ABSTRACT
Post-1881 anti-Jewish violence galvanized traditional Jewish hope for messianic redemption and restoration to Zion into political action. Among Russian Jews, the pogroms brought about an ideological transformation unparalleled in West European countries, away from adaptation and merging with Russia and in favor of mass emigration. A despairing return to Jewish militancy is marked powerfully by Hebrew poets who respond to anti-Jewish violence in the late 19th and early 20th centuries: Judah Leib Gordon, Chaim Nachman Bialik, Saul Tchernichowsky and Uri Zvi Greenberg. The victims in each case were unarmed Orthodox Jews in Russia, Ukraine and Palestine, including women and children. The effect of these atrocities was to drive Jews to self-defense. Greenberg was the most outspoken in expressing dread of Jewish annihilation both in Europe and in Eretz Yisrael. In Hebrew literature, the land of Israel was the final resort and refuge, the place of the last stand.
