Introduction

Abstract

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes 1. A different set of myths, perhaps even less rooted in the actual varieties of the East European Jewish and immigrant experience, obtains of course in Jewish diaspora communities. For the case of American Jewry's East European myths, see Steven Zipperstein Zipperstein, Steven J. 1999. Imagining Russian Jewry: Memory, History, Identity, Seattle: University of Washington Press. [Google Scholar], Imagining Russian Jewry, chap. 1. In Israel, arguably, such myths have been less total and more consistently disrupted by serious public interest and reflection on the actual, complex history of East European Jewry than their American Jewish counterpart. The most dramatic and lasting exception to this may be attitudes toward the Yiddish language and cultural expression, but even this seems to be changing. Two especially impressive recent examples of this change are the journal Davka: Eretz yidish ve-tarbutah and Shachar Pinsker's series of essays on “Batei kafeh sifrutiim” (literary coffee houses) in Eastern and Central Europe carried serially in the Literature and Culture supplement to Ha'aretz, April–May 2008. 2. Among the senior scholars who have long made such analysis a central part of their research agenda, we might include Israel Bartal, Hamutal Bar-Yosef, Dan Miron, Anita Shapira, and the late Jonathan Frankel. The recent revisionist work of Gur Alroey on the Second Aliyah should also be noted. Alroey Alroey, Gur. 2004. Imigrantim: Ha-hagirah ha-yehudit le-Eretz-Yisrael be-reshit ha-me'ah ha-esrim, Jerusalem: Yad Itzhak Ben-Zvi. (Immigrants: Jewish immigration to Palestine in the early twentieth century) [Google Scholar], Imigrantim. 3. This is paralleled by the larger disembedding of Israel studies from Jewish history; cf. Penslar Penslar, Derek. 2007. “Is Israel a Jewish State?”. In Israel in History: The Jewish State in Comparative Perspective, New York: Routledge. [Google Scholar], “Is Israel a Jewish State?” Here, it should be noted that those scholars who have continued to interrogate the relationship between East European Jewish and Israeli experience have sometimes come to similar conclusions about the primacy of the local. This can be seen in pivotal works like Jonathan Frankel Frankel, Jonathan. 1981. Prophecy and Politics: Socialism, Nationalism, and the Russian Jews, 1862–1917, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]'s monographic chapter in Prophecy and Politics on the travails and transformation of Russian socialist-Zionist ideology in Palestine 1904–1914, Anita Shapira Shapira, Anita. 1992. Herev ha-yonah: Ha-tziyonut veha-koah, 1881–1948, Tel Aviv: Am Oved. Translated as Land and Power: The Zionist Resort to Force. Trans. William Templer. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992 [Google Scholar]'s analysis of changing Yishuv attitudes toward the use of force and the inevitability of armed confrontation between Jews and Arabs in Herev ha-yonah (in English, Land and Power), and Dan Miron Miron, Dan. 1987. “Mi-yotzrim u-vonim le-vnei bli bayit”. In (From creators and builders to homeless children). In idem, Im lo tihiyeh Yerushalayim: Masot al ha-sifrut ha-ivrit be-heksher tarbuti-politi, Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad. (If there should be no Jerusalem: Essays on Hebrew literature in cultural-political context) [Google Scholar]'s packed examination of the changing status of the Hebrew writer in relation to Zionist politics in Russia and the Yishuv in “Mi-yotzrim u-vonim li-vnei bli bayit.” 4. This special issue stems from a conference on “East European Jewish Modernity: Legacies, Dialogues, Comparisons,” held on 5–6 June 2006, under the auspices of the Nevzlin Research Program in Contemporary Jewish Civilization at the Chaim Weizmann Institute for the Study of Zionism and Israel, Tel Aviv University. Organized by Anita Shapira, Derek Penslar, Meir Chazan, and myself, the conference brought together specialists in many facets of East European Jewish history with scholars of Jewish history in Palestine and Israel. Four of the five articles that follow grew out of conference presentations; the article by Marcos Silber was written especially for this volume. Other participants included Hamutal Bar-Yosef, Jonathan Dekel-Chen, Chana Kronfeld, Olga Litvak, Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern, Scott Ury, Seth Wolitz and myself, with responses provided by Daniel Gutwein, Ezra Mendelsohn, Penslar, and Shapira.