The Road to Modern Jewish Politics

In this innovative study, Eli Lederhandler explores the previously ignored antecedents to the political awakening of Jewish intellectuals and their break with the traditional, religion-centred culture in Tsarist Russia. Only in the last few years have scholars begun to consider the place of politics in pre-modern Jewish society, and then only from a purely theoretical point of view. Lederhandler's work will be the first to examine in depth the actual political functioning of a Jewish community in its relations with the non-Jewish state and with its own citizens.