The Long Shadow of the “Jewish Question”
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/ February 10, 2026
The Long Shadow of the “Jewish Question”
After the Holocaust, Israel was hailed as the solution to an essentially antisemitic debate. Now, as another genocide unfolds—in Gaza—Jews are once again questioning the question.
Joseph Dana
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Mame loshn: Attendees at the first Yiddish Language Conference in Czernowitz, 1908.
This article appears in the
March 2026 issue, with the headline “The Long Shadow of the Jewish Question.’”
In late August 1908, some 70 delegates crowded into a hall in Czernowitz, the cosmopolitan capital of Austrian Bukovina. They had come from Warsaw and Galicia and cities across Eastern Europe for the First Yiddish Language Conference. Leading writers like I.L. Peretz were present; Sholem Aleichem had wanted to attend but was kept away by illness. For five days, they argued about the nature of Jewish languages and whether the one named in the conference title—the one spoken by Eastern Europe’s Jewish masses—was a legitimate national tongue or merely a corrupted jargon of exile.
For Nathan Birnbaum, the man who had organized the gathering, this was not a matter of mere academic import; it was a question of existential significance. Born in Vienna in 1864 to an assimilated family, Birnbaum had grown up largely secular yet rejected the assumption that Jews should dissolve into the surrounding German-Austrian culture. With his determined stare and full beard projecting well below his throat, he could be easily mistaken for Theodor Herzl at the time.
The two men had, in fact, been allies for a period. Nearly two decades earlier, in 1890, Birnbaum had coined the term Zionism while editing the early Zionist journal Selbst-Emanzipation (Self-Emancipation), and he was later elected secretary-general of the Zionist Organization at the First Zionist Congress in Basel. Later, however, he would abandon the Zionist movement and, in its stead, embrace a different vision for the future of the Jewish people—one that diverged wildly from political Zionism and was the implicit focus of the Czernowitz ingathering.
Birnbaum did not believe that the Yiddish-speaking Jews scattered from the Baltics to the Black Sea were failed Europeans awaiting transformation in Palestine, as the Zionist movement argued. Rather, they were a living nation deserving recognition where they already stood. The Czernowitz conference was meant to formalize this recognition by declaring Yiddish the national language of the Jewish people, not merely one among several. Such a declaration would have been a direct challenge to the Zionist project, which was busy reviving Hebrew as the tongue of a future state and …
Be honest—this is ridiculous.
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Current Issue
Feature
/ February 10, 2026
The Long Shadow of the “Jewish Question”
After the Holocaust, Israel was hailed as the solution to an essentially antisemitic debate. Now, as another genocide unfolds—in Gaza—Jews are once again questioning the question.
Joseph Dana
Share
Copy Link
X (Twitter)
Bluesky Pocket
Mame loshn: Attendees at the first Yiddish Language Conference in Czernowitz, 1908.
This article appears in the
March 2026 issue, with the headline “The Long Shadow of the Jewish Question.’”
In late August 1908, some 70 delegates crowded into a hall in Czernowitz, the cosmopolitan capital of Austrian Bukovina. They had come from Warsaw and Galicia and cities across Eastern Europe for the First Yiddish Language Conference. Leading writers like I.L. Peretz were present; Sholem Aleichem had wanted to attend but was kept away by illness. For five days, they argued about the nature of Jewish languages and whether the one named in the conference title—the one spoken by Eastern Europe’s Jewish masses—was a legitimate national tongue or merely a corrupted jargon of exile.
For Nathan Birnbaum, the man who had organized the gathering, this was not a matter of mere academic import; it was a question of existential significance. Born in Vienna in 1864 to an assimilated family, Birnbaum had grown up largely secular yet rejected the assumption that Jews should dissolve into the surrounding German-Austrian culture. With his determined stare and full beard projecting well below his throat, he could be easily mistaken for Theodor Herzl at the time.
The two men had, in fact, been allies for a period. Nearly two decades earlier, in 1890, Birnbaum had coined the term Zionism while editing the early Zionist journal Selbst-Emanzipation (Self-Emancipation), and he was later elected secretary-general of the Zionist Organization at the First Zionist Congress in Basel. Later, however, he would abandon the Zionist movement and, in its stead, embrace a different vision for the future of the Jewish people—one that diverged wildly from political Zionism and was the implicit focus of the Czernowitz ingathering.
Birnbaum did not believe that the Yiddish-speaking Jews scattered from the Baltics to the Black Sea were failed Europeans awaiting transformation in Palestine, as the Zionist movement argued. Rather, they were a living nation deserving recognition where they already stood. The Czernowitz conference was meant to formalize this recognition by declaring Yiddish the national language of the Jewish people, not merely one among several. Such a declaration would have been a direct challenge to the Zionist project, which was busy reviving Hebrew as the tongue of a future state and …
The Long Shadow of the “Jewish Question”
Be honest—this is ridiculous.
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Current Issue
Feature
/ February 10, 2026
The Long Shadow of the “Jewish Question”
After the Holocaust, Israel was hailed as the solution to an essentially antisemitic debate. Now, as another genocide unfolds—in Gaza—Jews are once again questioning the question.
Joseph Dana
Share
Copy Link
Facebook
X (Twitter)
Bluesky Pocket
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Mame loshn: Attendees at the first Yiddish Language Conference in Czernowitz, 1908.
This article appears in the
March 2026 issue, with the headline “The Long Shadow of the Jewish Question.’”
In late August 1908, some 70 delegates crowded into a hall in Czernowitz, the cosmopolitan capital of Austrian Bukovina. They had come from Warsaw and Galicia and cities across Eastern Europe for the First Yiddish Language Conference. Leading writers like I.L. Peretz were present; Sholem Aleichem had wanted to attend but was kept away by illness. For five days, they argued about the nature of Jewish languages and whether the one named in the conference title—the one spoken by Eastern Europe’s Jewish masses—was a legitimate national tongue or merely a corrupted jargon of exile.
For Nathan Birnbaum, the man who had organized the gathering, this was not a matter of mere academic import; it was a question of existential significance. Born in Vienna in 1864 to an assimilated family, Birnbaum had grown up largely secular yet rejected the assumption that Jews should dissolve into the surrounding German-Austrian culture. With his determined stare and full beard projecting well below his throat, he could be easily mistaken for Theodor Herzl at the time.
The two men had, in fact, been allies for a period. Nearly two decades earlier, in 1890, Birnbaum had coined the term Zionism while editing the early Zionist journal Selbst-Emanzipation (Self-Emancipation), and he was later elected secretary-general of the Zionist Organization at the First Zionist Congress in Basel. Later, however, he would abandon the Zionist movement and, in its stead, embrace a different vision for the future of the Jewish people—one that diverged wildly from political Zionism and was the implicit focus of the Czernowitz ingathering.
Birnbaum did not believe that the Yiddish-speaking Jews scattered from the Baltics to the Black Sea were failed Europeans awaiting transformation in Palestine, as the Zionist movement argued. Rather, they were a living nation deserving recognition where they already stood. The Czernowitz conference was meant to formalize this recognition by declaring Yiddish the national language of the Jewish people, not merely one among several. Such a declaration would have been a direct challenge to the Zionist project, which was busy reviving Hebrew as the tongue of a future state and …
