At the Crossroads Between War and Genocide: A Reassessment of Jewish Ideology in 1940

In the months following the outbreak of World War II, East European Jewry stood at the crossroads of life and death. Unable to alter their political fate, a small group of intellectuals took refuge in ideology by continuing to prepare the journal that they had begun before the war. This journal, appropriately named Afn sheydveg (At the Crossroads), provided the prism through which its contributors continued to interpret the evolving catastrophe. Only two issues of the journal reached print—in April and August 1939, respectively— before the outbreak of World War II. The editors of the journal, Elias Tcherikower (1881–1943) and Yisroel Efroykin (1884–1954), East European Jewish émigrés living in Paris, gathered articles from Jewish intellectuals throughout the world. As former Diaspora nationalists and Yiddishists, however, Tcherikower and Efroykin invited their ideological compatriots Zelig Kalmanovitsh (1885–1944), Avrom Menes (1897– 1969), and Avrom Golomb (1888–1982) to participate as regulars in the journal.

Even in the aftermath of the outbreak of World War II, Tcherikower and Efroykin continued to prepare for the publication of a third issue of their journal. Only the Nazi invasion of France in September 1940 prevented the publication of this issue. Recently, I discovered the manuscripts of this third issue. Throughout the three editions of Afn sheydveg, the essays of its regular contributors shared the following features: a sense of betrayal by both fascist and democratic countries; a call for a Jewish retreat from politics in response to this betrayal; a bemoaning of depleted Jewish strength due to a failed attempt at assimilation; and the search for an organic Jewish life that they believed had existed in the medieval ghetto.

Who was this "Afn sheydveg group," which voiced such conservative opinions at the moment of European Jewry's greatest crisis? These intellectuals represented the second generation of Diaspora nationalists and Yiddishists who heeded the call of such ideological founders as Shimon Dubnow (1860–1941), Chaim Zhitlowsky (1865–1943), and I. L. Peretz (1852–1915). Because of the similar, though not identical, trajectory of these men's careers and ideological transformation, viewing them as a historical cohort proves constructive. Following their writing and activity from 1905 to 1940 reveals valuable insight into the challenges facing at least one prominent stream of Diaspora nationalist, Yiddishist thought.

The political and ideological career of this cohort was one of successive waves of ideological disillusionment. Tcherikower, Efroykin, Kalmanovitsh, and Menes had all begun their careers committed to Jewish socialism, Diaspora nationalism, and secular, modern Yiddish culture. Throughout their careers, these men successively shed their faith in these ideologies. Understanding their careers through this model of ever-increasing disillusionment helps to explain the seemingly extreme statements that they expressed on the pages of Afn sheydveg.

In order to trace the ideological trajectory of this cohort, it is important to distinguish between its inner and outer circles. At the innermost point of the circle stood Tcherikower, Efroykin, and Kalmanovitsh. Born in the early and mid-1880s, these men received a traditional Jewish education before attending university in Russia, Switzerland, and Germany, respectively. All three first became active in socialist and Diaspora nationalist politics during the Revolution of 1905. Following the Revolution, Tcherikower spent a year in tsarist prison for revolutionary activity with the Mensheviks.¹ At the same time, Efroykin and Kalmanovitsh helped form the Sejmist Party, dedicated both to socialism and to the establishment of maximal Jewish national autonomy in Russia.²

During World War I, Tcherikower, Efroykin, and Kalmanovitsh focused almost exclusively on the cause of Diaspora nationalism. In America during the war years, Tcherikower wrote columns in the American Yiddish press in which he urged his socialist readers to join Jewish bourgeois leaders in war relief efforts as well as to continue to fight them for economic justice in the work place. He also collaborated with the socialist Zionist thinker...