[Leon Pinsker]. Autoemantzipatiziah.

(ZIONISM).

Chaim Yaakov Sheftil

Berditchev

1899

FIRST EDITION IN HEBREW. Translated from the German by F. Frankael.

No copy located in WorldCat.

First edition of Pinsker’s “Autoemancipation” in Hebrew. Highly scarce. 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 that first appeared in 1882, 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 direct precursor to Herzlian political Zionism. See EJ, Vol. XIII, cols. 545-8.