The severe pogrom that broke out in Odessa in 1881 had not only been ignored but also even abetted by the government and defended by the press.
Leon Pinsker, his assimilationist beliefs shattered, turns to Jewish nationalism, no longer believing that mere humanism and enlightenment would defeat anti-Jewish sentiments.
His visit to Western Europe leads to his famous pamphlet
Auto-Emanzipation, subtitled
Mahnruf an seine Stammgenossen, von einem russischen Juden (
Warning to His Fellow People, from a Russian Jew), which he publishes anonymously in German on January 1, 1882, and in which he urges the Jewish people to strive for independence and national consciousness.
The book raises strong responses, both for and against.
An incisive, embittered, and impassioned pamphlet, Auto-Emanzipation provokes strong reactions, both critical and commendatory, from Jewish leaders.
In the pamphlet, he contends that Judeophobia is a modern phenomenon, beyond the reach of any future triumphs of” humanity and enlightenment,” and that the only restorative for Jewish dignity and spiritual health lies in a Jewish homeland, not necessarily in their ancestral home in the Holy Land.
As a professional physician, Pinsker prefers the medical term "Judeophobia" to the recently introduced misnomer "antisemitism".
Pinsker knows that a combination of mutually exclusive assertions is a characteristic of a psychological disorder and is convinced that pathological, irrational phobia may explain this millennia-old hatred: "... to the living the Jew is a corpse, to the native a foreigner, to the homesteader a vagrant, to the proprietary a beggar, to the poor an exploiter and a millionaire, to the patriot a man without a country, for all a hated rival."
His analysis of the roots of this ancient hatred lead him to call for the establishment of a Jewish National Homeland, either in Palestine or elsewhere.
Eventually Pinsker will come to agree with Moses Lilienblum that hatred of Jews is rooted in the fact that they are foreigners everywhere except their original homeland, the Land of Israel, or Eretz Israel.
Leon Pinsker had inherited a strong sense of Jewish identity from his father, Simchah Pinsker, a Hebrew language writer, scholar and teacher.
Leon had attended his father's private school in Odessa and was one of the first Jews to attend Odessa University, where he studied law.
Later he realized that, being a Jew, he had no chance of becoming a lawyer due to strict quotas on Jewish professionals and chose the career of a physician.
Pinsker believes that the Jewish problem could be resolved if the Jews could attain equal rights.
In his early years, Pinsker had favored the assimilation path and had been one of the founders of a Russian language Jewish weekly.
The Odessa pogrom of 1871 had moved Pinsker to become an active public figure.
In 1881, a bigger wave of anti-Jewish hostilities, some allegedly state-sponsored, had swept southern Russia; the pogroms will continue until 1884.
