ONLINE FIRST
published on April 17, 2024
Roman Karlovic, Peter Bojanic
https://doi.org/10.5840/philtoday202449531
Goldschmidt and Yiddish Anarchism
While Hermann Levin Goldschmidt didn¡¯t read Yiddish anarchists, there seems to have been a convergent evolution in their thinking. Goldschmidt¡¯s looking up to Jewish lore as a source of liberating creativity is commonly encountered in Yiddish anarchist texts. His view of action as a constant response to internal and external challenges in the struggle for an open future is developed by Isaac Nachman Steinberg on the basis of nineteenth-century vitalism. Goldschmidt¡¯s theory of anarchist individualism as willed self-limiting solidarity has a compelling parallel in Hillel Solotaroff¡¯s view of history. His use of impressionism and photography to eternalize the immediacy of human actuality is akin to Rudolf Rocker¡¯s championing of decadent literature. In both cases, the goal of anarchism is not a dictatorship of the former downtrodden, but a continuous and contradictory evolution of freedom in ever-changing contexts.