The pogroms and the anti-Semitism of the…

The pogroms and the anti-Semitism of the new tsar not only means economic hardship and physical suffering but a deep spiritual malaise as well for many Jews, especially the maskalim (”enlightened”).

Before 1881, they had been abandoning the strict confines of the kehilot en masse and rebelling against religious orthodoxy, anxiously waiting for the expected emancipation to reach Russia.

The 1881 pogroms and their aftermath have shattered not only the faith of the maskalim in the inevitable liberalization of tsarist Russia but also their belief that the non-Jewish Russian intellectual will take an active role in opposing anti-Jewish policies.

Most of the Russian intelligentsia have either been silent during the pogroms or actually supported them.

Having lost their faith in God and in the inevitable spread of liberalism, large numbers of Russian Jews are forced to seek new solutions.

Many flock to the revolutionary socialist and communist movements opposing the tsar, while others become involved with the Bund, a cultural society organized in 1897 that seeks to establish a Yiddish cultural renaissance within Russia.

A smaller but growing number of Jews are attracted to the ancient but newly formulated notion of reconstituting a Jewish nation-state in Palestine.

Zionism as it evolves in Eastern Europe, unlike Zionism in the West, deals not only with the plight of Jews but also with the crisis of Judaism.

Thus, despite its secularism, East European Zionism remains attached to the Jewish biblical home in Palestine.

It also is imbued with the radical socialist fervor challenging the tsarist regime.