Simon Dubnow Papers

Simon Meyerovich Dubnow was born on September 10, 1860 in Mstislavl, Russia (now Belarus). He was raised in a large, religious family in the home of his grandfather Bentsion, a respected rabbinic scholar and misnaged who provided Dubnow with a traditional Jewish education. From a young age he was drawn to historical and heretical works, acquainting himself with Hebrew literature, maskilic newspapers and journals, Russian, German, English, mathematics, among other subjects. Largely self-taught and unable to obtain a high school diploma (and thence attend university), in 1880 he moved illegally to St. Petersburg to pursue historical research and journalism. There he spent his days studying in libraries and writing essays, articles, and book reviews for Russian Jewish periodicals such as Rasvet (Dawn), Voskhod (Sunrise), and Russkii evrei (Russian Jews).

Unable to secure a residency permit in St. Petersburg, in 1884 the now married Dubnow was forced to return to Mstislavl, which remained his primary residence until the family moved to Odessa in 1890. Though limited compared to St. Petersburg, Odessa was a hub for Jewish intellectuals and literary figures who shared an ideology of cultural Jewish nationalism.

Dubnow’s first published original historical work, a series on the origins of Hasidism, appeared in Voskhod between 1888 and 1893. In 1891, frustrated by the lack of organized support and research materials available for scholars of Eastern European Jewry, Dubnow published an essay "On the Study of the History of Russian Jews and the Establishment of a Russian Jewish Historical Society," in Voskhod, in which he issued a call for the collection of Russian Jewish historical sources. In 1892 Dubnow rewrote his essay in Hebrew and published it under the title "Let Us Search and Study". The Hebrew article was reprinted as a separate brochure and distributed free of charge throughout the Pale. Between 1893 and 1895 Dubnow received hundreds of historical documents, including minute books of the local and regional communities (pinkasim), community registers, memorabilia, letters, manuscripts, legends and folklore materials, rare books, government documents, inscriptions, martyrological texts, and Hasidic literature. In addition, Dubnow's correspondents sent him extensive bibliographic and historical notes on sources that they had uncovered.

In Odessa Dubnow evolved his historiographical and political philosophies, which he grounded in a concept he termed “historism” – the history of Eastern European Jewry serves as the spiritual source supporting national identity. His most significant publications during this period include the 1893 essay “What is Jewish History? An Attempt at a Philosophic Analysis” in Voskhod, his 1896 textbook Vseobshchaia istoriia evreev (A General History of the Jews), and a series of essays in Voskhod between 1897 and 1907 explicating his ideology of Jewish nationalism known as autonomism.

Dubnow did not limit his activity to writing. In 1901-1903 he was involved in a “kulturkampf” among members of the Odessa OPE (Society for the Promotion of Culture among the Jews of Russia, Obshchestva dlia Rasprostraneniia Prosveshcheniia Mezhdu Evreiami v Rossii) over how much Jewish content to include in schools subsidized by OPE. In 1906, after three years spent in Vilna, Dubnow moved again to St. Petersburg, where he taught Jewish history and contributed to the founding of the Folkspartey and the Jewish Historical-Ethnographic Society. He served as editor of Evreiskaia starina (Jewish Past) from 1909 to 1918, and in 1920 participated in a committee organized by the Jewish Historical-Ethnographic Society to review and publish materials related to blood libels.

Dubnow was given permission to leave Russia in 1922. He emigrated first to Kovno, Lithuania and then settled in Berlin. There he lived in relative seclusion while working on the ten volume World History of the Jewish People, first published in German translation in 1925-1929. During this period, he also contributed his venerable stature and experience to the Historical Section of YIVO (Yiddish Scientific Institute, Yidisher visnshaftlikhe institut), printed an edition of the Pinkas Medinat Lita (Records of the Lithuanian Council), and published his three volume history of Hasidism in Yiddish, Hebrew, and German.

In 1933 Dubnow moved from Berlin to Riga, leaving his archive with Elias Tcherikower to be delivered to YIVO. In Riga he wrote his autobiography Kniga zhizni: Vospominaniia i razmyshleniia; Materiali dlia istorii moevo vremeni (Book of Life: Reminiscences and Reflections; Material for the History of My Times) published in 3 volumes in 1934-1940. After Nazi troops invaded Riga in July 1941 Dubnow was forced from his home into the Riga Ghetto, where he was murdered on December 8.

Based upon: Seltzer, Robert M. "Dubnow, Simon." YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe. New York: YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, 2010, pp. 432-434.

Groberg, K. (1993). The Life and Influence of Simon Dubnov (1860-1941): An Appreciation. Modern Judaism, 13(1), 71-93.

For further reading, see the excellent bibliography compiled by Simon Rabinovitch.