The Jewish Century

Acknowledgments

Various drafts of this book have been read by numerous friends and colleagues: Margaret Lavinia Anderson, Andrew E. Barshay, David Biale, Victoria E. Bonnell, Rogers Brubaker, John M. Efron, Terence Emmons, Sheila Fitzpatrick, Gregory Freidin, Gabriele Freitag, Jon Gjerde, Konstantin Gurevich, Benjamin Harshav, David A. Hollinger, Sergey Ivanov, Joachim Klein, Masha Lipman, Lisa Little, Martin Malia, Tim McDaniel, Elizabeth McGuire, Joel Mokyr, Eric Naiman, Norman M. Naimark, Benjamin Nathans, Irina Paperno, Igor Primakov, Nicholas V. Riasanovsky, Irwin Scheiner, James J. Sheehan, Peter Slezkine, Ronald Grigor Suny, Maria Volkenshtein, Edward W. Walker, Amir Weiner, Wen-hsin Yeh, Victor Zaslavsky, Reginald E. Zelnik, and Viktor M. Zhivov. Most of them disagreed with some of my arguments, some disagreed with most, and none (except for Lisa Little, who vowed to share all, and Peter Slezkine, who has no choice) is responsible for any. Two people deserve special mention: Gabriele Freitag, whose dissertation and conversation gave me the idea to write this book, and Benjamin Harshav, whose book Language in Time of Revolution suggested the structure of the last chapter and the concept of the “Jewish Century.” Two seminars, at the University of Chicago and Stanford University, resulted in several substantive revisions. Several presentations—at Berkeley, Harvard, Vassar, Yale, and the Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania—led to useful discussions. A number of colleagues, including Jamsheed K. Choksy, István Deák, David Frick, Donghui He, Andrew C. Janos, Tabitha M. Kanogo, Brian E. Kassof, Peter Kenez, G. V. Kostyrchenko, Matthew Lenoe, Ethan M. Pollock, Frank E. Sysyn, and Frederic E. Wakeman, Jr., helped by responding to specific queries. At Princeton University Press, Brigitta van Rheinberg presided over the project, Lauren Lepow improved the text, and Alison Kalett attended to every detail.

The funding for the research and writing was provided by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, and the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (which also supplied good weather and much lively companionship). Eleonor Gilburd was an incomparable research assistant; Jarrod Tanny was a great help in the final stages of writing; Vassar College, Pinar Batur, and John M. Vander-Lippe combined to make the spring semester of 2002 pleasant as well as productive; and the History Department at Berkeley has been, for over a decade, an extremely enjoyable and stimulating place to work.