Tolstoy and the Jews

I have often been asked, and still am asked, whether I know from my frequent conversations with Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy about his attitudes toward the Jews. I am asked whether I spoke with him on this subject. I admit this question always troubled me. I wanted to speak with him about the Jews many times. Each time, though, something stopped me, kept me from bringing up what naturally interested me deeply. And I think that what prevented me was the atmosphere at Yasnaya Polyana,¹ where I was. This atmosphere, naturally, was exceptional. At Yasnaya, the question of nationality evaporated completely, and one felt guilty somehow raising it. Just as in olden times in temples, so, too, the persecuted found moral protection at Yasnaya. Once during the pogroms, while relating stories of the horrors and hearing Lev Nikolayevich’s indignation, I happened to say: “And so you see, Lev Nikolayevich, it would be important for everyone to hear what you’re saying.” To this he replied: “I receive many letters and requests to stand up for the Jews, but everyone knows my revulsion toward violence and oppression, after all, and if I say little about what is being done against individual nationalities, then that is only because I am constantly speaking out against any and all oppression.” This somewhat evasive answer proved to me that L. N. did not particularly distinguish the Jewish question from all the questions that engaged him, and that is why I stopped trying to rouse him to that conversation.

However, Tolstoy himself did speak more than once both to me as a Jew and on the subject of Jews. I remember, during my first visit to Yasnaya Polyana in 1891, while out walking with me, Lev Nikolaevich asked whether I knew the Hebrew language, whether I had studied the Bible, and so forth.

“I studied ancient Hebrew,” he told me. “That beautiful ancient language interested me greatly.

“I studied with Rabbi M.; he and I were friends; He is a beautiful, marvelous person. I learned to read and understand, but I couldn’t devote a lot of time to it.”

L. N. once told me: “I now have sitting here a very fine acquaintance of mine, a Jew. I will introduce you to him. A wonderful man! He’s a baptized Jew. About ten years ago he converted, in part due to my efforts. I repent having done this; this isn’t good. It was a mistake on my part and I will never do it again.”

Another time, Tolstoy introduced me to a Jew who was visiting from Tula. “A most interesting man,” L. N. said quietly, “a businessman and a very pious Jew. He is greatly interested in religious questions and I find it very pleasant to talk to him.” . . . “I have many friends who are Jews,” he added.

During the Dreyfus trial, however, Tolstoy took little interest in the issue. He was irritated that it had taken on such proportions. According to L. N.’s views, some religious questions can and should grip all humanity. Lev Nikolaevich did not find Dreyfus sympathetic as a person.

During the Zionist Congress, L. N. once asked me some questions about Zionists. He spoke of them sympathetically but did not share their main goal—the founding of an independent Jewish state in Jerusalem.

“I’m surprised,” he said. “The Jews are so universal, such cosmopolitans, and this is their best virtue, an important quality. They should not have repeated what led in other nations to lamentable phenomena.”

The measures taken against Jews in recent years aroused indignation in Lev Nikolaevich. If he did not say so in print, this indignation was often heard from his lips by all the people who spoke with him often.

Above, I said that at Yasnaya Polyana the question of nationality not only did not ever come up but never could. And if I often heard there that an Englishman had come, or an American, then this was in the sense of from where, what country, an admirer had come to see Tolstoy. I often had occasion to sit at the table with an American, a German, a Swede—people not only from different countries but also different people who sometimes seemed opposite in their way of life, origin, and type of occupation. A priest, a retired soldier, a professor, an illiterate peasant, a pagan, a Jew, and a Muslim—everyone felt equal here. No one here raised “his” question; everyone here lived by Tolstoy alone, i.e., by his lofty understanding of man’s role in nature and among men. Everyone here shook hands with everyone else as equals; no one complained about their own personal, familial, or national hardships. And just as L. N. gleaned his wisdom from various world sages, so, too, did he inspire his moral and religious ideals in people irrespective of nationality or religion, origin or personal status.