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.
Article PDF
Similar content being viewed by others
Avoid common mistakes on your manuscript.
Acknowledgements
I wish to thank Scott Ury and the members of his reading group, as well as Alex Valdman, for their helpful comments.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Competing Interests
The author declares no competing interests.
Additional information
Publisher’s Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.
About this article
Cite this article
Reuveny, M. Our Small World: Hebrew Children’s Letters and Modern Upbringing in Czarist Russia. JEW HIST 37, 259–286 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10835-023-09454-w
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10835-023-09454-w