New Books In History

I’ve got a name for you: Robert Zimmerman (aka Shabtai Zisel ben Avraham). You’ve heard of him. He was a Jewish kid from Hibbing, Minnesota. But he didn’t (as the stereotype would suggest) become a doctor, lawyer, professor or businessman. Nope, the professions were not for him. He loved the American folk legend Woody Guthrie (of “This Land is Your Land” fame). In fact, he wanted to become the next Woodie Guthrie. So he more or less left his Jewish roots, changed his name to Bob Dylan, and immersed himself in American folk music.

Most Americans know this story and others like it. In fact, it seems like a peculiarly American story. But, as you will read in Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern‘s fascinating The Anti-Imperial Choice: The Making of the Ukrainian Jew (Yale, 2009), it’s not. It can be found in–of all places–Ukraine. The story of the Jews in Ukraine is not exactly a happy one (cf. “pogroms”). The relationship between Jews and Ukrainians has always, it seems, been one of mutual mistrust. Therefore it is all the more surprising to find a tradition of Jewish literati who devoted themselves body and soul to the cause of Ukrainian culture and the foundation of a Ukrainian state. But that is in fact what Yohanan has uncovered. The Anti-Imperial Choice discusses five Jewish-born authors who “adopted” (so to say) the Ukrainian movement in favor of the dominant imperial culture (Russian, German, etc.). They were a minority (Jews) and they elected to affiliate with a minority (Ukrainians). Yohanan does a masterful job of describing the ways in which these authors fused Jewishness and Ukrainianess into a significant literary canon in the Ukrainian language. Remarkable and food for thought indeed.

Let me also add that the book is wonderfully written. It is always amazing to me to see someone write with this level of mastery in a second language. Actually, I think English is Yohanan’s fourth or fifth language (which makes it that much more amazing…).

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Tags: 19th Century, 20th Century, Ashkenazi Jews, Assimilation, Colonialism, Communism, Culture, Eastern Europe, Empires, Hebrew, Imperialism, Intellectuals, Jews, Marxism, Modernity, National Identity, Nationalism, Religion, Revolution, Russia, Russian Empire, Socialism, Ukraine, Yiddish, Zionism by Marshall Poe
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In preparation for this interview I watched the documentary (that’s what the producers call it, anyway) “Loose Change 9/11: An American Coup.” Of course it’s absolutely loony. In fact, it’s so loony that I began to wonder if the director, Dylan Avery, wasn’t having us on. It’s hard to tell whether “Loose Change” is a you’ve-gotta-hear-this conspiracy theory or a tongue-firmly-in-cheek parody of a conspiracy theory. Maybe I’m just jaded, but it seems to me–particularly after reading David Aaronovitch’s excellent book Voodoo Histories: The Role of Conspiracy Theory in the Shaping of Modern History (Penguin, 2010)–that we’ve heard all this before: Satan’s children did it, the Freemasons did it, the Illuminati did it, the Jews did it, the the Commies did it, the Mafia did it, the John Birch Society did it, the Trilateral Commission did it, the Bilderberg Group did it, the Club of Rome did it, Skull and Bones did it, PNAC did it, and everyone else has done “it” whatever “it” happens to be. Every time one of these insidious plots “comes to light” it turns out to be a sickly-sweet cocktail of paranoia, anger, and don’t-let-the-facts-get-in-the-way-of-your-argument speculation. You’d think we’d have learned by now not to believe that “dark, hidden forces” are behind everything because, well, they demonstrably aren’t. But people want to believe these things, particularly when they seem to explain why something distrubing–say, the collapse of Germany in WWI, the high costs of rapid industrialization in the USSR in the 1930s, or America’s evident lack of preparation for 9/11–wasn’t “our” fault, but rather someone else’s. I would like to think that David’s wonderful book will put an end to loopy conspiracy theories so that we can get on with the important business of fixing things that matter. It probably won’t, but nonetheless Voodoo History is certainly a fine step in that direction and I applaud David for writing it (and you for reading it).

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Tags: 19th Century, 20th Century, 9/11, Anti-Semitism, Assassination, CIA, Catholicism, Christianity, Communism, Conspiracy Theories, George W. Bush, Historiography, Hitler, Hoaxes, Intellectuals, JFK, Jews, Joseph McCarthy, Mafia, Nazis, Papacy, Paranoia, Politics, Popular Culture, Propaganda, Public Intellectuals, Red Scare, Soviet Union, Stalin, Trotsky, Witchhunts, Zionism by Marshall Poe
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For us, every “nation” has and has always had a “culture,” meaning a defining set of folkways, customs, and styles that is different from every other. But like the modern understanding of the word “nation,” this idea of “culture” or “a culture” is not very old. According to the OED, the modern meaning gained currency in English only in the nineteenth century. In a way, that’s not surprising: the nineteenth century was the era of high-nationalism and, as we’ve said, every “nation” had to have an essence that distinguished it from all others. That essence came to be called “culture.” This nation-culture equivalency, however, presented some nationalists with a problem, particularly if their “nation” had what looked to be several cultures. Jews are the archetypal example. They were spread all over the place, spoke many languages, and practiced many customs. There was nothing to unite them except Judaism–itself hardly unified. If you believed in a Jewish nation, then you had to believe that there could be a “Jewish culture.” But what would it be? In his fascinating new book Jewish Renaissance in the Russian Revolution (Harvard, 2010), Kenneth Moss explores the ways in which Eastern European Jewish culture-builders attempted to answer this question in the Russian Revolutionary era. As Ken points out, there was no simple answer. Rather, there were a lot of competing answers (Yiddishist, Hebraist, Socialist, etc.). But there was also a lot of deep, deep thought about what it meant to build and have a culture. These thinkers knew what we have forgotten, namely, that all cultures are made. They knew this because they were making one. Whether we admit it or not, we are too…

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Tags: 19th Century, 20th Century, Anti-Semitism, Ashkenazi Jews, Bolsheviks, Culture, Emancipation, Hebrew, Ideology, Intellectuals, Jews, Marxism, National Identity, Nationalism, Poland, Popular Culture, Revolution, Russia, Russian Empire, Socialism, Soviet Union, Ukraine, World War I, Yiddish, Zionism by Marshall Poe
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