Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-jn8rn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T04:19:52.190Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Leon Pinsker's Autoemancipation! and the Emergence of German as a Language of Jewish Nationalism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 March 2017

Marc Volovici
Marc Volovici*
Affiliation:
Princeton University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article examines the role of the German language in early Jewish nationalism. It focuses on the publication, reception, and afterlife of the pamphlet Autoemancipation!, published in 1882 by Leon Pinsker, a Russian Jewish doctor. The first Jewish nationalist pamphlet to be written in German by a Russian Jew, its rhetoric and terminology tapped into various Jewish and European discourses of emancipation. Pinsker not only challenged the legal-political conception of emancipation as it had been commonly used in German-Jewish discourse, but also mobilized its social and revolutionary connotations, which had been associated with radical European political movements since 1848. Moreover, Autoemancipation! marked a shift in Jewish political culture with regard to the potential function of the German language. Since the late eighteenth century and through the nineteenth century, German had a controversial status in Central and Eastern European Jewish societies given its association with Jewish Enlightenment, religious reform, secularization, and assimilation. Pinsker was the first to use German as a transnational language aimed at promoting the Jewish national cause. In this respect, Autoemancipation! set in motion a process whereby German became the chief language of Jewish nationalist activism.

Dieser Aufsatz untersucht die Rolle der deutschen Sprache im frühen jüdischen Nationalismus. Der Fokus liegt dabei auf der Veröffentlichung, der Rezeption und dem Nachleben des im Jahre 1882 von dem russisch-jüdischen Arzt Leon Pinsker publizierten Pamphlets Autoemanzipation! Es war das erste jüdische nationalistische Pamphlet, das von einem russischen Juden auf Deutsch geschrieben worden war, und seine Rhetorik und Terminologie griffen verschiedene jüdische und europäische Emanzipationsdiskurse auf. Pinsker stellte nicht nur das bis dahin im deutsch-jüdischen Diskurs gängige juristisch-politische Konzept der Emanzipation in Frage, sondern mobilisierte auch ihre sozialen und revolutionären Konnotationen, die seit 1848 mit den europäischen politischen Bewegungen assoziiert waren. Darüber hinaus stellte Autoemanzipation! im Hinblick auf die potentielle Funktion der deutschen Sprache eine Veränderung innerhalb der jüdischen politischen Kultur dar. Seit dem späten 18. Jahrhundert und bis ins 19. Jahrhundert besaß die deutsche Sprache innerhalb der zentral- und osteuropäischen jüdischen Gesellschaften eine kontroverse Stellung, da sie mit der jüdischen Aufklärung, religiöser Reform, Säkularisierung und Assimilation assoziiert wurde. Pinsker war der erste, der Deutsch als eine transnationale Sprache im Dienst des jüdischen Nationalismus benutzte. In dieser Hinsicht setzte Autoemanzipation! einen Prozess in Bewegung, durch den Deutsch die Hauptsprache des jüdischen nationalistischen Aktivismus wurde.

Type
Articles
Information
Central European History , Volume 50 , Issue 1 , March 2017 , pp. 34 - 58
Copyright
Copyright © Central European History Society of the American Historical Association 2017 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Autoemancipation! Mahnruf an seine Stammesgenossen von einem russischen Juden (Berlin: Commissions-Verlag von W. Issleib, 1882)Google Scholar. Apart from places where the translation does not match the original German, I use the translation from Pinsker, Leon, Road to Freedom: Writings and Addresses, trans. Blondheim, D. S. (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1944), 74–106 Google Scholar.

2 According to David Gordon, a Lithuanian Maskil and editor of the Hebrew periodical Ha-Magid, “The sensation that this pamphlet generated in the West, and especially in Germany, is unimaginable.” See Zitron, Shmuel Leib, Anashim vesofrim (Warsaw: Central, 1922), 53 Google Scholar.

3 Abramovich, Sh. Y., “A Sguleh tsu di Yudishe Tsores,” Der Nitslekher Kalendar far di Rusishe Yidn (1884): 70–86 Google Scholar. For a bibliography of the pamphlet's editions and translations, see Shukhtman, B., “Y. L. Pinsker: Bibliografia,” Kiryat Sefer 11 (1934–1935): 117–29Google Scholar.

4 Hess, Moses, Rom und Jerusalem: Die letzte Nationalitätsfrage (Leipzig: Eduard Wengler, 1862)Google Scholar.

5 Vital, David, The Origins of Zionism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975), 126 Google Scholar.

6 Pinsker to Isaac Rülf, Odessa, Sept. 21, 1883, in Schoeps, Julies H., Palästinaliebe: Leon Pinsker, der Antisemitismus und die Anfänge der nationaljüdischen Bewegung in Deutschland (Berlin: Philo, 2005), 117–18Google Scholar.

7 Central Zionist Archives (CZA), A9/175, Alter Druyanow, “Notes for a Biography on Pinsker” [Hebrew], Haaretz, Jan. 1, 1922.

8 Schoeps, Palästinaliebe, 30; Vital, Origins, 126. John Klier has, by contrast, asserted that this explanation is “untenable” because the Russian censors had delayed the publication but did not forbid its publication. A Russian version of the pamphlet was published in 1884. See Klier, John D., Russians, Jews, and the Pogroms of 1881–1882 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 315 Google Scholar.

9 Most of the remaining materials are part of Alter Druyanow's collection at the Central Zionist Archives: CZA, A10.

10 See Gabrielle M. Spiegel, The Past as Text: The Theory and Practice of Medieval Historiography (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997), 23–24; Burke, Peter, “Introduction,” in The Social History of Language, ed. Burke, Peter and Porter, Roy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 9 Google Scholar.

11 Chartier, Roger, The Order of Books: Readers, Authors, and Libraries in Europe Between the Fourteenth and Eighteenth Centuries, trans. Cochrane, Lydia G. (Oxford: Polity Press, 1994), 4 Google Scholar.

12 Requate, Jörg and Wessel, Martin Schulze, “Europäische Öffentlichkeit: Realität und Imagination einer appellativen Instanz,” in Europäische Öffentlichkeit: Transnationale Kommunikation seit dem 18. Jahrhundert, ed. Requate, Jörg and Wessel, Martin Schulze (Frankfurt/Main: Campus, 2002), 11–39 Google Scholar; Osterhammel, Jürgen, The Transformation of the World: A Global History of the Nineteenth Century, trans. Camiller, Patrick (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014), 29–32 Google Scholar.

13 Brinkmann, Tobias, “The Road from Damascus: Transnational Jewish Philanthropic Organizations and the Jewish Mass Migration from Eastern Europe, 1840–1914,” in Shaping the Transnational Sphere: Experts, Networks and Issues from the 1840s to the 1930s, ed. Rodogno, Davide, Struck, Bernhard, and Vogel, Jakob (New York: Berghahn, 2014), 152–72Google Scholar; François Guesnet, “Strukturwandel im Gebrauch der Öffentlichkeit: Zu einem Aspekt jüdischer politischer Praxis zwischen 1744 und 1881,” in Requate and Wessel, Europäische Öffentlichkeit, 43–62.

14 Frankel, Jonathan, The Damascus Affair: “Ritual Murder,” Politics, and the Jews in 1840 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997)Google Scholar.

15 Green, Abigail, “The Limits of Intervention: Coercive Diplomacy and the Jewish Question in the Nineteenth Century,” The International History Review 36, no. 3 (2014): 473–92Google Scholar.

16 For instance, in 1874, Russian Maskil Peretz Smolenskin headed a mission organized by the Alliance that sought to investigate the social and economic condition of Romanian Jews in order to find ways to improve it.

17 Greenbaum, Avraham, “Newspapers and Periodicals,” The YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe, ed. Hundert, Gershon David (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008)Google Scholar, 2:1260–68.

18 Green, Abigail, “Old Networks, New Connections: The Emergence of the Jewish International,” in Religious Internationals in the Modern World: Globalization and Faith Communities since 1750, ed. Green, Abigail and Viaene, Vincent (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 53–81 Google Scholar; Bar-Chen, Eli, Weder Asiaten noch Orientalen: Internationale jüdische Organisationen und die Europäisierung “rückständiger” Juden (Würzburg: Ergon, 2005)Google Scholar.

19 Gelber, N. M., “The Intervention of German Jews at the Berlin Congress 1878,” Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook 5 (1960): 221–48Google Scholar; Vital, David, A People Apart: The Jews in Europe, 1789–1939 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 496–503 Google Scholar.

20 Gaster, Moses, “Pinsker's Auto-Emancipation—A Jubilee,” Views 1, no. 1 (April 1932): 17–25 Google Scholar.

21 Stern, Fritz, Gold and Iron: Bismarck, Bleichröder, and the Building of the German Empire (New York: Vintage Books, 1979), 351–93Google Scholar (esp. 375–80).

22 Taylor, A. J. P., The Struggle for Mastery in Europe, 1848–1918 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1954), 253 Google Scholar; Craig, Gordon A., Germany, 1866–1945 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978), 110–16Google Scholar.

23 Shumsky, Dimitry, “Leon Pinsker and ‘Autoemancipation!’: A Reevaluation,” Jewish Social Studies 18, no. 1 (2011): 33–62 Google Scholar.

24 Schoeps, Palästinaliebe, 22–25.

25 Autoemancipation!, 3.

26 Ibid., 9, 5.

27 Ibid., 3. Pinsker used the term nationale Selbstständigkeit, which also denotes national autonomy or self-reliance.

28 Ibid ., 33.

29 Ibid., 14. On the genealogy of the idea of self-determination, see Weitz, Eric D., “Self-Determination: How a German Enlightenment Idea Became the Slogan of National Liberation and a Human Right,” The American Historical Review 120, no. 2 (April 2015): 462–96CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

30 “The goal of our present endeavors must be not the ‘Holy Land,’ but a land of our own” (Autoemancipation!, 22).

31 Kamusella, Tomasz, The Politics of Language and Nationalism in Modern Central Europe (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 86–91 Google Scholar; Gordin, Michael D., Scientific Babel: How Science Was Done Before and After Global English (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2015), 163–72Google Scholar.

32 Kahane, Henry, “A Typology of the Prestige Language,” Language 62, no. 3 (Sept. 1986): 495–508 Google Scholar.

33 Steinmetz, Willibald, “‘Speaking Is a Deed for You’: Words and Action in the Revolution of 1848,” in Europe in 1848: Revolution and Reform, ed. Dowe, Dieter et al. , trans. Higgins, David (New York: Berghahn, 2001), 845 Google Scholar.

34 Autoemancipation!, 7.

35 Ibid, 19. Mosse, George L., Nationalism and Sexuality: Respectability and Abnormal Sexuality in Modern Europe (New York: Howard Fertig, 1985), 90–113 Google Scholar.

36 Autoemancipation!, 22.

37 Ibid., 4, 18, 20.

38 Ibid., 4, 12, 16.

39 “The German, proud of his Teutonic character, the Slav, the Celt, not one of them admits that the Semitic Jew is his equal by birth.” Pinsker then decried the refusal of Jews to speak in “Aryan” society about their “Semitic” descent. Ibid., 9–10.

40 Olender, Maurice, The Languages of Paradise: Race, Religion, and Philology in the Nineteenth Century, trans. Goldhammer, Arthur (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008), 1–20 Google Scholar, 37–50.

41 Meinecke, Friedrich, Weltbürgertum und Nationalstaat: Studien zur Genesis des deutschen Nationalstaates (Munich: R. Oldenbourg, 1907)Google Scholar. On the “perpetual ambiguity” between ideas of “political community” and “cultural community” in national discourse, see Breuilly, John, Nationalism and the State (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1993), 349 Google Scholar.

42 Shumsky, “Leon Pinsker and ‘Autoemancipation!,’” 52–53.

43 Autoemancipation!, 12–13.

44 Elsewhere he called antagonism toward Jews a “power of nature” (Naturkraft). Ibid., 18–21.

45 Ibid., 3.

46 On the place of science in Zionist thought, see Funkenstein, Amos, Perceptions of Jewish History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 340–47Google Scholar; Efron, Noah, “Zionism and the Eros of Science and Technology,” Zygon 46, no. 2 (June 2011): 413–28Google Scholar.

47 Pinsker, L., Die See- und Limanbäder von Odessa (Vienna: Wilhelm Braumüller, 1881)Google Scholar.

48 Ludwig Philippson, “Eine alte Frage: Ein Nachtrag,” Allgemeine Zeitung des Judenthums, Oct. 17, 1882.

49 Steinschneider, [Moritz], “Judaica,” Hebräische Bibliographie 128 (March 1883): 123 Google Scholar.

50 Die Fremdlinge in unsrem Heim! Ein Mahnwort an das deutsche Volk von einem Berliner Bürger (Berlin: Niendorf, 1877)Google Scholar. Pinsker asserted that the Jews are “never at home” and always remain a stranger (Fremdling). See Autoemancipation!, 9.

51 [Y. L. Gordon], “Bina BaSfarim,” Ha-Melits, Nov. 9, 1882; Zitron, Shmuel Leib, Im ein Ani Li, Mi li (Vilna: Rom, 1884), 35 Google Scholar.

52 Emma Lazarus, “An Epistle to the Hebrews,” The American Hebrew, Dec. 8, 1882.

53 On the prevalence of the metaphor of language as a living organism, see Theobald, Tina, Presse und Sprache im 19. Jahrhundert: Eine Rekonstruktion des zeitgenössischen Diskurses (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2012), 126–40Google Scholar.

54 Bartal, Israel, The Jews of Eastern Europe, 1772–1881 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005), 143–56Google Scholar. Ludwig Philippson also noted that Autoemancipation! expressed ideas that were circulating among Russian Jewry, as reported by Meir Feivel Goetz in his essays titled “Letters from Russia.” See Allgemeine Zeitung des Judenthums, Aug. 29 and Sept. 26, 1882.

55 Bartal, Jews of Eastern Europe, 151–52.

56 Schrenzel, Moses, Die Lösung der Judenfrage: Allen Angehörigen des jüdischen Stammes zur Beherzigung empfohlen (Lemberg: Selbstverlag [Druck von Carl Budweiser], 1881)Google Scholar. According to N. M. Gelber, “There are a number of similarities between the two pamphlets of Pinsker's and Schrenzel's and basically their ideas are the same. It is likely that Pinsker was somewhat influenced by Schrenzel's writing.” See Gelber, N. M., “Dr. Yehuda Leib (Leo) Pinsker: The Sixtieth Anniversary of the Death of Dr. Leo Pinsker,” Zion 12, no. 1 (June 1952): 45 Google Scholar.

57 Gordon alluded to a biblical sentence from the Book of Isaiah (45:17) that invokes the salvation of the people—though he omitted the words “by the Lord.” See [Y. L. Gordon], “Bina BaSfarim.”

58 von Wertheimer, Joseph Ritter, Zur Emancipation unserer Glaubensgenossen (Vienna: Alfred Hölder, k. k. Hof- und Universität-Buchhändler, 1882), 2 Google Scholar. Both Pinsker and Wertheimer described Jewish history as a “history of suffering” (Leidensgeschichte), though Wertheimer drew a clearer distinction between the achievements of Western European Jews and the deplorable condition of Russian Jews.

59 Ibid., 26.

60 Abramovich, “A Sguleh tsu di Yudishe Tsores,” 4.

61 Wogue, L., “La Question Juive—Deux Solutions,” L'Univers Israélite 12 (March 1, 1883): 363 Google Scholar.

62 Zipperstein, Steven J., The Jews of Odessa: A Cultural History (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1985), 5 Google Scholar.

63 Ibid., 40.

64 On the tension between the two images of Odessa in Jewish historical memory—as a center of progressive intellectual productivity, but also as a city indifferent to Enlightenment ideologies—see Horowitz, Brian, “Myths and Counter-Myths about Odessa's Jewish Intelligentsia during the Late Tsarist Period,” Jewish Culture and History 15, no. 3 (2014): 163–72Google Scholar.

65 Zipperstein, Odessa, 52–53, 56–57, 86–95; Grill, Tobias, “Odessa's German Rabbi—The Paradigmatic Meaning of Simon Leon Schwabacher (1861–1888),” Simon Dubnow Institute Yearbook 2 (2003): 199–222 Google Scholar.

66 Druyanow, Alter, Pinsker vezmano (Jerusalem: Reuven Mass, 1953), 76 Google Scholar.

67 Klausner, Joseph, “Doctor Yehuda-Leib Pinsker,” in Sefer Pinsker, ed. Klausner, Joseph (Jerusalem: Ha'vaad shel ha'hevrah le'yishuv erets yisrael be'odessa, 1921), 10 Google Scholar; Vital, Origins of Zionism, 122.

68 Shumsky, “Pinsker and ‘Autoemancipation!,’” 46

69 Ibid., 44–45. For a list of Pinsker's publications, including those he published anonymously, see Vernikova, Bella, “Atributsiya statei L'va Pinskera vrussko-yevreiskoi pechati 1860–1880,” Vestnik Yevreiskogo Universiteta 26 (2003): 41–94 Google Scholar.

70 Maitz, Peter, “The Death of Standard German in 19th-Century Budapest: A Case Study on the Role of Linguistic Ideologies in Language Shift,” in Germanic Language Histories ‘from Below’ (1700–2000), ed. Elspaß, Stephan, Langer, Nils, Scharloth, Joachim, and Vandenbussche, Wim (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2007), 405–2Google Scholar1.

71 In 1848, Adolf Jellinek stated: “The Jews are German in Austria, Bohemia, Hungary, Galicia, Moravia, and Silesia. In countries where the population is mixed, Jews represent the German language: they are the carriers of Kultur, Bildung, and Wissenschaft.” Quoted in Häusler, Wolfgang, “‘Orthodoxie’ und ‘Reform’ in Wiener Judentum in der Epoche des Hochliberalismus,” Studia Judaica Austriaca 6 (1978): 41–42 Google Scholar. On the significance of German as the language of empire in modern Jewish history, see Diner, Dan, “Between Empire and Nation State: Outline for a European Contemporary History of the Jews, 1750–1950,” in Shatterzone of Empires: Coexistence and Violence in the German, Habsburg, Russian, and Ottoman Borderlands, ed. Bartov, Omer and Weitz, Eric D. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2013), 61–80 Google Scholar.

72 Kamusella, Politics of Language, 437; White, George W., Nationalism and Territory: Constructing Group Identity in Southeastern Europe (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2000), 67–69 Google Scholar.

73 Kamusella, Politics of Language, 47.

74 Jena, Detlef, “Michail Bakunin und der Slawenkongreß 1848 in Prag,” in The Prague Slav Congress 1848: Slavic Identities, ed. Haselsteiner, Horst (Boulder, CO: East European Monographs, 2000), 81–100 Google Scholar.

75 Bakunin, Michael, Aufruf an die Slaven von einem russischen Patrioten (Koethen: Selbstverlag, 1848)Google Scholar.

76 Compare “If you do not take advantage of the fleeting moments of repose and devise remedies …, lasting peace is impossible for you”; “Let ‘now or never!’ be our watchword. Woe to our descendants, woe to the memory of our Jewish contemporaries, if we let this moment pass by!” (Autoemancipation!, 1, 36). Bakunin begins by exclaiming: “The time of decision has arrived. … The question is whether the future will belong to you, or will you again sink for centuries in the grave of powerlessness.” Bakunin, Aufruf, 3.

77 Autoemancipation!, 2.

78 “It is the holy duty for all of us, fighters of the revolution, democrats of all nations, that we unite our forces, that we agree to congregate and care for each other.” Bakunin, Aufruf, 6.

79 Autoemancipation!, 34.

80 Sorkin, David, “Emancipation and Assimilation: Two Concepts and Their Application in German-Jewish History,” Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook 35 (1990): 17–33 Google Scholar. On the term's prevalence in German debates since the 1820s, see Katz, Jacob, “The Term ‘Jewish Emancipation’: Its Origin and Historical Impact,” in Studies in Nineteenth-Century Jewish Intellectual History, ed. Altmann, Alexander (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1964), 1–25 Google Scholar.

81 Klier, John D., “The Concept of ‘Jewish Emancipation’ in a Russian Context,” in Civil Rights in Imperial Russia, ed. Crisp, Olga and Edmondson, Linda (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), 121–44Google Scholar.

82 Nathans, Benjamin, Beyond the Pale: The Jewish Encounter with Late Imperial Russia (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), 75–78 Google Scholar.

83 Lederhendler, Eli, The Road to Modern Jewish Politics: Political Tradition and Political Reconstruction in the Jewish Community of Tsarist Russia (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 151–55Google Scholar.

84 Dubnow, Simon, “Kakaia samoemantsipatsiia nuzhna evreiam?,” Voskhod (May–June 1883): 219–46Google Scholar; (July–August 1883): 1–30.

85 Dubnow, Simon, Buch des Lebens (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2004)Google Scholar, 1:188.

86 Dubnow, S., “Samo-emantsipatsiia,” Voskhod (July–August 1883): 25 Google Scholar. Translation from Seltzer, Robert M., Simon Dubnow's “New Judaism”: Diaspora Nationalism and the World History of the Jews (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 71 Google Scholar.

87 Ibid., 71–76; Rabinovitch, Simon, Jewish Rights, National Rites: Nationalism and Autonomy in Late Imperial and Revolutionary Russia (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2014), 164 Google Scholar.

88 Kritikus, a, “Réflexion sur les juifs, par Isidore Loeb,” Voskohd, 10 (1884): 17 Google Scholar. Quoted in Slutzky, Yehuda, Ha'itonut hayehudit-rusit ba'me'a ha'tesha esre (Jerusalem: Mossad Bialik, 1970), 349 Google Scholar.

89 Karl Martin Grass and Reinhart Koselleck, “Emanzipation,” in Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe: Historisches Lexikon zur politisch-sozialen Sprache in Deutschland, ed. Otto Bruner, Werner Conze, and Reinhart Koselleck (Stuttgart: Ernst Klett Verlag), 2:191–95.

90 Eley, Geoff, Forging Democracy: The History of the Left in Europe, 1850–2000 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 38–43 Google Scholar.

91 Kołakowski, Leszek, Main Currents of Marxism (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 2006), 609–19Google Scholar.

92 Eley, Forging Democracy, 43

93 Koselleck, Reinhart, The Practice of Conceptual History: Timing History, Spacing Concepts (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2002), 254 Google Scholar.

94 Avineri, Shlomo, The Making of Modern Zionism: The Intellectual Origins of the Jewish State (New York: Basic Books, 1981), 75 Google Scholar; Shimoni, Gideon, The Zionist Ideology (Hanover, MA: Brandeis University Press, 1995), 32–35 Google Scholar.

95 On the metaphor of Jews as ghosts, see Bein, Alex, Die Judenfrage: Biographie eines Weltproblems (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1980)Google Scholar, 2:276–77.

96 It is important to bear in mind that Pinsker's plan for Jewish emigration did not pertain to the entirety of Eastern European Jews, but only to that “inassimilable surplus.” See Autoemancipation!, 27.

97 “The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains,” in Marx, Karl and Engels, Friedrich, “Manifesto of the Communist Party,” in The Marx-Engels Reader, 2nd ed., ed. Tucker, Robert C. (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1978), 500 Google Scholar. According to Pinsker, “The Jews have no other way out of their desperate position …, indeed, what have we to lose?” (Autoemancipation!, 20).

98 Pinsker might have been aware of the text because it had been partially republished in a German social-democratic periodical in 1881; see Jacobs, Jack, On Socialists and “The Jewish Question” after Marx (New York: New York University Press, 1992), 9 Google Scholar.

99 Nirenberg, David, Anti-Judaism: The Western Tradition (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2013), 433 Google Scholar.

100 Ibid., 431.

101 Autoemancipation!, 6, 16.

102 Talmon, Jacob, Riddle of the Present and the Cunning of History [Hebrew], ed. Ohana, David (Jerusalem: Mosad Bialik, 2000 [1978]), 71–72 Google Scholar.

103 Luz, Ehud, Parallels Meet: Religion and Nationalism in the Early Zionist Movement, 1882–1904, trans. Schramm, Lenn J. (Philadelphia, PA: Jewish Publication Society, 1988)Google Scholar.

104 Bartal, Israel, Cossack and Bedouin: Land and People in Jewish Nationalism [Hebrew] (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 2007), 230–38Google Scholar. On the tension between vernacular and “neobiblical” influences in Eastern European Haskalah, see Frieden, Ken, “Neglected Origins of Modern Hebrew Prose: Hasidic and Maskilic Travel Narratives,” AJS Review 33, no. 1 (2009): 3–43 Google Scholar; Kahn, Lily, “The Role of the ‘Qatal’ in Maskilic Hebrew Prose Fiction, 1857–1881,” Hebrew Studies 50 (2009): 159–74Google Scholar.

105 “Bina basfarim,” Ha-Melits, Nov. 9, 1882.

106 Zitron, Anashim, 57.

107 Ibid., 57–58.

108 Quoted in Levinson, Avraham, Kitve Avraham Levinson (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 1956), 144–45Google Scholar.

109 [Smolenskin, Peretz], “Yediat Sfarim,” Ha-Shachar 3 (1883): 185 Google Scholar.

110 Ibid.

111 Ibid, 185–86.

112 Ibid, 186.

113 Barzilay, Isaac E., “Smolenskin's Polemic against Mendelssohn in Historical Perspective,” Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research 53 (1986): 11–48 Google Scholar.

114 Smolenskin, Peretz, Ma'amarim (Jerusalem: Keren Smolenskin, 1925)Google Scholar, 2:72.

115 Ibid., 235.

116 Rülf, J., Aruchas Bas-Ammi, Israels Heilung: Ein ernstes Wort an Glaubens- und Nichtglaubensgenossen (Frankfurt/Main: J. Kauffmann, 1883)Google Scholar.

117 On Pinsker's activity in Hibbat Zion and the ambivalent legacy of his leadership, see Zipperstein, Steven J., “Representations of Leadership (and Failure) in Russian Zionism: Picturing Leon Pinsker,” in Essential Papers on Zionism, ed. Reinhartz, Jehuda and Shapira, Anita (New York: New York University Press, 1996), 191–209 Google Scholar.

118 Druyanow, Alter, ed., Ketavim letoldot hibat tsiyon veyishuv erets Israel (Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University, Hakibutz hameuchad, 1985)Google Scholar, 2:487.

119 “A[l] d[var] asefat hovevei tsiyon be'katovits”, Ivri Anokhi 15 (Jan. 16, 1885): 115–17Google Scholar.

120 Ibid., 115.

121 Ibid., 115–16.

122 Ibid., 116.

123 Ketavim letoldot, 3:141–42.

124 Ibid, 3:153–54

125 Ibid. See also 2:486.

126 “He'ara ve'he'ara,” Ha-Magid (Feb. 26, 1885): 72 Google Scholar; “He'ara ve'he'ara,” Ha-Melits (Feb. 27, 1885): 208 Google Scholar.

127 Rosenhek, Ludwig, Festschrift zur Feier des 100. Semesters der akademischen Verbindung Kadimah (Vienna: Selbstverlag, 1933), 41 Google Scholar; Olson, Jess, Nathan Birnbaum and Jewish Modernity: Architect of Zionism, Yiddishism, and Orthodoxy (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2013), 43–46 Google Scholar.

128 Zimmermann, Moshe, “German Jews and the Jewish Emigration from Russia” [in Hebrew], in Solidariyut yehudit leumit ba'et ha-hadasha, ed. Pinkus, Benjamin and Troen, Ilan (Beer-Sheva: Ben Gurion University Press, 1988), 116–26Google Scholar.

129 Was soll aus den russischen Juden werden? (Berlin: Cossirer & Danziger, 1891)Google Scholar. Klausner, Israel, Mikatovits ad bazel (Jerusalem: Ha'histadrut ha'tsiyonit, 1964)Google Scholar, 2:102–8.

130 The German version of the call did not relate the German language to “our Jewish brethren,” as in the Hebrew version, but it did reiterate the significance of the journal's language: “And this important publication [is] doubly important because it is written in the German idiom, with which we are primarily concerned.” See National Library Archives, Jerusalem, Ahad Ha-Am Collection, ARC. 4° 791 7 1887.