The Birth of Jewish American & Israel

Pogrom: Kishinev and the Tilt of History by Steven J. Zipperstein examines the influential and, at this point, little known attack on the Jewish community of Kishinev in 1903.  At the time, the pogrom became international news, and brought the spotlight to the desperate plight of Russian Jews.  Zipperstein sees Kishinev as at the tilt of history, as a moment when Jewish history began an irreversible slip.

Zipperstein writes that although the pogrom had government sanction, it was only on a local level. Victims were blamed for the pogrom, both because of a spurious blood libel charge, and because there were too many Jews in Kishinev for gentile comfort.  Zionists leaders also blamed the Jews of Kishinev for their supposed passivity during the pogrom.  H.N. Bialik, "The City of Slaughter" outright condemned victims, and accused Jewish men of cowardliness.  

And this leads to the main point: This book shows the intersection where Russian Jews realized that all roads led out of that  troubled land.  Russia hated its Jews. Burgeoning Zionism hated old world Judaism.  Jews could either fight or flee.  Those who fought went to Palestine; those who fled, to American, to form the backbone of American Jewry today.  Before the Holocaust forged Judaism into the binary (but spurious)  Israeli and an American identities, the violence at Kishinev cleared the path.