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Simon Dubnow. Photo by Unknown Author. .

Top 10 Interesting Facts about Simon Dubnow

Simon Dubnow was a Jewish-Russian historian, writer and activist. Dubnow was born in 1860 in Belarus. Though he grew up in an observant family, Dubnow began reading literature associated with the Russian Jewish Enlightenment of the mid-19th century. These writings broadened his horizons and inspired him to rebel against religion. He set about teaching himself Russian and tried to acquire a secondary school diploma, which was needed to enter university.

Simon was the son of a timber merchant and the grandson of a rabbi in the town of Mstsislaw, in what was then the Russian Empire, today Belarus. Let’s look at the Top 10 Interesting Facts about Simon Dubnow.

1. He used forged documents to enter St. Petersburg

Page from the minutes-book of the Council of Four Lands, obverse and reverse, formerly in the possession of Simon Dubnow. Photo by Briangotts..

In 1880 Dubnow used forged documents to move to St Petersburg, officially off-limits to Jews. Jews were generally restricted to small towns in the Pale of Settlement, unless they had been discharged from the military, were employed as doctors or dentists, or could prove they were ‘cantonists’, university graduates or merchants belonging to the 1st guild.

2. His publications appeared on the press as early as 1885

Soon after moving to St. Petersburg Dubnow’s publications appeared in the press, including the leading Russian鈥揓ewish magazine Voskhod. In 1890, the Jewish population was expelled from the capital city, and Dubnow too was forced to leave. He settled in Odessa and continued to publish studies of Jewish life and history, coming to be regarded as an authority in these areas.

3. He was a pro-Jews activist

Throughout his active participation in the contemporary social and political life of the Russian Empire, Dubnow called for modernizing Jewish education, organizing Jewish self-defense against pogroms, and demanding equal rights for Russian Jews, including the right to vote.

Living in Vilna, Lithuania, during the early months of 1905 Russian Revolution, he became active in organizing a Jewish political response to opportunities arising from the new civil rights which were being promised. In this effort he worked with a variety of Jewish opinion, e.g., those favouring diaspora autonomy, Zionism, socialism, and assimilation.

4. Dubnow founded the Jewish People’s Party

In 1906 he was allowed back into St Petersburg, where he founded and directed the Jewish Literature and Historical-Ethnographic Society and edited the Jewish Encyclopedia.

In the same year, he founded the Jewish People’s Party with Israel Efrojkin, which successfully worked for the election of MPs and municipal councilors in interwar Lithuania and Poland. After 1917 Dubnow became a Professor of Jewish history at Petrograd University.

5. Dubnow was influenced by Heinrich Graetz

Simon Dubnow. Photo by Unknown. .

Dubnow was influenced by Heinrich Graetz, the pioneer of modern Jewish historiography. Graetz saw Jewish history as the story of an unfolding spiritual tradition, grounded in rationalism and universal human values.

Accordingly, Graetz鈥檚 history emphasized the rational aspects of Jewish culture and neglected what he saw as superstitious, primitive or obscurantist, in particular Kabbalah, Hasidism, and the Yiddish-speaking world.  Dubnow initially agreed that the survival of the Jews should be explained in terms of their spiritual essence and that ethical behavior and spiritual achievement were the factors which bound Jews to their national existence and to their past.

6. Dubnow was murdered by his former pupil

In 1922 he left Russia. A proposal for him to become professor of Jewish history at the University of Kovno met with the opposition of the Lithuanian professors, and Dubnow settled in Berlin, where he stayed until 1933. When Hitler came to power, Dubnow found refuge in Riga, the capital of Latvia.

There the aged scholar continued his work in solitude, but with undiminished vigor. Riga was captured by the Germans in July 1941, and in a night of terror, on December 8, 1941, when the Jewish community was deported to a death camp, Dubnow was murdered by a Gestapo officer, a former pupil of his.

It is said that just before his death, turned to other Jews surrounding him and implored them: “If you survive, never forget what is happening here, give evidence, write and rewrite, keep alive each word and each gesture, each cry and each tear!”

7. He introduced the theory of autonomy

According to Dubnow, the Jews not only are a religious community but also possess the distinctive characteristics of a cultural nationality and as such create their own forms of autonomous social and cultural life.

He viewed the history of the Jews as a succession of large autonomous communities, or centres. Dubnow鈥檚 theory of autonomism, or Diaspora nationalism, was first expressed in his famous 鈥淟etters on Old and New Judaism鈥� (Russian ed. 1907; Nationalism and History: Essays on Old and New Judaism).

8. Dubnow was self-taught

Young Simon Dubnov. Photo by Hebrew National House of Booksm Jerusalem.

From his childhood, this man had been fascinated by history. He did not have the opportunity to attend a real school, and so taught himself all he knew at home until he had learned as much as the greatest scholars of his age.

Because he was Jewish he could not get a position teaching in a Russian university so he spent his life studying, writing, and teaching young students Jewish history and culture.

9. He was the first modern day historian

According to Heinrich Graetz, Simon Dubnow was the first modern historian to present a comprehensive 禄World History of the Jewish People from the Earliest Times to the Present Day芦.

His ten-volume magnum opus was initially published in German. Since Dubnow鈥檚 thought was characterized by an intellectual proximity to the liberal political culture of Western Europe, he became a cultural mediator between Western and Eastern Jewry.

10. He worked together with several scholars

Signature of Simon Dubnow. Photo by Unknown. .

In 1890 the Dubnow family moved to Odessa, where he became part of an illustrious group of intellectuals committed to a nationalist conception of Jewish identity but distanced from religion, a group that included Mendele Moykher-Sforim (Sholem Yankev Abramovitsh), Ahad Ha-Am (Asher Ginzberg), 岣�ayim Na岣�man Bialik, and other eminent Jewish literary figures and Zionist intellectuals.