Arie M. Dubnov’s intellectual biography of Sir Isaiah Berlin (1907−1997) is remarkable in many ways. First, it is unusually unattractive: the font and the layout of the text render its otherwise lucid prose almost unreadable. That said, there are marvelous rewards here for the intrepid. Berlin, although largely unappreciated in America, was an English philosopher with enormous influence both on the history of ideas and on the political battles over the formation of the state of Israel. Dubnov’s approach to this complex thinker is appropriately careful. He explores Berlin’s Russian roots — particularly the Jewishness of his family and the anti-Semitism that propelled them in and out of their hometown (Riga, Latvia) — to establish a theme with great significance in Berlin’s life and thought: his identity in England as a “Russian-Jew” and its implications for his positions on “dissimilation and acculturation.”
A mere teenager when he arrived in England, Berlin worked his way into Oxford, which became his intellectual home. Thanks to Dubnov’s familiarity with Oxonian subcultures, readers can navigate that thicket of thinly disguised anti-Semitism, budding Marxism, and other tendencies, with ease. The stage is then set for Berlin’s 1934 visit to Palestine, a turning point in his intellectual and political formation. (Discovering the Yishuv through the eyes of this Russian-Jewish Oxford philosopher offers a whole new perspective on pre-State history.) With the outbreak of World War II, the British government sent Berlin to America; after the War, Berlin returned to Oxford, focused now on political thought and the history of ideas, rather than analytical philosophy. Dubnov concludes by exploring the very nuanced concepts of freedom and liberalism of the mature Berlin, bringing together the themes of Zionism and anti-assimilation he developed earlier. Thankfully, Dubnov has no need to fit Berlin into any intellectual straightjacket; instead, he embraces Berlin’s growth and his ambiguities. This is not an easy book, because its subject is complex, but it is gracefully written and repays the serious reader’s efforts generously. Bibliography, endnotes, index, photographs.
Bettina Berch, author of the recent biography, From Hester Street to Hollywood: The Life and Work of Anzia Yezierska, teaches part-time at the Borough of Manhattan Community College.
