Modern Jewish Identity in the Age of Empire

The YIVO Institute for Jewish Research presents a conversation with Ofer Dynes and Svetlana Natkovich on two new books examining the emergence of modern Jewish identity through literature, politics, and self-expression. Dynes’s “The Fiction of the State: The Partitions of Poland and the Beginning of Modern Jewish Literature” locates the origins of modern Jewish literature within the Partitions of Poland during the late eighteenth century, while Natkovich’s “Questionable People: Inventing Modern Jewish Selves in the Russian Empire, 1860–1890” explores how the maskilim used self-expression, fashion, dress, and artistic work to define themselves in a modernizing Russia. The discussion is moderated by Jeremy Dauber.