Transatlantic Russian Jewishness

“It takes an enormous amount of time and knowledge to assemble the variety of primary sources in these pages—and to turn them into a relevant statement on both Jewish cultural history and its implications on the ideological struggles and conflicts playing out at this moment in history. This is what Estraikh has done. And it would be- hoove all those who are interested in these themes and topics to heed his hard-earned takeaways…His study reflects a life—many lives—dedicated to the past, present, and future of the Jewish people, with all of the pitfalls that such dedication brings.”

— David Stromberg, Contemporary Jewry

“Gennady Estraikh’s Transatlantic Russian Jewishness… is a compelling account of the Forverts’s political and personal transatlantic shifts. … Drawing upon the author’s previous book… this book carefully sets the Russian-Jewish transatlantic political scene. Estraikh moves between the personal and ideological aspects and presents relevant evidence for the Forverts’s political and ideological development. He places its ideological twists and turns within transnational and Jewish-American contexts based on numerous editorials and articles published in the Forverts and other primary and secondary sources. … This thorough study thus contributes to the field of history of ideas in the American Jewish context and the scholarship on the cultural history of Yiddish in the United States.”

— Yael Levi, Bar Ilan University, Journal of Modern Jewish Studies

"Readers benefit from Estraikh’s detailed knowledge of the complex and fluctuating scenes of different socialist, Bundist, and Zionist groups in and beyond the United States during the first half of the twentieth century. The study draws on the coverage of the Forverts and several other papers as well as extensive archival research… This study has a lot to offer for specialists who are familiar with the complex and shifting ideological landscape inhabited by Yiddish socialists... Estraikh devotes much attention to different contributors and critics of the Forverts, but also other figures such as Agro-Joint director Joseph Rosen. He retraces the flight of Lestschinsky, Dovid Eynhorn, and others to America and uncovers connections between members of overlapping networks comprising a wide range of authors affiliated with the paper. The extensive bibliography illustrates the breadth of the study."

—Tobias Brinkmann, Penn State University, AJS Review

“Estraikh’s detailed study of the longstanding Yiddish newspaper, the Forverts, draws on many primary and secondary sources. He examines in depth its ideological development under the editorial leadership of flamboyant personalities such as Abraham Cahan, Moyshe Olgin, David Eynhorn, and David Bergelson. The book is well written and captivating, particularly in the way it dramatically weaves stories and anecdotes relating to the paper’s editors and contributors. Most importantly, it reveals how the Forverts was a mirror to the acculturation and assimilation process of many Yiddish speaking Jewish Americans. … This work will be a benchmark for future studies not only on the history of the Forverts and its editors, but also on the history of the Jewish left and Jewish intellectual ideas, as well as a standard for studying the evolution from Jewish affiliation with secular socialism to Zionistic religiosity.”

—David Levy, Lander College for Women, AJL Reviews

“Now, finally, we have a scholarly volume that considers the history of the Forverts as a global institution. Professor Gennady Estraikh has been associated with the Forverts for more than 30 years and he knows the newspaper inside and out. He had previously used material from the newspaper for his own research, and he now has a book which places the Forverts and Cahan center stage.”

—Mikhail Krutikov, The Forward

“For more than a century, the Yiddish Forverts was the Jewish newspaper of record and a major Jewish American institution. Drawing on an impressively wide array of primary sources, Estraikh reconstructs the complex history of this paper with all its political twists and ideological turns. Estraikh expertly and elegantly converts his superb scholarship into a gripping narrative, weaving dramatic personal stories of the Forverts editors and contributors into the board canvas of twentieth-century European and American history.”

—Mikhail Krutikov, Professor of Slavic and Judaic Studies, University of Michigan

“Transatlantic Russian Jewishness is more than a book about the Yiddish Forverts, edited first and foremost by Abraham Cahan. Gennady Estraikh’s elegant work shows how the newspaper mirrored the population that read it—Russian Jews who came to the United States and, more importantly, assimilated. Although Estraikh focuses on the Forverts writers—from the hot-headed Cahan and the elegant Moyshe Olgin to modernist David Bergelson and the wealthy David Eynhorn—we have to imagine that we are reading the newspaper of more than one hundred years of Jewish American acculturation—from secular socialism to Zionist religiosity.”

—David Shneer, Louis P. Singer Endowed Chair in Jewish History, University of Colorado Boulder

“In Transatlantic Russian Jewishness, Gennady Estraikh chronicles the ideological development of the Jewish Daily Forverts, the world’s foremost Yiddish newspaper and America’s most important Socialist daily, from World War I through the 1950s. Paying special attention to the views expressed in the Forverts toward the Soviet Union and Communism, Zionism and Palestine/Israel, Germany and rise of Nazism, as well as toward Yiddish language education and traditional Judaism, Estraikh shows that the Jewish politics in the war and interwar years were at once local and transnational, personal and ideological. Transatlantic Russian Jewishness is thoroughly researched and clearly written. It will be a gold mine for those interested in the history of the Forverts and its imperious editor, Abraham Cahan, as well as for those interested in the general history of the Jewish left and its debates over the burning international issues of its heyday.”

—Daniel Soyer, Professor of History, Fordham University

“Transatlantic Russian Jewishness is a deeply researched study, rich in detail and broad in scope. Bringing to bear a wealth of knowledge, Gennady Estraikh expertly leads the reader between Russia and the United States as he examines how the Yiddish Daily Forverts shaped the politics and culture of immigrant Jews. This most important immigrant institution has finally received the scholarly treatment it deserves.”

—Tony Michels, George L. Mosse Professor of American Jewish History, University of Wisconsin–Madison