Organized in 1924 by the Jewish publisher Alexander Kogan, the expedition to British Mandate Palestine—aimed at documenting the nature, daily life, and historical monuments of Eretz Yisrael (the Land of Israel)—served as an additional catalyst for its participants to contemplate their national identity. Among them was the prominent Russian-Jewish artist Leonid Pasternak, father of the Nobel laureate in literature, Boris Pasternak. For him, as for the generation of culturally Russified Jewish intelligentsia of that era, this subject was of profound relevance at the beginning of the last century. It appears that the dilemmas and self-perceptions prevalent during the emergence of the "Russian" or "Russian-speaking" sub-ethnic group of the Jewish people remain, if not entirely applicable, then certainly comprehensible to a significant portion of today's Jewish "creative class" in the major cities of the former USSR.

Exactly one century has passed since an expedition, organized by the prominent Jewish publisher Alexander Kogan, set out for British Mandate Palestine. The mission of the expedition was to document the nature, daily life, and historical monuments of Eretz Yisrael (the Land of Israel), toward which the thoughts of many European Jews were directed.

A key participant in this project was the distinguished Russian-Jewish artist Leonid Pasternak, father of the Nobel laureate in literature, Boris Pasternak. His journey to the Holy Land became an additional factor in defining his national identity—a theme of utmost relevance for the Pasternak family, as well as for those generations of the culturally Russified Jewish intelligentsia at the beginning of the last century.

The nature and direction of the spiritual search of such individuals are reflected, for instance, in the partially published archival materials of the Pasternak family. Of particular interest are the artist's recollections of daily life in a Jewish family in pre-revolutionary Odessa, where he grew up, and of the pogrom of 1871, which left a deep scar on the future artist's consciousness. Numerous sources provide insight into Leonid Pasternak's understanding of Jewish identity: concern for his children, the fear of pogroms, the bitterness of poverty and inequality, a readiness to accept fate and even resign himself to manifestations of antisemitism, diligence, and boundless love for his family.

Certain episodes in Leonid Pasternak's biography bear a striking resemblance to the narratives described in the feuilletons of Vladimir (Ze'ev) Jabotinsky, a poet, writer, publicist, and founder of Revisionist Zionism, who was also a native of Odessa. Jabotinsky's "Four Articles on the 'Chirikov Incident'"[1] address a public debate from 1908 regarding the influence of Jews on Russian literature and culture in general, which was highly controversial at the time though little known today. The background of this debate was a reading in a capital literary salon of an unsuccessful comedy play, "Yiches" ("Blue Blood"), written by the playwright and writer Sholem Asch. The reading took place in the presence of a group of Jewish and Russian writers. Russian writer Yevgeny Chirikov made several critical remarks to the author, which prompted a sharp response from Asch, who asserted that Russian writers were incapable of understanding his play.

The subsequent literary dispute, extending far beyond the confines of the salon, became the subject of numerous publications and a prolonged public polemic regarding Russian nationalism in literature, theater, and public life. Literary critics pointed out the derivative nature of Jewish literature, suggesting that the play, "apparently inspired by Chekhov's 'The Cherry Orchard', was written according to a completely abstract scheme."[2]

Many liberal and educated Russian intellectuals (writers in Jabotinsky’s feuilletons and artists in Pasternak’s memoirs) deemed it appropriate for a Jewish author or creator to focus exclusively on Jewish themes. For instance, the artist Nesterov strongly advised Pasternak to paint solely the Jewish world and avoid Russian subject matter, and when the artist substituted for his colleague Konstantin Korovin in the portrait class at the School of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture, some students demonstratively walked out of the classroom due to the instructor's Jewish background.

It is difficult to avoid parallels with the processes shaping the national, cultural, and religious identity of modern Jews born in the USSR and living in the post-Soviet space. The Pasternak household no longer used the Jewish language (Yiddish), traditional rituals and prayers were virtually absent, and the family observed both Jewish and Orthodox Christian holidays. The most influential figures shaping the young artist's personality were individuals such as the composer Alexander Scriabin, the merchant's wife and philanthropist Margarita Morozova, the artist Nikolai Ge, and the writer Leo Tolstoy—in other words, entirely non-Jewish authorities.

Also indicative is Pasternak's entirely natural inclination to find common ground between the Jewish prophets and Christ, without making any ideological manifesto. Alongside these facts, Leonid Pasternak was deeply inspired by the Zionists who chose to return to the land of their ancestors. The artist met groups of such pioneers on his way to the expedition. However, Pasternak did not envision himself participating in Zionist practice, viewing these events through the lens of a Russian intellectual, deeply rooted in Orthodox Christian aesthetics and psychology.

Thus, upon seeing the Sea of Galilee (Kinneret), the houses of Tiberias (Tveria), and Mount Hermon, Pasternak exclaims in his memoirs: "...why, this is Polenov." Such a reaction was not accidental: Vasily Dmitrievich Polenov (1844–1927), one of the most prominent artists of the post-reform era, traveled to Eretz Yisrael in 1899 to gather material for his grand Gospel series "From the Life of Christ," which he completed in 1909. The exhibition of these paintings was a resounding success and became a central event in the world of Russian art.

In this sense, Leonid Pasternak was, of course, a Russian artist and intellectual. Similar reflections, grounded in a Russian Orthodox worldview, appear in the novel "Doctor Zhivago," written by his son, the Russian author Boris Pasternak. It can be argued with some certainty that contemporary Russian writers such as Y. Maletsky, L. Ulitskaya, E. Chizhova[3], and the poet and publicist D. Bykov, are spiritual successors to this approach.

In our time, the Russian sociologist of culture Alexei Levinson, summarizing qualitative research on high-status Jewish groups in capital and major cities (academics, NGO leaders, political analysts, media personalities, writers, poets, and other members of the "creative class"), highlights a rather prevalent viewpoint in these circles.

Under current conditions, belonging or not belonging to Jewry, in the view of some respondents, is a matter of personal choice: "Jews are destined to think about their Jewishness and either embrace or reject it. This is particularly true for individuals of mixed heritage." The foundation for a positive resolution of this dilemma, according to the same views, includes a sense of a "common destiny," "shared psychotype, cultural habits, family memory," and "connection to the cultural tradition of Russian Jewry (Mandelstam, Pasternak, Brodsky, etc.)."[4]

In other words, this is not merely a similarity in ethnic and cultural self-awareness between today's Jewish intelligentsia, deeply integrated into Russian elite culture, and a closely related phenomenon from a century ago. It also reflects a readiness to find in the legacy of specific predecessors a viable framework for their own national and spiritual search. By many indications, this also applies to the religious dimension of this phenomenon.

The religious sentiments of Leonid Pasternak's children at the beginning of the last century were as follows: Boris Pasternak was convinced he had been baptized in childhood, Alexander Pasternak indicated in a 1924 questionnaire that he was Protestant by religion and Russian by nationality, while daughters Josephine and Lydia testified that they had felt Christian since childhood. An illustrative metaphor was provided by Evgeny Borisovich Pasternak: his grandfather, Leonid Osipovich, remarked that in choosing between the Father and the Son, he leaned toward the Father (meaning the God of the Old Testament/Tanakh), whereas subsequent generations almost entirely lost their connection to Jewish identity.

It appears that for various segments of the contemporary Jewish "creative class" in major cities of the former USSR, such dilemmas and self-perceptions are, if not entirely acceptable in every respect, at least understandable. During the Soviet regime, Judaism and other religions served as a kind of cultural background which, as in families like the Pasternaks a century ago, was characterized more by family tradition than public practice. It did not mandate the strict observance of specific commandments and rituals, and even allowed for the celebration of holidays from different religions without perceiving a contradiction.[5] Furthermore, while under the rise of secular ethnic consciousness, Jewish and Russian (or any other—Ukrainian, Georgian, etc.) identities were perceived as mutually exclusive, the same cannot be said so definitively about the "Judaism-Christianity" opposition.

Although residual elements of tradition fostered a negative attitude toward converts, public opinion (both Jewish and non-Jewish) generally did not exclude them from the Jewish milieu. The difference between the generations of Jewish intellectuals in Eastern Europe at the turn of the 19th–20th centuries and those at the turn of the 20th–21st centuries was that for the former, Christianity was a means to escape the Pale of Settlement and social limitations. A century later, for a number of Jewish intellectuals who were critical of communist ideology and seeking "spirituality and roots" within fully secularized families integrated into Russian or other ethnic cultures, Christianity, as the "first accessible choice," could paradoxically become a channel for returning to Jewish roots. (For some of them, particularly Jewish youth in major cultural centers, Christian texts became the source of their initial acquaintance with Jewish tradition).[6]

Under the type of modernization characteristic of Russian and Eastern European Jewry integrated into local culture at the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries (as well as their predecessors at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries), the level of identification with Judaism or another religion served as an indicator of the dynamics of the religious component of "symbolic ethnicity." During a large-scale survey of the Jewish population of Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, and Kazakhstan, conducted in 2019–2020 on the initiative of the EAJC and under the direction of one of the authors of this article[7], respondents were asked which religion (regardless of their level of religious observance) they considered "their own." The findings were compared with the results of a study conducted under the direction of Ze'ev Khanin and Velvl Chernin in 2003–2004 on the ethnic and religious identity of Jews in two capital cities (Kyiv and Moscow) and three regional cities in Russia and Ukraine.[8] In 2004–2005, approximately 60% of respondents identified Judaism as their religion, whereas fifteen years later, only 43% gave this response. Christianity was identified as "their own" religion by 4.3% and 16% respectively; and "both religions equally" by 21.2% and 14% of those surveyed.

The absence of a significant correlation between ethnic origin and the level of religious observance among respondents confirms that this involves differences in cultural and value-based motivations rather than a simple division between "Russian Christians" and "Jewish Judaists." However, when it came to identification with a particular system of religious and cultural values dictated by origin, upbringing, social environment, and personal or family experience, the factor of ethnic origin was clearly visible.[9]

It is evident that the roots of this phenomenon lie not only in the experience of Soviet and post-Soviet Jewry but also in the social processes that occurred during the formation of the "Russian" or "Russian-speaking" sub-ethnic group of the Jewish people over a century ago.

[1] Deserters and Masters. II. Asemitism. III. The Bear from the Den. IV. Russian Kindness. For details, see: Kelner V.E. Two Incidents: From Russian-Jewish Relations at the Beginning of the 20th Century. Journal of the Jewish University in Moscow. 1995. No. 3. pp. 190–198; Mikhailova M. The Jewish Theme in the Work of E. N. Chirikov and the "Chirikov Incident." Parallels. M. 2003. Vol. 2–3. pp. 163–188

[2] Niger S. Jewish Almanacs // Jewish World. 1910. Book 1. p. 151

[3] Maletsky Y. Greetings from California // Prose of New Russia in 4 volumes. Moscow: Vagrius. Vol. 2. 2004. pp. 366-396; Ulitskaya L. Daniel Stein, Interpreter. Moscow: EKSMO, 2006; Chizhova E. The Criminal // Zvezda. 2005B No. 1–2.

[4] Levinson A. "The Future of Jewry in Modern Russia: Survey Results" // Jews of Europe and Asia: State, Heritage, and Prospects. Scientific and Publicistic Yearbook of the EAJC. Vol. 3 (2020-2021/5781) / Z. Khanin and V. Chernin, eds. Jerusalem and Herzliya: Institute of Jewish Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Institute for Euro-Asian Jewish Studies, 2021, pp. 205–245 (cited data on pp. 235–236)

[5] Gitelman Z., Chervyakov V., Shapiro V. "Judaism in the National Self-Consciousness of Russian Jews," Journal of the Jewish University in Moscow. 1994. No. 3(7). – pp. 121-144; Ze'ev (Vladimir) Khanin. "Ashkenazi Jews of the Former USSR: Religious Identity and Religious-Cultural Tradition," The Herald of Public Opinion, 1–2(130), January – June 2020, pp. 182–190

[6] See, for example: Judith Deutsch Kornblatt, Doubly Chosen: Jewish Identity, the Soviet Intelligentsia, and the Russian Orthodox Church (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2004)

[7] The structure, methodology, and results of this study are detailed in the book: Vladimir (Ze’ev) Khanin, The Jews of Contemporary Post-Soviet States: Sociological Insights from Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, and Kazakhstan. Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter, 2023

[8] Vladimir (Ze’ev) Khanin and Velvl Chernin, Identity, Assimilation and Revival: Ethnic Social Processes among the Jewish Population of the Former Soviet Union (Ramat-Gan: the Rappaport Center for Assimilation Studies and Strengthening of Jewish Vitality, 2007)

[9] Khanin, The Jews of Contemporary Post-Soviet States, p. 102