Judaism and Russian Religious Thought

This chapter examines the role played by Judaism, the pre-1917 Russian ‘Jewish Question’, and anti-Semitism in the philosophical and cultural formation of key Russian religious thinkers. It explores how Vladimir Soloviev laid the foundations for a common ‘liberal–conservative’ approach to Jews and Judaism, by using them as tropes for his thinking on Russian nationhood and religious identity. It then examines how Sergii Bulgakov, Pavel Florensky and Vassily Rozanov each used Judaic elements to forge a philosophy of ‘sacred materialism’. The question of these three thinkers’ anti-Semitic writings is considered as part of a more general irrationalist element in Russian conservative religious thought, and the philosophical effects of the 1911–1913 Beilis blood libel trial on the work of Rozanov and Florensky are analysed. Finally, the chapter looks at the work of four Jewish thinkers: Aaron Steinberg, Mikhail Gershenzon, Lev Shestov, and Semyon Frank (the latter, despite his conversion to Russian Orthodoxy, preserved a connection to a particular form of Jewishness, it is argued, especially through his devotion to the German language). The author concludes that they succeeded in creating a pan-European universalist version of Russian thought that enabled them to find an outlet for an original fusion of Russian and Jewish elements, which was forged in creative tension with their dual heritage.