Ber borochov biography of albert

BOROCHOV, BER (Dov; 1881–1917), Socialist Zionist leader and foremost theoretician; scholar of the history, economic structure, language, and culture of the Jewish people.

Borochov, Ber | Encyclopedia.com

A brilliant analyst, in debate as well as in writing, Borochov influenced wide circles of the emerging Jewish labor movement, first in Russia, later in Central and Western Europe and the U.S. He postulated the concept of an organic unity between scientific socialism and devotion to the national needs of the Jewish people. He thus freed many young Jewish intellectuals from their preoccupation with the seemingly irreconcilable contradiction between social revolution and Zionism.

Borochov's main theoretical contribution was his synthesis of class struggle and nationalism, at a time when prevalent Marxist theory rejected all nationalism, and particularly Jewish nationalism, as distinctly reactionary. Borochov regarded the mass migration of Jews in his time as an inevitable elemental social phenomenon The YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe BIT