From Myth to Counter-Myth: The Romanticization of the Eastern Jew (1880–1914)

The East European Jews (Ostjuden) played an integral role in German Jewish self-definition. As ‘ghetto Jews’ they were living embodiments of the general pre-modern Jewish condition and perfect foils for the creation of Jewish myths and counter-myths, stereotypical negations and affirmations. This paper attempts to delineate the outlines of these myths and counter-myths and to analyse the major symbolic functions which the Eastern Jews performed in the ideological world of liberal, Zionist and ‘post-Zionist’ German Jews.