“Einem russischen Juden” [Leon Pinsker]. “Auto–emancipation!” Mahnruf an seine Stammesgenossen [“A Warning Call of a Russian Jew to His Kinsmen”]

(ZIONISM).

W. Issleib (G. Schuhr)

Berlin

1882

FIRST EDITION. Lord Byron’s tragic poem regarding the Jews inscribed on verso of upper cover.

The first modern call for a Jewish homeland. Following the government-led pogroms in Russia in 1881, Leon Pinsker (1821-91), hitherto an assimilationist, underwent a dramatic change in outlook. The publication of this famous tract, with its dispassionate analysis of the psychological and social roots of anti-Semitism, provided the stimulus for the Chibath Zion Movement. Despite the derision the work received from some quarters, ultimately it was the precursor of Herzlian Zionism. See EJ, Vol. XIII, cols. 545-8.