World War I and the Remaking of Jewish Vilna, 1914-1918 A

WORLD WAR I AND THE REMAKING OF JEWISH VILNA, 1914-1918 A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY AND THE COMMITTEE ON GRADUATE STUDIES OF STANFORD UNIVERSITY IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY ANDREW N. KOSS AUGUST 2010 © 2010 by Andrew Noble Koss. All Rights Reserved. Re-distributed by Stanford University under license with the author. This dissertation is online at: http://purl.stanford.edu/wp368wc8732 ii I certify that I have read this dissertation and that, in my opinion, it is fully adequate in scope and quality as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Steven Zipperstein, Primary Adviser I certify that I have read this dissertation and that, in my opinion, it is fully adequate in scope and quality as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Norman Naimark I certify that I have read this dissertation and that, in my opinion, it is fully adequate in scope and quality as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Aron Rodrigue Approved for the Stanford University Committee on Graduate Studies. Patricia J. Gumport, Vice Provost Graduate Education This signature page was generated electronically upon submission of this dissertation in electronic format. An original signed hard copy of the signature page is on file in University Archives. iii Abstract This study argues for the importance of World War I in the history of Jewish life in Russia and Eastern Europe through an analysis of Jewish politics, society, and culture in the city of Vilna/Vilnius from 1914 to 1918. The First World War is a subject that has received only minimal attention in the historiography of East European Jewry. The war brought vast disruption to Vilna, ushering in a period of immense suffering as thousands of Jews died of starvation and disease. At the same time, after over a century and a quarter of Russian rule, the city fell under the control of a German military regime that both ruthlessly exploited the local population and granted it freedoms of expression, association, and education that had been unheard of under the Tsars, even guaranteeing equal rights to Jews and non-Jews. While the material deprivations of war tore asunder the fabric of Jewish society, sweeping away established practice and institutions, a new generation of modernizing, nationalist intellectuals and activists came to power within Vilna‟s Jewish community. They took advantage of both newfound freedoms and the collapse of old social structures to found new institutions and to recreate Jewish politics and civil society on the basis of secular nationalism. The war years served as a proving ground on which they could test the new ideas about Jewish society and politics that had been gestating in Jewish minds, journals, and salons during the previous half-century. The trends that emerged during the war laid the foundations for Jewish life in Vilna in the two decades between the World Wars. Chapter 1, “Leadership,” discusses the revolution that occurred in Jewish communal politics during the war. It shows how a group of community activists moved from the margins of political life to its center, and used the war as an opportunity to reform communal government. Despite strict restrictions on political activity, these leaders were nonetheless able to achieve de facto Jewish autonomy under German rule. This chapter also addresses the protracted struggle of the Jewish government with German authorities over forced labor and collective taxation. Chapter 2, “Community and Culture,” deals with the flourishing of Jewish civil society during the war years. It examines the demise of traditional religious associations and the simultaneous expansion of new economic, social, and cultural institutions. It also addressed the role these new organizational structures played in the new Jewish communal politics. Chapter 3, “Education and Cultural Politics,” describes the explosion of new Jewish educational institutions under the German occupation. The proliferation of new schools in turn led to a fierce struggle over their content and curricula, which became a battle-ground for various Jewish political ideologies. Chapter 4, “Memory,” discusses the perception of World War I during the war itself; Vilna Jewry‟s attempts to record the history of the war while it was still ongoing and immediately after it ended; and the legacy of these commemorative projects. It is my contention that contemporary perceptions of the war‟s importance shaped the actions of communal leaders discussed in previous chapters and thus Vilna‟s wartime trajectory itself. This chapter concludes by showing how the attempts of Vilna‟s Jewish intelligentsia to create a historical record of their wartime experiences and iv achievements served as a template for an entire genre of commemorative works that appeared in subsequent decades. v ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The assistance of many people has made the completion of this dissertation possible. First and foremost I would like to thank my academic advisor, Steven Zipperstein, whose guidance, insightful comments, wisdom, and patience have helped turn this work into what it is and helped me cultivate myself as a scholar. Norman Naimark and Aron Rodrigue provided many helpful comments and suggestions regarding the dissertation itself, and have done much to shape my understanding of history in general. James Sheehan, Michael Silber, and Ada Rapoport-Albert all did much to broaden and deepen my approach to history and Jewish studies during my first years of graduate school. I learned much through conversations with Gabriella Safran, who also kindly shared with me portions of the manuscript of her forthcoming biography of S. An-sky. A conversation with Gennady Estraikh did much to help me shape my argument in Chapter 2. Professor Estraikh was also kind enough to show me an unpublished manuscript of his on Yiddish and Civil Society. I also have benefitted from having many excellent language instructors and would especially like to thank Ania Kieturakis of Stanford for patiently guiding me through the mysteries of Polish. I must also thank numerous librarians and archivists. Zachary Baker of Stanford fielded many bibliographic queries for me and shared his vast knowledge of Jewish Vilna. Yeshaya Metal of the YIVO library spent much time tracking down obscure and difficult to find books and journals and also helped me solve a solve a small mystery. Herbert Lazarus made countless trips to the stack to bring me the materials I needed. I also wish to thank Gunnar Berg and Leo Greenbaum of the YIVO Archives, Sherry Hyman and Shelley Helfand of the JDC Archives, the staff of vi the Dorot Jewish Division at the New York Public Library, Joanna Newman of the Jewish Theological Seminary Library, and the staff of the Hoover Institution Archives. Throughout the process of attaining my PhD, I have been fortunate enough to have had the love and support of friends and family. Dina Danon, Dan Heller, and others made graduate school a far more pleasant experience than it might have otherwise been. I would also like to thank my parents, Marvin and Lynn Koss, and my brother, Jonathan Koss, for their constant encouragement. Above all, I wish to express my gratitude to my wife, Alison Hornstein Koss. She read several chapters of the dissertation when they were in dire need of help and gave me invaluable advice about how to restructure them; in addition, she spent many hours reading and correcting the final version with her careful editor‟s eye. More importantly, I benefitted immensely from her emotional support and devotion, her forbearance as I neglected her for many evenings and weekends to work on my dissertation, and her genuine interest when I allowed Vilna dominate countless conversation. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS AUTHOR’S NOTE ........................................................................................................... x INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................................. 1 CHAPTER 1: LEADERSHIP ....................................................................................... 48 CHAPTER 2: COMMUNITY AND CULTURE ..................................................... 101 CHAPTER 3: EDUCATION AND CULTURAL POLITICS ............................... 160 CHAPTER 4: MEMORY ............................................................................................ 226 CONCLUSION .............................................................................................................. 271 AUTHOR’S NOTE As is true with most works about Eastern Europe (and many other parts of the world), issues of transliteration, spelling of names of places and people, and dates cause problems for the author that cannot be solved easily. These problems are aggravated by the fact that official languages and calendars changed during the war itself in the period in question. As a rule, I have followed the Library of Congress systems for transliterating Hebrew (eliminating diacritics), Yiddish, and Russian. For titles and quotations in Yiddish, I have transliterated according to the spellings used in the original texts, rather than according to contemporary standard spellings. For the names of individuals who had reason to employ the Roman alphabet, I have generally followed the spelling they themselves preferred. I have also taken account individuals‟ own language of choice and the spellings employed by the recently released YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in

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