Book Description: Leo Pinsker, Autoemancipation

Bibliographic Information: 
Pinsker, Leo, Auto-Emancipation, An Appeal to his People by a Russian Jew, 1882 <https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/quot-auto-emancipation-quot-leon-pinsker>

Summary

Leo Pinsker’s brief, visionary, and incisive 1882 essay is a foundational document of Modern Zionism. Pinsker set out his understanding of why the predicament of the Jews in the modernizing countries of the time was unsolvable if they remained in the countries they then inhabited. Auto-Emancipation is relevant to the study of antisemitism because of its astute analysis of the phenomenon of Jew-hatred. He compares it to the fear of ghosts. Ghosts seem like spirits with no bodies. The Jews are a people with culture but no body. Since the Romans conquered their country and destroyed it centuries ago, antisemites see them as a kind of “walking dead.” As a physician, Pinsker applied medical terms to antisemitism, describing it as a “psychic aberration” he saw as incurable.

Context

At first, Pinsker believed in the integration of Jews into the society of the Russian Empire. As a result of the pogroms of the late 19th Century, he concluded that this goal was unattainable. His essay followed on failed attempts to encourage Jewish emigration to the Land of Israel/Palestine, so the article is not strictly speaking “Zionist.”He did not insist on the Holy Land if the Jews could find a territory for a state elsewhere. Many readers note the accuracy of his essay’s diagnosis of the nature of antisemitism, the situation of the Jews, and his programmatic suggestions to alleviate their suffering and to the route eventually taken by the Zionist movement to gain independence in Israel.

Style

Pinsker’s pedantic style may take patience for modern readers to access.

Classroom

Students will probably benefit from background information on the catastrophic realities of Jewish life in the Russian Empire in the late 19th Century. Also, a trigger warning may be in order. Pinsker thought within the cultural limitations of his time and place. Pinsker probably never met a Black person. At one point, he says that Jews, unlike Blacks, belong to an “advanced race.” He was perhaps referring to Jews as technologically advanced and European in culture, which would have been an inaccurate representation of Jewish sociology of his day. Ironically, he says this in the context of a call to liberate Blacks and Women, and Jews. There are no other sources that point to him as a racist. However, to modern ears, this is unacceptable language.