Rabinovitch Publishes New Book on Jews and Diaspora Nationalism
Brandeis University Press has just published Professor Simon Rabinovitch’s new book, Jews and Diaspora Nationalism: Writings on Jewish Peoplehood in Europe and the United States. During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries Jewish intellectuals wrestled intensely with the problem of how to preserve, construct or transform Jewish peoplehood. But despite a rich array of writing about the vitality of Jewish existence in the diaspora, the key works have never been collected in a single volume, and few reliable English translations exist.
In this volume Rabinovitch assembles a variety of thinkers who offered competing visions of peoplehood within the established and developing Jewish diaspora centers of Europe and America. Writing in Russian, Yiddish, Hebrew, French, and English, these Jewish intellectuals sought to recast Jewish existence, whether within multiethnic empires, liberal democracies, or socialist forms of government, in national terms.
The fourteen readings in Jews and Diaspora Nationalism: Writings on Jewish Peoplehood in Europe and the United States present extensive excerpts on Jewish peoplehood or nationalism from major figures in modern Jewish history, in many cases providing the first availability of these texts in English. As volume editor,
Rabinovitch provides an introductory essay, as well as short introductions and annotations to each document that contextualize and make accessible this wealth of primary sources for scholars and students.