Yiddish-Language World History and the Emergence of a Jewish Nationalist Politics in Late Imperial Russia

Abstract

ABSTRACT Scholars have long posited a connection between the emergence of Jewish historical consciousness and the “new Jewish politics” of the period 1881–1917. They have largely neglected, however, the many popular Yiddish-language histories that appeared during this time. These popular histories – nearly all of them printed in Warsaw and dedicated to the topic of “world history” – were sold in the first decade of the twentieth century by newly established Yiddish publishing houses and were heavily advertised in the burgeoning Yiddish daily press. I argue that the narratives of cultural work presented in this genre of history provided a conceptual infrastructure for the eventual articulation of a Jewish mass politics in the post-1905 era. Moving beyond the textual analysis of canonical (Russian and Hebrew-language) historical literature reveals the discourses and practices that enabled Yiddish-speakers in the rapidly urbanizing Pale to imagine the Jewish nation as a coherent historical agent.