Two Revolutionary Jews: Leon Trotsky and Chaim Zhitlowsky

Lecture In Person: Admission: Free Registration is required. Register Zoom Livestream: Admission: Free Registration is required. Register

What role should Jews play in revolutionary movements? Should they act collectively on their own behalf or as indistinct individuals within majority populations in the interest of universalistic ideals? Or was this a false dichotomy? These questions have defined the basis of left-wing Jewish politics since the 19th century.

In this lecture, Tony Michels will discuss two different approaches to revolutionary Jewish politics, as defined by Leon Trotsky and Chaim Zhitlowsky. Both were Russian-born Jews who played seminal roles in the Russian revolutionary movement. Both also came to be seen as embodiments of the modern Jewish experience. However, they gave radically different answers to the predicament of modern Jewry.

This evening’s program is the first in a series of programs held in conjunction with YIVO’s current digitization of the Jewish Labor and Political Archives (JLPA). Consisting of nearly 200 collections encompassing 3.5 million pages of archival documents that were collected by the Bund Archives, the JLPA forms the world’s most comprehensive body of material pertaining to Jewish political activity in Europe and the United States.

This program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council.

About the Speaker

Tony Michels teaches American Jewish history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he also serves as director of the Mosse/Weinstein Center for Jewish Studies. He is author of A Fire in Their Hearts: Jewish Socialists in New York, editor of Jewish Radicals: A Documentary History, and co-editor of The Cambridge History of Judaism, Volume Eight: The Modern World, 1815-2000.