The Other Jewish State
I was conducting my usual link harvesting routine earlier today, when I came across this page on the website of Kommersant, an independent Russian newspaper, which discusses the area of southeast Russia known as The Jewish Autonomous Region. Not to be confused with the Pale of Jewish Settlement (the sliver of Eastern Europe/Western Russia that served essentially as the gentile government-imposed ghetto homeland of Jewish peoples of Slavic origin up until the Shoah), Wikipedia states,
The Jewish Autonomous Republic was founded in 1928 as the Jewish National District. It was the result of Vladimir Lenin’s nationality policy, by which each of the national groups that formed the Soviet Union would receive a territory in which to pursue cultural autonomy in a socialist framework. In that sense, it was also a response to two supposed threats to the Soviet state: Judaism, which ran counter to official state atheism; and Zionism, which countered Soviet views of nationalism. The idea was to create a new Soviet Zion, where a proletarian Jewish culture could be developed. Yiddish, rather than Hebrew, would be the national language, and a new socialist literature and arts would replace religion as the primary expression of culture.
Stalin’s theory on the National Question held that a group could only be a nation if they had a territory, and since there was no Jewish territory, per se, the Jews were not a nation and did not have national rights. Jewish Communists argued that the way to solve this ideological dilemma was by creating a Jewish territory, hence the ideological motivation for the Jewish Autonomous Oblast. Politically, it was also considered desirable to create a Soviet Jewish homeland as an ideological alternative to Zionism and the theory put forward by Socialist Zionists such as Ber Borochov that the Jewish Question could be resolved by creating a Jewish territory in Palestine. Thus Birobidzhan was important for propaganda purposes as an argument against Zionism which was a rival ideology to Marxism among left-wing Jews. The propaganda impact was so effective that several thousand Jews immigrated to Birobidzhan from outside of the Soviet Union, including several hundred from Palestine who had become disillusioned with the Zionist experience.
Though Stalin’s experiment eventually failed, the region today retains its Jewish identity, despite retaining practically no Jewish population — or at least, a Jewish population consistent with that of other nations: roughly 2% of the total inhabitants. Interesting to know, though, that if (á’òä*) this Israel thing doesn’t work out, we got an icy tundra of a backup state waiting in the wings.
You can visit the official website of the government of the Jewish Autonomous Region here. If you’re interest is further piqued, check out the 2002 film L’Chayim Comrade Stalin by Yale Strom of the famed klezmer outfit Hot Pstromi. There’s also a bitchin’ online exhibit at Swarthmore on Stalin’s Forgotten Zion.
In related news, Novosti reports,
Russian chief rabbi Berl Lazar issued a statement on Tuesday in the wake of a brutal attack on several rabbis in Moscow calling on law enforcement agencies to step up measures to protect ethnic minorities.
Pravda reports that incidents of antisemitism and ethnic nationalism in Russia are sharply on the rise. For more on the history of Russian antisemitism, check out the excellent Wikipedia entry here.
*The abbreviation I was aiming for was for “b’li ayin hora”. If that’s not it, then what is?
Interesting post, but I think you made a syntactical error.
“if (á’òä) this Israel thing doesn’t work out,”
I think your abbreviations may be wrong. It looks like the one you used was “b’ezrat HaShem,” (with the help of God). I think maybe you meant “chas v’hallilah” or “chas v’shalom” (God forbid).
Amazing exhibit.
This story, in my mind, bolsters the case for Zionism once again. Even after the Holocaust, Jews were being murdered and their cultural lives were being decimated by a blatantly anti-Semitic regime. Once again, a form of “emancipation” failed miserably in the face of persistent hatred. The only true solution for the Jews was their own state, outside the realm of control of another government.
My mind is blown. I can’t believe I never knew about any of that before.
On the other hand, Ronen, I don’t see how Stalin’s purges are the kind of problem that Zionism “solves.” The early purges, according to the exhibit, happened throughout the Soviet Union, not just in the JAR, while the latter campaign is explicitly said to have occurred *because* of the creation of the State of Israel.
If the lesson you want to take is that it’s a joke for dictatorial governments to establish “autonomous” regions in their territories, on the other hands, I certainly am not surprised about that.
I discovered this only a month ago too. Someone new in my shul mentioned this ‘Biribijzan’ (his pronounciation) and a tidbit that there’s a certain religious fellow living there (rabbi(?)) who has poseked that since you can travel over water on shabbos (like on a ship), he’s placed a reservoir of water under his car seat and this allows him to drive on the holy days.
From what I remember, Birobidzhan was only “Jewish” in its name. Most Jews who lived in or around major cities of USSR had no interest in moving away from the civilization to work. Most of those who moved started running away from almost as soon as they arrived. Number of Jews moved there during WWII, but even they moved back to their hometowns or other big cities in Russia after war was over. I believe my grandmother was one of those people; I am going to ask her about it tonight.
Here is a really cool link for you guys.
http://www.swarthmore.edu/Home/News/biro/
From what I remember, Birobidzhan was only “Jewish” in its name. Most Jews who lived in or around major cities of USSR had no interest in moving away from the civilization to work. Most of those who moved started running away from almost as soon as they arrived. Number of Jews moved there during WWII, but even they moved back to their hometowns or other big cities in Russia after war was over. I believe my grandmother was one of those people; I am going to ask her about it tonight.
Here is a really cool link for you guys.
http://www.swarthmore.edu/Home/News/biro/
It’s interesting that this project actually failed, it demonstrates that having a jewish homeland outside of Palestine wouldn’t work. On another note, I read somewhere a while ago that there was actually a jewish monarchy i think north of where Sophia is nowadays. I find out exacly where and when and post about it soon.
Random comments:
1) One of the weird things about Birobidzhan was that its official language was Yiddish … odd to see some of this Soviet republic’s official documents.
2) Something they simply didn’t deal with, but that Israel did and had to, was the idea of an ingathering of Jews from multiple points in the diaspora. In contrast to Israel — which everyone agrees handled it poorly, but in any case which had to deal with it — Birobidzhan wasn’t a pan-Jewish homeland, it was a (Soviet-designed) Ashkenazic homeland. Again, weird.
3) I once spent a few minutes looking to find out who else lived in Birobidzhan before the Soviet government decided it would be designated as a land for a people (nationality, in Soviet speak) without one. Inever found an answer, though. Were there any locals around to mind that the new official language was Yiddish?
The Jerusalem Post had an article here about Birobidzhan a few months back.
“or at least, a Jewish population consistent with that of other nations: roughly 2% of the total inhabitants.”
You mean 0.2%, not 2%.
I think 2% is right vis a vis the US
“I think 2% is right vis a vis the US”
But the US is an exception. It has one of the world’s largest Jewish populations. Overall, Jews make up just 0.2% of total world population.
8opus,
In contrast to Israel — which everyone agrees handled an ingathering of Jews from multiple points in the diaspora poorly
Which part of the past 130 years are you refering too? The poor pioneers of the late 1800’s? The people who fought to get here during the British mandate and/or had to deal with bloodthirsty Arabs in Hebron, ‘East’ Jerusalem, and other areas, the holocaust survivors, the sephardi Jews who came religious, but were forcibly secularized, the Ethiopians Jews, the Vietnamese families, or the Russian immigrants?
I think many of the comments dance around the main point… the unified Ashkenazic culture should have been a plus, and the use of Yiddish rather than the forced resurrection of Hebrew also seems the most rational choice. And here the Jews were given all the trappings of national autonomy.
Yet embattled Israel, and not sleepy Birobijan, survived and thrived.
The obvious conclusion is that neither ethnic “Jewishness” nor “nationhood like all the other nations” are a sufficient basis for Jewish survival.
Other nations just are. The Jewish nation has – must have – a reason for being. That reason for being is a covenantal relationship with G-d, expressed in private and public lives lived in the spirit of the Torah.
Nothing else ever survives – not on the Russian tundra, and not in cushy suburban America.
Ben-David
b’ezrat hashem – with the help of god…
take heart young patawan that you must learn to how to wield hebrew before engaging the dark side.
actually i was aiming for b’li ayin hora
Ben-David: “I think many of the comments dance around the main point… The Jewish nation has – must have – a reason for being. That reason for being is a covenantal relationship with G-d, expressed in private and public lives lived in the spirit of the Torah.”
For a couple millennia, the rabbinate served very well as a government in exile. Rabbinic traditions should not be cast off lightly by any of us. At the same time, Jews certainly deserve a degree of “normality” by way of a legitimate place among the family of nations. There is alot of work to make the transition between physical, political exile and national self-determination, and we do no good dismissing each other along secular and religious lines. There is no roadmap or blueprint for this kind of thing, so surely it will take generations to figure out.
(There are abridged English translations of some of the works of Shimon Rawidowicz out there that address this tension. Hebrew readers would do well to check out his multi-volume Babylon and Jerusalem.)
I don’t think other nations “just are…” I think they have a call to God as well, and we were simply the first nation to realize the extent of this call and to make a Covenant with God to embody it.
Of course, I stole all this from Buber and I have no opinion of my own, being a mindless automaton.
Zionista:
There is alot of work to make the transition between physical, political exile and national self-determination, and …. There is no roadmap or blueprint for this kind of thing, so surely it will take generations to figure out.
———————————-
In fact there IS a blueprint – the “rabbinate that served as a government in exile” preserved the Torah’s blueprint for national and personal life, even though large tracts of that plan were impossible to fulfill in exile and wandering. The recent thread on the revival of the Sanhedrin and Temple service is just one example… one of the most interesting developments in Israel today is the scholarship surrounding the revival of Jewish Law and/or its incorporation in the body of modern Israeli law.
You write:
“it is no good dismissing each other along religious and secular lines.”
IMNSHO it is the secularists – both in the Reform movement, and the Socialists who founded Israel – who dismissed the cogent Jewish identity that came before, and attempted to create a new “nationality” out of broken pieces – as if the Torah were irrelevant to Jewish national identity.
Secular Zionism is quite a strange ideological cross-breed: a compeletely assimilationist, self-effacing, cosmopolitan dream (am k’chol ha-amim) wrapped in the mantle of national renewal.
Now it is 2004/5765 and all the substitute Judaisms have failed. Yet many secular Jews still cling to their condescension/rejection of authentic Torah Judaism. Here in Israel anyone religious is belittled and marginalized by the hard kernel of socialists that still control much of the media and the civic sphere.
It’s time for this to change. The religious nationalists are already on their 3rd generation of college educated professionals. Their university – Bar Ilan – graduates the largest number of students every year, in a range of arts and sciences. They are respected in the army (and there, too, there is a “glass ceiling” preventing them from being represented in the higher echelons in numbers reflecting their presence in the general society).
I have heard it argued that the leftist elite’s hatred of the settlers is partly due to the fact that the religious national camp is the most formidable threat to their monopoly on civic leadership. Certainly a large part of their hatred stems from this group’s continued devotion to the Zionist ideal and the ideals of the Jewish people – a position which draws admiration from the “silent majority” among the secular Israelis.
Similarly, in America – Orthodox Jews are represented in all the professions, and their community is dynamic and expanding as other streams are shrinking. There are many lessons to be learned from the Orthodox – about Jewish education and “continuity”. Yet the non-Orthodox cannot seem to get over their (sometimes bitter) antipathy to those faithful to the Judaism of the Ages.
Besides the cliche of the hot-headed ultra-Orthodox “rebbe” denouncing the “goyim” – and it’s always easy to find such a grandstanding fool – I see most of the real “dismissal” happening in one direction: a crumbling secular elite continues to antagonize the Orthodox, even when such rejection is baseless and to their own detriment.
At the same time, Jews certainly deserve a degree of “normality” by way of a legitimate place among the family of nations. Zionista
Yeah, whatever. The part about Israel striving to be accepted in the family of nations is the biggest embarrassment of the Israeli decalration of independance (1948). In the 13th paragraph, we beg the UN to accept us into the ‘family of nations’. Well, I do suppose that we have this innate inferiority complex, but this is so debasing: like the schoolyard wimp returning from the nurse’s office after being beaten to a pulp begging for acceptance into the gang just one more time.
Zionista, can you name one other country created in the last century that felt the need to beg/ask for acceptance into the ‘family of nations’? Only us. Only WE feel the need to emphasize our struggle to become secular, er, ‘normal’, ‘like everyone else’.
I think ‘normality’ should have something to do with self-ethnic pride and education (like other proud nations), not striving for the lowest common denominator of what the world thinks is ‘normal’ at any given moment like Hollywood, the hula-hoop, to Michael Jackson concerts and nose piercing.
Jewish history is replete with examples of Jews aspiring to ‘fit in’ – the vast majority of which failed miserably on a consistent basis.
I once felt this fondness to be ‘normal’ by dressing like everyone else and liking Tiffany, but since then decided to be different by putting on tefillin in the morning, listen to Reva l’sheva, wear a kipa and keeping kosher even at the expense of standing out on overseas business trips and old friends.
Who wants to be normal when you can be special?
Shabbat shalom
http://www.knesset.gov.il/docs/images/megila.jpg
in Soviet Zion, will there be webpage swastikia backgrounds? 😛
Ben-David, why the hostility? Many liberal Jews, like myself, appreciate the Orthodox. While we cannot honestly be Orthodox, or submit ourselves to Orthodox views on halacha, but we understand, accept, and often appreciate the important role that Orthodox Jews play in the Jewish world. Maybe it is a problem for concentrated Jewish communities, and being an American from Iowa, I cannot understand. Where I live, our synogogue (there is only one in town, though Chabad has an unaffiliated presence) is mixed Reform/Conservative, and we try to help the Orthodox (particularly visiting Orthodox) by assembling a minyan when needed to meet their religious needs.
That said, why hasn’t anyone mentioned the Khazars? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khazars If you ever wanted a nice example of an independent state run by Jews who ruled a plural society outside Israel, Khazaria was it.
Michael Chabon author of Wonder Boys and the Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay (and my friend Adam’s brother) is currently working on a book about a Jewish national home in Alaska where the official language is Yiddish. Wonder if he knew about this? Regardless, I can’t wait to read it.
A Jewish state which existed in Diaspora was the kingdom of Himyar in southern Yemen, between the IVth century CE and the early VIIth c.
As for the Birobidzhan project, it was a sorry ill-fated idea from the biggest factory of bad ideas of last century.
There was a wonderful film about Birobidzhan called “L’Chaim Comrade Stalin” that came out a few years ago (maybe 2002?). I think the director’s name was Yale Strom. He travelled to the region and spoke to people who came to settle there – some from the United States. Ironically enough, the translator who accompanies him turns out to be an inveterate anti-Semite.
There were several Soviets (councils) in the Ukraine who used Yiddish exclusively for their correspondence and debates, at least into the late 1930s.
“Yiddish- A Nation of Words” by Miriam Weinstein has a good chapter on the Jewish Autonomous Region.
On the other hand, Ronen, I don’t see how Stalin’s purges are the kind of problem that Zionism “solves.”
They are, at the very least, an example of how “autonomy” within a nation-state will not protect Jewish self-determination or safety if that state is (or becomes) dictatorial.
I touched on this subject last year.
Josh: which part of the past 130 years are you refering too? Europeanization.
Zionista, can you name one other country created in the last century that felt the need to beg/ask for acceptance into the ‘family of nations’? Only us.
On the contrary: many countries have sought to be recognised as countries.
the unified Ashkenazic culture should have been a plus … agreed, insofar as it was common to all of the inhabitants … and the use of Yiddish rather than the forced resurrection of Hebrew also seems the most rational choice.
I’m not so sure. The Soviet Union included both Ashkenazic and Caucasian (Georgian, Bukharian, etc.) Jewish communities. Birobidzhan is not quite in the Caucasus, but it is certainly nearer to it than to the western Ashkenazi areas of the Soviet Union.
So it’s not obvious why, of the several Jewish languages spoken by the Soviet Jewish communities, the language of the furthest-away communities should be adopted. The real reason may have something to do with a Eurocentric Stalin who was, himself, anxious to show his Europeanness and efface his Georgian roots.
Don’t get me wrong. I have nothing against Yiddish. Just wanted to underline that the choice to adopt it as Birobidzhan’s official language was, it seems to me, very much a political choice — with interesting similarities both to Israel’s early days (where Ashkenazim sought to built a country in Europe’s best traditions) and to Hollywood’s early days (where Jews sought to build a country in which we weren’t different from anyone else).
Yet embattled Israel, and not sleepy Birobijan, survived and thrived. The obvious conclusion is that neither ethnic “Jewishness” nor “nationhood like all the other nations” are a sufficient basis for Jewish survival.
There are so many factors with Birobidzhan’s failure that it’s almost impossible to focus on each one. That it was cooked up and administered by Stalin’s regime is probably part of it. That it had a wintry climate nestled near the Chinese border might not have helped.
What does Europeanization have to do with ‘poor treatment of ingathering of exiles’?
What does Europeanization have to do with ‘poor treatment of ingathering of exiles’? It has to do with absorption of Jews from non-European lands. You are apparently not aware of this — or profess not to be — but some people think this did not go perfectly. Try Googling on ma’abarot, Black Panthers, Shas or, really, whatever you think appropriate.
oy vey you crazy ashkenazim…
its best to leave matters of the evil eye to those who know how to give it, otherwise you just end up using it in the wrong context…
josh: “Zionista, can you name one other country created in the last century that felt the need to beg/ask for acceptance into the ‘family of nations’? Only us.”
Not even close, josh. Israel was 59th member nation of the UN. It began with 51. There are now 191.
Ben-David,
Jews have been defined variably as a nation, a religion, a race, combinations of some or all of the above, and to an extent and at various times in history we have allowed some definitions to limit our own self-awareness.
Jewish identity just happens to have both a national and a religious component, and different Jews will have different measures of both. A secular national leadership can’t prohibit halachic observance, and a religious leadership shouldn’t have to impose it. The viability of Zionism is in the objective reality that a Jewish state remains legitimate without having to rely on theocratic rule. Further, just as Bar Ilan in particular, we can teach secular subjects anywhere along with the Torah and its mitzvos, and just as diligently, whether in Israel or the diaspora.
Ben-David: “The religious nationalists are already on their 3rd generation of college educated professionals. Their university – Bar Ilan – graduates the largest number of students every year, in a range of arts and sciences.”
I’m familiar with Dr. Jose Faur from Bar Ilan. Very impressive teacher. He can lecture for hours at a time without notes.
There is a great song in Yiddish about “Birobidzhan” (it’s where the two rivers come together) in which the Jews are happier than ever before. I know a couple beautiful melodies for it. Also, a guy in my chorus was air-dropped over the area at some point in WWII and is still astonished to remember the storefronts he saw there with Yiddish signage, in the middle of central Asia. I think he said it was kind of a ghost town, though.
To precise, Birobidjan is in the Far East, not in Central Asia, closer to Vladivostok than to Alma-Ata.
I have a completely different view that I stand by as far as the construct of Jewish identity. From my observations, and they have been many, Jewish identity is primarily ethnic. Being from the Ashkenazic community we have a tendency to self-deceive and pass Yiddishkiet and Eastern European mannerisms as being of a spiritual/religious component. This is typical of any ingroup behavior. The fact of the matter is we are much more tribal than religious. We tend to be able to identify other “ashkenazic” Jews on the subway ( saying he “looks” Jewish), tend to help each other out – these are all tribal elements. Not to say there is no religious component but it is certainly a byproduct of our tribalism rather than vice versa. Much for what mobilizes us to our religion is our sense of fear of gentiles which is justified based on their past actions and tendencies towards irrational thought systems vis-a-vie their lower IQ (documented by numerous pyschological studies). We are MORE moral on the whole than the gentiles but this probably has to do more with our higher IQ ( our ability to reach objective understanding of surroundings) than our thought system which is highly complex and times (or quiet often) nonsensical. Ashkenazim are a race plain and simple. We even have inclinations towards certain hereditary diseases (such as Tay Sachs). This is why we don’t want to wholeheartedly mix with other Jewish communities (or are scared to do so). Again this post might take many by surprise but if someone thinks this is utter nonsense than a reply explaining why would be nice.