cover image Between Tradition and Modernity

Between Tradition and Modernity

David H. Weinberg. Holmes & Meier Publishers, $40 (0pp) ISBN 978-0-8419-1355-4

Faced with anti-Jewish riots and massacres, segregation and anti-Semitic government policies, the three Russian-Jewish thinkers profiled in Wayne State University history professor Weinberg's cogent study sought diverse ways to secure a new foundation for modern Jewish identity and renewal. For Haim Zhitlowski (1865-1943), the answer lay in a revival of Yiddish language and culture, combined with agrarian socialism, Jews' return en masse to the land within the Soviet Union, a dream crushed by the Stalinism that he supported out of fear of Jewish extinction. Historian Simon Dubnow (1860-1941), who dismissed Zionism as an isolationist response, envisioned autonomous Jewish communities within a future democratic Russia and other multinational states. He was killed during the liquidation of the Riga, Latvia, ghetto. Journalist Asher Ginsberg (pen name Ahad Ha-Am, ""One of the People""), who saw Palestine as a center of spiritual renewal, rejected Theodor Herzl's political Zionism and instead supported a binational Arab-Jewish confederation. He died in Tel Aviv in 1927 at age 71, isolated and demoralized. (July)