Simon Dubnow
Simon Dubnow (alternatively spelled Dubnov; Yiddish: שמעון דובנאָװ, romanized: Shimen Dubnov; Russian: Семён Ма́ркович Ду́бнов, romanized: Semyon Markovich Dubnov, IPA: [sʲɪˈmʲɵn ˈmarkəvʲɪdʑ ˈdubnəf]; 10 September 1860 – 8 December 1941) was a Jewish-Russian historian, writer and activist.
Simon Dubnow
Historian, writer and activist
Political ideals[edit]
Dubnow was ambivalent toward Zionism, which he felt was an opiate for the spiritually feeble.[13] Despite being sympathetic to the movement's ideas, he believed its ultimate goal, the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine achieved with international support and substantial Jewish immigration, to be politically, socially, and economically impossible, calling it "a beautiful messianic dream".[14] In 1898, he projected that by the year 2000, there would only be about 500,000 Jews living in Palestine.[15] Dubnow thought Zionism just another sort of messianism, and he thought the possibility of persuading the Jews of Europe to move to Palestine and establish a state fantastical. Beyond improbability, he worried that this impulse would drain energy away from the task of creating an autonomous Jewish center in the diaspora.[1]: 21
Much stronger than his skepticism towards Zionism, Dubnow rejected assimilation.[1]: 20 He believed that the future survival of the Jews as a nation depended on their spiritual and cultural strength, where they resided dispersed in the diaspora. Dubnow wrote: "Jewish history [inspires] the conviction that Jewry at all times, even in the period of political independence, was pre-eminently a spiritual nation,"[16][17] and he called the push for assimilation "national suicide".[1]: 20
His formulated ideology became known as Jewish Autonomism,[18][19] once widely popular in eastern Europe, being adopted in its various derivations by Jewish political parties such as the Bund and his Folkspartei. Autonomism involved a form of self-rule in the Jewish diaspora, which Dubnow called "the Jewish world-nation". The Treaty of Versailles (1919) adopted a version of it in the minority provisions of treaties signed with new east European states. Yet in early 20th-century Europe, many political currents began to trend against polities that accommodated a multiethnic pluralism, as grim monolithic nationalism or ideology emerged as centralizing principles. After the Holocaust, and the founding of Israel, for a while discussion of Autonomism seemed absent from Jewish politics.[20]
Dubnow Institute in Leipzig[edit]
In honor of Simon Dubnow and as a center for undertaking research on Jewish culture, in 1995, the Leibniz Institute for Jewish History and Culture – Simon Dubnow was founded.[55] It is an interdisciplinary institute for the research of Jewish lived experience in Central and Eastern Europe from the Early Modern Period to the present day. The Dubnow Institute is dedicated to the secular tradition of its namesake. At the Dubnow Institute, Jewish history is always regarded in the context of its non-Jewish environs and as a seismograph of general historical developments. The institute is contributing courses to several degree programs of Leipzig University and offers a Ph.D. research scheme.
