“Autoemancipation!” Mahnruf an seine Stammesgenossen [“A Warning Call of a Russian Jew to His Kinsmen”]. “Von Einem Russischen Juden” [i.e. Leon (Judah Leib) Pinsker]

THE FIRST MODERN CALL FOR A JEWISH HOMELAND. Following the government-led pogroms in Southern Russia in 1881, Pinsker, a passionate assimilationist, underwent a dramatic change in Weltanschauung - proclaiming that ‘Judaeophobia’ would only disappear once a Jewish national center was established. The publication of this famous tract, with its dispassionate analysis of the psychological and social roots of anti-Semitism, resulted in the formative ordering of the early Chibath Zion Movement. Despite the derision the work received from some quarters, it was a direct precursor to the writings of Theodor Herzl more than a decade later