22 Facts About Simon Dubnow

In 1860, Simon Dubnow was born Shimon Meyerovich Dubnow to a large poor family in the Belarusian town of Mstsislaw.

Later Dubnow entered into a kazyonnoye yevreyskoe uchilishche where he learned Russian.

Simon Dubnow was particularly fascinated by Heinrich Graetz and the Wissenschaft des Judentums movement.

In 1880 Simon Dubnow used forged documents to move to St Petersburg, officially off-limits to Jews.

In 1890, the Jewish population was expelled from the capital city, and Simon Dubnow too was forced to leave.

Simon Dubnow settled in Odesa and continued to publish studies of Jewish life and history, coming to be regarded as an authority in these areas.

Simon Dubnow welcomed the first February Revolution of 1917 in Russia, regarding it, according to scholar Robert van Voren, as having "brought the long-anticipated liberation of the Jewish people", although he "felt uneasy about the increasing profile of Lenin".

In 1922 Simon Dubnow emigrated to Kaunas, Lithuania, and later to Berlin.

Simon Dubnow chose Latvia in part for its government's support for Jewish self-reliance and the vigorous Jewish community in the small country.

Simon Dubnow was among thousands of Jews to be rounded up there for the Rumbula massacre.

Simon Dubnow was ambivalent toward Zionism, which he felt was an opiate for the spiritually feeble.

Simon Dubnow thought Zionism just another sort of messianism, and he thought the possibility of persuading the Jews of Europe to move to Palestine and establish a state fantastical.

Simon Dubnow believed that the future survival of the Jews as a nation depended on their spiritual and cultural strength, where they resided dispersed in the diaspora.

Simon Dubnow wrote: "Jewish history [inspires] the conviction that Jewry at all times, even in the period of political independence, was pre-eminently a spiritual nation," and he called the push for assimilation "national suicide".

Simon Dubnow's formulated ideology became known as Jewish Autonomism, once widely popular in eastern Europe, being adopted in its various derivations by Jewish political parties such as the Bund and his Folkspartei.

Autonomism involved a form of self-rule in the Jewish diaspora, which Simon Dubnow called "the Jewish world-nation".

Simon Dubnow's political thought perhaps can better be understood in light of historical Jewish communal life in Eastern Europe.

Simon Dubnow here describes the autonomous social-economic and religious organization developed by the Jewish people under the Commonwealth government:.

Simon Dubnow supported the broad movements for change in the Russian Empire; yet in the main he sought to restore and to continue the Jewish autonomy, described above at its zenith under the old Commonwealth, into the 20th century.

Spiritual values were highly esteemed by Simon Dubnow, who viewed the Jewish people as leaders in their advancement.

Early in his intellectual life, Simon Dubnow turned to history and in the study and writing of Jewish history he found the surrogate for Judaism, the modern means by which he could identify as a Jew, which would give him inner satisfaction and keep him part of the Jewish community.

The Simon Dubnow Institute is dedicated to the secular tradition of its namesake.