The 1905 Revolution in Russia ushered in an unprecedented (though brief) period of social and political freedom in the Russian Empire. This environment made possible the emergence of mass Jewish politics and the flourishing of a new, modern Jewish culture expressed in Yiddish, Hebrew, and Russian. Unfortunately, 1905 also unleashed popular anti-Semitism in the shape of pogroms on a scale previously unknown.
Russian Jewry, by far the largest Jewish community in the world at that time, faced fateful decisions. Should the Jews strive to uphold Jewish national uniqueness either in the context of the Russian Empire or by emigrating to Palestine/the Land of Israel, or should they identify with and merge into the general revolutionary or liberal movements in their country of birth? What direction should Jewish culture and social organizations take within the context of democratization and modernization? In what language or languages should this culture be expressed? How should Jews abroad react to the revolutionary crisis and to the dilemmas of their coreligionists?
The thought-provoking essays in this volume shed new light on these issues while placing them in the larger context of the historical, social, and cultural developments within the Russian Empire. The authors, representing various disciplines, emphasize both the highly varied Jewish responses to the great crisis and the degree to which these responses shared certain vital characteristics.

Introduction
—Benjamin Nathans
PART I. REASSESSING THE 1905 REVOLUTION
1. Interpreting 1905
—Abraham Ascher
2. Nicholas II and the Revolution
—Richard Wortman
PART II. THE OLD REGIME CONFRONTS ITS "JEWISH QUESTION"
3. A Note on the Jewish Press and Censorship during the First Russian Revolution
—Dmitrii Elyashevich
4. The Russian Right Responds to 1905: Visual Depictions of Jews in Postrevolutionary Russia
—Robert Weinberg
5. "The Jewish Question" in the Tsarist Army in the Early Twentieth Century
—Semion Goldin
PART III. 1905 AS A CROSSROADS FOR THE EMPIRE'S JEWS
6. Victory from Defeat: 1905 and the Society for the Promotion of Enlightenment among the Jews of Russia
—Brian Horowitz
7. The Generation of 1905 and the Politics of Despair: Alienation, Friendship, Community
—Scott Ury
8. The Jewish Socialist Parties in Russia in the Period of Reaction
—Vladimir Levin
9. 1905 as a Watershed in Polish-Jewish Relations
—Theodore R. Weeks
PART IV. CULTURAL REFLECTIONS OF REVOLUTION
10. Polish Literature's Portrayal of Jewish Involvement in 1905
—Agnieszka Friedrich
11 Rebellion in Writing: Yosef Haim Brenner and the 1905 Revolution
—Hannan Hever
12. The Revolutionary Origins of Yiddish Scholarship, 1903-1917
—Barry Trachtenberg
13. 1905 as a Jewish Cultural Revolution? Revolutionary and Evolutionary Dynamics in the East European Jewish Cultural Sphere, 1900-1914
—Kenneth Moss
14. Jewish Cultural Associations in the Aftermath of 1905
—Jeffrey Veidlinger
15. Writing between the Lines: 1905 in the Soviet Yiddish Novel of the Stalinist Period
—Mikhail Krutikov
PART V. OVERSEAS RIPPLES: 1905 AND AMERICAN JEWRY
16. The 1905 Revolution Abroad: Mass Migration, Russian Jewish Liberalism and American Jewry, 1903-1914
—Rebecca Kobrin
17. Democracy and Assimilation: The Jews, America, and the Russian Crisis from Kishinev to the End of World War I
—Eli Lederhendler
Notes
List of Contributors
Index
Acknowledgments

Stefani Hoffman is the former Director of the Mayrock Center for Russian, Eurasian, and East European Research at The Hebrew University, Jerusalem, and coeditor of Restructuring Post-Communist Russia. Ezra Mendelsohn is Professor Emeritus, Institute of Contemporary Jewry and Russian Studies at The Hebrew University. His most recent book is entitled Painting a People: Maurycy Gottlieb and Jewish Art. He is coeditor of the journals Zion and Studies in Contemporary Jewry.