Criticism and bibliography. Reviews

Bloomington-Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2004. 311 p. (The Modern Jewish Experience)*

At the turn of the 19th and early 20th centuries, Jewish culture was undergoing a period of dramatic change. Virtually all institutions of European Jewish communities have been radically transformed. The processes of politicization, secularization, urbanization, acculturation and mobility that took place in them, as well as a number of other qualitatively new phenomena, allow modern researchers to speak about the onset of a new era in Jewish culture - the era of modernity.

The first historical and journalistic works devoted to this topic are characterized by a comparative research method. Thus, the first Russian-Jewish historian I. G. Orshansky (Orshansky I. G. Jews in Russia . Essay on the economic and social life of Russian Jews . St. Petersburg.,

* Stein S. A. Formation of modern Jewry . Yiddish and Ladino press in the Russian and Ottoman Empires . Blumington-Indianapolis: Indiana State University Press, 2004. 311c. (Modern Jewish experience).

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1877) compares the situation of Jews in the Russian Empire with that of their brethren in Western Europe. Modern foreign serious research on the history of Russian Jewry organically includes elements of comparative studies. For example, in the monograph of B. Nathans (Nathans B. Beyond the Pale . The Jewish Encounterwith Late Imperial Russia . Univ. of California Press, 2002) compares the situation of Jewish communities in the pale of settlement and beyond, the processes of emancipation of Russian Jewry and the earlier Western period, the status of the Jewish minority within Russia as a multinational empire, and in the book by Ch. Friz (Freeze Ch. Jewish Marriage and Divorce in Imperial Russia . Brandeis Univ. Press, 2002) compares marriages and divorces among the Jewish population of tsarist Russia and the non-Jewish environment. Nevertheless, in modern historiography, the history of European Jews is usually limited to the borders of national states or empires (see, for example: Gont D. Jewish autonomy at the beginning of Modern Times: The Polish-Lithuanian State and the Ottoman Empire // History and culture of Russian and Eastern European Jewry . New sources , new approaches . Moscow, 2004).

The reviewed monograph, as its author S. Stein notes, "is the first comparative study of Jewish culture in the Russian and Ottoman Empires" (p. 3). To study the history and culture of Russian and Ottoman Jewry means to study a vanished culture, most of the creators and carriers of which, as well as its centers (Warsaw and Thessaloniki) themselves, as a result of The Holocaust disappeared from the map of Jewish settlement. The peculiarity and novelty of the reviewed monograph is that its author resolutely overcomes the borders of the Ashkenazi (Eastern European) and Sephardic (Southeastern) Jewish worlds and seeks to compare them with each other during the transition to the era of modernity.

At the end of the 19th century, the Jewish population of the Russian and Ottoman Empires was caught up in new processes. However, with some common features, such as the lack of emancipation, the Jewry of the two empires was very different. Thus, in the Ottoman Empire, the number of Jews barely exceeded 0.25 million, and in Russia it was more than 5 million 200 thousand. In the Ottoman Empire, unlike in Russia, ethnic and religious differences were respected, and anti-Semitism was not widespread. Thus, the development of these national minorities, as Stein emphasizes, occurred "asymmetrically".

The various branches of the Jewish national movement that developed so rapidly in the Russian Empire, such as Zionism in its most diverse forms, Jewish socialism and autonomism, did not gain any significant influence in the Ottoman Empire. While a significant part of the Jewish intelligentsia in Russia usually defended the Yiddish language as a language of literature and political propaganda, the intellectuals of the Ottoman Empire paid little attention to Ladino, even when they turned to it. The Jews of the two empires also differed in their attitude to the empires in which they lived. If Russian-Jewish immigrants associated Russia with violence and pogroms, Stein writes, then Jews from the Ottoman Empire, even after leaving it after the collapse, felt nostalgia and, as a sign of their positive attitude towards it, wore fezzes, which were banned in their old homeland by the new republican government.

These empires also had different historical experiences in dealing with their multiethnic populations, including Jews. Unlike the Ottoman Empire, in Russia its multinational character, Stein argues, was never recognized by the authorities, whose policy was aimed at Russifying their subjects. In the case of Jews, this was manifested in the middle of the nineteenth century in rather vague guidelines for "rapprochement and fusion", and at the end of the same century in outright segregation. Thus, the differences in the legal, political, and economic status of the Jews of the Russian and Ottoman Empires also create significant differences in the forms of expression of Jewish modernity.

According to Stein, these processes were most clearly reflected in the rapidly developing print culture in the spoken languages of Jews-Yiddish and Ladino.

The first such publications appeared with a difference of 20 years: "La buena Esperanza "(in Ladino) in 1842, 1871-1911 in Izmir and" Kol Mevasser " (in Yiddish) in 1862-1870 in Odessa. Among dozens of periodicals in Hebrew, Yiddish, Russian, and Polish in the Russian Empire, and in French, Ladino, and Turkish in the Ottoman Empire, Stein selects two of the most representative periodicals for her era, according to her well - founded statement: the first Yiddish daily newspaper Der Freind, published in St. Petersburg and Warsaw in the Soviet period. 1903-1913, and the Ladino literary, political, and financial newspaper El Tiempo, which published-

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Yusya was born in Constantinople in 1872-1930. These publications had a lot in common, but also a lot of differences. The newspaper "El tiempo" preached an assimilation course focused on Western values, while "Der Freind" expressed national aspirations.

The appearance of these newspapers, especially Der Freind and El Tiempo, was a sign of the transition from an elite culture to a more popular one. Jewish life was rapidly changing, and the press of that time contributed a lot to these processes. Russian and Ottoman Jews were looking for vectors of cultural identity. Although the philosophies of assimilation, acculturation, and various forms of nationalism were debated by Russian and Ottoman Jews during the decades of the 19th and early 20th centuries, on the eve of the Balkan Wars and the First World War, their concepts differed in each country. Jewish leaders in Russia (with the exception of a narrow circle associated with the court) assumed first of all that the continued existence of their people would take place outside the empire, i.e. after its disappearance or in a different geographical space, while their Ottoman co-religionists mostly proceeded from the existing status quo, which they did not put doubtful. An important feature of the life of Russian and Ottoman Jewry on the eve of the new century was the fact that a large number of Jews gained access to printed publications promoting various cultural values, including manners of behavior or fashion in clothing. This allowed them to better navigate the world around them.

S. Stein analyzes the readership of these publications by gender, social status, place of residence, and political preferences. It introduces very interesting political cartoons from the time of the first Russian Revolution, published in Der Freind, and a wide variety of advertisements and advertisements in El Tiempo. The author of the book asks how the first Jewish daily newspapers in spoken languages influenced the very nature of reading, and challenges (based on an analysis of El Tiempo materials) the widespread opinion that the appearance of printed publications in ethnic spoken languages is a necessary harbinger of the development of nationalism. S. Stein notes that the Jewish press in spoken languages contributed to the development of many political views and aspirations, including openly assimilatory sentiments. This is especially evident in the case of El Tiempo's materials.

In conclusion, Stein discusses the fate of the Yiddish and Ladino periodicals during the interwar period in states that emerged from the ruins of the two empires. It provides a general description of the periodicals in these languages, which in these years have become more diverse, "fragmented" by geographical, political, aesthetic and class orientation. This fact "was a sign of its cultural vitality and influence" (p. 207).

The monograph concludes with a kind of apology for comparative Jewish historiography. However, the author's opinion that it is her book that "introduces a comparative approach to the field of Jewish history" seems to me somewhat exaggerated. As mentioned above, we can compare Eastern European Ashkenazi and Southern European Sephardic cultures using the example of two influential periodicals. Despite the importance of periodicals in colloquial languages, such phenomena as the role of community governance, relations within the community itself, and the evolution of the role of the Ashkenazi institution called Stadlanut (intermediary in Jewish relations with the central government), which were transformed in the two communities during the modern era, remain outside the scope of research. Nevertheless, in his research, Stein comes to a fairly reasonable conclusion that modern European Jewish culture was not uniform in nature and was manifested differently in heterogeneous contexts. While Jewish nationalism in the form of Zionism and Diaspora nationalism gained influence in Russia, these movements did not have any serious support in the Ottoman Empire. On the contrary, many Jews in this country expressed a deep distrust of nationalism and showed loyalty to the authorities. In Russia, many Jews supported cultural and political movements that influenced the destruction of the empire.

Stein's research highlights the diverse forms of Jewish modernity. But it also shows some similar trends in the early twentieth century, such as the emergence of printed cultures in spoken languages and national and assimilation movements. The occurrence of these similar phenomena is, in turn, a bright field for comparison.

Modernity itself, as Stein shows, could be perceived differently by each member or group in Jewish society. The general idea was that the future should be different. It was a time of new opportunities and new discussions. Moder-

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This tendency was manifested in the desire to learn new languages, to give children a different education than before, to turn to new gender roles, for example, the place and role of women in society, and to receive a secular education. Although the attitudes and views of readers and authors of Yiddish and Ladino newspapers on the place of the Jewish community in the state entities in which they lived differed dramatically, they all raised the same question: how to meet the requirements and demands of modernity?

Comparative study of Jewish history involves understanding the diversity and heterogeneity of modern Jewish culture. This experience opens up an opportunity for us to present the common beginnings and special features that determined the development of Jewish history and, along with it, the history of Russia, the Ottoman Empire, Europe, and the Middle East. According to Stein, the idea of what Sephardim and Ashkenazim have in common and special, of new connections between Europe, Russia and the Middle East, of Russian and Ottoman Jewish history shows that the established concepts (the author obviously means primarily Zionist historiography) that there was a single Jewish people and its culture, not well-off. A study of influential periodicals in Yiddish and Ladino in two declining empires allows her to make the extremely bold conclusion that her research represents "a new map of European Jewish culture" (p.214).

In my opinion, a more in-depth study of various institutions, processes and phenomena in the life of the Jewish communities of the two empires that entered the modern era is necessary to substantiate such statements.

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