What Should We Do in Haman’s Times?

Just months before the German invasion of Poland in 1939, the historian Simon Dubnow published a letter in the Paris-based Yiddish journal Oyfn sheydveg (At the Crossroads). The journal, which saw a brief run of just two issues, was a forum for thinkers like Abraham Joshua Heschel. The title of Dubnow’s letter clearly likened Hitler to the biblical villain Haman, from the book of Esther, emphasizing that Jews were facing a threat as dangerous as any in their history. Dubnow concluded that the era of European emancipation—with its hope that Jews would be accepted as equal citizens—had collapsed. Instead of saying that Jews should follow Western values, he proposed a concept he called Spiritual Nationalism, focused on strengthening Jewish identity from within.