Marxist Jewish Historiography: National Sources and Conclusions

• In Event: Class and nation in Jewish radical’s thinking, politics and identity

Abstract

The first half of the twentieth century saw a trend in Jewish historiography yet to be explored: Marxist Jewish historiography. This intellectual phenomenon emerged from the various Jewish and general workers movements, and accordingly – composed of different, and sometimes opposed, sub-currents. This paper will unfold the interrelation between theoretical and political aspects in different trends within Marxist Jewish historiography – Marxist Zionists (Ber Borochov, Jacob Lestschinsky, Isaac Schipper, Emanuel Ringelblum, Raphael Mahler), Jewish Communists (Otto Heller and Moyshe Katz) and Trotskyists (Abram Leon) – while answering the following questions: What was the background for the emergence of Marxist Jewish Historiography at the dawn of the 20th century? What were the reasons for its popularity in the 1930’s and for its decline right afterwards? Why was it dominated for a long time by Zionist intellectuals? Why the Jewish Bund did not develop its own interpretation of Jewish history? Why was Soviet Jewish historiography only a short-lived phenomenon? And why, when communist movements have joined the Jewish historical discourse, only in the 1930's, they adopted a hesitant or even mild sympathetic approach to Jewish nationalism?

Author

• Tom Navon, University of Haifa