The Jewish Century

[Dave Monroe]

Slezkine, Yuri.  The Jewish Century.
   Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 2004.

This masterwork of interpretative history begins with
a bold declaration: The Modern Age is the Jewish
Age--and we are all, to varying degrees, Jews.

The assertion is, of course, metaphorical. But it
underscores Yuri Slezkine's provocative thesis. Not
only have Jews adapted better than many other groups
to living in the modern world, they have become the
premiere symbol and standard of modern life
everywhere.

Slezkine argues that the Jews were, in effect, among
the world's first free agents. They traditionally
belonged to a social and anthropological category
known as "service nomads," an outsider group
specializing in the delivery of goods and services.
Their role, Slezkine argues, was part of a broader
division of human labor between what he calls
Mercurians-entrepreneurial minorities-- and
Apollonians--food-producing majorities.

Since the dawning of the Modern Age, Mercurians have
taken center stage. In fact, Slezkine argues,
modernity is all about Apollonians becoming Mercurians
--urban, mobile, literate, articulate, intellectually
intricate, physically fastidious, and occupationally
flexible. Since no group has been more adept at
Mercurianism than the Jews, he contends, these
exemplary ancients are now model moderns.

The book concentrates on the drama of the Russian
Jews, including émigrés and their offspring in
America, Palestine, and the Soviet Union. But Slezkine
has as much to say about the many faces of
modernity--nationalism, socialism, capitalism, and
liberalism--as he does about Jewry. Marxism and
Freudianism, for example, sprang largely from the
Jewish predicament, Slezkine notes, and both Soviet
Bolshevism and American liberalism were affected in
fundamental ways by the Jewish exodus from the Pale of
Settlement.

Rich in its insight, sweeping in its chronology, and
fearless in its analysis, this
sure-to-be-controversial work is an important
contribution not only to Jewish and Russian history
but to the history of Europe and America as well.

http://pup.princeton.edu/titles/7819.html

Ch. 1, "Mercury's Sandals: The Jews and Other Nomads"

http://pup.princeton.edu/chapters/s7819.html

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