Melville House Books

Orlando Figes review of Yuri Slezkine‘s The Jewish Century appears in the current issue of The New York Review of Books. The review describes the book as an important linking of “the emigration of the Jews with the dissemination of the twentieth century’s three main ideologies” and it praises the book for being “full of bold and sweeping statements and flashes of brilliance.” Slezkine, who is a Russian historian by training, tells a sweeping story of Jews in the twentieth century, noting that “the modern age is the Jewish age, and the twentieth century, in particular, is the Jewish Century.” His historical narrative weaves through Russian history, where, during the 20th century, the Jewish population dwindled from 5.2 million at the turn of the century to just 230,000 today. But Slezkine’s account expands what it means to live in “the Jewish Century,” relating such a concept to the most important cultural turns of the modern period. Modernization, Slezkine writes, “is about pursuing wealth for the sake of learning, learning for the sake of wealth, and both wealth and learning for their own sake. It is about transforming peasants and princes into merchants and priests, replacing inherited privilege with acquired prestige, and dismantling social estates for the benefit of individuals, nuclear families, and book-reading tribes (nations). Modernization, in other words, is about everyone becoming Jewish.”

Dennis Johnson is the founder of MobyLives, and the co-founder and co-publisher of Melville House.