Nachman Syrkin (1868-1924) was a political theorist, founder of Labour Zionism and a prolific writer in the Hebrew, Yiddish, Russian, German and English languages. In this present volume, which was first published in 1961, his daughter Marie Syrkin reprints translations of some of his more influential essays, and remembers her childhood and youth and the wanderings of her family over the face of the earth at a time not only of danger and suffering, but of adventure and romance and real enjoyment. A lively, engaging read!
This volume contains the first broad selection of essays made available in English by Ber Borochov, one of the leading intellectuals of the early Zionist movement. Borochov founded the Labor Zionist party in 1906, and was the pillar of the Israeli Labor party from whose ranks arose such figures as David Ben-Gurion and Itzhak Ben-Tsvi. He is best remembered for his ability to synthesize socialism and nationalism.Borochov argues that early Marxist theory failed to understand the causes of nationalism and views it only as a temporary phenomenon. Borochov tried to synthesize socialism with Jewish nationalism. Zionism was a movement necessary to free oppressed Eastern European Jews and permit them to further socialist ideals in their own nation-state. The dilemma is that socialist internationalism requires national culture to be of no further value once a socialist victory occurs in a country. Borochov's essays provide an important, if largely unknown perspective on these questions.
Marie Syrkin's life spanned ninety years of the twentieth century, 1899-1989. As a polemical journalist, socialist Zionist, poet, educator, literary critic, translator, and idiosyncratic feminist, she was eyewitness to and reporter on most of the major events in America, Israel, and Europe. Beautiful as well as brilliant, she had a rich personal life as lover, wife, mother, and friend. During her lifetime Syrkin's name was widely recognized in the world of Jewish life and letters. Yet, inevitably, since her death, recognition of her name is no longer quite so immediate. Carole S. Kessner's intention is to restore for a new generation the singular legacy of Syrkin's life. Syrkin was born in Switzerland, the only child of the theoretician of socialist Zionism Nachman Syrkin and Bassya Osnos Syrkin, a feminist socialist Zionist. Following short stints in several European countries, the family immigrated to the United States in 1909. By the age of ten Marie was fluent in five languages. Educated in American public schools and at Cornell University, by the time she was twenty-three she had published translations as well as her own poetry. After her first trip to Palestine in 1933, Syrkin joined the staff of the Jewish Frontier. This began her lifelong contribution to Zionism, Jewish life, and responsible journalism. In 1947 she published her most celebrated work, Blessed Is the Match. In 1950 she became a professor of English literature at Brandeis University and later published a biography of her father and the authorized biography of her longtime close friend Golda Meir. Syrkin married three times: the first, to Maurice Samuel, annulled by her father's intervention; the second, to the biochemist Aaron Bodansky, the father of her son David; the third, to the poet Charles Reznikoff, lasted on and off for more than forty years. In the course of her life, Marie had many influential friends, such as Hayim Greenberg, Ben Gurion, and Irving Howe, and she served as inspiration to many younger intellectuals, including Martin Peretz, Michael Walzer, and Leon Wieseltier. As poet and journalist, Zionist activist and public intellectual, Syrkin's work and actions illuminate a wide range of twentieth-century literary, cultural, and political concerns. Her passions demonstrate, as Irving Howe said, "a life of commitment to values beyond the self."
