Description
Book SynopsisIn
Russian Idea—Jewish Presence, Professor Brian Horowitz follows the career tracks of Jewish intellectuals who, having fallen in love with Russian culture, were unceremoniously repulsed. Horowitz relays the paradoxes of a synthetic Jewish and Russian self-consciousness in order to correct critics who have always considered Russians and Jews as polar opposites, enemies, and incompatible. In fact, the best Russian-Jewish intellectuals—Semyon Dubnov, Maxim Vinaver, Mikhail Gershenzon, and a number of Zionist writers and thinkers—were actually inspired by Russian culture and attempted to develop a sui generis Jewish creativity in three languages on Russian soil.
Trade Review“The narratives found in the book celebrate Jewish culture but in doing so also question issues of social and political assimilation and ultimately of the role of Russian Jews in a changing society and world. Russian Idea—Jewish Presence is effective for graduate level as well as for undergraduate students. In that alternate perspectives are a focus of all scholars, the insightful discussions offered by this book are ones that scholars of various fields should include in their own personal libraries. It is precisely the diverse range of narratives that help explain philosophical differences in a way that is accessible to those not familiar with this era of history, nor with the various philosophical discourses of those times.”
— Rosalind Latiner Raby, California State University at Northridge, for The Russian Review, July 2014 (Vol. 73, No. 3)
