Jews, Race, and the Politics of Difference by Marina B. Mogilner

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The Case of Vladimir Jabotinsky against the Russian Empire

Jews of Eastern Europe

Jews, Race, and the Politics of Difference explores how Russian Jewish writers and political activists such as Vladimir Jabotinsky turned to “race” as an operational concept in the late imperial politics of the Russian Empire.

Building on the latest scholarship on racial thinking and Jewish identities, Marina Mogilner shows how Jewish anthropologists, ethnographers, writers, lawyers, and political activists in late imperial Russia sought to construct a Jewish identity based on racial categorization in addition to religious affiliation. By grounding nationality not in culture and territory but in blood and biology, race offered Jewish nationalists in Russia a scientifically sound and politically effective way to reaffirm their common identity.

Jews, Race, and the Politics of Difference presents the works of Jabotinsky as a lens to understanding Jewish “self-racializing,” and brings Jews and race together in a framework that is more multifaceted and controversial than that implied by the usual narratives of racial antisemitism.

Year first published: 2023