Jewish Autonomism was a non-Zionist
political movementJewish political movements refer to the organized efforts of Jews to build their own political parties or otherwise represent their interest in politics outside of the Jewish community...
that emerged in
Eastern EuropeEastern Europe is a region lying in the Eastern part of Europe. The term is highly context-dependent and there are "almost as many definitions of Eastern Europe as there are scholars of the region"...
in the late 19th and early 20th century. One of its major proponents was a historian and activist
Simon DubnowSimon Dubnow was a Jewish historian, writer and activist...
, who also called his ideology folkism.
The Autonomists believed that the future survival of the Jews as a
nationA nation is a body of people who share a real or imagined common history, culture, language or ethnic origin. The development and conceptualization of the nation is closely related to the development of modern industrial states and nationalist movements in Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries,...
depends on their spiritual and cultural strength, in developing "spiritual nationhood" and in viability of
Jewish diasporaThe Jewish diaspora , the presence of Jews outside of the Land of Israel, is a result of the expulsion or emigration of Jews from Israel...
as long as Jewish communities maintain self-rule, and rejected
assimilationCultural assimilation is a political response to the demographic fact of multi-ethnicity which encourages absorption of the minority into the dominant culture...
.
Jewish Autonomism was a non-Zionist
political movementJewish political movements refer to the organized efforts of Jews to build their own political parties or otherwise represent their interest in politics outside of the Jewish community...
that emerged in
Eastern EuropeEastern Europe is a region lying in the Eastern part of Europe. The term is highly context-dependent and there are "almost as many definitions of Eastern Europe as there are scholars of the region"...
in the late 19th and early 20th century. One of its major proponents was a historian and activist
Simon DubnowSimon Dubnow was a Jewish historian, writer and activist...
, who also called his ideology folkism.
The Autonomists believed that the future survival of the Jews as a
nationA nation is a body of people who share a real or imagined common history, culture, language or ethnic origin. The development and conceptualization of the nation is closely related to the development of modern industrial states and nationalist movements in Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries,...
depends on their spiritual and cultural strength, in developing "spiritual nationhood" and in viability of
Jewish diasporaThe Jewish diaspora , the presence of Jews outside of the Land of Israel, is a result of the expulsion or emigration of Jews from Israel...
as long as Jewish communities maintain self-rule, and rejected
assimilationCultural assimilation is a political response to the demographic fact of multi-ethnicity which encourages absorption of the minority into the dominant culture...
. Autonomists often stressed the vitality of modern Yiddish culture.
Various concepts of the Autonomism were adopted in the platforms of the
FolksparteiThe Folkspartei was founded after the 1905 pogroms in the Russian Empire by Simon Dubnow and Israel Efrojkin...
, the Sejmists and socialist Jewish parties such as the
BundThe General Jewish Labour Bund of Lithuania, Poland and Russia , generally called The Bund or the Jewish Labour Bund, was a secular Jewish socialist party in Central and Eastern Europe operating predominantly between the 1890s and the 1930s...
.
Some groups blended Autonomism with
ZionismZionism is the international political movement that originally supported the reestablishment of a homeland for the Jewish People in Palestine. The area was the Jewish Biblical homeland, called the Land of Israel...
: they favored Jewish self-rule in the diaspora until diaspora Jews make
AliyahAliyah is the immigration of Jews to Eretz Israel. It is a basic tenet of Zionist ideology, and a value in almost all movements of Judaism...
to their national homeland in
ZionZion is a term that most often designates the Land of Israel and its capital, Jerusalem. The word is found in texts dating back almost three millennia...
.
The movement's beliefs were similar to those of the Austromarxists, who advocated national cultural autonomy within the multinational Austro-Hungarian empire, and
cultural pluralistsCultural pluralism is a term used when small groups within a larger society maintain their unique cultural identities. One of the most notable cultural pluralisms is the caste system, which is related to Hinduism....
in America, such as
Randolph BourneRandolph Silliman Bourne was a progressive writer and public intellectual born in Bloomfield, New Jersey, and a graduate of Columbia University...
and
Horace KallenHorace Meyer Kallen was a Jewish-American philosopher.-Biography:Born in the then German Bernstadt, Silesia to Jacob David Kallen and Esther Rebecca , an Orthodox rabbi and his wife, Kallen came to the United States as a child in 1887...
.
In 1941, Simon Dubnow was one of thousands of Jews murdered in
RumbulaRumbula is a pine forest enclave in Riga, Latvia, in which Jews were massacred during the Holocaust. For the air base at Rumbula, see Rumbula ....
. After
the HolocaustThe Holocaust , also known as The Shoah is the term generally used to describe the genocide of approximately six million European Jews during World War II, a program of systematic state-sponsored extermination by Nazi Germany,...
, the Autonomism practically disappeared from
Jewish philosophyJewish philosophy refers to the conjunction between serious study of philosophy, Jewish scholasticism and Jewish theology. In one sense, it refers to all philosophical activity carried out by Jews or in relation to the religion of Judaism...
.
It is unconnected to the contemporary political movement
autonomismAutonomism refers to a set of left-wing political and social movements and theories close to the socialist movement. Autonomism , as an identifiable theoretical system, first emerged in Italy in the 1960s from workerist communism...
.
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