Rethinking the Jewish history in the context of the early twentieth century

In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, history was used for political p urposes. For Jews and most of the ethnic groups demanding autonomy, writing a history of their nation was perceived as a form of emancipation. The unc ommon disparity existing between West and East European Jews - the latter c onstituting the major part of the Jewish people - resulted in two distinct approaches: one focused on re-writing the past and the other, on building t he future. This article aims to show the principles lying at the basis of t his divergence. At stake for German Jews was to convince Jews and non-Jews alike that the former could become integrated in a social world abiding by the rules of a sovereign state: this corresponded to a universalist approac h. The Russians, however, bet on a more radical political and historical pr ogram, thus developing a nationalistic approach. Our selection of a number of ideas worked out by intellectuals and militants of the "Jewish cause" su ch as Heinrich Graetz, Leopold Zunz, Peretz Smolenskin, Simon Dubnow and Ah ad Ha-Am, allows us to see these divergences in the make-up of a Jewish his tory.