“The narratives found in the book celebrate Jewish culture but in doing so also question issues of social and political assimilation and ultimately of the role of Russian Jews in a changing society and world. Russian Idea—Jewish Presence is effective for graduate level as well as for undergraduate students. In that alternate perspectives are a focus of all scholars, the insightful discussions offered by this book are ones that scholars of various fields should include in their own personal libraries. It is precisely the diverse range of narratives that help explain philosophical differences in a way that is accessible to those not familiar with this era of history, nor with the various philosophical discourses of those times.”

Brian Horowitz (PhD University of California, Berkeley) is the Sizeler Family Chair Professor in Jewish Studies at Tulane University. He is the author of such books as Jewish Philanthropy and Enlightenment in Late-Tsarist Russia (2009) and Empire Jews (2009). He has won numerous awards, including a fellowship at the Frankel Center at the University of Michigan, an Alexander Von Humboldt grant, a Fulbright, an IREX grant, and a Yad Hanadiv grant to study with Ezra Mendelsohn and the late Jonathan Frankel at the Hebrew University.