Russian and Eastern European Jewish History

The article analyzes the monograph by A. B. Kovelman Those Who Entered Pardes, published in the Chase collection of the Knizhniki publishing house. The leitmotif of the experiment connects the beginning and the end of the study and permeates through the seven chapters of the book framed by the introduction and conclusion. The weaving of motley themes following a certain idea and the creation of a composition from a variety of elements reveal the Talmudic method of “masefet”, which allows the reader to gain their footing through the continuity of “their own” and “the alien”. This book is not just about culture, metaphor and its literalization, or idioms and codes that permeate through the Judeo-Christian cultural dialogue. At the center of the research is the question: where are we standing and what is under our feet, the desert or Jacob’s ladder? / В статье анализируется монография А. Б. Ковельмана «Вошедшие в Пардес», опубликованная в «Чейсовской коллекции» издательства «Книжники». Лейтмотив эксперимента связывает начало и конец исследования и пронизывает невидимыми нитями семь глав книги, обрамленных вступлением и заключением. Плетение пестрых тем на определенную идею, создание композиции из самых разных элементов обнаруживает талмудический метод «масефет», который позволяет читателю обрести опору в неразрывности «своего» и «чужого». Это книга не просто о культуре или о метафоре и ее буквализации, идиомах и кодах, пронизывающих иудео-христианский культурный диалог. В центре исследования вопрос: где мы стоим и что у нас под ногами, пустыня или лестница Иакова?

Abstract. The Purpose of the Research. The organization of an effective social protection of servicemen is an important component of the state policy in the military service formation sphere. Therefore, the purpose of the article is to elucidate the highest authorities activities of the UkrainianPeople’s Republic (the UNR) during the Directory period. The research methodology is based on theprinciples of historicism, logic, scientific objectivity in assessing the past, a critical approach to thesources, including the highest authorities official legislation of the Ukrainian People’s Republic, theresearch works of participants and eyewitnesses. The scientific novelty of the article consists in the fact that the social protection issue of servicemen of the UNR Army, although it occupied one of the key places in the activities of the highest authorities of the UNR – the Directory and the government – the Council of People’s Ministers, was not the subject of a separate scientific study....

У статті аналізуються проблеми, пов’язані із перебуванням підрозділів Дієвої Армії УНР на території Волинської губернії в жовтні-листопаді 1921 р. Звернута увага на передумови й підготовку військового походу на територію УСРР, зокрема на волинський терен. Визначено напрямки організаційної роботи щодо максималь­ного поширення повстанського руху на територію радянської України; обґрунто­вано, спираючись на зміни у суспільно-політичній ситуації в УСРР, найвдаліший момент для партизанського походу в Україну. З’ясовано взаємини керівництва Партизансько-повстанського штабу з очіль­никами повстанських загонів на території Волинської губернії, проаналізовано причини поступового послаблення повстанського руху. Визначено причини згортання партизанського походу в Україну, з’ясовано обставини повернення Волинської групи на територію ІІ Речі Посполитої. Названо прізвища вояків народжених на Волині, страчених більшовиками в м. Базар на Житомирщині.

The main forms of widespread behavioural deviations of the population of Ukraine's rear provinces during the First World War are characterized in the article. Particular attention is paid to manifestations of anti-Semitism, Germanophobia and espionage-mania, as well as an effect of the "dry law" on Poltava province people. The ways of evasion from call-up and the region dwellers' attitude to this phenomenon are considered. The analysis of the criminogenic situation in Poltava region during the Great War of 1914-1918 is carried out.

“Moshko the Imperial” is a chapter from the book Lenin’s Jews (Yale University Press). The book discusses urban culture in the towns where Moshko Blank lived in the first half of the nineteenth century (ch. 1, “From Nowhere to Zhitomir”); contextualizes Lenin’s attitude to Jews in his milieu and his conceptualization of Jews in general and in the Russian Empire in particular (ch. 3, “Lenin, Power, and Jews”); reconstructs consistent attempts of the Bolsheviks to suppress any mention of Lenin’s Jewish roots in the Soviet historical discourse (ch. 4, “Glue for the Vertebrae”); and sheds light on the questions of the Judaization of Lenin and the Bolsheviks in the writings of the Russian far right (ch. 5, “How Lenin Became Blank”). The second chapter of the book, “Moshko the Imperial,” offered to the readers of Ab Imperio in the authorized translation, utilizes the existing narratives about Lenin’s maternal grandfather from Starokonstantinov and introduces a number of recently uncovered primary documents. It seeks to contextualize Moshko Blank against the broad backdrop of contemporary political, cultural, and ideological trends among East European Jews. Moshko is portrayed as an ingratiating individual who hated his brethren and a Jew in himself and who achieved notoriety among Russian administration as the author of claims, appeals, protests, and denunciations. A master of denunciations, Moshko bowed down before imperial power: the Russian imperial authorities, the Russian Orthodox Church, and Russian state symbols were his utmost values. As a close analysis of his letters to Tsar Nicholas I has proved, Moshko was neither a harbinger of Jewish religious reform nor a champion of the Haskalah. He planned to uproot Judaism, not to modify it. Ultimately, he should be placed among other Jewish informers of his time – individuals who sought to solve their personal financial or social problems, to be remunerated by the administration, or to achieve upward mobility by denouncing the Jews to the Russian authorities. “Moshko the Imperial” tells the story of the romance of Moshko Blank with the Russian imperial “vertical of power,” a romance that had both a happy and unsettling end.

During the Russian Civil War (1918–20) Russian Jewry suffered a tragedy comparable to the period of Hetman Bohdan Khmel'nytskyi and surpassed only by the Holocaust. Historians differ in their estimates of the number of victims of anti-Jewish pogroms, the bloodiest of which occurred in Ukraine from 1919 to the beginning of 1920. No statistics were kept, of course, and the numbers put forth in the literature range from 50,000 to 200,000 dead.2 To these we should add tens of thousands who were maimed, raped, and robbed. Despite the magnitude of these events, their circumstances and consequences have been insufficiently studied. The tragedy of Russian Jewry in 1918–20 has tended to exist "in the shadow" of the Holocaust.
Before investigating this problem further, we must first analyze the existing historiography on the "Jewish question" in the Russian Civil War. This article critically explores the literature concerning one of its most important aspects – the history of the relationship between participants in the White movement and the Jewish population of the former Russian empire. Analysis of several of the more significant works demonstrates that these relations were much more complex than has been hitherto recognized. They cannot be reduced simply to a duality of executioners and their victims. I of course do not mean to "whitewash" the White movement; its participants so besmirched its name that no objective historian could bleach it clean. Rather, my task is to formulate, on the basis of the existing literature, the essential questions that confront historians examining the "Jewish question" in the Russian Civil War.

Contemporaries and historians of the Russian revolutions have often made a great deal of the Jewish role in the events of 1917. In late 1917, for instance, it was commonplace to assert that the Bolsheviks were simply part of a Jewish conspiracy. This paper takes a look at the various Russian perspectives on the revolution and its Jewish aspects, focusing in particular on the views of leading intellectuals, writers and politicians, such as S.M. Dubnov, Maxim Gorkii and Aleksandr Blok. It reveals that attitudes were not always straightforward, even amongst the liberal elements of the intelligentsia.

The history of the modern Yiddish-language press in Poland is inextricably
entwined with the careers of two Ukrainian Jews — Zwi Pryłucki, founder
of Warsaw’s first Yiddish daily, Der Veg (1905-1907) and editor of Der
Moment (1910-39), and his son Noah, best known for his work in Yiddish
philology and leadership of the interwar Folkspartey. One of two journalistic
families to dominate the Warsaw Yiddish newspaper scene (the other was
the ‘family’ of Samuel Jackan, publisher of Haynt), the Pryłuckis helped
to build the Yiddish press into the most effective means for the diffusion of
Jewish politics and culture to a mass audience. Father and son typified the
new breed of Jewish cultural leader — part ideologist, part entrepreneur —
that laid the foundations of modern Jewish culture in Congress Poland. Their experiences illuminate not only the socio-cultural currents within Polish Jewry during the early decades of the twentieth century but also the transformative role of Yiddish newspapers as both products of modernity and modernizing agents.

Der Moment became one of the two largest circulation Yiddish dailies in Poland thanks to the comprehensiveness and diversity of its content, which included local and world news, literature and the arts, sports, popular medicine, and other genres at its height. Together with its bitter rival, the Zionist Der Haynt, it transformed the face of Jewish journalism in the age of mass politics and culture that unfolded following the 1905 Russian Revolution and continued to shape Jewish public opinion in Poland until the outbreak of World War II. It helped to increase the prestige of Yiddish in the eyes of its readers as well as contributed to the formation of journalistic and literary registers in the Jewish vernacular. The very existence of a thriving Yiddish press also challenged the aspirations of the Polish nationalist movement for cultural and political hegemony in a longed for Polish sovereign state, exacerbating tensions between Jews and Poles.

Although exceptional for the sheer diversity and longevity of his cultural and political activity, Noah Prylucki illustrates a broader phenomenon common among the secularized nationalist leadership of early twentieth century Eastern European Jewry. He provides an example of an acculturated intellectual who under the influence of the general European movements of Romanticism and populism “discovered” Yiddish as the “authentic” creative expression of an idealized Jewish folk dwelling on the territory of the former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Claiming to be a non-native speaker of the language, he worked to refashion the folk’s own language (folkshprakh) into an instrument for the attainment of both political and cultural goals on its behalf. Paradoxically, he endeavored to create a kulturshprakh, a version of the language whose growth and cultivation was to be removed from the hands of the Jewish folk which had created it and ultimately entrusted to linguists necessarily at a social remove from it.

The attire of the Jews of central and eastern Europe was depicted in paintings, caricatures and photographs and was described in Jewish and non-Jewish texts in the course of several centuries. At the same time, the diversity of the sources depicting in words or/and images the varied Jewish population of this vast region often hinders attempts to understand and analyze the development of Jewish clothing. This workshop will focus on visual and textual depictions of early modern and modern central and eastern European Jewish attire and the relationship to the attire of their non-Jewish neighbors. We invite scholars from various disciplines-design, textiles, material and visual culture, art history and fashion history-to discuss central and eastern European Jewish dress and its details in the early modern and modern periods and to compare it to the dress of the surrounding populations. We would like to stress the methodological aspects of this issue, and hope that such a discussion will contribute to the history of interaction between the Jewish and non-Jewish cultures. We envision this online workshop as a series of 10 to 15 minute presentations followed by discussion, as well as a broad conversation in which the participants will share their experiences of working with online research and digital sources and of major challenges faced by historians of Jewish dress.

This digital lecture series takes the 25th anniversary of the foundation of the Dubnow Institute as an opportunity to examine Jewish emigration from the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe between the 1960s and 1990s in order to highlight the effects and repercussions these waves of migration exerted on Jewish studies, especially in the United States, Israel, and Federal Republic of Germany.The focus of these broadly contextualizing lectures is on migration processes from an interdisciplinary perspective. Of central interest here is the experience of migration as well as the different disciplinary specializations of the scholars (political science, sociology, history, material culture, literature) in question. The aim of the lecture series is to discern the relationship between knowledge and migration in the respective countries.

Due to the corona pandemic, the lecture series is taking place digitally (Zoom). Please register at least one day in advance to receive a link to the digital lecture room.
Please send an email to [email protected] with the title of the event »Let My People Go!«, your name, institution (if applicable) and the email address to which we
should send the link.

Program/Speakers

November 12, 2020
Dr. Mischa Gabowitsch (Einstein Forum, Potsdam)
Loyalität, Widerspruch, Auswanderung: Pogromgerüchte, Aktivismus und jüdische Emigration aus der UdSSR während der Perestroika

November 26, 2020
Prof. Dr. Irena Kogan (Universität Mannheim)
Integration of Jewish Immigrants from the Former Soviet Union: Lessons for the Recent Refugees

December, 10, 2020
Prof. Dr. Rebecca Kobrin (Columbia University, New York)
The Long Silent Revolution: Narrating Russian and Soviet Jewish Migration across the Long Twentieth Century

January, 7, 2021
Dr. Sergey Lagodinsky (Mitglied des Europäischen Parlaments, Berlin/Brüssel)
Vom Objekt zum Subjekt: Neueste jüdische Geschichte und Gegenwart im wiedervereinigten Deutschland
 
January, 21, 2021
Dr. Vladimir Levin (Hebräische Universität Jerusalem)
A Scholar as Scholarly Subject: Contemporary Historiography on East European Jews and their Material Culture seen in a Personal Perspective of Physical and Intellectual Migration

February, 4,  2021
Natasha Gordinsky (Universität Haifa)
Rethinking Soviet Spaces: A New Paradigm in Comparative Literature

THE VOLOZHIN YESHIVA: A TALE OF TWO NARRATIVES
Essay Review:
Shacter, Jacob J., Haskalah, Secular Studies and the Close of the Yeshiva in Volozhin in 1892, The Torah U-Madda Journal, Vol. 2 (1990), pp. 76-133, published by Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary, an affiliate of Yeshiva University. URL: www.jstor.org/stable/40914771

Yeshiva Volozhin is often romanticized as the womb that bore and nurtured the greatest dynasties of Talmidei Chachamim such as Rabbanim Abraham Kook, Yosef Dov Halevi Soltoveitchik, and the Hafez Hayyim, who among others, started religious movements that changed the Jewish world in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in Eastern Europe. Known as the “mother of all yeshivoth,” Volozhin opened in 1806 and closed in 1892 amidst an epic struggle between traditional and modernization forces which are discussed by Jacob J. Shacter in his essay Haskalah, Secular Studies and the Close of the Yeshiva in Volozhin in 1892, also the subject of this review. The closing of Yeshiva Volozhin had tremendous repercussions in the yeshiva world of that time as it stopped producing dynasties of religious intellectuals and it is still a source of debate in American yeshivas today. Rabbi Jacob, J. Shacter’s two main sources for his essay written in 1990 are: My Uncle the Netziv, (p. 76) —authored by the Netziv’s nephew, Rabbi Baruch HaLevi Epstein in 1988, and a letter written on July 7 of that same year (1988), by Rabbi Baruch Manes, executive director of the Orthodox Lakewood Cheder School in Lakewood, New Jersey, (p. 77). These two pieces reflect the tension among past and present rabbanim who continue their struggle to make sense of the closing of Volozhin.

The German language holds a deeply controversial place in the modern history of European Jews, representing different—often conflicting—historical currents. It was the language of the German classics, of Jewish emancipation, and of the Zionist movement, but also the language of Hitler, Goebbels, and German guards in Nazi concentration camps. The crucial role of German in shaping Jewish national culture and politics in the late nineteenth century has been largely overshadowed by the catastrophic events that befell Jews under Nazi rule.

German as a Jewish Problem tells the Jewish history of the German language, focusing on Jewish national movements in Central and Eastern Europe and Palestine/Israel. Marc Volovici considers key writers and activists whose work reflected the multilingual nature of the Jewish national sphere and the centrality of the German language within it. He argues that it is impossible to understand the histories of modern Hebrew and Yiddish without situating them in relation to German. This book offers a new understanding of the language problem in modern Jewish history, turning to German to illuminate the questions and dilemmas that largely defined the experience of European Jews in the age of nationalism.

Der Artikel beleuchtet die Zusammenhänge und Wechselwirkungen zwischen der frühen jüdischen Abwehrarbeit und der parallel betriebenen Unterstützung für ost- und südosteuropäische jüdische EmigrantInnen. Der jüdische Transit durch das Deutsche Reich in die Vereinigten Staaten fungierte als Katalysator für antisemitische Agitation gegen die deutschen Juden. Die Migrationshilfe als humanitär motiviertes Engagement wurde dadurch Bestandteil der Abwehrarbeit. Mit der Gründung des C.V. 1893 und des Hilfsvereins der deutschen Juden 1901 setzte eine Ausdifferenzierung von Abwehrarbeit und Migrationshilfe ein.

A conference on the manifold heritage of Viacheslav Ivanov (1866 – 1949), one of the leading figures of European Modernist literature, art and thought and especially of the Russian Symbolist movement is to be held at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
The proposed conference will include presentations on Ivanov's seminal role as one of the leading figures of Russian and European Modernism in poetry and literature, literary criticism, philosophy of culture and religion, theory of theater, music and art. Viacheslav Ivanov's oeuvre encompassed the entire edifice of European humanities. His poetry, plays and essays formed the cornerstone of a new Modernist trend, Russian religious symbolism. A distinguished pupil of Theodor Mommsen and a fervent follower and, at the same time, critic of Friedrich Nietzsche, Ivanov became a trail-blazing historian of ideas. He researched ancient Greek and Roman religious cults and philosophy. His study of the cults of Dionysus (1904 – 1923 – 1936) remains novel and stimulating to this very day. Mikhail Bakhtin's analysis of Dostoevsky, which became seminal for the development of modern theory of literature and culture, was greatly indebted to Viacheslav Ivanov's discoveries concerning Dostoevsky's invention of the genre of novel as a modern form of Dionysian tragedy. The development of philosophy, theater, art and music in the twentieth century was enriched by Ivanov's ideas.
For us in Jerusalem especially important are those ideas of Ivanov that influenced the works of Jewish composers in St. Petersburg and the symbolic language of the celebrated play “The Dybbuk” by S. Ans-ki which was directed by E. Vachtangov in 1922 for the Hebrew theater "Habima". Viacheslav Ivanov’s general attitude to Jewish culture is relevant for the conference. As a poet, philologist and a religious thinker, Ivanov had a special interest in the Hebrew language and in ancient and modern Hebrew culture; e.g., his participation in the translation of Bialik's poetry into Russian. From Ivanov's point of view, the Zionist movement and its focus on the Hebrew language was a symbol of the resurrection of the Jewish nation. At the very beginning of the persecution unleashed by the Soviet regime in 1918 against Zionism, Ivanov defended the Hebrew language and especially the “Habima”. Ivanov's own poetry in the Hebrew translation of Avraham Shlonsky was widely known in Eretz Israel and later in Israel.
The tentative plan of the symposium includes the following topics:
 Ivanov's role in Modernist poetry and literature
 Ivanov's contribution to the philosophy of culture and religion
 Ivanov's theory of theatre: from Meyerhold to the Habima theater
 Wagner, Nietzsche, Skriabin and the artistic quest for form
 Ivanov's role in promoting Hebrew culture
 
The working languages of the conference are English and Russian.
 

- Conception: Jan C. Behrends, Potsdam; Juliane Fürst, Potsdam; Mischa Gabowitsch, Potsdam; Semion Goldin, Jerusalem
- Participants: Samuel Barnai, Jerusalem; Stefano Bottoni, Budapest; Naida-Michal Brandl, Zagreb; Kateřina Čapková, Prague; Diana Dumitru, Chișinău; Konstanty Gebert, Warsaw; Zvi Gitelman, Ann Arbor; Jan T. Gross, Berlin; Pavel Kolář, Konstanz; Ilse Josepha Lazaroms, Frankfurt am Main/Utrecht; Joanna Nalewajko-Kulikov, Warsaw; Pól Ó Dochartaigh, Galway; Andrea Pető, Budapest; Iryna Ramanava, Vilnius; Joshua Rubenstein, Cambridge, Mass.; Dariusz Stola, Warsaw

סיפורה של חסידות קרלין, אחת החסידויות הראשונות, הוא מן המרתקים בתולדות החסידות. חסידות זו שמה דגש על עבודת ה' ברגש ובגוף, על האמת, על הענווה ועל התנגדות ליומרנות אינטלקטואלית. היא הייתה הראשונה שהעמידה בראשה 'ינוקא', בן של צדיק בעודנו ילד, ואף חזרה על תקדים זה כעבור כמה דורות. היא עודדה עלייה לארץ ישראל שנים לפני הציונות ואף תמכה בהגירה ממזרח אירופה לאמריקה זמן רב לפני מלחמת העולם  שנייה, בניגוד לעמדתם של רוב רבני התקופה. משפחת אדמו"ריה כמעט שנכחדה בשואה, אך היא הצליחה להמשיך ולהתקיים ושרדה התפלגויות ומתחים. צאצאים של חסידי קרלין נטלו ונוטלים חלק פעיל בצדדים מגוונים של חיי  יישוב והמדינה, והיא עצמה, על ארבעת פלגיה, ממשיכה לקיים חיי דת תוססים בישראל ובעולם.
כספינה מיטלטלת: חסידות קרלין בין עליות למשברים הוא מחקר רחב יריעה ראשון על חסידות זו. אף שהאדמו"רים עומדים במרכז הדיון, הספר מאיר גם את דמויותיהן של הנפשות הפועלות מסביבם: נשותיהם, בני משפחתם,  פעילים והעסקנים. הספר משלב עיון מחקרי ותיאור סיפורי ומציג ניתוח מעמיק של אמונות וערכים לצד התנהגויות אנושיות, אישיות וחברתיות. עלילתה של חסידות קרלין ראשיתה במאה השמונה עשרה ואחריתה בימינו אלה, תחילת המאה העשרים ואחת.

Unquestionably one of Russian modernism’s best-known artists, El Lissitzky created artworks—in a staggering variety of media—that have entranced collectors and inspired other artists for decades. In this book Alexander Kantsedikas, one of the world’s leading experts on the artist, offers the first extended look at his earlier work, which was  more or less exclusively devoted to Jewish subjects, reflecting his religious education and family’s heritage. While a handful of these works are well known and widely published, this phase of his work will be far less familiar even to an audience well versed in El Lissitzky’s oeuvre. Featuring more than five hundred works, lavishly reproduced in color and black and white, the book tracks his evolution from an expressionist style to one that is increasingly more abstract and nonobjective. It also includes rare photographic material of the artist’s family, as well as little-known correspondence from his father and details about his relationship with his first wife, who has heretofore been entirely obscured in the artist’s biography.
"Lissitzky’s Yiddish period […] is an area in need of documentary research, specifically the rise and subsequent fall-off of his enthusiasm for the artistic expression of Jewish secular traditions." – Nancy Perloff, “The Puzzle of El Lissitzky’s Artistic Identity” (2003)

Гебраизмы - фонетические, лексические и морфологические следы и приметы древнееврейского языка в памятниках церковнославянской и древнерусской письменности относятся к малоизученным сторонам истории русского языка. Статья посвящена их общему обзору и классификации.

Alex Valdman, " Sha'ul Ginsburg and the Non-Radical Pattern in Jewish-Russian Historiography, " Zion LXXX, 4, 2015, pp. 521-549. This paper explores the social and ideological context of the Jewish-Russian historical almanac Perezhitoe, which was published in St. Petersburg between 1908 and 1913. The editors of Perezhitoe – scholars and writers, led by the prominent historian and public activist Sha'ul Ginsburg – adopted a seemingly self-contradictory stance: they refrained from clearly defining the ideological formulation behind their historical endeavor, while at the same time insisting on the creation of a historiography highly relevant to the Jewish public discourse of the time. In my discussion of Perezhitoe I show how the analysis of this apparently paradoxical stance can lead to a more nuanced understanding of the ideological backgrounds of the modern Jewish public sphere in late Imperial Russia. The discussion of Sha'ul Ginsburg and other members of the editorial board of Perezhitoe allow tracking down ideological formulations which did not crystallize into far-reaching, radical political or social visions, but nevertheless played a noteworthy role in the shaping of social and cultural realities, and in the creation of Jewish-Russian historiography.

The article is devoted to research of the new stage in development of synagogue decorations in the late 19th  – early 20th cc. due to the influence of social and political movements among the Jews of Eastern Europe. Here we examine the connection of new subjects of painting with the Zionist movement, correlation of the traditional program of synagogal murals with its religious, eschatological and messianic meanings and a new paradigm of practical settlement of Palestine associated with the establishment of a national home in Eretz Yisrael.
Kotlyar, Eugeny. “The Hibbat Zion and Zionizm Influence on the Synagogue Decorations Development“, in Art Studies in Ukraine. Kyiv, 2013. Vol. 13. P. 268-278.
Котляр Є. Вплив палестинофільства і сіонізму на розвиток синагогальної декорації // Мистецтвознавство України (редкол: А. Чебикін, О. Федорук, М. Яковлєв та ін.). – К.: Інститут проблем сучасного мистецтва НАМУ – Фенікс, 2013. – В. 13. – С. 268-278.

Michael Levi Rodkinson (1845–1904) was a journalist, author, and publisher whose literary projects spanned numerous countries and continents. Hero to some and scoundrel to others, Rodkinson was a polemical figure whose beliefs underwent many transformations over the course of his life, most significantly from Hasidism to combative Haskalah to eventually anticipating the neo-Romantic trends of the early twentieth century. Throughout his career, Rodkinson’s writing challenged the familiar genres of the literature of Hasidism and the Haskalah, shaping the religious realities of his readers and articulating a spiritual and community life among Jews, who took his ideas to heart in surprising ways.Today, Rodkinson is frequently referred to as a minor Hasidic author and publisher, a characterization based on the criticism of his opponents rather than on his writings. In Literary Hasidism, Meir draws upon those writings and their reception to present a completely different picture of this colorful and influential writer. Examining Rodkinson’s lifelong role as a catalyzing agent of different cultural phenomena, his diverse publishing activities, and his writings in their respective stages, Meir grants readers a provocative new vantage point from which to consider this divisive, enigmatic figure.
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“A must read for anyone interested in the history of Hasidic literature. Jonatan Meir masterfully tells the story of late nineteenth-century eastern
European Jewish scholarship through the bruising battles, big ideas, and petty intrigues of Michael Levi Rodkinson.”
—Eliyahu Stern, Yale University
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Jonatan Meir portrays the career of one of the most ambivalent characters of the Haskalah, or Jewish Enlightenment, Michael Levi Rodkinson, and his move from the propagation of popular Hasidism to his more grandiose attempts to reframe and restructure the entire Jewish canon. This look into the world of the late nineteenthcentury Jewish Enlightenment will be an eye-opener."—Pinchas Giller, Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies, American Jewish University
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"Meir has taken the relatively neglected figure of Rodkinson and created a detailed and fascinating portrait. He ably demonstrates that the boundaries between Hasidism and Haskalah were frequently crossed, and this markedly improves our understanding of the dynamics of Jewish intellectual history in the crucial period of the late nineteenth century."—Ira Robinson, Concordia University

published without the knowledge of the author - . not proofread by the author. an updated and corrected version of the article will appear in my book - Wrestling with the Esoteric (2017)

הדברים נדפסו שלא בידיעתי וללא הגהה מצידי. אין אחריות המחבר על טיב התרגום ודיוקו. נוסח מעודכן, עם תיקונים רבים, יראה אור בספרי  - נפתולי סוד, 2017


Йо н а т а н Ме и р
Михаэль Лайтман и группа «Бней-Барух»
(фрагмент статьи «О последователях рабби
Й.-Л. Ашлага, полемике с ними и о распространении
еврейской каббалистической литературы»)

This is an excerpt from a much bigger article devoted to
several followers of Rabbi Yehudah Ashlag’s agenda who
are trying to disseminate Kabbalistic ideas and practices
outside of the borders of Judaism. This very excerpt analyzes
teachings of Michael Laitman, a Russian-speaking student of
Rabbi Baruch Ashlag, and his movement “Bnei Baruch”,which
try to present Kabbalah as science and lead it out of Orthodox
Judaism. Author considers Laitman’s methodology, his ideas
on correction of the world and salvation from anti-Semitism
through Kabbalah studies, his social ideal. In this excerpt one
can also find analysis of the social context of the movement,
Laitman’s competition with another representative of New Age
Kabbalah Shraga Feivel (Philip) Berg, strategies of gaining
popularity and complicated relations with Jewish Orthodoxy.

The lecture will focus on the exception figure of Hillel Zeitlin (1871–1942), as part of the Renaissance of the Jewish Mysticism in Poland at the beginning of the twentieth Century. We will analyze the messianic visions of Zeitlin in the context of modern Jewish thought and compere his philosophy to William James, Nietzsche, Abraham Joshua Heschel, and Martin Buber.


ヒレル・ツァイトリンとポーランドにおけるユダヤ神秘主義の再生　第2回文化講座のご案内
暑さも幾分和らいでまいりましたが、いかがお過ごしでしょうか。本年度2回目の文化講座では、20世紀初頭のユダヤ神秘主義に焦点をあてた講演会を開催いたします。今回、京都大学の研究プロジェクトの後援によって、イスラエルから講師としてお招きするのは、近現代のユダヤ神秘主義、および東欧ユダヤ啓蒙の研究で数々の賞を受賞された新進気鋭の研究者、Jonatan Meir先生です。皆様、お誘いあわせの上、ぜひお越しください。

日時：　　10月4日（日）14:00 – 17:00
場所：　　こうべまちづくり会館2階ホール (高速神戸・花隈駅より徒歩2分)
住所：　　〒650-0022 兵庫県神戸市中央区 4丁目2−14
　　　　　TEL： 078-361-4523；　　FAX：078-361-4546
　　　　　ホームページ：http://www.kobe-sumai-machi.or.jp/matisen/
参加費：　正会員＝無料、維持会員・一般参加者＝500円、
　　　　　学生＝無料（受付で学生証をご呈示下さい）
講師：　　Jonatan Meir准教授 (ネゲヴ・ベングリオン大学)
ヨナタン・メイール教授

言語：　　英語(通訳付き)
講演題目：ヒレル・ツァイトリンとポーランドにおけるユダヤ神秘主義の再生
後援：　　京都大学 人間・環境学研究科 勝又研究室
　　　　　科学研究費助成金(基盤A)助成研究 「ユダヤ学史と原典資料の複合研究」

【講演要旨】
本講演は、20世紀初頭のポーランドにおけるユダヤ神秘主義ルネッサンスの一部として、ヒレル・ツァイトリン(1871-1942)という特異な人物に焦点をあてる。近代ユダヤ思想の文脈のなかで彼のメシア的ビジョンを分析し、またウィリアム・ジェイムズ、ニーチェ、アブラハム・ヨシュア・ヘッシェル、マルティン・ブーバーらと彼の哲学を比較してゆきたい。

【講師略歴】
エルサレム・ヘブライ大学およびネゲヴ・ベングリオン大学において研究助手、助教を務めたのち、2011年より現職。専門は東欧ユダヤ史、ユダヤ神秘主義、ハスカラー、ハシディズムおよび現代カバラー。主要著作にRabbi Nahman of Bratslav: World Weariness and Longing for the Messiah (2006), Kabbalah and Exotericism in Jerusalem (2011), Imagined Hasidism: The Anti-Hasidic Writings of Joseph Perl (2013)など。

※本講演についてのお問い合わせは、
向井直己 (神戸・ユダヤ文化研究会事務局／京都大学人間・環境学研究科)までお寄せください。
Tel: 075－753-6612
mail: [email protected]

The lecture will discuss portrayals of Eastern European Hasidism as "pure mysticism" in the writings of Martin Buber (especially his early stories about R. Nahman of Bratslav and the Baal Shem Tov), as well as the reception of such portrayals by non-Jews and mystics in Eastern Europe in the first half of the twentieth century. Many scholars have already analyzed the romantic picture painted by Buber, but without sufficient attention paid to the responses of Hasidim and other Eastern European thinkers to that picture. It seems that at precisely the time that Buber was holding up a form of "pure Hasidism" in contradistinction to the contemporary movement - which, in his opinion, had become stagnant -- a profound renaissance was in fact occurring in Eastern European Hasidism. Not only were Buber's portrayals disconnected from historical reality, he will fully ignored the Hasidic renaissance happening at the time. The lecture will discuss briefly the responses of a few Eastern European thinkers and scholars who contested Buber's description, while focusing on the unique response of the Warsaw mystic Hillel Zeitlin.

This anthology brings together a variety of thinkers who offered competing visions of peoplehood within the established and developing Jewish diaspora centers of Europe and America.  Writing in Yiddish, Hebrew, French and English, these Jewish intellectuals sought to recast Jewish existence in national terms, whether it be within multiethnic empires, liberal democracies, or socialist forms of government.

Jewish Fragments of the Life of St Nikita of Novgorod

Hypothesis of Jewish origins of one the first Russian national Orthodox saint and Nikita the Bishop of Novgorod and Recluse, of the Kiev Far Caves
Гипотеза о еврейских источниках в житие одного из первых русских национальных святых Чудотворца Никиты Ногродского

Jonatan Meir, "The Discovery and Publication of Joseph Perl’s Yiddish Writings"

The attitude of Tarnopol satirist Joseph Perl (1773–1839) towards the Yiddish language has been discussed by a number of scholars. In particular, researchers have examined his views with regard to his most well-known satire, Sefer Megaleh temirin, which was printed in Hebrew in Vienna, 1819, with a partial Yiddish translation of the work appearing in Vilna, 1938. However, there remains much to be said concerning the creative process which guided Perl’s writing in Yiddish, as well as the later discovery and publication of his Yiddish works, both of which are chapters in the wider story of the development of Yiddish literature in the first half of the nineteenth century and the increasing scholarly interest in it at the outset of the twentieth century. This article briefly describes these multifaceted matters and then offers suggestions for the future study of Perl’s writing in particular, and maskilic Yiddish literature in general.

Jonatan Meir, “The Politics of Printing the Book Sefer Likutei Tefilot"

This essay discusses one of the more astounding books produced by Bratslav Hasidism – Likutei Tefilot, composed by R. Nathan Sternharz of Nemirov between 1822 and 1827. Notable enough for its content alone, the book also established a whole new genre in Bratslav literature, a fact requiring examination of the book’s genesis, the context of its printing, and its primary goals, as well as the controversy that erupted around it. The new Bratslav theology that emerged upon the death of Rabbi Nahman at the end of 1810[, and which was articulated in Likutei Tefilot,] carried with it a number of ramifications for the small group that had begun to gather around the tsadik, including the eruption of disputes, both internal and external, over [the role and character of] Rabbi Natan of Nemirov. This is a particularly obscure chapter in the history of Bratslav Hasidism, which as a whole remains under-explored by modern scholars; a careful examination of the initiation and crystallization of Bratslav Hasidism in its early stages will shed light on the movement as it exists today in all its diversity, both ideological and social.

The satirical writings of Lucian of Samosata had a tremendous influence on the literature of the Eastern European Haskalah, shaping its criticism of the burgeoning Hasidic movement in the nineteenth century as if there were no gap between it and the Roman Empire of the second century. Lucian’s criticism of false prophets, self-proclaimed philosophers, and common fools and frauds, like his satirical dialogues with the world of the dead, provided the perfect model for those Maskilim who opposed the revelations of the Hasidic movement in both theological and social realms. One particularly salient testimony to the classical satirist’s influence is the astounding translation of his story “Alexander the False Prophet” by the Maskilic writer Meir Letteris, the first translation of Lucian’s work into Hebrew. The translation, printed in full below, was based on the German edition of Christoph Martin Wieland and published in the journal Ha-Tsefirah, which Letteris edited in 1823. As with every translation, it is a new product, shaped in and by its own context. This essay discusses the tendencies and apparent goals of the translator, the additions and omissions he made to the text, and the influence of Lucian’s satirical style on the Haskalah.