Between martyrology and historiography: Elias Tcherikower and the making of a pogrom historian

This article examines the dialectical relationship between martyrology and historiography, religion and secularism in the works of the Russian‐Jewish historian and communal activist, Elias Tcherikower. Tcherikower, although a disciple of Shimon Dubnov, who maintained a commitment to a positive portrayal of Jewish life in the Diaspora, championed what Salo Baron called “the lachrymose conception of Jewish history,” the view that understood Jewish history as consisting primarily of a series of persecutions. From World War One onward, Tcherikower romanticised Jewish martyrs and argued that religious and cultural renaissance followed on the heels of persecution and martyrdom. This preoccupation with the relationship between Jewish martyrdom and cultural creativity inspired Tcherikower first in his role as an historian of the pogroms of the Russian Civil War and then as a leader of YIVO. Until the eve of World War Two, Tcherikower believed that modern Yiddish scholarship served the same transcendent purpose as had Torah study in the past and that Jewish historiography could inspire the Jewish people in the same manner as had pre‐modern martyrology. Tcherikower’s work thus provides a fascinating case study of the persistence of traditional religious conceptions in twentieth‐century East European nationalist Jewish historiography.