Our Small World: Hebrew Children’s Letters and Modern Upbringing in Czarist Russia

IF 0.2 2区历史学 Q2 HISTORY Jewish History Pub Date : 2023-12-27 DOI:10.1007/s10835-023-09454-w

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Abstract

The historiography of modern Hebrew culture views early twentieth-century Russia largely through the lens of canonical literature. However, Hebrew played a role in many other aspects of Jewish society, prominent among them children’s literature. By examining readers’ letters published in four Hebrew children’s magazines, this article explores the spread and meaning of the language for different sectors of Russian Jewry. It claims that Hebrew played a role in Jewish modernization for those who did not identify with Zionism and even those who claimed to reject modernism entirely. To better understand East European Jewish life through the prism of multifaceted Hebrew culture, this article studies publications of varied ideological positions—Zionist, nonpartisan nationalist, and Orthodox—to provide a more comprehensive picture of Jewish perception of Hebrew. It shows how, despite their disparities, the four publications employed similar strategies when addressing young readers, directing them to a desired worldview and mobilizing them to social activity. The readers’ letters in these magazines reveal the experience of learning, reading, and speaking the renewed language in the context of family life, social pressure, and gender dynamics. They provide essential information about methods, habits, and patterns of using Hebrew inside and outside the classroom. In addition, the letters shed light on the interaction between children and adults—parents, teachers, and newspaper editors—against the backdrop of the vibrant ideological discourse of the era. On balance, the current research offers a contribution to the study of revitalized Hebrew culture as well as the social history of modern European Jewry.

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我们的小世界：希伯来儿童的书信与沙皇俄国的现代教育

摘要现代希伯来文化史学主要从经典文学的角度来看待二十世纪初的俄罗斯。然而，希伯来语在犹太社会的许多其他方面也发挥了作用，其中最突出的是儿童文学。通过研究四本希伯来语儿童杂志上发表的读者来信，本文探讨了希伯来语在俄罗斯犹太人不同阶层中的传播和意义。文章称，对于那些不认同犹太复国主义的人，甚至那些声称完全拒绝现代主义的人来说，希伯来语在犹太人的现代化进程中发挥了作用。为了更好地从多面希伯来文化的角度理解东欧犹太人的生活，本文研究了不同意识形态立场的出版物--犹太复国主义、无党派民族主义和东正教--以更全面地了解犹太人对希伯来语的看法。文章表明，尽管存在差异，但这四种出版物在面向年轻读者时采用了相似的策略，引导他们树立理想的世界观，并动员他们参与社会活动。这些杂志中的读者来信揭示了在家庭生活、社会压力和性别动态背景下学习、阅读和使用新语言的经历。它们提供了有关在课堂内外使用希伯来语的方法、习惯和模式的重要信息。此外，这些信件还揭示了在那个时代充满活力的意识形态话语背景下，儿童与成人--家长、教师和报纸编辑--之间的互动。总的来说，目前的研究为研究复兴的希伯来文化以及现代欧洲犹太人的社会历史做出了贡献。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

Jewish History HISTORY-

CiteScore

0.40

自引率

33.30%

发文量

期刊介绍： The purpose of Jewish History, the sole English-language publication devoted exclusively to history and the Jews, is to broaden the limits of historical writing on the Jews. Jewish History publishes contributions in the field of history, but also in the ancillary fields of art, literature, sociology, and anthropology, where these fields and history proper cross paths. The diverse personal and professional backgrounds of Jewish History''s contributors, a truly international meeting of minds, have enriched the journal and offered readers innovative essays as well as special issues on topics proposed by guest editors: women and Jewish inheritance, the Jews of Latin America, and Jewish self-imaging, to name but a few in a long list.