Jewish Philanthropy and Enlightenment in Late-Tsarist Russia

Jewish Philanthropy and Enlightenment in Late-Tsarist Russia PDF Author: Brian J. Horowitz
Publisher: University of Washington Press
ISBN: 0295997915
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 360

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Book Description
The Society for the Promotion of Enlightenment among the Jews of Russia (OPE) was a philanthropic organization, the oldest Jewish organization in Russia. Founded by a few wealthy Jews in St. Petersburg who wanted to improve opportunities for Jewish people in Russia by increasing their access to education and modern values, OPE was secular and nonprofit. The group emphasized the importance of the unity of Jewish culture to help Jews integrate themselves into Russian society by opening, supporting, and subsidizing schools throughout the country. While reaching out to Jews across Russia, OPE encountered opposition on all fronts. It was hobbled by the bureaucracy and sometimes outright hostility of the Russian government, which imposed strict regulations on all aspects of Jewish lives. The OPE was also limited by the many disparate voices within the Jewish community itself. Debates about the best type of schools (secular or religious, co-educational or single-sex, traditional or "modern") were constant. Even the choice of language for the schools was hotly debated. Jewish Philanthropy and Enlightenment in Late-Tsarist Russia offers a model of individuals and institutions struggling with the concern so central to contemporary Jews in America and around the world: how to retain a strong Jewish identity, while fully integrating into modern society.

Jewish Philanthropy and Enlightenment in Late-Tsarist Russia

Jewish Philanthropy and Enlightenment in Late-Tsarist Russia PDF Author: Brian J. Horowitz
Publisher: University of Washington Press
ISBN: 0295997915
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 360

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Book Description
The Society for the Promotion of Enlightenment among the Jews of Russia (OPE) was a philanthropic organization, the oldest Jewish organization in Russia. Founded by a few wealthy Jews in St. Petersburg who wanted to improve opportunities for Jewish people in Russia by increasing their access to education and modern values, OPE was secular and nonprofit. The group emphasized the importance of the unity of Jewish culture to help Jews integrate themselves into Russian society by opening, supporting, and subsidizing schools throughout the country. While reaching out to Jews across Russia, OPE encountered opposition on all fronts. It was hobbled by the bureaucracy and sometimes outright hostility of the Russian government, which imposed strict regulations on all aspects of Jewish lives. The OPE was also limited by the many disparate voices within the Jewish community itself. Debates about the best type of schools (secular or religious, co-educational or single-sex, traditional or "modern") were constant. Even the choice of language for the schools was hotly debated. Jewish Philanthropy and Enlightenment in Late-Tsarist Russia offers a model of individuals and institutions struggling with the concern so central to contemporary Jews in America and around the world: how to retain a strong Jewish identity, while fully integrating into modern society.

Vladimir Jabotinsky's Russian Years, 1900-1925

Vladimir Jabotinsky's Russian Years, 1900-1925 PDF Author: Brian J. Horowitz
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253047714
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 290

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Book Description
In the early 20th century, with Russia full of intense social strife and political struggle, Vladimir Yevgenyevich (Ze'ev) Jabotinsky (1880–1940) was a Revisionist Zionist leader and Jewish Public intellectual. Although previously glossed over, these years are crucial to Jabotinsky's development as a thinker, politician, and Zionist. Brian Horowitz focuses on Jabotinsky's commitments Zionism and Palestine as he embraced radicalism and fought against antisemitism and the suffering brought upon Jews through pogroms, poverty, and victimization. Horowitz also defends Jabotinsky against accusations that he was too ambitious, a fascist, and a militarist. As Horowitz delves into the years that shaped Jabotinsky's social, political, and cultural orientation, an intriguing psychological portrait emerges.

Russian Idea--Jewish Presence

Russian Idea--Jewish Presence PDF Author: Brian Horowitz
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781618118196
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 270

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Book Description
In Russian Idea--Jewish Presence, Professor Brian Horowitz follows the career tracks of Jewish intellectuals who, having fallen in love with Russian culture, were unceremoniously repulsed. Horowitz relays the paradoxes of a synthetic Jewish and Russian self-consciousness in order to correct critics who have always considered Russians and Jews as polar opposites, enemies, and incompatible. In fact, the best Russian-Jewish intellectuals--Semyon Dubnov, Maxim Vinaver, Mikhail Gershenzon, and a number of Zionist writers and thinkers--were actually inspired by Russian culture and attempted to develop a sui generis Jewish creativity in three languages on Russian soil.

The Russian-Jewish Tradition

The Russian-Jewish Tradition PDF Author: Brian Horowitz
Publisher: Jews of Russia & Eastern Europ
ISBN: 9781618115560
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 282

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Book Description
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.

An Amateur Performance

An Amateur Performance PDF Author: Lev Osipovich Levanda
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Jews
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
"Russia's best Jewish writer in the nineteenth century, Lev Levanda (1835-1888), is still barely known in the English-speaking world. Here for the first time is one of his major novels in its entirety, "An Amateur Performance (Reminiscences of a Student in the 1850s," translated with elegance by Hugh McLean and edited by Brian Horowitz and Conor Daly. This work from 1882 describes the rush by Jews to the government schools, secular education, and the lights of enlightenment"--

Jewish Emancipation

Jewish Emancipation PDF Author: David Sorkin
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691205256
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 526

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Book Description
The first comprehensive history of how Jews became citizens in the modern world For all their unquestionable importance, the Holocaust and the founding of the State of Israel now loom so large in modern Jewish history that we have mostly lost sight of the fact that they are only part of—and indeed reactions to—the central event of that history: emancipation. In this book, David Sorkin seeks to reorient Jewish history by offering the first comprehensive account in any language of the process by which Jews became citizens with civil and political rights in the modern world. Ranging from the mid-sixteenth century to the beginning of the twenty-first, Jewish Emancipation tells the ongoing story of how Jews have gained, kept, lost, and recovered rights in Europe, North Africa, the Middle East, the United States, and Israel. Emancipation, Sorkin shows, was not a one-time or linear event that began with the Enlightenment or French Revolution and culminated with Jews' acquisition of rights in Central Europe in 1867–71 or Russia in 1917. Rather, emancipation was and is a complex, multidirectional, and ambiguous process characterized by deflections and reversals, defeats and successes, triumphs and tragedies. For example, American Jews mobilized twice for emancipation: in the nineteenth century for political rights, and in the twentieth for lost civil rights. Similarly, Israel itself has struggled from the start to institute equality among its heterogeneous citizens. By telling the story of this foundational but neglected event, Jewish Emancipation reveals the lost contours of Jewish history over the past half millennium.

Everyday Jewish Life in Imperial Russia

Everyday Jewish Life in Imperial Russia PDF Author: ChaeRan Y. Freeze
Publisher: Brandeis University Press
ISBN: 1611684560
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 665

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Book Description
This book makes accessibleÑfor the first time in EnglishÑdeclassified archival documents from the former Soviet Union, rabbinic sources, and previously untranslated memoirs, illuminating everyday Jewish life as the site of interaction and negotiation among and between neighbors, society, and the Russian state, from the beginning of the nineteenth century to World War I. Focusing on religion, family, health, sexuality, work, and politics, these documents provide an intimate portrait of the rich diversity of Jewish life. By personalizing collective experience through individual life storiesÑreflecting not only the typical but also the extraordinaryÑthe sources reveal the tensions and ruptures in a vanished society. An introductory survey of Russian Jewish history from the Polish partitions (1772Ð1795) to World War I combines with prefatory remarks, textual annotations, and a bibliography of suggested readings to provide a new perspective on the history of the Jews of Russia.

New Approaches to Religion and the Enlightenment

New Approaches to Religion and the Enlightenment PDF Author: Brett C. McInelly
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1683931629
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 414

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Book Description
New Approaches to Religion and the Enlightenment examines religious belief and practice during the age of Enlightenment from a range of disciplinary perspectives, including theology, the natural sciences, politics, the law, art, philosophy, and literature.

1915 Diary of S. An-sky

1915 Diary of S. An-sky PDF Author: S. A. An-Sky
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253020530
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 202

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Book Description
The WWI diary of the Russian Jewish activist and author of The Dybbuk presents “an unforgettable portrait of life, culture, and destruction” (Eugene Avrutin, author of Jews and the Imperial State). By the outbreak of World War I, S. An-sky was a well-known writer, a longtime revolutionary, and an ethnographer who pioneered the collection of Jewish folklore in Russia's Pale of Settlement. In 1915, An-sky took on the assignment of providing aid and relief to Jewish civilians trapped under Russian military occupation in Galicia. As he made his way through the shtetls there, close to the Austrian frontlines, he kept a diary of his encounters and impressions. In his diary, An-sky describes conversations with wounded soldiers in hospitals, fellow Russian and Jewish aid workers, and Jewish civilians living on the Eastern Front. He recorded the brutality and violence against the civilian population, the complexities of interethnic relations, the practices and limitations of philanthropy and medical care, Russification policies, and antisemitism. In the late 1910s, An-sky used his diaries as raw material for a lengthy memoir in Yiddish, published under the title The Destruction of Galicia. Although most of An-sky’s original diaries were lost, two fragments are preserved in the Russian State Archive of Literature and Art. Translated and annotated here by Polly Zavadivker, these fragments convey An-sky's vivid perceptions and enlightening insights.

The Story of a Life

The Story of a Life PDF Author: Anna Pavolovna Vygodskaia
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1609090462
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 172

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Book Description
Anna Pavlovna Vygodskaia's autobiography, originally published in 1938, is a rare and fascinating historical account of Jewish childhood and young adult life in Tsarist Russia. At a time when the vast majority of Jews resided in small market towns in the Pale of Settlement, Vygodskaia liberated herself from that world and embraced the day-to-day rhythms, educational activities, and new intellectual opportunities in the imperial capital of St. Petersburg. Her story offers a unique glimpse of Jewish daily life that is rarely documented in public sources—of neighborly interactions, children's games and household rituals, love affairs and emotional outbursts, clothing customs, and leisure time. Most first-person narratives of this kind reconstruct an isolated and self-contained Jewish world, but The Story of a Life uniquely describes the unprecedented social opportunities, as well as the many political and personal challenges, that young Jewish women and men experienced in the Russia of the 1870s and 1880s. In addition to their artful translation, Eugene M. Avrutin and Robert H. Greene thoroughly explicate this historical context in their introduction.