1897: A Year of Transition

[Music] both of those projects initiatives got off the ground because of the garage prolific team members slain in west germany out of the 24 who were killed were americans who had come to learn i say one million jewish children who were made to become losers [Music] it is never too little it is never too late and it is never enough jewish history sound bites bringing alive the world of our glorious past here is our host live from jerusalem jewish historian and tour guide yehuda gabaro you're the gabriel jewish history sound bites and this episode i wanted to share about this incredible artist i see his stuff all over and i finally contacted him and made a purchase myself and will probably continue to do so elon block he does great art abstract art very beautiful rich a different fresh kind of look i love his stuff and i think that a lot of our listeners of jewish history sound bites will like it as well as you can commission any historical figure and he'll give you this incredible you know fresh uh abstract um colorful if you want not colorful if you don't want whatever it's a anything else or historical figures or anything else um you'll love it here's his contact information obviously i'm going to post it as well um in the show notes and on the jewish history sound bites social media platforms on twitter he's at elon block i l a n block b l o c k uh same on instagram he's s elon block s-i-l-a-n-b-l-o-c-k his uh number for whatsapp and stuff like that is 908.239.9161 and you can email him at elon block gmail.com i l a n b l o c k gmail.com so i'll post that and i wonder what i wanted to speak about today is a little bit of a different type of episode than i usually do but this struck me a while ago and i looked into it and and obviously i'm making this connection myself so i don't know if it actually has historical significance but i want to explore it a little bit together with all you uh out there there were four events in the jewish world in the year which just happened to take place in the same year by pure coincidence two of them were major events in the jewish world and two of them were relatively minor events in the jewish world but i think they're still significant especially for religious jews the first two major events were was the first zionist congress in basel switzerland with theodore herzl of course who chaired it and he called it he convened the conference the the congress and that was at the end of august the second major event was the founding of the bund the jewish socialist political party in russia was founded in vilna in october of that year and then the third event which was like i said a much more minor event but very significant especially in the torah world was the pulmus hamusa the dispute regarding the muslim movement in lithuania which took place over the summer of the year 1897 and the fourth event last but not least uh was the founding of the taiwan yeshiva in uh in lubavitch by the rev the fifth rabb of khabar and he appointed his his young son who just had finished his cheva brachus um in in and that was in l that year so l was september of course in the year 1897 and these are four very very different events they cross the ideological political and religious spectrum of the jewish people in in russia in europe at the time and therefore they're the four are seemingly completely unrelated whatsoever to each other and maybe it's just coincidence that they happen to have taken place in the same year on the gregorian calendar or is it significant that they're on the same year now i'm not saying that there's something mystical about the year 1897 that's not what i'm insinuating this is not an 1840 type of situation or podcast i think that it's just a metaphor 1897 just happens to be a metaphor for an undercurrent which gives expression in different ways and they happen to have taken place during the same year by coincidence so there's nothing special about the year itself obviously i hope that's obvious but it's an excuse the fact that they coincided that way it's an excuse for me to delve into that time period and take a bit of a survey of the jewish world at that time and perhaps find a an underlying uh connection about why this is a time of transition a time of change a time of revolution a time of of of searching for new solutions and new identities in the jewish world at the time and i want to actually explore it further by noting that two other things took place in 1897 on the other side of the world which have absolutely no relation to the jewish people or jewish history but i feel that it may broaden our perspective as well and these two things took place in 1897 too one was the klondike gold rush in yukon um the discovery of gold there was in but word reaches seattle and san francisco from the yukon only in july of 1897 when river traffic was restored after the winter and there's this image of get rich quick of gold of of of the new world of america is the streets paved with gold and and here you can get rich quick by just finding gold if you can venture out to the yukon 100 000 people reportedly tried to get there approximately most of them did not get there only about 30 40 000 got there but speculators and businesses surrounding the mining and these these you know dawson city these other like boom towns and then the rise of places like seattle seattle doubles in its population during the next few years in san francisco other cities and this is during the time of great immigration to the united states among them many jews so there's there's jewish immigrants and other immigrants who see america as the promised land and now they're heading out literally to find gold and uh and this is you know big reverberations around the world as well that's another event that takes place in 1897. and then a further very seemingly very insignificant event takes place and that's that the new york times starts printing the their slogan their famous logan all the news that's fit to print on the front page in february 1897. it already appeared on the editorial page several months earlier it was coined by adolf ox himself the owner of the paper but in february 1897 it started to appear on the front page and it continues to do so as far as i know until today now the new york times had been purchased a year earlier by adolf ox oaks oaks however you pronounce it it was an unaffiliated jew from cincinnati the child of german jewish immigrants um who came during the the german jewish immigration of the 1840s from the 1820s to the 1860s but they his parents kept came in the 1840s and his slogan of all the news that starts to print that he now wanted a print to to have on the front page of his paper it signaled his competition with two other prominent new york papers at the time joseph pulitzer's new york world and william randall hirst's new york journal both of the others engaged in yellow journalism sensationalism and ox wanted the new york times to be considered the newspaper of record and accurate journalism and not yellow journalism of the other two prominent newspapers in new york at the time worth noting that joseph pulitzer was a hungarian jewish immigrant who was born in macov near budapest and ironically the pulitzer prize which is for you know accurate journalism among other things photographs and all kinds of other categories but one of them is you know accurate journalism and good reporting so it's named after a person who proudly engaged in sensationalists and yellow journalism and very not accurate but in any event he was a hungarian jew so the hungarian jews competing with the german jew which is not the first time that happened in jewish history but both of them are as american papers not as jewish papers of course william randall fierce was non-jewish but since his the character of william randle fierce was he inspired citizen kane so we can say that he was close enough to being jewish since hollywood is jewish of course and even though orson welles was not jewish but the screenwriter hermann monkeyevich was in any event why are these two events the klondike gold rush and the new york times coining their new slogan why are they connected to the first force first of all they're not connected to the first four but there's something about it that that made me make a connection anyway um and that's that this is during the time of immigration what's hovering in the background of 1897 and all these other events that are taking place in jewish europe is the great immigration um jews are leaving eastern europe and going to the united golden st where now there's actually gold in the mountains of the yukon which is technically canada but it's the same idea and jews are rising in prominence the earlier generation of german jewish immigration which comes a half a century before the russian jewish immigration and the galicia jewish immigration they're already americanized they're already rising in prominence in new countries there's a secularization there's economic struggle there's a search for the new jewish identity in the new world there's new technologies newspapers are relatively new medium and there's all this change that's represented in the new world and it has its effect on the old world as well and not only in the fact that it's pulling jews to migrate from the old world to the new world but it eventually has an impact and it changes the jewish community in the old world as well so even though there's no direct connection at all but it seems to be to me at least that because the greatest uh change that's happening in the jewish world is the immigration that's taking place the migration that's taking place and therefore the jews are on the move the jews are searching there's there's this struggle it's the period of modernity there's they're confronting new challenges and and and and all these economic changes and political changes and therefore there's a search how to confront all this change so it's about really the time period around 1897 it's not specifically about the years that whole decade or you know a few decades actually of the close of the 19th century and the beginning of the the uh the um the 20th century now of the four events that i mentioned earlier um the the zion first zionist congress and the founding of the bund and the pulmus a muslim and the founding of so that big two the the the the first zionist congress and the founding of the ubuntu represent the larger response the external response about how how is the jewish people as a people gonna define themselves and and confront the new world of of of change of political change of economic change urbanization things like that the latter two the pulmonary and the founding of kind of express the internal or religious response um an internal response within the jewish community within traditional judaism and it's a response to one it's a fast-changing world which required some sort of reaction to a very dynamic social and political environment and which presented traditional jewish life with some pretty serious challenges and with this like i said before the hovering in the background is the great immigration so that like as you know the jewish people are are moving out they had enough of russia they had enough of the czar that enough the palestine and many of them are leaving and there's there the great immigration is already two decades old it starts in the beginning of the 1880s and now it's 1897 and and it's on the cusp of an exponential increase in the decade leading up to world war one which is going to have enormous uh tremendous numbers of jews moving and and the jewish community who stays put is confronting similar challenges in different ways with different solutions with immigration not being one of them so they have to figure out how they're gonna deal with the world and uh and and i think all these different events are really um different solutions they're providing different solutions where they're presenting and i think it's it really gives the tapestry of the jewish people at that time about how how the jewish people over their history deal with change deal with transition and of course it's all gradual it's a process there's no instant change and i'm not trying to say there's instant change because of these events they're just indicators indicators and therefore it's worth pointing out the indicators because the gradual process is hard to perceive in for sure in real time but even in retrospective analysis and therefore these events that took place indicate the underlying change that's that it's representing that it's expressing and i'm going to just discuss each one of these four events not in a chronological order throughout the year um as an aside all four of these should really have their own episode um there are huge stories of course if you want to sponsor one of those then sponsorships are available available so you can be in touch with me about that but now i just want to use these events as an overview of the time period we'll start with the bund um there's this this growing movement towards socialism the industrial revolution affects the jewish people as well and they're working for their factory rights and their workers rights and the bund is founded based on that premise of socialism and revolution and anti the tsar and the tsarist government but the bund sees a unique situation to the jewish people in russia and and therefore the jewish people as a whole throughout the world although it's questionable how much the buns saw the jews as a whole they definitely saw jewish workers as a whole wherever they may be um they definitely did not have much affinity for jewish capitalists or the jewish religion or jewish nationalism such as the zionist movement um to say the least they had had a lot less than affinity they had a lot of antagonism towards all the all the above but they also on the other hand are kadhi kramer and the other founders of the uh of the bund who gathered in vilna in in the fall of 1897 to officially found the bun which is kind of you know really existed before that but this was like the formal founding of it as a political entity as a party um they they they are focusing first of all on socialism on workers rights on improving the the the world like whatever socialist ideals were at that time um and and jews flocked to socialism because they were a persecuted minority and of course revolution against the czar and of course arkady cramer and most of the other leaders of the bund are arrested at one point or another either way in the beginning or during the 1905 revolution when the czar cracked down on all these revolutionary movements but what the unique what was unique about the bund and they presented as a platform was a form of jewish nationalism of jewish culture of jewish language of yiddish um and combating anti-semitism working for jewish rights and and and they marry that to to socialism in other words this is a unique jewish idealism because of that they had a very fraught uh relationship with other non-jewish socialists who who said socialism needs to be universal there can't be anything particular about a specific nationality that's that's the very antithesis of what socialism is supposed to be socialism is supposed to be universal workers worldwide need to unite and if you the bund say the jews are unique and the jews have a special situation and they're specially persecuted and there's special anti-semitism against targeting jews not just workers and it's not just the economic system that needs to be changed but jewish identity needs to be strengthened and the jewish language needs to be recognized and autonomy with culture needs to be demanded and and and there's a specific real situation for the jews that means that they're they're presenting a uniquely jewish response to the economic challenges of living under the czarist repression and therefore it's it's a it's a a something very relevant to the time because socialism is prominent everywhere during the closing decades of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th but here what we're seeing is is that it's married to the idea of preserving jewish identity in the modern world and struggling for jewish autonomy and survival and and and sticking up for jewish rights in a very unique way in a different way and turning their backs on tradition um going against the jewish religion seeing that the modern era is different for further for the reasons that they perceive and seeing that that zionism jewish nationalism is not the answer either because that's a form of escapism it's unrealistic we have to deal with the here and now and the reality of living under the tsar that's the bund the second thing was like i mentioned before the first zionist congress you have theodore herzl who envisions it at basel i founded the jewish state or i conceived the jewish state um that's what herzl writes after the the congress that takes place in the last days of august in 1897 max nordau all the other zionist leaders uh nathan birnbaum at the time is part of the zionist movement and others and and the z at the zionist congress there's an absorption of the most of the sion the lovers of zion movement which had existed in russia and now they're incorporated into the zionist movement which becomes an official movement which becomes a political movement uh which becomes much more serious with a a platform and a program and it takes nationalism to a practical and serious level and here with the founding of the zionist movement what the jewish people whoever associated with it at the time whether they're religious or secular are assimilated like herzl himself and there was a quite a bit of a range within the zionist movement at this time of of jewish or or traditional affiliation what they were saying was is that emancipation did not work in western europe it did not get rid of anti-semitism modern anti-semitism existed and even increased in the 19th century and and in eastern europe emancipation never happened the jews never received their rights from the tsar which is where most of the jews lived in russia and the pale and so if there's no solution to the jews in europe emancipation is not working which seemed to have been at the dawn of the century that seemed to be what the solution for the jewish people would be emancipation we'd become citizens we can integrate into our countries we can become proud citizens of our countries and by the end of the 19th century it seemed that it wasn't working in russia because they didn't get it yet and it didn't seem like the czar was too keen on ever giving it to the jews or anyone else in russia for that matter and in western europe it didn't get rid of anti-semitism so what this first zionist congress was saying was that what these theories and ideas and ideologies of jewish nationalism of zionism of of of creating creating a state or or creating a jewish entity that can can provide a framework for their existence for jewish existence in the modern world it takes nationalism to a practical and serious level and it's providing a new solution and the first sign is congress makes it concrete it makes it real on the ground that it's now a component of the jewish people the third event was the pulmonary which was the background of the pulmonary so a year before that in 1896 there's the founding of the nevada kishiva where the altar which was a more radical form of musser it brought mustard to the forefront again there's another moisture yeshiva and and they have i spoke about this in an episode quite some time ago about novartic and what it was and how it was spread is how it spread eventually it opened other branches that was still on the horizon it hadn't happened yet the year before was also the passing of ubisoft khan inspector the great covener who is a great unifier of the jewish people in russia in general and for sure in the religious community and without the unified leadership anymore so there's disputes that can break out several years earlier was the closing of the village in yeshiva the the first modern yeshivas and the greatest one and now there's this competition among lithuanian yeshivas who who's replacing valajian who's succeeding velesian at the forefront there's also the revolutionary fervor that affects the yeshivas as well there are revolutionaries in the yeshivas and this is a revolutionary time in russia and then of course we have the early years of slabhatka yeshiva which is the first real muster yeshiva where the altar of slovakia if necessary finger combines elite learning it's going to be the best yeshiva it's going to be a contender for the successor of elijah on one hand but it's also a master yeshiva which was the first of its kind it was a revolutionary concept it was a new educational concept and it caused controversy there's a slobatka revolt a student revolt within the yeshiva i spoke about it in one of the first episodes ever of jewish history sound bites a couple of years ago and the rabbis across lithuania are divided and they express their different opinions in the pages of the hamelitz newspaper the most popular newspaper read by jews in the russian empire and and there's the le mans ms and the le mans something else the pro and the anti-cult claires these proclamations published in the newspapers and there's this entire dispute about the place of master in jewish society in the yeshiva curriculum and what is muster and should it be studied and is it is it appropriate should it be part of a a yeshiva curriculum is this a way to train rabbis is this what the jewish people needs is this what is it new and we're conservative societies anything new is against tradition is it is it very important is it something that can actually help the yeshivas with all the revolutionary and all the posthaskala reality in the beginning of secularization of the jews in eastern europe is this something that can actually enhance the yeshiva studies and everyone's got an opinion and the result of the of the pulmonary is a a revival i mean any time there's strong opinions expressed on both sides slovakia yeshiva splits the the altar leaves and with the people with with the students who followed him and the the two leaders of the pulmonary and the the movement against the muslim movement was the rabbi of kavanaugh the son of of of its clan inspector and the rabbi of sabat and they take charge of the yeshiva that remained in slabatka that was not the altars of shiva and they found it as ishiva knesset and eventually several years later in 1904 they hired lebowitch to be the reshiva of the non-muslim non-muslim anti-muslim depends how you want to term it so there's a split in slovakia and this you know split it eventually enriches the yeshiva world and it enriches jewish society because the whole discussion is you know what what do we need what are our values eventually muster wins out because almost every yeshiva has muslim eventually especially after world war one so the long-term results is that it enriches the yeshiva world this discussion of the pro and anti-muslim and how the altar slovakia ultimately emerges victorious and the verdict succeeds too and even the non-muslims succeed also so there's this flourishing of the torah world of the yeshiva world of the master yeshivas and and therefore there's a renewal a very rich renewal of the internal spiritual and traditional life as a result which is a reaction to the changes happening in jewish society at the time the fourth and final event that takes place and also it's really its own episode it was a watershed moment in hasidic history the founding of the time yeshiva really an incredible story the rabbi the rashab shalom the fifth rabbi of chabad and he appoints his son of course the free of the qarabah the sixth rabb of chabad and and this founding of time kind of foreshadows the responses of some of the great visionaries leaders in sadiq of the hasidic movement during the ensuing decades during a time of crisis in the hasidic movement which i discussed in an episode and how the rashad pioneers this the rashaba says that is going to save russian jewelry going to save the hasidus is going to strengthen the the russian jury in general the communities what it's going to produce his focus on education his focus on youth was very unique and very revolutionary for the time both education and youth no other facilities did that take place until years later and many of them were many of them did that eventually in the interwar period and beyond and the idea was to have it wasn't just the yeshiva it was quite a unique yeshiva with a mashpia and teaching hasidis and strengthening their identity of the tumeemim of the students in the yeshiva so was a revolution it was a revolution at a revolutionary time and it was a reaction to what was going on around them and and it was a pioneering endeavor about to have this type issue to have a yeshiva to have the reba focusing on the youth and having his son running it under his auspices and other branches open up kevin shulkin and many other cities across russia and it becomes an entire movement with their own journal and newspaper and gatherings and fabrangans and and songs even and um and and becomes a model that really brings khabad and lubavitch to a new level it really strengthens the ranks and they produce rabbis of of communities across russia in the ensuing years and therefore this response again an internal traditional response but it's revolutionary it's new it's good to confront the challenges of modernity and these changes happening in russian jewish society so if we would summarize we can say that although like i said these events have nothing to do with each other and especially the far-off events in america have zero to do with what was going on in jewish europe they all happened to have taken place in the same year in 1897 and it's kind of a reflection of what's going on in the wider world both the wider jewish world and really the wider world of society and especially this immigration that's taking place in the background the background that people are fed up jews are fed up with living in russia under the tsars and they're moving they're leaving they're leaving it all behind moving to a new world and those who choose to stay either by choice by conscious choice or because of inertia or because of any other reason that they're staying which is ultimately the majority of people two-thirds of of russian jewry do stay in europe um so the overwhelming majority stays how do they how do they search for jewish identity in the modern world how do they confront the challenges the economic changes political changes threats and challenges to traditional religious jewish life how are they going to strengthen their internal life and therefore it may not be such a coincidence that this all takes place during that year 1897 and it's a at the cusp of a new century the jewish world is redefining itself in many different directions so this is jewish history sound bites you can reach me at yehuda you the gabbard.com for questions comments sources tours trips sponsorships and lectures you can subscribe to jewish history sound by sun podbean or your favorite podcast platform and i hope you enjoyed