ABSTRACT
By the turn of the century the impact of the Enlightenment and European nationalism on the Jewish world had led to a furious debate about the future of the Jewish people, one in which its status as a religious entity was put into question, and in which Marxism, socialism, liberalism and internationalism combined or fought against various strands of Zionism, territorialism and Diaspora nationalism. Along with the religious question, the so-called ‘language question’ came to haunt modern Jewish thought. This language question involved a debate about the actual and ideal interrelationship between Hebrew, Yiddish and the national languages of the states in which Jews lived.
