Sikh Diaspora Nationalism in Canada

2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 325-345
Author(s):  
Kalam Shahed
Keyword(s):  
2012 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 98-124 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roni Gechtman

Simon Dubnow (1860–1941) was a towering intellectual figure in the history of East European Jewry in the half-century before the Second World War. His influence was manifested mostly in two areas: as the preeminent Jewish historian of his generation and as the main theorist of Jewish diaspora nationalism (Folkism) and intellectual leader of the Folkspartey in Russia (1907-1917). This article examines the relation between the two aspects of Dubnow’s career and legacy. As a historian, Dubnow developed a method for the study of Jewish history he called ‘historism’. Politically, Dubnow was an atypical nationalist, in that he did not demand territorial independence for his people but only the recognition of Jews as a nation with autonomous status within the states where they already lived. I show how Dubnow’s Jewish nationalism and his political views derived, to a large extent, from his historical theory and analysis, and in turn, how his historical interpretations were often informed by his ideological preconceptions. By analyzing and juxtaposing his historical and theoretical works, I argue that the writing of history was for Dubnow a means to achieve his more ambitious goal: to change the future of Jewish society and, by extension, the countries where the Jews lived.


This chapter reviews A Missionary for History: Essays in Honor of Simon Dubnow, which was edited by Kristi Groberg and Avraham Greenbaum. The most useful cluster of essays in this volume is the trio on Dubnow and the pogroms. Michael Hamm, Shlomo Lambroza, and John Klier show that there is little evidence to support Dubnow's view that the pogroms of the late imperial period were carefully prepared and centrally directed, in part to discredit and intimidate liberals and revolutionaries, and in part to divert peasant discontent. Most importantly, they explain how Dubnow's understanding of the pogroms, which still enjoys enormous influence and informs many synthetic accounts of modern Jewish history, derived from his lack of access to important sources as well as to his lack of distance from the events and his own involvement in Russian Jewry's political struggles. Stimulating as well is Israel Bartal's essay on how Dubnow's diaspora nationalism influenced his view of medieval Jewish autonomy, leading him to reverse the Haskalah's negative attitude towards communal autonomy and, at the same time, to describe this autonomy in thoroughly anachronistic terms.


2006 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
pp. 111-129 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chong Jin Oh

A diaspora is a migrant community which crosses borders, retains an ethnic group consciousness and peculiar institutions over extended periods (Cohen, 1997, p. ix). It is an ancient social formation, comprised of people living out of their ancestral homeland, who retain their loyalties toward their co-ethnics and the homeland from which they were forced out (Esman, 1996, p. 317). The Jews were the most ancient and well-known diasporic people. For a long time, “diaspora” meant almost exclusively the Jewish people. Hence diaspora signified a collective trauma, a banishment, where one dreamed of home but lived in exile. However, in recent years other peoples, such as Palestinians, Armenians, Chinese, Tatars, etc., who have settled outside their natal territories but maintain strong collective identities, also have defined themselves as disasporas. As Cohen states, “the description or self-description of such groups as diasporas is now common,” which allows a certain degree of social distance to displace a high degree of psychological alienation. Accordingly, during the last decades, disaspora has been rediscovered and expanded to include refugees, gastarbeiters, migrants, expatriates, expellees, political refugees, and ethnic minorities (Safran, 1991, p. 83).


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