Less rapid was the progress of Jewish scholarly endeavors. Yet, beginning with the eighties, even this domain is marked by an uninterrupted activity which forms a continuation of the scientific achievements of the West. The nineties inaugurate systematic efforts directed toward the elucidation of the history of the Jews in Russia and Poland. A series of scholarly researches, monographs, and general accounts of Jewish history, written mostly in Russian, make their appearance. Particularly noteworthy are the efforts to blaze new paths of Jewish historiography converging towards the national conception of Judaism. The Jewish historians of the nineteenth century in Western Europe, who were swayed by assimilationist ideas, viewed Jewish history primarily from the theological or spiritualistic point of view. The scholarly endeavors of Russian Jewry constitute an attempt to understand the social development of the Diaspora as a peculiar, internally-autonomous nation which, at all times, has sought to preserve not only its religious treasures, but also the genuine complexion of its diversified national life.
FOOTNOTES:
[17] See vol. II, p. 332.
[18] After the publication of his Judenstaat, Herzl openly confessed that at the time of writing he did not know of the existence of Pinsker's "Autoemancipation."
[19] The motto prefixed to Herzl's Zionistic novel Altneuland.
[20] It was founded in 1889 and disbanded in 1897.
[21] [See vol. II, p. 421 et seq.]
[22] [Ahad Ha'am's report is embodied in the second volume of his collected essays (Berlin, 1903) under the title Tehiyyat ha-Ru'ah, "The Spiritual Revival." An English version of this article is found in Leon Simon's translation of Ahad Ha'am's essays (Jewish Publication Society of America, Philadelphia, 1912), p. 253 et seq.]
[23] [A number of articles under that title appeared originally in the Russian-Jewish monthly Voskhod. They were subsequently enlarged and published in book form in 1907. The first two "Letters" were rendered into German by the translator of this volume and published in 1905 by the Jüdischer Verlag in Berlin, under the title Die Grundlagen des Nationaljudentums.]