Thinking Europe in Yiddish edited by Marion Aptroot Issue n. 17, September 2020 QUEST. Issues in Contemporary Jewish History Journal of the Fondazione CDEC QUEST N. 17 Editors Guri Schwarz (Università degli Studi di Genova, Italy – Editor in Chief), Elissa Bemporad (Queens College of the City University of New York, USA), Laura Brazzo (Fondazione CDEC, Italy), Tullia Catalan (Università degli Studi di Trieste, Italy), Cristiana Facchini (Alma Mater Studiorum, Università di Bologna, Italy), Gadi Luzzatto Voghera (Fondazione CDEC, Italy), Dario Miccoli (Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia, Italy), Michele Sarfatti (Fondazione CDEC, Italy), Marcella Simoni (Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia, Italy), Ulrich Wyrwa (Universität Potsdam and Zentrum für Antisemitismusforschung der TU Berlin, Germany). Editorial Assistants Matteo Perissinotto (Univerza v Ljubljani, Slovenia – Managing Editor), Chiara Renzo (Università Ca' Foscari Venezia, Italy), Piera Rossetto (Universität Graz, Austria). Book Review Editor Miriam Benfatto (Alma Mater Studiorum, Università di Bologna, Italy) English Language Editor Elen Rochlin Editorial Advisory Board Ruth Ben Ghiat (New York University, USA), Paolo Luca Bernardini (Università degli Studi dell’Insubria, Italy), Dominique Bourel (Université Paris-Sorbonne, France), Michael Brenner (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität and American University Washington D.C., Germany and USA), Enzo Campelli (La Sapienza Università di Roma, Italy), Francesco Cassata (Università degli Studi di Genova, Italy), Marco Cuzzi (Università degli Studi di Milano, Italy), Roberto Della Rocca (Dipartimento Educazione e Cultura – Ucei, Italy), Lois Dubin (Smith College, USA), Jacques Ehrenfreund (Université de Lausanne, Switzerland), Katherine E. Fleming (New York University, USA), Anna Foa (La Sapienza Università di Roma, Italy), Ada Gigli Marchetti (Università degli Studi di Milano, Italy), François Guesnet (University College London, UK), Alessandro Guetta (Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales, France), András Kovács (Central European University, Hungary- Austria), Fabio Levi (Università degli Studi di Torino, Italy), Simon Levis Sullam (Università Ca' Foscari Venezia, Italy), Germano Maifreda (Univesità degli Studi di Milano, Italy), Renato Mannheimer (Istituto Pubblica Opinione, Italy), Dan Michman (International Institute for Holocaust Research, Yad Vashem, Israel), Michael Miller (Central European University, Hungary-Austria), Liliana Picciotto (Fondazione CDEC, Italy), Marcella Ravenna (Università degli Studi di Ferrara, Italy), Milena Santerini (Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Italy), Perrine Simon-Nahum (École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, France), Francesca Sofia (Alma Mater Studiorum, Università di Bologna, Italy), David Sorkin (Yale University, USA), Emanuela Trevisan Semi (Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia, Italy), Christian Wiese (Goethe-Universität, Germany). Direttore Responsabile ai sensi della legge italiana (Legge 47/1948), Stefano Jesurum QUEST. Issues in Contemporary Jewish History Journal of the Fondazione CDEC ISSN: 2037-741X via Eupili 8, 20145 Milano Italy Reg. Trib. Milano n. 403 del 18/09/2009 P. IVA: 12559570150 tel. 003902316338 - fax 00390233602728 www.quest-cdecjournal.it [email protected] Cover image credit: Pariz. Yidish hant-bukh: veg-vayzer un firer, eds. A. Bekerman et al., (Paris: Naye Prese, 1937). Cover detail of the Yiddish language guidebook published for the World’s Fair in Paris. II QUEST N. 17 Contents Guri Schwarz Editorial: 10 Years of Quest p. VI FOCUS Thinking Europe in Yiddish edited by Marion Aptroot Marion Aptroot Introduction p. XI David E. Fishman How, When, and Why Did Yiddish Become a Modern Culture? p. 1 Marc Caplan Marking Territory: A Flâneur’s Failure in I. L. Peretz's Mayses p. 22 Daria Vakhrushova “To Hell with Futurism, Too!” The Metamorphoses of Western and p. 43 Eastern European Modernism in Yiddish Manifestos Debra Caplan An American in Shtetl: Seeing Yiddish Europe Through the Eyes of p. 75 Molly Picon Gennaddy Estraikh A Quest for Yiddishland: The 1937 World Yiddish Cultural Congress p. 96 RESEARCH PATHS Rebecca Wolpe “Poor Jews! You Get Blamed for Everything!”: Hope and Despair in a p. 118 Galician Yiddish Newspaper during the Revolutions of 1848-49 Tamir Karkason The Buffer Zone: Ottoman Maskilim and their Austro-Hungarian p. 146 Counterparts – A Case Study III QUEST N. 17 DISCUSSION Daniel Boyarin, Judaism: The Genealogy of a Modern Notion by Luca Arcari p. 180 by Daniel Barbu p. 192 REVIEWS Susanne Theresia Kord, Lovable Crooks and Loathsome Jews: Antisemitism in German and Austrian Crime Writing Before the World Wars by Lisa Silverman p. 203 Hana Kubátová and Jan Láníček (eds.), Jews and Gentiles in Central and Eastern Europe during the Holocaust: History and Memory by Tim Corbett p. 207 Angelos Dalachanis and Vincent Lemire (eds.), Ordinary Jerusalem 1840-1940: Opening New Archives, Revisiting a Global City by Nimrod Luz p. 211 Judith Lindenberg (ed.), Premiers savoirs de la Shoah by Antoine Burgard p. 214 Sara Yael Hirschhorn, City on a Hilltop: American Jews and the Israeli Settler Movement by Caterina Bandini p. 218 Michael Brenner, Der lange Schatten der Revolution. Juden und Antisemiten in Hitlers München 1918 bis 1923 by Ulrich Wyrwa p. 222 Irene Aue-Ben-David, Deutsch-jüdische Geschichtschreibung im 20 Jahrhundert. Zu Werk und Rezeption von Selma Stern by Dominique Bourel p. 226 Joshua Teplitsky, Prince of the Press: How One Collector Built History's Most Enduring and Remarkable Jewish Library by Mirjam Thulin p. 230 IV QUEST N. 17 Aomar Boum and Sarah Abrevaya Stein (eds.), The Holocaust and North Africa by Piera Rossetto p. 234 Cordelia Hess, The Absent Jews: Kurt Forstreuter and the Historiography of Medieval Prussia by Ingo Haar p. 241 V QUEST N. 17 – EDITORIAL Editorial: Ten Years of Quest by Guri Schwarz Ten years ago, we published the first issue of our journal. Quest had been in the works for well over a year, the idea stemmed from the need of the Fondazione Centro di Documentazione Ebraica Contemporanea (CDEC) of Milan to equip itself with a scientific periodical. As a result of the discussions that took place within the CDEC’s Scientific Board, it was decided to take what Michele Sarfatti, Editor in Chief for the first eight issues of Quest and Director of the CDEC, qualified as “a leap of faith:”1 the creation of an English language, online, open– access journal devoted to publishing contributions on any aspect of Jewish history from the 18th century onwards. Not merely the house-organ of the CDEC – which was, and still is, the main Italian research center for the study of the Holocaust, modern Italian Jewish history and antisemitism – but a more ambitious project. It was not an obvious choice. There was no lack of Jewish history journals, so why the need to create a new one? The team that conceived the project was based in Italy – a country with a tiny Jewish minority and at the same time a long and rich Jewish past – and our intent was to create a venue for scholarly discussion that could further stimulate the field of Jewish studies, and Jewish history in particular, in Italy where, despite the fact that some significant scholarly works were and are being produced, the field has little autonomy and is confined to being a subset of wider disciplinary sectors (such as modern history, religious studies, Hebrew literature etc.). If that had been the only objective, we could have done it in Italian, and in many ways it would have been easier. There was also another, maybe more ambitious goal: as we discussed the various options, we realized that one of the things that we yearned for was a venue that could promote dialogue between different academic traditions. It is a fact that the U.S. represents the vital core of Jewish Studies worldwide. This reflects availability of funding, the recognition awarded to the field within academic institutions and, of course, the quality of the works produced. Then there is Israel, with its own traditions and institutions, which also constitutes a crucial point of reference. In the 21st century, if one wants to find a place in the global discussion in this field English is the obvious medium, 1 “A New Journal: Quest, Alessandro Cassin interviews Michele Sarfatti, historian and Director of CDEC,” Printed_Matter: Centro Primo Levi Online Monthly, January 28, 2010; https://primolevicenter.org/printed-matter/a-new-history-online-journal-quest/ VI Guri Schwarz but language is not the only barrier. A European scholar could find a way to be read by having his/her work translated into English and publishing in American academic journals. What is required though is, often, not a mere linguistic transformation, but an adaptation to a different cultural milieu. We must recognize that there are varying, sometimes diverging, certainly autonomous historiographic traditions that deserve to retain their identity and that – at the same time – could benefit from a closer dialogue. With this journal our goal was to foster such scholarly conversation, creating bridges that could put different schools and approaches in communication with each other. Consequently, we chose to create a journal that would guarantee the easiest access to the widest possible audience. That was one of the reasons why Quest was “born digital.”2 It is of course not up to us to measure our success. In these first ten years we published 17 issues, striving to come out twice a year, an objective that was reached most of the