PINSKER, LEON. [“Autoemancipation”]. Im Ein Ani Li, Mi Li. Translated into Hebrew by Samuel Loeb Citron. * With: (An Open Letter to Nachum Sokolow)

(ZIONISM).

The Widow and Brothers Romm

Vilna

1883

FIRST HEBREW EDITION

Friedberg A-1917

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: ‘Judaeophobia’ would only disappear once a Jewish national center was established. The publication of this famous tract in 1882, 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. The second part of Citron’s translation, is a response to the criticisms of Pinsker's tract made by Nahum Sokolow - later to become President of the World Zionist Organization. See EJ, Vol. XIII, cols. 545-548; XV, cols. 85-89