah but only by oral tradition, and therefore did not have the obligatory value of “basic laws.” He felt that it would be too terrible a blow to tell Benzion that he also denied the “basic laws.” The tall figure of grandfather bent over, his head sinking to his chest. He arose and walked back and forth across the room. Several minutes passed in heavy silence. Suddenly he stopped before me and said with a penetrating voice which expressed endless sorrow, ‘Shimon, the time will come when you will say with the words of the prophet: “I will go and return to my first husband for it was better for me then than now” [Hosea 2:9].’ Thus we finally diverged, representatives of two world views: the centuries-old unmovable thesis and the rebellious antithesis. The venerable community saw the unprecedented: the grandson of the spiritual leader of society, Rabbi Benzion, did not visit the synagogue on Rosh Hashanah or Yom ­Kippur, when even the “worst” Jews worshipped.71

Dubnow later transformed this relationship with Benzion into a symbol: In two parallel streets sat a grandfather and a grandson both surrounded by books: one studied the wisdom of the Talmud and the rabbis and transmitted it to his audience; the other just as zealously deepened himself in the new wisdom of the [current] century and had his distant audience with whom he spoke by means of the printing press.72

As long as Dubnow felt himself to be a New Man in the Positivist sense, he could cope with relative equanimity being alienated from the Jewish intelligentsia and the Jewish masses. His work in Russian-Jewish journalism was only a “stepping stone to the sea of general literature”: he had plans in 1883 for a large monograph on J.S. Mill, and in 1885 for a life of Condorcet.73 In 1882, he expressed in his diary the fear that

71  Ibid., p. 175. 72 Ibid., p. 176. 73 Ibid., pp. 124–25. Diderot and Condorcet, p. 131; Condorcet, p. 187; plans for a monograph on Mill, p. 156.

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chapter four I would not have the opportunity to give myself over completely to my beloved work on the history of eighteenth-century philosophy and its relation to my religion of Positivism, and I would have to go according to the line of least resistance and work in the narrow sphere of Jewish problems.74

As late as 1888 he could still write: I am pulled to general philosophical work. . . . I love Jewish history and write about the interests of my suffering people—to do this has become a burning demand—but I do not think of dedicating my whole life to this task. . . . I dream of more diversified literary work.75

In the summer of 1883 he and Ida almost left for Paris where Dubnow hoped to study at the Sorbonne, but Landau unfortunately had gone abroad, giving Dubnow only a small advance on his salary, so that “the opportunity to direct my life into another channel was completely frustrated.”76 Then eye pains interrupted his general studies. After the birth of his first child two years later, he began to feel the burden of family responsibilities; he was trapped in his job for Voskhod, living on the edge of poverty.77 Dubnow could bear these practical burdens stoically, with the thought that Spinoza may have been right: “A man of spiritual vows would do well if he did not settle down to life as a married man.”78 He even had a momentary pang of what he called “emigrant psychology” when he wrote, “If I were physically well and single, I would go to America forever.”79 But he never seriously considered leaving Russia and certainly not abandoning his family. When his Positivism broke down, the full consequences of his social isolation became apparent. Had he been able to feel himself a member of the Russian intelligentsia, sharing its struggle for intellectual freedom and social justice, he might have reformulated his philosophical views without changing his attitude toward Judaism. His limited personal experience with Russian writers and alienation from the Russian intelligentsia prevented this outcome. Dubnow had almost no contacts with the Russian intelligentsia in St. Petersburg. His acquaintances there were ­relatives,

74 Ibid., p. 141. 75 Ibid., p. 223. 76 Ibid., p. 156. Nevertheless, the failures of his plans suggest that he did not really want to leave Russia, and indicate perhaps that the ties to his “first world” were stronger than he himself realized. 77 Ibid., p. 223. 78 Ibid., p. 181. 79 Ibid., p. 210.



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Jewish journalists, and a few Russified Jewish writers such as Grigori Bogrov, Akim Flekser-Volinsky, and his closest friend at the time, Simon Frug.80 The only well-known non-Jewish writer Dubnow knew personally was Nikolai Leskov, whose opinions and behavior repelled him. A major turning point for Dubnow occurred as he concluded that the Russian intelligentsia as a whole was indifferent to, if not actually infected with, anti-Semitism. In his 1882 editorial on the “May Laws,” he had attacked the Russian intellectuals for remaining silent during the pogroms.81 In 1884 he had lamented that the Russian liberals did not publicly and collectively state their opposition to the Judeophobic opinions of the Novoe Vremia.82 Toward the end of the decade this recurred in his writings. He considered, for example, the Jewish heroine in a novel to be unrealistically portrayed because she was not disturbed by the fact that “a remarkable part of the Russian intelligentsia had no human reactions to the pogroms.”83 His most severe remarks were reserved for the nationalist Russian writers who openly expressed their hostility to Jews. In a long article published in 1887, Dubnow scornfully and bitterly traced the development of Ivan Aksakov’s anti-Jewish opinions, starting with Aksakov’s defense of a society based on Christian principles to his conclusion that “the more educated the Jews become the more dangerous they are to us.”84 A few years later (1890) Dubnow discussed a speech by the Russian educator Nikolai Pirogov (delivered in 1881) in which Piragov had called the 80 Akim Flekser-Volynsky (1863–1926) later became one of the leading defenders of the Symbolist movement. Grigori Bogrov (1825–1885) wrote stories and a semi­autobiographical work attacking the obtuseness and fanaticism of the Jewish community. Simon Frug (1860–1916) became well-known for his Russian verses and later wrote poems on the sorrow and revival of the Jewish people. See S. Dubnow-Ehrlich, “Jewish Literature in Russian,” Jewish People Past and Present (New York: Jewish Encyclopedic Handbooks, 1952), III, 259–60, 261–62. Gradually Dubnow acquired many acquaintances in the RussianJewish intelligentsia. When he went to Vilna in 1886, he had as a guide the local correspondent of Voskhod (KZ, I, 203). In Warsaw the following year he interviewed many Jewish writers (ibid., pp. 215–19). In 1888 he noted that his literary correspondence was beginning to grow, adding liveliness to his isolated existence (p. 224). His correspondence with Sholem Aleikhem resulted in a visit to the writer’s dacha at Boyarke in 1891 (ibid., pp. 237–39). 81  Dubnow was perplexed by what he felt were the contradictions between Leskov’s liberal sympathies and his sentimental attitude towards Orthodox Christian piety and, especially, icons. Dubnow was furious when Leskov solicited a review from Dubnow and then inserted his own anti-Jewish opinions into the published version (KZ, I, 150–52). 82 #31, p. 3. 83 #78, p. 40. This novel is Sofia Malich by I.M. Ge. Kritikus noted that the author used his privilege as observer from the side “too moderately,” but at least he is to be congratulated that he is not “one of our enemies” (ibid.). 84 #60. p. 12.

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Jews “his brothers,” and remarked, “This sounds very strange now; does that part of Russian society still exist?”85 Dubnow came to feel that there was almost no common ground for understanding between Jewish and non-Jewish intellectuals. When they wrote about Jews, non-Jewish Russian authors tended either to be hostile or they sentimentalized Jewish life.86 Both were inaccurate. “We are not higher or lower than other peoples. . . . We just have the good qualities and weaknesses of [ordinary] human beings.”87 He concluded that there was no place for Jewish intellectuals in the Russian educated class, the “sad fate of the new generation, educated in modern ideals, but full of ambiguity.”88 The young Jew who would have gone from yeshiva to the university in search for truth several decades ago, now finds only “disillusion” there and “with pain in his heart” returns home.89 The shock of this crucial realization motivated Dubnow to re-examine his own ambiguous place in society and to conclude that he was “returning home.” My brother correctly evaluated one of the reasons for my depression when he argued in his long letters that abstract love for humanity took away from me the happiness of concrete love for one’s people, and I was dissatisfied to work for one people because of boundless pretensions to work for all peoples. Within me began a struggle of centripetal force with the previous centrifugal force: the national principle with the cosmopolitan.90

In his autobiography he summarized this 1887 turning point: I felt that the fateful tortures of self-definition [samo-opredelenie, his emphasis] were coming to an end and I had to define my calling and choose one of the many projects that pulled me in various directions. The twenty-seventh year of my life was a decisive moment. Until then my thoughts still ran to general literary plans, although actually I worked only in Jewish literature. I had been dissatisfied with this narrow sphere of activity and longed for the broader problems which my mentors Mill, Spencer, Renan, and Taine 85 #90 (February), p. 19. 86 #83, p. 26, on the sentimental stories of Leopold von Sacher-Masoch. 87 #79, p. 32, apropos of an insulting defense of the Jews by “Natalia Petrovna Uvarova, born Countess Gorchakov.” 88 #90, p. 25. 89 Dubnow describes how earlier Jewish writers would have portrayed the hero of a novel. #74 (January–February), p. 29. #75, a review of a novel by Braudes (Two Extremes, or a Novel from Contemporary Jewish Life) argues that the author does not really take into account the contemporary material sufferings of the Jews, the problems of the contemporary Jewish intellectual, and the new movements in Judaism (#75, p. 39). 90 KZ, I, 195.



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studied. My eye illness, involving the danger of losing normal sight, gave me the impulse for deeper thoughts. I became convinced that true creativity required the process of self-limitation, that kabbalistic secret of concentration (sod ha-tzimtzum) that the Infinite used so that He could create the world from primordial chaos. I now understood that my path to the universal lay precisely through the field of the national in which I was already working. You could serve humanity only by serving one of its parts, all the more so if that [part] was a nation of the most ancient culture. It became clear to me that my general knowledge and universal ambitions would give fruitful results in conjunction with the inherited treasures of Jewish knowledge and the yet unformed Jewish national ideals. From this time began my propensity for the great themes of Jewish history.91

Discovering History In retrospect, it would seem that there was an historian in Dubnow trying to get out. Many of his early “compilations” show more than a perfunctory interest in the past. But the freedom to follow this inclination depended upon the breakdown of his belief that truth could only be found in the natural sciences and his disillusionment with the Russian intelligentsia. Even before he began independent historical research, his book reviews reveal changes in his emotional attitudes toward certain phases of Jewish history. In 1886 Dubnow published pieces critical of Theodor Mommsen’s and Ernest Renan’s failure to portray the Jewish war against Rome (65–70 C.E.) with sufficient sympathy for the rebels. Although he praised the erudition of these two authors, he felt that Mommsen had limited insight into the “internal religious and moral climate” of the Judaeans because of his predilection for seeing events from the perspective of the imperial interests of the Roman state. Scholars should strive to understand the losers as well as the winners in such encounters.92 Renan appreciated ancient Judaism as a religion, but lost interest in Judaism once Christianity appeared ­several decades before the revolt and was therefore insensitive to the political turmoil that led to the war.93 Dubnow’s remarks on the uprising—an event both secular and religious in the modern sense of these terms—was an indication of his desire to take into consideration the peculiar features of Jewish history. Earlier, 91  Ibid., pp. 206–207. 92 #49, p. 3. 93 #52, p. 9.

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in 1881, he implied that if the Pharisees had emphasized the universal rather than the national nature of Judaism, there would have been no conflict with early Christians over spreading Judaism actively to other peoples, in which case it would not have remained a minority religion.94 In 1886, however, he published a long review of Gustav Karpeles’ History of Jewish Literature in which he asserted (in italics) that “there are two main parallel tendencies of thought throughout the whole spiritual history of the Jewish nation”: the “national”—“practical religion in the form of obligatory responsibilities or laws”—and the “universal”—“philosophy, morality and free investigation.”95 These two tendencies appear in each historical epoch of Judaism: during the biblical period the Mosaic laws were the national element while the prophets were the universal; later the Pharisees represented the national and the “Alexandrian philosophy of religious contemplation” the universal; talmudic law was the national and rabbinic legends and homilies were the universal; the medieval French talmudists the national and the “Spanish philosophical-poetical school the universal.”96 The dichotomy presented in this article is not meant to be invidious inasmuch as the concept of national was purely historical and not at all ideological. The same issues of Voskhod which contained this summary also featured a series by Dubnow entitled “Jews in the Mogilev Gubernia: An HistoricalStatistical Essay,”97 based on a semi-official study of the total population of that area. The concluding installment of this review attacked the “current epidemic” of “blaming the Jews for conditions under which they too suffer,” and pleads for the abolition of the Pale. The first two parts sketched the history and demography of Belorussian Jewry. Dubnow summarized statistics on the percentage of Jews in the total population and in urban 94 He had agreed with the Dutch theologian and Bible scholar Abraham Kuenen that Ezra and Nehemiah reversed the trend to “universalism” in the prophets and returned to a “national” religion (#36, p. 25; KZ, I, 173). 95 #55 (November), p. 1. 96 He thought highly of the review of Karpeles’ book and referred to it again later (#59). He remarked in his autobiography that in this essay he had begun to use the evolutionary method in the investigation of history and contemporary affairs in place of his previous revolutionary approach (KZ, I, 201). 97 #47. In the last installment he describes an “ethnographical” article on the Jews by a Belorussian landlord who claims that the Society for the Spread of Enlightenment among Russian Jews is the central government for Russian Jewry, while the Alliance Israélite in Paris was the world government. Dubnow also sharply questions the author’s conclusions that we must spread the Jews out and get them into agricultural work—but without widening the Pale. “Jews are not cattle,” he asserts; only freedom of residence and work, not another set of restrictive laws, will regularize their economic situation.



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areas, the Jewish birth and death rate, and the distribution of professions among Jews in the province. His perception of the hard facts distinguishing Russian Jewry was sharpening. A review of the short stories of the German-Jewish writer Karl Emil Franzos in the same year exhibits this concrete approach to social realities.98 Dubnow used the characters in Franzos’s vignettes of Galician life to make a wide-ranging analysis of East European Jewry which avoided tendentious blame and praise. He described the alienation of the fathers and sons, the problems of a transitional generation caught between the old and new ways of life, the dilemma of Jewish women, and the relationship of East European Jews to the external Christian world. Dubnow was making a transition from what he felt was a commitment only to truths that applied universality to an appreciation of particularity. Instead of requiring that every phenomenon be assimilated to an overriding scheme, he tried to grasp elements of Russian-Jewish life which violated most seriously his earlier concept of rational Judaism. This appears in his decision to study Hasidism. Hasidism had previously attracted his attention as a major obstacle to the modernization of the East European Jewish masses, a common trope in earlier Haskalah writing. Dubnow did not spell out why he was first led toward the end of the eighties to investigate Hasidism, except to mention that the pantheism of Jewish mysticism intrigued him. Yet Hasidism previously had hardly been treated scientifically, and Dubnow was forced to piece together slowly its history from difficult or rare primary sources.99 As he proceeded, he wrote in his diary: “I am creating in my mind something unified and organic from little atoms.”100 From August 1889 until mid-spring 1890 he worked steadily on the origins of the schism between the Hasidim and the Mitnaggedim, their opponents.

  98 #48. See his remarks on the “call for resignation” in this article (KZ, I, 197). A similar more objective tone appeared the previous year in a review of stories by the Austrian Jewish writer Nathan Samuely in #43.   99 Dubnow had one predecessor who led the way to reevaluating Hasidism. Eliezar Zweifel (1815–1888) published in 1868 Shalom al Yisrael [Peace on Israel], which has been called the first unprejudiced account of Hasidism. The maskilim of his time ignored or protested his work (Spiegel, op. cit., pp. 131–34). 100 KZ, I, 231. Dubnow’s introduction to his history of Hasidism, published in 1888, was the first article to appear under his full name in four years (ibid., p. 220). Dubnow said he was intrigued by Hasidism, “where the element of religious pantheism was more humanistic and social than in the Kabbalah” (ibid., p. 207).

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chapter four Never did I experience in such a degree the tortures and joys of creativity as I did in those months. . . . Never did I give myself up less either to personal sorrow or world sorrow. “I stopped tormenting myself with cursed questions. I found forgetfulness in my work. All my religion, philosophy, and poetry are concentrated in this work” (a note from November 10, 1889). In my Near Year’s Day entry (1890), I said, “My plans are related largely to Jewish history; about it I think and will continue to think.”101

While working on the history of Hasidism in 1889, he wrote a long series on the French Revolution and the Jews and published primary sources for the study of East European Jewish history. In the early nineties, he reviewed the work of the major Western Jewish historians and prepared a series of essays on the nature and meaning of Jewish history and its relationship to Russian-Jewish life. Then came one of his best known and most influential moves. In 1891 Dubnow published a long article calling for a rational and organized preparation of the history of Russian Jewry. In it he surveyed the accomplishments of West European Jewish scholarship and the gaps in the known history of East European Jews. “Like Stanley exploring the Congo,” he said, Jewish history in Russia was a “dark continent” which has yet to be investigated systematically.102 He periodized the eight centuries of Jewish life in Eastern Europe103 and then outlined the source materials that would have to be collected to lay the groundwork for the history: the minute books of the Jewish communes and burial societies, the records of regional synods, and the records of the famed Council of the Four Lands. To be rescued from oblivion and made available to scholars were materials from government archives in St. Petersburg and the provincial capitals. Data on Jewish life must be collected and indexed, Russian legal texts and historical chronicles probed for references to Jews, rabbinic and mystical literature perused for information, Jewish oral legends and local customs recorded, and archeological remains, such as cemetery monuments, inspected and described.104 In order to carry out this work a historical society should be formed to issue a journal and coordinate the efforts of many independent 101  Ibid., p. 231. In the summer of 1889 he had to languish a month in Petersburg waiting for a rare book on Hasidism to be located in the library of Baron Günzberg. At the end of February he spent two days pouring over the book in the Baron’s study, and he wrote: “I feverishly read through the precious acts and in my mind there grew up the grandiose architectural plan for the history of Hasidism. I experienced all the depths of pleasure which scientific creativity can give” (KZ, I, 228). 102 #98, p. 36. 103 Ibid., pp. 40–46. 104 Ibid., pp. 47–76.



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researchers. Dubnow offered a plan for the society, its committees and departments, and suggested how the necessary funds could be raised.105 In 1892 he rewrote this in his seminal call for the preparation of RussianJewish history in Hebrew, entitled “Let us Search and Study,” and sent it to the dukhovnyi (spiritual) rabbis and leaders of the Jewish communities.106 It elicited a tremendous response. Correspondents from all over the Pale began to mail him materials. Dubnow published some of what he thought were the more interesting pieces in Voskhod as a series of “Historical Communications.” He added a commentary and observations in order to introduce the public to the “laboratory of historiography,” demonstrate how a scholar discovered and synthesized the past, and teach the reader about a significant event in Russian-Jewish history.107 The study of history had become a solace for a Jewish intellectual living in a dismal present, but more: it became an existential commitment. In 1887, he had written about an anti-Semitic book: “How do you deal with this kind of thing? After a while you get tired and turn to your own life, your past, for better food to strengthen you.”108 In 1890 he asserted that although the Jews had to continue the fight for elementary rights, “We have to think about the historical development of our people and

105 Ibid., pp. 76–82. Dubnow’s project elicited a response, even though an independent society and journal did not materialize until 1908. A group of St. Petersburg lawyers wrote him enthusiastically that they were forming an historical-ethnographic commission associated with the Society for the Spread of Enlightenment among Jews. The original group, Maxim Vinaver, Vasily Berman, and Samuel Gruzenberg, was joined by several graduates of Moscow University who had already compiled an index to the literature in Russian on the Jews, which was published as a supplement to Voskhod in 1892. In 1900 these men sent Dubnow the first volume of their collective research, Regesty i nadpisi [Abstracts and Inscriptions], accompanied by a letter asserting that this was a direct result of Dubnow’s appeal. See KZ, I, 264–65, 357; and #110 (July), p. 11; Maxim Vinaver, “How We Studied History” [in Russian], Evreiskaia Starina, I (1909), 41–54; G.B. Sliozberg, Dela minuvshikh dnei [Affairs of By-gone Days: Notes of a Russian Jew] (Paris, 1934), III, 111; Frumkin, et al., eds.,p. 463. These men were to play an important role in Jewish social and political life between 1905 and 1917. 106 Published in the Odessa yearly Pardes in 1892, and sent around as a separate brochure. Dubnow tried to get financial help for his program from the Petersburg Society for Enlightenment among Jews but he heard that the historian Dr. Abraham Harkavy, who could not forgive Dubnow’s criticisms of his pedantry, prevented this from being approved (KZ I, 281). He did get a small amount of money from the Odessa branch of the society. 107 #110 (July), p. 11. The first sources Dubnow published, already in 1889 (#80), were two documents found by Dubnow’s brother Wolf in Benzion’s library (KZ, I, 229). 108 #68, p. 20.

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the meaning of its relationships with other peoples, and our own selfdefinition (samo-opredelenie).”109 On New Year’s Day, 1892, Dubnow wrote in his journal that his aim in life was now clear: “I have become a missionary of history.”110 An opportunity to demonstrate that he had thereby resolved his alienation from Mstislavl came just before he left for Odessa, when he defended the Jewish community from administrative terror by publicizing crude threats of the local police to whip Jewish leaders if the Jews were not more respectful to authority.111 Soon after, when he departed from his grandfather, Benzion told him: I heard that you did a good thing; you defended the honor of Israel, and they are saying about you, ‘There are those who can acquire the Kingdom of Heaven in one hour.’ But I think that never in your soul were you foreign to our people.112

Dubnow recalled that it was one of the “worst fanatics” in the town who recited this talmudic aphorism to forgive him. Dubnow describes this scene further: We parted forever. [He was] my spiritual father in childhood, my antipode in youth. But were we antipodes? Were we not both men of spiritual vows, with the difference that grandfather was a monolith, the product of the immense deposit of centuries, whereas the son stood between the formation of the old and new worlds in the period of historical transformation. Did not the prophetic word which he pronounced over me come about in a different form? Aher, “Externus,” who stood outside, found his way to make peace between the old thesis and the new antithesis with the newest synthesis.113

A short while after he had settled in Odessa, Dubnow received word of Benzion’s death. Working on his first Hebrew essay since childhood, he dedicated it to his grandfather’s memory. I inscribed my brochure on the first page: “To the memory of him who all the days of his life did not depart from the tent of the Torah.” I felt that I was obligated to this hero of the spirit, who had given me an inheritance and an affection for the tent of Torah, although it was a completely different, broader, and free Torah.114 109 #90 (January), p. 22. 110 KZ, I, 268. 111  Ibid., pp. 235, 240. 112 Ibid., p. 241. 113 Ibid., pp. 241–12. In 1890 he called for the “end of destructive differences in our intelligentsia and for friendly work in behalf of our unhappy people” (#90 [February], p. 25). 114 KZ, I, 270.



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Dubnow’s perception that the active agent in the frustration of his expectations was not, as it had been in childhood, traditional Judaism, but tsarist Russia, and that the past could be integrated into one’s self without obliterating construction of one’s personal identity (indeed, enhancing it), represented an emotional change that allowed him to reintegrate himself personally and with his Jewishness.

Chapter Five

Romantic Positivism The geographical odyssey of Dubnow’s life to this point can be summa­ rized as follows. Born and raised in a traditional Jewish home in Msti­ slavl, he left home at age seventeen for Vilna, Dinaburg, and Smolensk in what turned out to be unsuccessful attempts to get a certificate of gradu­ ation. As a result, Dubnow was a quintessential autodidact, self-educated in what he considered to be the pertinent fields of “higher learning.” He began his literary career in 1880 as a journalist in St. Petersburg at the age of twenty but was forced to leave the capital in the spring of 1884. Most of the next six years were spent at home in Mstislavl except for occasional forays in search of residence rights, books, and medical advice to Warsaw, Kiev, and St. Petersburg. In the fall of 1890 the Dubnows settled in Odessa, where they lived for the next thirteen years. The existential crisis that surfaced in the mid-1880s somewhat resem­ bles that of his youthful hero John Stuart Mill, as depicted in the latter’s famous autobiography (and may even to some extent be modeled on it). Dubnow’s emotional and philosophical discontent abated in 1888, leaving him with a greater sense of the concreteness of human life, of personal rap­ port with nature, and secure acceptance of an ongoing positive bond with the Jewish people. Underneath the specific revisions of his worldview, the resolution of his unrest represented a shift in tone and perspective rather than an abrupt about-face. He was never to give up his sense of personal autonomy, devotion to high principle, and an overriding need to find a higher meaning for his life. Young Dubnow’s most provocative calls for radical reforms of Jewish culture, religion, and education had been written between 1883 and 1885. He later wrote that after that, “the evolutionary method in the investigation of history and contemporary affairs replaced my previous revolutionary approach.”1 “Evolutionary method” had several meanings for him, including that he was and remained a staunch liberal in an age of increasing political extremism.

1 KZ, I, 201.

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It took time for him to evolve his mature position in the many arti­ cles he published between 1886 and 1897. Along with an ever increasing involvement in historical study, for financial reasons he had to continue writing book reviews on a wide range of subjects for Voskhod until 1895. He began editing and authoring books on Jewish history which he pub­ lished by himself, but he continued to submit essays to Voskhod until the journal’s demise in 1906. On the ideological level, the greatest shift during these years was, as we have seen, a modification of his universalistic rationalism. The earliest indication of his growing identification with the Jews of Eastern Europe can be detected in 1886. The years between his qualified repudiation of Positivism and his ardent Jewish nationalism in 1897 constitute a distinct, if extended, transition in his thought. In 1887 he had visited Warsaw to collect sources for his history of Hasid­ ism, his first original piece of historical research. This was soon followed by a trip to Kiev where he found a physician who was able to cure the headaches induced by astigmatism. His writing in his articles on history during this period was more open, poetic, and imaginative than before, or for that matter than at any other period in his life. The move to Odessa was motivated by the desire to live in a large city where he could more easily carry on historical research. Once there, at a historic moment of Russian political ferment, he became a stalwart member of an eminent, influen­ tial, and creative group of Jewish cultural nationalists. In the summer of 1897 he vacationed in Mstislavl, made a trip to Switzerland, and began to publish the first of his series of “Letters on Old and New Judaism.” The Influence of Renan and Graetz Dubnow’s early Comtean Positivism had been based on empiricism and on faith in inexorable progress as humanity passed through certain clearly-defined steps to self-understanding. He came to qualify the lat­ ter conviction somewhat, but never the former. Dubnow always empha­ sized the intrinsic importance of precise and accurate collection of facts and preferred, whenever possible, to stress the similarities between his­ tory and the natural sciences. He recognized that human consciousness should be conceived as an independent level of existence with its own internal principles of development. He later called his approach to history sociological but he owed even more to the late nineteenth-century Dar­ winian “science of society”. The new departures that were beginning to



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appear in the social sciences through the exploration of consciousness by such figures as Emil Durkheim, Max Weber, and Sigmund Freud were beyond the ken of Dubnow and his colleagues, as were Neo-Kantianism, phenomenology, and a fortiori avant-garde music and symbolist poetry.2 With all necessary changes being acknowledged, Dubnow remained rooted in what Franklin L. Baumer called “the New Enlightenment” of the nineteenth century.3 His positivistic commitment was expressed in his urge to find an inspir­ ing, universal meaning to history, primarily the history of his own people. Although he berated many Jewish writers who launched grandiose proj­ ects without carefully assembling all the available data beforehand,4 he disliked pedants who “turned history into a museum mummy.”5 He com­ pared the process of writing history to Ezekiel’s vision of the valley of the dry bones: the past should come alive again on the printed page after the facts were assembled and joined in the right way.6 It was therefore necessary that Dubnow find a method to organize the details so that his narratives attained intensity and dynamism.7 Abjuring ethical relativism,8 for Dubnow a historical synthesis had to instruct the reader and under­ pin moral truths. To achieve these ends he turned to a romantic posi­ tivism (lower-case rather than upper-case because it went beyond the

2 On the revolt against positivism in the 1890s, see H. Stuart Hughes, Consciousness and Society: The Reorientation of European Social Thought, 1890–1930 (New York: Random House, 1958), pp. 29–40. 3 Franklin Le Van Baumer, Main Currents of Western Thought: Readings in Western European Intellectual History from the Middle Ages to the Present. 4th edition. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1978, Part III, Section 2. 4 #98, p. 11; #74 (January–February), p. 20. 5 #110 (July), p. 11; KZ, I, 282. 6 #98, p. 88. Dubnow remarked that because he wanted to gain an inward sense of the facts and not mere information, he was more interested in Renan, Buckle, and Taine than Weber, Schlosser, and Ranke (#79 [November–December], p. 68). #86 contains a review of a detailed article by a well-known scholar; Dubnow describes it as “preparation for but not the reconstruction of history.” Elsewhere he remarks that history is not chemistry or mineralogy; it has inner content and must teach useful lessons (#116, p. 67). 7 Dubnow’s problem was not unlike Tolstoy’s. On the one hand he “perceived reality in its multiplicity, as a collection of separate entities,” and on the other he advocated “a single embracing vision” (Isaiah Berlin, The Hedgehog and the Fox: An Essay on Tolstoy’s View of History [New York: New American Library, 1957] 63–64). 8 Dubnow’s faith in evolution made it impossible for him to evolve the “historicism” that has been detected among nineteenth-century German scholars. Iggers notes that “his­ toricism . . . came to be confronted by ethical nihilism as the logical consequence of its position that all values and cognitions are bound in their validity to the historical situa­ tion in which they arise” (Georg G. Iggers, The German Conception of History [Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan Univ. Press, 1968], p. 270).

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Positivism of Comte) which emphasized the pathos in the march of gener­ ations. As Dubnow says in his autobiography, his youthful and rebellious Sturm und Drang, which had briefly given way to a period of “quiet res­ ignation”, was itself replaced by a world view expressed in Victor Hugo’s lines: L’histoire m’apparut, et je compris la loi Des générations, cherchant Dieu, portant l’arche, Et montant l’escalier immense marche à marche.9

Thus, Dubnow’s favorite historians were erudite, didactic scholars who could combine mastery of detail with emotional expressiveness. He admired Hippolyte Taine,10 Thomas Babington Macaulay, Isaac Hirsch Weiss,11 and, above all, Ernest Renan and Heinrich Graetz. Dubnow’s first major historical work, a series on the development of Hasidism, seems to have used as a model, for the most part, Renan’s Histoire des origines du Christianisme.12 Like Renan, Dubnow opened his study with a discussion of the social and intellectual background of a movement which traced its origins to a founder known mainly through quasi-legendary sources. Applying Renan’s dictum that even pious biog­ raphies have an historical element,13 he stripped the Hasidic account of Israel ben Eliezar, the “Baal Shem Tov” (Master of the Good Name, acro­

  9 KZ, I, 245. Victor Hugo’s sense of history was accompanied by a faith in liberty and progress. These lines are taken from a poem (“Ecrit en 1846” in Book Five of Les Contemplations) which justifies the rejection of his youthful royalism. The next line is: “Je restai le meme oeil, voyant un autre ciel” (Victor Hugo, Oeuvres poetiques completes [Paris: JeanJacques Pauvert, 1961], p. 436. 10 Wellek points out these same inconsistencies in the writings of the French critic Hippolyte Taine, who, despite his use of Hegelian notions, “was a positivist in a wide and loose sense” (op. cit., p. 35, also pp. 32, 37, 57). 11  Weiss was the author of a famous history of the Jewish legal tradition. See Ginzberg, op. cit., pp. 217–40. 12 The similarities between Dubnow’s and Renan’s work result in part from the common social pattern in both movements; there are, furthermore, parallels between Christian and Hasidic piety (Dubnow notes this in #82, September, pp. 5–6 [footnote]). Nevertheless, it can be argued that the founders of Hasidism, including the Besht, were not protesting rabbinic learning but the alienation of the scholars from the masses. Robert M. Seltzer, The Development of the Leadership Principle in Early Hasidism (unpublished M.A.H.L. thesis, Cincinnati Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, 1961), pp. 19–37. 13 #73 (May–June, 1888), p. 120. Ernst Cassirer praises Renan for his ability to make the world of myth intelligible (The Problem of Knowledge; Philosophy, Science and History Since Hegel [New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1950], pp. 301–308). Wardman suggests that Renan’s portrait of Jesus is in many ways a portrait of Renan (H.W. Wardman, Ernest Renan: A Critical Biography [London: Univ. of London, Athlone Press, 1964] p. 86). Certainly Dubnow’s love of nature and admiration of moral earnestness influences his picture of the Besht.



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nym: the Besht), of its supernatural motifs according to the Hasidic book of stories about him entitled Shivhei ha-Besht [Tales in Praise of the Besht]. He revealed a simple man who through his love for nature14 and the com­ mon people preached a doctrine of pantheistic mysticism and brother­ hood.15 Like Renan’s Jesus, Dubnow’s Besht believed that the purpose of religion was self-perfection; the moral, rather than the purely theological element was the essence of its teaching.16 Renan and Dubnow assumed that the primary source of faith in these movements was an exalted romantic feeling that was almost pantheistic, which lead both historians to portray the founders as rebels against dry formalism and rote custom.17 Dubnow agreed with Renan that their subject had won fame as a miracle worker, but like Renan he assured his readers that this did not involve conscious deception because they and their followers were naively unaware of sci­ entific law.18 After the death of the unique spiritual figure, his apostles succeeded in building a mass following. Dov Baer, like Paul, imposed his own personality on the original teaching of the master. (Dubnow con­ cluded that Dov Baer was responsible for the ideas that gave the tzaddik unlimited power as an intermediary between man and God.)19 The History of Hasidism marches almost section by section abreast of the Origins of Christianity: how the sect grew in militancy, defied the outdated author­ ity of its opponents, survived persecution, assembled its literature, and eventually proliferated into splinter groups. Renan carried his narrative as far as the death of Marcus Aurelius in 180 C.E.; Dubnow continued his until the liberation in 1800 of the famed tzaddik Shneur Zalman from the Petersburg fortress where he had been confined by the tsarist police. Both

14 #73 (May–June, 1888), pp. 127–28, 136–37; Renan, The Life of Jesus (New York: Random House, 1927), p. 306. On Renan’s love for nature Albert Schweitzer remarks: “He offered his readers a Jesus who was alive, whom he, with his artistic imagination, had met under the blue heaven of Galilee, and whose lineaments his inspired pencil had seized. Men’s attention was arrested, and they thought to see Jesus, because Renan had the skill to make them see blue skies, seas of waving corn, distant mountains, gleaming lilies” (The Quest for the Historical Jesus [New York: Macmillan Co., 1968], pp. 180–92 [First published as Von Reimarus zu Wrede, 1906]). Schweitzer goes on to say, however, that “there is scarcely any other work on the subject which so abounds in lapses of taste” (p. 182). 15 KZ, I, 221 refers to the influence of Renan in Dubnow’s portrayal of the Besht. 16 #73 (September, 1888), p. 12; Renan, op. cit., pp. 122, 129. 17 #73 (September, 1888), p. 4; also #72 (March), p. 13; Renan, op. cit., pp. 214, 227. 18 #72 (July 1888), p. 85; Renan, op. cit., 242. 19 #82 (October), p. 4; (November–December), pp. 47–49. On Renan’s attitude toward Paul, see Edmund Wilson, To the Finland Station (Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1955), p. 41 (first published in 1940).

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concluded by sketching the social and religious structure of the mature movement and evaluating what they considered its ambiguous legacy. Dubnow’s views on Hasidic history indicate that he agreed with Renan that the scholar could combine a rejection of dogmatism and fanaticism with an appreciation for religion’s ability to answer the longings of the common people. Dubnow explained the rise of Hasidism as a protest against the rigors of talmudic method and the previous aspects of the Kabbalah.20 Polish rabbis in the eighteenth century had been too concerned with “dead books” and did not provide sufficient spiritual guidance to the masses trapped in a never-ending search for physical sustenance.21 The seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century Jewish mystics in East Europe offered the people primarily “negative” ascetic doctrines. The Besht left an indelible impression because he opposed mortification, rejected dry scholasticism, and preached a positive form of spirituality.22 Dubnow warned the reader of his History of Hasidism that the “law of progress” inherent in the sciences was not necessarily true for religion. In its place, he seemed to propose a kind of law of inevitable decay in the idealism of a religious movement; the original reformist ideal loses its purity when overwhelmed by the mentality of the masses, producing “a new chemical element,” a teaching nominally attributed to the founder but actually having little in common with his intent.23 Dubnow believed that Hasidism had followed this pattern and ultimately had become completely encrusted with ignorance and superstition. In the last install­ ments of his work Dubnow was noticeably impatient for the advent of the Haskalah’s critical spirit.24 Dubnow’s mentor in absentia for the panorama of Jewish history in its entirety was Heinrich Graetz. In a long study of Graetz’s accomplishments written as a memorial after his death, he praised the German-Jewish historian’s “architectural ability” to bring together many sources, includ­ ing long forgotten manuscripts found in archives, and to create a convinc­ ing and coherent narrative.25 Dubnow advised his reader to look into the 20 #73 (September), pp. 3–6. Against asceticism: #72 (March), p. 11. 21 #72 (January–February), p. 96. 22 73 (September), pp. 4–6. Summary of the Besht’s teachings: ibid., pp. 12–14. 23 #82 (September), pp. 3–4. 24 #109 (May), pp. 14–26. 25 #105 (March), p. 61; KZ, I, 266, 268–69. On Graetz (1817–1891) and his historical method compared to Ranke, see Salo Baron, History and Jewish Historians: Essays and Addresses, compiled by Arthur Hertzberg and Leon A. Feldman (Philadelphia: Jewish Pub­ lication Society of America, 1964), pp. 263–75.



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appendices of Graetz’s volumes to see how “tiny elements” were put together, “like oxygen and hydrogen becoming water.”26 Graetz’s Geschichte der Juden was virtually Dubnow’s graduate school. He not only admired the meticulous German historical method but, as he reread each volume in the early nineties, he recalled that “before my eyes unfolded a grandiose picture of the historical path of the people.”27 Graetz was able to evoke in him historical pathos because, Dubnow said, “he taught us what we experienced all those centuries.”28 Like John Stuart Mill, Graetz could have said when he died, “My work is done.”29 In 1893, Dubnow prepared an introduction for an ill-fated Russian translation of Graetz’s Popular History of the Jews.30 That same year he decided to publish this essay separately in Voskhod under the title “What is Jewish History? An Attempt at a Brief Philosophical Characterization.” This essay enhanced Dubnow’s reputation in Russia, and the German and English translations of it were widely read in Western Europe and Amer­ ica long afterwards. Although it borrowed heavily from Graetz’s style, it was different in several ways which merit analysis. In the introductory section of “What is Jewish History?” Dubnow explains that his aim is to demonstrate that “Jewish history, in respect to its quantitative dimensions as well as its qualitative structure, is to the last degree distinctive and presents a phenomenon of undeni­ able uniqueness.”31 “Historical peoples”—those with cultural goals and a “spiritual physiognomy”—fall into three groups: the ancient orien­ tal nations, the classical occidental nations, and the modern nations of Europe and Asia, perhaps implying that some of the ethnic groups in Eastern Europe who were beginning to demand recognition as “nations” were at best latecomers. The Jews were the only people that did not fit

26 #105 (March), p. 73. 27 KZ, I, 266. 28 #105 (September), p. 14. Dubnow criticizes those who, picking at the little details, ignore Graetz’s masterful synthesis. 29 Ibid., p. 13. Despite his admiration of Renan and Graetz, Dubnow disagreed with them when he felt they were not sufficiently broadminded. He attacked Renan’s disap­ proval of the levitical system, the activities of Ezra and Nehemiah, the fanaticism of the Maccabees, and the legal concerns of Judaism after Jesus. Dubnow suggested that Renan’s over-idealization of Judaism prevented him from understanding periods when the people was absorbed in the task of self-preservation (#123 [May], p. 24). He argued that Graetz failed to credit the Kabbalists with saving the Jewish religious spirit from petrification dur­ ing the later Middle Ages (#105 [May], p. 63). 30 The Graetz translation was ordered confiscated by the church censors and destroyed (KZ, I, 276–77). 31 #111 (October), p. 120.

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neatly into this “accepted classification,” because their history extended 3,500 years without interruption or loss of vitality. The Jewish people is hardly “non-historical;” indeed it is “historicissimus.” The history of the Jewish people is like an axis crossing the history of mankind from one of its poles to the other. As an unbroken thread it runs through the ancient civilization of Egypt and Mesopotamia, down to the present-day culture of France and Germany.32

During the first half of its history, when the nation possessed its own terri­ tory under its own government, it created a novel religious world view and code of morality which eventually gained universal appeal. The subject of the first half was “the people as teacher of religion.”33 In the second half, it seemed that “historical providence”34 wanted to prove that a people can continue to live without the tangible accompaniments of nationality, such as land and state. If the inner life and the social and intellectual development of a people form the kernel of history, and politics and occasional wars are but its husk, then certainly the history of the Jewish diaspora is all kernel.35

Jewish history remained “an organic constituent of the past of all that por­ tion of mankind which has contributed to the treasury of human thought.” Sometimes it was shaped by persecutions, while at happier times by gen­ eral enlightenment.36 The subject of the latter part of Jewish history was “the people as thinker, stoic, and sufferer” as it “eked out existence under conditions which no other nation has found adequate or, indeed, could ever find adequate.”37 The special destiny of Jewry, Dubnow says, was to exhibit intellectual discipline and periodic martyrdom. Like Graetz, Dubnow insists that diaspora Judaism is not the history of a “church.” Graetz maintained that it was the story of ein lebendiger Volksstamm,38 a tribe-like entity whose scattered members could sense their folkish unity through religious consciousness, historical memories,

32 Ibid., p. 114. 33 Ibid., p. 120. 34 Ibid., p. 117. 35 Ibid., p. 118. 36 Ibid., p. 119. 37 Ibid., p. 120. 38 Heinrich Graetz, Geschichte der Juden (Leipzig: O. Leiner, 1909), V, xv; Zvi [Heinrich] Graetz, Divrei Yemei Yisrael, translated by Saul Pinchas Rabinovitz (Warsaw: Defus Yisrael Alapin, 1893), III, 5. See also R. Mahler, “Dubnow’s Method and Accomplishment in Jewish Historiography” [in Hebrew], Dubnow, Man and Work, p. 60.



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morals, and hopes. Graetz had written that mankind needed not just Jew­ ish ethical monotheism and religious rationalism, but also the actual pres­ ence of the Jewish people, as in the following passage: When their mission as the exponents of a special religious and moral concep­ tion became clear to them, the people prized their task beyond all things— more highly than their fatherland and nationality, and even more than life itself. And because they sacrificed themselves, the idea which dominated them attained to enduring existence and to immortality.39

Dubnow’s epitomizes the Graetzian concept of Jewish history with the statement that the special destiny of the Jews was “to think and to suffer.”40 Even though Dubnow owed his virtual mentor a great debt, under the surface there were differences between their approaches. The concept of a transcendent absolute and divine Providence that Graetz took for granted is absent from Dubnow’s view of history, which solely depends on the action of the people.41 Dubnow pays homage to the biblical idea of monotheism, but his main emphasis is, as we shall see next, on acts of the human will.42 The core of Dubnow’s “What is Jewish History?” is a fifty-page “philosophicalhistorical synthesis” in which Dubnow summarizes the dynamic processes of Jewish history and reevaluates its unusual features. The influence of Renan as well as of Graetz can be seen throughout. Its overall conception seeks to convey the emotional force and drama of the Jewish past. In his journal Dubnow originally described this study as his “historical credo in miniature”; later he deemed it “a hymn to Jewish history.”43

39 Graetz, History of the Jews (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1895), V, 718); this epilogue was written by Graetz himself especially for the English trans­ lation of his work. 40 #111 (October), p. 117. 41  On the development of Graetz’s views on Judaism and the Jews, see Samuel Ettinger, “Judaism and the History of the Jews according to Graetz” [in Hebrew], in Heinrich Graetz, Darkhei ha-historiyah ha-yehudit [Essays, Memoirs, Letters] (Jerusalem: Mosad Bialik, 1969), pp. 7–36; especially on the concept of Providence: pp. 10, 15. 42 In the titles to the sections of his historical synthesis Dubnow adds geographical terms to the literary periods, foreshadowing his later theory of regional “hegemonies.” Dubnow’s concept of will is reflected in his remark: “The flames issuing from the funeral pile on which martyrs die a heroic death for their ideas is, in its way, as awe-inspiring as the flame from Sinai’s height” (#111 [October–November], p. 123). 43 KZ, I, 274–75.

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In this “synthesis” Dubnow presents what is in effect a biography of a people.44 The basic plot is the conflict between the people as collec­ tive individual and the obstacles to its progress through time. As a child “he” must be dragged along by “his” leaders, but he learns to cope with the vicissitudes that confront him, armed with spiritual weapons. He may reel under the impact of grievous blows from enemies, but when condi­ tions permit, he rises to full stature and to new pinnacles of intellectual achievement. Dubnow’s narrative implies that there were four processes at work in Jewish history. The first was the creation by the elite during biblical times of a world view which was gradually communicated to the masses. Dub­ now may have derived from Renan the notion about the original deism of the patriarchal nomads conditioned by “tent life”; he ignored Renan’s teaching that monotheism could also be traced to the inherent inability of Semitic languages to express those mythological concepts in which the Aryan languages excelled.45 (This was a common racial conceit of the time often used by “Aryan” anti-Semites.) According to Dubnow the masses, left by themselves, would have assimilated to the behavior, attitudes, and standards of their neighbors; however, introspection induced by the Baby­ lonian Exile and given content by the educational achievements of the scribes made the people as a whole conscious of its prophetic task. A second process was a sharpening of the individuality of the Jewish people through interaction with other nations, this occurring most often through their confrontation with political or economically advanced but morally backward civilizations, such as Pharaonic Egypt or Hellenistic Syria. Dubnow refers to an essence of Judaism only when contrasting it to other cultures. On the whole, Dubnow was in accord with Graetz on the main moral values of Judaism. In an article written in English just before he died, Graetz quoted with approval Renan’s aperçu that Judaism is “a minimum of religion,” explaining that this meant Judaism was a doctrine of ethical

44 Dubnow personified the Jewish nation throughout #55 to explain the development of Jewish literature. For example, “the young and healthy national soul” (September, pp. 16–17). Dubnow announces that “the development of a nation is the same process as the development of an individual”; the rise of Hellenistic-Jewish literature is therefore comparable to a child who leaves home, makes new acquaintances, and develops new ideas (October, p. 17). 45 Ernest Renan, History of the People of Israel (Boston; Roberts Brothers, 1896), I: 11, 41, 49.



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monotheism which rejected injustice, sexual debauchery, selfishness, and idolatry, and exemplified pure religious rationalism.46 A third process was the dichotomy between the universal and the partic­ ular (the nation).47 Although Judaism’s world view is universalistic, exem­ plified by the prophets and the medieval philosophers, at certain times this aspect had been deferred to guarantee the preservation of national identity. Thus, after the Babylonian Exile the Temple had to be rebuilt to insure unity, and the ceremonial law elaborated to provide a spiritual mechanism for self-defense. The “capitalization” of the “accumulated trea­ suries” of the people through canonization made the Bible and later the Talmud the tools for survival through subsequent periods of history. The contrast between national and universal can be seen in Dubnow’s setting as cultural antipodes medieval Sephardic Jewry, especially dur­ ing Arab rule of the Iberian Peninsula, and Ashkenazic Jewry in medieval northern France and Germany. The history of the first illustrates the prin­ ciple that in secure and tolerant times Judaism undergoes an intellectual rebirth in all spheres of general knowledge; however, in times of uncer­ tainty and persecution Jewry retreats to a closed, intense, one-sided life in order to preserve the foundations of Jewish unity, until it can once more engage in universal philosophy and science. In other words, “history” pro­ vides good reasons for relative Jewish self-isolation when necessary for survival. In the Middle Ages Maimonides was the epitome of the synthe­ sis of the universal and national traits: mid-nineteenth-century German Jewry also exemplifies that ideal inasmuch as the great German-Jewish scholars (he has in mind Graetz) cultivate the national culture without rejecting the standards and methods of modernity. A fourth process consisted in the psychological interplay between “mind” and “heart.” The universalistic tendencies within Judaism are a product of intellect, but there are other tendencies in which feelings predominate. Dubnow explains mystical and messianic yearnings as responses to a need for spiritual warmth in cold, inhospitable environ­ ments. By stripping Jewish mysticism of its speculative and theological aspects, Dubnow found a way to incorporate it into his conception of the mainstream of Jewish history.

46 Heinrich Graetz, “The Significance of Judaism for the Present and the Future,” Jewish Quarterly Review, I (1889), 8–11. 47 The dichotomy between national discipline and individual liberty remained with Dubnow and is reflected in his later writings.

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These four processes, which constitute the structure of his narrative, reflect Dubnow’s identity as a Russian Jew at that point. The relationship of the elite and “the masses” was a much discussed issue in Russian social thought, as it was between the lines in East Euro­ pean Jewish discourses. The confrontation between Judaism and what he perceived as a brutal, sensual environment (drawing on his growing alienation from Russia and his concomitant growth in pride concerning Jewish history) went along with Dubnow’s “capitalizing the accumulated treasures of the past” in his historical work. The resolution of the ten­ sion between the national and universal aspects of Judaism, in a way that acknowledges the importance of each, has its parallel in Dubnow’s desire to serve a particular group within humanity while participating fully in European thought. His acknowledgement of the claims of both mind and heart reflects his devotion to rationality and poetry fused in his romantic positivism. The Influence of Lavrov and Mikhailovsky Dubnow’s thought during this period relied on the vague but powerful concept of “the spiritual” which has a wide range of nuances. An appar­ ently similar word can have quite different connotations in different cul­ tures, languages, and literary contexts (compare the German geistlich, the Hebrew ruhani, the Russian dukhovni and more). Despite a superficial resemblance in usage, Dubnow’s notion of spiritual differed from that of Graetz since it had no transcendent referent. For Dubnow believed “the spiritual element” in Jewish history was intended to be a scientific concept which had exerted a positive historical effect; using a principle taken from John Stuart Mill, he explained:48 Inductive logic lays down a rule of ascertaining the law of a phenomenon produced by two or more contributory causes. By means of what might be called a laboratory experiment, the several causes must be disengaged from one another, and the effect of each observed by itself. Thus it becomes pos­ sible to arrive with mathematical precision at the share of each cause in the result achieved by several cooperating causes. This method of difference, as it is called, is available however, only . . . for phenomena in the department of the natural sciences. It is the nature of the case that mental and spiri­

48 A similar formulation can be found in John Stuart Mill, Auguste Comte and Positivism, p. 88.



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tual phenomena, though they may be observed, cannot be artificially reproduced.49

Hence Jewish history, he argued, is of exceptional interest to sociologists: Now in one respect, Jewish history affords the advantages of an arranged experiment. The historical life of ordinary nations—such nations as are endowed with territory and are organized into a state—is a complete inter­ mingling of the political with the spiritual element. Totally ignorant as we are of the development either would have assumed, had it been dissevered from the other, the laws governing each of the elements singly can be dis­ covered only approximately. Jewish history, in which the two elements have for many centuries been completely disentangled from each other, presents a natural experiment, . . . rendering possible the determination of the laws of spiritual phenomena with far greater exactitude. . . .50

The vitalistic dimension of historical Judaism could serve as a moral inspi­ ration for contemporary humankind. While everyone was familiar with the “ennobling effect” of mastering the Bible, few realized that, if better known, post-biblical Jewish history would “dispense consolation to the afflicted.” Dubnow apparently was proposing that a study of this history would encourage idealists by revealing that in the past others had like­ wise acted from “spiritual” motives. A knowledge and understanding of the fortitude exhibited by Jews in past centuries would serve to under­ mine bigotry and intolerance and “Jew-haters might even be cured of their disease.”51 Jewish history, he said, taught the Jew that this history was a “pledge”52 of the spiritual union between the Jews and other nations which could be fulfilled when its mission as “conciliator” was complete. The imme­ diate lesson, he concluded, was that Jews should be comforted to know that their people was preeminently “a spiritual nation.” Since the “spirit is immortal,” Judaism could not suffer annihilation; the Jew, however, was obliged to work unceasingly to perfect himself: Jewish history admonishes the Jews: ‘Noblesse obligeʼ. The privilege of belonging to a people to whom the honorable title of ‘veteran of history’ has been conceded puts serious responsibilities on your shoulders. You must demonstrate that you are worthy of your heroic past. . . . If, in the course of time, elements out of harmony with your essential being have fastened

49 #111 (October), pp. 122–23. 50 Ibid. 51 Ibid., pp. 123–25. 52 #111 (December), p. 112.

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chapter five upon your mind, cast them out; purify yourselves. In all places and at all times, in joy and in sorrow, you must aim to live for the higher, spiritual interests.53

Among the forces which were “spiritual” Dubnow included the following: religious, moral and philosophical ideas “whose exponent was the Jewish people, either in its totality or in the person of its most prominent rep­ resentatives”; historical memories, “recollections of what in the course of many centuries the Jewish people experienced, thought, and felt in the depths of its being;” a sense of mission, which was “the consciousness that true Judaism which has accomplished great things for humanity in the past, has not yet played out its part and, therefore, may not perish.”54 While this definition did make vague reference to doctrines and beliefs, its voluntary quality was its most important feature. Acts of will, involving a commitment to social and intellectual ideals, were the primary modes for expressing spirituality. Dubnow seemed to hold that the spiritual element was that freedom which made it possible to set goals, sacrifice for others, withstand adversity, and, if necessary, be martyred. Besides Graetz, sources from which he drew this concept seem to be the writings of two eminent figures in Russian populism: Peter Lavrov and Nicholas Mikhailovsky.55 (Russian Populism—Narodnichestvo from the Russian word narod, the folk—had developed a much more articu­ lated ideology by the eighties than had existed in the sixties.) Dubnow had no special interest in the organized Populist movement, which was a growing underground in the Russian political spectrum. But just as he had been affected by the basic attitudes of the Positivists of the sixties 53 Ibid., p. 111. 54 Ibid., p. 110. 55 Peter Lavrov (1823–1900) and Nicholas Mikhailovsky (1842–1904) were both trained in natural sciences and made reputations in radical journalism. Lavrov first gained fame through articles published between 1858 and 1862 which expressed his philosophy of “anthropologism.” Exiled because of his alleged connections with the revolutionary Land and Freedom Society he wrote a series of Historical Letters between 1867 and 1869 which became a favorite radical text in the seventies. In 1870 he escaped to Paris, edited a revo­ lutionary journal, published various books, and became a revered figure in the interna­ tional socialist movement. Mikhailovsky remained in Russia and edited several populist journals. In 1869 he published his well-known essay “What is Progress?”, and continued to write extensively on populism, sociology, and literary criticism, becoming by the end of the century the grand old man of populist socialism. See Peter Lavrov, Historical Letters, translated with an introduction and notes by James P. Scanlan (Berkeley: Univ. of Califor­ nia Press, 1967); James Billington, Mikhailovsky and Russian Populism (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1958).



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without becoming involved with the Nihilists, his thought in the early nineties reflected the gradual penetration of some presuppositions of populist thought. (We will see later that Dubnow evolved a non-agrarian Jewish populism as his nationalist ideology.) Lavrov and Mikhailovsky had much in common with their precursors in the Russian intelligentsia, the Positivists: they admired Feuerbach, Comte, Spencer, and Mill, opposed religion and metaphysics, and invoked utilitarian arguments. However, the key to understanding human life that the two populist writers espoused was closer to philosophical Ideal­ ism than to Materialism. In his early philosophical articles Lavrov insists that the study of human consciousness requires the introspective method, and therefore Materialism is inapplicable to the domain of history. Con­ sciousness may be only a minor phenomenon in the over-all order of nature, but for human existence it has surpassing importance: Man can never eliminate the subjective illusion which is present in his con­ sciousness and which establishes, for him, an enormous difference between activity for which he sets the goal and selects the means, critically analyzing the merits of each, and activity which is mechanical, impulse or habitual, in which he recognizes himself an instrument of something given from without.56

Similarly, Mikhailovsky acknowledged that Positivism had performed a service for theoretical knowledge when it showed humanity “the limits beyond which it faces eternal and invincible darkness,” but it was seri­ ously inadequate inasmuch as it discounted those feelings and desires which form an essential element of human action.57 Both Populist leaders conceived progress to be, not an inevitable law of nature, but the subjective evaluation of the critically-thinking individual. Lavrov explained that “the theory of progress makes a moral appraisal of the events of history which have taken place, and points out the moral goal toward which the critically-thinking individual must move if he wishes to be an agent of progress.”58 Human beings can only understand history in these terms: “the subjective ideal puts [the facts] of history in perspective and there is no way of constructing this perspective other than with the aid of a moral ideal.”59 Mikhailovsky wrote:

56 Lavrov, op. cit., p. 98. 57 Mikhailovsky, Sochineniia, IV, 94. 58 Lavrov, op. cit., p. 279. 59 Ibid., p. 325.

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chapter five Perhaps the objective point of view, obligatory for the natural scientist, is completely unsuitable for sociology, the object of which—man—is identical with the subject. Perhaps as a consequence of this identity, the thinking subject can attain to truth only when he is fully merged with the think­ ing object and is not separated from him even for an instant, i.e., when he enters into his interest, lives his life, thinks his thoughts, shares his feelings, experiences his sufferings, weeps his tears. . . .

This emphasis on subjectivity may have confirmed to Dubnow that he could discuss the spiritual factor in Judaism without embarrassment and gradually to incorporate the concept of a subjectivist sociology into his theory of Jewish history. It was Mikhailovsky who believed that man’s goal must be individual self-perfection and wholeness. In “What Is Progress?” he qualifies Spencer’s definition of progress as going from “simplicity to complexity and homo­ geneity to heterogeneity”; on the contrary, he suggests that progress means “making society less heterogeneous and the individual more het­ erogeneous,” that is, striving for “the fullest possible and most diversified division of labor among man’s organs, and the least possible division of labor among men.”60 A broadly and harmoniously developed person, whom he labels “the integral individual,” must become the supreme goal. This entails (in the words of the Russian literary critic D.S. Mirsky) the principle of “the greatest happiness, not just for the greatest number, but for all, for the human individual is the supreme and only value and could not be sacrificed to society.”61 Both Lavrov and Mikhailovsky were committed to the struggle for the “incorporation of truth and justice in social forms.”62 Lavrov believed that the solidarity of the intellectual elite with the masses was essential for progress, especially the peasantry that was treated in such a lowly man­ ner in Russian society until the emergence of the Slavophile tendency a few decades earlier that idealized the peasant commune. The “criticallythinking person” owed a considerable debt to the masses whose toil freed one from oppressive concern for daily bread. In his Historical Letters

60 Mikhailovsky, op. cit., p. 187. Mikhailovsky finds Spencer’s formula defective because it makes no distinction between non-human and human progress (Francis B. Randall, “N.K. Mikhailovskii’s ‘What Is Progress?’ ” in Essays in Russian and Soviet History in Honor of Geroid Tanquary Robinson, ed. John Shelton Curtiss [New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1963], p. 56). On the origins of the term “integral personality”: ibid., p. 60. 61  D.S. Mirsky, A History of Russian Literature, ed. Francis J. Witfield (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1964), p. 323. 62 Masaryk, op. cit. II, 123.



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Lavrov alludes to the need for disciplined party action to create a fed­ eration of autonomous communes in a state decentralized to the maxi­ mum feasible degree, certainly in internal matters if not in international relations.63 This sociological pluralism is also a qualified acceptance of nationalism. Lavrov and Mikhailovsky admitted the legitimacy of the principle of nationality far more than the Positivists who had influenced Dubnow earlier. Like Dubnow Lavrov and Mikhailovsky despised milita­ ristic and chauvinistic nationalism. Later Dubnow wrote with approval about Lavrov’s disapproval of the concept of “fixed and frozen national spirits” and certainly would have agreed with his statement that “the true patriot was one who endeavored to make his nation the finest representa­ tive of science and justice among contemporary nations.”64 Another of their views that resonated with Dubnow was that the national factor was more than just a formal linguistic differentiation. Thomas Masaryk noted that Mikhailovsky (borrowing from Spencer) included in his concept of “empiricism” the inherited experience of ances­ tors. Masaryk concluded: “He [Mikhailovsky] even believes that heredi­ tary transmission of ancestral experience is manifested physiologically through changes in the descendants’ nerves.”65 We shall see that Dubnow later made use of a version of this notion to explain the nature of Jewish identity. Historical Integratsia Dushi Dubnow prefaced his article calling for a Russian-Jewish historical soci­ ety with a motto from Cicero: “Not to know history means always to be a child.”66 The child knows the present through direct sensations and lives primarily for immediate joys. Children’s sense of the future consists of promised rewards and feared punishments; their past is composed of fragmented memories not logically or causally related to his present. When the growing person learns to anticipate consequences he or she has

63 Lavrov, op. cit., pp. 249, 252, 268. 64 Lavrov, op. cit., pp. 167–69, 212; Masaryk, op. cit., p. 129; Dubnow, Pis’ma, p. 20. 65 Masaryk, op. cit., p. 137. Hoffding explains that Spencer’s opposition to Weissman’s genetic hypothesis is based on the belief that “ethical and social responsibility . . . become greater if we believe in the transmittance of acquired characteristics than if everything depends on natural selection” (Harald Hoffding, A History of Modern Philosophy, trans. D.E. Meyer [New York: Dover Publications, 1955], II, 473; first published in 1900). 66 #98, p. 1. KZ, I, 257.

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acquired the faculty of foresight. The practical person who concerns him­ self exclusively with the present and future and is preoccupied with the achievement of expedient results remains incomplete. The highest stage of psychological development is represented by the adult who, following the Delphic maxim “know yourself,” realizes that one’s tastes, convictions, and character result from the imprint of past experience, reworked by thought, and crystallized into a definite form. Thus, “a conscious relation­ ship to the past is the criterion of spiritual development.”67 The mature person, through formulating the “psychological laws of his own being,” achieved self-understanding and a rich internal life.68 This process, which Dubnow called integratsiia dushi (integration of soul), was a personal concern dear to him. His diary served this function. He much later titled his autobiography Kniga Zhizni (Book of Life), a refer­ ence to the “book of life” which God keeps for each person and balances once a year at the Days of Awe according to the Jewish liturgy. Dubnow’s autobiography contains flashbacks and parallels between a discussion of contemporary subjects and past events; numerous passages are devoted to his reflections on the changes in his situation and outlook, descriptions of old friends, and the effects of the passage of time on people and places. Dubnow’s frequent and deliberate use of these motifs testifies to the pro­ found satisfaction such self-integration gave him.69 In Dubnow’s system the mature person who “knows himself ” can serve as the prototype for a people. Since a Jew was produced by his history, Jewish solidarity cannot be explained by external factors:70 In these days the keystone of national unity seems to be the historical con­ sciousness. Composed alike of physical, intellectual and moral elements, of habits and views, of emotions and impressions for thousands of years, this

67 #98, p. 1 (The title of Part I). 68 The life cycle summarized above: ibid., pp. 1–5. 69 E.g., on a trip to Vilna he recalled his experience there fourteen years before (KZ, I, 203). In Mogilev in 1890 he remembered his previous years there: “Twelve years ago there lived here a dreamy boy who would have thought himself a happy man if he had a career as a well-known writer; now the mature man who has achieved this felt himself unhappy” (ibid., p. 244). On the need to integrate one’s soul through autobiography: KZ, II, 203. The value of autobiography reoccurs in Dubnow’s letters, especially to Ahad Ha-Am (Sefer Dubnow, pp. 275, 278, 288, 289, 316, H55). 70 #98. Dubnow insists that religion does not account for Jewish national cohesion, for in the forefront of the Jewish national movement stand the free-thinkers and the indiffer­ ent on the subject of religion. He also observes that the notion of race explains nothing. Whereas typical Jewish mannerisms disappear in the upper classes, this does not weaken the attraction of these people to their people (ibid., p. 6).



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historical consciousness is a remarkably puzzling and complex psychic phe­ nomenon. By our common memory of a great, stirring past and heroic deeds on the battlefields of the spirit, by the exalted historical mission allotted to us, by our thorn-strewn pilgrim’s path, our martyrdom assumed for the sake of our principles, by such moral ties, we Jews, whether consciously or unconsciously, are bound fast to one another.71

The mentality of the present was shaped by the inheritance of the past: A long chain of historical traditions is cast about us with magnetic power. In the course of centuries as generation followed generation, similarity of historical fortunes produced a mass of impressions which have been crys­ tallized and have thrown off the deposit that may be called “the Jewish national soul.” This is the soil in which, deep down, lies embedded, as an unconscious element, the Jewish national feeling, and as a conscious ele­ ment, the Jewish national idea.

Dubnow concluded that Jews had in common a subjective awareness: a sense of kinship, loyalty, and destiny deposited in their emotional struc­ ture by the historical experience of the ancestors. National feeling was not a racial impulse. Its origins, development, and “vital force” could be explained through historical analysis and ordered into “the national idea.”72 “Our national idea is historical consciousness.” Armed with historical laws drawn from Jewish history, a Jewish intel­ lectual could equip the masses to withstand the worst that fate had to offer. The study of history would revive the sagging morale of the intelli­ gentsia, quicken the national feeling of those whose Jewish consciousness was weakening,73 and reinforce the identity of those who demanded some type of rational explanation for remaining Jewish.74 The mature nation, he implied, by recording its history, understands the meaning of its experi­ ence and thereby integrates its soul.75

71  #111 (October–November), pp. 120–21. 72 #98, pp. 5–6. 73 #111 (October), p. 121. 74 #98, p. 5. 75 Drawing the analogy in detail, he explains that in the 1860s and 1870s the modernized part of Russian Jewry lived as children concerned only with the interests of the present. The unfortunate events of the 1880s, however, led some to despair of any improvement in the present, or others to have fantastic dreams of the future rebirth of Israel on another soil. The latter notion Dubnow regarded as being based solely on practical expediency. Inasmuch as Palestinophilism avoided the prolonged contemplation of painful events, it was perhaps a temporary shield against depression, but the only healthy solace, Dubnow insisted, must be rooted in self-knowledge (#98, p. 4).

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Dubnow’s growing reputation at that time reflected his success in evolving a naturalistic approach which made Judaism intelligible and pal­ atable to people who had formerly eschewed religion as outdated, even reactionary.76 Historical consciousness offered his readers an empirical solution to the problem of Jewish identity that did not require a com­ mitment to doctrinal beliefs or specific practices. Because it purported to be scientific, Dubnow, as the “missionary of history,” provided a secular substitute for the consolations of religion. The search for the spiritual offered a means for defining an ethnic iden­ tity befitting a chaotic social situation. To be sure, Dubnow’s approach was rather circular: the self-integration of the individual was patterned on the synthesizing of history, while the meaning of history was analogous to the individual’s maturation. Convinced now that Jewish history was a destiny allotted to Jews by “historical fate,” Dubnow defined Jewishness as a self-awareness formed by history. History was the scripture where a Jew learned why he or she “felt Jewish” and what that meant to the extent to which it was possible. To use religious terminology that Dubnow himself did not employ, history is creator, revealer, and redeemer. Dubnow’s approach at this stage in his development fulfilled several quasi-psychological and ideological functions. His version of Jewish identity was a far more radical reinterpretation of the tradi­tional Jew­ ish self-image than any that had been previously offered. Based on objective historical research Judaism became an indefinable subjec­ tive feeling inspired by the Jewish past. Dubnow rationalized Jewish­ ness and integrated his own life through what can be called pantheism of history. By the time Dubnow left Odessa in 1903 he had become not only a recog­ nized pioneer in the study of East European Jewish history, but had begun to put himself forward as the “synthesizer” of the whole Jewish past.77 When the Russian Orthodox church censor seized and destroyed the first volume of the Russian translation of Graetz’s Popular History of the Jews, Dubnow set aside his research and began to translate from 76 In retelling the period of the Judges, for example, where the narrator, of course, explains that the Israelites suffered defeat when they abandoned God, Dubnow reverses the sequence. Concerning the Pharisees: rather than building a fence around the national identity because the nation was witness to God’s revelation to mankind, Dubnow insists that the Pharisees elaborated the religious law in order to preserve the nation. Dubnow often views the religious factor as the passive superstructure of Jewish history. 77 Dubnow was solicited at home and abroad to contribute articles for encyclopedias (KZ, I, 367, 402).



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the German an introductory survey of Jewish history by Rabbi Samuel Baeck.78 Because this work was too theological he combined it with a German textbook by Dr. Marcus Brann.79 Although the final two-volume work was published under the names of Baeck and Brann, Dubnow wrote most of it himself. (A friend remarked that “Baeck and Brann” was another of Dubnow’s pseudonyms.)80 Dubnow personally arranged for printing the volumes and even handled the shipping and billing for subscribers and bookstores. The book obviously filled a need for the Russian-reading Jewish public. “Baeck and Brann” did not free Dubnow from financial dependence on Landau, but his next project, a school book on Jewish his­ tory, finally insured him a minimum income. Since “Baeck and Brann” was out of print by the time these volumes were completed, Dubnow started on a three-volume General History of the Jews.81 In 1900, Dubnow outlined a long-range schedule: in 1900 and 1901 he would write this general history of the Jews, in 1902 he would revise and issue the history of Hasidism, in 1903 and 1904 publish his collected literary criticism, in 1905 his selected monographs, and in 1906, after completing twenty-five years of literary work, he would begin a period of twenty-five years devoted solely to the study of the history of Russian Jews based on primary sources. What happened was not quite as planned. He would publish his collected essays on Jewish nationalism in 1907. He edited Evreiskaia Starina, the scholarly journal on the history of Russian

78 He received encouragement from a sum of money sent him by the Brodskys of Kiev (KZ, I, 296–97). Samuel Baeck, Geschichte der Judischen Volkes und seiner Literatur vom Babylonischen Exile bis auf die Gegenwart (Lissa: 1878; 2nd ed.: 1894). 79 Marcus Brann, Geschichte der Juden und ihrer Literatur (vol. I: 1893, vol. II: 1894; 2nd ed.: 1899); Ein kurzer Gang durch die Jüdische Geschichte (1895). He was Graetz’s succes­ sor to the chair of Jewish history and biblical exegesis in the Breslau Jewish Theological Seminary. 80 Ahad Ha-Am said this (KZ, I, 300). 81 The first Baeck-Brann volume appeared in December, 1895 (ibid., p. 305). Dubnow worked continually from March, 1896 to March, 1897 on the second volume, which he published in the spring of 1897 just before he left for his travels of that year (ibid., p. 307). He finished the first part of the schoolbook in June 1898 (ibid., p. 340). The second part was completed by 1899 (ibid., p. 346). The third part, finished in 1901, was not approved for use in Jewish schools because the government ruled that Dubnow was too partial to the Jewish nation (ibid., p. 376). A pirated edition appeared in New York in 1925, translated without Dubnow’s permission. The first half-volume of his General History of the Jews was published at the end of 1900 (ibid., pp. 360–61). As he was working on the second halfvolume the censorship became so obstructive that he decided to issue the remainder as a supplement to Voskhod, thereby justifying his move from Odessa to Vilna in 1903 (ibid., p. 386).

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Jewry from 1908 to 1918. He would publish his history of Hasidism (in Hebrew), his essays on Yiddish literature (in Yiddish), and sources for East European Jewish communal history in the 1920s, along with his magnum opus that emerged from a further revision of his General History: a tenvolume World History of the Jewish People. Dubnow’s growing fulfillment as a professional writer during the busy and productive decade in Odessa made it possible for him to express other, more personal desires which had previously been submerged. He concluded the aforementioned master plan with the hope that “we will settle somewhere in Polesie [the forested region on the Ukraine/ Belorussian border near where he grew up], buy a small house with a field and vineyard, and I will work half the day on history and the other half on physical labor and farming.”82 Thus, he held to his former ideal of har­ monious mental and physical labor and also complemented the pathos of history with a conscious pathos of nature. Dubnow’s sensitivity to the landscape was always apparent in his use of such imagery as the “sunlight sparkling on the waves” of the Black Sea,83 the “primeval grandeur” of the Swiss glaciers,84 and the “cool forests” along the banks of the Sozha River.85 His love of nature reached its fullest expression in his accounts of summer visits to the saw-mill home of a friend near Rechitsa in Polesie. When Dubnow made the first of these trips, a two-month stay in 1898, he took along his son Yasha. On Tisha B’Av (the Jewish fast commemorat­ ing the destruction of the Temple) they went with their hosts to the syna­ gogue where they read the book of Lamentations. Seated on a bench in the garden overlooking the Dnieper that evening, Dubnow mused on “the mysterious image of the moon swimming in the river” and felt that “he had a single vision beyond all human understanding, and a deep impres­ sion was engraved upon his heart.”86 From then on I was strongly moved by a cult of nature, a kind of pantheism which I called emotional. Thus I found peace between two opposite princi­ ples: burning historism and cold cosmism. The unconsciously religious [feel­ ing] which the contemplation of nature gives us, together with the conscious and scholarly element, were the basis for my harmonious world view.87 82 Ibid., pp. 361, 370. 83 Ibid., p. 261. 84 Ibid., p. 324. 85 Ibid., p. 312. 86 From Pushkin’s poem, “There Lived a Poor Knight” (Pushkin: Selected Verse, ed. John Fennell [Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1964] p. 47). 87 KZ, I, 344–35.



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His pathos of nature was accompanied by a fondness for lyrical poetry. “What is lyric poetry if not singing psalms before nature, [reciting] prayers directed toward the whole of which I am a part?” He suggested that “if we remove the appeal to a God of creation from Psalm 104” there would still remain a spiritual, non-pagan concept of nature. Dubnow’s affinity for the poetry of Victor Hugo dated from his earlier “home university” days in Mstislavl. We can surmise that he was attracted to Hugo’s visionary and yet personal faith which remained humanitarian and optimistic even when it turned to the darker problems of life.88 For Dubnow Hugo’s poetry provoked “deep thoughts,” while the “decadent” French and Russian symbolists were “jugglers of words.”89 He apparently found in Hugo a reverence for cosmic infinity which was expressed in stanzas like the following: Ainsi, Nature! abri de toute créature! О mère universelle! indulgent Nature! Ainsi, tous à la fois, mystiques et charnels, Cherchant l’ombre et le lait sous tes flancs éternels, Nous sommes là, savants, poètes, pêle-mêle, Pendus de toutes parts à la forte-mamelle!90

For Hugo this to include all of humankind—and more: Chaque chose et chacun, âme, être, objet ou nombre, Suivra son cours, sa loi, son but, sa passion, Portant sa pierre à l’œuvre indéfinie et sombre Qu’avec le genre humain fait la création!91

Also staying with Dubnow’s hosts that summer was a young woman, “Vera G.”, whom Dubnow described as “one of those quiet, sweet girls whom Petrarch turned into heavenly Lauras.” With his “Laura,” Dubnow walked in the woods, recited poetry and listened to her reading from Turgenev. Several years later they met in St. Petersburg and her presence evoked a memory of “the high oaks along the distant Dnieper, the radi­ ance of a summer day, two figures flashing in the narrow border of the fields among the high ears of rye. . . . Something that was and will never

88 See L. Cazamian, A History of French Literature (London: Oxford Univ. Press, 1955), pp. 308, 310. 89 KZ, III, 147. 90 Victor Hugo, Oeuvres poétiques ([Paris]: Bibliotheque de la Pleiade, 1964), I, 969. 91  Ibid., p. 1061.

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be again.”92 This flirtation, his love of poetry, his feeling for the beauties of nature, and his conception of spiritual history were aspects of feeling “part of the whole”—an “emotional pantheism” that he had evolved as his personal philosophy of life. In 1904, he wrote that he doubted if he would live to see the full noon of a new Russian society. But “I heard a voice saying, ‘You have tormented yourself enough; it is time to look on life more calmly from the point of view of eternity.’”93 In 1905, in the midst of revolution and pogroms he began to “save his soul” by making the first sketches for an autobiography.94

92 KZ, II, 40. Ibid., p. 150, when he saw her again several years later. Benzion Katz (“On Simon Dubnow,” He-Avar, II [ January, 1954], 112–16) asserts that this romance was seri­ ous and lasted two years. Nevertheless, in the autobiography, it is a literary motif. Vera G. recalls those women in Russian literature who “served as a synonym of the ideal, as a symbol of a higher Purpose” (Abram Tertz [pseud.], op. cit., pp. 63–64). 93 KZ, II, 29. 94 Ibid.

Part Three

The Exigencies of the Present, 1897–1907

Chapter Six

The Historian Becomes a Nationalist Activism Dubnow’s move to Odessa had brought a major change in his social milieu. As a young man in St. Petersburg he had felt isolated from the new Jewish intelligentsia although he was for all practical purposes a part of it. His rejection of Hibbat Tziyon had not endeared him to the small group of Jewish writers living there. Back in Mstislavl his reputation for being a “free-thinker” earned him the disdain of the religious. Only in Odessa was Dubnow finally able to become an active participant in a burgeoning social group, which provided an optimal setting for Dubnow’s conversion to the cause of Jewish nationalism—his own version of it. Scarcely a century old at that time, Odessa was one of Russia’s most modern and cosmopolitan cities. The Jewish community in 1897 numbered 112,000, 33% of the total population. Quite a few Odessa Jews tended toward a modern secular outlook.1 A significant segment had come from Galicia and Germany where they had been affected by the Mendelssohnian Haskalah and its East European continuation. In 1826 they had sponsored the first modern Russian-Jewish school. By the end of the century the Odessa Jews had organized industrial training and commercial schools, girls’ schools, evening schools, and general educational institutions. Until 1892, when they were deprived of the right to vote in the election of municipal officers, prominent Odessa Jews had played an active role in the city council. In the early twentieth century two of the three political dailies were owned by Jews and most of the newspaper reporters were Jewish. Jewish businessmen were extensively represented in the most modern segments of the Odessa economy: the grain trade, banking, sugar industry, and distilleries.2

1  JE, IX, 385. 2 Ibid., pp. 377–84.

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Only Warsaw rivaled Odessa as a center for modernist Jewish high culture in the Pale of Settlement.3 Odessa, where Lilienblum and Pinsker resided, was headquarters for the Palestinophile movement. Dubnow’s closest associates in this city included the illustrious writers Sholem Aleikhem (Solomon Rabinowitz), Mendele Mokher Seforim (Shalom Abramovich) and Ahad Ha-Am (Asher Ginzberg), the journalist Mark Rabinovich (pen name Ben Ami, “Son of My People”),4 and the lawyer and civic leader Michael Margulis.5 Among his acquaintances were many others who became future Zionist leaders and outstanding literary figures, such as Yehoshua Ravnitsky, Micah Berdichevsky,6 Hayyim Nahman Bialik, Hayyim Tchernowitz, and Meir Dizengof.7 There Dubnow became a participant in a group whose members were articulate and energetic; in this circle he could share ideas and observations in an atmosphere of intellectual ferment and diversity. This group met often to celebrate the secular New Year, birthdays, and some Jewish holidays; they visited each other during the summer, participated in various committees of the Society for Enlightenment (Hevrat Mefitzeh Or ve-Haskalah). In December, 1897 they formed an historicalliterary commission for the exchange of opinions on Jewish problems.8 Dubnow remembered with special fondness a summer evening at his cottage near Lyustdorf in 1891 when he sat by the sea with Abramovich, Ben Ami, Ravnitsky, Sholem Aleikhem, and Simon Frug, drinking wine, exchanging anecdotes, and singing Hasidic folksongs.9 This particular scene pointedly illustrates how the social group around Dubnow contributed to his new role in Russian-Jewish life. Dubnow had felt “foreign” and

3 See Shaanan, op. cit., III, 136, on the “sober and classical” literary atmosphere of Odessa. 4 Dubnow describes his friend Ben Ami as a virtual Russophobe, who vigorously opposed anti-Semitism, idealized the Hasidic way of life in his stories, and insisted on speaking French, rather than Russian, with his children (KZ, I, 252–53; Rav Tsa’ir [Hayyim Tchernowitz], Massekhet zikhronot [Book of Memoirs] [New York: Vaad Ha-yovel, 1945], pp. 177–80). 5 Margulis was a well-known lawyer and leader in the Society for the Spread of Enlightenment among Jews. Although he and Dubnow cooperated on several projects, their relationship was at times stormy. Margulis had attacked Dubnow’s reform plans in the 1880s and opposed his nationalism at the end of the century. Dubnow came to consider him an “assimilationist,” a title that Margulis would not accept (KZ, I, 231–33, 404; Rav Tsa’ir, op. cit., pp. 13–19, 113). 6 KZ, I, 255. 7 Ibid., pp. 384–85. 8 Ibid., p. 33. 9 Ibid., pp. 261–62.



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“alien” when he visited the Hasidic synagogues of Galicia in 1897;10 at a distance, he was able to appreciate the peculiar strengths of the “patriarchal way of life.” In Odessa, Dubnow was part of a specific coterie of modern Jewish intellectuals who assumed the socio-political leadership of Russian Jewry as it entered a new age when Russia was in one of its periodic states of thaw. The thirteen years Dubnow spend in Odessa were very productive ones. His social and intellectual life was busy and intense. He did go through another period of depression when early in 1897 he had finished his second Baeck-Brann volume and complained of fatigue, indecision, and loneliness,11 which he attributed to two years of constant work and physical tension. In the late spring of that year he returned to Mstislavl for the first time since 1890; the thoughts he expressed in his diary revealed his reconciliation with his home town and were a prologue to the new direction his life was soon to take: I stood in the garden behind my mother’s house, among the blossoming poppies, listening to the melody coming from the distant synagogue. I leaned against the fence around the field and could not tear myself away. The joys and sadness of youth returned. Near me my daughter stood reading aloud from Turgenev’s Rudin and I thought, “Two worlds, two generations, and between them a man of both worlds. How are these worlds going to come together?”12

After returning briefly to Odessa, Dubnow went abroad for the first time. He passed through Galicia, where he drank in the “seventeenth-century atmosphere” of the Lvov ghetto and mused from the train window on the “imaginary shadow of the Besht” gathering medicinal herbs in the distant Carpathian Mountains.13 After stopping over briefly in Vienna, Dubnow proceeded to Switzerland where he spent two months touring the Alps. He declined to attend the first Zionist Congress at Basel, expecting that he would feel uncomfortable with the ideas and programs expressed there.14 He also rejected the example of his relative, Robert Zaichik,15 10 He was appalled by the disorder, howling, and dirt of the Hasidic synagogues he visited there (ibid., p. 318). 11  KZ, I, 310–11, 317. 12 Ibid., p. 315. 13 Ibid., p. 317. 14 Ibid., p. 322. 15 Robert Zaichik was first mentioned during Dubnow’s earlier trip to Warsaw (ibid., p. 216). For Dubnow’s review of his book on Jewish history, see #104.

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who accompanied Dubnow in his travels around Switzerland. Zaichik had received a doctorate in Bern with a thesis on medieval Jewish history and then lost interest in Judaism and Jewry; settling in Zürich, he became a Nietzschean, and urged Dubnow to be more of an “egotist.”16 Dubnow observed about Zaichik, “We stood on two different fields of thought: he on the aesthetic, I on the ethical; he on the universal-individual, I on the national.”17 In September Dubnow returned to “the Russian Egypt in order to take part in the sufferings of my brothers, to fight the pharaohs and search for the paths of truth.”18 At the end of 1897 he began to publish a series of essays on questions of Jewish nationalism under the title Letters on Old and New Judaism. The 1880s had been a period of relative passivity in Russian public opinion; the revolutionary groups had been suppressed, most of the prominent radicals were in exile, and the “zemstvo liberals” confined themselves to “small deeds.”19 The government’s effort to repress all challenges to its authority was being undermined by the very economic developments it was encouraging. The social structure of Russia was rapidly becoming more complex, the country was becoming more urban, education was slowly improving, and the reappearance of widespread dissent in the late nineties took on a more challenging character. Industrialization had created a potentially disruptive urban proletariat, and at the same time the condition of the peasants, technically emancipated but still tied to the peasant communes, worsened. Three decades after the emancipation of 1861 the government was unable and unwilling to alleviate peasant indebtedness and land hunger. The famine of 1891 in the Volga region stimulated a well-publicized campaign of famine relief by the zemstvos; opposition to the government within the zemstvos gradually crystallized into a liberal protest movement which demanded more and more openly a constitutional regime for Russia. Out of these last groups came the Constitutional Democrat (Kadet) party of 1905; important other voices in the growing ideological debate were the Russian Social Democratic Party, founded in 1898, and the neo-Populist Social Revolutionaries organized in 1901. By 1897 political activism critical of the tsarist government was reemerging and would become increasingly overt in the next few years. 16 KZ, I, 325. 17 Ibid., p. 320. 18 Ibid., p. 325. 19 George Fischer, Russian Liberalism; From Gentry to Intelligentsia (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1958), pp. 15–18.



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Russian Jews were profoundly affected by the turmoil. Herzl’s call for a world Zionist organization tapped into and galvanized the subsiding energies of the Palestinophile movement; one month after the first Zionist Congress in August, 1897, the Jewish Workers’ Bund was organized in Vilna. Other groups were formed which offered fusions of Zionism and socialism, and an Orthodox sector (the Agudat Israel, founded in Germany) would reach out to East Europe Jewry, so by the end of the century Russian Jewry had developed a broad continuum of ideologies, religious and secular, nationalist and cultural, liberal and Marxist. During his brief stay in Mstislavl in 1899, Dubnow noted that small-town Jews were avidly discussing Herzl’s diplomacy, the editorial positions of the Jewish press, reforms in Jewish education, and other burning issues of the day.20 The Jewish provinces were no longer quiet and sleepy. Furthermore, the noticeable number of Jewish youths in the revolutionary organizations enabled the government to discredit these parties as Jewish and therefore alien. Nicholas II was no friend of the Jews, to say the least. A new wave of anti-Jewish violence began with a pogrom in Kishinev in 1903. There was a week of bloody pogroms in 1905, which followed the issuance of the October manifesto promising Russia a Duma. Social crisis, ideological turmoil, and blatant anti-Semitism could not help but profoundly touch even so scholarly and contemplative a person as Dubnow. He had always been concerned about such issues but was now very involved in Jewish affairs and had close contacts with the new secularized Jewish leadership that had surfaced. Three issues in particular illustrate the rise in activism among the new Jewish leadership with which Dubnow associated himself after 1897: the Odessa debate over Jewish education, the pogroms, and the Russian Revolution of 1905. By the end of the nineteenth century, a group of Odessa Jewish intellectuals had become critical of the current modern Jewish education on the grounds that it Russified the children in such a way as to undermine their Jewish consciousness. In 1900, Dubnow joined with them to press the Odessa Society for the Spread of Enlightenment to increase substantially the amount of time devoted to Jewish history, literature, and the Hebrew language in schools the Society subsidized. The executive committee rejected these demands on the grounds that the schools should primarily provide a general European education and useful knowledge. Open 20 KZ, I, 377–78.

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conflict came at the Society’s annual meeting on April 28, 1901. Dubnow argued that strengthening the Jewish content of the schools would not lessen the overall content of their education; “every living nation,” communicated general knowledge by means of its national culture. All schools have moral and spiritual aims as well as practical ones; Jewish schools, in particular, should be a shield against the assimilating influence of the environment. When the vote went by a small margin against the protesters, Dubnow and others decided to organize a “nationalizing committee” (komitet natsionalizatsia) in order to prepare for a renewed struggle the following year.21 The members of this committee met regularly in private homes and in a Jewish commercial club to discuss their plans and hear readings on topics of Jewish interest. In October, 1901 the “nationalists” collected a petition with 150 signatures. After another rebuff by the Society’s leadership in April, 1902, the debate reached its climax at the general meeting of May 15th. Dubnow and others spoke, followed by their opponents. When one of the opponents provoked uproar by saying that “we have to burn the idol of nationalism,” the session was prematurely closed. The city governor of Odessa prohibited its continuation and ordered the censor to remove mention of this issue from the press.22 Dubnow published his account of the “Odessa Kulturkampf ” in Voskhod, insisting that there should henceforth be no avoidance of the key term “natsionalizatsiia” (nationalizing).23 This issue was suddenly overshadowed by an immediate crisis. On the evening of April 7, 1903, Dubnow’s circle heard rumors of an anti-Jewish disorder in Kishinev. As the details gradually filtered to Odessa during the next few days, Dubnow concluded that It was not a usual pogrom, but a slaughter prepared before the eyes of the local authorities that continued for three days. In contrast to my weak reaction in youth to the April pogroms of 1881 which seemed to be a temporary response to the murder of the Tsar on March first, this time I was strongly shaken by the new era of bloody pogroms. A week later I wrote . . . “I threw over all my work and rushed about distractedly, not able to think of anything else.”24

21 Ibid., p. 374. Leon Simon, Ahad Ha-Am (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society, 1960), pp. 198–99. 22 KZ, I, 390. The committee had a plenum of forty and a bureau of five (ibid., pp. 374, 384). 23 Dubnow coined this term (ibid., p. 374). See #158 and the second appendix of Part I of Pis’ma, pp. 148–51. Ahad Ha-Am’s article on the same subject is “Ha-hinukh ha-ivri,” Kol Kitvei Ahad Ha-Am, pp. 410–14. 24 KZ, I, 407.



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The “nationalizing committee” set itself up as an information bureau. Ahad Ha-Am, Dubnow, Ben Ami, Bialik, and Yehoshua Ravnitzky distributed a hectographed Hebrew circular to Jewish communal leaders throughout Russia. Ahad Ha-Am wrote the text: If the government is not willing to defend us, we have to be prepared to defend our own lives and honor. . . . Brothers, the blood of our brethren in Kishinev flows in us. . . . Rise up from the ashes, stop weeping and praying. Stop holding out your hands to your enemies imploring them to help you; let your own hands save you.25

The Kishinev pogrom provoked public meetings throughout Europe and America. It crystallized the feeling among Jews that they were besieged by an essentially brutal Russia.26 The positive attitude toward self-defense that became prevalent was a radical change from the traditional Jewish utilization of diplomacy, petition, and bribery to deal with such a situation. A few weeks later Dubnow sharply criticized the kazyonnyi (staterecognized) rabbi of Vilna for his lack of civic heroism and national self-respect at this terrible moment; the rabbi “looked at me astounded, clearly not understanding how one was able to argue with the governor and police inspector.”27 Later the same year Dubnow remarked that the Gomel pogrom was a second Kishinev but “without the disgrace of passivity.” After these pogroms he attended religious services on the Days of Awe for the first time since his childhood because he “felt a great need to be with my mourning brothers.”28 Although the October pogroms of 1905 were “a continual Bartholomew’s night” (an allusion to the brutal

25 Ibid., p. 409. Ahad Ha-Am’s circular was reprinted in Ha-Tekufah, XXV (Berlin, 1928), 416–20. The Committee decided to send the poet Bialik to gather first-hand testimony in Kishinev. For Dubnow’s description of their reaction to his report, see KZ, I, 411, and Sefer Dubnow, p. 322. On Bialik’s visit to Kishinev: P. Lachover, Bialik, Hayyav ve-yetzirotav [Bialik, His Life and Work] (3 vols., Jerusalem: Mosad Bialik, 1955), II, 424–26. 26 See for instance: Cyrus Adler (ed.), The Voice of America on Kishineff (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1904); W.C. Stiles, Out of Kishineff: The Duty of the American People to the Russian Jews (New York: Dillingham, 1903; Chaim Shorer (ed.), Hapogrom be-Kishinov be-mel’ot 60 shanah [The Kishinev pogrom after 60 Years] (Tel Aviv: Ha-Igud ha-Olami shel Yehudei Bessarabia [The World Union of Bessarabian Jews], 1963). On the change of attitude toward the future of the Russian-Jewish problem by Western Jewish leaders: Zosa Szajkowski, “Paul Nathan, Lucien Wolf, Jacob H. Schiff and the Jewish Revolutionary Movements in Eastern Europe 1903–1917,” Jewish Social Studies, XXIX, No. 1 (January, 1967), 4–7. On the reaction of a liberal Russian administrator toward the Jews of Bessarabia after the pogrom and his views on the Jewish question: Prince Serge Dmitriyevich Urussov, Memoirs of a Russian Governor, trans. Herman Rosenthal (London and New York: Harpers, 1908), pp. 142–70. 27 KZ, I, 410. 28 KZ, II, 7.

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massacre of Huguenots in sixteenth-century France), Dubnow described with evident pride the measures taken to prevent a pogrom in Vilna, where he was living at that time. The Jewish leaders had demanded that the city fathers warn the people against any disturbance, and placards to that effect “made the expected impression” around the city. At the same time a committee collected ammunition and money for weapons, while the Bund and Po’alei Tsiyon organized self-defense groups.29 The rise in activism also produced an organization for Jewish rights in the early months of 1905. Beginning in February, a series of meetings in Vilna and elsewhere protested the legal disabilities of the Jews. When news was received from St. Petersburg that Baron Günzberg’s circle was preparing a petition to the government, the nationalists were dissatisfied; in a public meeting Dubnow declared, “We have to appear as the accusers of the government and not the accused.”30 In late March a group of St. Petersburg lawyers, including Maxim Vinaver, Henry Sliozberg, Leon Bramson, and Mark Ratner,31 came to Vilna to meet with provin­ cial leaders. After several days of discussion (March 25–27, 1905) “without preliminary permission” from the authorities (a blatant defiance), the sixty-seven delegates established a supra-party organization to work for the “civil, political, and national rights of the Jews in Russia.”32 The fight to include national rights in the published list of demands was spearheaded by Dubnow, who argued that besides personal liberties and parliamentary representation they should advocate autonomy for the Jewish communities and Jewish national schools. In the long discussion on this issue he was supported by Ratner and Vinaver. Choosing a name for the organization provoked another debate; in order to allay the fears of the moderates that their movement might appear too radical, they decided on the “League for the Attainment of Full Rights for the Jews in Russia” (Soiuz dla dostizhenia polnopraviia Evreiskogo naroda v Rossii— they came to be called “the Dostizhentzi, the Attainers”).33 Dubnow was

29 Ibid., p. 34. 30 Ibid., p. 20. 31 Ibid., pp. 15–16. The decisive initiative came from a group of Jewish lawyers who had organized a league of defense the previous year to represent the Jews in court in trials connected with the Kishinev and Gomel pogroms. They had won a reputation for boldness and courage by their behavior and protests in the courtroom (ibid., pp. 21–23). These men had been stimulated by Dubnow’s call for the study of Russian-Jewish history and had published an important collection of documents. 32 Ibid., p. 24. 33 Ibid., p. 25.



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elected to the central committee. Soon afterwards the League publicly protested rumors that Jews would not be allowed to vote for members of the projected consultative Duma, an action which may have played a role in the government’s decision to drop this idea.34 Members of the League met again in St. Petersburg from November 22–25, 1905 to discuss the formation of a union of Jewish communities to act as a central organ for Russian Jewry. The need for such an organization had become one of Dubnow’s most insistent principles. The League also used this meeting to contemplate its relationship to the Russian political parties. Dubnow supported an alliance with the Constitutional Democrats (Kadets); faced with protests that the Kadets were not sufficiently radical, he was forced to qualify his position by explaining that they should not work with parties to the right of the Kadets. The third and last full meeting of the League on February 10–13, 1906 was devoted to the forthcoming elections of the First Duma. A call for a boycott of the election was rejected and the idea of a Jewish Duma faction was proposed. The League voted that its candidates must promise to unite in the constitutional fight for full Jewish rights.35 Vinaver was to be the nominee in Vilna but when he was entered on the Kadet slate, they turned to Dubnow, who refused to run. The name of Dubnow’s friend, Shmarya Levin, was submitted, and with the help of the Lithuanian voters he was elected as the Vilna Duma representative.36 By the end of 1906 the League of “Attainers” had begun to fall apart. According to Dubnow, the first blow came in November when the Russian Zionists decided at their Helsingfors convention to work independently of the others for Jewish national rights in the diaspora as well as in Palestine.37 When the Jewish Democratic Group (Evreiskaia demokraticheskaia Gruppa), allied to the Populists (Trudoviki), seceded, Vinaver formed the Jewish Popular Group (Evreiskaia narodnaia Gruppa) with a moderate nationalist program opposed to the “Zionist emigration principle.”38

34 Ibid., p. 28. See Sliozberg, op. cit., pp. 172–73; EE, XIV, 515–17. On the issue of Jewish electoral rights see (weekly) Voskhod, June 2, 1905, pp. 1–4; June 9, 1905, pp. 5–11; June 23, 1905, pp. 1–10. 35 K, II, 47. 36 Ibid., p. 50. See Shmarya Levin, The Arena, trans. Maurice Samuel (New York: Harcourt Brace and Co., 1932), p. 290. 37 KZ, II, 63. 38 On the dissolution of the League, see Sliozberg, op. cit., pp. 177–90.

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The breakup of the League led Dubnow and his supporters to form their own organization, the Folkspartei (the People’s Party), and ally with some of the Kadets.39 The Folkspartei remained a small group in St. Petersburg without agents, funds, or the initiative to recruit in the provinces; it was revived briefly in 191740 and sustained with modest success in Poland between the two world wars. Dubnow believed that the Folkspartei’s significance lay primarily in its program, which pressed for Jewish autonomy through secularized local community organizations. As mentor of the Folkspartei, Dubnow helped to draft its published platform, defended the party in print, and supplied its ideology. The Odessa Circle Dubnow the ideologist of nationalism emerged out of Dubnow the historian of Judaism, as the historian had emerged earlier from the journalist and critic. The roots of this phase in his life can be seen in his previous writings, but Dubnow now had to construct an explicit system. The goal of his prior credo had been personal and collective self-knowledge, not praxis. Since he had come to see himself as a historian, his turn to political activism might be seen as an about-face by his audience. Even after Dubnow decided to become involved in current affairs he often resisted “attempts to drag me from the study to the forum.” When he complained that direct involvement took up too much time, on one occasion his friend Ahad Ha-Am joked, “He wants to save himself for history”; Dubnow’s only correction was, “for historiography.”41 His decision to move from Odessa to Vilna in 1903 may have been to escape the burden of ideological commitment, but “searching for quiet for the troubled soul and scientific work, I changed my place but could not change the times.”42

39 KZ, II, 64, 68–69. 40 Ibid., pp. 223, 234–35. The Polish Folkspartei was established in July, 1916 by Noah Prylucki. They elected two members to the Seym in 1918, but gradually receded from the scene after 1926 (Harry Rabinowicz, The Legacy of Polish Jewry: A History of Polish Jews in the Inter-War Years, 1919–1939 (New York: Thomas Yoseloff, 1965), pp. 118–19, 122. 41  KZ, I, 389. 42 Ibid., p. 416. After 1907 Dubnow, of course, never retired into complete scholarly isolation, and always felt a tension between his commitment to historical writing and writing on current Jewish affairs. (KZ, II, 232).



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There are three factors which explain the impulse that drove him to formulate the position which can be called “Dubnovism”:43 his political views, the stimulus of his Odessa associates, and his fear that Jewish youth had adopted erroneous and dangerous ideologies. Dubnow’s politics were those of a moderate liberal as understood at that time. He detested the principle of autocracy and believed that Russia’s future progress depended on representative government and constitutionally guaranteed liberties: freedom of speech, assembly, religion, and so forth. Like other liberals, he had hoped for moves in this direction when Nicholas II became Russia’s ruler in 1894 and was disillusioned by the new tsar’s reactionary attack on “senseless dreams.” A poem by Simon Frug in praise of Nicholas’s coronation (a capitulation to pressure by some officials), had provoked in Dubnow disgust with his friend.44 Dubnow’s view of history taught him about the dangers of apocalyptic messianism, which demanded instant, overwhelming transformation of reality.45 Dubnow spoke respectfully of Eduard Bernstein’s revisionist socialism,46 but wrote to a critic: The romantic youngsters of the socialist parties think that the messianic age is imminent. You and I, however, are not political infants and we have not undertaken to build the kingdom-to-come in the course of a few years.47

At times he seemed to feel that the real political problem was to prevent the coming of chaos. In his diary entry for January 1, 1901, he wrote: We are entering the twentieth century. What will it give us, humanity and especially Jewry? Judging by the recent decades of the outgoing century, one might think that humanity is entering a new Middle Ages, with horrors of war, national conflicts, and the desecration of the higher ethical principles in politics and public life. One does not want to believe this. . . .48

43 On the term “Dubnovism”: KZ, I, 342; Dubnow: Man and Work, p. 229. For testimony on the impact of his articles on Jewish nationalism: ibid., pp. 80–81. His Weltgeschichte also made a strong impact in Zionist circles (ibid., p. 140). 44 KZ, I, 297. 45 “From history I brought deep convictions that the political revolution had to precede the social-economic revolution, and, therefore, it was wrong for [the Bund] not to support fully the democratic institutions [that Russia acquired in October, 1905]” (KZ, II, 41). 46 Ibid., p. 42. He met Eduard Bernstein in person in Berlin in the twenties (KZ, III, 99, 112). 47 Pis’ma, p. 356. 48 KZ, I, 371.

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This pessimism derived not solely from the general situation in Russia, Europe, and the world, but also from that of the Russian Jews. The conversation among Dubnow’s Odessa circle was conducted in the Russian language, but he and his friends had no intimate contact with the nonJewish Russian intelligentsia. Isolated at the beginning of the nineties, their feelings of vulnerability intensified. In 1895 for instance, when a childhood acquaintance informed Dubnow that he had converted to Christianity and changed his name in order to obtain a job after graduation, Dubnow wrote: “I did not hide from him what I thought of deserters from the besieged camp.”49 The line between “us” and “them” was becoming more sharply drawn.50 In 1903 Dubnow wrote an article for Voskhod entitled “Historical Moment,” in which he seemed to derive a cyclical view of history from the Kishinev pogrom: Today the martyrology of the Jews in the south of Russia has come full circle, from the Uman slaughter to that of Kishinev, from 1768 to 1903. Twenty-two years ago we dogmatists of straight-line progress were struck with confusion and horror when we saw that the straight line of modern history bent in a circle and moved in a direction that brought us back to the starting point, the dark past. . . .51

Dubnow depicted the defeats of Russian troops in the Russo-Japanese War as retribution for the pogroms: The Jews see the hand stretched out from the theater of war writing ‘Mene Mene, Tekel Upharsin.’ This is payment for the blood of Kishinev and Gomel, for the moans of millions of pariahs. The ancient prophets thus lightened their souls thinking of the fate of Babylon.52

Problematic for a liberal was that Dubnow’s negativity about the government was coupled with suspicion of the Russian masses. In 1904 he compared the current “mobilization pogroms” to the “mobilization pogroms of the crusaders in the eleventh and twelfth centuries” about which he was writing:

49 Ibid., p. 303. 50 In 1896 Dubnow bemoaned the Jewish scholars who “prefer to add to the intellectual riches of other peoples rather than satisfy the require­ments of their own literature” (#125, p. 92). 51  KZ, I, 412; Weekly Voskhod, No. 21 (May 22, 1903), p. 1. 52 KZ, II, 9. See also: ibid., pp. 27, 36–37.



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History repeats itself. The logic of the wild fanatics, who had to settle accounts with internal enemies before they could do so with external enemies, is also expressed here.53

In late 1905 he delivered a speech, which became the first of a series of articles entitled “Lessons of the Terrible Days,” with the message “Do not trust Amalek, neither the government nor the people, for the old Russia can again appear in the new.”54 Dubnow was apprehensive throughout 1905, fearing that “the new Russia will die as a terrible miscarriage.”55 When news came to strikebound Vilna, where the Dubnows were then living, of the October 17th tsarist manifesto promising Russia an elected parliament, he recorded: “I have my doubts; have our dreams of a quarter of a century really been achieved?”56 The socialist slogan of “a proletariat state” prompted the observation: “To be free is a difficult art for those who are educated in the school of slavery.”57 Contrary to many liberals and other critics of tsarism, he was dejected during the December, 1905 Moscow uprising and the general strike: Why does the social revolution, which in the natural course of events will be the consequence of the political revolution, interfere with its incomplete development and thus destroy freedom and equality, clearing the field for either the old or a new despotism?58

However, with the Duma opened, Dubnow said that for the first time he felt part of Russian political life. His elation was intense. Only those of my generation who, chained in slavery, for a quarter of a century, dreamed about a constitutional assembly can understand our festive mood in the spring of 1906 when the exhausted soul thirsted for faith in the new Russia and the renewal of Judaism in it.59

Dubnow was working at the time on a new version of an essay on the Jews and the French Revolution,60 and the parallel was to him blatant:

53 Ibid., p. 18. 54 Ibid. p. 35; Pis’ma, pp. 298–299. 55 KZ, II, 29. 56 Ibid., p. 32. 57 Ibid., p. 33. 58 Ibid., p. 44. 59 Ibid., p. 52. 60 #81 was the old version, #168 the new.

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chapter six In the morning the speeches of Grégoire, Mirabeau, Clermont-Tonnerre . . . in the French National Assembly and the Paris Commune of 1879 to 1791; in the evening the speeches of [Fyodor] Rodichev, [Maxim] Kovalevsky, and the answer to the throne speech in the Russian Duma.61

His conviction that Russia was on the proper path to freedom and equality lasted only a short time. At the end of 1906, on a vacation in Finland, he sat in the hotel dining room where the Vyborg manifesto had been signed by members of the Russian parliament who were protesting the abrupt closing of the first Duma; Dubnow concluded that Russia was freezing over again.62 The seemingly perpetual Jewish isolation from Russian society returned, exacerbating the belief that Jews had no friends outside their own camp. Dubnow felt that Russian liberals, with few exceptions, had remained notably silent during the pogroms. Other minorities in Vilna, especially the Poles, did not want to form a united front with the Jews to press for minority rights.63 After receiving an invitation in September, 1906 to move to St. Petersburg and lecture at what was called Professor Lesgaft’s Free University, Dubnow wrote in his diary: Should I leave with the other exiles after twenty-five years of service and dedicate the remainder of my life to my beloved historical work to the modest extent possible outside Russia? Another voice answered, “Remain. Go to the Russian capital and take upon yourself the maximum of work. Boil, burn, until you are consumed.” I will go.64

Dubnow’s commitment to liberal, carefully considered change forced him to deny the possibility of cataclysmic social transformations that would bring a socialist utopia. This underlay his rejection of Marxism and Zionism, both of which he saw as prone to illusionary expectations. In 1903, a secret meeting was arranged in Vilna between Dubnow and several leaders of the Bund which ended in disagreement, with Dubnow insisting that he could accept neither historical materialism nor the concept of a class struggle within Jewry.65 He argued that the pogroms morally obligated all Jews to share in the common defense and claimed that the Bund was blind to the dangers that Jews faced collectively. Zionism also

61 KZ, II, 53. 62 Ibid., p. 65. 63 Ibid., pp. 27–28. 64 Ibid., p. 57. 65 Ibid., pp. 5–6.



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undermined Jewish national unity because it was, in Jewish terms, prematurely “messianic.” Dubnow considered Zionism impractical and incorrect: impractical because the vast majority of Jews could not and would not be resettled in Palestine and incorrect because it denied the positive importance in Jewish history of the diaspora. Jews did not have to return to a homeland in the east, he said, because Jewish life had always evolved to survive in new environments and would continue to do so.66 In Odessa the closest figure to Dubnow was Ahad Ha-Am (“One of the People,” the pen-name of Asher Ginzberg), the Zionist ideologist whose influential series of essays, mainly written between 1989 and 1903, espoused a Jewish national-spiritual revival. Like Dubnow, Ahad Ha-Am was educated in traditional Judaism although his family had been Hasidic (Dubnow’s was mitnaggedic, i.e., anti-Hasidic). Like Dubnow, Ahad Ha-Am broke with his religious upbringing, was unsuccessful in his attempt to gain a higher education and managed to acquire on his own a solid background in the Russian, French, and English thinkers such as Pisarev, Renan, Mill, and Spencer. Upon settling in Odessa in 1886 Ahad Ha-Am joined the Hovevei Tsiyon, but he sharply criticized the narrow philanthropic and practical aims of that organization. That Jewish nationalism should aim primarily for the moral re­generation of the Jewish people became a basic principle of his ideology.67 Ahad Ha-Am made several trips to Palestine and published reports which were critical of the limited achievements of the Hibbat Tziyon there. In 1896 he founded and edited the monthly HaShiloah which became, under his editorship, the outstanding Hebrew literary periodical of its time. Also like Dubnow, Ahad Ha-Am was critical of the slipshod amateurism of Hebrew writing and applied very severe standards to his contributors.68 Although he had great influence on promising young authors such as the poet Chaim Nahman Bialik, he was faithful to the ideals of critical realism and was unsympathetic to literary modernism and Nietzschean individualism.69 Dubnow emphasized that he and Ahad Ha-Am agreed in their philosophical approach, explaining that “we were both evolutionists of the 66 #112 (May), pp. 37–38. 67 Ahad Ha-Am participated in a semi-secret order, the Bnei Moshe (Sons of Moses), inspired by his first major articles and organized to revitalize the Hibbat Tziyon movement by means of an elite of dedicated individuals. See Simon, op. cit., pp. 76–94. 68 On Ahad Ha-Am as an editor: ibid., pp. 127–49. 69 For his well-known attack on M.J. Berdichevski’s use of Nietzschean ideas in his interpretation of Jewish identity, see Kol Kitvei Ahad Ha-Am, pp. 154–59.

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English school and attached ethical criteria to the phenomena of social life.”70 They both rejected religion inasmuch as it was an infringement on freedom of thought, although they acknowledged the historical value of religion for the development of ethics and the survival of the Jewish people. Espousal of a view of Judaism based on the “rule of absolute justice” earned Ahad Ha-Am the epithet of “agnostic rabbi.”71 Ahad Ha-Am preached that the secular rejuvenation of Judaism should have as “its focal point the ideal of our nation’s unity . . . and its free development through the expression of universal values in terms of its own distinctive spirit.”72 He insisted that “it is impossible to be a Jew in the religious sense without acknowledging our nationality,” yet one could “be a Jew in the national sense without accepting many things in which religion requires belief.”73 Ahad Ha-Am’s theoretical writings might be said to constitute a prolegomenon to a book on Jewish ethics which he promised to write but never did. Toward the end of the nineties, his conception of Jewish history was almost identical to Dubnow’s; indeed, it is hard to say which man had the greater influence on the other. Dubnow was not Ahad Ha-Am’s disciple; as a contemporary in Odessa noted, when Dubnow took up nationalism he expected the Ahad Ha-Am group to follow his vision of it.74 Nevertheless, it does seem that Ahad Ha-Am, more than anyone else, made Jewish cultural nationalism respectable for Dubnow. In 1893, Ahad Ha-Am criticized Dubnow’s belief that knowledge of the past was the highest intellectual level to which the people could aspire; love of the past, Ahad Ha-Am insisted, was a sign of old age, whereas concern for the future was a characteristic of youth.75 Dubnow rejoined that the old age of a people is not comparable to senility, for an ancient people that has withstood the storms of history has more vital force than a young nation untested in battle. Dubnow later characterized this disagreement as “merely verbal.”76

70 KZ, I, 362. 71  Arthur Hertzberg uses the term “agnostic rabbi” in The Zionist Idea: A Historical Analysis and Reader, ed. Arthur Hertzberg (Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1959), pp. 250–51. Hertzberg’s criticism of Ahad Ha-Am’s Zionism is on pp. 51–72. Similarly, Baruch Kurzweil calls Ahad Ha-Am’s system “theology without God” (Baruch Kurtzweil, Sifrutenu ha-hadashah, hemshekh o mahpekhah? [Our Modern Literature, Continuation or Revolution] [ Jerusalem: Shocken, 1959], p. 219). 72 Kol kitvei Ahad Ha-Am, p. 53. 73 Ahad Ha-Am, Iggrot Ahad Ha-Am [Letters of Ahad Ha-Am] (Tel Aviv: 1924), IV, 149. 74 Rav Tsa’ir, op. cit., p. 112. 75 “Past and Future,” Kol kitvei Ahad Ha-Am, pp. 81–83. 76 KZ, I, 284.



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An early sign of Ahad Ha-Am’s influence was Dubnow’s prediction in 1894 that there would be a synthesis of “western” and “eastern” concepts of Judaism.77 He wrote that the western concept, based on “religious or philosophical-historical principles,” depicted the Jews as a spiritual entity; the eastern concept focused on the demand for a real center to unify the incomplete and un­natural Jewish nation. Dubnow based his hope for their fusion on the grounds that westernizers, such as himself, were now willing to use the term “Jewish nation” and that the easterners, such as Ahad Ha-Am, acknowledged that Judaism required a spiritual center rather than geographical consolidation along with political sovereignty. Both men were critical of Herzl’s political Zionism. Ahad Ha-Am insisted after the formation of the World Zionist movement in 1897 that Judaism did not require an independent state (which he considered an unrealistic goal) but “the creation in its native land of conditions favorable to [ Judaism’s] development.” Ahad Ha-Am envisioned the gradual emergence of a “spiritual [i.e., cultural] center” there whose intense and creative Hebrew life would invigorate the diaspora and sustain the people.78 Ahad HaAm’s “spiritual Zionism” and Dubnow’s “diaspora nationalism” diverged mainly on the issue of whether such a geogra­phical center was necessary for the future of Jewish identity. In the early nineties Ahad Ha-Am had criticized Dubnow for praising the conception of a universal mission of Israel in the diaspora as articulated by German-Jewish theologians. Ahad Ha-Am considered this concept an example of “slavery in the midst of freedom”—a rejection of kelal Yisra’el (the unity of the Jewish people) for the sake of civil emancipation.79 Since Dubnow disliked the disparagement of the diaspora, which he felt was inherent in Zionism, he countered with the phrase “freedom in the midst of slavery.” Jews, he argued, could satisfactorily develop their unique national spirit in the diaspora even though they were still deprived of full civil rights.80 When Dubnow published his own program for Jewish autonomy in Europe, Ahad Ha-Am called on Dubnow to admit that “more is better than less,” and that “we have to look for . . . more radical ways of strengthening and enlarging our national life.”81 Dubnow, as we shall see, rejected this formulation. Their 77 #126 (October), pp. 15–19. 78 Kol kitvei Ahad Ha-Am, p. 138. 79 The title of an article on this theme (ibid., pp. 61–69). 80 KZ, I, 249–50. 81  Kol kitvei Ahad Ha-Am, p. 402. See Ahad Ha-Am’s letter to Dubnow on the question of the future of Jewish life in the diaspora, in Iggrot Ahad Ha-Am, III, 284–89. Also, KZ, I, 333, and Sefer Dubnow, p. 261.

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main practical divergence was a consequence of this different emphasis: Ahad Ha-Am insisted that Hebrew should be the only language of the Jewish renaissance while Dubnow later came to feel that Yiddish was a viable and important Jewish language deserving perpetuation.82 Dubnow and Ahad Ha-Am disagreed in print in a friendly, respectful tone quite different from the usual polemics of the time. Toward the end of the decade they became close personal friends and cooperated in several joint literary and community activities.83 Ahad Ha-Am was the intellectual stimulus and foil which forced Dubnow to clarify his ideological position. Another profound but more subtle and indirect influence on Dubnow during his Odessa period was the writer Shalom Abramovich. Abramovich, under the pen name of Mendele Mokher Seforim (Mendele the Bookseller) had become “der Zeide”, “the grandfather” of Yiddish and Hebrew literature, and was the patriarch of the Odessa circle. Mendele (as he is usually known) had studied at yeshivot and after a period of youthful wandering wrote several Hebrew works in the spirit of the Haskalah, including a natural history and a novel. He then turned to Yiddish and produced a series of masterful novels and stories in that language.84 Moving to Odessa in 1881 as director of the modernized Talmud Torah, he proceeded to translate his Yiddish works into Hebrew, developing a unique style in that language which captured the flavor of the Jewish vernacular. An affectionate relationship developed between Mendele and Dubnow in the nineties, and they spent many hours together in Mendele’s study. Dubnow was amused rather than irritated by Mendele’s original but paradoxical opinions which often disrupted the discussions of the “Nationalizing Committee.”85 Mendele insisted that the others all had “labels,” but that he was neither a Zionist, an assimilationist, nor an autonomist—just “glat a Yid” (“a plain Jew”).86 Mendele spoke warmly of “my Dubnow”87 82 See Ahad Ha-Am’s letter to Dubnow on the language problem in Iggrot Ahad Ha-Am, IV, 100. On the relationship between the two men, see Simon, op. cit., pp. 235–38; Kauf­ mann, Ben netivot, p. 120. 83 KZ, I, 362–63. Dubnow and Ahad Ha-Am collaborated on a catalogue of the Jewish trade clerks’ library in Odessa (He-Avar, I [1954], 54). 84 Mendele (c. 1836–1917) turned to Yiddish for utilitarian reasons (Spiegel, op. cit., p. 225). 85 Mendele saw no reason why he always had to express the same opinion on the matter under discussion (KZ, I, 332). Shmarya Levin (Youth in Revolt, p. 202) describes Mendele’s “torrential” conversation. 86 KZ I, 354. 87 Rav Tsa’ir, op. cit., p. 111.



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and defended him: because Dubnow had dwelled outside the house of Judaism, he said, he was one of the few who could now see it from a wider perspective.88 In his memoir of him Dubnow described Mendele as rather conservative in his Jewish practices and a more authentic Jew than all the Odessa Jewish nationalists.89 Mendele was like Dubnow, a Jew with humanitarian sympathies who outlived the Haskalah but never repudiated it.90 In his mature satirical works Mendele abandoned the didacticism typical of maskilim. The ironic effect emanates from the contrast of Judaism’s grand and holy tradition in the minds of the men of the Pale and the panic and weakness of their lives. Baruch Kurtzweil pointed out that Mendele very effectively combined evocative biblical phrases and the mundane, petty details of his characters’ existence.91 Mendele’s viewpoint was redolent of populism in its affection for the poor and gentle Jewish folk.92 He may have doubted Israel’s ability to shake off its degraded condition, but also believed that the tsorus (troubles) of the Jewish masses was their unifying feature and a symbol of the suffering of all downtrodden peoples. The names of Mendele’s imaginary villages convey the defects and poverty of the Pale life: Kisalon or Fools’ Town, reflecting the narrow intellectual horizons of the Jews; Bitalon, derived from a Hebrew root signifying idleness, unworldliness, and economic rootlessness; Kavtsi’el alluding to the grinding, all-pervading poverty.93 At the same time Mendele seemed to feel that this world could not possibly disappear.94 In a similar mood Dubnow meditated in his mother’s garden in 1897: I perceive something endlessly sad and, at the same time, endlessly satisfying in the quiet half-sunny life of the Jewish kingdom. It cannot be rooted out; neither persecutions nor pogroms could destroy it.95

88 KZ, I, 288–89. 89 “Vospominaniia ob Abramoviche” [Reminiscences of Abramovich], Safrut, ed. L. Yaffe (Berlin: Zaltzman, 1922), p. 168. #245 of the “Auto Bibliography.” 90 Kurtzweil, op. cit., p. 176. 91  Ibid., pp. 184–89. 92 Ibid., p. 179. On the duality of satire and compassion, see also Rabinovich, op. cit., p. 7. 93 David Patterson, The Foundations of Modern Hebrew Literature (London: The Liberal Jewish Synagogue, 1961), pp. 20–23. 94 Shaanan, Ha-sifrut ha-ivrit, III, 196. His chapter on Mendele and Peretz is appropriately entitled “Jewish Populism” (p. 170). 95 KZ, I, 315.

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It was this quality in Mendele’s writings which may have reinforced Dubnow’s belief that the life-force of the Pale was in some sense eternal and that on its inexhaustible resources a new social structure could be built. At the turn of the century Dubnow the (somewhat) rebellious “son” was on the way to becoming Dubnow the (somewhat) rejected “father.” He simultaneously felt sympathetic and alienated from the young and their strivings. His older daughter, a poet in the avant-garde tradition, was soon to marry the future leader of the Bund; his younger daughter was to marry a Christian and be baptized. Dubnow was outflanked by the Zionist and socialist radicalism and by the new artistic movements, such as Symbolism, which captured some of the most creative writers of the next generation. The presence of many impecunious Jewish students in Odessa recalled for Dubnow the plight of his own youth, and he and his associates joined to provide them with cheap meals, free tutors, and access to an adequate library.96 He later remarked about these externs, “I can testify that the school of tsarism prepared one for the role of a desperado.”97 When the first arrests of Jewish students occurred in Odessa, Dubnow sent books and other necessities to the daughter of an old friend who had been placed in solitary confinement for possessing illegal literature. On this occasion he asked himself, “Could this kind of ant-work undermine the fortress of tsarism?” and answered that it was indeed collapsing “from these underground blows.”98 As Dubnow perceived it, the basic problem was that Jewish intellectuals, obsessed by immediate problems, did not offer any “real theoretical principles” to those Jews who had grown up in these troubled times, so that their relationship to their Jewishness was highly problematical.99 Dubnow’s published articles and personal behavior in the nineties convey his growing conviction that he must formulate an ideology.100 In

  96 Ibid., pp. 387–88, 366–67.   97 Ibid., p. 228. Although Dubnow condemned the Jewish nihilists of the seventies, he explained that their intention was to serve the Russian people in a spirit of brotherhood (#100 [1891], pp. 34–35).   98 KZ, I, 340.  99 #112 (February–March), p. 32. 100 See, for example #132, where he reviews three stories and derives from them three social types: a money lender with no conscience, a Palestinophile, and the rare example of a young man who wants to actualize his love for the Jewish people in what Dubnow considers a realistic way.



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1894 he traveled to Kharkov to deliver a public lecture on Jewish history. The following day, asked to speak on contemporary issues, he presented for the first time his concept of Judaism as spiritual nationalism.101 This talk elicited a lively discussion which led to two more evenings with students of the Kharkov University and the Technological Institute. Dubnow found himself attacked from two sides: by the Palestinophiles (the Hovevei Tziyon), who considered his concept too abstract, and by the socialists, who insisted that Jews should join the general revolutionary movement.102 Two years later, a group of students came to Dubnow asking to study Jewish history and thereafter met regularly for several months to discuss his “general theses.”103 When Dubnow returned from abroad he learned that some had already been swept into the Zionist movement and others into groups that became the Bund.104 The demand for direct action became more apparent in the following few years. One Hanukah evening for students, organized by Dubnow, Ahad Ha-Am, Mendele, and others, ended in an uproar when a student shouted, “We are the sons of the Maccabees; we should conquer Palestine. . . . We do not need help from the God of Israel.”105 The proliferation of alternatives became even more pronounced with the emergence of Labor Zionism. Although Dubnow acknowledged that the “process of differentiation” was natural and he admired the energetic cheerfulness of the young Po’alei Tsiyon, he felt that Jewish unity was being inexorably undermined.106 Dubnow hoped and expected that his formulation of how to be modern and Jewish at the same time would insure Jewish survival in Russia. He had schematized his own development in the following pseudo-Hegelian way: the thesis was his childhood and the old way of life; the antithesis was his youth and radical criticism; the synthesis was his maturity and the rediscovery in modern form of the values inherent in the traditional culture.107 This formula describe the gradual evolution of his thought but it indicates why he found it so painful to realize that his synthesis would not necessarily be the starting point of the next generation.

101  KZ, I, 293. The term is used in #122, p. 8. 102 KZ, I, 294. 103 Ibid., p. 309. 104 Ibid., p. 310. 105 Ibid., pp. 335–36. The phrase is from the midrash, attributed to Bar Kokhba. 106 Ibid., p. 386; KZ, II, 41. 107 Chapter 17 of Dubnow’s autobiography is entitled “Extreme Antithesis”; Chapter 30 is “Path to Synthesis.”

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chapter six In my youth I went through a period of very sharp antithesis, but after a long internal struggle I established a synthesis of humanism and nationalism which seemed the natural achievement of our transitional generation that it was obligated to transmit to the youth who were following us on the scene. We were convinced that the younger generation would take our synthesis, borne with torment, as the basis for the future development of its world view.108

Dubnow thought he saw the way to make peace between the patriarchal milieu and “unpatriarchal life,” but many of “the children” ignored his solution. We observed, however, that our national synthesis, accepted by one part of the young, appeared to another part to be the same outdated thesis as the truly outdated regime of the past century had seemed to the reformers [of our generation]. The part of the youth that did not succeed in saving itself from the flood of assimilation in the crowded ark of political Zionism was in a dangerous situation. Parents from circles of the leading intelligentsia close to me observed with horror that their convictions, achieved through much suffering, seemed obsolete to their adolescent children.109

The most severe blow, therefore, came from witnessing the “denationalization” of Jewish youth who were abandoning their Jewish identity “to construct for themselves a newer building outside our spiritual territory.”110 The moans of such disappointed fathers found a reflection in the following note of June 1904: “How strange to be disillusioned with children, to follow from the first day the growth of their dear souls, . . . to see yourself better and more complete in your children, and then to learn that this was self-deception. How painful it is that some passer-by could destroy these hopes.111

Mendele, Dubnow, and Ahad Ha-Am each witnessed one of their own children “fly from the family nest” and marry non-Jews.112 108 Ibid., pp. 14–15. 109 Ibid. 110  Ibid., p. 29. 111  KZ, I, 315–16. 112 The expression is in KZ, II, 5. This personal anguish refers to his children, who for different reasons were grieving him. Concerning his son’s ignorance of Judaism, Dubnow remarked that eventually the boy would not even be able to understand the simple Hebrew poem inscribed by Ahad Ha-Am in his bar mitzvah present (ibid., p. 370). His poetess daughter Sophie’s interest in symbolism and her involvement with the Bund disturbed him. His other daughter Olga married a non-Jew and herself converted to Christianity; Dubnow would have nothing to do with her for several decades (Benzion Katz, loc. cit., pp. 114–15). See Isaac Remba, “Tragedies in the Families of the Great of the Nation” [in Hebrew], Ha-Do’ar, XLVIII, No. 34 (July 26, 1968), 619–20; No. 35 (Aug. 9, 1968), 636–38; No. 36 (Aug. 23, 1968), 652–54; No. 37 (Sept. 6, 1968), 666–68.



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By his early forties, Dubnow had achieved the personal integration and professional fulfillment he had earlier longed for. In Odessa, he had been associated with a group of active intellectuals who sought to guide Russian Jewry to a new self-awareness in a period of rapid social change and political turmoil. Sensitive to the alienation of Jewry in Russia and the morale of the young, Dubnow developed his own gradualist diaspora nationalism. His ideology was formulated, under the pressure of circumstances, from attitudes and principles clarified through three decades of reflection. Having decided that the Jewish nation required the explicit right to life and liberty as a collectivity, Dubnow concluded: “Here I found and crossed the bridge from Mill’s doctrine of the absolute freedom of the individual to the doctrine of the freedom of the collective.”113 Autonomism Although Dubnow’s political orientation was that of a western liberal, his ideology was based on a re-examination of the potential strengths, specific needs, and historical pattern of East European Jewry. Dubnow’s attitude toward the Jewish masses had earlier betrayed certain condescension. In the late 1880s, for example, he stated that the Jewish “jargon” (Yiddish) did not have a future, but since one could not expect the masses to be fluent in Russian for some time, this language could at present be used legitimately in a literature directed to their needs. The jargon certainly was no worse for educational purposes than Bulgarian, he said. Jewish writers should remember, however, that they are writing for the common people and simplify their style accordingly.114 By 1894 his evaluation of the masses had changed considerably. Several Yiddish stories that he had read depicted what he felt was an admirable “real type”: the simple Jew who accepts golus (exile), makes his peace with poverty, and enjoys the modest pleasures of family life. He contrasted the “adaptability”115 of the Jews in the patriarchal milieu with the spiritual collapse found among Jews influenced by contemporary culture. Despite their limited circumstances, the stoic Lithuanian Jews and the emotional

113 KZ, I, 329–30. In 1881 Dubnow had attacked the sacrifice of in­dividual freedom for the sake of the social unity of Judaism, calling it a violation of Mill’s teaching on the inherent value of diversity (#2 [1881], No. 36, pp. 1428–33). 114 #77, p. 9; #85, p. 24. 115 #124, p. 24.

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Hasidim of southern Russia had preserved a quality that made them psychologically stronger than the Russified upper crust. In this same review, Dubnow remarked that the spontaneous emotional strength inherent in the lower classes could also be found in the psyche of the secular “thinking man” and provide support in life. This was a way of asserting that the Jewish intellectual might have more in common with the masses than with the “cultured.” Dubnow noticed that the Russified Jewish readers of Voskhod and the state-recognized (kazyonnyi) rabbis seemed, on the whole, indifferent to his call for the preservation of Jewish historical sources, but that people in the more traditional milieu responded enthusiastically to his Hebrew brochure.116 Dubnow had discovered a new audience and perhaps a following. At the end of the century he pressed the editors of Voskhod117 to assume an active role in the Jewish national struggle. The old educational ideal, the old journalistic policy, and the old Russified leadership had failed to defend the interests of the Jewish masses and insure the survival of the Jewish people. Dubnow had been critical of the failure of the Jewish upper classes to press energetically for needed reforms in his earliest writings. In 1890 he complained that the heder would have already been done away with, were it not for the timidity and inactivity of the Jewish communal leadership.118 The following year he denounced the Society for Enlightenment for acts of cowardice, including its reluctance even to defend itself in the courts against the vilifications of the Judeophobes.119 In an historical study published in 1894 Dubnow concluded that sixteenth-century Jewish leaders had acted against the interests of the community by enforcing unfair and unjust limitations on Jewish economic enterprise in order to placate the szlachta (the Polish nobility).120 At the end of the decade, Dubnow’s inability to convince the leaders of the Society for Enlightenment in Odessa to introduce greater national content into the Jewish schools demonstrated to him “how deeply rooted the assimilationist tendency still was.”121 During a visit to

116 #110 (July), p. 5; KZ, I, 269. 117 Ibid., pp. 351–52, 392–93. In a letter to Ahad Ha-Am (1904) Dubnow criticizes the submissive tone of Voskhod. 118 #90, pp. 28–29. 119 #103 (October), pp. 54–55; #93, p. 52, where he accuses them of being too cowardly to publish record books of Jewish communities for fear of the anti-Semites’ accusations. This idea is repeated in #98, pp. 53–55, and #74 (March), p. 15. 120 #119, p. 118. 121  KZ, I, 355.



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St. Petersburg in 1902 he met with Baron Horace Günzberg, who was acting as though he were an old-fashioned shtadlan (intercessor), “filling the archives of various government commissions” in behalf of the Jews. Dubnow asked the Baron to petition the Minister of Education for a redirection of Jewish education along more national lines. Although the Baron was firmly dedicated to Judaism and could not be considered an assimilator in any sense, he gave Dubnow the “typical answer”: I agree with you completely with respect to strengthening the teaching of Jewish subjects in the schools, but why do you need the slogan “national education?” I cannot appear before the minister in the name of the Jewish nation and ask him for national schools.122

Dubnow remarked at this reply, “Of course, he was right in his own way; ingratiating yourself as an intercessor does not fit you to be a fighter for justice.”123 The new leadership, Dubnow implied, should not be passive, timid, or conciliatory, but must energetically further the interests of the nation. Dubnow’s position on the issue of Russian-Jewish community organization also reveals a changed take on social reality. In 1887 Dubnow had asserted that the old kahal was instituted by the Polish kings and later preserved by the Russian state in order to collect taxes and discipline the Jews;124 in 1890 he wrote that the kahal had no positive features.125 In the mid-nineties, however, he began to describe the kahal, with all its defects, as “a civilizing influence.”126 By 1899 he concluded: In face of the defects of the old kahal-rabbinical regime, it rendered an important historical service by preserving the Jewish masses as a special national-spiritual organism. To a certain extent it repressed the liberty of the individual, but it saved the liberty and originality of the nation. In this situation the Jew at least felt himself equal when he was in his society and synagogue; he had his own spiritual life, his own science, his own schools. His most important needs—social, intellectual, religious, moral—were satisfied. Although Jewry was a weak unit, it had strength through its social organization, which enabled it to withstand the pressures from outside.127

122 Ibid., p. 399. 123 Ibid. 124 #68, p. 15. 125 #90 (January), p. 33. 126 #117, p. 104. #121 is a long study of the middle levels of the Jewish system of selfgovernment in the sixteenth century. 127 #142, p. 18.

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Therefore Dubnow called for a new form of kahal, an autonomous and secular body that would defend the interests of the masses and insure the perpetuation of Jewish identity. The result of these considerations, a position Dubnow called “autonomism,” was summarized and presented in the platform of the Folkspartei. The party platform demanded that Russia reconstitute itself as a multi-national state with a democratic constitution recognizing national rights of its various ethnic components as well as civil freedoms for the individual. National rights he defined as the freedom of an individual to identify himself as a member of his true nationality.128 According to the platform, territorial minorities should receive regional autonomy, whereas non-territorial minorities “which are scattered over various provinces without being a majority in any, will have communal and cultural autonomy.”129 This formula was devised to permit the Jews to qualify as a non-territorial nationality. The Folkspartei platform defined as a condition of being legally Jewish “the factual and official adherence of that person to the Jewish nation.” Dubnow’s position was that by becoming a Christian one was no longer factually and officially Jewish. A minority insisted that baptized Jews should have the right to declare themselves to be members of the Jewish nationality.130 Cultural rights of the nation were to include formal assurances that Jews could celebrate their Sabbath and holidays without legal hindrance,131 and because the state would officially recognize nationality languages, the Jewish vernacular was to be acceptable in public life, the administration, and the courts.132 Communal rights included representative institutions for non-territorial nationalities. A Jewish constitutional assembly, elected by direct and secret ballot without regard to gender, would prepare the constitution of a general vaad (council).133 The vaad, composed of delegates, one for every ten thousand Jews, should meet yearly in a major center of Russian-Jewish population to select its permanent executive and supervise national Jewish life. The vaad would approve the constitutions of the local communities and create central agencies to support national culture. It would 128 Folkspartei Program, p. 26, paragraph 4. 129 Pis’ma, p. 83. Dubnow approved wholeheartedly of Renner’s concept, but arrived at his own independently (ibid., p. 345; also KZ, I, 382). 130 Folkspartei Program, p. 27, para. 5; KZ, II, 64. 131 Folkspartei Program, p. 29, para. 13. 132 Ibid., p. 28, para. 11. 133 Ibid., p. 26, para. 3.



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also try to im­prove Jewish economic conditions by organizing cooperatives, establishing professional unions, and facilitating emigration. The elected Jewish leadership would exert influence on the administration and parliament in all matters of Jewish interest. The local Jewish communities would elect a board to supervise Jewish philanthropic, religious, and educational needs, these activities being financed by taxes.134 The platform stated that all movements, pious and free-thinking, should be represented in the local communities, with specific ques­tions of religion decided according to the strength of the parties in each respective area.135 Dubnow’s position was that elemen­tary schools be under the direct supervision of the Jewish communal boards; a minority in the party held that it would suffice if Jews were guaranteed the right to study their special subjects in the general schools, with separate schools conducted in the national language if desired.136 Dubnow’s was one of several blueprints to solve the minority problems of Austria-Hungary and Russia by state sponsorship of non-territorial national organizations. Hayyim Zhitlovsky,137 a Russian-Jewish Social Revolutionary, and Nathan Birnbaum,138 an Austrian Zionist, insisted, independently of Dubnow that East European Jews be considered a national minority with legally recognized cultural rights. The best known parallel position was developed by the Austrian Social Democratic Party without any reference to the Jewish situation. At the Bruenn Party Congress of 1899 the South Slav delegation proposed that each national group have self-rule in linguistic and cultural matters throughout the Austrian-Hungarian empire; the resolutions adopted by this Congress endorsed the mixed principle of territorial and 134 Ibid., p. 28, para. 10. 135 Pis’ma, p. 261. 136 Folkspartei Program, pp. 28–29, para, 12. 137 Zhitlovsky claimed to have evolved this idea in the 1880s. He expressed it in various pamphlets in the 90s in which he insisted that a nationality is a body of people that achieves special creative forms and marked, distinctive characteristics. The Yiddish language was evidence that Eastern Jews had done this and should have the right to continue to do so (Oscar Janowsky, The Jews and Minority Rights [1898–1919] [New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1933], pp. 51–57). 138 Birnbaum, who later turned to Jewish Orthodoxy, had organized the first Zionist student group in Vienna in the 1880s and advocated a non-Zionist nationalism or Alljudentum between 1902 and 1905. He insisted that even after emancipation Eastern Jews would constitute a distinctive mass group and should be considered as such (Janowsky, op. cit., pp. 62–64). On the importance of Birnbaum, see Alex Bein, “The Origin of the Term and Concept ‘Zionism,’ ” Herzl Yearbook, ed. R. Patai. (New York: Herzl Press, 1959), II, 6–12.

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non-territorial autonomy by advocating local self-rule and countrywide national unions. During the following decade, Karl Renner and Otto Bauer, the theoreticians of the Austrian socialist movement, elaborated the idea of “personal” nationalism. Having concluded that national differences would not disappear with the growth of socialism, they proposed that each nation within Austria-Hungary be accorded its own national register of individuals and its own elective organ, which would have the right to tax its members. This, they felt, would neutralize nationalism as a psychological barrier to proletarian cooperation, make separate statehood for each unnecessary, and facilitate free movement of population in Central and Eastern Europe.139 However, neither Renner nor Bauer considered the Jews a nationality. Bauer was Jewish but denied the validity of a separate Jewish socialist movement in Austria-Hungary.140 Nevertheless, the resolutions of the Bruenn Congress and Renner’s pamphlet published afterwards immediately attracted atten­tion among the theoreticians of the General Jewish Workers Bund of Russia and Poland. The Bund had emerged in the late 1890s from the growing Jewish workers’ movements and the socialist intellectuals’ decision to propagandize among Jewish workers in Yiddish. At first the Bund insisted only on civil emancipation for Russian Jews and did not wish to commit itself on the future of the Yiddish language. In 1901 the Bund leadership still identified nationalism with chauvinism, but it soon began to modify this position. In 1903 the Bund asked the Russian Social Democratic Party to recognize it as the sole representative of Jewish workers throughout Russia, a move that would have transformed the Social Democratic Party into a federation. These demands led to a notorious debate at the July– August 1903 Convention and the Bund walkout, which left Lenin’s faction in the majority.141 The pogroms and the wide appeal of the Jewish nationalist parties soon forced the Bund to take an increasingly positive 139 Richard Pipes views their work as a compromise between the theories of socialism and the realities of nationalism (The Formation of the Soviet Union: Communism and Nationalism, 1917–1923 [Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1957], p. 27). See also Oscar Jaszi, The Dissolution of the Habsburg Monarchy (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1929], p 279; J.L. Talmon, The Unique and the Universal: Some Historical Reflections (London: Seeker and Warburg, 1965), pp. 53–55. 140 Bauer’s views of Jewish nationalism are discussed in Edmund Silberner, “Austrian Social Democracy and the Jewish Problem,” Historia Judaica, XIII (1951), 134; Silberner, Hasotsializm ha-ma’aravi u-she’elat ha-yehudim [Western Socialism and the Jewish Question] (Jerusalem: Mosad Bialik, 1955), pp. 280–83. 141 Henry Tobias, “The Bund and the First Congress of the RSDWP: An Addendum,” Russian Review, XXIV, No. 4 (October, 1965), 393–406.



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stand on Jewish cultural rights. Vladimir Medem was particularly influential in synthesizing the Bund’s radicalism and socialism with the demand for national rights, so that in 1905 he proposed a formula of “neutralism.” Because the Bund opposed “national oppression,” he said, it should advocate guarantees for Jewish culture, but not attempt to predict whether Yiddish culture would survive in the long run. The ideology of the Bund would leave the verdict to history.142 A similar but only partial about-face was forced on the Russian Zionists. Until 1905 the Zionist movement as a whole considered national rights in the diaspora impossible to attain and even undesirable. However, during 1905 and 1906 various local Zionist groups and writers in the Zionist press advocated a change of position. At the Russian Zionists’ 1906 Helsingfors Convention practically all the delegates favored national rights in the diaspora. Officially the territorial goal of the Zionist movement was not changed, but the party decided that even limited national rights in the diaspora would increase the self-consciousness of Russian Jewry and help in organizing it. The historian Oscar Janowsky wrote that the Zionist leadership had accepted the principle as a necessary evil.143 The impact of this pressure to acknowledge the need for national autonomy can also be seen in the proletarian wing of Zionism which emerged in 1900 and gradually crystallized into three separate movements. The Zionist Socialist Labor Party had taken the most hostile attitude toward national rights in the diaspora until 1907 but then decided to support the concept of school associations and cultural institutions.144 A second group emerged from a circle of Kiev intellectuals who founded the journal Vozrozhdenie (Renascence), won the cooperation of Hayyim Zhitlovsky, and formed a small party (the “Serp” or Seimists) affiliated with the Social Revolutionaries. They advocated a Jewish national seim (a diet, sejm in the Polish spelling) as an essential element of the future democratic Russia, 142 On the Bund’s change of attitude in 1904, see Jacob S. Hertz, “The Bund’s Nationality Program and Its Critics in the Russian, Polish and Austrian Socialist Movements,” YIVO Annual of Jewish Social Science, XIV (1969), 57; Charles E. Woodhouse and Henry Tobias, “Primordial Ties and Political Process in Pre-Revolutionary Russia: The Case of the Jewish Bund,” Comparative Studies in Society and History, VIII, No. 3 (April, 1966), 341. The evolution of Medem’s ideas is treated in Koppel S. Pinson, “Arkady Kremer, Vladimir Medem, and the Ideology of the Jewish ‘Bund,’ ” Jewish Social Studies, VII, No. 3 (1945), 248–64. 143 Janowsky, op. cit., pp. 109–112; also see pp. 68, 99. A description and summary of the debate and resolutions of the Helsingfors Conference is contained in Katzir: A Collection of Articles on the Zionist Movement in Russia [in Hebrew] (Tel Aviv: Masada, 1964), pp. 76–102. 144 Janowsky, op. cit., p. 43, pp. 135–36.

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a stand which most closely approximated Dubnow’s.145 A third labor Zionist movement, the Jewish Social Democratic Labor Party—Po’alei Tsiyon—viewed national-political autonomy as a palliative rather than a fully adequate solution to the Jewish problem, but even so publically acknowledged its value at a conference in 1906.146 On the opposite end of the new Jewish continuum were Vinaver and Sliozberg, Kadets and leaders in the League for the Attainment of Full Jewish Rights. Unable to withstand fully this pressure of the new attitude, their small anti-Zionist Folksgruppe advocated a minimal program of cultural “national rights.”147 Thus every modern Jewish party, despite its original position, came to accept the principle of Jewish autonomism in some form.148 This convergence was the result of the political situation during those few years when Russia seemed headed to become a constitutional monarchy. When the autocracy brought the Duma under its control in 1907, the matter subsided, only to reemerge again with even greater force during the Russian revolution and the Versailles Peace Conference. Dubnow’s conception of non-territorial national autonomy differed from all these other positions because it was derived from a historical justification peculiarly his own. Dubnow’s conviction that the kahal in a modern form could serve as a bridge between old Jewish identity and modernity recalls the discovery by the Russian intellectuals at the end of the forties of the unique potentialities of the peasant mir. In both cases a venerable institution, seemingly obsolete by western standards, came to be viewed as a promising solution to a burning social question. Dubnow, like Alexander Herzen in his day, thought he had found a more democratic alternative to western social institutions, an alternative that would avoid their anomic effects.149 Like the Populists, Dubnow believed that the local commune could be used as a starting point for a decentralized federative system of government. 145 Ibid., p. 129. 146 Ibid., pp. 45, 133. 147 Ibid., p. 118. 148 Ibid., p. 90. A summary and analysis of the turn by Jews toward political activity at the turn of the twentieth century is the subject of Henry Tobias, “The Jews in Tsarist Russia: The Political Education of a Minority,” Minorities and Politics, ed. Henry J. Tobias and Charles E. Woodhouse (Albuquerque: Univ. of New Mexico Press, 1969), pp. 19–38. 149 Martin Malia, Alexander Herzen and the Birth of Russian Socialism (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1961, pp. 395–406.



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Nevertheless, Dubnow’s autonomism was not really a comprehensive political theory. He never attempted to work out in detail how the entire Russian political structure could be remade to reflect the principle of nationality were his scheme adopted. To be such, Dubnow’s approach would have to explain how the stability and sovereignty of the state, the discipline of the army, or the integration of the economy could be secured with the degree of segregation his concept implied. Even though the Folks­partei program suggested that the national minorities be proportionally represented in the Duma,150 it was a program for a specifically Jewish audience. In order to convince his readers that his point of view was valid, Dubnow tried to refute alternative positions and to offer another reconstruction of the processes of Jewish history—the pillars which support Dubnovism as an ideology and a form of historiography.

150 Kurt Stillschweig, “Nationalism and Autonomy among Eastern European Jewry: Origin and Historical Growth up to 1939,” Historia Judaica, VI (1944), 27–68.

Chapter seven

From the Nineteenth to the Twentieth Century The turn of the century ushered in an immense burst of creativity in Russian Jewry at a time when Russia entered an accelerated period of change and upheaval. The debacle of the 1903 Russo-Japanese War severely discredited the regime, eventuating in a series of demonstrations and riots that impelled the tsar to concede a parliament (the Duma) in October 1905. During these chaotic years it did seem that the Russian state might move away from autocracy in a direction toward greater democracy with civil rights for all Russian subjects, but these years of turmoil also saw an outburst of pogroms perpetrated by urban gangs known as the Black Hundreds and linked to the Union of the Russian People, a rightist movement with covert support in tsarist circles. The new continuum of Jewish parties and movements, each with its own analysis of the situation, of the nature of Judaism, and political program, responded with activism, even militancy. Open turmoil ended by 1907 when Nicholas II curbed the Duma, reasserting some features of the autocracy, but Russia was not the same as it had been before 1900. By the end of the fourth decade of Dubnow’s life, he was recognized as a writer who combined independence of mind, devotion to liberalism, and participation in the leadership of the modernized sector of Russian Jewry. By then Dubnow had clarified the integration of his personal, social, political, and professional commitments (integratsiia dushi), tying them together in a coherent personal philosophy and public role among his people. In this chapter we will look at Dubnow’s main ideological statement and then his approach to Jewish history, especially as it relates to his ideology of diaspora nationalism.1 At the end of the chapter we will briefly summarize the second half of his life. .

1 To be sure, the term “diaspora nationalism” is perhaps not quite precise enough because there were other non-Zionist forms of Jewish nationalism and other diasporapositive movements that were not particularly nationalist. Dubnow was not on principle anti-Zionist, as were various other movements of the time. Indeed, his historical writings were very important in the Yishuv (the Jewish community in Palestine) in the 1920s and 1930s because much of what he said resonated with Zionists and in the Yishuv.

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Dubnovism can be considered an “ideology” in the sense that it was a system of ideas based on certain understandings about history, society, and human nature which justified a position on public affairs. An ideology in this sense gains credibility from its basic principles which are not, however, conceived of as merely hypothesis; it is a unity of theory and praxis. The “theory” is a set of explanations which claim to be rational, even scientific. The “praxis” is a set of goals and strategies. Not all ideologies are totalistic, but they have a certain assuredness and finality. As we have seen, Dubnow was indebted to the Enlightenment, Positivism, liberalism, Darwinism, Wissenschaft des Judentums, and Russian populism. The resulting synthesis underpinned, he felt, the most adequate solution, the most viable Jewish political status in modern countries, and at the same time best maintained the personal meaning of being Jewish. Its immediate audience was the rapidly modernizing Jewry of the Pale of Settlement, but it was applicable to Jews everywhere because it took into account the needs of the “world Jewish people.” Dubnow published the first of his essays on Jewish nationalism in 1897, the year of the founding of both the World Zionist Organization and the General Jewish Labor Bund [Union] of Russia, Poland, and Lithuania. Continuing to publish pieces under that title in Voskhod, in 1907 he compiled them into a book which became the classical presentation of Jewish diaspora nationalism. The key argument of the Letters on Old and New Judaism was that modern Jewry should recognize that the category of nationhood was by far the best way of affirming a Judaism that could respond effectively to the pressures of the present, was true to its past, and offered a vision of a viable Jewish future.2

2 Dubnow began writing his series of Letters on Old and New Judaism at the end of 1897. During the summer of 1906 and the spring of 1907 they were in part rewritten and arranged in an orderly sequence for publication. The book is divided into three parts: “General Principles,” “Between Social Tendencies,” and “Between Inquisition and Emancipation, 1903–1907.” Included also is published material not originally labeled “Letters,” some of which appears in appendices. Despite the obvious care with which Dubnow prepared this book, the impact of his presentation is weakened by the repetitiousness inherent in assembling articles published over a decade. In my summary I have attempted to extract the most effective arguments and formulations.



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With other politically dependent peoples there is no need to use the term national; it is enough to say, for example, ‘Polish intelligentsia’ in order for it to mean the national intelligentsia insisting on its independence in some degree or other. . . . However, with us the term ‘Jewish’ and the term ‘national’ are not identical. . . . We want nothing more than for the time to come when the slogan ‘national’ is unnecessary and the term Jewish intelligentsia is completely equivalent to the term national intelligentsia. But in order for this to come about, we have to fight for the national ideal as a definite banner.3

Dubnow asserted that every human being has a nationality4 and that a Jew who denied his or her Jewish identity was de facto identifying himself or herself as a member of another nation.5 Self-declared cosmopolitans who claimed that human beings are about merge into one homogeneous mass were sadly mistaken.6 To be sure, espousal of cosmopolitanism did not affect the crucial interests of a populous nation, but in the case of the Jews it did. Addressing the Russian philosopher Vladimir Solovyov, Dubnow remarked: In order to deny your aggressive [Russian] nationalism, you sometimes call yourself cosmopolitan. What does it matter? You can permit yourself this luxury. Your nation, unified by language and internal culture, bound in an armor of territory and state, defended on the frontiers by fortresses and cannons, will not disappear; it will not dissolve among other nations even though you speak of your cosmopolitanism.7

The beleaguered Jewish situation was quite different: Here am I, a son of the Jewish diaspora that is scattered in five parts of the world, speaking every language, divided into as many political and territorial groups as there are nations of the world. If I and a significant part of my people renounce our remaining cultural links and proclaim ourselves ‘cosmopolitans,’ we are committing base treason. We are hastening the death of that nation which is defended by nothing but spiritual boundaries; we are accomplishing what a political traitor does who endangers your territorial boundaries. For you to be a cosmopolitan is a national zero, but for us it is a national minus.8

3 Pis’ma. p. 151. 4 Ibid. p. 25. 5 Ibid., p. 275. 6 Ibid., p. 45. 7 Ibid., p. 67. 8 Ibid.

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Many Jews had assumed that emancipation would nicely resolve the political status of Jews because with the granting of citizenship would come acknowledgement that they belonged to the ruling nationality. Their Jewishness, if they continued to be faithful to it, was their religion. The modern nation-state was a sovereign entity in which all citizens were in theory equal before the law and participants in its public life without reservations. For Dubnow citizenship and nationality were distinct and separate concepts. A state was a formal union of individuals within a single legal jurisdiction; a nation was a historic entity held together by cultural and psychological ties.9 Whereas a person could become the citizen of a state just as he or she could join a corporation or guild, you were born a member of your nation.10 To call yourselves a part of the French nation you have to be born French, you have to be a descendant of the Gauls or a race close to them, or in the course of generations become so like the French that you take on the peculiarities that result from the historical evolution of the French people. Jews born in France remain members of the Jewish nation and, consciously or unconsciously, bear on themselves and in themselves the impress of Jewish historical evolution.11

Change in nationality can occur only after several generations and usually as a result of marriage. The correct term for French Jews was “French citizens of Jewish nationality.” Those who preferred “German, Italian, Czech, or Pole of the Jewish faith”12 may not have consciously advocated assimilation, but recent history proved them wrong.13 The proof of this error was found in the rebuff they have received: One of the causes for the success of anti-Semitism in the West is the loss of self-respect among the educated classes of Jewry who strove for assimilation and forced themselves on other national organisms where they provoked irritation like a foreign body in an organism.14

Anti-Semitism had inflicted a terrible burden on a generation raised to believe that Judaism constitutes only adherence to “Mosaic principles.” These Jews and their children desired to be accepted as members of the

  9 Ibid., pp. 32–33. 10 Ibid., p. 31. 11  Ibid. 12 Ibid., p. 341. 13 Ibid., pp. 341, 27. 14 Ibid., p. 51 also p. 79.



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nation in whose culture they were educated, but discovered that they were still identified primarily by their Jewish descent.15 By way of illustration, Dubnow described the hero in the autobiographical German novel, Werther der Jude by Ludwig Jacobowski: The hero of the novel, the son of a Jewish merchant who was educated at home as a “Jew of the Mosaic faith,” who went to a German school and attended the University of Berlin, is painfully vacillating all his life between two national feelings, the German and the Jewish. He yearns to forget his Jewishness, to which he is attached only by childhood memories of the synagogue, of the festivals, and of an uninspiring teacher who taught him the Hebrew alphabet. He feels himself to be German to the core. His Christian environment, however, reminds him at every step that he is a Jew. The Christian girl whom he loves, her relatives, his fellow-students, all tell him directly or by hints: “You are a stranger to us; you come from a despised race; you can never be like a native German!”16

Such a conflict of “cultural and racial loyalties” produced demoralizing ambiguity: At one point the hero is himself poisoned by the anti-Semitism of his environment. He sees himself victimized by the sins of his ancestors; he sharply condemns the vices of the rich Jews but pays no attention to the shortcomings of the German bourgeoisie. Every time he becomes aware within himself of a natural feeling of attachment to Judaism he chastises himself because he views it as a bad sign that he has not become as Germanized as he should have. There are also occasions, however, when his historical heritage prevails. When a friend beseeches him not to concern himself so much with Jewishness, he answers bitterly: ‘Is it possible? Does not this problem arise of itself like a horrible monster in every contemporary Jew who looks with open eyes at ugly reality?’17

There were Jews who claimed to be part of the Russian people (as contrasted to merely being subjects of the Russian tsar) without being infected by the fictional Werther’s self-hate, but that aspiration was futile. Such Jews were “accomplices of assimilation” inasmuch as they refused to realize that the ideal of cultural fusion was bankrupt and only an explicit Jewish national ideal could take its place.18 The cure for assimilation, “the

15 Ibid., pp. 123–25. Ludwig Jacobowski (1868–1900) was a German-Jewish poet and writer, who entered into sharp debates with anti-Semites on the inclusion of Jews in German culture. This novel was published in 1892. 16 Ibid., p. 117. 17 Ibid., pp. 117–118. 18 Ibid., p. 269.

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typical bacillus of the diaspora,” lay in acknowledging that Jewish culture must develop according to its own inner law.19 The conscious development of the intelligentsia in this national spirit I call “autonomous,” and a blind or calculated imitation of a foreign nation “heteronomous.”20

We recall Dubnow’s earlier drive to be autonomous in the sense of liberating himself from the “Old Judaism” of his family and home town, striking out to build a life of his own choosing. Autonomy had the meaning of selfaffirmation akin to the famous statement by Kant that the key principle of the Enlightenment was using one’s own reason without subservience to norms imposed by others. Dubnow advocated responding to the “epigones of assimilation” with a forthright program of Jewish national self-affirmation. Traditionally religious Jews knew from childhood that the Jews were a nation and still are,21 but Dubnow’s concern was the growing secular component of Russian Jewry. It was crucial to provide their children with a “nationalized education” that would inculcate “those half-conscious emotions which are more basic than conscious ideas” and facilitate the honorable survival of a great people and culture in difficult times. (Dubnow had come forward as a strong supporter of the increased national Jewish content of the Odessa community’s Jewish schools.) Only a child who acquired universal knowledge through his national culture would be able to maintain that culture and pass it on: The school must prepare the child to struggle consciously for both his personal and national self—for in the life of the Jew the first is closely tied to the second. The hostile world persecutes us not only as individuals but as members of a definite nation. We require a general education which inspires a specific moral and social ideal. At the present time nothing else can improve and inspire the spirit of our youth except the Jewish national ideal that it is better to serve one’s persecuted nation and fight for its liberation than to join a stronger foreign nation and provide oneself a peaceful existence.22

19 This metaphor is used on p. v and p. 280. 20 Ibid., p. 259. 21 Ibid., pp. 238, 15. 22 Ibid., p. 127.



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Does Jewish nationalization imply a lack of patriotism to the country in which one lived? Dubnow dismissed this charge. Patriotism consisted of two different emotions. The first was love of landscape and home, independent of one’s relationship to other nationalities residing there.23 The second was loyalty to the government. One may love the Russian countryside and detest its present regime.24 Nationalism did not conflict with the civic obligations of polity because “the Jews did not form a state within a state—they were everywhere a nation among nations.”25 Dubnow noted that prominent Jewish “assimilationists” had expressed liberal sympathies for persecuted groups such as the Irish, the Austrian Slavs, the Poles, the Armenians, and even the Boers in South Africa,26 disapproving of attempts to forcibly assimilate these peoples to the ruling nationality where they resided.27 This indicated that liberals did not view nationalism per se as reactionary and chauvinistic. Just as in the fifteenth century the religion of Tomás de Torquemada, the leader of the Spanish Inquisition, must be distinguished from the faith of the Czech reformer John Hus, so the aggressive “national egotism” of Georg von Schönerer (the leader of the pan-German anti-Semitic group in Vienna at that time) should not be equated with the “defensive nationalism” of Lajos Kossuth or Giuseppe Garibaldi in the nineteenth century.28 Thus the unethical and vicious anti-Semitic behavior of the anti-Dreyfusards and the Union of the Russian People were aberrations of the national idea as such, not its substance.29 If the pure national ideal is consistent with the ideal of universalism, the Jewish national idea, in particular, which can never become aggressive, will be in harmony with it. The high principle of social ethics stipulates the equality of collective individuals or nations in the international family. Jewish nationalism is justified by the demands of ethics, whereas the abovementioned French (or contemporary Russian) nationalism destroys it. Let those who acknowledge this high ideal fight its perversion. It is fitting and proper for the descendants of the biblical prophets to support in its purity

23 Ibid., p. 39. 24 Ibid., p. 40. He points out that the three “nations” of Switzerland have a strong sense of civic loyalty and suggests that the Irish would be patriotic Britons if they had home rule (ibid.). 25 Ibid., p. 42. 26 Ibid., p. 260. 27 Ibid., p. 79. 28 Ibid., p. 60. 29 Ibid., p. 55.

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chapter seven that national idea which the prophets combined with noble dreams of the unity of mankind.30

Laying out psychological, sociological, and moral grounds for affirming one’s Jewish nationality, Dubnow concluded that Russian Jews should be divided into those who are nationalist and those who were anti-nationalist.31 “Bezpartiinost’ (neutrality) on this matter is not viable.”32 Any Jewish movement which refused to recognize the priority of special Jewish problems and goals should be considered anti-nationalist, whether it admits so publically or does not.33 Unfortunately, according to Dubnow, the latter option was where much of the Jewish Left has positioned itself.34 The Bundists were the worst offenders: For the followers of the Bund the Jewish label is only ethnic—not national. They take into consideration the language of the masses, the ‘jargon’ [Yiddish]. They reject the reborn Hebrew language. They speak of ‘freedom of self-determination’ and even of ‘national-cultural autonomy’ as dogmas of general freedom. But they do not plan for the actual development of Jewish culture, for an autonomous [Jewish] social structure, for national education as a defense against assimilation.35

The ideology of the Bund was at heart assimilationist, a consequence of a theoretical “bookish economic monism”36 which explained all issues by economic forces and class conflict. Unfortunately, Marxist historical materialism “has gained adherence among the [ Jewish] nation whose entire past is a violent protest against this doctrine.”37 One of its most dangerous misconceptions was that a socialist state could appear in Russia

30 Ibid., p. 73. “Individuality rests on a man’s desire to preserve his external and internal freedom while not destroying the freedom of others” (ibid., p. 61). 31 All parties in Jewish history are measured by this criterion (ibid., pp. 227–29). 32 Ibid., p. 242. Also implied on pp. 307, 227–28. 33 This priority and these goals are the basis of the Folkspartei platform (ibid., p. 338). 34 The young Jews in the Social Democratic Party were complete assimilationists, Dubnow observed. He considered the Jews in the Polish Socialist Party, who fought for Polish, but not Jewish, autonomy, even more contemptible (ibid., pp. 301–302). Dubnow agreed that the Social Revolutionaries did not oppose the Jewish demands, but they were primarily concerned with the agrarian, not the national question (p. 303). Yitzhak Maor points out that the SRs were the only general party sympathetic to Jewish nationalism (She’elat ha’yehudim ba’tenu’ah ha-liberalit ve-ha-mahpekhanit ba-Rusiah [The Jewish Question in the Liberal and Revolutionary Movement in Russia, 1890–1914] [Jerusalem: Mosad Bialik, 5724 (1963/64)], p. 257). 35 Pis’ma, p. 303. Dubnow did come to agree with them on the value of Yiddish as a permanent Jewish language. 36 Ibid., p. 307. 37 Ibid.



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before the country became a democracy. This illusion had led the Bund to subordinate all social and political interests to class politics. Separation of the Jewish proletariat from the “so-called [Jewish] bourgeoisie” was a crime against the nation,38 undermining the natural feelings of solidarity among Jews. By misapplying the term “bourgeois” to those political parties who work for a healthy economic life for all classes of the Jewish nation, the Bund sowed animosity among Jews and nullified the possibility for effective common action.39 Ahad Ha-Am had characterized Western non-nationalist and antinationalist versions of Judaism as “slavery in the midst of freedom”: defining one’s Jewishness only within limits set by the nation-state. This was to be contrasted to “freedom in the midst of slavery” of many East European Jews, that is, Jewish self-affirmation regardless of one’s religious beliefs or lack thereof in an autocratic regime that denied Jews equal rights. Dubnow asserted that the Bund’s refusal to participate fully in the struggle for Jewish national rights was “slavery in the midst of revolution.”40 When this slogan provoked vociferous objections, Dubnow replied that he was not opposed to Jewish participation in the struggle for economic justice, but that Jews must recognize “the supremacy of national politics”41 as the chief condition for their survival in times of oppression.42 True freedom entailed awareness by Jews that they must defend themselves energetically against the overwhelming danger that threatens each and every Jew. Indeed, it was by no means impossible that even the Russian liberals might in the future turn their backs on the Jews. Therefore the Union for the Attainment of Full Jewish Rights “fought as a special legion with its national banner alongside the Kadets” (the Constitutional Democratic Party, the main liberal movement).43

38 Ibid., p. 308. 39 Ibid., pp. 321–26. Dubnow insisted that the organized Jewish workers and the upper Jewish bourgeoisie were only two small poles of the Jewish social structure in Russia; the great mass of artisans and petty traders in the middle should not be counted among the bourgeoisie but among the proletariat with whom their standard of living was identical. 40 Ibid., p. 300. This was a continuation of the series of slogans described earlier. 41 “The Incompatibility of Two Sovereignties” is the Russian title of letter thirteen, p. 321. 42 Ibid., pp. 329–30. 43 Ibid., p. 333. Dubnow’s criticism of the liberals is expressed several times in the Pis’ma. He notes that only Schedrin, Solovyov, and Chicherin spoke out against antiSemitism, and then only as individuals. There were no joint protests, public appeals, and editorial statements calling for aid to the victims of the pogroms (ibid., pp. 297, 107).

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chapter seven Society and government hostile to the Jews vent their wrath not only on a part of the people but on the entire people. Hatred against the Jews is indivisible, no matter whether it is inherited or acquired through education, whether it springs from cold calculation or from savage revolt. It has assumed different masks in various periods: religious, national, economic, political, whatever suited the state of social climate prevailing at the moment. Therefore the Jewish left jeopardizes all Jews. If the leader of the German Social Democratic Party declared that his party would fight shoulder to shoulder with the patriots of the bourgeoisie in case of danger, . . . then what would Bebel’s Jewish allies in Russia [August Bebel was a prominent German Marxist politician] do when their unfortunate nation is faced with a danger that is greater than the one that would threaten Germany from attack by the French army?44

Zionism, to be sure, affirmed Jewish nationalism, but made it dependent on a renewed Jewish homeland. Dubnow contrasted his evolutionary gradualism which is “like the rising of the tide after its ebbing”45 with Zionist “messianism.” Zionism evoked impractical and dangerous fantasies of a Jewish utopia. (He was not referring to the cultural/spiritual Zionism espoused by his friend Ahad Ha-Am and his disciples.)46 The practical activities of the Zionist Organization, such as the Colonial Bank and the new agricultural colonies, were admirable undertakings but did not constitute a complete solution to the Jewish question.47 Dubnow estimated that a century hence there might be a half million Jews in Palestine—not quite the Jewish population of the province of Kiev.48 Zionism has indeed generated great enthusiasm but in the long run “will weaken those means by which the people fought to survive.” Imagine a powerful family that has become impoverished, living a life of poverty and oppression, exposed to indignities at the hands of its rich neighbors. Through persistent labor it supports itself and hopes for better days. Despite its great want, however, it does not forget its ancient and aristocratic spiritual worth. Then, clever salesmen come to this family, sell it a lottery ticket and confuse it by promising that the family will soon become rich. At first, the unfortunate ones are elated. They hope, they take courage

44 Ibid., pp. 338–39. 45 Ibid., p. 157. 46 The main difference between the Zionists, and even Ahad Ha-Am and himself was that Dubnow rejected the diaspora as “exile” (galut) which implied a negative condition. Like some Western Jewish thinkers but for other reasons, Dubnow advocated affirming the dispersion of the Jews as a positive. 47 Ibid., p. 192. 48 Ibid., p. 171.



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and wait. Every day members of the family sit and plan the lives they will lead, once the great prize is won.49

The failure of these hopes will cause bitter disillusionment and an enormous wave of indifference: Then the day of the drawing arrives. The poor people do not win anything. The poor home is unrecognizable, its inhabitants filled with despair. Since they had become used to imagining a rich and free life for themselves, they begin to look with contempt upon their oppressive poverty. They now grow tired of their burdensome life, which had formerly been sweetened by humble spiritual pleasures. Their material troubles remain the same, but their purity of soul has disappeared, leaving only terrible emptiness and disappointment in their souls.50

Dubnow thought he detected a touch of anti-Semitism in the contempt by the political Zionists for the diaspora.51 Judaism demanded “Show me that you love my soul, my culture, and not just my future territorial qualifications.”52 The political Zionists were “conditional nationalists.”53 They loved their nation only as long as they were assured that it will be like other nations, thereby emulating an external standard of what a nation must be.54 The root of the problem was that the Zionists had not drawn the correct lessons from history. Present-day Jews do not occupy one specific land because they were forced to develop the skill of moving periodically in order to stay alive as a people.55 Despite not being a majority in any particular territory, Dubnow insisted that the Jews were one of the native peoples of Europe:

49 Ibid., p. 191. 50 Ibid. 51  Dubnow attacks the noted Zionist leader Max Nordau for insisting that it was “servile” to agree that it is “better to be a live dog than a dead lion.” Dubnow remarked that “Jews who prefer to suffer and be true to their people, rather than prosper and abjure it, are without doubt free men” (ibid., p. 188). For Nordau’s letter, see Ketavim Tziyoniyim [Zionist Writings] (Jerusalem: Histadrut Tziyonit, 1954), I, 84–101. 52 Ibid., p. 190. A play on Song of Songs 1:7, of course. 53 Ibid., p. v, and KZ, I, 328. 54 Ibid., p. 174. 55 Ibid., p. 356. Dubnow defends the idea of emigration as a safety valve (p. 357). He argues that the concept of “territorialism” (the search for a Jewish land outside Palestine) should be taken seriously (p. 292, footnote). Perhaps a Jewish state is not attainable, but a large settlement somewhere may be, he insists.

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chapter seven The view that the Jews, deprived of their ancient homeland in Asia Minor, have no moral or legal right to European territory is so widespread that it is used not only by anti-Semites, but unfortunately also by imprudent political Zionist agitators in their propaganda. . . . Yet there is no more dangerous and likewise no more anti-historical error than the view that the Jews are strangers and foreigners in Europe. History tells us that the Jews are ancient inhabitants of Europe, that they established themselves in Europe even before the growth of civilization and the consolidation of Christianity there.56

As they had in Western Europe, the Jews played a role in the earliest history of the regions that had come to be inhabited by Slavic peoples. The legend of “Ahasuerus the eternal Jew” was included in the folklore of most countries because the Jews had moved from location to location, usually in order to escape persecution.57 Migration within the diaspora was a continual and natural process, just as currently it was creating a major new center for Jewish life in America. Dubnow did not oppose on principle contemporary Jewish settlement in Palestine: “a small ray of light in Zion is desirable.”58 But he held that Jewish emigration should be directed any place where significant masses of Jews could carry on their nationalcultural life.59 Zionism could play its proper role in the overall Jewish national movement only if Zionists acknowledged that they are part and not the whole of the Jewish renaissance. In the last analysis, however, they faced east, whereas his supporters face west.60 Dubnow the optimist expected that the Jews must remain in Europe and that forced assimilation will someday end.61 Judeophobia was not eternal.62 There will be time in the future when the Jewish nation would take its rightful place in a peaceful humanity. Dubnow summarized his position in the following formula: the assimilationists view Judaism as a nation in the past; the Zionists view it as a nation in the future; “we view Judaism as a nation in the present.”63 The Letters on Old and New Judaism opened with “general theses” offered to support the contention that Dubnovism rested on a scientific conception

56 Ibid., p. 34. 57 This whole process is discussed on pp. 34–45. 58 Ibid., p. 320. 59 Ibid., pp. 287–88. 60 Ibid., p. 163. 61  Ibid., p. 195. 62 On p. 155 he implies this, although he does not state so explicitly. 63 Ibid., p. 181.



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of national identity.64 Drawing on metaphors from biological evolution, Dubnow attempted to show that Jewish identity conformed to the overall pattern of nationality and that therefore his conception of Jewish nationhood was scientific. The individual was like a cell of his or her national organism65 and the nation was like a species within the genus mankind. The nation was a social aggregate that could manifest a will-to-live passed on from generation to generation.66 Within the nation67 and among them, a process akin to natural selection operated to weed out weaker elements and preserve the stronger.68 An elemental vital force, if strong enough, drove a nation to adapt to the changing conditions. Assimilation was the disappearance of those weaker nations of the world in the face of environmental challenges. In effect, Dubnow was applying Herbert Spencer’s conception that structures evolve from simplicity to complexity and from external to internal causation.69 He theorized that the elemental social group was the type whose unity was based primarily on blood ties. If a tribe adjusted to the needs of its environment, it could enter a more complex stage of national evolution, forming a state. The unifying forces underpinning a territorial nation were manifested in the will to defend the native land when threatened by conquest. Conquering nations, those whose empires were based mainly on military-political force, ultimately collapse through inner conflict. In the course of time psychically weak nations disappear but cohesive nations create cultural forms that insure their continued development. Each nation has its particular pattern of development. For Dubnow historical evolution, therefore, worked toward the emergence of strong national individualities.70 The stronger the members of a nation feel the need to develop according to the nation’s own spirit, the more intense its cohesion over time.71 Dubnow concluded that “the

64 He insisted that his theory is scientific (p. 58). He also asserted that the future form of Jewish identity must be secular (pp. 11–12). 65 Ibid., p. 114. 66 Ibid., p. 10. 67 Ibid., p. 7. 68 Ibid., p. 3. 69 The entire evolutionary process is discussed on pp. 1–6. 70 Ibid., pp. 258–59. He argues that there are special combinations of factors or forces in each nation; in Rome there was a powerful state force; in Judah a strong religious-ethical principle. These forces in themselves are not unique, but the combination of elements differs in each historical nation. 71  Ibid., p. 81.

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preservation of national individuality is an axiom of sociology.”72 Each nation should be guaranteed the right to follow its own destiny. Mill’s On Liberty had been applied by Dubnow to the collective. Many peoples have survived the loss of political independence, but only one has dispersed among other nations, having lost its natural homeland and unifying language, yet willed to maintain an independent existence. That nation surely has reached the highest stage of evolution and may be indestructible. As the Jewish nation has passed through the phases of national development, the spiritual factor achieved dominance over the physical and political.73 Prophets, priests, and Pharisees successively strengthened the nation’s culture to such a degree that the scattered organism was able to survive in the diaspora. Over the long stretch of historical time, the Jewish people had compensated for limitations on its political life “just as the blind and deaf compensate for their weaknesses through the sharpening of other senses.”74 Wherever the vital forces of the Jewish nation were manifested, autonomous communal institutions were created to serve as “surrogates of a state.” The changing forms of Jewish law, literature, and faith were results of this basic national instinct for survival.75 This phenomenon was even more apparent now when the modern secular Jewish intellectual dropped obvious Jewish customs, peculiarities, and religious dogmas. Then he or she should be all the more aware that the essential nature of national originality comprised historical memories and ideals, feelings of mutual sympathy, and distinctive mental and ethical tendencies.76 With arguments like these Dubnow sought to buttress that Jewish continuity in history was capable of scientific explanation but that the essence of a nation was ultimately subjective, “spiritual” (in his nontheological, non-metaphysical sense of the term). Far from being an historical abnormality, the Jewish people are the supreme example of its class, “the quintessence of a nation.”77

72 Ibid., p. 160 (footnote). 73 Ibid., p. 10. 74 Ibid. 75 Ibid., p. 9. 76 Ibid., pp. 14, 160. 77 Ibid., p. 14.



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For Dubnow a modern state rested, at least in theory, upon a social contract sustained by the popular will.78 In contrast, a nation was a psychological organism formed by voluntary and involuntary forces, “the creator of its history and the product of its history.”79 As a nation was shaped by its changing environments while often struggling for survival against other national organisms, it acquired definite characteristics. Akin to the idea of natural selection, Dubnow’s nationalism can be considered a version of social Darwinism, but not that term as applied to late-nineteenthcentury capitalism in the United States.80 Dubnow’s nationalism rested on an impersonal élan vital which molded culture and identity to its needs. This force was a vast power before which the individual was dwarfed and yet which he or she could feel pulsating within, akin, perhaps, to what Dubnow sensed in his pantheistic moments in the forests. Dubnow’s Darwinism was not at all racist in the biological sense that term came to be used in nineteenth- and twentieth-century racism because, when cultural ties were broken, blood ties were not sufficient to preserve a nation. Dubnow’s national will-to-live was psychic. He approvingly quoted Renan’s famous statement: A nation is a living soul, a spiritual principle. Two things, which in truth are but one, constitute this soul, this spiritual principle. One is in the past, the other in the present. One is the common possession of a rich heritage of memories; the other is actual consent, the desire to live together, the will to preserve worthily the undivided inheritance which has been handed down.81

The national will-to-life was voluntaristic, as epitomized by Renan in his well-known dictum that “a nation’s existence is—if you will pardon the metaphor—a daily plebiscite, as the individual’s existence is a perpetual affirmation of life.”82 Dubnow wrote: “The nation’s consciousness is the main criterion of its existence. ‘I think of myself as a nation: therefore I am.’ ”83 Accordingly, a group which successfully asserts that it is a nation—is a nation. The desire to survive as a nation was morally legitimate and progressive, qualities

78 State is contrasted with nation on p. 33. The term “natural group” is used on p. 31. 79 Ibid., p. 10. 80 To be sure, not the Social Darwinism of Gilded Age capitalists in the United States. 81  Renan, “What is a Nation,” Poetry of the Celtic Race and Other Essays (London: Walter Scott Publishing Co., n.d.), p. 80; quoted in the Pis’ma, p. 4. 82 Renan, op. cit., p. 81. 83 Pis’ma, p. 26.

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of great importance to the socially-conscious generation of secular East European Jews to whom Dubnow was addressing.84 Dubnow argued that there always were secular factors facilitating Jewish survival and that religion was not the primary explanation for the existence of the Jewish people even in the past. Medieval Judaism, in his view, survived because it enjoyed communal autonomy in the lands of the diaspora. Isolated within the ghetto the Jews had their own internal life. In practice the nation as a whole fulfilled tasks under the rule of religion which transcended the sphere of religion, so that the problems of secular organization were solved in the “religious” community. The kahal took care of matters of communal welfare, supervised economic life, education, and tax collection for the government, while the rabbinic tribunals adjudicated cases involving family and financial matters.85

Giving up some personal freedoms for the sake of national discipline may have been a burden for the sensitive few but was a necessary condition for the survival of the whole. In the nineteenth century, some modern Jews had rejected traditional Judaism because of their aspiration for freedom of thought (i.e., personal autonomy in the Kantian sense). This newly emancipated generation criticized what they considered the fossilized order of Jewish life, seeking to break down Jewish isolation. Admittedly, the Enlightenment was a positive experience for these Jews but also had negative consequences. “The antithesis humanized us, but at the same time denationalized us.”86 Pushed to its ultimate it would eventuate in national suicide. Better elements in the Jewish community began to wonder: what have we achieved in the period of antithesis? We have become alienated from our own people, without being integrated into the nations around us. Assimilation turned out to be in practice psychologically unnatural, ethically damaging, and practically useless. We gave up autonomy, the vital artery of every national body, and exchanged for it the principle of heteronomy, an alien law of development. We lost the center of our inner life, we transferred it to an alien environment, and thus we lost our balance.87

84 Ibid., p. 226. 85 Ibid., pp. 83–84. 86 Ibid., p. 80. Dubnow insisted that ideological “differentiation” within the RussianJewish intelligentsia is a natural process, but must be accompanied by a process of integration which will result in the basic crystallization of the two parties, nationalists and anti-nationalists (p. 246). He felt that this process can be seen in the history of the RussianJewish press (pp. 205–206). 87 Ibid., p. 79.



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Using his quasi-Hegelian triad of thesis-antithesis-synthesis (by the way, a terminology that was not used by Hegel in describing the stages of the dialectic), Dubnow concluded that modern Judaism must be based on principles and institutions that will preserve the best of the Old Judaism (the “thesis”) without its oligarchy, isolation, and intellectual fetters. Judaism should acknowledge the value of the Enlightenment “antithesis” without its self-destructiveness, leading to a synthesis, a New Judaism that was freethinking but loyal. Thus the future survival of the Jewish nation can be assured if the nation consciously and bravely wills it. Taking issue with those who said that in ancient times Jews may have been a nation but that they were one no longer, for Dubnow they still were a nation because of their resolve to remain such by force of will. Indeed, they were the most evolved form of nationhood, because the psychic element of group survival was primary. In sum, Dubnow set out to convince his public that Jewry did constitute a nation, even though as a group they did not jibe with the usual list of features of a nation. They did not need to have a single national language, a specific territory that was the current homeland. They did not have a single historical language or a current homeland; they had not had for centuries, a sovereign government.88 (We shall discuss this in more detail in the next chapter.) Western Jews had insisted that the Jews had every right to be accepted as citizens of the states in which they live because their Jewishness was their religion. Even Dubnow’s earlier hero, Heinrich Graetz, who had rejected the Jewish religious reformers’ elimination from the liturgy of any reference for a messianic resurrection of a Jewish commonwealth, asserted they were a spiritual people, not a political one. Political Zionists insisted that the solution to “the Jewish problem” was a Jewish state in the Land of Israel. Cultural Zionists pointed to the need for a homeland where Jewish civilization could flourish untrammeled. Socialist Zionists worked for the realization of social equality and economic justice under specifically Jewish auspices in a Jewish land. Against these views, Dubnow envisioned as a solution to the Jewish problem a formally and legally recognized status of Jewish communal institutions in multi-national democratic states. The Folkspartei platform advocated that each of the nationalities of Russia should have its own educational, cultural, and communal

88 Spinoza famously argued that Jewish law no longer had validity because Jews no longer had a commonwealth of their own.

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institutions supported by the government. These would be established, irrespective of the territory where a group constituted the majority, so this would apply to the Jews for whom there was no such territory. In his historical work, therefore, Dubnow was especially interested in Jewish communal institutions in the early modern period where East European Jews had created an overarching federation of communities, the Council of the Four Lands in Poland and the supra-communal Vaad of Lithuania. Far from being obsolete, the East European Jewish past offered a model for the New Judaism of the future throughout the diaspora. On Dubnow’s Historiography In addition to making a name for himself as a principal advocate of the ideology of diaspora nationalism in the first few years of the twentieth century Dubnow had become the dean of East European Jewish historians. This was no mean achievement, considering that he had no academic training and never held a regular academic position, although he lectured at scholarly gatherings and had a devoted following among the next generation of researchers in East European Jewish history. He read voluminously in several languages, accumulated an extensive library, worked intensively on his writings, kept in touch with many contemporary Jewish researchers, and was passionately devoted to Jewish history in all its phases, especially Eastern Europe. Indeed for him history (that is, the study of history) was a fully satisfying substitute for religion, a learning from which so much of personal relevance could be gleaned. Earlier we noted that for a while he labeled his point of view “historism.” He repeated found phrases and moments of the Jewish past that could be seen as analogous to the events of his day, connecting the then and now. One example is a series of articles he wrote late in life entitled “Living in Haman’s Time,” but there were many more such gestures in his writing. Apart from book reviews, Dubnow’s major historical writings can be grouped into three categories: surveys of East European Jewish history, publication of primary sources on East European Jewish history, and the history of the Jewish people from earliest times to the present. The first version of the history of Hasidism, published in installments in Voskhod in the late 1880s, was rewritten in Hebrew in the mid-twenties. His History of the Jews of Russia and Poland was translated into English and published in the United States during World War I. In the 1920s appeared his edition of



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the minute books of the Lithuanian Vaad (council of Jewish communities there) in the Early Modern period, as well as his collected essays on Yiddish writers. The opus that became the World History of the Jewish People began in the late 1890s, was published in a German translation also in the mid-1920s, soon followed by a Hebrew translation and in the 1930s by the Russian original. (A Spanish version was published in Argentina in the 1950s and an English version in the United States in the late 1960s and early 1970s.) Dubnow had made himself into the equivalent for his people of the nationalist historians that emerged among other European peoples: Thomas Babington Macaulay in England, Jules Michelet and Hippolyte Taine in France, Pavel Miliukov in Russia, Heinrich von Treitschke in Germany, and others. Each of them produced works of literature that made history relevant to their ardent readers, and each had a political orientation that shaped their writing. Dubnow’s comprehensive history did for his public what these writers did for theirs: justify an esteemed place in the pantheon of modern nations. Nineteenth-century Wissenschaft des Judentums had sought to show through the history of Jewish ideas, literature, and institutions that the Jewish religion had not only produced the Hebrew Bible but remained vital and creative after the rise of Christianity, through the Middle Ages, and down to modern times. Despite persecution and other stresses, its destiny was “to think and to suffer” (Dubnow’s earlier epitome of Graetz’s approach). For the mature Dubnow it was the Jewish people, not just the Jewish religion that deserved recognition for its historical vitality, and the key to doing this was an approach which he called his “sociological conception of Jewish history.”89 In his opening lecture in 1906 at the short-lived St. Petersburg Free University, Dubnow praised the faculty for including his subject in the social sciences rather than the philosophical and theological courses. His use of “sociological” is misleading because his approach has little to do with what sociology had become in the twentieth century at the hands of Max Weber, Emile Durkheim, Georg Simmel, and others. It represents a return by Dubnow to something like the Positivism of his earlier period, infused with the perspective that permeated the political movements of

89 KZ, II, 62.

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his time and place. (Coincidentally it was one of young Dubnow’s intellectual heroes, August Comte, who had coined the term “sociology.”) By “sociological” Dubnow meant not the analysis of social structures but the continued existence in time of a social group, a people. The history of the people involved recovering a “genealogy,” in the postmodern sense in which that term was popularized by Michel Foucault, the social theorist of post-structuralism in the late twentieth century. In 1910 Dubnow wrote:90 It is becoming clear that the Jewish people during the millennia has not only “thought and suffered,” but has in all possible circumstances proceeded to build its life as a separate social unit. Accordingly, the primary task of the writing of history is to reveal this process of the building of [Jewish] life as a separate social unit.91

He included this passage in an introductory essay for his ten-volume World History of the Jewish People in the 1920s.92 Dubnow had his own version of the universal/particular dichotomy. Although the Jews were, as was every nation, a particular people, together they constituted a “world people”. In the general introduction to the first volume of the World History he wrote: This is a universal history of the Jewish people in that it fully corresponds to the contents and the scope of this extraordinary part of the history of mankind. The term “universal” is applicable to the history of civilization throughout the world, as distinguished from the histories of individual peoples and countries. But the destiny of the Jewish people has manifested itself . . . in such a way as to have its own universal history in the literal sense. . . . Our scientific historiography was engendered in Western Europe in the middle of the nineteenth century, when the dogma of assimilation reigned: “Jewry is not a nation, but merely a religious group”. . . . A new understanding of Jewish history is maturing which corresponds more to its actual content and scope.

He went on to explain the genesis of the distinctive religious worldview of ancient Israel that became central to the Jewish heritage:

90 Ibid., p. 111, where he explains that he wrote this passage in 1910, which he later included in the introduction to his World History of the Jewish People. 91 Dubnow, History of the Jews, trans. Moshe Spiegel (New York: Thomas Yoseloff, 1967), I, 27, with slight changes. 92 See especially Ben-Zion Dinaburg [Dinur], “Simon Dubnow on his Seventy-fifth Birthday” [in Hebrew], Zion, II (January, 1936), 95–128; and the studies in Sefer Dubnow and Dubnow: Man and Work. See also the remarks of Ellis Rivkin on Dubnow’s skill in preserving the unity and structure of each historical age (Ellis Rivkin, “The Writing of Jewish History,” The Reconstructionist Magazine [June 15, 1959 and July 26, 1959], offprint, p. 4).



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The fundamental question of ancient [Jewish] history is precisely this: Why were Israel and Judah the creators of the highest spiritual culture, the culminating socio-ethical ideals of the prophets, while Assyria, Babylon, and Egypt, so strong in their material culture, failed to attain the humanitarian and pacific ideal which the Jews had proclaimed to humankind? Theologians explained this by divine or supernatural predestination of a “chosen people,” but a sociologist offers a more simple explanation: a small, peaceful nation situated between political giants, its territory forming a corridor between Mesopotamia and Egypt, could not dream of expansion through conquest: rather, it had to think in terms of safeguarding its cultural independence from the invasion of alien elements, of preserving an inner autonomy such as was possible only under the reign of peace and justice upon earth that would permit the co-existence of wolves and sheep in the area of universal history. The energy of the entire nation was concentrated not on conquest but on defense—a defense which was primarily spiritual rather than physical. Hence, the spiritual character of the Jewish national life, and the subsequent inner conflicts between this spiritual beginning and the later secular tendencies expressed in the slogan, ‘Let us be like unto all the nations.’93

Several themes of Dubnovian historiography make their appearance in this passage. Ancient Israelite religious ideas can be explained in secular terms. “Spiritual” (i.e., cultural) developments were creative responses to changing historical contexts that propelled Judaism forward from era to era. Historians of the Jews should focus on the people as a social unit shaped by the geo-political situations in which the Jewish people found itself. Because the Jews are a world people, Jewish history is virtually world history in miniature. Dubnow organized his narrative of diaspora Jewish history as much as possible according to regional “hegemonies,” rather than constructing a chronological narrative of Jewish history and describing what happened to the Jews century by century as Graetz tended to do. This enabled him to draw attention to the distinctive features of each major historic Jewish community. Of importance to him were the communal structures governing Jewish life and the means by which Jewish leadership represented their people to the ruling political elite. He thus could incorporate social-cultural progresses such as migrations, institutions of government, and mass movements. A view held by nineteenth-century Jewish historians and reiterated by some Zionists was that the Middle Ages was a

93 Volume 1, pages 26–28. On the last phrase: see Deuteronomy 17.14 and I Samuel 8.5.

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long period of “hibernation” for the Jewish people, when Jewish communal action was muted until it could spring to life again in modern times.94 Dubnow rejected this: the Jews always had a political life. Treatments of Dubnow by two distinguished Jewish historians among those who have commented on his approach indicate some of the problematics of Dubnow’s historiography. Raphael Mahler, a Marxist Zionist of East European background, insisted that Dubnow’s conception of Jewish history led him to evaluate dissident movements within Judaism as revolts against national discipline and hence as dangers to Jewish survival.95 For example, according to Dubnow early Christians yearned for an individualistic religious faith that could not be satisfied by the yoke of national unity, whereas the Pharisees wisely avoided emphasizing this disjunction and thus sustained the people.96 Likewise, according to Dubnow talmudic law was maintained not primarily because it was grounded in revealed Torah but as a disciplinary device designed to maintain the cohesion of the Jewish people through the many centuries until it entered the modern period. (Of course both explanations may have value.) Mahler also noted that Dubnow often downplayed divisions within Judaism. As a Marxist, Mahler was especially sensitive to this factor and therefore quite critical of Dubnow’s treatment of the early medieval revolt against “rabbinism” by the Karaites, the medieval mystics opposed to Aristotelian rationalism, the sporadic messianic uprisings that disrupted Jewish life, and eighteenth-century Hasidism,97 all of which Mahler saw as symptoms of socio-economic protest. As a result, Mahler noted, that while Dubnow deplored the Inquisition’s attacks on Christian philosophers as well as on the Marranos, and while he expressed admiration for the Jewish philosophers of Islamic Spain, Renaissance Italy, and seventeenth-century Holland, he labeled them premature, even 94 See the article by Raphael Mahler in Sefer Dubnow, pp. 89–135, especially pp. 124 and 128. His shorter article in Simon Dubnow: Man and Work, pp. 57–72, is also useful. On Graetz’s use of the notion that talmudic law was a defense against assimilation, see Samuel Ettinger, “Judaism and the History of the Jews according to Graetz” [in Hebrew], in H. Graetz, Darkhei ha-historiyah ha-yehudit, p. 31. 95 Mahler (1899–1997) was born and educated in Poland and lived in the US and in Israel. A prolific historian, he was the author of works on Hasidism and the Haskalah, on the Karaites, and a seven-volume survey of modern Jewish history that was incomplete at the time of his death. He was associated with the YIVO Institute of Jewish Research and with the left-wing Po’alei Zion movement. He was awarded the Israel Prize in 1977. 96 Simon Dubnow, History of the Jews, I, 838–41. 97 Mahler, in Sefer Dubnow, p. 131.



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dangerous for the survival of national identity. In effect Dubnow justified the Jewish leadership in Amsterdam who sought to repress philosophical activity even to the point of excommunicating Uriel Acosta and Baruch Spinoza. Thus for Dubnow Uriel Acosta’s sad life reflects the tragic and inevitable conflict between the needs of the individual and those of Jewish society at that time.98 Dubnow believed that within Judaism “humanistic tendencies” were appropriate only when they emerge in the nineteenth century as the necessary “antithesis” to tradition. Only later does religious faith becomes a private matter for each Jew, who was thus liberated from the externals of national discipline and could affirm its inner truth. Mahler acknowledged that Dubnow’s sociological orientation sensitized the reader to note how the larger environment affected the organization and culture of each Jewish community, but insisted that Dubnow’s version of Jewish nationalism limited his passionate effort to integrate Jewish history fully into world history.99 For example, Islam possessed an elaborate system of religious law akin to Judaism’s, but Dubnow does not explore this similarity, viewing halakhah (Jewish religious law) as a distinct Jewish national form. The conflicts between the Jewish Aristotelians and the Kabbalists had their counterparts in the Christian and Islamic worlds, but these are only mentioned in passing in Dubnow’s work. According to Mahler, the periods of persecution, the pattern of migration, and the structure of the Jewish communities could be explained far more fully than Dubnow does. Another historian, Yehezkel Kaufmann is known especially for his insistence on the utter originality of Israelite monotheism in the context of ancient cultural and religious history, an insistence that stemmed not because Kaufmann was personally religious but because he felt it was necessary to explain the survival of Judaism.100 Before Kaufmann   98 Mahler, in Dubnow: Man and Work, p. 69.   99 See Mahler, Sefer Dubnow, pp. 127–28. Dubnow did encourage the study of the economic history of the Jews in one article, “What is Lacking in our Economic History” [in Yiddish], Ekonomishe Shriften [Essays on Economics and Statistics], ed. Jacob Lestschinsky (Vilna: YIVO, 1928), I, 180–83. He praised the work of Lestschinsky (Alexander Manor, Yakov Lestschinsky, ha-hogeh ve-ha-hoker [ Jacob Lestschinsky, the Man and his Work] [Jerusalem: World Jewish Congress, 1961], pp. 146–50). 100 Kaufmann (1889–1963) was born in the Ukraine and educated in Odessa, Petrograd, and Berne. He settled in Palestine as a teacher in 1928 and was appointed professor of Bible at the Hebrew University in 1949. A prolific author on issues in philosophy and Jewish historiography, he also dealt with the contrast between universalism and particularism in Jewish history, with quite different conclusions than Dubnow’s, especially on the role of religion in the survival of Judaism. He is best known for his multi-volume Toldot

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settled in Palestine in the late 1920s, he published a two-volume analysis of the dynamics of Jewish history entitled Golah ve-nekhar (Exile and Alienhood) that showed the influence of German sociologists and neoKantians. Like Mahler, Kaufmann rejected the Dubnovian notion that a national “will to survive” as such was the primary cause of the longevity of Jewish history. For Kaufmann, that Jewish monotheism postulated a transcendent God distinct from the created cosmos was the principal reason why the Jewish religion and therefore the Jewish people outlasted the defeats of ancient times and persecutions later. Jewish monotheism Kaufmann traces to “a Mosaic revolution” which saw idolatry as the worship of human creations. This new conception of religion lay behind classical prophecy’s refocusing the ideals of the bond between God and Israel to emphasize the primacy of social justice to the covenant. For Kaufmann ideas and symbols were at least as important as sociology. Despite having much in common with the ancient Christians on monotheism and revelation, there were sharply defined boundaries between adherents of these traditions, especially the Jewish refusal to accept Christ as God incarnate that held them apart from the burgeoning Christian movement of late antiquity. Likewise, the claim that Muhammad was the “seal of the prophets” established the mental boundary between the Jewish collectivity and the peoples who accepted Islam. For Kaufmann, the legal autonomy of medieval Jewry, which Dubnow interprets as the ultimate expression of the national will to survive, was a consequence of the crucial role of religion in medieval societies. Muslim and Christian rulers had to permit the Jews their own institutions if they were to be allowed to reside in their lands, because the general social and legal structure was infused with the symbols of the state religion. Since Dubnow did not acknowledge religious faith as an independent causal force he could not admit that pre-modern Jewish autonomy, justified by symbols of biblical, rabbinic, messianic or mystical redemption from exile, could not simply be resurrected in a secular form in the diaspora.101 Kaufmann acknowledged that social and economic factors did contribute to Jewish survival, but observed that assimilation of ethnic groups is a natural process, and has even occurred among Jews whenever they were able to participate fully in a secular culture where

Ha-emunah ha-Yisraelit (History of Israelite Religion). He was awarded the Israel Prize in 1958. 101 Like Mahler, Kaufmann was a Zionist, although each had their own conception of what Zionism should stand for.



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traditional religion seemed to be irrelevant.102 As a psychological explanation for the historic survival of the Jews, “national will to survive” is a tautology. It is not enough to say they survived because they willed to survive. They wanted to remain Jews because their tradition maintained their distinctiveness. Kaufmann concluded that Dubnow’s analogy between the Jews and the other minority groups of East Europe did not pertain because the other minorities, such as the Poles in Lithuania, had a place elsewhere where they were the majority.103 Dubnow himself acknowledged that the Jews were the primary example of a totally non-territorial nation. Although at the beginning of the twentieth century the life of the Jewish masses in East Europe may have seemed to offer some foundation for Dubnow’s theory, he failed to take into account the tremendous economic changes already revolutionizing that society. Kaufmann doubted whether the rationale that Dubnow employed to substantiate a new autonomy and his prescription about how to do it in the diaspora would be satisfying for large numbers of modern Jews in the long run. Kaufmann the Zionist asked if Dubnow’s program of minority rights in the diaspora was a “messianic ghetto,” since it did not allow for the possibility for Jewish redemption from the condition of perpetual aliens.104 In the best of all possible worlds Dubnow’s spiritual nationalism might serve as a transitional ideology for a secular generation reared in the Old Judaism and maturing in the presence of anti-Semitism, but would later generations, not feel inhibited by the social boundaries that Dubnow envisioned as still appropriate? Dubnow’s own youthful rebellion was as much the result of his attraction to another cultural world that led to disaffection from the cultural world of his birth. Would Dubnovism not end up by depriving many Jews of a sense of homeland both in the countries of their residence and in a Jewish State where they could aspire to participation in all levels of social life? Mahler and Kaufmann have in common their rejection of Dubnow’s effort to force the Jewish past to conform to a single overarching explanation, thus obscuring the degree to which the Jewish people and Judaism constituted in different historical contexts a variety of social entities and ideational systems. At one time Jews may have been largely agricultural, 102 Kaufmann’s criticism of Ahad Ha-Am applies in many ways to Dubnow too (Golah ve-nekhar, II, 348–85; also I, 433–55). 103 Ibid., II, 308. 104 Ibid., II, 300–318.

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at other times almost completely urban. Jewish identity is not the same in a polytheist milieu as in a monotheist world where each tradition claimed Abraham as its spiritual ancestor. Dubnow tended to portray Jewish history overall as the story of a singular entity adapting to new environments in order to maintain its homeostasis, as an animal species might struggle with the forces of natural selection and yet preserve a genetic continuity. Granting the difficulty of establishing a fully satisfying concept of the continuity within Jewish history, Dubnow does not rise above the monism that he accuses the Marxists of holding. One must add, however, that as a practicing historian Dubnow was more discerning and subtle than Dubnow the historical theoretician. Hence, some of Dubnow’s reluctance to see the intellectual realm as distinct from the social was connected to Dubnow’s nationalism, which sought to be inclusive of as many sectors within the Jewish world at that time, that is, to insist that Jews who thought of themselves as non-religious and completely secular were just as much part of the Jewish people as those who were religious. Faithful to the legacy of John Stuart Mill, Dubnow insisted that modern Jewish identity must not be limited by any specific ideas. However, as Chaim Zhitlovsky, also a proponent of diaspora nationalism but unlike Dubnow a socialist, had pointed out already in 1907 that Dubnow acknowledged that a member-in-good-standing of the Jewish nation should not worship Christ nor attempt a Nietzschean transvaluation of Jewish ethics.105 Thus, he does implicitly posit certain ideational parameters to Jewishness. Must the continuity of Jewish history be seen in terms of the survival of a people, or should it also be sought in the continual development of a family of ideas or a world view or a mentalité? A history of Judaism in terms of the survival and transformation of symbols was beyond Dubnow’s cognizance. In the last analysis, Dubnow’s attack on cosmopolitanism in the Letters on Old and New Judaism is a demonstration of the psychological appeal that nationalism had to an East European intellectual reared in a minority culture, seeking to valorize that tradition in the face of rejection from many directions. In the next chapter we discuss this factor further as a motive for Dubnovism as a form of “defensive” nationalism. 105 Zhitlovsky’s remarks appear in “Mr. Dubnow’s ‘Spiritual’ Nationalism” [in Russian], Serp, II [c. 1907—n.d.], 308–10. Zhitlovsky (1865–1943) was born in Russia. He was involved in the founding of the Russian populist Social Revolutionary party and an ardent Yiddishist. He settled in the United States around 1910 and was very active in left-wing and Jewish affairs and Yiddishist education.



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From Vilna to St. Petersburg/Petrograd to Berlin to Riga In late 1903 the Dubnows moved from Odessa to Vilna to be closer to the Russian capital. In Vilna during the turbulent years referred to earlier he became involved in that coalition of Jewish leaders that set out to defend Jewish rights in the fluid situation that had emerged in Russia after Nicholas II was forced to concede a parliament, the Duma. Ironically, Jews could vote for members of the Duma and could even serve in it, despite their lack of legal rights in many other areas of civil life. The strategy of the Jews elected to the Duma was an issue among the politically involved group in which Dubnow participated. It was then that Dubnow wrote the platform for the Folkspartei; we recall that the Jewish Folkist Party was allied with the Kadets (the Constitutional Democrats) but in addition advocated Jewish cultural autonomy. In 1906, at the age of 46, Dubnow finally gained legal permission to reside in St. Petersburg, ostensibly because he had been invited to lecture at the Free University in St. Petersburg directed by Professor Peter Lesgaft, a noted teacher, physician, and reformer. The Free University was soon shut down by the police, but the Dubnows remained in the capital for two decades. In St. Petersburg he was closely involved in cultural and educational initiatives that spurred an efflorescence of Russian-Jewish historical research, especially the Jewish Historical-Ethnographic Society. For a while he was a member of the editorial staff of the Evreiskaia Entsiklopedia, modeled on The Jewish Encyclopedia published in the United States a few years earlier. He opted out of this project on the grounds that he could not devote himself to this project while continuing to work on his comprehensive Jewish history. And he disapproved of what he considered the inadequate scholarly level of this work.106 Beginning in 1908 he lectured on Jewish history at the Courses in Oriental Studies established by Baron David Günzberg, an institute of higher learning not given official status by the government.107 He had students who went on to make names for themselves in Jewish scholarship. There are several descriptions of Dubnow at this time in the writings

106 (KZ, II, 76–78, 83–86, 98). On his residence problems, see ibid., p. 59 et passim. 107 Ibid., pp. 79–80. Zalman Shazar, Morning Stars, trans, by Sulamith Schwartz Nardi (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1967), pp. 177–82; Ben-Zion Dinur, Bimei milhamah u-mahpekhah [During War and Revolution, Recollections and Notes] (Jerusalem: Mosad Bialik, 1960), pp. 26–28, 37, 91; Solomon Zeitlin, “The Need for a Systematic Jewish History,” Jewish Quarterly Review, LVIII, No. 4 (April, 1968), 262–64.

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of eminent future Jewish historians who studied with him or visited him, such as Zalman Rubashov-Shazar, Benzion Dinur, and Solomon Zeitlin. Also in 1908, after Maxim Vinaver and others had separated the Jewish Historical-Ethnographical Society from the Society for Enlightenment among Jews, Dubnow became the editor of its quarterly, Evreiskaia Starina.108 In this journal and through his lectures Dubnow fostered a new generation of East European Jewish researchers. He continued preparing for publication sources on the East European Jewish past, and began writing articles in Yiddish. He supervised his daughter’s translation of the first volume of Renan’s History of the People of Israel.109 He devoted himself to the enlarged version of his general history of the Jews, two volumes of which were published before the outbreak of the First World War. Like many Russian intellectuals in 1914 he initially supported the war because it allied Russia with democratic France and Great Britain against Austria-Hungary and Germany, which were seen as conservative if not outright authoritarian governments. Because Russia was allied with Western governments, they hoped that the defeat of the Central Powers would bring about the finale of autocratic rule and the triumph of parliamentary liberalism throughout Europe. During the war Dubnow wrote a three-volume History of the Jews in Russia and Poland for the Jewish Publication Society of America, which established his reputation in the United States for decades.110 In 1915 he published a series entitled “Inter Arma” on the Jewish aspect of the war, dealing especially with the tragedy of Russian Jews fighting for a country which deprived them of civil rights.111 Dubnow rejoiced in the overthrow of the tsarist regime in March 1917 (the “February Revolution” Old Style because Russia had not yet adopted the Gregorian calendar). The Provisional Government ratified the full emancipation of Russian Jewry on March 21st. There followed a half-year of intense Russian-Jewish organizational activity, as though Dubnow’s dream was coming to fruition.

108 KZ, II, 89. 109 KZ, II, 75. 110  Translated by Israel Friedlaender, who also translated Dubnow’s “What Is Jewish History” into German. The two men admired each other but never met. Friedlaender was killed in the Ukraine on a relief mission after World War I. For their correspondence, see Moshe Davis (ed.), “Jewry East and West, the Correspondence of Israel Friedlaender and Simon Dubnow,” YIVO Annual, IX (1954), 9–62. 111 Ibid., p. 169; Pinson’s introduction to Simon Dubnow; Nationalism and History, ed. Koppel S. Pinson (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1958), p. 24.



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For Dubnow, the Bolshevik take-over in November (the “October Revolution” according to the then Russian calendar) was a devastating blow to his passionate hope that Russia would become a functioning democracy and that Jewish autonomy could be actualized in the form of an elected national Jewish assembly. He was profoundly distressed in the following years by the Bolshevik elimination of all other political parties and movements, destruction of independent cultural institutions and elimination of intellectual and personal freedom. Dubnow’s call for cultural rights for Jews and other nationalities resonated with the minority-rights provisions of the Versailles treaties that the Western powers signed with new successor states in Eastern Europe, so that, despite obstacles and limitations, Dubnovism did have a certain presence in interwar Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, and Czechoslovakia. And for a few years in the USSR, where there was some effort to encourage Yiddish institutions of a secular nature. Until the end of the USSR in 1991, being a Jew was an item on one’s internal passport, one’s “national identity” in the ethnic sense, which ironically increasingly came to have negative rather than positive consequences, especially after World War II with the increasing anti-Semitism of Stalin and Stalinism. The war years in Petrograd had been difficult, an understatement. (Saint Petersburg was renamed Petrograd in 1914, renamed Leningrad in 1924, and in 1991 again St. Petersburg.) The four years that followed contained more deprivation while Dubnow managed to work on several committees investigating archival materials and continued to write his history of the Jews. With the curbing of individual rights in Communist Russia, a repression more thorough than in the tsarist regime, Dubnow sought permission to leave Russia. After delays, in 1922 he received the necessary visas and exit permits. Because there were many expressions of hostility to the Bolsheviks in Dubnow’s diaries, he feared that he would not be able to rescue them, but the young man sent to look over his possessions was proud of being Jewish and he approved without problems Dubnow’s being allowed to ship his personal private archive and manuscripts with him when he left the U.S.S.R. in April 1922.112 Dubnow was welcomed enthusiastically by the Jews in Riga and Kovno. (Kovno had become the capital of newly independent Lithuania, because Vilna, the traditional center of Lithuanian culture and history, ended up 112 Dubnow: Man and Work, p. 189.

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within the boundaries of newly independent Poland.) A position had been arranged for him as professor of Jewish history at the University of Kovno, but when the Lithuanian professors objected to his appointment to the faculty of the university on the pretext that he did not have a diploma, the Dubnows moved to Berlin. There they took up residence near a wooded park on the outskirts of the city.113 In Berlin Dubnow found himself once again closely involved with a sympathetic and productive group of Jewish intellectuals, mostly émigrés from Russia. The autobiography of his grandson Victor Erlich, the distinguished literary critic, describes Dubnow’s habits at this time. Victor was about nine years old when he lived several months with his grandparents in Berlin. In my fond recollections of life with Grandfather, the years 1925 and 1926 have the pride of place. . . . For Alex [Victor’s brother] and me, this extended visit offered a golden opportunity to get to know Simon and Ida Dubnow and to become initiated into their way of life. The Dubnow apartment, located in a quiet residential section of a teeming metropolis, seemed at times a rare instance of controlled bustle. Somehow Grandfather’s rigorous writing schedule was made to absorb a stream of visitors, close associates, and Jewish community leaders, self-assured pundits and timid apprentice historians. . . . Above all, it was a household dominated by steady work. I have never since met anyone more methodical, more productive, more fully committed to writing than was Dubnow. (That’s how he managed to write the tenvolume World History of the Jewish People, along with some other scholarly and polemical tracts.) On visitor-free days, the exacting routine would be interrupted by two daily “constitutionals.” Actually, “interrupted” is hardly the right word: the walks were an integral part of the writing schedule, clearly indispensable to the demanding pace Dubnow was determined to maintain. A man of modest if not austere habits where food, clothing, and housing were concerned, he would allow himself one luxury: a pleasant residential location, within walking distance from a park or woods. I would often accompany him on these walks and got to learn their immutable pattern by heart. While we strolled down the quiet, tree-lined streets of the Grunewald, he would engage me in conversation or, more typically, hold forth on a topic of mutual interest. Yet as soon as we would enter the path, he would stop talking, even if it meant interrupting himself in the middle of a sentence, raise his finger, and say with feeling: “Vitya, breathe.” For some fifteen or twenty minutes, we would breathe together in silence as leaves rustled under our feet. If the story had not run its course or the point had not been made, the narrative or discursive flow would be resumed on our way back.

113 KZ, III, Ch. 68.



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It was clear to me that Grandfather’s insistence on ‘breathing’ was not simply a matter of body hygiene, of expanding one’s lungs by imbibing maximal amounts of healthful air. The silence which followed the injunction suggested a quasi-religious reverence. Arguably, it is at such moments of wordless communion with nature, he came as close to a religious stance as he ever did. It is a well-known fact that Dubnow was in the main a secular thinker. His attitude toward Judaism had evolved since his rebellious youth, when he was an epikoyres, a militant challenger of the rabbinical establishment. The premier historian of Jewry was bound to acquire a rich appreciation of Judaism’s contribution to Jewish survival. But he never became an observant Jew, though he would attend the synagogue on the High Holidays, partly in deference to tradition, partly out of fondness for Kol Nidrei (the prayer chanted at the beginning of the Day of Atonement). Predictably, his favorite Jewish holiday was Passover. He found its symbolism particularly congenial and enjoyed celebrating it in the company of friends.114

Historians speak of a Jewish renaissance in Weimar Berlin in part because of the remarkable publications in Judaica that came out of that city in the 1920s. Dubnow was able to “seal his Talmud,” as he called it, with the publication between 1925 and 1929 of the German-language version of his World History of the Jewish People. (Several volumes of the Russian original and the Hebrew translation appeared soon afterwards.) As mentioned earlier, he published a revised version in Hebrew of his much earlier History of Hasidism, fulfilling his promise to his dear friend Ahad Ha-Am that he would make a contribution to Hebrew literature.115 Dubnow published his edition of the minute-book of the Lithuanian Vaad in 1924, and at the end of the decade Fun Zhargon tsu Yiddish, containing pieces on Yiddish authors written between 1916 and 1928. In 1925 Dubnow participated in the creation of YIVO, the Yiddisher Vissenshaftlicher Institut (the Jewish Scientific Institute), which became (and still is) the leading institution devoted to the study of East European Jewish culture and history. Dubnow was its intellectual patriarch. Founded in Berlin, YIVO was headquartered in Vilna. In Vilna YIVO attracted an illustrious group of scholars to work in its library and archive. YIVO also offered classes in Jewish subjects. Most of its holdings were moved to New York just before the outbreak of World War II. There YIVO has 114 Victor Erlich, Child of a Turbulent Century (Evanston, Ill: Northwestern University Press, 2006), pp. 17–19. The whole chapter is a fond portrait of Dubnow. By the way, the father (Dubnow’s son-in-law) spelled his name Ehrlich, the sons (Dubnow’s grandchildren) Erlich. 115 Philip Friedman, “Polish Jewish Historiography between the Two Wars (1918–1939),” Jewish Social Studies, XI, No. 4, 375. For Dubnow’s promise to Ahad Ha-Am, see KZ, III, 89.

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remained a major institution of Jewish scholarship in all fields of East European Jewish studies. The Folkspartei, whose platform Dubnow had written years earlier, continued to hold its own in interwar Poland, although it never became a major force in Jewish politics where Zionists of various orientations, the Orthodox Agudas Yisroel, and the Bundists were the dominant parties. Henryk Ehrlich, the head of the Bund, was Dubnow’s son-in-law, the husband of his daughter Sophie, the noted poet. (Henryk and Sophie were the parents of Victor Erlich, quoted earlier in this chapter116 and of the economist Alexander Erlich.) The Bund did incorporate into its program some aspects of Dubnovism, such as the importance of Yiddish as a language of the masses, although Dubnow remained critical of ideological socialism all his life. In August 1933, a few months after Hitler came to power the Dubnows settled in Riga. Soon after, his wife died. The thirties saw the completion of the Hebrew and Russian editions of his Weltgeschichte. He carried on an active correspondence with fellow scholars throughout the world, and published Kniga Zhizni [Book of Life: Reminiscences and Reflections: Material for the History of My Times].117 Even though Dubnow did not move to Vilna where the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research was located, he remained closely connected to it.118 At a YIVO conference he attended in Vilna in August 1935, his daughter wrote that “the ominous shadow of Nazism loomed large on the European horizon, but along with the growth of concern for the cultural values threatened by barbarism grew the determination to defend them to the utmost.” In her memoir, Sophie summarized her father’s speech at the opening of the conference to the fifteen hundred people present at the occasion: Was it not strange that, at a time when mortal danger threatened the Jews in one of the major European countries, at a time when a vile pestilence was poisoning the atmosphere of Europe, a scholarly conference had 116 Henryk was murdered by Stalin when he fled to Moscow after the Germans invaded Poland. Sophie, Victor, and Alexander made their way across Siberia to America. Victor became a prominent literary critic at Yale and Alexander a professor of economics at Columbia University—and (I cannot refrain from saying again) a member of my dissertation committee. 117 The third volume of the autobiography was published just before the outbreak of World War II and for a long time was thought to have been completely destroyed. A single copy survived and was reprinted in 1957. 118 Sefer Dubnow, p. 331, includes a letter Dubnow mailed in 1940.



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been organized? Was it possible to create cultural values during a moral earthquake? It was not only possible, it was necessary, he declared with conviction. Just as a physical earthquake could not break the laws of nature, so a moral crisis could not break the laws of history. It was necessary to cultivate genuine scholarship with special persistence at a time when scholarship was being falsified on a dictator’s orders. The Jewish people were accustomed to creating their culture in the face of external obstacles.119

At that conference he read a paper on Jewish historiography, arguing that form and content of Jewish scholarship had moved from a theological stage (scholastic commentaries), to a spiritual stage (the study of Judaism from the perspective of the historical process in a spirit of a moderate traditionalism), to a sociological stage when the political, economic, cultural, and ethnographic life of the people was studied critically by him and his YIVO colleagues. In 1939 and 1940, spurning all efforts to induce him to leave East Europe, Dubnow chose to remain among those Jews for whom he had championed national survival. On the eighth of December, 1941, he was shot by a Latvian militiaman as the Nazis were carrying out the second stage of the liquidation of the Riga ghetto.120 A witness to the liquidation of the Riga ghetto published the following account after the war: Then came the terrifying night of 7–8 December, 1941. The same thing as the previous week was repeated, but in a more ‘organized’ way. They loaded the sick and the feeble into dark blue buses. There wasn’t enough room for everyone, and they shot many old people and pregnant women then and there, on the spot. When they drove Dubnow out into the street he had a high temperature. . . . He hadn’t the strength to climb the steps of the bus quickly. A drunken Latvian militiaman came up and shot him point blank in the back of the head. Dubnow fell dead. The next day they buried him in a mass grave in the old Jewish cemetery in the Riga ghetto. Later a rumor began to pass from mouth to mouth that, as Dubnow walked to his death, he had repeated, “People, do not forget. Speak of this, people; record it all.” Of those who could have heard those words hardly one is alive today. Only the legend lives, no less truthful than the life itself.121

119 Sophie Dubnov-Erlich, The Life and Work of S.M. Dubnov, p. 223, translated by Judith Vowles and edited by Jeffrey Shandler. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1991. First published in Russian by YIVO in 1950. 120 Pinson, op. cit., p. 39. 121 Gilel Melamed, Zukunft 1946, Vol. 4, as quoted on pp. 246–47 of Sophie DubnovErlich, The Life and Work of S.M. Dubnow (Indiana UP, 1991).

Chapter Eight

Reconsiderations A committed Jew in his special way, a human being of dignity and integrity, Dubnow’s limitations and illusions are understandable in relation to his time and place. We have seen that Dubnow combined a life-long loyalty to political liberalism when it was frequently held by those on the right and the left to be outdated, if not obsolete. He continued to adhere to a positivism that made some room for the subjective element in human experience, if not that accorded by more sophisticated philosophical approaches in his day. He longed to see the Jews free to be individualists yet recognized as a distinct community in a multi-national Russian state alongside other “minorities” aspiring to organize homogeneous nation-states. Hopeful as he was about historical progress, he was very much aware of the ominous growth of anti-Semitism that was to result in further discrimination, ever more violent pogroms, and eventually mass murder. Dubnow’s overriding goal, while remaining true to his ethics of communal responsibility and stubborn sense of individuality, was to convince his fellow Jews that they had always been a nation that not only remained worthy of continuation in the present and future but was a harbinger of a harmonious world of nations in the future. The appeal of Dubnovism can be examined on several of levels. First of all, we have seen that it served as the ideological grounding of a small political group among the Russian-Jewish organizations that flourished between 1897 and 1917. Dubnow’s Folkspartei had a limited but loyal following in Russia until the Communist Revolution and afterwards in some parts of non-Communist Eastern Europe down to World War II. Second, in its heyday much of Dubnovism expressed underlying attitudes of a growing part of the more than five million Russian Jews who constituted a large percent of the Jews of the world. Much of his audience had been brought up in a traditional Jewish familial and communal milieu. Their mamaloshen was Yiddish but they were increasingly secular in style of life and attitudes. Thus Dubnovism not only expressed an orientation to Jewish identity attractive to a sector of Russian-Jewish intellectuals, it had widespread appeal among Jews in Eastern Europe and those

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who emigrated. What led many (but hardly all) Jews in Eastern Europe to relate positively to some psychological aspects of Dubnovism will be discussed later in this chapter. Third, Dubnovism was an attempt at a theoretical solution to the mystery of Jewish continuity through the ages. Although Dubnow did not believe in God, he believed in the truths revealed through history, i.e., that the meaning of being Jewish could be found in the study of the past. Are the Jews a Nation? The short answer is that the Jews of Dubnow’s time and place had some but not all of the characteristics of a “nationality” according to the prevailing definition of that time. Why the Jews were to be deemed “a nation” was self-evident to him, if not to quite a few other Jews and non-Jews. It was the heart of his ideology and historiography. A meticulous investigator into the past of East European Jewry, Dubnow learned an immense amount of Jewish history by vociferous reading, but there were large areas and many subjects he knew only second- or third-hand. As we saw in the last chapter, criticisms could be leveled about his work from various positions. With due respect for the sweep of Dubnow’s portrayal of Jewish history, does his insistence that Jews should consider themselves a nationality comport with the whole history of Judaism and the Jewish people? Subsequent twentieth-century Jewish academic historiography has employed more sophisticated methodologies for the study of various cultures in the Jewish past. The Jewish historical experience now appears to have been more complex than Dubnow’s nationalist conception of it revealed to him. His approach, however, hinges on what is a “nation.” In Dubnow’s day a “nation” was commonly understood to be a social entity whose members (a) shared a common origin, (b) had a common homeland, (c) possessed a common language, and (d) shared cultural traits in common which as a whole distinguished them from their neighbors. Based on these criteria, the leaders of a group claiming to be a “nationality” demanded “self-determination,” if not outright sovereignty. Should the Jewish people be included in this list? The Hebrew Bible contains the story of the coming into being and vicissitudes of am Yisra’el, the Hebrew am being rendered “people.” (In the Bible the other nations were goyim, a word without negative connotations except they did not worship the God of Israel.) Regardless of what the Jewish people were in the past, nineteenth-century Jewish religious



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reformers in the West had considered nationhood in the modern sense not applicable to them, thus the much lambasted definition that they were “Germans of the Mosaic persuasion.” For them it was crucial that Judaism be recognized as a living religion. Heinrich Graetz insisted that the Jews were a stamm and a “spiritual nation” but derived no particularistic Jewish political aspirations in the present from his position other than to be accepted as Germans. How would Dubnow have defended his insistence that the Jews were a nation with distinctive political needs according to the usual definition of such at the turn of the century? First, the matter of common ancestry. Traditional Jewish identity was grounded on the conviction (one might call it a “myth” in the anthropological sense) that the Jewish people were descendants of the patriarchs and matriarchs of the book of Genesis. They produced the eponymous twelve tribes of Israel that were, in turn, the ancestors of the “mixed multitude” (erev rav) of Exodus that coalesced as the “people of Israel” by accepting the covenant with YHVH at Mount Sinai. In the ensuing centuries many gerim (biblical “resident aliens,” later a term used for proselytes) were assimilated into the people of Israel. According to the “Deuteronomic” ideology of the late seventh century B.C.E. (see Deuteronomy 29:10–16) their ancestors had been there when Moses gave his farewell speech before the Israelites entered the Promised Land. Even if the details of origin are of much later construction, the belief in a common ancestry was a constituent of Jewish identity. Such questions can be raised about the putative common origins of other peoples aspiring to be recognized as contemporary nations. Indeed, the principle of origin is built into the etymology of nation from the Latin natio, “that which has been born.” In ancient Latin works the external peoples (nationes) were sometimes contrasted with the Roman community (civitas), somewhat like, in the Hebrew Bible, other nations (goyim) are contrasted with the People of Israel (am Yisra’el). There is evidence that, by the Hellenistic period, non-Jews who voluntarily joined the People of Israel were readily accepted. In the course of time, formal conversion to Judaism was legally defined as adoption into the Jewish people. Medieval authorities such as Maimonides ruled that proselytes become descendants of Abraham and Sarah, in effect reborn as Jews. The early Christians had appropriated the Hebrew Bible by considering themselves the “new Israel” as a result of baptism and acceptance of Jesus as the Christ, rather than descent from the “old Israel” and observance of “the Law.” In Judaism, unlike in ancient Christianity, personal salvation and immortality by gentiles were not made conditional on conversion. Despite considerable conversion to Judaism throughout history, the strong family-like quality of being Jewish persisted.

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That concept of common Jewish ancestry was grist for the mill of antiSemites, who asserted that despite acculturation to the modernized peoples among whom they lived, behind this screen the Jews were an alien race. Dubnow did not see Jewish nationhood as racial in the biological sense. As we have seen, for him the Jewish people survived because it willed to survive. Dubnow made ample use of evolutionary metaphors, but this will-to-survive was a matter of consciousness, not a biologic instinct. That this loyalty could disappear among assimilated Jews is why he set out to defend it. A second modern attribute of nationhood was a homeland. According to the Genesis narrative, long before the Exodus, YHVH intended that the descendants of the patriarchs and matriarchs reside in the land of Canaan, which in due course was “the Land of Israel” (eretz Yisra’el). 586 B.C.E. was the beginning of the “Babylonian exile”, but when the Persian ruler Cyrus the Great permitted the Judahites (subjects of the kings of Judah and before that members of the tribe of Judah) to return to Zion, others continued to reside outside Yahud (then the term for Judah), forming a permanent network of communities. The Greek word diaspora (“scattering”) was used already in ancient times to describe these settlements not only in and around the area that Jews continued to call Babylon, but also in Hellenistic Egypt, Syria, Asia Minor, North Africa, and localities in the western Mediterranean. By the end of the first century B.C.E., perhaps a majority of Jews were not living in the ancient Jewish homeland. To be sure, they continued to consider the Temple of Jerusalem the holiest spot and make pilgrimages there, especially at Passover, until it was destroyed by the Romans in 70 C.E. The holy land and city maintained their symbolic presence in the Jewish liturgy throughout the Middle Ages. (The “Palestinian” Talmud or the “Talmud of the Land of Israel”, composed in the Galilee, is traditionally designated “the Jerusalem Talmud.”) It was the goal of pilgrimage, as indicated by pietistic groups like the “mourners of Zion”, who went there to pray for the messianic redemption, or the Zionides of the Sephardic poet Judah Halevy (“My heart is in the east but I am in the depths of the west” [the Iberian peninsula]). The Passover seder ends with the line, “Next year in Jerusalem” which means the messianic Jerusalem. Zion may not have been literally the land of most Jews, but it was, metaphorically, a spiritual home. We recall that Dubnow’s disagreement with Zionism was based on the pragmatic conviction that it was an error to put so much effort into resettling the Jews in Palestine, which would hold only a small percent of



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diaspora Jews even were Zionism successful and would cause disillusionment when it failed to completely solve “the Jewish problem.” Dubnow was not an anti-Zionist in the sense that he feared that returning to Palestine ran up against intractable problems with the Arabs or that establishing a homeland raised the issue of dual loyalty. He was not opposed, in principle, to Ahad Ha-Am’s idea that a restored modernized Jewish center there would radiate a more authentic Jewish culture to the diaspora. Dubnow’s principled “affirmation of the diaspora” was based on the fact that Jews had at present lived in Europe, the Middle East, North Africa, Persia, and Central Asia, and elsewhere, a process that was continuing with the immense immigration to the Americas. In his day the United States was fast becoming a great new center of the diaspora. The Jews were a “world nation.” (The Hebrew title of Dubnow’s Weltgeschichte is rendered poetically, perhaps with the help of the poet Bialik, by the phrase am olam: “world” in space; “forever” in time.) Contrary to anti-Semitic invective, the Jews were not alien intruders in the diaspora, having taken up residence in Europe even before the start of the Common Era, preceding the ancestors of certain European nations that arrived later. (For example, the Magyars, who became Hungarians, may have been a Bulgar-Turkic group who arrived in Europe at the very end of the ninth century C.E.) For Dubnovism, the peoplehood of the Jews had evolved beyond being tied to a single geographical homeland. The homeland of the paradigmatic diaspora nation was, in effect, global. Dubnow’s conception of diaspora can be viewed as a secular parallel to the nineteenth-century Reform Jewish idea of the “affirmation of the diaspora,” based on the idea that it was the “mission of Israel” to spread ethical monotheism (Isaiah 2.3, 45.22, 49.6, Micah 4.2, and so forth). Dubnow’s perspective was, to be sure, not for the purpose of spreading pure monotheism through the world, but likewise it was not an “exile” (galut). Dubnow’s version not only secularized “affirmation of the diaspora” but for him Jewish particularism was a source of respect, a value in itself. Paradoxically perhaps, for Dubnow in the diaspora the Jewish peoplehood epitomized the universalistic essence of nationhood, inasmuch as it demonstrated that the will-to-survive as a distinct group can transcend the need for a single defining locality. A specific territorial base, however limited or extended, was no longer mandatory for a nation’s existence or resurgence. Even though Jews were a minority where they lived, the totality of Jewish history was intrinsically part of world history (again a nuance of the title of the Weltgeschichte des Jüdishe Volk). It should be

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noted that in recent decades the diasporas of “transnational” groups have become the subject of historical study, perhaps a concept derived to some extent from the Jewish experience.1 A third criterion of true nationhood in Dubnow’s time was the possession at some point in the past of a political form something like sovereignty. Nineteenth-century nationalist historians had emphasized or rediscovered (or invented) such a polity for their people (Greek, Polish, Lithuanian, Serbian, etc.), a glorious if evanescent period when kings led their people to regional power and splendor (perhaps even presided over a spectacular defeat, like the Serbians at Kosovo in 1389). The recovery of this early history as enshrined in epics and chronicles qualified a folk for inclusion on the list of “historical peoples.” A people was “historical” if it could be located, at least some time in the past, on the chronological as well as the geographical map of world history as then conceived.2 Jews qualified as historical in this regard during biblical and Hellenistic times, albeit a long time ago and in a distant land. Dubnow justified his conviction that the Jews were a political nation, not by referencing the kingdom of David and Solomon or that of the Hasmoneans, but by noting a wide range of semi-autonomous Jewish communal institutions. We have seen that Dubnow came to employ what he called an evolutionary approach. Nations emerged out of primitive tribes with a common language, a sense of common ancestry and a feeling of unity. In the course of time, some of these groups led by tribal elders or chieftains developed formal systems of rulership. Thus the loose alliance of ancient Israelite tribes in the period of the biblical shoftim (“judges,” more accurately in that period charismatic “chieftains”) was superseded by Saul and David who, according to the biblical narrative, created a monarchy (after a while, there were two) recognized as such even by prophetic critics for five centuries. Although the Persian rulers did not permit the Judahites to have a king, they did support the High Priests, who officiated at the Jerusalem Temple and who may have served as civil administrators of the area around Jerusalem. The Maccabean revolt of the second century B.C.E. led to the relatively short-lived independent Hasmonean state of Judea and its Herodian aftermath as a client kingdom of Rome. Therefore, there 1 See, for instance, Diaspora and Transnationalism: Concepts, Theories and Methods, edited by Rainer Bauböck and Thomas Maist, (n.p.: IMISCO Research, Amsterdam Uni­ versity Press, 2010). Oddly, the Jews are mentioned only in passing, on p. 40. 2 The term was borrowed by Engels from Hegel and used to distinguish the Germans, Poles, and Hungarians of the Hapsburg monarchy from supposedly “non-historical” peo­ ples such as the South Slavs, Ukrainians, Czechs, and other peoples in the eastern regions of the Austro-Hungarian empire.



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had been Jewish polities long ago, but could this be brought closer to the present? Dubnow sought to show that after the institutions connected with the Second Temple were destroyed by the Romans, the political element of Jewish history was reincarnated in other forms of communal autonomy, which he considered modes of self-government: the Galilean patriarchate in the later Roman empire, the exilarchate in Parthian and Sassanian Persia, the gaonim and negidim in the Islamic realm, the aljamas in medieval Spain, the Ashkenazi kehillot in feudal Christian Europe, and, most relevant to Dubnow’s diaspora nationalism, the local kahals and the central vaads of Poland and Lithuania in early modern times. The last in this list was critical for Dubnovism because he claimed that the Council of the Four Lands (Vaad Arba’a Aratzot) in Poland during the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries and the comparable Lithuanian Vaad, suitably secularized and democratized, could be considered precursors and models of autonomous Jewish institutions that could protect, represent, and guide minority cultures in multinational states, such as the future democratic Russia that he hoped to see emerge “after the revolution.” Dubnow formulated a Jewish nationalism that was liberal not only with respect to the overall state but also the institutions of the minorities that lived in the state. All Jewish parties and movements were to be represented in the new constitutionally recognized councils to be accorded all nationalities, yet as citizens of a multi-national state would have the rights of freedom of speech, assembly, equality before the law, and parliamentary representation that were the hallmark of a liberal polity. It was Dubnow’s hope, especially between 1897 and 1917, that, after the demise of the tsarist autocracy, a democratic Russian polity would be constructed on the basis of a political order that would guarantee all national minorities living there suitable institutions to facilitate their social and cultural development in an atmosphere of freedom and tolerance. Russia did acquire a Duma in 1907. It might be considered to have edged further toward a constitutional order in the ten-month provisional government in 1917, but then came the Bolshevik coup in the Council of Soviets, the Civil War years, and the Communist victory, which ended up as a much more consistently authoritarian regime than that of the tsars. Was Dubnow completely off-base in his hope for a viable synthesis of political liberalism and nationalism? There is a considerable literature, such as the classic work on the subject of nationalism by Hans Kohn, that “civic nationalism” (in contrast to ethnocentric or totalitarian nationalism) had many advantages in the long run. There have been a few democratic multi-national states that have held their own in the twentieth century (Switzerland is the preferred example). Some federative arrangements that

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represent going beyond the limits of the nation-state have emerged in our contemporary world (the European Community primarily). New forms of multiculturalism might take shape in which sovereignty of governments that purport to represent distinctive cultural units are subsumed under a global “family of nations.” We cannot know if Dubnow’s vision has a future, but one can hope that it will. A fourth criterion of nationhood was a national language. The minorities of East Europe often became self-conscious of themselves as a nationality when philologists forged a standardized language out of a cluster of related dialects. The linguistic dimension of Jewish history was far more complex. To be sure, Hebrew was the historic Jewish language and remains so in religious study. In the second half of the nineteenth century Hebrew was the medium of worship for the vast majority of Jews and, together with texts in Aramaic, for rabbinical learning. As we saw earlier, by then Hebrew was on the way to modernization by maskilim, who were producing a library of modern works in almost every genre (school textbooks, novels, ideological and philosophical treatises, and so forth). A further step taken in the 1880s by Eliezer ben Yehudah and his associates made Hebrew a vernacular in which one could say almost anything about anything. However, the “Jewish masses” in Eastern Europe (“masses” being a favorite term of Dubnow’s generation of intellectuals) still spoke Yiddish, not modern Hebrew. In the nineteenth century the Yiddish vernacular was rapidly becoming a flexible vehicle for journalism and literature, moving toward standardization, a process intensified as a result of the efforts of YIVO scholars in the 1920s and 1930s. Hebrew was well on the way to becoming the national language in the Yishuv. Yiddish was only one of a crop of Jewish vernaculars: besides Aramaic (Eastern and Western), there had been Judeo-Persian, JudeoArabic, Judeo-Berber in the Maghreb, Judeo-Tat in the Caucasus, Ladino ( Judezmo) in the Iberian Peninsula and by Sephardic Jews in the Ottoman Empire and elsewhere after the expulsions of the 1490s. A modern Ladino press and literature was emerging in Dubnow’s time. Complicating the Jewish linguistic profile, large numbers of “acculturated” Jews had come to use the vernacular of the lands in which they resided, with the result that significant Jewish books were been published in German, French, Italian, English—and Russian. Although he did publish in Hebrew and Yiddish, Dubnow’s main works were written in Russian. Against those who insisted that only Hebrew or Yiddish could serve the role of Jewish “national language,” Dubnow held that all of them together could.



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Jewish nationhood had transcended a single language just as it transcended the need for a single homeland. The matter of a national language was closely related to a fifth criterion of nationhood: that a nation had a cultural tradition in relation to its language as well as to other important aspects of its past, such as religion. Historians trace this idea, at the heart of the emergence of modern nationalism, to such figures as Johann Gottfried Herder. As developed by Johann Gottlieb Fichte and German Romantic thinkers, the uniqueness of German civilization (well before there was a united Germany) was the lynchpin of their critique of a supposed universalistic Enlightenment, which they had come to see as a mask for French domination. The ideology of nationalism underpinned the conception that there were deep and distinctive dimensions of German, then Italian, Spanish, Polish, Irish, and other cultures that were preparing for political renaissance. “The national soul” of these peoples might have been interfused with a specific religious tradition (more about that later) but modern nationalism in effect reduced it to secondary status because the driving force for nationalism was secular. In late nineteenth-century discourse, the word “culture” moved beyond its earlier meaning as referring to cultivation, improvement, and refinement (as in “a cultured person”) to become an umbrella term for customs, beliefs, artistic styles, and other facets of societies, thus “a culture” was the distinct way that a people symbolizes the various aspects of reality.3 For Dubnow Judaism was the “national culture of the Jewish people.” But, as in the case of Jewish languages, there were several Jewish cultures or sub-cultures, and they were infused with religious symbols, prescriptions, and self-conceptions under the overall blanket of the Jewish people’s covenant with God. From a Dubnovian perspective (and that of Ahad Ha-Am and others), traditional Judaism had to be secularized if being Jewish was to be meaningful to most moderns, whereas the earlier exponents of modern Judaism in the nineteenth century had held that the theological element was central. Scholars that had been involved in Wissenschaft des Judentums sought to demonstrate that Judaism continued to be a living religion after the rise of Christianity in order to refute detractors who considered it in effect a fossil, long ago superseded by Christianity. That generation of Jewish intellectuals, many of whom were rabbis with

3 “Culture” was further expanded by twentieth-century anthropologists to stand for the human capacity to classify and represent experiences symbolically.

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university educations, concentrated their efforts on the history of religious literature and ideas. This was hardly a feasible way of defending Judaism in nineteenthcentury Russia. We saw that young Dubnow had early on absorbed the anti-religiosity of Russian Positivists and its Western intellectual heroes. Dubnow’s pioneering history of Hasidism depicts the Besht from a rather non-religious viewpoint. Placing the communal dimension at the center of Jewish history clarified, for him, the underlying dynamics of Jewish history by showing how Jewish communal institutions were adapted to varied diaspora conditions in ways that preserved the integrity of the Jewish people. Religion had been a superstructure on top of an elemental force that maintained the vitality of a living people, but that force could continue to produce a viable secular Judaism. Indeed, it had to do so if modern Jews were to take their place in the panoply of modern nations. Dubnow’s historiography acknowledges the complex nature of Jewish culture inasmuch as he structured the Jewish past as a series of hegemonies in which a series of diaspora centers exerted influence over peripheral communities. What then was the matrix of these multiple Jewish cultures? The will to remain a single and singular people. The concept of secular Jewish culture had an existential as well as a theoretical aspect because it enabled Dubnow and his cohort to relate positively to the Jewish way of life while continuing to abjure theological commitments. Russian-Jewish intellectuals were in the process of creating a secular Jewish culture, first in belles lettres and then in the visual arts, music, theater, later film. (A few of the most prominent creative figures appeared earlier in our narrative because Dubnow had close connections with them: Sholem Aleikhem and others whose works, in Ruth Wisse’s phrase, constituted the beginning of “a modern Jewish canon.”4) The notion of a secular Jewish culture might be traced back to certain maskilim and extended to include the writings of modern social thinkers, whose point of view can be seen to draw indirectly on Jewish values. While they took positions which are deliberately outside Judaism (for example, some of the poems of Micha Yosef Berdichevsky which are quite Jewish in some ways but outside traditional Jewishness in other ways), in retrospect they can be linked to this emerging modern Jewish secular culture. Under this umbrella, so to speak, the Jewish activists of Dubnow’s generation who broke away from religion, then “returned” in the sense that they came to

4 Ruth Wisse, The Modern Jewish Culture: A Journey through Language and Culture (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003).



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identify with the travails of the Jewish people and draw creatively on the riches of the Jewish heritage. They were able to distill those aspects of Judaism that were most meaningful in an age of excruciating transition. In contrast to some of the maskilim who criticized the backwardness of folk Judaism, Dubnow and his cohort came to speak of the inner strengths of the “patriarchal” Jewish milieu, while holding themselves apart from traditional practice in their daily lives. For them, the primary task was defending their people from its enemies, of which they certainly had plenty—and applying Jewish values to the social and moral issues of their time. Dubnow’s mild emotional crisis in his mid-twenties had led him beyond the dogmatic parameters of Comtean Positivism, but not to fin-de-siècle neo-Romanticism or, say, the proto-existentialism of Martin Buber and Franz Rosenzweig. Once his emotional crisis was resolved, Dubnow was once again a positivist, a Jewish positivist with benefits. He sidelined the spiritual as an independent ontological element in the determined, longrange Jewish motivation to persist in being Jewish. His attitude, which had legitimated his personal and intellectual liberation, at the same time did have built-in certain limitations because mature Dubnovism was not just a response to secularity, but a form of secularism. A brief digression on this distinction. Secularity is a feature of modern pluralistic societies stemming from the critical, open-minded spirit derived from the Enlightenment and other aspects of Western civilization that contributed to separating science, economics, politics, and art from the hegemony of “organized religion.” Secularity involved the liberation of these and other spheres from a religiosity that claimed to know certain truths definitively and that had the right to impose them on nonconformists. In contrast, secularism is a set of ideologies that prima facie deny any ontological reality to a spiritual dimension of being. We saw Dubnow had used the term “spiritual” in his account of Graetz’s historiography but in his own non-theological way. In Dubnow’s mature approach, the spiritual was manifest, not primarily in the “thinking and suffering” of Jews in the Middle Ages as he averred earlier, but as an underlying psychological force that sustained the survival of the Jewish nation through many centuries. In Dubnow’s emotional life there was a place for the spiritual as inward experience, evidenced by his love of certain poets and of certain landscapes—and at least one woman not his wife.5 Secularity did not block off the spiritual; it had porous boundaries through 5 As mentioned earlier, Dubnow alludes to this romance in his autobiography. His grandson Alexander Erlich confirmed it to me. See Chapter 5, footnote #92 above.

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which the individual could relate to what he or she felt was beyond the “material.” Nevertheless, Dubnovism made no place for a specifically Jewish spirituality as a causative factor. He was one of the most forthright “Jewishly Jewish” secularist thinkers in the first half of the twentieth century. The ultimate meaning of Judaism for Dubnow was seeing himself in the flow through time of an on-going, living social organism. History took the place of religion as a central component of identity. In sum, Dubnovism consigned as outdated those features of the historic Jewish people that did not fit in his time and place into the commonplace blueprint for a nation. The Jews survived as a distinct group because they wanted to survive as such, era by era, diaspora region by diaspora region, generation by generation. It was important to them to want to survive, especially when they were demeaned, vilified, and attacked from many directions as they were in Dubnow’s time. A rather circular argument, but one which had strong appeal to his audience. Are the Jews at nation? They were—but a unique one. The Jewish people was not exceptional—they were paradigmatic. What Dubnovism accomplished was fitting a square peg (Judaism) into a round hole by filing down the edges. The Jewish people does not conform neatly to the attributes of a modern nation that we have examined, but this did not mean they are not a nation; it meant they were the ideal nation. Why this was so convincing at that time and place we will explore further. Before that, however, there was a step beyond this in which Dubnow acknowledged implicitly, if not overtly, that the meaning of Judaism concretized a moral imperative. In his milieu the imperative was the obligation to identify with a beleaguered Jewish people when it was threatened by prejudice, insult, violence, eventually mass murder (of which he himself was victim). For Dubnow it was an obligation to come to the aid of one’s brethren in the age of disabilities and pogroms, and especially during the darkening years (“Haman’s Time” he called it) of the last decade of his life. But there was more to it. Dubnow’s Judaism embodied an imperative which transcended historical facts and processes, embracing values which he would not have wanted to be labeled explicitly religious. On the very eve of World War II, Dubnow concluded the last volume of the World History thusly: At the end of our journey down the long historical road of the eternal people, it is permissible to ask the question: Quo vadis, Israel? [Whither goes thou?] . . . We are confronted with a turning point in the history of the world, and at this moment it is a turning point for the worse, to one of the worst ages in the history of nations. . . . For the student of modern history . . . there is a



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confrontation with this question: is it possible that in its forward movement, the twentieth century will be just the opposite of the nineteenth instead of being its natural continuation? These ideas of freedom, equality, and social justice, which are so close to the spirit of the people whose prophets had proclaimed them—could it be they will yield everywhere to the ideas of bondage, and of racial discrimination, and of brute force, or the principle that “right rests in might?” . . . No, we cannot extirpate from our soul the ideals of humanness and the belief in that the human species will continue progressing from bestiality to humanism. This faith was bequeathed to us in the prophetic words of the Bible about the “end of time,” when “swords will be forged into plowshares,” and the strong will live in peace with the weak (“a wolf with a sheep”), because all will be strong in spirit and morally perfect (“the earth will be filled with Omniscience”). Without this faith, and without our eternal idealism, we would be an ephemeral, and not an eternal people. However, “faith without deeds is dead.” We would not be a universal people if, in moments of catastrophes, we would be isolated from one another— if the fractions of Jewry throughout the world were not to pool their forces to rescue the threatened parts, and to preserve the whole. The perils of the last decades served to consolidate our world Diaspora as never before. The Jewish people embarked upon the nineteenth century numbering three million souls—primarily in Europe—with an additional 10,000 in America and a handful of lamenters at the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem. At present [1939], there are 15 million Jews, one-third of whom are to found in America; and almost half a million are engaged in the construction of the renewed Land of Israel in Palestine, exhilarated by the perspective of a Jewish State. And so, the Jewish people continue their march into history.6

Defensive Nationalism Like other nationalist historians of the later nineteenth and earlier twentieth century, Dubnow’s historiography was intertwined with his conception of “what should be done” to insure the socio-political survival of his people. At heart it was an attempt to “normalize” the Jews—to fit them into what seemed to be the evolving structure of modern history, while not disparaging the special features of Judaism and the positives of being a loyal Jew. The purpose was to define Judaism so that it would be a viable continuation of Jewish identity in a new age.

6 Simon Dubnow, History of the Jews, vol. 5: “From the Congress of Vienna to the Emergence of Hitler.” Translated by Moshe Spiegel. New York: Thomas Yoseloff, 1973, pp. 893–94.

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Other modern Jewish ideologies have a version of Dubnow’s triad of Old Judaism, Enlightenment critique, and New Judaism. The thesis of this dialectic was a concept of Old Judaism, a venerable, complex, intellectually stimulating, and intensely meaningful religious identity that had for centuries functioned well until it encountered a drastically different set of challenges that were at once philosophical, sociological, and psychological.7 These included the critical rationality that lay behind modern science, the changed picture of how nature works as inferred from scientific findings, a secularity which led to the diminishing formal role of religion in public life and a much enlarged neutral zone in which people could conduct their affairs, regardless of the religions to which they adhered. There ensued a concomitant restructuring of religious institutions and reassertion of the spiritual value of religion in new terms, together with seismic shifts in Jewish life, including a panoply of new or reshaped Jewish institutions—and of ideologies that reframed Jewish social identity. There have been in modern times several “New Judaisms”—one of which was Dubnovism. As we have seen, Dubnovism was crafted in late tsarist Russia by combining the universalistic outlook of liberalism with a concern for defending those vital interests needed to safeguard the Jewish future. Unlike older movements such as Hasidism that were not particularly concerned with explicitly defining a place for the Jews in the larger socio-political context, Dubnow’s New Judaism went hand-in-hand with a visionary plan for a new Russia that would honor, protect, and sustain all minority nationalities living there. During the years that we have covered, much of Russian Jewry was, in one way or other, affected by the onslaught of modernity in its Russian rendition. Hundreds of thousands of Jews emigrated each year, but others sought, against considerable obstacles, to find a place in a Russia which was rapidly changing. Previously a noble-peasant society, Russia now had a relatively small but growing capitalist class which included some Jews. It had a growing industrial working class, which had its Jewish component in certain regions. Jewish religious institutions, such as the Lithuanian yeshivot, remained centers of traditional learning devoted to teaching young Jews to think and argue, even though this curriculum not infrequently lead to their criticizing and breaking away from the religious tradition to which the yeshivot had been devoted. Hasidism still flourished but the new intelligentsia tended to look on all religion as obsolete. Among these 7 To be sure, this was also the case for Christianity and all “organized religions.”



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educated, and in many cases self-educated, Russians who were excluded from ruling circles, various ideological options won a following. In the mid-nineteenth century, Slavophiles and Westernizers clashed; by the end it was Liberals, Populists and Socialists. Russian literary and artistic culture was moving in new directions. A new Russia was being born. This was true of Jewish Russia. Diverse Jewish movements had captured the loyalty of many young Jews: Zionists versus Socialists, Bundist Socialists versus Zionist Socialists, each offered diagnoses for dealing with a tsarist regime that did contain a few officials who were not anti-Semitic, and growing tensions with minorities who were increasingly so. The air was filled not just with nationalism but with nationalisms. Dubnovism was a thoughtful, informed effort by a man of high principle to prescribe his own version of New Judaism for a Russian Jewry needing not just a plan but an emotionally powerful raison d’être to fight for its rights as a specific group. How can this development fit into the overall history of nationalism? In modern historical discourse, the concept of nationalism was usually limited to entities that aspire to be a nation-state or have been recognized as such. The idea of the modern “nation” stems from a redefinition of the relationship of the population to the government: the sovereignty of the state is to be rooted in the “general will” of the people, in contrast to states that had in early modern times been divided into separate legal orders ruled by a small political elite. The new idea was that the state should encompass all those sharing a cultural and linguistic commonality. In this enlarged sense the idea of “nationalism” hardly existed as a widespread phenomenon before the beginning of the nineteenth century. Some of its roots in Western political theory can be traced back to ancient Greece and ancient Israel. Historians suggest that the first paradigm of a modern nation has been identified as emerging in seventeenthcentury England, but nationalism as an “ism” was largely a by-product of the French Revolution. The French Revolution was driven by the universalistic viewpoint of the Enlightenment, derived in large part from the rationalism of the preceding century. The “nation” that the revolutionaries invoked was a general principle in opposition to privileged estates, lordship and servitude, the divine right of kings, and various local and regional privileges. The first stage of modern nationalism as an explicit form arose mainly in German-speaking lands,8 when the nationalists 8 E.J. Hobsbawm, The Age of Revolution, 1789–1848 (New York: World Publishing Co., 1962), pp. 88, 104–108. The German Jews were important beneficiaries of the antifeudalistic program of the revolutionary armies (Raphael Mahler, Divrei yemei Yisrael, II [Merhavya: Sifriat ha-Po’alim, 1954], II, 95–96).

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forged an ideology of national liberation and eventual unity.9 Drawing on such notions as Kant’s autonomy of the ethical will, Herder’s views on the connection between language and culture, Romantic defense of feeling and personhood, and the emergence of historical Wissenschaft as a form of explanation, the Germanic ideologists defended the unique character of their presumed people against Napoleon. Thus nationalism as connected to what we now call ethnicity arose to a great extent in reaction to the dominance of French culture and military authority during the Napoleonic period. Until the mid-nineteenth century nationalism was tied to political liberalism. Nationalist revolutionaries usually assumed that an international brotherhood of democratic nations would result from their efforts. The failure of the revolutions of 1848, especially in Central Europe, exposed the potential for ethnic conflicts in national unification.10 A second phase of nineteenth-century nationalism occurred soon after, when it was taken up by the rulers of certain monarchies which had earlier opposed it as subversive of their authority.11 It had become evident that nationalism could be used to mobilize popular opinion and sometimes justify the expansion of the territory under its control within Europe and overseas. This created a volatile situation. Until the political unification of Italy in 1861 and Germany in 1871, these had been geographical regions with common languages, not political sovereignties. The areas controlled by the Hapsburgs, the Romanovs,  9 Elie Kedourie, Nationalism (2nd ed. rev.; New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1960), pp. 20–31. Introduction to Johann Gottfried von Herder, Reflections on the Philosophy of History of Mankind, abridged with an introduction by Frank E. Manuel (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1968), pp. xvii–xviii, xxi; J.L. Talmon, op. cit., p. 112; G. Iggers, op. cit., p. 41. These elements can be found in the major writings of Fichte, an important figure in the development of German nationalism. Fichte had welcomed the ideal of human freedom espoused by the French Revolution but constructed an ideology of liberation for Germany through the concept of the unique cultural mission of the German Volk. Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Addresses to the German Nation, ed. George Armstrong Kelly (New York: Harper and Row, 1968); see p. x, p. xxiv, and especially p. xxvii: “The Addresses are an essay in identity.” See also K.R. Minogue, Nationalism (New York: Basic Books, 1967), pp. 57–69. 10 Louis Namier, 1848: The Revolution of the Intellectuals (New York: Doubleday and Co., 1964), pp. 145–51 (first published in 1946: London, Oxford Univ. Press). Although there were some attempts to provide a nationalist rationale for monarchic authority after the defeat of Napoleon, the conservative monarchies were extremely wary of nationalism. In 1824 the Prussian censor prohibited Fichte’s Addresses (Kaufmann, Be-hevlei ha-zeman, p. 36). 11 Geoffrey Barraclough, The Origins of Modern Germany (2nd ed. rev.; New York: Capricorn Books, 1963), pp. 421–24.



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and the Ottoman sultans contained many diverse ethnic groups, so that adopting the ideal of a nation-state added a further level of tension to the process of their modernization. Living under these dynasties had not been that problematic before these governments were identified with the promotion of an exclusive state-nationalism, but the appeal of such created feelings of inequality of a kind that had not existed before. According to Pan-German, Hungarian, and Great Russian nationalists, one was either within or without the ruling ethnicity. The result was to foster feelings of rejection among peoples that had been eliminated from the political map of Europe, such as Ireland, Poland, or the Czechs (Bohemia), Serbs (in the Balkans), and Ruthenians (the Ukrainians). Within such groups a new cultural elite was emerging. The standardization of ethnic languages, revitalization of select historical memories of great ages past, recovery of old epics, creation of a modern literature, and valorization of folkways strengthened a sense of being part of something like a family writ large, in which the religious element, which earlier may have been central, was now secondary. To be sure, some members of minority ethnicities in these multi-national empires might have possibly come to greater self-consciousness about their own traditions in the course of modernization, but this process was amplified due to the pressure exerted by the feeling that they were treated as marginal by the state nationality. The growth of nationalism among the minorities in these empires might be called, to a great extent, “reactive” or “defensive” because it derived much of its impetus and passion through the appeal to resist the status of the dominant nationality of these regimes. To be sure, specific historical circumstances, especially the arrangements that took shape as a result of World War I, determined the extent to which a “nationality” achieved self-determination in that region. Looking back, however, we can examine the process by which a group came to claim it was a nationality and therefore the right to be a nation.12 12 See Anthony D. Smith, “Theories and Types of Nationalism,” Archives européenes de sociologie, X, No. 1 (1969), 119–32; also, Louis Snyder, The New Nationalism (Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press, 1968), pp. 47–68; Konstantin Symmons-Symonolewicz, Modern Nationalism: Towards a Consensus in Theory (New York: The Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences in America, 1961). My analysis draws on the discussion of nationalism by Yehezkel Kaufmann in Be-hevlei ha-zeman and Golah ve-nekhar. Kaufmann exaggerates the clarity and self-consciousness of the ethnic factor in history but his approach is a masterful combination of insights from Marxism, nationalism, and neo-Kantianism, which testifies to the stimulating intellectual environment in Russia between 1905 and 1917 when Kaufmann was a young man.

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A prerequisite was the existence of a group for whom the claim is advanced. In this regard, we might distinguish between a “nationality”—a group in whose name a claim has been pronounced—and an “ethnos” (using an old Greek term) as a group which had heretofore not made any claim to self-determination. An ethnos in this sense was a community based on a sense of common kinship, language, territory of concentration, and the other factors discussed in the previous part of this chapter.13 Ethne did not necessarily have a continuous political structure, for conquests and religious boundaries may have intervened in the past to prevent the fusion which can result from propinquity (e.g. Serbs from Croats). The survival of an ethnos depended on circumstances (except, perhaps, for the Jews). The existence of an ethnos, however, is only a precondition for a claim to nationality status. As noted, the emergence of the concept of nationalism, and the changes it underwent, reflect specific political conditions during different periods and in various areas. The “will to survive” that Dubnow used as an explanation for Jewish historical survival may have been inspired by the efforts of the elites of the East European nationalities to defend their identities in light of the distancing, exclusion, and even the sharp rebuff sensed from the new statenationalism. In the course of this ferment, the Jews became paradigmatic “aliens,” putting the Jewish situation there in a different light than it was earlier and for other peoples. As noted, the Jews of Eastern Europe not only had their problems with the Russian ruling class but also with the minorities among whom they lived. The first half of Dubnow’s life encapsulates how this reorientation of the vectors of group identity occurred. Dubnow came to identify in some regards with the Judaism from which he had earlier sought unsuccessfully to distance himself. Eventually discovering that the Jewish past was personally meaningful, he agreed with his confrères that Jewry had no viable alternative but to conceive of itself as a “nation.” This accords with the accounts of spokespeople for other national groups who were marginalized

13 Certain cultures can become emancipated from particular local conditions and assume a sufficient degree of abstraction that they can be transmitted to other peoples and be accepted as part of their identities—such as Judaism or Hellenism (Kaufmann, Be-hevlei ha-zeman [The Struggles of the Age: A Collection of Studies and Essays on Contem­ porary Questions] [Tel Aviv: Dvir, 1936], p. 17). See also, Hans Jonas, The Gnostic Religion (2nd ed. revised; Boston: Beacon Press, 1963), pp. 4–6, 15–17.



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by the state nationality. To defend one’s honor, the putative nationalist reorients toward what is now considered one’s prime and ancestral nationality. If there are enough like-minded souls, this reorientation takes on the form of a cultural-political movement. For Russian-Jewish intellectuals, we saw earlier that the pogroms of 1881–82 had a great impact. The Kishinev pogrom two decades later had a powerful significance, galvanizing some young Jews to active defense against their attackers. Such an event facilitates the mobilization of a mass following for a nationalist movement because it can be meaningfully placed within the framework of changed perceptions. Dubnow had not been that much shaken by the pogroms of the early eighties, but was ready to interpret the Kishinev pogrom of 1903 quite differently. Hatred of the Jews could have been a blow to his morale, but this was not the case because he could interpret it within the context of his ideology. As was the case with Dubnow, the pre-nationalist identities of Pinsker, Lilienblum, and others indicate that seldom do the early spokespeople for nationalism come from the traditional religious leadership class, which was often at first opposed to the militant demands of the nationalists. Most of the new elite were individuals who received a modern education that undermined the binding authority of the old way of life, giving them a different perspective of the world.14 In the case of nineteenth-century East Europeans and some Asians, this education includes some components of the Enlightenment, which had emancipated cultural life from the domination of traditional religion.15 For the Jews, it had been the Haskalah, but parallel movements can be seen in India, China, Japan, and elsewhere. We noted that the Enlightenment, as a motivating force of the French Revolution, played an important role in the dismantling of the medieval social hierarchy, replacing the ancien régime with a society based on the equality of citizens before the law. Ideally the modern nation-state was to include as citizens everyone residing within its borders who would accept full civic responsibilities, and prior ethnic distinctions were to have no 14 For the conclusion that the professional classes (clergy, teachers, lawyers, and doctors) played the most important role in the growth of Eastern European nationalism, see the Royal Institute of International Affairs, Nationalism, a Report (London: Frank Cass and Co., 1963; reprint of the original edition published in 1939), p. 112. One need only think of Moses Hess, Pinsker, Lilienblum, Herzl, Nordau, as well as Fichte, Sun Yat-sen, and Gandhi. See Kedourie, op. cit., p. 76. 15 Peter Gay, The Enlightenment: An Interpretation, vol. II: The Science of Freedom (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1969), p. 6.

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significant legal and political importance.16 But how this was to work out in various multi-ethnic circumstances was problematic. The first half of Dubnow’s biography exemplifies in miniature this construction of a national consciousness, if and when an intellectual makes a claim to national status on behalf of his ethnic group and lays out the ideological groundwork for the construction of a movement. Dubnow’s indicates that such an action might follow a redefinition of personal identity. As we have observed, young Dubnow remained rather optimistic for a while about being accepted as an enlightened subject of the Russian empire but was profoundly affected by such government measures as the brutal expulsion of the Jews from Moscow on Passover 1891. Ensconced in his Odessa circle, he came to accept the principle of Jewish nationhood so that by 1903 he interpreted the Kishinev pogrom as justifying a drastically different strategy than he had long before envisioned for Russian Jewry. We recall that an element that links Dubnow’s experience with other autobiographical accounts of a conversion to nationalism is a sharp sense of rejection directed against one’s ethnic group.17 The grievance of being disdained as a Jew turned him toward what he now conceived as his proper nationality and the discovery of its heroic history.18 As Dubnow came to hold that Jewry had to conceive of itself as a “nation” among the 16 This is perhaps illustrated by Nathan’s speech to the Templar: “Oh come, we must, we must be friends. Disdain my folk, as much as ever you will. For neither one has chosen his folk. Are we our folk? What is a folk? Are Jew and Christian sooner Jew and Christian than man? How good, if I have found in you one more who is content to bear the name of man!” (Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Nathan the Wise, trans. Bayard Morgan [New York: Ungar, 1955], p. 52). 17 Theodor Herzl, for instance, tells this story: he was discussing the “Jewish Question” with a friend in 1894 and suggested that anti-Semitism would be useful because it would force the Jews to correct the defects in their character. His friend replied that this is a “universal historical conception.” On his way home Herzl was called a “dirty Jew” by two urchins. He admitted that this insult was not directed against him personally and com­ ments, “World history is of no use in such a situation” (The Complete Diaries of Theodor Herzl, ed. Raphael Patai, trans. Harry Zohn [New York: Herzl Press, 1960], I, 10–11). See similar experiences in Fanon, op. cit., pp. 111–12, 118. 18 See the remark of Albert Memmi: “It is clear that no one is oppressed in the abso­ lute, but always in relation to someone else, in a given context, in such a way that, even if one is fortunate in comparison with others, or with oneself in another situation, one may perfectly well be living in a state of domination and suffer all the ills inherent in it, even the most, serious. It is so, apparently, with the French Canadians” (Dominated Man: Notes toward a Portrait [Boston: Beacon Press, 1969], p. 74). See also O. Mannoni: “In other words, the Malagasy can bear not being a white man; what hurts him cruelly is to have discovered first (by identification) that he is a man and later that men are divided into blacks and whites” (Prospero and Caliban: The Psychology of Colonization, trans. Pamela Powesland [2nd ed.; New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1984], p. 84).



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other nationalities of Eastern Europe, he formulated a program that he thought would make this strategy practicable. A turning point, therefore, in the formation of “defensive nationalism” was the failure of an expectation of inclusion to be applied universally in a multi-national state which now had increasingly a specific nationalist identity. The belief that upon acceptance of certain requirements members of an ethnic elite will be fully integrated into the state’s political and social life fails to be fulfilled. Deciding that the obstacles to integration were such that patience alone could not resolve, the leadership agrees that the universalistic Enlightenment ideal is an ideal but also an illusion. This proves to be a motive because one can make demands in the name of one’s ethnicity. Thus the emergence of the nationalist claim surfaces when intellectuals from an ethnic group feel themselves perceived as an isolated object by the larger society whose cultural and social life they had once hoped to share.19 Loss of self-esteem revealed in the earlier writings of a number of those who became nationalists is corrected by their rejection of the rejecters.20 Concluding that the condition for emancipation to the dominant nationality was really to become as little like their original selves as possible, the new nationalists saw that when they sought acceptance on these terms, they were disliked even more. The nationalist “returns to his own people.”21 Dubnow’s own ideological crisis had involved at first those emotions of isolation and loneliness which can be heard by others converted to

19 See Sartre’s description of the formation of the “us-object” (Being and Nothingness: An Essay on Phenomenological Ontology, trans. Hazel E. Barnes [New York: Philosophical Library, 1956], pp. 415–23); and Wilfrid Desan, The Tragic Finale: An Essay on the Philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre (2nd ed. Rev, New York: Harper and Row, 1960), p. 92. See Albert Memmi: “What makes [the colonized] different from other men has been sought out and hardened to the point of substantiation” (The Colonizer and the Colonized, trans. Howard Greenfeld [New York: Orion Press, 1965], p. 132). 20 The psychological necessity for such a step is illustrated by Kurt Lewin’s discussion of Jewish self-hatred: “The only way to avoid Jewish self-hatred in its various forms is a change of the negative balance between the forces toward and away from the Jewish group into a positive balance, the creation of loyalty to the Jewish group instead of negative chauvinism” (Resolving Social Conflicts, ed. Gertrud Weiss Lewis [New York: Harper and Brothers, 1948], p. 198). On Malcolm X’s growing awareness that the condition of his hair was a symbol of self-respect as a black man: Autobiography of Malcolm X, pp. 54, 259. Fanon remarks that at this point, “the sari becomes sacred, and shoes that come from Paris are left off in favor of pampooties” (The Wretched of the Earth, trans. Constance Farrington [New York: Grove Press, 1968], p. 221). 21 See, for instance, the single most revealing statement on this subject that Dubnow ever made, above, Chapter IV, pp. 98–99.

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nationalism.22 Disillusionment with imminent progress had led young Dubnow to reinterpret the promise of imminent Russification and take on another model for self-determination. He “returned to his people.” Culling expressions from Dubnow’s writings, mainly the Letters, we can put together a summary portrait of this emotional transformation.23 “Assimilation” was now perceived as “imitation of others.” The “imitator” felt forced to dissolve the valence of his or her personality and reassemble it according to a model embodied by others as a result of their natural evolution. The ensuing depersonalization was now seen as “an ethical disease” and “an ulcer torturing the soul.”24 The psychic appeal evokes reassertion of the freedom and integrity of the self. Successful fusion happens naturally, but when presented as an explicit demand for conformity, it entails an “obsequious servility”25 on the one side and a “scornful condescension”26 on the other. The solution is to transform self-affirmation into an act of will. Converts to nationalism restore their sense of independence by choosing to embrace that which they have found to be a fact—their inherited ethnic identification. They withdraw from a supposedly universal concept that proved to be only particularistic and in its name demand to be recognized in their particularity.27 The 22 Fanon writes: “I came into the world imbued with the will to find a meaning in things, my spirit filled with the desire to attain to the source of the world, and then I found that I was an object in the midst of other objects” (op. cit., p. 109; see also p. 140). 23 See Theodore Draper, “The Fantasy of Black Nationalism,” Commentary, XLVIII, No. 3 (September, 1969), especially pp. 51–54. The remarks that follow were stimulated by JeanPaul Sartre’s analysis of anti-Semitism in Anti-Semite and Jew, trans. Margery Bentwich (New York: Schocken Books, 1948), especially pp. 55–58. Several of the accounts of the formation of new social identities, such as that of Memmi, Fanon, and Mannoni, show Sartre’s influence. Frantz Fanon, in Black Skin, White Masks, trans. Charles Lam Markmann (New York: Grove Press, 1967), was led to see himself differently after reading Sartre’s book, which he quotes throughout. (e.g., p. 181). There are obviously great differences between the problems of black identity and Jewish identity, but we are here interested in their common features. 24 “Putting on their masks,” ibid., p. 201. “Depersonalization,” ibid., p. 80. “This lack of self-respect only brought out their scorn,” (ibid., p. 51. “Heteronomy is the imitation of others,” ibid., p. 258. “Ethical sickness” and “ulcer,” ibid., p. 47. Hans Rogger points out that reaction against the foreigner had the effect among the eighteenth-century Russian intellectuals of “stimulating the search for an autonomy which imitation and dependence had made difficult” (National Consciousness in Eighteenth-Century Russia [Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1960], p. 280). 25 “Obsequiousness” and “servility,” Pis’ma, p. 30. 26 “Condescension” and “scorn,” ibid., p. 51. 27 Fanon quotes Hegel to illustrate this process: “Action from one side only would be useless, because what is to happen can only be brought about by means of both: . . . they recognize themselves as mutually recognizing each other” (Black Skin, White Masks, p. 217). In the last stage of Fanon’s writings he came to feel that only in revolt is real



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future nationalist speaks of “wounded honor” and “loss of pride,” demanding in place of dependence, self-determination, freedom, and autonomy. The response places a “defensive wall” around the psyche to protect selfrespect and its will to act. Having safeguarded the “fulcrum” of independent existence, the nationalist can then be prepared for defense “with a mailed soul,” eliminating a source of inner conflict by acknowledging that he or she is a part of the process that provides assurance of the historical equivalent of immortality through an identity shared with past and coming generations. Through confrontation and negotiation the nationalist seeks to compel the Other to recognize the ethnic group as an independent agent, affirming the national will. Although Dubnow’s “autonomism” was a call for minority institutions to be legally recognized and even subsidized by the government, it had such an inward dimension: a reassertion of the freedom and integrity of the self as part of the group with whom he now wholeheartedly identifies. Stigmatization was overcome by choosing to embrace that which is found to be a fact—Jewish ethnicity raised to the level of a national identity which demands that others recognize it as an independent agent through confrontation, protest, and negotiation. In that situation, emancipation of the Jews will not be a “gift of kindness” but an act of justice to an ancient cultured personality which “has resided nineteen centuries in Europe.”28 Dubnovian nationalism did not mean the denial of the universal idea of humankind as such. Even as Dubnow championed Jewish nationalism, he insisted that the Jews were part of Europe and must be recognized as bona fide participants in its life. In the long view, such nationalism may be a stage in the greater integration into the family of nations. It can lead to a greater appreciation of the past of all peoples—including the unique and exemplary history of the Jews—and carry us further to the understanding of the idea of universal humanity.

liberation possible, but the reaching out to the universal through the particular can still be detected in this book. See J.E. Seigel, “On Frantz Fanon,” American Scholar, XXXVIII, No. 1 (Winter, 1968–69), pp. 95–96. 28 “Defensive wall,” Pis’ma, p. 47. The “fulcrum” must be within, ibid., p. 52. Voluntary “isolation,” ibid., p. 108. “Mailed soul,” ibid., p. 17. “Not as a gift of kindness,” ibid., p. 44. “Nineteen centuries in Europe,” ibid., p. 238.

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Dubnow’s favorite triad—thesis (Old Judaism), antithesis (Enlightenment), and synthesis (a New Judaism for the twentieth century)—enabled him to situate his ideology (and also himself) in relation to the passing historical moment in which he lived and flourished. Born and raised in the religiously and ethnically distinctive world of the shtetl, Dubnow lived through the rapid transformation of Russian Jewry from largely traditionalistic to somewhat modern. He participated in its struggles to adjust to unprecedented opportunities and disasters. He witnessed the decline of tsarist autocracy and the failure of the democratic Russia he hoped so much to see arise out of it. He came to live in some of the most important urban centers of dense East European Jewry and was close to some of its most notable figures. His murder in Riga was emblematic of the brutal destruction of the world he would not leave, even when he could. Even though Dubnow’s main audience was the rapidly modernizing Jewry of the Pale of Settlement and the successor states in Eastern Europe, his reputation extended beyond to countries and continents where East European Jewry was being transplanted. In an age of idealistic and, in retrospect, overly simplistic ideologies, he remained, mutatis mutandis, a straight-forward liberal, a defender of the critical spirit of the Enlightenment, devoted to the principle that each has the right to follow his or her reason. Above all he was a man with a deep loyalty to his extended family and to his people, which he considered a moral duty and came to view as his lifelong mission. During the first part of his life, Dubnow made himself into the epitome of the historian who sets out, in James Joyce’s famous phrase, “to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race.” Dubnow wanted to recover the history of the people so as to delineate the way for it to survive creatively in an unprecedented time. He was one of a bevy of nationalist spokesmen of various European peoples (and peoples on other continents) who devoted themselves to recovering sources and events needed for the detailed reconstruction of their nation’s past, presenting the sweep of the entirety of that history and explaining how the history of their ethnic group fit into the history of humanity. History was not just an interesting field to study but had existential meaning. Dubnow wrote micro-historical accounts about specific institutions and developments, but he also produced one of the great macro-historical accounts



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of the Jews in world history. He sought to analyze the root cause of the vitality of his people through more than 3000 years and “to forge” for his people a design for a future that respected collective as well as personal individuality. We noted earlier that ideology is a fusion of theory and praxis. Dubnow’s historical analysis provided him with the theory; turn-of-thecentury Russia set the conditions for the praxis. Dubnovism was his attempt, based on a conception of the underlying force driving Jewish history, to answer the classic question of Russian radicals: “What is to be done?” “The Old Judaism” was a religious tradition, indeed one of the most influential in world history. Dubnow and many of his compatriots thought of themselves as thoroughly secular, even anti-religious, but as a responsible historian he brought into his writings religious elements of the Jewish past when appropriate, even though he held that the underlying driving force of that tradition was a collective “will to survive” more elemental than beliefs about God, revelation, and redemption of the soul. Every historian’s work is fated to be severely criticized in light of new questions, methods, and findings. Dubnow had started out as a journalist and a social critic. An autodidact, he made himself into a historian through vast reading, careful research, and direct involvement in various groups of likeminded students of the Jewish past at a time when postbiblical Jewish history was of interest only to (some) Jews. Since his death and in recent decades as Jewish history has been accepted as a valued part of the curriculum of secular universities, the study of the Jewish past has been broadened and transformed. Presentations at scholarly conferences in Israel and America and the table of contents of journals devoted to Jewish studies are testimony as to how Jewish history is being explored from new perspectives (a few examples: the reliability of the biblical narrative on the formation of the Davidic kingdom, the gradual emergence of rabbinic Judaism in late antiquity, the putative Jewishness of the Marranos, the overlooked involvement of Jewish women). Much of Dubnow’s world history of the Jews was based on voracious reading of secondary sources now out-of-date. Even the areas in which he was a pioneer, such as the origins of Beshtian Hasidism and effectiveness of the Polish and Lithuanian national councils, are being freshly assessed. Likewise with respect to his vision of where “the Jewish nation” should be headed: dying in 1941, he could not have anticipated that such a large portion of the Jewry that survived the Holocaust would find places in the

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economically and technologically most advanced sectors of society. He had welcomed the flood of Jewish immigration to America from Eastern Europe, but could not envision that postwar America would become Jewry’s preeminent diaspora community or how the East European Jewish heritage would be Americanized, from the stories of Isaac Bashevis Singer, the lithographs of Mark Chagall, and the theology of Abraham Joshua Heschel, to klezmer music, “Fiddler on the Roof,” and the religious entrepreneurship of Chabad. What would he have thought of the rapid mainstreaming of American Jewry, the surge of intermarriage in recent decades, the emergence of new Jewish religious movements and the gradual transformation of the older denominations? He would have been astonished by the current and potential impact of the internet on Jewish connectivity. Dubnow had doubts about the Zionist project on practical grounds and because of its “negation of diaspora,” but he could not have envisioned the extent a sovereign Jewish state would become so central to modern Jewish life. Much of Dubnovism reflects a world passed by. Appropriately, of his many publications, perhaps his most enduring legacy will be the three volumes Kniga Zhizni (Book of Life: Reminiscences and Reflections for the History of my Time). What still pertains in Dubnow’s new Judaism? Without minimizing the position of the State of Israel in contemporary Jewish life, the Jews remain a “world people,” just as Judaism is a world religion and Jewish history is a world history. Despite the virtual end of some venerable Jewries such as those in the Islamic world, there are major communities in North and South America, South Africa, Australasia, and Europe. The surviving remnant of Russian Jewry has made an impact. And in an age of electronic globalism, being a “world people” may take on a different meaning. Dubnovism stood out in the continuum of Russian-Jewish movements because of its fusion of diaspora nationalism with classic liberalism. The relationship worked both ways: Dubnow was thoroughly committed to freedom of thought and expression, equality before the law, respect for minority opinions, and democratic forms of representative government (precedents of which could be found in traditional Judaism). Dubnovism sought to enlarge the universalism of the various historical enlightenments—ancient, medieval, and modern—in which Jewish ideas, such as monotheism, covenant, and disputation “for the sake of Heaven,” had been present. Dubnovism included in its liberalistic universalism respect for particularism. Hopefully the conception of a humanistic, tolerant polity will turn out to be more enduring than the various despotisms and



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totalitarianisms under which Dubnow’s and subsequent generations have suffered. Perhaps the most important impact of Dubnovism and similar orientations is in relation to what secularity means for contemporary Jewish identity. Not the militant, hard secularism that denies any transcendent ground for religion but what Barry A. Kosmin and others have called “soft secularism.”29 This has affected all but the most rigidly “fundamentalist” branches of Judaism. In liberal forms of Judaism this means not mandating a single explicit theology. In Judaism there have been varied metaphors for the transcendent realm, even for God, as the rabbis, philosophers, and mystics long ago acknowledged. Liberal religion involves the rejection of simple faith in certain metaphysical symbols of transcendence in order to grasp poetically and historically what they point to. The new theologies of Judaism that were in the process of emerging were not of interest to Dubnow. Ever the convinced secularist, he had his spiritual experiences through moments overwhelmed by the aloof grandeur of nature, but it was in Jewish history that he mainly found selftranscendence. We remember that at a critical moment he decided to be “a missionary for history,” and that he labeled his personal philosophy “historism.” “Historism” was not the blatant substitute for theology that it was for Hegelians and Marxists but contained something akin to traditional religiosity. Joining the march of his people from generation to generation was for Dubnow emotionally stirring and intellectually satisfying. It acknowledged change in the Jewish cultural heritage while affirming continuity— realizing that a significant aspect of one’s identity derives from and belongs to that stream of people flowing through long stretches of time. Dubnow’s secular conception of Jewish history sees the Jewish tradition as complex and nuanced, not locked into a specific version of the Jewish mainstream, political, halakhic, or theological. It acknowledges change in a way that also acknowledges continuity. History is not just chaos— merely one thing after another. Dubnow’s historical secularism sees Jewish culture as a tapestry of institutions, symbols, ideas, roles, that came into being or disappeared or morphed into other textures and colors, so that the Jewish heritage has been more adjustable, dynamic, fluid than

29 For example, Barry A. Kosmin and Ariela Keysar, Religion a Free Market: Religious and Non-Religious Americans (Ithaca, New York: Paramount Market Publishing, 2006), and Kosmin’s other studies.

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any single photograph of it could capture. The ways in which modern Jews relate to that Jewish heritage are richer, more diverse, and open to further interpretation. Whatever its downside (lack of the sharp borders that fundamentalists apparently need), the Dubnovian view of Judaism legitimates a liberal sense of personal autonomy to include the sense that one is part of a large stream of consciousness within the even more inclusive wholes of humanity and the cosmos. In sum, the Judaic heritage opens for the most secular Jew a treasury of texts, concerns, and involvements that can enrich his or her life. Dubnovian New Judaism, suitably adjusted for the passage of time since his era, makes Jewishness a meaningful part of a person’s identity. (Another James Joyce quotation: “It is a curious thing, do you know, Cranly said dispassionately, how your mind is supersaturated with the religion in which you say you disbelieve?”) Being a Jew in this sense means involvement in the life of the Jewish community, being thoughtful about doing the right thing and then doing it, caring for others, being concerned for justice, engaging the serious ideas which have been a hallmark of the Jewish intellectual tradition, integrating the active life of the mind into the morally good life. Dubnow’s intense Jewish commitment was derived from the world of the shtetl, now long gone. After his youthful conversion to Comtean Positivism, there occurred a return to his people which we have called a “defensive” response to the chauvinistic nationalism rampant in his milieu, a response that was a dignified asserting of Jewish selfhood in the crossfire of movements increasingly anti-Jewish. This return home became a path of personal and social discovery, an achievement of his ongoing integratsiia dushi—that integration of soul that was the story about him that I have tried to tell.

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Auto Bibliography SIMON DUBNOW Chronological list of my books and articles in Russian and other languages (1881–1939) I. In Russian 1. Titles of books, as distinct from articles, are given in capital letters. 2. Articles not signed by a pseudonym or initials were published over the full name of the author. 3. Articles in the “Literary Chronicle” of the monthly journal “Voskhod” appeared over the pseudonym Kritikus, with the exception of those which are here otherwise marked in brackets. Reviews in the biblio­ graphical section are signed with the initials S.M., if not otherwise marked. Short reviews dating from the same year are grouped together as one item.* 4. ABBREVIATIONS. Voskh.—monthly journal “Voskhod”, St. Petersburg 1881–1906. Ch.Voskh.—the weekly “Chronicle of Voskhod”, St. Petersburg, 1882–1906. Rus.Yev.—weekly paper “Russki Yevrei”, St. Peters­ burg, 1879–84. Rassv.—weekly paper “Raszvet”, St. Petersburg, 1879–83. Yev.St.—quarterly journal “Yevreiskaya Starina”, St. Petersburg, 1909–1919. Yev.Mir—monthly journal “Yevresiki Mir”, St. Peters­ burg 1909; weekly paper 1910–1911. 1881 1. Нѣсколько моментов в исторіи развитія еврейской мысли.—Рус. Ев. №№ 16–18, 24, 27, 28, 30, 32, 35, 36. * More detailed references to short reviews are to be found: in Dr. Maisel’s: Dubnow Schriften (Soncino-Blatter, Berlin 1926); Dubnow-Festschrift (Berlin 1930).

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  2. Мендельсон русских евреев: жизнь и дѣятельность И. Б. Левинзона (С. Д.). Разсв. №№ 30, 31, 33, 35, 36.   3. Вопрос дня (об эмиграціи в Америку). Разсв. №№ 34, 35.   4. Народная еврейская газета: о газетѣ на „жаргонѣ“ (аноним.). Разсв, № 35.   5. К выясненію истины: о необходимости экономической экспедиціи (анон.). Разсв. № 36.   6. Заграничная хроника (аноним.). Разсв. №№ 25, 26, 29–33, 35, 37–40.   7. Деллингер. Евреи в Европѣ (перевод С. Д.). Разсв. №№ 38–43. 1882   8. Историческій очерк поседенія евреев в Америкѣ (С. Д.). Разсв. №№ 20, 21.   9. Бѣдствія евреев на УкраинЪ в 1648–1652 гг. (С. Мстиславскій). Разсв. №№ 24, 25, 37, 39, 40. 10. Передовая статья о „Временных правилах“ 3 мая (аноним.). Разсв. № 20.  11. Саббатай Цеви и псевдомессіанизм в XVII вѣкѣ „Воc-ход“ кн. 7–8, 9–10. 12. Комперт, Сказки еврейскаго квартала (перев. С. Д.). Восх. кн. 9–10. 13. Берне, Вѣчный жид (перевод с предисл. С. Д.). Восх. кн. 11–12. 1883 14. 15. 16. 17.

Яков Франк и его секта христіанствующих. Восх. кн 1–4, 9–10. Историческая справка к статьѣ „Саббатай Цеви“. (С. Д.). Восх. кн. 3. Какая самоэмансипація нужна евреям? Восх. кн. 5–8. Комиссія по еврейскому вопросу во Франціи 1785 г. (С. Мсти­ славскій). Восх. кн. 10. 18. Общество еврейской науки в Парнжѣ (С. Д.—нов): Восх. кн. 7–8. 19. Литературная Лѣтопись: Родкинсон, Mazat mizwa. (С. Д.). Восх. кн. 1. 20. Грец, Исторія евреев, т. V, рус. перев. с прим, Гаркави. (С. Д.). Восх. кн. 3. 21. Родкинсон, Tefila le-Mosche (С. Д.). Восх. кн. 4. 22. Бершадскій, Литовскіе евреи (С. Д.). Восх. кн. 5–6.



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23. Палестинофильство и его проповѣдник: Смоленскій (С. Д.). Восх. кн. 7. 24. Обзор новоеврейской литературы. Восх, кн. 9. 25. Линовскій, Еврейскіе силуэты (Z.). Восх. кн. 10. 26. Zschokke, Das Weib im Alten Testament; Heilenbach, Die antisemi­ tische Bewegung, Восх, кн. 11–12. 27. К исторіи русских евреев: о „Русско-еврейском Архи-вѣ“ Бершадскаго. (С. Д.). Рус. Ев. №№ 15–16. 28. Жидотрепаніе г. Костомарова (С. Мстиславскій). Хр. Восх. № 12. 29. Паяцы антисемитизма: о французском листкѣ „Анти-семитик“. (С. Мстиславскій). Хр. Восх. № 35. 30. „Возвращенный“ Гейне: по воспоминаніям Вейля. (С. Мстисл­ авскій). Хр. Восх. № 48. 1884 31. Послѣднее слово подсудимаго еврейства (Экстернус) Восх. кн. 1, 5, 11, 12. 32. Благородный русскій голос в защиту евреев: Сан Донато. (С. Д.). Восх. кн. 1. 33. Литературная лѣтопись : Лиліенблюм. О возрожденіи еврейскаго народа, и другія книги. Восх. кн. 2. 34. Фентон, Древнѣйшая жизнь евреев и др. книги. Восх. кн. 5. 35. Еврейскій Некрасов: Стихотворенія Л. Гордона (С. Д.). Восх. кн. 7. 36. Kuenen, Volksreligion und Weltreligion. Восх. кн. 9. 37. Loeb, Réflexions sur les juifs. Восх. кн. 10. 38. Исторія русскаго законодательства о евреях. Анонимная записка для Паленской Комиссіи по еврейскому з0просу. Гектографическая копія, стр. 285–581 (первая половина, стр. 1–281: Антонович, Евреи в Западной Европѣ). 1885 39. О реформѣ еврейскаго школьнаго воспитанія. (Д. С). Восх. кн. 5, 6, 7. 40. Религіозныя повѣр1я еврейскаго народа. (С. Мстиславскій). Восх. кн. 11–12 и продолж. 1886, кн. 1, 2. 41. Эдуард Гартман о еврействѣ. (С. Мстиславскій). Восх. кн. 9, 10. 42. Литературная Лѣтопись: Еврейскій вопрос в романѣ (Немировскій, Пробужденіе; Север, На 6иржѣ). Восх. кн. 10.

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43. Галиційскіе разсказы Самуэли; Ежегодник Н. Соко­лова. Восх. кн. 11. 44. Среди крайностей (Я. Прилукер, I. Рабинович, Ф. Гец). Восх. кн. 12. 1886 45. Иммануил Римскій, позт и сатирик XIV вѣка. (С. Д.). Восх. кн. 3, 4, 5. 46. Историческая справка: план основанія еврейскаго штата в Америкѣ (С.) Восх. кн. 6. 47. Евреи в Могилевской губерніи. Историко-статистическій очерк (Мстиславскій). Восх. кн. 9–12. 48. Трагизм еврейской жизни в разсказах К. З. Францоза. (Д. С.). Восх. кн. 2. 49. Литературная Лѣтопись: lудея и іудеи в эпоху римских цезарей (Момзен, Римская Исторія, том V). Восх. кн. 1. 50. О. Квич, Немножко философіи и др. Восх. кн. 3. 51. Еврейскій вопрос перед ареопагом европейских мыелителей (анкета И. Зингера). Восх. кн. 4. 52. Послѣдніе дни lepyсалима в изображеніи Ренана. Восх. кн. 7. 53. К юбилею Людвига Берне (Альберти, Біограф1я Берне). Восх. кн. 7. 54. Матеріалы для исторіи литовских евреев (Файнштейн, Община Бреста). Восх. кн. 8. 55. Общій взгляд на исторію еврейской литературы (по поводу книги Карпелеса). Восх. кн. 9–12. 56. Библіографія: о стихах Л. Гордона на народном языкѣ и о других книгах. Рецензіи в Восх. кн. 2–6, 11. 57. Сцена из великой трагедіи: Короленко, сказаніе о Флоpѣ Римлянинѣ. (С. Мстиславскій). Хр. Восх. № 45. 1887 58. Моисей Хаим Луццато, поэт и мистик XVIII вѣка. (С. Д.) Восх. кн. 5, 6. 59. Литературная Лѣтопись: Ежегодники Соколова и Ра­биновича. Восх. кн. 1. 60. И. С. Аксаков и евреи. Восх. кн. 2. 61. Соломон Маймон и его мѣсто в исторіи философіи. Восх. кн. 3. 62. Южнорусское духовенство и евреи в XVII вѣкѣ (Галятовскій, Мессія Праведный). Восх. кн. 4. 63. Бѣдная еврейская беллетристика (о романах Шомера). Восх. кн. 5.



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64. Из области серьезнаго (о еврейской исторiи Касселя и проч.). Восх, КН. 6. 65. Ηовыя свидѣтельства о бѣдиости еврейской беллетристики. Восх. кн. 7. 66. П. Смоленскiй как романист и публицист. Восх. кн. 9. 67. Отрадные симптомы (Шалом Алейхем и др.). Восх. кн. 10. 68. Печаль современности и ут ѣшеніе исторіи (Wolski, La Russie juive; Chaikin, Apologie des juifs etc.). Bocx. кн. 11. 69. Остатки литературной жатвы 1887 г. (Житловскiй, Мысли о еврействѣ и др.). Восх кн. 12. 70. „Патрioтическіе“ отклики: сборник „Дер Веккер“ и драма „Зерубавель“ Лилiенблюма. (М—кій). Восх. кн. 12. 71. Библіографія (о многих книгах и брошюрах), Восх. кн. 2–12. 1888 72. Введеніе в исторію хасидизма. Восх. кн. 1–3. 73. Возникновеніе хасидизма: жизнь и дѣятельность Бешта. Восх. кн. 5–10. 74. Литературная Лѣтопись· Литература наших ежегодников Восх. кн. 1–4. 75. Параллели из жизни: роман Браудеса „Двѣ крайности“ (евр.). Восх. кн. 5. 76. Древняя исторія евреев по Ренану (Исторія Израильскаго народа, т. 1). Восх. кн. 8, 9. 77. О жаргонной литературѣ (Шалом Алейхем и др.), Восх. кн. 10. 78. Из современнаго хаоса (роман Ге, Софья Малич). Восх. кн. 11–12. 79. Библюграф1я (о многих книгах). Восх. 1–12. 1889 80. Из еврейской старины: два документа по исторіи бѣлорусских евреев в 18-м вѣкѣ. Восх. кн. 1. 81. Французская революція и евреи. (С. Мстиславскій), Восх. кн. 4–7. 82. Возникновеніе цадикизма: Бер из Межирича и ученики Бешта. Восх. кн. 9–11; окончаніе в Восх. 1890, кн. 1. 83. Литературная Лѣтопись: Еврейскія идилліи Захер-Мазохз. Восх. кн. 3. 84. „Тьма египетская“ (о романѣ Вс. Крестовскаго). Восх. кн. 6.

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  85. Новости жаргонной литературы (сборник Шалом Алейхема и др.). Восх. кн. 7.   86. Из области исторіи (Грец, Бершадскій и др.). Восх. кн. 9.   87. Библіографія (о разных книгах). Восх. кн 1–10.   88. Граф Л. Н. Толстой и евреи (Д.). Хроника Восхода № 6. 1890   89. Исторія хасидскаго раскола, главы I–IX. Восх. кн. 2–12.   90. Литературная Лѣтопись: Прежде и теперь (Моргулис, Вопросы еврейской жизни). Восх. кн. 1, 2.   91. Чего стоит юдофобская правда? (Н. Нотович, Правда о евреях). Восх. кн. 3.   92. Наши старыя раны. (Л. Гордон, Разсказы). Восх. кн. 8.   93. Народная и простонародная литература (Шалом-Алей хем, Динесон). Восх. кн. 9.   94. Из еврейской мартирологіи (Шульгин, Коліивщина). Восх. кн. 10.   95. Вѣчные и эфемерные идеалы еврейства (сборники „La Gerbe“ и „Kaweret“). Восх. кн. 12.   96. Библіографія (краткія рецензіи). Восх. кн. 1–12. 1891   97. Исторія хасидскаго раскола, главы X–XIII. Восх 1, 2, 10–12.   98. ОБ ИЗУЧЕНІИ ИСТОРІИ РУССКИХ ЕВРЕЕВ и учрежденіи Исто­ рическаго Общества. Сборник „Восхода“ и отдѣльная брошюра, 91 стран.   99. О совокупной работѣ по собиранію матеріалов для исторіи русских евреев. Воззваніе. Восх. кн. 11 и отд. 100. Литературная Лѣтопись: Беллетристическій памфлет. (Кресто­ вскій, Тамара Бендавид). Восх. кн, 1.  101. Чѣм богаты (о литературных сборниках). Восх. кн. 2. 102. Литература по изслѣдованіо Св. Земли (Каган, Лунц). Восх. кн. 3. 103. Итоги Общества Просвѣщенія (о книгѣ Розенталя). Восх. кн. 10, 11. 104. Библіографія (разныя рецензіи). Восх. кн. 1–3, 11–12. 1892 105. Исторіограф еврейства: Грец, его жизнь и труды. Восх. кн. 2–5, 7–9.



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106. Релипіозная борьба среди русских евреев в концѣ XVIII вѣᴋа, глава 1 (продолженіе „Исторіи хасидизма“) Восх. кн. 11, 12. 107. Библіографія. Восх. кн. 1. 108. Русскій перевод глав 1 и 6–8 „Народной исторіи евреев“ Греца, т. l. Напечатан в Петербургѣ, но был конфискован духовной цензурой. 1893 109. Религіозная борьба среди русских евреев в концѣ XVIII вѣка, главы 2, 3, 4. (Окончаніе). Восх. кн. 1–5. 110. Историчесᴋія сообщенія: подготовительныя работы по исторіи русских евреев. № 1–5. (Ружанскіе мученики 1659 г.—Плач укра­ инскаго еврея 1768 г.—Народное бѣдствіе и сскты в Подоліи.— Религіозная распря в Литвѣ.—Первые еврейсᴋіе колонисты в Новороссіи) Восх. кн. 7, 8.  111. Что такое еврейская исторія? Опыт философской ха­рактеристики. Восх. кн. 10–12. 112. Литературная Лѣтопись: Литература смутных настро-еній (сборники „Пардес“ и др.). Восх. кн. 2–3, 5. 113. Фальсификація современности и исторіи („Секта Coгa-ритов“ и др.). Восх. кн. 4. 114. Новыя вѣянія (Бен-Авигдор, „Sifre Agora“). Восх. кн. 9–10. 115. Еврейсᴋіе историки из „Наблюдателя“ и „Русскаго Архива“. Восх. кн. 12. 116. Библіографія: „Указатель литературы о евреях“ и др. рецензіи, Восх. кн. 4–12. 1894 117. Историческія сообщенія: № 6. Кагальные уставы 16–18 вѣка. Восх. кн. 2. 118. —№ 7. Областные Кагальные сеймы в Волыни и Бѣло-руссіи. Восх. кн. 4. 119. —№ 8. Польсᴋіе сеймы и еврейсᴋіе синоды.—№ 9. Насилія польской администраціи над евреями. Восх. кн. 9. 120. —№ 10. Еврейская старина в г. Острогѣ, Восх. кн. 10. 121. —№ 11. Еще о средних органах еврейскаго самоуправ-ленія. Восх. кн. 12.

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122. Литературная лѣтопись: Націонализм и ортодоксія (С. Р. Гирш, „Хорев“ и др.). Восх. кн. 1. 123. Період второго храма в освѣщеніи Ренана. Восх. кн. 45. 124. О народѣ и для народа (сборник „Гаузфрайнд“). Восх. кн. 6. 125. Новый историк франкизма (Сулима). Восх. кн. 7. 126. Взаимодѣйствіе идейных направленій („Пардеc“, „Гаа-сиф“ и др.). Восх. кн. 10, 11. 127. Библіографія. (Мелкія рецензіи), Восх. кн. 2, 6, 7, 11, 12. 1895 128. Историческія сообщенія: № 12. Жсртвы ложных обви­неній в Люблинѣ, Краковѣ и Ленчицѣ (1636–39) Восх. кн. 1, 2. 129. Евреи и реформація в Польшѣ в XVI вѣкѣ, Восх. кн. 5, 7, 8. 130. О ходѣ подготовительных работ по исторіи русских евреев. Отчет за 1893 и 1894 г. Восх. кн. 5. 131. Литературная лѣтопись: Охранители старины (Шугуров, Исторія евреев в Россіи, „Русскій Архив“). Восх. кн. 1. 132. Статика и динамика жизни. (О второй серіи „Sifre Agora“ БенАвигдора). Восх. кн. 8, 9. 133. Библіографія (МелкіЯ рецензіи). Восх. кн. 1, 8, 9, 1896 134. БЕК И БРАНН. ЕВРЕЙСКАЯ ИСТОРІЯ от конца библейскаго періода до настоящаго времени. Переработал и дополнил С. М. Дубнов. Том І.: Восточный період (от вавилонскаго плѣна до конца эпохи гаонов). Одесса 1896, XVI+323.стран. 3600 экз. 135. Исторія франкизма по новооткрытым источникам (Краусгар). Восх. кн. 3, 5–6. 136. О подготовительных работах по исторіи русских евреев. Отчет за 1895 год. Восх. кн. 7. 1897 137. БЕК И БРАНН. ЕВРЕЙСКАЯ ИСТОРІЯ (выше № 134). Том II: Западный період. Одесса 1897, VIII+474 стран 3600 зкз. 138. Письма о старом и новом еврействѣ. Письмо I: о духовноисторическом націонализмѣ. Восх. кн. 11.



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1898 139. Письма о старом и новом еврействѣ. Письмо II: еврейство как духовно-историческая нація среди политических націй. Восх. кн. 1. 140. —Письмо III: Духовный націонализм и сіонизм. Восх. кн. З, 4. 141. УЧЕНБНИК ЕВРЕЙСКОЙ ИСТОРІИ. Часть І: древнѣй­шая (библейская) исторія. Одесса 1898, VII+152 стран. 5000 экз. 1899 142. Соціальаная и духовная жизнь евреев в Польшѣ в пер­вой половинѣ XVIII вѣка (к введенію в исторію хасидизма). Восх. кн. 1, 2. 143. Письма о старом и новом еврействѣ. IV: Этика націо­нализма и сіонизма. Восх. кн. 5, 6. 144. —Дополненіе к письму IV. Восх. кн. 7. 145. Из хроники мстиславской общины (1844). Восх. кн. 9. 146. Библіографія: по поводу брошюры Александрова „Патріотизм антисіонистов“ (Критикус). Восх. кн. 12. 147. О смѣнѣ направленій в русско-еврейской журналистикѣ. (№ 5 „Писем о еврействѣ“). „Будущность“ № № 2–6, декабрь 1899. 148. УЧЕБНИК ЕВРЕЙСКОЙ ИСТОРІИ для школ и самообразованія. Часть ІІ: побиблейская исторія на Востокѣ. Одесса 1899. 120 стр. 3000 экз. 1900 149. Внутренняя жизнь евреев в Польшѣ и Литвѣ в XVI вѣкѣ. Глава I: воспитаніе и обученіе; глава ІІ: домашній быт. Восх. кн. 2, 4. 1901 150. ВСЕОБЩАЯ ИСТОРІЯ ЕВРЕЕВ от древнѣйших времен до настоящаго. Том І: древнѣйшая и древняя исторія. 1-й полутом: до вавилонскаго плѣна. Одесса 1901, XII+228 стр. 151. Историческія сообщенія. № 13. Бюрократическія упражненія в рѣшеніи еврейскаго вопроса (1840–44), Восх. кн. 4, 5. 152. Письма о старом и новом еврействѣ. VI: Раздробленная и об‘единенная національная партія. Восх. кн. 11. 153. —VІІ. Автономизм как основа національной программы Восх. кн. 12.

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* «Учебник еврейской исторіи» в трех частях, напечатаввых впервые в 1898–1901 г., перепечатывался почти ежегодво до 1917 г. 1-я часть выдержала 17 изданій в количествѣ 76.000 экз., 2-я часть—12 пздавій (34.000 экз.), а 3-я часть—6 изданій (13.000 экз.). В 1919—20 гг, в Иркутскѣ без вѣдома автора печатались фотографическим способом всѣ три части, как « нзданіе Національнаго Совѣта Евреев Свбнри и Урала » (без обозначенія года). На оборотѣ заглавных листов звачвлось : « Твпо-литографія Коммеріал Пресс, Шанхай, Китай ». Перепечатывались повнднмому в в Харбннѣ.

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1910 190. ВСЕОБЩАЯ ИСТОРIЯ ЕВРЕЕВ, том I: древнѣйшая и древняя исторiя до разрушенія іудейскаго государства римлянами. Второе переработанное изданіе. Спб. XVI+ 639 стρан. 1300 экз. 191. Вмѣшательство русскаго правительства в антихасидскую борьбу (1800–1801). Архивные документы. Евр. Стар. том III, 84 и 253 сл. 192. Саул Пинхас Рабинович (Шефер). Некролог. Евр. Стар. том III, 321 сл. 193. Рѣчь в общем собранiи Евр. Историко-этнограф. Общества: О современном состоянiи еврейской исторioграфiи. Ев. Ст. том III, 148; Ев. Mip (еженед.) № 10. 194. К вопросу о типѣ общины Евр Mip (еженед.), № 4. 195. Новѣйшая зволюція еврейской національной идеи. Сборник Кастелянскаго: „Формы нацioнальнаго движeнія в современных государствах“. Спб 1910, стр. 399–423. 1911 196. Еврейская Польша в эпоху послѣдних раздѣлов Ев. Стар. том IV, 441 сл. 197. Библіoграфія (рецензіи, подписанныя С. д.) Ев Стар. том IV, стр. 149, 430, 595 сл. 198. Замѣтки: Высшіе курсы еврейскаго знанія; Смерть экстерна и еврейская средняя школа. Ев. Mip (еженед.) №№ 5 и 12. 199. Мысли о русско еврейской журналистикѣ—доклад в Евр. Историко-этнограф. Обществѣ. Ев. mір (нед.), № 16. 1912 200. Судьбы евреев в Россіи в эпоху западной „первой эмансипаціи“ (1789–1815). Ев. Стар. том V, 3, 113. 201. Евреи в Россіи в эпоху европейской реакціи (1815–48). Ев. Стар. том V, 274, 370. 202. Евреи в генуэзской Кафѣ в 1455 г. (Г. А. Хокер). Ев. Стар. том V, 66 сл. 203. Акты еврейскаго короннаго сейма или Ваада, 1621–99 (из Тиктинскаго Пинкоса) Ев. Стар. том V, 70, 178, 453. 204. Ритуальные процессы 1816 года: Межирицкое дѣло (С. Д.). Ев. Стар. том V, 144 сл.

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205. Книжная лѣтопись (библіoграфія с подписью С. Д. и без подписи). Евр. Стар. том V, 95, 342, 475. 1913 206. Евреи в Россіи в эпоху европейской реакціи (см. выше № 201). Ев. Стар. том VI, 23, 308 сл. 207. Выдвореніе евреев из Малороссіи во второй четверти 18 вѣка.— Перепись евреев в Малороссіи в 1736 г. (С. Д). Ев. Стар. том VI, 123, 400, 526. 208. Книжная лѣтопись (рецензіи без подписи). Ев. Стар. том VI. 282, 413. 209. Об уходящих. Письмо в редакцію (Декларація о выкрестах). Нов. Восход (еженед.) № 29; „Разсвѣт“ № 29. 210. Проблема общины в новѣйшей исторіи еврейства. „Вѣстник евр. общины“, Спб. кн. 1. 211. Источники ритуальной лжи. Историческіе выводы. Петербу­ ргская газета „День“ от 22 сентября. 1914 212. НОВѢЙШАЯ ИСТОРIЯ ЕВРЕЙСКАГО НАРОДА (1789–1881). Том IV „Всеобщей исторіи еврейскаго народа“. Спб. 1914, 640 стр. 2000 экз. 213. Историческая тайна Крыма (памятники Мангуп-Кале). Ев. Стар. том VII, 1–20. 214. Письма С. О. Грузенберга, с предисловіем (1896–99). Ев. Стар. том VII, 385 сл. 215. Научно-литературная хроника (рецензіи без подписи). Ев. Стар. том VII, 128, 292, 501. 216. Об‘ективность или безпринципность? Нѣсколько слов моим критикам. Новый Восход, № 10. 217. Еврейская высшая школа на Западѣ (план евр. уни­верситета). Нов. Восх. №№ 18, 25. 218. Внутренній быт евреев в Польшѣ в XVI вѣкѣ. (Вышеуказанныя в № 149 статьи с поправками). „Исторія еврейскаго народа“ изд. „Mip“, Москва. Том XI, стр. 320–351.



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1915 219.

Из исторіи восьмидесятых годов, главы I–III (1881). Ев. Стар. том VIII, 267 сл. 220. Письма Билуйца (1882–84), с предисловіем. Евр. Стар. т. VIII, 100. 201 сл. 221. Письма С. О. Грузенберга. Вторая серія (1899–1907). Евр. Стар. т. VIII, 367 сл. 222. Библіографія (рецензіи, подпис. С. Д.). Евр. Стар. т. VIII, 121, 418. 223–225. Inter arma. I–V. Нов. Bocx. 1914, № 52 и 1915, №№ 1, 6, 10–11.— VI–VIII: Скорая помощь и день грядущій; Уступки; De pro­ fundis. Еврейская Недѣля №№ 4, 14, 31.—Еврейскій вопрос в перспективѣ мipoвой войны. Журнал „Національныя Проблемы“ № 2. Москва. 1916 226. 227. 228. 229. 230. 231. 232. 233. 234. 235. 236.

Из исторіи восьмидесятых годов, главы IV–VII (1882–89). Евр. Стар. том IX. 1 сл., 353 сл. Іудеи в Боспорском царствѣ (Шюрер, с предисловіем и дополненіями С. Д.). Евр. Стар. т. IX, 137 сл. Церковныя легенды об отрокѣ Гавріилѣ Заблудовском. Евр. Стар. т. IX, 309 сл. Библіографія (С. Д.). Евр. Стар. т. IX, 130 сл. Письма А. Е. Ландау (1884–96). Матеріалы для исто­ріи „Восхода“. Евр. Стар. том IX, 102 сл. Воспоминаія о Шалом-Алейхемѣ и письма его (1888–90). Евр. Стар. т. IX, 227 сл. Воспоминанія о С. Г. Фругѣ и письма его. Евр. Стар. т. IX, 441 сл. Записка об антиеврейских погромах 1881 г. „Голос Минувшаго“, кн. III, 243 сл. Исторія одного из многих, главы 1–2 (начало „Исторіи евpейскаго солдата“ с цензурными пропусками. См. дальше № № 237 и 244). Евр. Недѣля, №№ 11 и 14. Современная критика в исторіи и историческій крите­рій (ОтВѣт Кулишеру). Евр. Недѣля № 28. Письмо к X. Н. Бялику по поводу его юбилея. Евр. Недѣля № 16.

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237. Исторія еврейскаго солдата 1915 года (полный текст). Евр. Недѣля № № 19–23. 238. ЧЕГО ХОТЯТ ЕВРЕИ. (Общедоступная Библіотека: Задачи свободной Россіи). Петербург, изд. „Муравей“, 32 стр. 239. Что мѣшает созыву еврейскаго с‘ѣзда? Евр. Недѣля № 19. 240. Еврейскій с‘ѣзд и Національный Совѣт (избиратель­ный листок „Еврейскій Mip“, № 1). 1918 241. Furor judophobicus в послѣдніе годы царствованія Александра III. Евр. Стар. том X, 27 сл. 242. Из черной книги россійскаго еврейства (предисловіе и заявленіе на имя совѣта министров). Евр. Стар. том X, 195 сл. 243. Критика и Библіографія (С. Д.). Евр. Стар. т. X. 297 сл. 244. ИСТОРІЯ ЕВРЕЙСКАГО СОЛДАТА (выіuе №№ 234 и 237). Отд издаНіе. Спб „Разум“. 32 стран. 245. Воспоминанія об Абрамовичѣ-Μeнделе. Сборник „Саф­рУТ“, кн. III, Москва, 1918. Во 2-м берлинском изданіи 1922 г. стр. 153–171. 246. Распад россійско-еврейскаго центра. „Новый путь“ (еженед). №№ 7–8 (іюнь). 1919 247. НОВѢЙШАЯ ИСТОРІЯ ЕВРЕЙСКАГО НАРОДА. Том I (1789–1848). Второе издаНіе „Кадима“. Петроград VIII+465 стр. 248. Погромныя эпохи. ВведеНіе в „Матеріалы для исторіи аНти­ еврейских погромов в Россіи“, том I: Кишиневское дѣло. Петроград. стр. I–IV. 1922 249. ЕВРЕИ В ЦАРСТВОВАНІЕ НИКОЛАЯ II (1894–1914). Изд. „Кадима“, Петроград. 85 страниц. 250. Израиль фридлендер. Памяти родной души. „Еврейскій Вѣстник“ (Петроград), № 1.

251. 252.

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Національное об‘единеНіе (Палестинскій мандат и Литовская автономія). „Разсвѣт“ (Берлин), № 22. Из письма к другу (М. Винаверу о перспективах больше­ вицкой Россіи). „Еврейская Трибуна“ (Париж), № 34. 1923

Поэтическая трилопія Бялика. „РазсВѣт“ (Берлин) № 1. ЕВРЕИ В РОССІИ И ЗАПАДНОЙ ЕВРОПѢ В ЭПОХУ АНТИСЕМИТСКОЙ РЕАКцІИ (1881–1914). Москва— Петроград, изд. Френкеля, 128+100+148 страниц, (Из­влеченіе из ІІІ тома „Новѣйшей истори“, с примѣчаніями в руском отдѣлѣ. 255–257. НОВѢЙШАЯ ИСТОРІЯ ЕВРЕЙСКАГО НАРОДА: том І (1789– 1815), 3 изданіе, дополненное; том ІІ (1815–1881), 3 изд. дополн.; том ІІІ (1881–1914), первое изданіе. Берлин, изд. „Грани“, 308+475+538 страниц. 258. Третья гайдамачина: вступленіе к книгѣ Чериковеpа „Погромы на Украинѣ 1917–18 гг.“, стр. 9–15. Берлин, 1923.

253. 254.

1924–1925 259–260. ВСЕМИРНАЯ ИСТОРИЯ ЕВРЕЙСКОГО НАРОДА. Восточ­ ный период. Том I: древнейшая история. 3–е изданіе, исправленное. Берлин „Гешер“, 484 страницы.—Том II: древняя история. Берлин. 536 стран, (по новой орфог­ рафии). 261. Партiйное и народное дѣло (о Еврейском Агентствѣ). Сборник „Свершеніе“, Берлин, стр. 98–101. 1934–1935 262–263. КНИГА ЖИЗНИ. Воспоминанiя и размышленія. Матерiалы для исторiи моего времени. Том I (до 1903 г.). 428 страниц. Рига 1000 экз.—Том II (1903–1922 г.). Рига, 376 стран. 1000 зкз.

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264–267. * ИСТОРИЯ ЕВРЕЕВ В ЕВРОПЕ от начала их поселенiи до конца XVIII века. Том I. Средние века до конца крестовых походов. 384 стран.—Том II: Позднее средневековье до нзгнанія из Испании. 429 стр.—Том III. Новое время (XVI– XVII в.). 384 стран.—Том IV. Но­вое время (XVII–XVIII в.). 392 стран. Рига. 1750 экз. 1937–1938 268–270. * НОВЕЙШАЯ ИСТОРИЯ ЕВРЕЙСКОГО НАРОДА от французской революции до наших дней. Том I. Эпоха первой эмансипации (1789–1815). 349 стран—Том II. Эпоха первой реакціи и второй эмансипации (1815–1880). 408 стр.—III. Эпоха антисемитской реакции и национального движения (1881–1914) с Эпилогом (1914–1938) 480 стран Рига. 1200 экз.—Эпилог напе­чатан также отдѣльно, 100 оттисков. 1939 271–273. * ИСТОРИЯ ЕВРЕЙСКОГО НАРОДА НА ВОСТОКЕ (томы I–III „Всемир. истории евр. нар.“) Том I. Древнейшая история до конца персид. владычества. 416 стр. II. Древняя история до падения иудейского го­сударства. 476 стр. III. Древняя и средняя история до упадка автономных центров на Востоке, 446 стран. Рига. 1200 экз. 274. Русско—еврейская интеллигеиція в историческом аспекѣ. „Еврейскій Mip“, ежегодник. Париж, Об’единеніе русско-еврейской интеллигенціи. (Стр. 11–16). 275. Пробужденіе міровой совѣсти и участь еврейства. Ежемѣсячник „Русскія зсписки“, книга IV. стран. 140–147. Париж.

* №№ 264–273 содержат русскiй орнгинал десатитомной « Всемiрной нсторiн сарейскаго народа », изданный в трех циклах: Западный перiод (4 тома), НоИѣйшая нсторiн (3 тома) н Восточный перiод (3 тома).



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II. In German 1.

DIE JÜDISCHE GESCHICHTE: ein Geschichtsphilosophischer Ver­ such. Autorisierte Übersetzung von I. F. (Friedlän­der). Berlin 1898. VI+89 S.—2. Auflage, Frankfurt а. M. 1921. VIII+111. 2. DIE GRUNDLAGEN DES NATIONALJUDENTUMS. Über­setzt von I. Friedländer, mit einer Vorrede d. Verfassers. Ber­lin, Jüdischer Verlag 1905. 69 S. 3–5. DIE NEUESTE GESCHICHTE DES JÜDISCHEN VOL­KES. Band I–II (1789–1880). Deutsch von A. Eliasberg. Berlin, Jüd. Verlag, 1920. 334+518 S.—Band III (1881–1914). Deutsch v. E. Hurwicz. Berlin 1923. 586 S. 6. Die Apotheose des Geistes in der Poesie Bialiks. (Jüdische Rund­ schau, Berlin 1922, № 103). 7. Drei Stufen des Nationalismus. Sammelbuch zu Ehren N. Birn­ baums: „Vom Sinn des Judentums“, S. 44–47. Frankfurt 1925. 8. Antwort an die Fanatiker (Sprachenstreit). Jüd. Rundschau, Berlin 1925, № 11. 9–18. WELTGESCHICHTE DES JÜDISCHEN VOLKES. Band I–Х. Auto­ risierte Übersetzung aus d. Russischen von Dr. A. Steinberg. Berlin Jüdischer Verlag, 1925–1929. XXXI +486+604+595+504+527+499+ 547+444+528+574 Ss. 19. Das alte und das neue Judentum, übers, von E. Hurwicz. „Der Jude“. Sonderheft: Deutschtum u. Judentum. Berlin 1926. 20. Autonomismus, Jüdisches Lexikon, Bd. I, 615–617. Berlin 1927. Jüd. Verlag. 21. Jüdische Geschichtsschreibung. Jüd. Lexikon, Bd. II, 1081–85. Ber­ lin 1928. 22. Autonomie in der jüdischen Geschichte. Encyclopedia judai­ca, Band III, 749–758. Berlin 1929. Eschkol-Verlag. 23. Chassidismus, Encyclopedia Judaica, Bd. V, 359–368. Ber­lin 1930. 24–25. GESCHICHTE DES CHASSIDISMUS. Bd. I–II. Aus d. Hebräischen übersetzt von A. Steinberg. 340+336 S. Berlin, Jüd. Verlag, 1931. 26–28. WELTGESCHICHTE DES JÜDISCHEN VOLKES. Kurzgefasste Aus­ gabe in drei Bänden. In Verbindung mit dem Verfasser bearbeitet von Dr. A. Steinberg. Jüd. Verlag—Hozaah Ivrit. Berlin—Jerutalem 1937–38. 541+555+704 Ss. 29. MEIN LEBEN. Herausg. v. Dr. E. Hurwicz. Berlin 1937, Jüd. Büchervereinigung, 256 Ss.

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1.

Jewish Encyclopedia: a) Council of four lands. Vol. IV, 304–308; b) Frank, Jacob—vol. V. 475–478; c) Hasidism—vol. VI, 251–258. New York 1903–1904. (S. M. D.). 2. JEWISH HISTORY. An essay in the philosophy of history. Philadel­ phia 1903, Jewish Publication Society of America. XVI+184 pp. in 16°. 3. The leading motives of modern jewish history. Jewish Review. Lon­ don, May 1911. 4–6. HISTORY OF THE JEWS in Russia and Poland. Trans­lated by I. Friedlander. Vols. I–III. Philadelphia 1916–1920, 413+429+411 pp. in 16°. Jew. Publ. Society. 7. A Sociological conception of Jewish history. „Menorah-Journal“. New York 1928, № 3, pp. 257–267. 8. World Jewry since 1914. Herzls Memorial Book. pp. 282–296. New York 1929. Ed. „New Palestine“. 9. Encyclopedia of Social Sciences: articles Diaspora, Graetz, Jose­ phus Flavius, Jewish Autonomy. New York 1931–32, Columbia University. 10–12. AN OUTLINE OF JEWISH HISTORY. Vols. I–III, 313+228+324 pp. New York 1925, ed. Μ. Maisel. 13. A SHORT HISTORY OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE. Transl. by D. Mow­ showich. London 1936, 319 pp. IV. In French 1. HISTOIRE D’UN SOLDAT JUIF. Paris 1929, 66 pp. 16°. 2–3. HISTOIRE MODERNE du peuple juif. T. t: 1789–1848; t. II: 1848– 1914 avec Epilogue. Trad. par S. Jankelewitch. Paris, ed. Payot 1933, 793+890 pp. 4. Le livre de ma vie. Extraits par N. Gourfinkel. „Cahiers juifs“. Paris 1935, № 13, pp. 45–52. (см. I, №№ 262–263). 5. PRÉCIS DE L’HISTOIRE JUIVE des origines jusqu’a 1934. Trad. par J. Pougatz. Préface d’Andrè Spire. Ed. „Cahiers juifs“, Paris 1936. 320 pp. (см. VII, № 39). 6. A propos de la protection des minoritès juives. Reponse à M. Slios­ berg. (Révue juive de Genève. Fevrier 1937).



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V. In Spanish, Italian, Polish, Hungarian, Rumanian Bulgarian аnd Swedish 1–2. HISTORIA CONTEMPORANEA del pueblo judio. I parte: 1789–1815. Version castellanea de S. Resnick. Buenos-Aires 1925. 280 pp.—II parte: 1815–1880. Vers. castel. de L. Dujovne. Buenos-Aires 1928. 415 pp. Ed. Sociedad Hebraica Argentina. 3–5. MANUAL DE LA HISTORIA JUDIA. Version castellanea de S. Resnick. Part I–III. Buenos-Aires 1932–1935. Ed. „Judaica“. 6. A ZSIDOSAG TÖRTÉNETE az okortol napjaikig. Budapest 1935. 359 pp. 7. ISTORIA EVREILOR pentru scola si adulti. In romaneste de A. Feller. Vol. I. Bucuresti 1935. 139 pp. 8. HISTORIA ŽYDOW. Przeklad Z. Erlichowej i С. Slapakowej. Krakow 1939. 299 Str. 9. L’elemento ebraico nella dottrina Tolstojana. Corriere Israelitico 1912, № 9. pp. 174–175. Roma. 10. Ζ Ksiegi Žycia. Przeklad C. Slapakowej. „Opinia“ i „Nasza Opinia“, 1935–36, №№ 113–156. Warszawa-Lwow. 11. Judarnas Historia. Nationeras Bibliotek, red. Ehrenpreis, pp. 1–33. Stockholm 1920. 12. Judefrugans nationela lösing. „Israels nutid och framtid“. Red. Ehren­ preis. Stockholm 1920. 13. Страница из историята на еврейския нарол, по С. Дубнов. Время на френската революция. Бюлетин Еврейската Община. София 1937. VI. In Hebrew ‫ לאסוף חמר לבנין תולרות ישראל בפולין‬. . . ‫ קול קודא‬.‫נחפשה ונחקורה‬ ‫ ונס בקונטרס‬.)1892( ‫ אוריסה תרנ״ב‬.‫ קובץ ״פורס־ כיך ראשון‬.‫ורוסיה‬ .‫ עטוּרים‬24 ,‫מיוּחד‬ .)‫החסידים הראשונים בארץ ישראל (פרק חרש ט״הולדות החסירות״‬ .214–201 ‫ ע׳‬,)1894( ‫ אוד םה תרנ״ד‬,‫״פרדם״ כרך שני‬ ,‫ ״לוח אחיאסף׳׳ חרנ״ה‬.‫עלילח־דם בעיר באבאוונע ויהוכה לנזרת וועליזש‬ ‫ ״לוח אחיאסף״ תרנ״ו‬,‫ טלואים לקורות עלילת באבאוונע‬.1894 ‫ווארשא‬ .)1895( ,‫—פררם״ כרך נ׳‬.)‫ הרוגי מאהליב על נהר רניעפר (תט״ו‬.‫צאן ההרנה‬ .100–94 ‫ ע׳‬,)1896( ‫אודיסה תרנ״ו‬

.1* .2* .3* .4*

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‫חסידים פורצי נדר (מתקופת הריב בין החסידים והמתגגדים)‪ .‬״השלוח׳׳‬ ‫*‪ .5‬‬ ‫כרך שביעי‪ .320–314 ,‬אודיסה ‪.1901‬‬ ‫וער ארבע ארצות בפולין ויחוסו אל הקהלות‪ .‬ספר היובל לד״נ םוקולוב‪,‬‬ ‫*‪ .6‬‬ ‫עמוּד ‪ .261–250‬וואדשא ‪.1904‬‬ ‫קורות העברים לבתי ספר ‪ . . .‬עביית מאת א‪ .‬לובושיצקי‪ .‬חלק א—ג‪,‬‬ ‫‪ .7‬‬ ‫וואדשא ‪( 1910–1908‬ע״פ ספר הלמוד הרוסי‪ ,‬נדפס פעמיס רבות עם‬ ‫הוספות המת־נס)‪.‬‬ ‫פנקס המדינה של וער הקהלות הראשיות במדינת ליטא (שפ״ג‬ ‫‪ .8‬‬ ‫—תקב״א)‪ .‬ניפס מכ?? עם מלומאים ושגויי נוסחאות‪ ,‬עם תרגום רוסי‬ ‫הד״ר י‪ .‬טוכים‪ ,‬הקדמה והערות מאת העורך ש‪ .‬רוּבּנאוו‪ .‬הוספה‬ ‫ַ‬ ‫מאת‬ ‫ל״ייבר־סקיא סטארינא״‪ .‬שנת ‪ 1909‬ער ‪( 1918.‬עיין למעלה בחלק הר‬ ‫וּסי № ‪ ,186‬ולמטה № ‪.)23‬‬ ‫טבוא לתולרות החסידות‪( .‬תרגום כ‪ .‬קרופגיק בהשתתפוּת המחבר)‪.‬‬ ‫‪ .9‬‬ ‫קובץ ״העתיד״‪ ,‬ברלין ‪ .1911‬כיך שלישי‪ ,‬ע׳ ‪.102–73‬‬ ‫יסוד היהדות שבתורת טולסטוי‪ .‬שברי הגיוגות‪ .‬״השלוח״ כיך כ״ה‪,‬‬ ‫*‪ .10‬‬ ‫עמור ‪ .628–627‬אודיכה ‪.1911‬‬ ‫שתי פגישות‪ .‬לוכיון הטנוה מ‪ .‬ל‪ .‬לילינבלוס‪( .‬שבועון ״העולם״‪,9 № ,‬‬ ‫*‪ .11‬‬ ‫ווילנא ‪.)1910‬‬ ‫סוד הקיום וחוק הקיום של עם יעיאל‪( .‬״העתיר״ כיך ד׳‪ ,‬עמוד ‪–112‬‬ ‫*‪ .12‬‬ ‫‪ .)116‬בילין ‪.1912‬‬ ‫שלילח הנלות וחיובה בתירת אהר?העם‪( .‬״השלוה׳׳ כרך ל׳ ‪.210–206‬‬ ‫*‪ .13‬‬ ‫אודיסה ‪.)1914‬‬ ‫היסטוריה של איש צבא יהודי‪ .‬תרגוס טריבוש‪ .‬״התקופה״ כרך א׳‪,‬‬ ‫*‪ .14‬‬ ‫טוסקבה ‪( 1918‬למעלהחלק דוסי № ‪. . . )237‬‬ ‫מפנקםי קהלת מסטיסלאב (תק״ר‪ .‬תר״ד)‪ .‬קובץ ״העבר״ כרך א׳‪ ,‬ע׳‬ ‫*‪ .15‬‬ ‫‪ .75–63‬פטרוגראד‪.1918 ,‬‬ ‫‪ .Chassidiana‬קובץ כתבים‪ .‬כרווים ואנרוה בענין המחלוקוז בין‬ ‫*‪ .16‬‬ ‫החסידים והמתנגדים (ספר ״זמיר עריצים וחרבות צוּרים״)‪ .‬״העבי״‬ ‫כרך ב׳ ‪ .28–6‬פטרונראד ‪.1918‬‬ ‫כתבי התננדות על כת החסידים (תקל״ב—תקמ״א)‪ :‬קונטרם ״מחשבות‬ ‫*‪ .17‬‬ ‫כסיליס‪ .‬קובץ ״דביר׳׳‪ ,‬כרך א׳‪ ,‬עמוּר ‪ .305–279‬ברלין ‪.1923‬‬ ‫ש״י איש וזורביץ‪ .‬קטעי זכדונות‪( .‬״דמון״‪ ,‬חובדת ג׳‪ .‬כ״ט—לי)‪ .‬ברלין‬ ‫*‪ .18‬‬ ‫‪.1923‬‬ ‫שלש מדרגות בלאומיות (לחג היובל של נ‪ .‬בידנבוים)‪ .‬״העולם № ‪,52‬‬ ‫*‪ .19‬‬ ‫לונדון ‪.)7 № ,II( .1924‬‬ ‫‪ .20–22‬דברי ימי ישראל בדורות האחרונים‪ .‬עברית ב‪ .‬קרופניק בהשתתפות‬ ‫המחבר‪ .‬כרך א‪ ,‬ב‪ ,‬ג‪ .‬כרלין ״דביר״‪402+358+256 .1924–1923 ,‬‬ ‫עמורים‪( .‬עיין ‪.)257–255 № ,I‬‬ ‫‪* The asterisks indicate that the original was written in Hebrew.‬‬

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‫פנקם מדינת ליטא‪ :‬קובץ תקגות ופסקים משנח שפ׳׳ג ער תקכ״א‪.‬‬ ‫*‪ .23‬‬ ‫ערוך בצרוף מבוא והערות ע?י ש‪ .‬דובנוב‪ .‬ברלין‪ ,‬״עינות״‪ .1925 ,‬עמ׳‬ ‫‪.358+XXXI‬‬ ‫תשונה לקנאים (ריב לשןנות)‪ .‬״העולם״ ‪( 6 № ,1925‬עיין ‪.)8 № ,II‬‬ ‫*‪ .24‬‬ ‫אנרוח חבעשיט ותלטידיו‪ :‬אטת אן ןיוף? ״קרית ספר״‪ ,‬שנה ב ‪1926‬‬ ‫*‪ .25‬‬ ‫(ירןשלים)‪ .‬עמ ‪.211–204‬‬ ‫אנטונומיה בתולדות ישראל‪ .‬״אשכול״‪ :‬אנציקלופדיה ישראלית‪ .‬חוברת‬ ‫*‪ .26‬‬ ‫לדוגמא‪ .‬ברלין ‪( .1926‬נדפס ג״כ בכרך א׳ של האנציקלופדיה)‪.‬‬ ‫מסקנות אחרונות בשאלות הכוזרים‪ .‬ספר זכרון לכבור רש״א פוזננםקי‪,‬‬ ‫*‪ .27‬‬ ‫וורשא ‪( .1926‬עמור ‪ 4–1‬בחלק העברי)‪.‬‬ ‫איש האמת‪ :‬על מות אחד־העס‪( .‬״העולם״ ‪ ,1927‬גליון א‪ ,‬לונדון)‪.‬‬ ‫*‪ .28‬‬ ‫מגלת סתרים של אחר־העם‪( .‬כרוז לאחר טבח קישינוב)‪ .‬״התקופה״‬ ‫‪ .29‬‬ ‫‪ ,1928‬כרך כ״דּ‪ ,‬עט׳ ‪ .420–416‬ברלין‪.‬‬ ‫‪ . 30–39‬דברי ימי עם עולם‪ .‬תולרות עם ישראל מימי קרם ער היום הזה‪ .‬עברית‬ ‫ב‪ .‬קרופניק בהשתתפות המחבי‪ .‬עשרה כרכים‪ ,‬חל־אביב׳ ״דביר״‬ ‫‪( ,1939–1929‬שלשת הכיכים האחרונים הם מהדורא חישה של ״דורות‬ ‫האחרונים״‪ ,‬למעלה כימן ‪ ,22–20‬והאחיון עם תקונים ומלואיכ)‪.‬‬ ‫תולדות החסידות בתקופת צמיחתה וגידולה‪ .‬םפר ראשון‪ :‬תקיפת‬ ‫*‪. 40‬‬ ‫הצמיחה והפולמוסיס הראשונים (ת״ק—תקמ״א); ספר שני‪ :‬תקיפת‬ ‫הגידול וההתפשטות (תקמ״ב—תקע׳׳ה); ספר שלשי‪ :‬חיי החסידים‪.‬‬ ‫תוספות ומלואים‪ .‬תל־אביב‪ ,‬״דביר״‪ 494+XVI .1931–1930 ,‬עמודים‪.‬‬ ‫תלמידים יהודים באוניברסיטה שבפרוכה כמאה הי״ו והי״ח‪ .‬״ספר‬ ‫*‪ .41‬‬ ‫השנה ליהודי אמריקה״‪ ,‬ניו יארק ‪1931.‬‬ ‫היסטוריה יהודית לילדים‪ .‬מתורגם ע״י י‪ .‬ל‪ .‬ברוך‪ .‬חלק‪ .‬ראשון‪:‬‬ ‫‪ .42‬‬ ‫התקופה המזרחית; חלק שני‪ :‬התקופה המערבית‪ .‬חל=אףנ‪ ,‬״דביר״‪,‬‬ ‫‪ 190+170 ,1938 ,1935‬עמוד‪( .‬תרגום מאידיש‪.)39 № VII ,‬‬ ‫םפר החיים (זכרונות)‪ .‬תרגום מ‪ .‬בן=אליעזר‪ .‬םפר ראשון‪.1890–1870 :‬‬ ‫‪ .43‬‬ ‫תל=אביב‪ ,‬״רביר״‪ 289 ,1936 ,‬עמודים‪.)262 ,I( ,‬‬ ‫מכתבים על היהדות הישנה והחדשה‪ .‬מהרורה מתוקנת (קיצור)‪.‬‬ ‫‪ .44‬‬ ‫עברית מאת א‪ .‬לוינסון בהשתתפות המחבר‪ .‬תל=אביב‪ ,‬״דביר׳׳ ‪.1937‬‬ ‫‪ 144‬עמודים‪.‬‬ ‫פילוסופיה בכתבי הקורש‪ .‬פתיחה‪ .‬ספר היובל לקלוזנר‪ ,‬ע’ ‪,320–316‬‬ ‫*‪ .45‬‬ ‫תל=אביב ‪.1936‬‬ ‫‪VII. In Yiddish‬‬ ‫‪ .1‬‬ ‫*‪ .2‬‬

‫פארמיי‪ ,‬אירע פ־יינר אוּן נעגנער‪( .‬״רעד פרייגד״ ‪,1907‬‬ ‫פאלקס = ֵ‬ ‫די ׇ‬ ‫פעכּרואר‪ 35 № ,‬פעטערכּוּרנ)‪.‬‬ ‫ֵ‬ ‫‪12‬‬ ‫נס=בּאוועגוגג (״פריינר״ ‪,1907‬‬ ‫ֵ‬ ‫ציא‬ ‫עמיגרא ׇ‬ ‫ֵ‬ ‫כּאוועגוּגג און‬ ‫פרייהייטם = ֵ‬ ‫פעכּרואר‪.)43–42 №№ ,‬‬ ‫ֵ‬ ‫‪22–12‬‬

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‫פראנע אוּן די דומע (די ֵאנקעטע פון ״פרמרי״)‪ ,‬״פריינד״‬ ‫ֵ‬ ‫די יוּרישע‬ ‫‪ .2а‬‬ ‫‪.1908‬‬ ‫נאוויטש‪,‬‬ ‫למא ׇ‬ ‫קא ַ‬ ‫ַאלגעמיינע איךישע געשׁיכטע‪ .‬איכּערגעזעצט פוּן ז‪ַ .‬‬ ‫‪ .3‬‬ ‫מיט ַא הקדמה פוּן מחכּר‪ II–I .‬טייל‪ :‬די ַאלטע געשיכטע‪ .‬ווילנע‪,‬‬ ‫רנאלין‪.1910 ,‬‬ ‫מא ׇ‬ ‫רלאנ ַ‬ ‫פא ַ‬ ‫ַ‬ ‫נאכין דרייסיקיעריגען קייג‪( .1911–1881 :‬״די אירישע װעלט״ ‪,№ 1 1912‬‬ ‫ׇ‬ ‫*‪ .4‬‬ ‫פעטערכּוּרג)‪.‬‬ ‫שפ־אך פין רוסישע‬ ‫ַ‬ ‫מאליקע‬ ‫עטלעכע ווערטער צוּם ַארטיקל ״רי ַא ָ‬ ‫*‪ .5‬‬ ‫(זאמלבּוּך ״רער פנקס״‪ ,‬ווילנע ‪.)1913‬‬ ‫אידען״‪ַ .‬‬ ‫(״ראס אירישע‬ ‫ָ‬ ‫טאקטיק אין רוּמע‬ ‫וועלט=פראנע; ב) רי אירישע ַ‬ ‫ַ‬ ‫א) די‬ ‫*‪ .6‬‬ ‫ווארט״ און ״אירישע וועלמ״‪ .‬פעטערכּוּרג ‪.)1916‬‬ ‫ָ‬ ‫ראציע)‪.‬‬ ‫לפוּר=דעקלא ַ‬ ‫ַ‬ ‫(כּא‬ ‫ַ‬ ‫א) דער נייער םכּוּל; כ) מש׳ח׳ם ציימען‬ ‫*‪ .7‬‬ ‫לקסכּלאט״ ‪ 1918–7191‬פעטערבּוּרג‪ 1 №№ ,‬און ‪.2‬‬ ‫ַ‬ ‫פא‬ ‫״אירי=שעם ָ‬ ‫זאמלכּוּך צוּם ַאנרענק‬ ‫יארען‪ .‬נינער‪ַ ,‬‬ ‫שלום=עליכס אין רי ַאכציגער ָ‬ ‫*‪ .8‬‬ ‫פוּן שלום=עליבס‪ .‬פעטערבּוּרנ ‪( .1917‬ו‪ָ ,‬אפטייל ‪.)231 № ,I‬‬ ‫פאלק‪ .‬איכּערגעועצט פוּן ליכּערמאן—‬ ‫פאר שוּל אוּן ָ‬ ‫אידישע געשיכטע ַ‬ ‫‪ .9‬‬ ‫ניוּיארק מיזעל‪( .1917–1915 ,‬ז‪.)172 № I .‬‬ ‫ָ‬ ‫ליפשיץ‪ ,‬אין רדיי טיילען‪.‬‬ ‫שלום=קאננרעם? (העפטען ״פוּן צייט‬ ‫ָ‬ ‫טאן אויפן‬ ‫האכּען מיר צוּ ָ‬ ‫וואס ָ‬ ‫ָ‬ ‫*‪ .10‬‬ ‫צוּ צייט״ ‪ ,№ 1‬פעטעיכּוּרג ‪.)1918‬‬ ‫נאיויטש‪,‬‬ ‫לםא ָ‬ ‫קא ַ‬ ‫ַאלגעמיינע אידישע געשׁיכטע‪ ,‬איבּערגעזעצמ פוּן ז‪ַ .‬‬ ‫‪ .11‬‬ ‫צעהן טייל (העפטען)‪ :‬פוּן עלטסטע ציטען בּיז מנשה בּן יטראל‪ .‬יוילנס‪,‬‬ ‫רנאלין ‪( 1920‬ו‪.)3 № .‬‬ ‫מא ָ‬ ‫ַ‬ ‫נאמיע‬ ‫ווטא ָ‬ ‫פארטיי=שטרייט איכּעד ַא ָ‬ ‫אל תרגזו כרדך‪ .‬וועגען רעם ַ‬ ‫*‪ .12‬‬ ‫מאי)‪.‬‬ ‫קאיונע ‪ַ 20 ,1922‬‬ ‫שפראך‪( .‬צייטוּנג ״גייס״‪ָ ,‬‬ ‫ַ‬ ‫אוּן‬ ‫כּאגר ‪ ,)1815–1789( I‬איכּ‬ ‫פאלק‪ַ .‬‬ ‫‪ . 13–15‬די נייסטע געשיכטע פוּן אירישען ָ‬ ‫־לאנ‪276+VIII .‬‬ ‫פא ַ‬ ‫ערגעזעצט פוּן נ‪ .‬שטיף‪ .‬בּערלין ‪ .1923‬איר‪ .‬לימער‪ַ .‬‬ ‫וואר=טע ‪,1926‬‬ ‫כּאנר ‪ ,)1880–1815( II‬א ֹבּערז‪ .‬נ‪ .‬שטיף‪ַ .‬‬ ‫זייטן‪ַ .‬‬ ‫כּאנר ‪ ,)1914–1881( III‬אי־כּערז‪ .‬ח‪ .‬קאזשראן‪.‬‬ ‫קוּלטוּר=ליגע‪ 427 ,‬זייטן‪ַ .‬‬ ‫ווארשע ‪1928‬־‪ 556‬זייטן‪.‬‬ ‫ַ‬ ‫״פארווערטם״‬ ‫גראמען‪ .‬צוויי ַארטיקלען אין ָ‬ ‫פא ָ‬ ‫רעוואלוּציעס מיט איריטע ָ‬ ‫ָ‬ ‫*‪. 16‬‬ ‫ניוּארק‪.‬‬ ‫‪ַ 15–8( 1923‬אפריל)‪ָ ,‬‬ ‫יאר אירישע געשיכטע‪.1924–1914 :‬‬ ‫טרןיעריקער סך=הכל פוּן צעהן ָ‬ ‫*‪ .17‬‬ ‫נאװ‪.)1924 ,‬‬ ‫ניוּיארק‪ָ 23 ,‬‬ ‫ָ‬ ‫טאנ״‬ ‫(״רער ָ‬ ‫זאמלכּוּך ״אין אוגוער תקוּפה״‪.156–145 ,‬‬ ‫טאגבּוּך (‪ַ .)1918–1917‬‬ ‫פוּן מיין ָ‬ ‫‪. 18‬‬ ‫כּערלין ‪.1924‬‬ ‫ספעקטאר‪.‬‬ ‫ָ‬ ‫לקסכּלאט״‪,‬‬ ‫ַ‬ ‫״פא‬ ‫ָ‬ ‫רגאן צוּ אידיש‪ :‬פעטערכּוּרגער‬ ‫זשא ָ‬ ‫ַ‬ ‫פוּן‬ ‫*‪ .19‬‬ ‫ניוּיארק ‪.1925‬‬ ‫ָ‬ ‫טא״;‬ ‫ָ‬ ‫סאן‪ ,‬שלום=עליכם‪ ,‬מענרעלע‪( .‬״דער‬ ‫רינע‪ָ :‬‬ ‫נוא‪ .)-‬ז‪ .‬װייטער № ‪.25‬‬ ‫יא ַ‬ ‫״פרימארנן״ רינע ‪ַ .1926‬‬ ‫ָ‬ ‫יוּני—אווגוּסמ;‬ ‫ַ‬ ‫‪* The asterisks indicate that the original was written Yiddish.‬‬

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‫(״ליטערארישע בּלעטער״ ‪,1927‬‬ ‫ַ‬ ‫מאיויטט‪.‬‬ ‫כּרא ָ‬ ‫מענרעלע=א ַ‬ ‫ֻ‬ ‫זכרונות װעגן‬ ‫‪ .20‬‬ ‫וא־שע‪ .‬איכּערגעדרוקמ אין בּוּך ״מענרעלע=טורעם״‪ .‬כּ‬ ‫№№ ‪ַ ,50–44‬‬ ‫״אלע װערק פוּ; מענדעלע״‪( 1928 ,‬ז‪.)245 № ,I .‬‬ ‫ַאנר ‪ֻ 22‬‬ ‫דעפעראט אויף רער‬ ‫ַ‬ ‫מאל אוּ; הינט‪.‬‬ ‫פאר אירישע דעכט ַא ָ‬ ‫קאמף ַ‬ ‫דער ַ‬ ‫*‪ .21‬‬ ‫נאלע מינדערהיטען ַאייגוּםס‬ ‫ציא ַ‬ ‫נא ָ‬ ‫קאנפערענץ פוּן איריטע ַ‬ ‫ציריכער ָ‬ ‫ניןיארק אץ ַאנדעדע צייטוּננען)‪.‬‬ ‫ָ‬ ‫טאנ״‬ ‫‪( .1927‬״דמד ָ‬ ‫נאמישע‬ ‫ןא ָ‬ ‫נאמישען נעשיכמע (ע ָ‬ ‫עקא ָ‬ ‫ָ‬ ‫וואם פעהלט אוּנז און רעד‬ ‫ָ‬ ‫*‪ .22‬‬ ‫וויםענשאפטליכען אינסטיטוּט אין װילנע‪ .‬כּאנר‬ ‫ַ‬ ‫שריפטן פוּן אידישען‬ ‫‪ .183–180 I‬בּערלין ‪.)1928‬‬ ‫רוּסלאנר בּעסער ווי אין ַאגרערע לענדער? ענםפער‬ ‫ַ‬ ‫לעכּען אירען אין‬ ‫*‪ .23‬‬ ‫ניוּיארק פוּן ‪ַ 7‬אפריל‬ ‫ָ‬ ‫טאג״‪,‬‬ ‫רעם װײםרוּםישען פרעןירענט‪( .‬״רער ָ‬ ‫‪.)1928‬‬ ‫װארשע ‪,1928‬‬ ‫(ליטעראדישע כלעטער״ ַ‬ ‫ַ‬ ‫פאלק=דיכטעד‪.‬‬ ‫פרוּג ַאלם ָ‬ ‫*‪ .24‬‬ ‫ניוּיארק‪ .‬דעצ‪.)1928 .‬‬ ‫ָ‬ ‫״פאדװערטס״‬ ‫ָ‬ ‫№ ‪;52‬‬ ‫ליטערארישע וכרונןװ‪.‬‬ ‫ַ‬ ‫רגאן צוּ אידיש אוּן ַאנרערע ַארטיקלען‪.‬‬ ‫זשא ָ‬ ‫ַ‬ ‫פוּן‬ ‫*‪ .25‬‬ ‫װילנק‪ ,‬קלעצקין ‪ 177 ,1929‬וײטען‪( .‬זעה אויכּן №№ ‪.)24 ,20 ,19‬‬ ‫דער צװײטער חורבּן פוּן אוּקרײנע (‪ :)1768‬דרײ טעקםטן פוּן ״מעשה‬ ‫*‪ .26‬‬ ‫בּאנד ‪,I‬‬ ‫היסטארישע שריפטן פוּן יו"א‪ַ ,‬‬ ‫ָ‬ ‫נדולה מן אומאן ואוקרײנא״‪.‬‬ ‫ווילנע‪.1929 ,‬‬ ‫צורקולאר ַארמיקל אין ‪ITA‬‬ ‫ַ‬ ‫רי בּלוּטיגע געשעהענישן אין ארץ יאראל‪.‬‬ ‫*‪ .27‬‬ ‫סעפטעמבּער ‪( ,1929‬געדרוּקט אין אירישע צײטוּנגען)‪.‬‬ ‫װארשע‬ ‫זאמלכּוּ‪ַ .‬‬ ‫(זשיטלאװםקי‪ַ :‬‬ ‫ָ‬ ‫נאמיום‪.‬‬ ‫װטא ָ‬ ‫זשיטלאװםקי ם ַא ָ‬ ‫ַ‬ ‫*‪ .28‬‬ ‫‪ ,1929‬ו‪.)195–190 .‬‬ ‫װםיסנשאפטלעכן איגסטיטוּט‬ ‫ַ‬ ‫בּאדײטוּנג פוּן אידישן‬ ‫היסטארישע ַ‬ ‫ָ‬ ‫די‬ ‫*‪ .29‬‬ ‫(ליט‪ .‬בּלעטער ‪.)43 № ,1929‬‬ ‫ניוּיארק‪.‬‬ ‫ָ‬ ‫טאג״‪,‬‬ ‫טאגבּוּך פוּן דער מלחמה צײט (״דער ָ‬ ‫פעטערבּוּרגער ָ‬ ‫*‪ .30‬‬ ‫קטאבּער ‪.)1929‬‬ ‫ָאפריל‪ָ ,‬א ָ‬ ‫נעועלשאפט אין‬ ‫ַ‬ ‫היסטארישער‬ ‫ָ‬ ‫רבּאטענע זכרונות‪ :‬װעגען דער‬ ‫פא ַ‬ ‫ַ‬ ‫*‪ .31‬‬ ‫גיויארק)‪.‬‬ ‫ָ‬ ‫נאװ‪,1929 .‬‬ ‫טאג״ ‪ָ 10‬‬ ‫פעטער=בּוּרג‪( .‬״רעד ָ‬ ‫געועלשאפט‬ ‫ַ‬ ‫גראפישער‬ ‫דיש=עטנא ַ‬ ‫ָ‬ ‫היסטא‬ ‫ָ‬ ‫ַא מצבה אויפן קבר פוּן רעי‬ ‫*‪ .32‬‬ ‫״ליטעדארישע בּלעטעד״ ‪( 6 ,5 №№ ,1930‬זעה אויכּ‬ ‫ַ‬ ‫אין פעטערבּוּרג‪.‬‬ ‫ן № ‪.)31‬‬ ‫בּאנר ‪.I‬‬ ‫פאלק‪ .‬מורח‪ :‬תקוּפה‪ַ .‬‬ ‫אוּראלטע געשיכטע פוּן אידישן ָ‬ ‫ַ‬ ‫‪ .33–34‬די‬ ‫װארשע ‪ ,1930‬קוּלטוּר=ליגע‪ 486 .‬וייטן‪—.‬די‬ ‫פארט‪ַ .‬‬ ‫פא ָ‬ ‫רא ָ‬ ‫אידיש פוּן ַ‬ ‫כּאנד ‪ .II‬אידיש פוּן האדעם‪.‬‬ ‫פאלק‪ֵ .‬‬ ‫ֵאלטע געשיכטע פוּן אירישן ָ‬ ‫װארשע ‪ 587 ,1931‬ןייטן‪.‬‬ ‫ַ‬ ‫בּאנד‪.‬‬ ‫נאװיטש‪ .‬עישטער ַ‬ ‫למא ָ‬ ‫קא ַ‬ ‫‪ .35–36‬געשיכטע פוּן חסידיום‪ .‬איבּערו‪ ,‬ז‪ֻ .‬‬ ‫בּאגר‪327 .‬‬ ‫פארטרעט‪ .‬ווילנע יװ״א ‪ ;1930‬צװײטער ַ‬ ‫‪ 275+VII‬זייטן מיט ָ‬ ‫זײטן‪ ,‬װילנע יװ״א ‪( ,1933‬איכּערגעועצט פוּן עברית ‪ָ ,40 № .VI‬אן די‬ ‫בּײלאגען)‪.‬‬ ‫ַ‬

‫‪auto bibliography‬‬ ‫*‪ .37‬‬ ‫*‪ .38‬‬ ‫*‪ .39‬‬

‫‪ .40‬‬

‫‪ .41‬‬ ‫‪. 42‬‬ ‫‪ .43‬‬ ‫*‪ .44‬‬ ‫*‪ .45‬‬ ‫*‪ .46‬‬ ‫*‪ .47‬‬ ‫*‪ .48‬‬ ‫*‪ .49‬‬ ‫*‪ .50‬‬ ‫*‪ .51‬‬

‫ ‪268‬‬

‫קאמף פוּן השכלה קעגן חסידוּה; פוּן מײן ַארכיוו—יװ״א=בּ‬ ‫דער ערשטער ַ‬ ‫בּאגד ‪ ,I‬ז‪ ,404 ,4 .‬ווילנע‪.‬‬ ‫לעטער ‪ַ ,1931‬‬ ‫נאמישע שריפטן פוּן יוּו״א‪.‬‬ ‫עקא ָ‬ ‫ָ‬ ‫יאר ‪,1808‬‬ ‫די ״נאווי=שילעניעס״ אין ָ‬ ‫בּאנר ‪ .ΙΙ‬בּערלין ‪.1932‬‬ ‫ַ‬ ‫אילוּסטראציעמ‪.‬‬ ‫ַ‬ ‫פאר קינדער‪ .‬מיט ‪70‬‬ ‫אידישע געשׁיכטע דערצײלט ַ‬ ‫זײטן‪—.‬דאםזעלכּע איכּערגעדרוּקט אין רינע ‪–1934‬‬ ‫ָ‬ ‫בּערלין ‪288 .1932‬‬ ‫פאר שול אוּן ה״ם״ אין צװײ‬ ‫‪ 1939‬אוּנטערן טיטוּל‪ :‬״אידישע געשיכטע ַ‬ ‫טײלן‪ :‬מורח=תקוּפה און מערב=תקוּפה‪ ,‬מיט דערגענצוּגג אין לעצטן‬ ‫קאפיטל‪.‬‬ ‫ַ‬ ‫קינרער=יארן‪ .‬״צוּקוּגפט״ ‪ ,1932‬העפט‬ ‫ָ‬ ‫פוּן מײן לעבּענס=בּוּך‪ :‬די‬ ‫װאנרער=יארן‪ .‬״צוּקוּנפפ״ ‪,1933‬‬ ‫ָ‬ ‫ניוּיארק‪—.‬די‬ ‫ָ‬ ‫םעפטעמבּער=רעצעמבּער‪.‬‬ ‫ווארשע ‪–1932‬‬ ‫״מאמענט״‪ַ ,‬‬ ‫ָ‬ ‫י=אװגוּסט‪( .‬איבּערגעדרוקט אץ‬ ‫מא ַ‬ ‫העפט ַ‬ ‫טשערוקאװער‪—.‬דוּ ָארע=סער‬ ‫ָ‬ ‫‪ .).1933‬איבּערגעזעצמ מײסטנס פוּן ַא‬ ‫צײט (‪ .)1897–1890‬״צוּקוּנפט״ ‪ ,1934‬העפט‪.8–4 ,2–1 ,‬‬ ‫קטאכּער‬ ‫ניוּיארק ‪ָ ,1933–1932‬א ָ‬ ‫ָ‬ ‫טאג״‬ ‫מײנע וכרונות (‪ .)1890–1881‬״דער ָ‬ ‫טשעריקאװעד)‪.‬‬ ‫ָ‬ ‫סערץ (א‪.‬‬ ‫(״פרימארנן‪ ,‬ריגע‪ָ 4 ,‬אקט‪.(1933 ,‬‬ ‫ָ‬ ‫װענן דעס גורל פוּן דײטשע אירן‬ ‫װעלט=קאנגויעם‬ ‫ָ‬ ‫װעלטקאנגרעס? (רער אירישער‬ ‫ָ‬ ‫װאם ַא אירישער‬ ‫צוּ ָ‬ ‫‪ .2–1‬פאריוּ ‪.)1934‬‬ ‫(״דאם‬ ‫ַ‬ ‫קעגנזאץ צוּם ‪-19‬טען!‬ ‫ַ‬ ‫יארהוּנרערט זײן ַא‬ ‫װעט רער ‪-20‬טער ָ‬ ‫נראן ‪ 1934‬נוּמער ‪ ;54‬איבּערגעדרוּקט אין ַאנדעדע‬ ‫לא ָ‬ ‫װאדט״‪ָ ,‬‬ ‫פרײע ָ‬ ‫צײטוּנגען)‪.‬‬ ‫ענציקלאפעריע‪,‬‬ ‫ָ‬ ‫(אלגמײנע‬ ‫נאמיע אין רער אידישער געשיכטע ַ‬ ‫װטא ָ‬ ‫ַא ָ‬ ‫פארין ‪.)1934‬‬ ‫כּאנר ‪ .I‬וײט ‪ַ ,239–236‬‬ ‫װ=פאנר‪ַ .‬‬ ‫ָ‬ ‫דוּבּא‬ ‫ָ‬ ‫כּאנר ‪ .VIII‬ז‪.70=68 .‬‬ ‫נראפיע װעגען קרעמיע‪( .‬ײװ״א=בּלעטער ַ‬ ‫נא ַ‬ ‫מא ָ‬ ‫ַא ָ‬ ‫וױלנע ‪.)1935‬‬ ‫געהאלטען אין רימע‬ ‫ַ‬ ‫רעד רמבּ״ם אין דער איו ישער געשיכטע‪ַ ,‬א רערע‬ ‫(יװ״א‪:‬בּלעטער ‪ .)201–195 ,VIII‬וױלנע ‪.1935‬‬ ‫ריאנראפיע‪.‬‬ ‫היסטא ָ‬ ‫ָ‬ ‫צוּשטאנד פוּן דער אידישער‬ ‫ַ‬ ‫רעד איצטיקער‬ ‫מענפאר פוּן יװ״א‪ ,‬וױלנע ַאװגוּסט ‪ .1935‬יװ״א=‬ ‫ָ‬ ‫צוּוא‬ ‫ַ‬ ‫דעפע=ראט אויפן‬ ‫ַ‬ ‫בּלעטער ‪.294–289 ,VIII‬‬ ‫בּעסטיאליזם‬ ‫ַ‬ ‫יארהוּנדערט געגען ‪=19‬טעיִ;‬ ‫װוּהין געהען מיר? (‪:20‬טער ָ‬ ‫געגען הוּמאניום‪ ,‬עטישער קריטעריוּם) ״צוּקוּנפט״ ‪ ,1935‬יוּלי־העפט‪,‬‬ ‫‪( .398–392‬איבּערגעדרוּקט אין צײטוּנגען)‪.‬‬ ‫נוּאר=‬ ‫יא ַ‬ ‫ט=פאלק‪ .‬״צוּקוּנפט״ ‪ַ ,1986‬‬ ‫ָ‬ ‫װעל‬ ‫ִ‬ ‫פאר ַא‬ ‫ניואציע ַ‬ ‫רגא ַ‬ ‫װעלט=א ַ‬ ‫ָ‬ ‫ַא‬ ‫העפט‪( .30–28 ,‬איבּערגעדרוּקט אין צײטוּננען)‪.‬‬ ‫מארט‬ ‫רעװאלוּציע (א‪ .‬ליעסין‪ .‬״צוּקוּנפט״‪ַ ,‬‬ ‫ָ‬ ‫מאנטיקער פוּן דער‬ ‫רא ַ‬ ‫דער ָ‬ ‫ניץארק—‪.)164–163‬‬ ‫ָ‬ ‫‪.1936‬‬

‫‪269‬‬

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‫פראבּלעמען פוּן דער אידישער געשיכטע‪:‬‬ ‫ָ‬ ‫ַא בּוּך װעגן‬ ‫*‪ .52‬‬ ‫ניויאדק רעצעמבּער‬ ‫ָ‬ ‫‪ S. Baron, A History of the Jews‬״צוקונפט״‪.‬‬ ‫‪ ,1937‬ז‪.768–765 .‬‬ ‫פאלקם‬ ‫לאציע פוּן ״בּוּנד״ אוּן דקר ציוניסטישער ָ‬ ‫איוא ַ‬ ‫ָ‬ ‫װעגען דער‬ ‫*‪ .53‬‬ ‫ניוּיארק)‪.‬‬ ‫ָ‬ ‫בּאװענוּנג‪( .‬״צוּקוּנפט״ ‪ ,1938‬יוּני‪ ,‬ו‪.329 .‬‬ ‫ַ‬ ‫פאלק (אויפריף)‪.‬‬ ‫גאלע לינע קעכן ַאגרעסיע אויפן אירישן ָ‬ ‫ציא ַ‬ ‫אינטערנא ָ‬ ‫ַ‬ ‫*‪ .54‬‬ ‫מאי ‪( .1939‬איבּערגעדרוּקט אין ַאנדערע‬ ‫גיוּיארק ‪ַ 18‬‬ ‫ָ‬ ‫טאג״‪,‬‬ ‫״דער ָ‬ ‫צײטוּוגען)‪.‬‬ ‫ואמלבּיכעד‬ ‫טאן אין המנס צײטן! (״אויפן ש״רװעג״ ַ‬ ‫רארף טען ָ‬ ‫האס ַ‬ ‫ָ‬ ‫*‪ .55‬‬ ‫פארין ‪.)1939‬‬ ‫‪ ,№ 2‬וײט ‪ַ .7–3‬‬ ‫פאלק‪( III .‬פין סוף טורח=תקוּפה)‪ .‬איפערו‪.‬‬ ‫‪ .56–58‬װעלטגעשיכטע פוּן אידישן ָ‬ ‫זייטן)‪—.‬בּאגר ‪( VI‬מערב=תקוּפה‬ ‫ַ‬ ‫האדעם‪ .‬װילנע יװ״א ‪565( 1938‬‬ ‫ל‪ָ .‬‬ ‫קאלםאנאװיטש‪ .‬װילנע ‪448–1939‬‬ ‫ָ‬ ‫בּיו סוף קרײצצוּגן)‪ .‬איבּערז‪ .‬ז‪.‬‬ ‫שפאגיע‪ .‬װיל=נע‬ ‫ַ‬ ‫מיטלאלטער בּין גירוּש‬ ‫ַ‬ ‫זײטן‪—.‬בּאנד ‪ :V‬שפעטער‬ ‫ַ‬ ‫יװ״א ‪ 512( 1939‬זײטן)‪.‬‬

270

auto bibliography Appendix

Supplementary list of books by Simon Dubnow which appeared after 1939. In Russian Book of Life—Reminiscences and Reflections—Materials for the history of my time, Third volume (1922–1933), Riga, 1940 pp 192; republished by The Union of Russian Jews, Inc., New York, 1957. In English Nationalism and History—Essays on Old and New Judaism, Edited with an introductory essay by Koppel S. Pinson, The Jewish Publica­ tion Society of America, Philadelphia, 1958 pp 385. (Also published in a paperback edition.) In French Precis d’Histoire Juive des Origines a nos Jours, Trad, par I. Pougatch. Nouvelle édition complétée, Edition “Kyoum”, Paris 1946 pp 351. In Italian Breve Storia di Israele delle Origini ai Nostri Giorni, Casa Editrice Israel, Firenze, 1941 pp 277. In Spanish Historja Universale del Pueblo Judio, Volumes I–Х, edited and trans­ lated by L. Dujovne, Buenos Aires, 1928–1952. Manual de la Historia Judia, Version castellanea de S. Resnick, Edito­ rial Judaica, Buenos Aires, 1944 pp 663.



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271

In Rumanian Istoria Universala a Poporului Evreu, Volumes I–VI, Versiune roma­ nesca de Dr. S. Bainglass, Bucaresti, 1945–47. In Polish Historia Zydow, przekad Z. Erlichowej i C. Slapakowej, “Amikam” Walbrzych, 1948 pp 251. In Serbo-Chroat Kratka Istorija Jevrejskog Naroda, Prevod sa Engleskog i Francuskog Izdanja, Redaktori: David Levi-Dale, Luci Mevorah-Petrovic, Izdavac: Savez Jevrejskih Opstina Jugoslavije, Beograd, 1962 pp 275. In Yiddish World History of the Jewish People from the Earliest Times Until the Present Day, In ten volumes, Alveltlecher Yiddisher KulturKongres, New York—Buenos Aires, 1948–1958. Jewish History for School and Home with 70 illustrations and maps, Moshe Shmuel Shklarski, New York 1947, pp 285. Jewish History, Published by the Central Committee of the Liberated Jews in the American Zone, Munich, 1947 pp 288. Letters on Old and New Judaism, translated into Yiddish by Moshe and Saul Ferdman with an introduction and comments by Ch.S. Kashdan, Published by the Shlomo Mendelsohn Fund, Mexico, 1959 pp 464. Book of My Life—Reminiscences and Reflections—Material for the his­ tory of my time, Volume one: Until 1903, translated into Yiddish by I. Birnbaum, Published by the Alveltlecher Yiddisher Kultur-Kongres, Buenos Aires—New York, 1962 pp 385. In Hebrew World History of the Jewish People, translated into Hebrew by Baruch Krupnik, in ten volumes, DVIR Publishing House, Tel Aviv; reprinted from the 1929–1939 edition in 1940, 1945, 1947, 1950; a newly edited and re-arranged edition appeared in 1958.

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World History of the Jewish People, A popular edition in one volume, DVIR Publishing House, Tel Aviv, 1952 (fifth re-print in 1956). World History of the Jewish People in six volumes, edited with sup­ plementary chapters by Dr. S. L. Kirshenbaum, Published by “Yediot Achronot”, Tel Aviv, 1957. What is Jewish History? A philosophical-historical essay, translated by Jacob Mittelman, SINAI Publishing House, Tel Aviv, 1953. Simon Dubnow in Memoriam—Essays and Letters, edited by Simon Raw­ idowicz, Ararat Publishing Society, London—Jerusalem—Waltham, Mass, U.S.A., 1954.

Index Acosta, Uriel, 69, 94, 187 Agudas Yisrael, 196 Ahad Ha-Am (Asher Ginsberg), 124n, 134, 139, 142, 147–150, 153, 154, 173, 174, 195, 203, 207 “Ahasuerus, the eternal Jew,” legend of, 176 Ahiasaf Publishing House, 55 Aksakov, Ivan 60, 97 anti-Semitism, 52–53, 82–83, 85, 88, 97, 137, 168–169, 175, 189, 193, 199, 202, 218n, 220n anti-Semitic themes in Zionist ideology, according to Dubnow, 175 assimilation, Jewish, 154, 156, 168–172, 176–177, 180, 188, 220 autonomism, 155, 158–163, 221 Kant’s concept of the autonomy of the ethical will, 180, 214 Baal Shem Tov, see Besht Baeck, Rabbi Samuel, 127 Bauer, Otto, 160 See also Nationalism: Bruenn Congress Belinsky, Vissarion, 48, 51, 55, 58 Belorussia (Belarus), 9–10 Ben Ami (Mark Rabinovich), 134, 139 Ben-Avigdor (Abraham Leib Shalkovich), 59 Bentham, Jeremy, 40 Besht (the Baal Shem Tov), 70, 110, 111, 112, 135, 208 See also Hasidism Bialik, Chaim Nahman, 8, 134, 139, 147, 208 Birnbaum, Nathan, 159 Börne, Karl Ludwig, 31, 73, 84 Bramson, Leon, 140 Brann, Marcus, 127, 135 Buckle, Henry Thomas, 37, 43, 45 Büchner, Ludwig, 38–39 Bund (the General Jewish Labor Bund of Russia, Poland, and Lithuania), 137, 140, 146, 152, 153, 160–161, 166, 172–173, 196 Byron, George Gordon (Lord Byron), 46, 89, 90

Chernyshevsky, Nicholay, 36, 37, 55 Comte, Auguste, 37, 42, 45, 63–64, 184 Comtean Positivism, 42–43, 92, 108, 110, 118n, 121, 209 See also Positivism Council of the Four Lands, 102, 182, 205 “culture,” changing definitions of the term, 207 Darwinism, 108, 166 Dubnow’s version of Darwinism, 179 Den (the journal), 50 Depping, Georges Bernard, 31 diaspora, origins of the term, 202 diaspora nationalism, 52, 149, 155, 165–166, 182, 190, 205 Dubnow’s version of the “affirmation of the diaspora,” 203 Reform Judaism on “affirmation of the diaspora,” 203 See also nationalism Dinenson, Jacob, 58 Dinur, Benzion, 192 Dobrolyubov, Nikolay, 48, 55, 58 Dostoyevsky, Fyodor, 82 Draper, John, 37, 43 Dubnovism as an ideology, 166, 199 Dubnow on “the spiritual,” 118 Dubnow’s political liberalism, 44, 165–166, 192, 199, 205, 212 Dubnow’s “Romantic positivism,” 109 “New Judaism,” Dubnow’s conception of, 181–182, 211–213 Particularism and universalism, 203 “spiritual” or “cultural,” meaning of the term in Dubnow’s usage, 178–179, 185, 189, 197 thesis-antithesis-synthesis, Dubnow’s version of the dialectic, 62, 104, 153–154, 180–181, 197, 212 Dubnow, Benzion (Simon’s grandfather), 11–12, 25, 95, 104 Dubnow, Meir Jacob (Simon’s father), 12–13, 24 Dubnow, Sheyne (Simon’s mother), 13

274

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Dubnow, Simon, his later years, 191–197 Dubnow, murder of, 197 Dubnows in Berlin, 194–196 Dubnows in Kovno, 193–194 Dubnows in Riga, 196 Dubnow, Wolf, (Simon’s brother), 13, 27, 28, 30, 31, 54, 93, 98 Dubnow-Ehrlich, Sophie (Dubnow’s daughter, the poet), 152, 154n, 192, 196 Dubnow on the early historical evolution of the Jewish people, 204 Dubnow on Akiba, 67–68 Dubnow on Ezra, 66–67 Dubnow on Maimonides, 30, 69–70, 117 Dubnow on rabbinic law, 64–68, 77 Dubnow’s 1891 call for collection of East European Jewish historical sources, 102–103, 156 Dubnow’s concept of regional hegemonies in Jewish history, 115n, 185, 208 Dubnow’s children, 128, 152 See also Dubnow-Ehrlich, Sophie Dubnow’s writings, 127–128, 182, 195 Fun Zhargon tsu Yiddish, 183, 195 History of Hasidism, 127–128, 182, 195, 208 History of the Jews of Russia and Poland, 182, 192 Kniga Zhizni (as title of Dubnow’s autobiography), 124, 130 Letters on Old and New Judaism, 108, 136, 166, 176, 190, 220 Weltgeschichte des Jüdische Volk (World History of the Jewish People), 128, 184, 194–196. 203 “What is Jewish History?”, 113–118 Duma (the Russian parliament), 137, 141, 145–146, 162, 163, 165, 191, 205 Ehrlich, Henryk (Dubnow’s son-in-law), 196 Elisha ben Abuya (“Aher”), 68, 94 emancipation of Russian Jewry, 6, 50, 52–54, 62, 73–74, 82, 84, 85, 149, 160, 168, 192, 221 Enlightenment (general), 16, 18, 84, 109, 166, 170, 180–181, 207, 209, 213, 217, 219 See also Haskalah Erlich, Alexander (one of Dubnow’s grandsons), 196, 209n Erlich, Victor (one of Dubnow’s grandsons), 194, 196 Evreiskaia Entsiklopedia, 191

Evreiskaia Starina, 127, 192 expulsion of Jews from Moscow in 1891, 81, 218 Externus (one of Dubnow’s pen names), 61, 62, 74, 77, 104 Folksgruppe, 162 Folkspartei (Dubnow’s Folkist Party), 142, 158, 163, 181–182, 191, 196, 199 Franzos, Karl Emil, 59, 101 Freidlin, Ida (Dubnow’s wife), 44, 86 French Revolution and the Jews, 84, 102, 145 Frug, Simon, 97, 134, 143 Gomel pogrom of 1903, 139 Gordon, Judah Leib, 31–33, 55n, 59 Graetz, Heinrich, 108, 110, 112–118, 120, 126, 181, 183, 185–186, 201, 209 Günzberg, Baron David, 191 Günzberg, Baron Horace, 87, 140, 157 Günzburg, Mordecai, 19 “Haman’s Time”, 182, 210 Ha-Melitz (journal), 49, 50, 52, 54, 55, 56 Hartman, Eduard von, 60, 83 Ha-Shahar (journal), 51, 52 Ha-Shiloah (journal), 147 Hasidism, 77, 101, 108, 110–112 Hasidism, the attitude towards it by Dubnow and his circle, 134–135, 212 Haskalah, 16–24, 31–33, 44, 48, 49–51, 53, 62, 70, 101, 112, 133, 150–151, 161, 217 See also Mendelssohn See also Society for the Spread of Enlightenment among Jews (Hevrat Mefitzeh Or ve-Haskalah) Ha-Tzefirah (journal), 55 heder, 13–15, 21–22, 76, 156 See also Schools and schooling, Jewish Herzen, Alexander, 48, 155, 162 Herzl, Theodor, 137, 149, 218n Hettner, Hermann Theodor, 30, 37 Hibbat Tsiyon, Hovevei Tsiyon, 54–55, 71–72, 133, 147 Hibbat Tziyon, Dubnow’s rejection of, 133 See also Palestinophilism, Lovers of Zion “historical peoples” contrasted with “non-historical” peoples, 114, 204 “historism,” Dubnow’s conception of, 128, 182 Hugo, Victor, 46, 89, 110, 129



index

integratsiia dushi (integration of soul), Dubnow’s conception of, 123–124, 165 intelligentsia (the term), 34 Jewish Democratic Group, 141 Jewish Historical-Ethnographic Society, 191, 192 Jewish Popular Group, 141 Jewish Social Democratic Labor Party (Po’alei Tziyon), 140, 153, 162 Jewish vernacular languages, 206 journalism, Jewish, 48 journalism, Russian, 47–48 Kadets (Constitutional Democratic Party), 136, 141, 142, 162, 173, 191 kahal, 4–5, 157–158, 162, 180, 205 Kantor, J. L., 55n Karpeles, Gustav, 100 Kaufmann, Yehezkel, 52n, 150n, 187–190, 215n, 216n Kishinev pogrom of 1903, 137–140, 144, 217–218 Kol Mevasser (journal), 56 Kostomarov, Nikolai, 60 Kovner, Uri, 32, 50 Kritikus (one of Dubnow’s pen names), 58–61 Landau, Adolph, 56–57, 60, 87, 89, 96, 127 Lavrov, Peter, 118, 120–123 League for the Attainment of Full Rights for the Jews in Russia (“Attainers”), 140–141, 162 Leskov, Nikolai, 97 Levin, Shmarya, 141 Levinsohn, Isaac Baer, 19 Lewes, George Henry, 37, 46 Liberalism (general), 44, 166 See also Dubnovism, Dubnow’s political liberalism See also Kadets (Russian Constitutional Democratic Party) Lieberman, Aaron, 52 Lilienblum, Moshe Leib, 20n, 33–34, 50, 54, 134, 217 Lovers of Zion, 54, 62, 71 See Hibbat Tsiyon, Palestinophilism Macaulay, Thomas Babington, 110, 183 Mahler, Raphael, 17n, 114n, 186–189 Mapu, Abraham, 20–23, 32 Margulis, Michael, 134 Masaryk, Thomas, 39, 123

275

Maskilim, 11n, 16–19, 21, 24n, 33, 48–51, 55, 151, 206, 208–209 See also Haskalah May Laws of 1882, 73, 81, 97 Medem, Vladimir, 161 Mendele Mokher Seforim (Shalom Jacob Abramovitch), 60–61, 134, 150–152, 153, 154, 208 Mendelssohn, Moses, 18, 31, 51, 63, 70 Mendelssohnian Haskalah, 133 Michelet, Jules, 183 Mikhailovsky, Nicholas, 118, 120–123 Mill, John Stuart, 37, 41, 42, 45–46, 88, 95, 98, 107, 113, 118, 121, 147, 155, 178, 190 See also Utilitarianism Mogilev gubernia, statistical portrait of, 10, 100–101 Moleschott, Jacob, 38 Mommsen, Theodor, 99 monotheism, Jewish, 51, 63–64, 115–117, 187–188, 203 Mstislavl, 9–12, 23–24, 28–33, 43–44, 46, 86–87, 90–94, 104, 107–108, 135, 137 Mysteries of Paris, 19, 22 See Shulman, Kalman Narodnichestvo, 120–123 See also Populism nation, definition of, 200 nation, etymology of, 201 nationalism, modern, origins of, 207 Bruenn Congress of the Austrian Social Democratic Party (minority rights proposal), 159–160 Dubnow on nationalism, 71–72 nationalism, growth of, 215 nationality, as contrasted with ethnos, 216 Versailles treaties, minority-rights provisions, 162, 193 See also diaspora nationalism See also Hibbat Tziyon, Dubnow’s rejection of Nationalizing Committee for Jewish Education, in Odessa, 138–139, 150 Odessa, Dubnows in, 107–108, 126, 133 Dubnow’s Odessa circle of friends and associates, 142 Pale of Settlement, 3–4, 6, 29, 134, 166 Palestinophilism, 54, 62n, 75, 93, 125n, 137 See also Love of Zion, Hibbat Tziyyon Pinsker, Leon, 53, 54, 62, 71, 75, 134, 217

276

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Piragov, Nikolai, 97 Pisarev, Dmitry, 36–37, 39, 48, 50, 58, 147 Po’alei Tsiyon, 140, 153, 162 pogroms of 1881–1882, impact of, 53, 54n, 73–75, 82–83, 97, 138, 217 pogroms of October 1905, 137–139, 144 Populism, Russian, 129, 166 See Narodnichestvo Positivism, 37, 63, 88, 90, 93, 95–96, 107–109, 118, 121, 166, 183, 199, 209 “New Man,” Positivist conception of, 95 Russian Positivists, 208 See also Comte, Comtean Positivism Printsipialnost’, 44–45 Raszvet (journal), 49–50, 52, 54 Ratner, Mark, 140 Ravnitzky, Yehoshua Hana, 134, 139 Renan, Ernest, 46, 91–93, 98, 99, 107, 108, 110–112, 115, 147, 179, 226 Renner, Karl, 160 See Nationalism: Bruenn Congress revolutions of 1917 in Russia, 48 February revolution of 1917, 192 October revolution (Communist) of 1917, 192–193, 199, 205 Rubashov-Shazar, Zalman, 192 Russkii Evrei (journal), 47n, 53 schools and schooling for Jewish children, 5, 7, 14, 15, 27–28, 77, 137–138, 140, 156, 157, 159, 170 See Nationalizing Committee secularity, as contrasted with secularism, 209 secularization of Jewish culture, 207 Serp (Seimist) Party, 161 Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 46, 88, 89 Sholem Aleikhem (Solomon Rabinowitz), 61, 134, 208 Shulman, Kalman, 19, 21 See Mysteries of Paris Sliozberg, Henry, 140, 162 Smolenskin, Peretz, 51–54, 59, 62, 70, 71, 86 social Darwinism, Dubnow’s version of it, 179 Social Democratic Party of Russia, 136, 160 Social Revolutionary (Populist) Party, 136, 190n Society for Spread of Enlightenment among Jews (Hevrat Mefitzeh Or ve-Haskalah), 53n, 100n, 103n, 134n, 137, 156

sociology, Dubnow’s conception of, 122, 178, 184 Solovyov, Vladimir, 167 Spencer, Herbert, 43, 46, 98, 122–123, 147, 177 Spinoza, Baruch, 46, 63, 68, 69, 94, 96, 181n, 187 St. Petersburg Free University, Lesgaft courses, 146, 183, 191 St. Petersburg, problem of obtaining legal residence there, 86–87 Switzerland, Dubnow’s vacation in, 128 Taine, Hippolyte, 98, 110, 183 Tolstoy, Leo, 46, 60, 89, 91–92, 109n Treitschke, Heinrich von, 183 Turgenev, Ivan, 35, 37, 38n, 89, 129n, 135 Union of the Russian People, 165, 171 Utilitarianism, 38, 40–41 See also Mill, John Stuart Vera G., 129–130 Versailles minority-rights treaties, 162, 193 Vinaver, Maxim, 140, 141, 162, 192 Vogt, Karl, 38 Voskhod (journal), 47, 54–58, 87, 89, 96, 100, 103, 108, 113, 138, 144, 156, 166, 182 Werther der Jude (novel by Ludwig Jacobowski), 169 Winchevsky, Morris, 52 Wissenschaft des Judentums, 18, 166, 183, 207, 214 Yiddish language and literature, 5, 128, 150, 155, 159n, 160–161, 172, 183, 190n, 192, 196, 199, 206 YIVO (Yiddisher Vissenshaftlicher Institut), 195–197, 206 Zaichik, Robert, 135–136 Zeitlin, Solomon, 192 Zhitlovsky, Chaim, 159, 161, 190 Zion (journal), 53 Zionism, 137, 149, 166 First Zionist Congress, 135 Political and Cultural, 149, 174, 181 Labor Zionism, 153, 161 Zionism in Russia, 161 Dubnow’s critique of Zionism, 137, 146–147, 149, 154, 174–176, 202–203 Zionist Socialist Labor Party, 161 Zweifel, Eliezar, 101n