Banning Jewish “Extremist” Literature in Russia: Conversion and Toleration in Historical Perspective

Abstract

In 2017, Russia’s Ministry of Justice banned a nineteenth-century book written by the German rabbi Markus Lehmann, labeling it extremist literature. This article places current Russian efforts to stamp out religious extremism in a broader historical context of imperial productions of tolerance and intolerance and the impact on religious minorities. It examines the case of Jews in the Russian Empire and post-Soviet Russia through the lens of religious conversion, forced baptisms, and freedom of conscience in the realm of apostasy. Lehmann’s book, characteristic of nineteenth-century Orthodox Jewish historical fiction in German, used the historical memory of forced conversions of Jews in medieval and early modern Europe to forge a new path to integration in tolerant, Protestant environs. This article offers a historical and literary reading of Lehmann’s banned book against the longer arc of imperial Russian toleration and conservative appropriations of toleration for discrimination against minorities.