Dubnov, Freud & Husserl: The Creation of Modern Consciousness in Eastern European Jewish Culture 

January 7, 2013
YIVO Institute for Jewish Research
Keynote Lecture | 2013 YIVO-Bard Winter Program on Ashkenazi Civilization
The end of the 19th century saw the birth of secular Jewish nationalism, the discovery of psychoanalysis and the founding of the philosophical movement known as phenomenology. The work of Sigmund Freud, Edmund Husserl and Shimen Dubnov is part of a much larger development in East European Jewish life that also gave rise to the insistent universalism of political activists such as Chaim Zhitlovsky and the literary tradition that can be traced from the works of Sholem Aleichem to Philip Roth.
The question we must ask, therefore, is not why Jewish thinkers and writers so avidly coalesced around political and artistic movements offering universalist solutions; but rather why it was Jews and, in particular, Jews of East European background, who frequently led or invented these movements that directed the development of general European culture.
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