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Brian Horowitz, the well-known scholar of Russian Jewry, argues that Jews were not a people apart but were culturally integrated in Russian society. The book lets us grasp the meaning of secular Judaism and gives models from the past in order to stimulate ideas for the present.
List of contents
Introduction, William Craft Brumfield Part I: Russian-Jewish Historians and Historiography 1. The Return of the Ḥeder among Russian-Jewish Education Experts, 1840–1917 2. ‘Building a Fragile Edifice’: A History of Russian-Jewish Historical Institutions, 1860–1914 3. Myths and Counter-Myths about Odessa’s Jewish Intelligentsia during the Late Tsarist Period 4. Saul Borovoi’s Survival: An Odessa Tale about a Jewish Historian in Soviet Times 5. The Ideological Challenges of S. M. Dubnov in Emigration: Autonomism and Zionism, Europe and Palestine Part II: Russian–Jewish Intelligentsia’s Cultural Vibrancy 6. Semyon An-sky—Dialogic Writer 7. Russian-Jewish Writers Face Pogroms, 1880–1914 8. M. O. Gershenzon, Alexander Pushkin, the Bible, and the Flaws of Jewish Nationalism 9. Battling for Self-Definition in Soviet Literature: Boris Eikhenbaum’s Jewish Question 10. Vladimir Jabotinsky and the Mystique of 1905 11. Vladimir Jabotinsky and Violence Part III: Jewish Heritage in Russian Perception 12. Vladimir Solov’ev and the Jews: A View from Today 13. Fear and Stereotyping: Vasily Rozanov and Jewish Menace
About the author
Brian Horowitz is the holder of the Sizeler Family Chair in Jewish Studies at Tulane University in New Orleans. He is an expert on the Jews of Eastern Europe and author of a number of books, including Empire Jews, Jewish Philanthropy and Education in Late-Tsarist Russia, and Russian Idea - Jewish Presence.
Summary
Argues that Jews were not a people apart but were culturally integrated in Russian society. In their diasporic cultural creations Russia's Jews employed the general themes of artists under tsars and Soviets, but they modified these themes to fit their own needs. The result was a hybrid, Russian-Jewish culture, unique and dynamic.
Additional text
“If you are someone who likes things Russian and Jewish,
then Brian Horowitz’s newest book has everything. … There is no single ‘Tradition’
here, but instead a series of intellectual, institutional, and cultural vectors
that both inform and contradict each other. As such, Horowitz’s new book is a lively
and welcome addition to a field that he—along with such scholars as Yuri Slezkine,
Gabriella Safran, Nathaniel Deutsch, Olga Litvak, Mikhail Krutikov, Steven
Zipperstein, and others—has already done much to shape.” —Val Vinokur, The New
School, Slavic and East European Journal
