The Jewish Reception of Vladimir Solovyov

In: Vladimir Solovyov: Reconciler and Polemicist, ed. Ewert von Zweerde, Peeters, Lewen, 2000 (in press).

1. Introduction

            The impact of the Jewish Kabbala on Solovyov, his consistently positive attitude towards Judaism, his defense of the moral character of Judaism and the Jews, and his activism on behalf of civil rights for Jews in Russia – are all well-known.[1]  Here, however, I wish to address a different question; namely, what imprint did Solovyov leave in the Jewish press, and on modern Jewish thought and literature? The attempt to answer this question may shed more light on modern Judaism than on Soloyov’s ideas, as is always the case with a study of reception. The Jewish reception of Solovyov is of  special interest, however, because of  the centrality of Judaism and the Jewish question occupies in his  views.  We may inquire: was Solovyov as important to Jews as Judaism was important to him? How were his ideas received by modern Jewish intellectuals? Could the ideas of a Christian-Russian theologian be absorbed by modern Judaism, and in what way?  I shall argue that Solovyov had a considerable, albeit selective, impact on modern Jewish – including Zionist - thought and literature, especially during the first quarter of the twentieth century.

            Modern Jewish culture in the Russia Empire was tri-lingual: it flourished chiefly in Russian, Hebrew, and Yiddish. Broadly speaking, it seems that the decisive majority of the Jewish responses to Solovyov were either in Russian or in Hebrew. Yiddish responses, especially in the Yiddish press, were much rarer.[2] This very limited response can probably be attributed to the popular orientation of Yiddish press and literature  and to the proletarian, nonidealistic nature of Yiddishist nationalism. The Jewish workers’ party, the Bund, founded in Russia in 1897, espoused Marxist materialism, and the Yiddish monthly for literature and thought, Die tsukunft (New York, 1892-), systematically attacked the atmosphere of religious revivalism and Christian and Jewish neomysticism.[3] At the same time, Jews writing in Russian were closer to Russian intellectual liberal circles  - such as the contributors  to the Vestnik Evropy,  (1866-1918)  or the Brokguas-Efron  Entsiklopedicheskii slovar’ (1890-1907) - where Solovyov was a central figure. As for Hebrew writers, their writings were intended for the Jewish intellectual elite, whose interests included philosophy and theological thought. Moreover, Hebrew literature at that time expressed the Jewish (and all-European) disillusionment with liberal cosmopolitanism, adhering with mystic desperation to the roots of Jewish nationalism. Their interest in Solovyov was natural.

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2. Solovyov as a defender of Judaism

            Solovyov’s activity in defense of Judaism and Jews certainly sparked the initial Jewish interest in his figure. Against the background of nineteenth century Russian literature and the traditional anti-Jewish Christian attitude his stance was most exceptional, even more so in the context of the growth of antisemitism in the Russian press  and the waning of liberal public opinion since the early 1880s.[4]  His views on Jews and Judaism were not only unprecedented in their enthusiastic positive tones; they were revolutionary in the context of Christian thought on Judaism. Solovyov’s pro-Jewish theses as well as his arguments were innovative, thus surprising to both Christians and Jews. “His own perspective on the Jewish problem is absolutely different from all his predecessors; he has shed new light on it,” writes Nahman Syrkin.[5]

This was a time of deep psychological crisis for assimilated Russian Jews, who during the 1860s-1870s hoped for successful acculturation. Their offended feelings evoked the desire to rehabilitate injured Jewish dignity, strengthened their national identity, and sharpened their sense of national interests. Solovyov was important for Jews at that time not only as a pro-Jewish political protector in Russia (as Gorky was later), but also as an advocate of Jewish dignity. He rehabilitated and exalted the Jewish character, Jewish religion, Jewish history, and even the unanimously  defamed Talmud. Solovyov’s exceptional friendship with Faivl Getz (1853-1931),[6]  as well as with other Jewish notables  - including the Baron Horace (Goratsii, Naftali Gertz) Ginzburg (1833-1909) and his son David Ginzburg (1857-1910);[7] Lev (Yehuda Leib) Kantor (1849-1915), the editor of Hayom (Hebrew) and Russkii Evrei; Semion (Shlomo) Gruzenberg (1875 - ?);[8] the orientalist Avraham Garkavi (1835-1919), and the journalist and historian Ben-Tsion Katz (1875-1958)[9] -  also played a certain role in the impression Solovyov made in acculturated Russian Jewish circles: they could witness the unusual  “intensity and energy of interest with which Solovyov treated the Jewish affair”.[10] Their reports of Solovyov’s ideas and personality, which cannot be suspected of quasi-religious hagiography, reveal the strong personal impression Solovyov made, even on skeptical Jewish minds.

Solovyov’s (unpublished) lectures on Judaism, delivered during February 1882 at the St. Petersburg University and at the “higher (Bestuzhevskii) courses for women” received immediate and broad cover  in the all the leading Russian-Jewish press organs.[11] On February 18 Russkii Evrei informed on Solovyov’s lecture “Mirovoe znachenie evreistva” (The international significance of Judaism), which was delivered on 11  February at the High Bestuzhev courses and again on 12 February at the University of St. Petersburg. In February 19 a report on that same lecture also appeared in Nedel’naia Khronika Voskhoda.[12] On February 26 detailed summaries of the lectures appeared in  Nedel’naia Khronika Voskhoda, in Razsvet  and in Russkii evrei.[13]  The anonimous writer in Nedel’naia Khronika Voskhoda summarized the above-mentioned lecture. He emphasizesdSolovyov’s praises of the Jews as a nation which “was and will always be the Chosen People, and this is why Jesus could  appear only among  them”, because their “national character” and their way of life was and is highly developed from the moral point of view. Solovyov attributed two more qualities to the Jewish national character: their strong belief and their materialism. Mentioning Solovyov’s opinion that in contrary to Christians Jews are not capable of abstract thinking (неспособности къ отвлченному мышлению), the writer adds his “(?)”. He continues by citing Solovyov’s words about the present situation of the Jews in Russia, and concludes by telling about the discussion which took place after the lecture. Here Solovyov expressed the necessity to give equal rights to Jews as the best means of  merging (слияние) between Jews and Russians. When asked about the last pogroms he sais that this was not done by the Russian people but by scums (подонки общества), and if it was, then he would be ashamed to be called Russian.

The two other summaries, both published on February 26 (different summaries of Solovyov’s lectures appeared at the same date on three Jewish arenas!), were written by the nineteen years old Akim Volynski (Flekser, 1885-1858, from 1891 he was the editor of Severny Vestnik ), who at that time made his first steps in the Russian-Jewish press.[14] Under the signature of his original name, Flekser A., he summarized the lecture “Istoricheskaia rol’ evreistva” (The Historical Role of Judaism), delivered on February 13, in Razsvet.

In addition to Solovyov’s ideas concerning the common characteristics of Judaism and Christianity and concerning the Jews as Chosen People, we hear about the common tendecies of Jews and Russians to carry out heavenly ideals. Jews can help Russians to awaken this potential  tendency. Concluding his summary, the young writer politely remarks that it is far from possible to agree with all the opinions of the repected professor. “We are convinced that the mission of Judaism does not consist of what has been expalined in the lecture”.[15]  He also remarks that if we go down from the “hights of philosophical mysticism” to the ground of reality, namely, to the recent pogroms, it will prove in a very concrete way the complete impossibility  of merging between Jews and Russians. “This merging corresponds neither to the Russian spirit, nor to the Jewish nationality (национальность)”.[16]  Flekser reports that Solovyov’s auditors applauded with excitement, and that Soloyvov also expressed his sympathy with the Jews who were “victims of unbridled (разнузданных) passions of the Russian people”. He also attacked anti-Jewish journalism, polemicizing with some “well-known journalist”, without mentioning his name.

Volynskii-Flekser, this time under the signature “-ъ”, also summarized Solovyov’s lecture “Mirovoje znachenie Iudaizma” (The International Significance of Judiasm), delivered at the Ceremonial Hall of  the St. Petersburg university on February 18, 1882. In a footnote the editor of Russkii Evrei, Lev Kantor, explained that the precis of “the young and talented philosopher’s”  lecture, presenting Judaism from a “purely Christian viewpoint”, is intended to draw the reader’s attention to how an “enlightened and true Christian” views the problem as opposed to the opinions of false critics of the Jewish cult “who do or don’t sit on committees.”[17] This comment reveals a typical trend within the Russian-Jewish press at that time: to enlist Russian public opinion in the battle against anti-Jewish discrimination; to fight against the general  atmosphere of contempt for Jews;  and to make an effort, typical of the Jewish Enlightement movement in Europe from Moses Mendelssohn onwards,  to rehabilitate the cultural and ethical values of the Jewish tradition, judged by modern European criteria. From this point of view Solovyov’s lecture abetted not only the political battle but also the effort to build a new, more dignified Jewish identity in Russia. In this lecture Solovyov’s argued that the national Jewish character had that very energy which was lacking in Russians to overcome the difficult tasks of development that they faced; thus, the Russian and Jewish natures would fulfill and nurture each other. (How would Russian characteristics  help the Jews? Such a question seemed to be out of anybody’s horizons at that time).

After summarizing the lecture, the writer continued with a description of the discussion that followed. In response to a question concerning the impact of the pogroms on the Jewish question, Solovyov termed them “an outburst of the people’s stygian impulses,” and he refused to predict the future of Jewish-Russian relations based on such outbursts. To the query: “What is to be done?” he replied that the sole solution was the granting of full civil rights to Jews and to develop unconditional and humane relations between the Russian and the Jewish intelligentsia.

Shortly after the publication of Solovyov’s “Talmud i noveishaia polemicheskaia literatura o nem v  Avstrii i Germanii” (in Russkaia Mysl’, August  1886) the editor of Nedel’naia Khronika Voskhoda, Adolph (Aharon) Landau (1842-1902) published an enthusiastic two-part response in his column “Otgolosski pechati”, containing very long citations from Solovyov’s essay.[18] In his introduction he described in an embittered tone the contemporary antisemitic tendency of  the dominant Russian press, which allowed the publication of lies and distorted facts about Jews. In this “general miasmatic  atmosphere, which is penetrating everywhere, from universities to church schools in the villages”, he writes, reading Solovyov’s ideas about Jews and Judaism is for the Jewish reader most unexpected as well as a source of gratitude. Solovyov expresses what has swelled and boiled in the Jews’ hearts, he says, but it has  not been possible to express openly what “the erudite Russian professor who is honoured  by all parties could afford to say”. Special stress  is laid by the editor on the paragraphs in which Solovyov rehabilitates Talmudic-Jewish morality, or attacks the Christian  double standard which judges Judaism in terms it did not apply to Christianity. He sees Solovyov’s defense of the Talmud mainly as an open expression of the Jewish offended feelings: “We Jews have nothing more to add to this Christian  proof of the truth. The writer said more than we ourselves have decided to say…”[19]  It is worth mentioning that since the eleventh century the Talmud has been attacked by Christian scholars and theologians, who saw  it as an embodiment of Jewish small-mindedness, petty legalism, decadent spirituality, chauvinism and materialism. From the seventeenth century, there was an ongoing polemic for and against the Talmud in European scholarship,[20] which did not prevent the anti-Talmudic stereoptype from being a factor in Russian antisemitism and in the educational policies of the Russian government. Solovyov’s defence of the Talmud thus entered  a sphere loaded with antisemitic sensitivities, and was, in fact, a defence of  the Jewish mentality and moral character.

In 1901, the Russian-Jewish paper Budushchnost’ published a short article by Solovyov entitled “On the antisemitic movement in the press” and subtitled “an unpublished essay of  Vl. S. Solovyov”.[21] In a note the editor, Shmuel Gruzenberg, explains that the manuscript was turned over to him by Faivel Getz, Solovyov’s friend and teacher for twenty years,[22] together with a letter where Getz explains that although the article was written in May 1890, because of  “truly fortuitous conditions, which are interesting but will be explained some other time”, it remained in Getz’s hands and was never published.[23]  In his letter to the editor Getz called Solovyov the “highly enthusiastic (plamenny)   fighter  for truth  and justice in the highest degree possible for his time”. The essay itself opens with a declaration that the movement against Jews, which was now widespread in the Russian press, was an unprecedented  desertion of the most elementary requirements for justice and humanity, now forgotten in Russia. By so doing, they create the Jewish Problem. Solovyov writes that antisemitism is either a result of blindness, of national egoism, or of personal self-interest. The Jews’ defects were caused not by their evil nature, but by millennia of persecutions. Jews should have the same rights as every Russian, Solovyov claims, for belonging to a certain tribe does not necessarily imply defects. Solovyov concludes by saying that hatred of people belonging to another tribe or religion is contrary to the Christian spirit and such hatred endangers the Russian nation.

            It was the Jewish-Russian press which created the image of Solovyov as one of hassidei umot ha-olam, righteous non-Jews who are worthy of Heaven.[24]  His death evoked deep sorrow in the Jewish Russian community: in several synagogues prayers were recited for the peace of his soul, and a series of eulogies appeared in the Jewish-Russian press as well as in the Hebrew press, where Solovyov’s laudatory attitude to Judaism and his brave fight against antisemitism received mention, sometimes together with a presentation of his philosophical ideas.[25]

Three days after Solovyov’s death the editor of the weekly Voskhod, Adolph Landau, wrote a eulogy whose title bore Solovyov’s name surrounded by a black frame,[26] in which he lamented the passing  of Solovyov as  “one of the most extraordinary and best Russian men of our time”. He also wrote: “He died not only for  science, not only for the Russian society, he also died for Judaism and the Jews (евреиство), with whom he sympathised and collaborated, and to whom he dedicated his work.” Landau mentions Solovyov’s essays on Judaism and the Talmud, his struggle against antisemitism, and also his participation  in the committee sessions of the Society for the Spread of Enlightenment among the Jews, and even  his “modest contribution” to a Jewish almanach (Sbornik  v polzu nachalnykh evreiskikh shkol. 1896). A month later  the weekly Voskhod published a short essay dedicated to the memory of Solovyov titled “Pamiati Vl. S. Solovyova”, where the editor summarizes Prince S. N. Trubetskoi’s essay published in the September issue of Vestnik Evropy.[27] The essay emphasizes Solovyov’s tolerance  and the importance he ascribed to “freedom of conscience”, and concludes with Prince Trubetskoi’s eye- witness account of Solovyov’s last hours: “He prayed when  he was conscious as well as when he was half-conscious. Once he said to my wife: ‘Don’t let me fall asleep, make me pray for the Jewish people, I have to pray for them’, and he began to recite the Psalms loudly in Hebrew.”[28]

The “Jewish point” is also stressed in F. Getz’s “Recollections of V. S. Solovyov’s Attitude Toward the Jews”[29]  and in his  “Solovyov’s Attitude to the Jewish Question”.[30] According to Getz, Solovyov was not a judeophile; he truly loved Jews just as he loved other nations and was unbelievably generous to people in general on day-to-day level (he cites two examples).[31] Getz found the key to Solovyov’s unusual attitude to Jews and Judaism in a letter dated 5 May 1891, where Solovyov, quoting from Ezekiel, interpreted the verses as directed to him personally and as expressing the need for him to purify his soul from sin. Another facet of his closeness to Judaism was, Getz explained, Solovyov’s attitude that living human beings are to be treated as revelations of divinity, and the sanctity he attributed to actual human love. Getz also emphasized Solovyov’s profound respect for the Bible and the effort he invested in studying the original Hebrew text, along with his interest in talmudic and rabbinic interpretations of biblical verses.

In his “Recollections” Getz recounted  his meeting with Solovyov in 1879, while a student at St. Petersburg University. As a result of this encounter, Solovyov expressed the desire to read Jewish sources in the original with Getz’s aid. Together they read not only the entire Pentateuch, along with the Prophets and Psalms, but also  parts of the Mishna (the Jewish law code written in Hebrew which serves as a basis for the Gemara, the Aramaic component of the Talmud).[32] Getz relates how he helped Solovyov to compose and to bring to press his essay on the Talmud (1886).[33]  He says it was Solovyov’s enthusiasm for sacred Jewish literature that motivated him actively and systematically to oppose antisemitism in Russia. Getz also cites excerpts from Solovyov’s letters where Solovyov reiterated his well-known position that antisemitism is not a Jewish problem but a Christian one. Of special interest is Getz’s reference to Solovyov’s efforts to promote Jewish emigration from Russia in 1891.[34]  In his 1901 article Getz noted Solovyov’s membership in the Society for the Spread of Enlightenment among Russian Jewry, his active participation in its meetings, debates, and publications. Getz also notes that Solovyov was closely acquainted with Jewish life and that he read contemporary Russian-Jewish journals, adding that consequently Solovyov viewed the [failings] of the Jewish people as the result of the exile, and their good qualities as the outcome of their tradition. Solovyov held the Jewish inclination to brave and independent thought in special regard, as he himself shared this inclination, says Getz.[35] It is not difficult to imagine the Jewish reader’s impression from Getz’s descriptions of Solovyov’s attitude to Jews and Judaism.

Getz’s essays on Solovyov found an echo in Hebrew publitisitika. In his 1902 essay “V. Solovyov and his Attitude to the Jewish Question and the Jews” Nahman Syrkin relies heavily on Getz , as well as on Solovyov’s own writings, in describing at length Solovyov’s respect and love for Jews and for their way of life, emphasizing Solovyov’s appreciation of the Jewish power of belief, Jewish unity and the love of the Jews for their families.[36]

            Solovyov was also eulogised by Noah (Nikolay) Bakst in the November 1900 issue of the monthly Voskhod.[37]  The writer, a professor of physiology and nephrology at St. Petersburg University, stressed that Solovyov defined Judaism on the basis of its moral-spiritual heritage and not its territorial belonging. At present, the Jewish nation is  for all intents and purposes “a European tribe,” Bakst wrote, [38] in support of  his own anti-Zionist position.    

Yehuda Leib Kantor, the founder and editor of the Hebrew-language daily  Ha-Yom (1886-1888) and the Russian-language Russkii Evrei (1879-1884), eulogised Solovyov in Hebrew in the monthly Ha-Dor.[39]  Kantor’s image of Solovyov is not far from Getz’s: he also explains Solovyov’s  love for Jews and Judaism as a result of his amazingly generous personality (Kantor cites examples) and in the context of his Russian neo-Christian vision. Solovyov treated Jews with the same love and understanding that he treated all men, says Kantor. He especially honored Judaism because he saw in it the spirit of the first century. Like Getz, Kantor was also impressed by Solovyov’s vast knowledge of Jewish sources, which included even an acquaintance  with relatively rare sources of medieval Jewish philosophy, theology, and ethics.[40]  Kantor also praised Solovyov’s rare courage in battling the Slavophiles, against whom he directed the final chapters of his The National Question in Russia. He cited Solovyov’s statement (from The National Question in Russia) that nationalism is legitimate insofar as it does not harm the rights of other nations. He mentioned the protest letter from 1891 initiated by Solovyov as well as his many pro-Jewish articles, stressing that when compared with other Judeophiles Solovyov more unequivocally, unconditionally, and without restraint defended the Jews.

It was Solovyov’s pro-Jewish activity, and especially the protest against antisemitism that he wrote in May 1890, that gave him a place of honour in Simon Dubnov’s World History of the Jewish People (Russian 1936-1939, English  1967-1971). Dubnov cites excerpts from Solovyov’s characteristic formulation: “In every nation there are wicked men and rascals. But there is no harmful nation and nor can there be … Racial and religious hatred is against the Christian spirit and its provocation impairs the feeling of justice and love,  and may lead to moral barbarism … So, if only by reason of the national self will to live, the antisemitic movement should be rejected, not only because of its immorality, but also because of its extreme danger to Russia’s future”.[41] It is not difficult to imagine how supporting these words were to Jewish ears on the eve of the Second World War.

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3. Solovyov and Jewish self definition

Solovyov’s ideas on nationality attracted the interest of Jewish writers and thinkers in Eastern Europe, at a time when the latter were engaged in their own redefinition of Judaism and of national revival. There was a striking affinity between the rich traditional Jewish thinking on the nature of Judaism and Solovyov’s historical analysis of burning ethical and cultural questions, his efforts to define Christian theology and ethos vis-a-vis other religions, and his practical attitude to problems of moral behaviour. His frequent use of examples from the Old Testament also served  as a convenient bridge between his discussion of Jewish and Christian history and Jewish sources. As mentioned before, Solovyov’s discussion of the moral value of nationality appeared in the mid-1880s, when this was the most burning issue for Jewish intellectuals in Russia. Even his rehabilitation of the Talmud appeared just when the issue was an apple of discord in Jewish intellectual circles themselves, not only for Christian scholars. This explains why his ideas had a natural entree  to contemporary Jewish thought. 

For Jews, the mere living in Christian suroundings caused an inferiority complex. “With few exceptions, one has to say that over long centuries Christian attitudes towards the Jewish people  have been characterised by what Jules Isaac has called the ‘teaching of contempt’. From a very young age, Christian children have received  through catechisms and liturgy a picture of Judaism as being anachronistic, crude, primitive, and wicked.”[42]  In Russia, throughout the nineteenth century Jews were encouraged to assimilate  and to become Christian through polemics that strengthened Jewish self-contempt and even self-hatred. In the 1860s and 1870s national feelings were considered to be a shameful sign of obscurantism in the liberal circles to which Russian-educated Jews hoped to belong. In the early 1880s this hope collapsed, laying bare Jewish vulnerability to what seemed  to be an incurable antisemitism. Many Jews in Petersburg chose to become Christian at that time, when this seemed the only way to professional and social status.[43]

Solovyov’s pro-Jewish ideas thus served sometimes  as psychological first aid to injured Jewish dignity or as an additional argument from outside authority for Jewish leaders who were engaged in rebuilding Jewish self-respect and national pride, at times even supporting Jewish self-confidence to the extent of expressions of readiness for national independence from European Christianity. From the article on the Talmud Getz cited Solovyov’s identification of the Essenes as the originators of the messianic idea, and  his claim that the New Testament was a talmudic-midrashic work. According to Getz, Solovyov reached the conclusion that Judaism and Christianity do not differ in the moral sphere; rather, they are divided in their metaphysical-religious outlook and in their interpretation of the meaning of Christ’s redeeming sacrifice.

The Hebrew writer and publicist Moshe Leib Lilienblum (1843-1910), one of the founders of the proto-Zionist Hibat-Tsion movement , mentions Solovyov in his letter of 20 Kislev 5648 (6.12.1887) to Yehuda Leib Gordon (1830-1892), the main pillar of Hebrew Haskala (Enlightenment) poetry and a great admirer of Russian culture.[44]  Lilienblum writes, that after the 1881 pogroms  he began rethinking the reason for the unremitting gentile hatred of Jews, refuting his earlier “enlightened” beliefs which had proved to be false. He now concluded that there was an essential difference of nature between the descendants of Shem, who include the Jews, and the descendants of Yafeth – the Aryan-European nations, descending from the Greeks and the Romans. Jews  are by their genetic nature more morally sensitive, while debauchery and aggression are in the Aryan nature. “Basically, Evangelism has not changed  the lives of  its Aryan  listeners. The Roman holidays, their manners and their codex were kept intact by them. Professor Solovyov complains in vain, the wolf changes his skin, not his nature,” writes Lilienblum,[45] hinting at Solovyov’s criticism of contemporary Christian practical ethics. Lilienblum continues his ironical reference to Solovyov with a sharp critique of  European culture and education and with a bitter rejection of the call for Jewish-Russian convergence, whose price must be the total liquidation of Jewish existence. For Lilienblum, Zionism is the logical outcome of this danger.

In a letter of April 1905 Avraham Yitshak Ha-Cohen Kook (1865-1935), the first Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of pre-state Israel, writes from Jaffa to  the young Zionist pioneers in Russia, encouraging them to bear proudly the flag of the Jewish religion and the nation. In support he juxtaposes citations from Solovyov and from the Jewish sage Rabbi Hanina. About Solovyov, Rabbi Kook writes: “And justly said the righteous gentile of our days Solovyov, that the Jewish question is not at  all real, rather it is the problem of Christians, who have not arrived at the moral level of humanity in order to know how to treat a precious and talented people like the  Jews.”[46]

Rabbi Kook’s readiness to quote a Christian theologian, a readiness not shared by Orthodox circles, took place at a time when Christianity was more than ever attractive to proselytes and to Jewish assimilants. Eucumenism became popular among Jews who succeeded to achieve high status in the Christian society, who wished to reconcile their Judaism with Christianity. As a reaction to these tendencies Ahad Ha-am (Asher Ginsberg, 1856-1927) wrote his essay “Al Shtei Ha-se’ipim” (Between two opinions, 1910). In this essay the writer, an outstandingly influential Zionist thinker, argues that Christian altruism is inverted egoism whereas Judaism is a religion of justice grounded in the principle of “Love your fellow as yourself.[do1] ” He refers to Solovyov as a figure who demanded that inter-national relationships also be based on this Jewish principle.[47] He differs, however, with Solovyov’s definition of the Jewish spirit as individualistic and materialistic. Ahad Ha-am argues that Judaism is based on “objective justice”, that it strives for the benefit and the redemption of the whole nation, while Christianity stresses the importance of the individual person and its utopia holds out the promise of individual redemption.[48]

Ahad Ha-am’s discussion of Judaism versus Christianity was intended to refute a process which developed in non-Orthodox Jewish culture during the first third of the twentieth century. At that time Jewish intellectuals – scholars, writers and artists – showed a new positive interest  in early Christianity, in Christian ideas which were considered to be non-Jewish by Orthodox circles (e.g., apocalypticism), and especially in the life of Jesus as a Jew.[49] Cultural associations, in which Valdimir Solovyov could be discussed together by both Jewish and Christian intelligentsia, existed in many towns in the Pale of Settlement at the beginning of the century, aand on another evening they might discuss revolutionary activity.[50] This atmosphere of Jewish intellectual interest in Christianity was a wider cultural phenomenon than we can imagine to-day. Solovyov was not solely responsible for this phenomenon (which deserves further study), but it is not unreasonable to state that his revolutionary attitude to Judaism paved the way for the development of a process in modern Christian thought in Russia, which was mutual.

Solovyov’s views on nationality  and nationalism  were crucial to Jewish national thought during its formative period in Russia.[51] Solovyov’s article “Nationality from a Moral Viewpoint” (1895), in which he rejects both cosmopolitanism and nationalistic chauvinism and defends the nationalism that avoids the suppression of other nations, attracted special interest. As early as early February 1895, immediately after the appearance of the article in the first volume of Vestnik Evropy (January 1895)[do2] , a response appeared in the “Echoes of the Press” (Otgolosski pecahti) column of Nedel’naia Khronika Voskhoda.[52] The writer cites Solovyov, “the famous philosopher-idealist”, in the context of the weekly’s continuing polemic against the Novoe Vremia and for  Vestnik Evropy. In summarizing the essay,  the writer cites Solovyov’s “unexpected and beautifully reasoned” formulation: “Human beings do not exist without nationality”, and this is why we have to love them together with their nationality.[53] He remarks that much water will flow until this view is absorbed in the flesh and blood of contemporary society, and for illustration he cites the antisemitic reports published  in  Nedelia and Novoe Vremia.

Solovyov’s “Nationality from a Moral Viewpoint” was also covered  in an essay in the Hebrew daily Ha-Melits.[54] The essay’s author, Dr. Shemaryahu Halevi-Levin (1867-1935), a writer, publicist, Zionist activist, and member of the 1906 Duma, urged the Hebrew reader to familiarize himself with Solovyov’s article. Halevi-Levin begins by expressing satisfaction with the fact that the national idea is expanding, overcoming cosmopolitanism. Like many other ideas, he says, nationalism was condemned because of its perverted realisations, not because it is philosophically  unsound. Here he refers to Solovyov’s essay and summarizes its main points, adding the introductory remark that “Vl. Solovyov is speaking only of the nationality of nations living in their own lands, which is different from ours.”[55] In his summary he explains Solovyov’s idea of nonaggressive national feeling and his demand that  nationality be respected as inseparable from individuality as a “ third idea” mediating between cosmopolitanism and aggressive nationalism. He concludes by saying: “Had the writer taken as an example not the nationality  that seeks to swallow everything, but the nationality of people who do not wish to be swallowed up, then maybe he have been spared the effort of seeking the third idea …, which is already included in these peoples’ idea of nationality”.[56]

            Similar arguments were raised four years later, this time  in Russian, by the historian and publicist Semion Dubnov (b. 1860; perished in the Holocaust in 1941), in the fourth of his “Letters on Old and New Judaism”.[57] In this series of articles Dubnov’s aim was to defend the moral substance of Jewish nationalism, which he viewed as spiritual-cultural and not as territorial-political in nature, and thus to decry the assimilation of enlightened Jews among the European nations, a phenomenon with the potential to destroy the Jewish people. In his analysis of nationalism, Dubnov distinguishes between “national individuality,” which aspires to protect the existence and uniqueness of a people, and “national egoism,” which directs its energies to suppression and takeover of other people. Dubnov concurred with Solovyov’s remarks in his Justification of the Good: A Moral Philosophy, and cited them at length.[58] Essentially, he agreed that nationalism becomes elevated when it seeks spiritual goals,  arguing that the entire path of Jewish history represents the realization of this elevated nationalism. Dubnov cited at length Solovyov’s remarks regarding the moral obligation to love each individual without denying him his national identity, which is a human characteristic. He also quoted Solovyov’s conclusion that we must love all nations as we love our own.[59]

            Based on Solovyov’s article “The National Question in Russia” and the item “The National Movements” (in the Brokgaus and Efron Entsiklopexicheskii slovar’)[60] Dubnov cited Solovyov’s distinction between “narodnost’” as a positive force, in contrast to “natsionalnost’” defined as excessive and counterproductive zealotry for the national character. In Dubnov’s view, however, these terms or categories lack the ability to clarify the real situation. It is essential to make a distinction between oppressive nationalism and emancipatory nationalism, says Dubnov, but he also issues a warning: the national struggle of the weak is positive only insofar as the weak do not in turn oppress those who are weaker than they are as part of their struggle.[61]

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4. The Impact of Solovyov’s Theosophy

            It was natural for Jews in Russia to concentrate more on Solovyov’s pro-Jewish views[62] than on his theological thought, which they perceived as part of Christianity. However, in many ways Solovyov’s theological philosophy penetrated and influenced Jewish Russian culture. Moreover, Solovyov’s attempt to bring Russian Christianity nearer to Judaism, and even to “Judaize” Christianity, opened a reciprocal process in Judaism. It did not begin ex nihilo: from the 1870s to the 1890s Moshe Rosenson, who did not know of Solovyov, was writing on the duty of to make peace between all religions on the Jewish basis of the belief in human Messiah.[63] His exceptional writings, however, have never been widely circulated and even his name is hardly known in Jewish cultural history.

            Solovyov’s vseedinstvo  as well as his Sophiology were presented to the Hebrew-reading intelligentsia in a twelve page article published in 1902, written by Nahman Syrkin (1868-1924). Syrkin, a leading Socialist Zionist who was also an editor and writer, was the first to portray Solovyov primarily as a mystic.[64] Syrkin argues that Solovyov was unique among Christians in his positive attitude to Jews, an attitude which was based neither on   forced tolerance  nor on Christian forgiveness but on theological philosophy and belief. Syrkin begins his explanation of Solovyov’s theology with his Sophiology, spontaneously translating “Sophia” by the Kabbalistic Hebrew term “Shechina”,[65] thus pointing at the contact point between Solovyov’s theology and Jewish mysticism. He also mentions Solovyov’s inclination to Kabbala and mysticism, which made him respect “all the possessions of our spirit”.[66] Syrkin does not enter into a discussion of the difference between Solovyov’s Christian Sophia and the Jewish Shechina. He says Solovyov was not engaged in proving the existence of God, which for him was self-evident; his aim was to research the essence and the meaning of the divinity and its relationship to the world with the help of the Scriptures. In trying to distill the quintessence of Solovyov’s religious view, Syrkin writes:

The complete truth is the living unity. Unity, which is the basis of the whole world, cannot be only an abstract idea, born through logical thought. It is a living force, the force of God. God is Love. And the Love of God expressed its  will in word and in deed: it is expressed in the Scriptures and by the real world. The goal of man, as a free creature who was created in the image of God (…) is to make great efforts in order to understand God’s will in these two expressions, to understand the connection between them and to realize their coordination and unity, to willingly accept the yoke  of God’s will and  to direct his way in life according to this doctrine, until God’s will becomes his own will. [67]

            Interest in Jewish mysticism and apocalypticism was flourishing in Jewish literature and thought at the turn of the century, together with neoromantic ideas of national revival, whose sources were multifarious, not necessarily Solovyovian. Against this background, however, it was easy for the Jewish intellectual to connect to Solovyovian mysticism, as Sophia Dubnova-Erlich (Simon Dubnov’s daughter, 1885-1986) describes it in her memoirs: “Symbolism seduced [us] with promises to widen the borders of our perception.  I have to admit that in spite of my attraction to Marxism, sometimes I was overtaken  by a wish to believe in Vladimir Solovyov”.[68]  Solovyov was one of the philosophers she discussed with Boris Stolpner (1871-1967), a devout follower of Solovyov’s spiritual mysticism and later an acquaintance of Andrey Biely.[69]

Solovyov’s combination of religious thought, neo-mysticism, and belief in national and personal moral revival was very attractive to Jewish modern thought at the beginning of the century, whether Zionist or not. Solovyov’s utopian revival  was one of the models for the modern Jewish utopian vision of revival, a theory which Jews, especailly in Russia, viewed seriously and practically, as they did other Russian utopias. In his “Solovyov” entry of the Brokgaus-Efron Evreiskaia Entsiklopedia Semion Gruzenberg writes: “Solovyov believed in the revival (vozrozhdenie) of  the ‘God-waiting people’ (…), whose vocation is to become the ‘active mediator of the humanisation of material life and nature, for the creation of a new land, where the truth lives’”.[70] In pre-state Israel during the 1920s-1930s, Such an understanding of Zionist goals was characteristic of both Orthodox and non-Orthodox Zionist leaders who were born in Russia, including Aharon David Gordon (1856-1922) and Rabbi Avraham Yitshak Ha-Cohen Kook.[71] The messianic idea occupied  a central place in the modern Zionist thinking from its very beginning,[72] and although this idea – which Zionism treated with traditional Jewish ambivalence[73] - derives from Biblical sources, its modern ideological and philosophical formulation owes much to Solovyov as the initiator of the “Revolution of the Spirit”  in Russia.[74] We should bear in mind that Zionism was created in Russia, and its leaders were inspired by the contemporary cultural context in Russia, even after they immigrated to Palestine.      

Hillel Zeitlin (b. 1871; perished in the Holocaust, 1942), a poet, writer, journalist, and thinker who wrote in Hebrew and Yiddish, complains in his essay “Reflections”[75] of the lack of true love as a reason for the difficulty in carrying out political visions. He concludes by saying: “If Zionism was a movement with a systematic perfect goal, and at the same time sparkled by true love for all our suffering and miserable brethren, then  many people who love their nation with their whole hearts, people of good taste and pure minds, would not have slackened”.[76] Zeitlin’s special interest was Jewish mysticism through the ages. In an essay published in 1911, he quoted from Solovyov’s Justification of the Good, where Solovyov classifies the absolute commandment “Do not commit adultery” as a moral concept that is deeply imprinted in the human soul, as opposed to moral concepts that are the result of moral fear.[77] Zeitlin’s remarks about the need for love and compassion as part of the Zionist project may well  have been inspired by Solovyovian ideas. Like many others of his generation, not necessarily influenced by Solovyov,  he would have liked to see Zionism as a movement of spiritual revival, not only a political one.

            Surprisingly, even Jewish rabbis who normally refrained from ever mentioning Christian sources were familiar with and respected Solovyov. One such rabbi was Shmuel Aleksandrov (1865-1941).[78] A descendant of the Maharal of Prague and a supporter of Zionism, he lived all his life in Bobruisk and perished in the Holocaust. Aleksandrov was a mystical anarchist: to a group of enthusiastic followers he preached the exceptional talmudic idea that “the Mitsvot (religious practical laws) will be cancelled in the [eschatological] future”, so that religion will remain only a spiritual activity and “practical Judaism” will be replaced by “a superior divine Wisdom”.[79] He studied German and Russian philosophy, and his favorite non-Jewish philosophers were Schelling and Vladimir Solovyov. He expounded his theological and moral views in essays published in periodicals, and in three volumes of his collected letters. He corresponded with rabbis who were his colleagues and friends, and also with leading figures of Zionist literature and thought such as Ahad Ha-Am, M. L. Lilienblum and M. Y. Berdichevsky.[80] In a letter from early 1907 to Abraham Yitshak Ha-Cohen Kook, Aleksandrov writes: “I remember that  in your booklet  for youth[81]  you praised the great sage Vladimir Solovyov, but it seems that you have just heard of him but have not read his lofty books of theology and philosophy, for had you read  the books of this philosopher you would certainly have realized that  serving God by  love   and God’s grandeur -  these ideas in their most pure and elevated sense are not alien to Christians of great spirit, and that sages like Solovyov were close  in spiritual affinity to the spirit of Judaism, and that the sole desire of his soul is eternal  justice”.[82] In another letter to Rabbi Kook dated 5 Tevet 5667 (22,12,1906), Rabbi Aleksandrov explains that his anarchistic ideas by no means lead to the denial of the existence of God. This idea, which is beyond the grasp of human thought, is after all in our minds, therefore we see that  the divine “secret substance” is to be found inside ourselves, as the human soul is “really part of  God above”. And as for modern heresy – here Aleksandrov cites Solovyov’s saying that the blind are sometimes sharper in the use of their other senses, and this is why God, when he wants humanity to dicover new things, sometimes prepares many people who are far removed from any belief and religion, so they can totally dedicate their  other talents to science.[83] In another of his letters, this time to his colleague and friend Rabbi Yosef Gutman,[84] Aleksandrov relies on Solovyov to substantiate his view that it was God’s will that humans partake of  the Tree of Knowledge, even though it ultimately caused them to forget God. In other words, education and unrestricted research are part of the divine plan for human development.[85]

Did Rabbi Kook read Solovyov, and/or was he influenced by him? This question, although crucial to the understanding of contemporary religious thought in Israel (because of Rabbi Kook’s central place in contemporary Israeli Judaism), has no satisfactory answer. Even his letters to Rabbi Aleksandrov provide no definite answer.[86]  Rabbi Kook certainly knew about Solovyov before he left Russia for Palestine in 1904. [In a letter of March 1905 he mentions Solovyov’s idea that the Jewish problem is a Christian one, calling him “the righteous gentile of our time”.[87] ]

Like Solovyov, Rabbi Kook was a mystic, a leader-prophet, a moralist, a political activist, and a poet. He preached spiritual revival and was very open and tolerant to ideas condemned by other Orthodox rabbis, including the secular Socialist Zionism. While he rejected Christianity as the alternative to Judaism, Rabbi Kook regarded it as an organic part of developing human spiritual life.[88] He attributed great importance to Love, to Wisdom, to unity, and to the relation between material and spiritual needs, stressing ideas that sometimes sound closer to those of Solovyov than to traditional Jewish Orthodox or even to mystical (Kabbalist, Hassidic) discourse. A striking example is his essay “Ha-Ahdut” (Unity. 1908), where unity is formualted as a multilevel process of redemption.[89] Similarly his formulations of the value and meaning of love are in a Solovyovian vein.[90]

            Rabbi David Ha-Cohen, known as Hanazir (“The Hermit”), belonged to Rabbi Kook’s circle. Born in 1887, he came to Petersburg in 1909, where he studied at the Petersburg Jewish Academy and had a close relationship with Baron David Ginzburg,[91] who had written an essay on Jewish Kabbala at Solovyov’s request, which was published in 1896 with an introduction and notes by Solovyov.[92] Hanazir’s personality and behaviour (as indicated by his soubriquet) were exceptional in the context of Judaism:[93] he dedicated his life to spiritual activity and decided to be become a nazir (nazirite), which is a more modest title Navi (prophet). Like the biblical Nazarite and like Solovyov he did not cut his hair, and he also refrained from drinking. After coming to the Holy Land, he had also taken a vow to refrain from speech. After his marriage he decided to fast from speech only on the Sabbath and the month that precedes the High Holy Days.[94]

It is amazing, therefore, to find in his 1905 collection of essays a discussion of the woman’s mission or objective whose premises and conclusions are unusual for Jewish thought.[95] He argues that for man woman is a “poetical possession”. The aim of the marital relationship, in addition to its sexual and reproductive functions, is aesthetic and moral.  Woman was created in order to bring beauty and purity to the world. As such woman is essentially “the angel of beauty, inspiration, poetry, and splendour”.[96]  As I said, such  formulations are not at all characteristic of Jewish theological discourse, where woman cannot play the role of divine redeemer. It seems likely that they echo Solovyovian ideas, to which the writer may have been exposed even before coming to Petersburg. 

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5. Solovyov’s Influence on Hebrew Poetry

            It is possible to view all of the foregoing as leading up to the most significant point of contact between Solovyov and modern Jewish culture: the poetry of Hayyim Nahman Bialik (1873-1934), the “national poet” of the Jewish revival movement at the turn of the century, and the most influential figure in modern Hebrew literature. While later Hebrew poets received Solovyovian ideas through mediation of Russian symbolist poetry (especially Blok), as well as from Bialik’s poetry, Bialik’s poetry seems to be a direst reaction to Solovyovian ideas, symbols and poetic images. In 1904-5, when he was thirty-one, Bialik published four lyric poems and two poemas whose intertextual affinity to Solovyov’s poetry is unmistakable: the poems “Ayekh?” (Where are you?), “Ve’im Yish’al ha’mal’akh” (And if the angel asks), “Kumi Tse’i” (Come out), “Hakhnissini takhat kbafekh” (Let me in under your wing), and the poemas “Ha-breikha” (The lake) and “Megilat ha-esh” (The scroll of fire).[97]

            Bialik could have been exposed to Solovyov’s ideas by  the essays and eulogies on Solovyov in the Russian-Jewish and the Hebrew press. As for Solovyov’s poetry – Nahman Syrkin was the only one who mentioned it. He even translated the third and last stanza from Solovyov’s “Bedny drug” (1887) into Hebrew.[98] Bialik may have been exposed to Solovyov’s poetry and thought via his forbidden love affair with the painter and writer Ira Yan (Ester Slepian)[do3] ,[99] who translated and illustrated Bialik’s poemas “The Dead of the Desert” (1902) and “The Scroll of Fire.” (1905), probably in 1905. [100]   Her illustrations and other paintings reflect a Solovyovian view of love, and her introduction to the Russian translation of “Megillat ha-Esh” echoes Solovyov’s ideas on the unity of Judaism and Christianity.[101]

In the four lyrical poems, love is depicted as a redemptive mystical experience, unlike Bailik’s skeptical attitude to love in his earlier poetry. And, for the first time in Bialik’s poetry, the metaphors used for sexual desire have parallels from the realm of Jewish sanctity.[do4]  The similarity between Bialik’s beloved and Solovyovian Sophia is particularly pronounced in the poems “Come Out” and “Take Me under Your Wing”. In these poems, the woman is portrayed in shades of blue, white and light - like a “heavenly bride” or “queen” - angelic, mysterious, emanating supreme mercy. At her side is a devoted man worshipping her. In “If the Angel Should Ask” love is a sort of heavenly castle at whose closed gates the poet has been knocking for his entire life. In “Where Are You?”, the poet calls upon the woman to come out of her hiding place and to redeem his life; his longing for her is presented in terms of the religious longing for sanctity. The emphasis here is on the man’s readiness to sacrifice his life and even his artistic creativity for extra-marital love. Such a concept of love opposed the accepted norms of the traditional Jewish society in which Bialik spent his childhood (Bialik’s marriage was an arranged one) and contrasted with Bialik’s earlier poems in which he rejected extramarital love in the name of Jewish moral purity.

            In Bialik’s poema  “The Lake” (1905), the relationship between the poet and the lake is described in terms of the relationship between a knight and his lady, using typical Solovyovian sophiological metaphors. (The choice of the female noun breikha allows the pond to be grasped as feminine.) The poem’s opening lines: “I know a forest, and in the forest/I know a small modest pond” immediately evoke the duality of the Hebrew word lada’at (to know) alluding both to its sexual connotation -“Now Adam knew his wife Eve” - and to the divine attribute of human knowledge. The lake lives in a virginal world of dreams, the world of thought and vision. Bialik describes the lake at various times: in the morning, on a moonlit night, on a stormy day, and at dawn. As opposed to the transient external forces, the lake remains static. She “dreams” that a suffering prince is wandering in the world, seeking his redemption, which she embodies. The poet’s moments of inspiration are described as a holy mating. The poet’s lack of knowledge is contrasted with the lake’s mysterious all-embracing knowledge, which conceals “the other world” inside it. The lake is portrayed as an innocent and modest princess whose dwelling place is hidden from the world, who is sunk in eternal sleep due to witchcraft. The forest is both her kingdom and her father the king of the lake, and she is “the open pupil of the prince of the forest” (ll. 207-8). The trees are knights who guard her virginity and her sleep until the arrrival of the prince who will redeem her. It is the poet who longs to be the one and only who redeems her from sleep.

            There is a distinct similarity between Bialik’s description of the lake and Solovyov’s poems describing the lake in Saima in the guise of sophia, as “the fair daughter of dark chaos” and as a mythological blue eye that guards peace and light in a bleak environment.[102] Yet the female figure in Bialik’s poem stands neither for spiritual-moral elevation, nor for the vision of individual and societal redemption; rather, it represents the spirit of creativity, whose depths are indifferent to everything external to the poet and his private world. In Bialik’s view, as a person who himself tended towards public and moral duty, the poet’s love for the lake is the contrast of moral duty; it resembles forbidden erotic devotion. Bialik raises the question of where can the holy truth to which the poet is bound can be found: in the world outside the lake or in its reflection in the innermost depths of the poetic “I”? Evidently, Bialik found Solovyov’s suggestion that the two be united unconvincing.

            At the thematic core of Bialik’s poema “Scroll of Fire” (1905) we find the question that was of focal interest to Solovyov, that is, the question of individual versus group redemption. This was a common topic shared by many Russian thinkers before and after Solovyov, but at Bialik’s time it was Solovyov who formulated and preached the idea of mystical unity between individuality and togetherness, as well as between love and spiritual elevation. In “The Scroll of Fire” Bialik describes the impossibility of such a happy unity.

The poema’s complex symbolistic plot opens with the destruction of the Temple. Only one flame taken from the altar by an angel has survived, and has been hidden on a desert island, where it is guarded by Ayelet Ha-shahar (the morning star Aurora). A group of boys and a group of girls who have been abandoned by the enemy naked on that desert island wander in the wilderness until they meet on the opposite shores of the River of Oblivion.[do5]  They then jump to their deaths. Only one boy and one girl remain. The poem’s central dilemma is: what is redemption? Is it to be found in love, which is a personal need, or in devotion to the spritual needs of the nation? For a moment the boy mistakenly sees these two as one: he imagines that the girl resembles Aurora, that she is leading him to redemption, but this is an illusion that causes him to jump into the River of Oblivion from which he is barely rescued. From that point on, he devotes his life to the general cause, but fails to achieve redemption.

            Bialik’s Aurora resembles Solovyov’s Sophia  in many respects. She is a woman-star who shines silently over a deserted island, her eyes are blue and her silver lashes tremble. She is heavenly, garbed in light and encircled by splendor. She is the “daughter of God,” and “the pupil of his eye.” Modesty, purity, grace, mercy and love emanate from her. These characteristics are apparently shared by the group of girls, but the spark in their eyes burns but briefly, their faces are frozen in an exaggerated smile, their hands are spread to catch the moonbeams like a spider’s web; in other words Bialik is caricaturing Christian salvation à la Solovyov. (The christological nature of this salvation is alluded to in Bialik’s use of alamot for the young girls.) The apparent similarity between Aurora and the girls is deceptive: whereas Aurora modestly and responsibly preserves the holy spark, the girls’ offer of redemption ultimately ends in loss. The encounter between the boys and the girls also expresses Bialik’s reservations concerning the Solovyovian belief in the redeeming power of unity and the merging of all opposing principles (vseedinsto). In contrast to the blessed unity between creativity, vision, nature, and ideal femininity in “The Lake”, in the “Scroll of Fire” Bialik sees no way to overcome the painful schism between the leader’s spiritual mission and the fulfillment of his erotic needs. In his view, dedication to the cause requires uncompromising moral purity, which means the abandonment of love.

            In the late 1920s Bialik again returned to Solovyovian motifs, this time in his prose work Aggadat Shloshah ve-Arbaah (The Legend of the Three and the Four, 1929 version), a legendary tale set in the time of King Solomon. It tells of the love between a Hebrew lad and the daughter of the king of Aram who is imprisoned on a desert island, and the obstacles that lie in the path of their reunion. The tale ends with the victory of love and in the ecstatic  unification of the distant players, not only the lovers but the hostile nations as well. Here Bialik dressed Solovyov’s vision in Jewish-Hebrew garb with an oriental Mediterranean flavor, thus allowing himself and his readers in the pre-State Zionist colonies dream of eternal peace and unity in the Near East.

            Sophiology played a central role in the work of other Russian-born poets in pre-state Israel, particularly the two main pillars of this period, Avraham Shlonsky (1900-1973) and Natan Alterman (1910-1970). Shlonsky,  born in the Poltava gubernia to a hassidic and pro-Revolutionary family, immigrated to pre-state Israel in 1921, where he became the leading poet and the editor of the most influential literary journals, including Ktuvim, where in late 1926 he published his translation to a long paragraph from  Solovyov’s  The Meaning of Love.[103] On the same page Shlonski’s own poem, untitled, describes the poet’s constant waiting for a Messiah.[104] Also on the same page is a short essay on Solovyov by Eliezer Shteinman dedicated to the 25^th anniversary of the death of Solovyov. Shteinman includes Solovyov among the Russian troika writers who “take-off to God”, together with Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy. Shlonsky’s adoption of Solovyovian Sophiology can be clearly traced in the cyclic poema “Shevi” (Prison, 1934), where a symbolic feminine princess, who is also the Shulamit from the Song of Songs, represents the sublime mystical spiritual and moral world of the poet. [105] Shlonsky’s subsequent attitude to Solovyov is reflected in the collection of poems Shirat Russia, (Russian poetry, 1942),[106] comprising Hebrew translations of Russian poems. The collection, edited by Shlonsky  and Leah Goldberg (1911-1970) opens with two poems by Solovyov in Shlonsky’s translation: “Panmongolism” (1894) “Panmongolism”””[do6] and “Li-gvirti ha-malka” (У царицы  моей, 1876 ), followed by the works of more than thirty symbolist and post-symbolist poets. The fact that Solovyov was chosen to open the volume reflects the editors’ awareness of his role as the founder of Russian literary symbolism. Yet in the introduction, Shlonsky criticizes the “panicky ideological retreat to mysticism” that followed in Solovyov’s wake in Russia. He writes: “Mysticism must bring distortion since true mysticism despises those who flee to it and hides its face from them.”[107] Here Shlonsky was not actually rejecting mysticism, only the “false mysticism” of the flight from reality. The importance Shlonsky attributed to political involvement can explain the reversed chronological order of Solovyov’s poems in Russian Poetry.

            Sophiology in its broader, post-Solovyovian sense, is dominant in the early poetry of Natan Alterman, the central Hebrew poet of the 1940s and 1950s. In his Kokhavim Ba-hutz  (Stars Outside,  1938) the woman is both a mysterious superhuman beloved and a transcendental symbolic being who represents creative spirit, joie de vivre and divine wisdom. In his Simhat Aniyim (The Joy of the Poor, 1941)  she is the suffering wife and a symbol of the Jewish spirit which must be revived. In both collections the poet plays the role of the devoted knight whose life must be sacrificed  for the ideals represented by the Woman. Alterman might have been exposed to Sophiology indirectly, through Bialik and Shlonsky, or by his reading of Russian symbolist and post-symbolist poets (especially Pasternak). At this stage Sophiology already had its own tradition in Hebrew poetry, where the divine woman alternately represented moral ideals, Jewish spiritual existence, poetic inspiration, joie de vivre, and the state of Israel. These were understood as sublime and sacred values that demand absolute devotion and the sacrifice  of trivial personal needs. The mystical features of the Jewish national revival continued to play a role in pre-state Israeli Zionism and literature and traces of its apocalyptic aspects in particular can be found in contemporary Zionist thought.

            To conclude, Solovyov was very important for Russian Jews as a defender of Jews and Judaism, as a supporter of nationality, and as a prophet of spiritual revival. From the 1880s, the Russian-Jewish and the Hebrew press covered  his  pro-Jewish lectures and essays. He was greatly respected by the Jewish community in Russia, including Orthodox circles. His ideas about Judaism provoked a wave of interest in Jewish-Christian cultural history and in early Christianity. His synthesis of modernity and mysticism, and especially his vision of mystical national revival, attracted Jewish modern thought and literature during the first half of the twentieth century. His vseedinstvo  and  Sophiology attracted the interest of Jewish thinkers and writers. Solovyov’s Sophiology which developed into a whole tradition in symbolist Russian literature, influenced leading Hebrew poets during the first half of the twentieth century, and thus became part of the contemporary Zionist experience.

Solovyov opened a channel of Jewish-Christian mutual interest. Ironically, this channel was blocked by two historical forces which were hostile to both Judaism and Christianity: the Soviet and the Nazi regimes. It is only now, half a century after the Holocaust’s Jewish trauma and about a decade after the end of the Soviet regime, that we can begin to examine it again.

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