Jewish Autonomism was a non-Zionist political movement that emerged in Eastern Europe in the late 19th and early 20th century. One of its major proponents was a historian and activist Simon Dubnow, who also called his ideology folkism.
The Autonomists believed that the future survival of the Jews as a nation depends on their spiritual and cultural strength, in developing "spiritual nationhood" and in viability of Jewish diaspora as long as Jewish communities maintain self-rule, and rejected assimilation. Autonomists often stressed the vitality of modern Yiddish culture.
Various concepts of the Autonomism were adopted in the platforms of the Folkspartei, the Sejmists and socialist Jewish parties such as the Bund.
Some groups blended Autonomism with Zionism: they favored Jewish self-rule in the diaspora until diaspora Jews make Aliyah to their national homeland in Zion.
The movement's beliefs were similar to those of the Austromarxists, who advocated national personal autonomy within the multinational Austro-Hungarian empire, and cultural pluralists in America, such as Randolph Bourne and Horace Kallen.
In 1941, Simon Dubnow was one of thousands of Jews murdered in the Rumbula massacre. After the Holocaust, the Autonomism practically disappeared from Jewish philosophy.
It is unconnected to the contemporary political movement autonomism.
Famous quotes containing the word jewish:
“For every nineteenth-century middle-class family that protected its wife and child within the family circle, there was an Irish or a German girl scrubbing floors in that home, a Welsh boy mining coal to keep the home-baked goodies warm, a black girl doing the family laundry, a black mother and child picking cotton to be made into clothes for the family, and a Jewish or an Italian daughter in a sweatshop making “ladies” dresses or artificial flowers for the family to purchase.”
—Stephanie Coontz (20th century)