On Romantic and Patriotic Love in the Russian Maskilic Imagination (1804–1863)

Abstract This paper reconstructs the emotive-semantic transmutation of the Hebrew verb ’. h.v . [‮ א . ה . ב .‬‎, ‘to love’] in maskilic Hebrew, set against the political transformation of the Russian Empire during the first half of the nineteenth century. It focuses on romantic love and love for the ruler and the state, inquiring how these two concepts of love converged and impacted each other in the maskilic imagination. The final section of the article identifies a critique regarding how Jewish maskilic discourse blurred the boundaries between romantic and patriotic love. It focuses on Israel Axenfeld’s Yiddish play The First Jewish Recruit in Russia […] or The Story of a Supposed Wedding (ca. 1830). The First Jewish Recruit , I argue, sheds light on the inherent cost of using romantic imagery to describe the relationship between Jews and the Russian government.