Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] The Jewish Question in 19th-20th Century Eastern Europe: 3 bibliographies

[CeJ]

I guess the post-mo 'Jewish question' is about Israel, Zionism, and
the 'unified identity' of a Jewish people.

Schlomo Sand and his latest book dominates the discussion
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schlomo_Sand ) but it was Paul Wexler
who did much of the groundwork that makes Sand's masterful arguments
possible. No, neither is a revival of the Koestler arguments (but let
me add, no Koestler was not anti-Semitic in any usual sense of the
word).

See, for example (although Wexler has since revised some of his
arguments and explanations since the publication of this book):



http://www.slavica.com/linguistics/ling_wexler.html



The Ashkenazic Jews: A Slavo-Turkic People in Search of a Jewish Identity
Paul Wexler
x + 306 p., 1993 (ISBN: 0-89357-241-1), $24.95

This book, a linguist's reassessment of early European Jewish history,
will be of interest to anyone who has ever wondered how the Jewish
people, lacking their own territorial base and living as a minority
among often hostile non-Jewish peoples over the four corners of the
globe, succeeded in preserving a separate identity for close to two
thousand years.

The book makes a number of innovative and controversial claims about
the relationship of the contemporary Jews to the Old Palestinian Jews.
Recognizing the limitations of historical documentation, this book
shows how facts about Yiddish and Modern Israeli Hebrew (presented in
four recent books) can assist historians and archeologists in
evaluating known data and artifacts as well as generate a new
hypothesis about the origins of the Ashkenazic Jews, the north
European Jews who have consituted the majority of the Jews in the
world for the last several centuries.

In Wexler's view, the Ashkenazic Jews most likely descend from a
minority ethnic Palestinian Jewish emigre population that intermarried
with a much larger heterogeneous population of converts to Judaism
from Asia Minor, the Balkans and the Germano-Sorb lands (the Sorbs are
a West Slavic population that still numbers about 70,000 in the former
German Democratic Republic). Widespread conversions to Judaism that
began in Asia Minor in the Christian era and ended with the
institutionalization of Christianity among the Western Slavs in the
beginning of the second millennium saved the tiny ethnic Palestinian
Jewish population in the diaspora from total extinction. The major
non-Jewish contributors to the ethnogenesis of the Ashkenazic Jews
were Slavs, though there was probably also a minor Turkic strain --
both in the Caspian-Black Sea area (the descendants of the Khazars, a
mainly Turkic group that converted to Judaism in the eighth century)
and in the Balkans and Hungary. In all of these areas, the Turkic
population early became submerged with the coterritorial Slavs.

In addition to Yiddish terms of Slavic, Greek, Romance and German
origin which express aspects of the Jewish religion and folk culture,
the book shows that many elements of Ashkenazic folklore and religion
themselves were of Slavic origin -- either West (Sorbian and Polabian)
or Balkan Slavic. There is a lengthy discussion of the evidence for
widespread conversion to Judaism in Asia Minor, southern Europe and
the Germano-Sorbian lands up to the twelfth century and the reasons
why pagan and Christian Slavs converted to Judaism. While historians
have been disputing the extent of conversion to Judaism, Wexler thinks
the linguistic and ethnographic evidence make the conversion evidence
highly plausible.

In addition, Jewish linguistic evidence refutes the traditional claims
that Yiddish is a variant of High German and that Modern Hebrew is a
"revived" form of Old Hebrew; new hypotheses are proposed: that
Yiddish began as a Slavic language (specifically a Judaized form of
Sorbian) that was re-lexified to High German at an early date, and
that Modern Hebrew is, in turn, Yiddish that became re-lexified to
Hebrew, and thus is also a form of Sorbian. These facts support the
author's hypothesis of the Slavic origins of the Ashkenazic Jews, and
the bulk of their religion and folk culture.

The book proceeds to show how, under the conditions of relative
separation from the non-Jewish population that developed after the
twelfth century, the north European Jews developed elaborate processes
of "Judaizing" their pagan and Christian Slavic religion and folk
culture -- by inserting unusually large amounts of Hebrew elements
into colloquial Judeo-Sorbian/Yiddish and by reinterpreting and
recalibrating religious and ethnographic practices according to
biblical and talmudic precedents; customs known to be obsolete among
the Christians were retained by the Jews as "Jewish" practices. For
example, the Slavo-Germanic glass-breaking ceremony intended to scare
the devil away from the merrymakers at a wedding, was reinterpreted as
remembrance of the destructions of the two Temples in Jerusalem. The
ethnographic and religious evidence is taken mainly from discussions
in the Germano-Slavic Hebrew religious

Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] The Jewish Question in 19th-20th Century Eastern Europe: 3 bibliographies

[CeJ]

>>L. L. Zamenhof, a product of this ferment.<<

He is a fascinating figure from history. I believe he was wrong in his
characterization of Europe's Jews as having a 'pseudo-Palestinian'
religion, but then again I'm not sure what he meant by it within his
critical framework, torn as he appeared to be between religiosity and
secularism, assimilation to Christian Europe and maintenance of Jewish
identity, zionism and non-zionist alternatives. If anything, you could
characterize the Yiddish Ashkenazim as one of the 'great stateless
peoples of Europe' whose ethnogenesis most likely had much more to do
with Persian Babylonia than it did Judeo-Hellenic Roman Palestine. If
anything his call for Judaism to reform to 'Hillelism' strikes me as
something that could easily be termed 'pseudo-Palestinian', at least
in a late antiquity sense of the Judaism and Samaritanism of Roman
Palestine that gave the world the early Christians (since their
Christianity shared a lot with philosophies like 'Hillelism'). And
let's face it, for the first half of the twentieth century, the
European Ashkenazim of Europe and North America formed by far the
overwhelming majority of  Jews worlwide--they were the demographic and
cultural core of Judaism. Even after the ravages of WW II and the
Holocaust, they still were the majority and went on to originate,
lead, and dominate the settler state of Israel founded over 20th
century Palestine.

As for his linguistic views, I would like to delve more deeply into
his analysis of Yiddish to see what it might yield for current debates
about this complex language and cultural grouping.

It now strikes me as ironic that this 'ferment' on language gives the
modern world two created languages, both largely derived from
Yiddish--i.e., Esperanto and modern Israeli (modern Israeli Hebrew).
All the more reason we need cool-headed analysis about the
ethnogenesis of the Ashkenazim and their 'language', Yiddish. My own
theory is that Yiddish formed a broad 'dialect band' that united
contact communities and contact languages of Germanic and Slavic
origins. Hence the appearance to some of Yiddish being Germanic while
to others of it being much more Slavic than standard analyses held.
The other irony being that Yiddish was the very sort of language that
Zamenhof was trying to create when he created Esperanto. I hope we get
a modern and complete analysis (as complete as possible) of Yiddish
language soon. So far I find Wexler's analysis the most compelling.

CJ
-- 
Japan Higher Education Outlook
http://japanheo.blogspot.com/

We are Feral Cats
http://wearechikineko.blogspot.com/

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Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] The Jewish Question in 19th-20th Century Eastern Europe: 3 bibliographies

[CeJ]

One Jewish 'question' or 'problem' that interests me is the relations
between the already-established German-language-speaking Jews of the
US with the later-arriving Yiddish Ashkenazim.

Another is the continued existence of a 'relic' of the Soviet
Union--the Jewish Autonomous Oblast.

http://eao.ru/eng/

http://eao.ru/eng/?p=361

How did the Jewish Autonomous Region appear on the map of our country?

Establishment of the Jewish Autonomous Region was necessity for more
than two millions of the Jews, living in the Soviet Union. They were
considered by tsarism to be foreigners, limited in choice of domicile,
possibility of housing accommodation possession. They could farm and
be occupied by limited kinds of activity only. They continued to
remain one of the most suffering people of the country with low living
standard, limited possibilities for realization of intellectual and
creative potential.

In 1921 the Committee on land settlement of the working Jews (KOMZET),
which was headed by P.G.Smidovich, was headed. It searched for places
for compact moving of the Jews, adaptation of the Jewish population to
agricultural labor.

The first attempts of KOMZET to create in 1924-26 Jewish settlements
in the Crimea, in the Ukraine, Stavropol Territory, near Smolensk and
Pskov didn't meet with success because of lack of free grounds in
these regions and necessity of transfer of concrete owners' lands to
Jewish settlers. The southern region of Priamurye, called then
Birsko-Bidzhanskiy region, after an investigation by the expedition
led by B.L.Bruk, the professor, under a management of V.R.Viliams in
1927, was recognized as a territory, favorable for compact moving of
the working Jews.

History of the JAR establishment, as the first and only state
territorial unit of the Jews not only in the USSR, but also in the
world (Israel was established on a solution of UNO in 1948), begins
from the fact that the Presidium of the General Executive Committee of
the USSR passed the decree "On the attaching for KOMZET of free
grounds near the Amur River in the Far East for settlement of the
working Jews" on March 28, 1928. The decree meant that there was "a
possibility of establishment of a Jewish administrative territorial
unit on the territory of the called region".

In May, 1928 on Tikhonkaya station, where the Birobidzhan emigrant
point was, the first group of settlers from cities and villages of the
Ukraine and Byelorussia, central regions of Russia arrived.
Simultaneously the state sent machines and necessary means there.

Jewish settlements were created in small villages. They connected the
Trans-Siberian railway with the Amur River valley. The epicenter of
the Jewish resettlement was Tikhonkaya station (later Birobidzhan
city).

Large collective farms and communities were created in Birofeld,
Amurzet, Valdgame, Danilovka and other villages. For the Russian Jews
it was especially important that this ground was in Russia, in their
Motherland, in the custom surroundings. It is necessary to mark, that
perspective of revival of a Jewish state, even as an autonomy, found
the response abroad - first of all among the American Diaspora. The
IKOR organization became its empowered person and rendered free
material help to settlers.

The fact of revival of a sovereign Jewish territory, though far away
from the actual ancestral Motherland and as an autonomy, actuated
afflux of immigrants abroad. They sincerely believed that the Soviet
Union was a democratic people's state. With such ideas almost 700
people from Argentina, Lithuania, France, Latvia, Germany, Belgium,
the USA, Poland and even from Palestine arrived there.

The majority of settlers was not familiar with agriculture. Russian
population rendered them all possible support. Many villages and
collective farms sent instructors, who trained settlers to
agricultural labour. In total since 1928 up to 1933 22,3 thousand
persons arrived in the territory of today's region.

On August 20, 1930 the General Executive Committee of RSFSR accepted
the decree "On formation of the Birobidzhan national region in the
structure of the Far Eastern Territory". The State Planning Committee
considered the Birobidzhan national region as a separate economic
unit. In 1932 the first scheduled figures of the region development
were considered and authorized.

Taking into account fast economic development of the Birobidzhan
national region, the Presidium of the General Executive Committee
accepted the decree on its transformation in the Jewish Autonomous
Region in structure of the Russian Federation. It happened on May 7,
1934. In 1938 with formation of the Khabarovsk Territory the Jewish
Autonomous Region (JAR) was included in its structure.

On December 18, 1934 in Birobidzhan the 1st regional congress of
Soviets was held. It finished registration of the new national region
as a Soviet state unit, ratified the plan of economic and cultural
development and elected the authorities. The first chairman of th

Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] The Jewish Question in 19th-20th Century Eastern Europe: 3 bibliographies

[c b]

 Ralph Dumain wrote:
> Time for an update on my bibliographies. I've learned, not much to my
> surprise though indeed to my disgust, that I can't bring up the
> subject of Jews in any context without being immediately assaulted by
> bigots.

^^^
Charles: Do tell.

^^^


These additional bibliographies reveal more of the extent of
> my interests.
>
> I've already mentioned the first bibliography I publicized:
>
> Marxism & the Jewish Question: Selected Bibliography
> http://www.autodidactproject.org/bib/jews-marxism.html
>
> This material is testing ground for a number of projects. Not only in
> terms of overt politics, but conceptually, how was historical
> materialism sufficiently evolved or not at any given stage or within
> any given tendency to explain exactly what bound the Jewish
> people--specifically of Europe (and more specifically of Eastern
> Europe, where conditions were worst)--as a people. Could historical
> materialism adequately encompass culture, and conversely, what did
> the culturalists leave out in their conceptualization of their situation?
>
> On the plane of overt politics, one will find an emphasis here on the
> conceptions and policies of the Bolsheviks as compared to the Jewish
> Bundists (on which there is a thought-provoking new book out--more on
> this later).
>
> This is, however, only a portion of the elements needed for a full
> analysis. The late 19th century and early 20th century were filled
> with schemes of religious, cultural, linguistic, and political reform
> and radicalism. There were currents not only of socialism and
> Marxism, but of assimilationism, Zionism, cultural autonomism,
> liberalism, Haskalah (the Jewish Enlightenment)--formulated and
> argued by Jewish intellectuals, all involving different conceptions
> of the nature of the past and contemporaneous communities of European
> Jews and prospects and programs for their future. I attempted to
> cover as many of these currents as I could in my second bibliography:
>
> L. L.
> Zamenhof & the Cultural, Religious, Professional & Political Context
> of 19th-20th Century Eastern European Jewish Intellectuals:
> Selected Bibliography
>
> Juxtaposing these two bibliographies suggests the extensiveness and
> complexity of the ideological ferment of the time, a topic which
> stands on its own, though the intellectually vacuous, ideologically
> degenerate, and juvenile politics of the present would gain some
> perspective from a study of this past.
>
> Finally, all of this is related to a specific project. December 15
> will mark the 150th birthday of the creator of the Esperanto
> language, L. L. Zamenhof, a product of this ferment. This weekend I
> will have the opportunity to meet Zamenhof's great-granddaughter,
> itself a remarkable occasion, all the more amazing because all of
> Zamenhof's children were murdered by the Nazis, and his grandson, a
> child at the time, escaped their clutches twice by a hairsbreadth
> (once under the protection of a Catholic priest), to eventually
> produce two daughters. Though Zamenhof is most known for the creation
> of Esperanto, underlying that project was a more general program of
> cultural and religious reform, all stemming from Zamenhof's
> preoccupation with the Jewish question.
>
> Traumatized by the pogroms of 1881, Zamenhof, still a medical
> student, joined the early Zionist movement and embroiled itself in
> its debates. At the time various options--all utopian--were
> considered. Zamenhof opposed establishing settlements in the
> territory that is now Israel, and favored settlement in
> America.  Ultimately he rejected Zionism altogether, and argued
> vigorously for years afterward that the project of settling in the
> Middle East would be either impracticable or disastrous. Another
> project involved the reform and standardization of Yiddish. (Zamenhof
> was born in the same year as Sholem Aleichem.) He gave up on that as
> well. In 1887 he published his first book outlining the basics of
> Esperanto. As the Esperanto movement took off internationally, he
> published two treatises in Russian under a pseudonym, in 1901,
> outlining a program for religious reform and a doctrine called
> "Hilelismo", inspired by Rabbi Hillel's famous aphorism concerning
> the golden rule as the essence of religion. Here the influence of
> Enlightenment thought (Haskalah) is evident, as Zamenhof rejects
> ancient superstitions and outmoded practices. However, Zamenhof's
> arguments were even more trenchant. Not only does he demolish the
> case for Zionism in every way possible, but he engages in a merciless
> demystification of the Jewish people, questioning the continuity that
> allegedly connects the Jewish people of today with their ancient
> homeland, and even questions the basis of their commonality across
> different nations and regions in the present.
>
> Zamenhof enquires as to what binds peoples together in general, 

[Marxism-Thaxis] The Jewish Question in 19th-20th Century Eastern Europe: 3 bibliographies

[Ralph Dumain]

Time for an update on my bibliographies. I've learned, not much to my 
surprise though indeed to my disgust, that I can't bring up the 
subject of Jews in any context without being immediately assaulted by 
bigots. These additional bibliographies reveal more of the extent of 
my interests.

I've already mentioned the first bibliography I publicized:

Marxism & the Jewish Question: Selected Bibliography
http://www.autodidactproject.org/bib/jews-marxism.html

This material is testing ground for a number of projects. Not only in 
terms of overt politics, but conceptually, how was historical 
materialism sufficiently evolved or not at any given stage or within 
any given tendency to explain exactly what bound the Jewish 
people--specifically of Europe (and more specifically of Eastern 
Europe, where conditions were worst)--as a people. Could historical 
materialism adequately encompass culture, and conversely, what did 
the culturalists leave out in their conceptualization of their situation?

On the plane of overt politics, one will find an emphasis here on the 
conceptions and policies of the Bolsheviks as compared to the Jewish 
Bundists (on which there is a thought-provoking new book out--more on 
this later).

This is, however, only a portion of the elements needed for a full 
analysis. The late 19th century and early 20th century were filled 
with schemes of religious, cultural, linguistic, and political reform 
and radicalism. There were currents not only of socialism and 
Marxism, but of assimilationism, Zionism, cultural autonomism, 
liberalism, Haskalah (the Jewish Enlightenment)--formulated and 
argued by Jewish intellectuals, all involving different conceptions 
of the nature of the past and contemporaneous communities of European 
Jews and prospects and programs for their future. I attempted to 
cover as many of these currents as I could in my second bibliography:

L. L. 
Zamenhof & the Cultural, Religious, Professional & Political Context 
of 19th-20th Century Eastern European Jewish Intellectuals:
Selected Bibliography

Juxtaposing these two bibliographies suggests the extensiveness and 
complexity of the ideological ferment of the time, a topic which 
stands on its own, though the intellectually vacuous, ideologically 
degenerate, and juvenile politics of the present would gain some 
perspective from a study of this past.

Finally, all of this is related to a specific project. December 15 
will mark the 150th birthday of the creator of the Esperanto 
language, L. L. Zamenhof, a product of this ferment. This weekend I 
will have the opportunity to meet Zamenhof's great-granddaughter, 
itself a remarkable occasion, all the more amazing because all of 
Zamenhof's children were murdered by the Nazis, and his grandson, a 
child at the time, escaped their clutches twice by a hairsbreadth 
(once under the protection of a Catholic priest), to eventually 
produce two daughters. Though Zamenhof is most known for the creation 
of Esperanto, underlying that project was a more general program of 
cultural and religious reform, all stemming from Zamenhof's 
preoccupation with the Jewish question.

Traumatized by the pogroms of 1881, Zamenhof, still a medical 
student, joined the early Zionist movement and embroiled itself in 
its debates. At the time various options--all utopian--were 
considered. Zamenhof opposed establishing settlements in the 
territory that is now Israel, and favored settlement in 
America.  Ultimately he rejected Zionism altogether, and argued 
vigorously for years afterward that the project of settling in the 
Middle East would be either impracticable or disastrous. Another 
project involved the reform and standardization of Yiddish. (Zamenhof 
was born in the same year as Sholem Aleichem.) He gave up on that as 
well. In 1887 he published his first book outlining the basics of 
Esperanto. As the Esperanto movement took off internationally, he 
published two treatises in Russian under a pseudonym, in 1901, 
outlining a program for religious reform and a doctrine called 
"Hilelismo", inspired by Rabbi Hillel's famous aphorism concerning 
the golden rule as the essence of religion. Here the influence of 
Enlightenment thought (Haskalah) is evident, as Zamenhof rejects 
ancient superstitions and outmoded practices. However, Zamenhof's 
arguments were even more trenchant. Not only does he demolish the 
case for Zionism in every way possible, but he engages in a merciless 
demystification of the Jewish people, questioning the continuity that 
allegedly connects the Jewish people of today with their ancient 
homeland, and even questions the basis of their commonality across 
different nations and regions in the present.

Zamenhof enquires as to what binds peoples together in general, and 
in the case of Jews in particular. He settles on language and 
religion as the two shaping principles of peoplehood. This is the 
very obverse of his