Nationalism, Liberation, and Internationalism in the Global Yiddish Public Sphere

Session Submission Type: Panel

Brief Description

The onrush of modernity over the late nineteenth century triggered a global explosion of political movements devoted to the abstract promise of “liberation.” For activists of nascent nationalist movements that erupted across the empires of Central and Eastern Europe, the concept of Liberation necessarily entailed emancipation from foreign and imperial domination. For many others – particularly from the ranks of industrial workers and indebted peasantries – the domination of the modern age seemed to stem not simply from the oppression of states, but also from forms of coercion engendered by emergent system of global capitalism, which seemed to necessitate internationalist responses. Jews, like all groups, struggled with tensions between nationalism and internationalism. Yet, for Jews in Eastern Europe and its global diaspora, the politics of liberation, whether nationalist or internationalist, increasingly conflated the ills of modernity with Jews and Jewishness producing the potential for mass social and political violence against Jews. This panel explores how Jewish intellectuals from the global Yiddish diaspora confronted the promises and dangers of nationalist and internationalist liberation, from the late 19th century through the totalizing politics of the interwar era.

Sub Unit

• History: 1900-1945

Chair

• Jeffrey Veidlinger, U of Michigan

Papers

• Philip Krantz and the Creation of the Internationalist Yiddish Public Sphere - Andrew Sloin, Baruch College / CUNY Graduate Center

• The Ambivalence of Liberation: Ester Frumkin on the Role of Yiddish as a Language of National Internationalism - Elissa Bemporad, CUNY Queens College / CUNY Graduate Center

• Krig in Shpanyen (The War in Spain): S.L. Shneiderman's Yiddish Reportazh from the Spanish Front - Nancy Sinkoff, Rutgers, The State U of New Jersey

Discussant

• Brian Jay Horowitz, Tulane U