Dubnow, Simon (1860-1941)
On the cold night of December 8, 1941, a Nazi Gestapo killer led an 81-year-old
bearded scholar from his home and shot him dead.
Thus ended the life of Simon Dubnow, an outstanding Jewish historian.
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 os 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.
Dubnow first wrote several studies of the life of the Jews in Russia
and Poland. His main work was a complete history of the Jewish people
which was first published in German in ten volumes and later in Russian
and Hebrew. These volumes are considered so important that all students
of Jewish history have had to read and understand them since they were
published until today. However, Simon Dubnow did more than just record
the facts of the past. He was most concerned with the life of his people
in the future.
The mystery of the Jewish people was that it had survived as a nation
without its own country. All other peoples which had been in a situation
like that of the Jews, namely in exile, had disappeared. Dubnow thought
he understood how the Jews had managed to survive. The key to their success
was their ability to establish a system of law and a way of life by which
they separated themselves and governed themselves even while in a foreign
land. The Jews had lived according to their own laws and had remained
faithful to their own religion. They wanted to remain a nation in order
to preserve their faith, their ideas and their culture and they had been
able to do so by forming a nation within a nation wherever they were.
Dubnow believed that the jews of the future could survive if they had
the proper will to develop centers of spiritual strength. He did not agree
with the Zionists who felt that jewish life in exile was doomed to failure
and that the only hope for the weak and scattered people was a new life
in Erez Israel. He argued that the basis of their national life was their
spirit and culture. This idea influenced many Jews to appreciate the special
quality of the Jewish spirit and the special role it had played in enabling
the Jewish nation to survive.
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