Tuesday, January 4, 2011

In Tsarist Times


Anecdote about a Jewish-Russian scholar, Daniel Khvolson, who lived in Tsarist times and converted to Christianity:
Asked "Did you convert out of conviction?"
Khvolson answered: "Yes, out of the conviction that it was better to be a professor in Petersberg than a Melamed in Shipshiok."
(Quoted in Klier, John D. "State policies and the Conversion of Jews in Imperial Russia, in Geraci & Khodarkovsky, Of Religion and Empire, Ithaca NY, 2001, p. 108.)

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