In this innovative study, Eli Lederhandler explores the previously ignored antecedents to the political awakening of Jewish intellectuals and their break with the traditional, religion-centred culture in Tsarist Russia. Only in the last few years have scholars begun to consider the place of politics in pre-modern Jewish society, and then only from a purely theoretical point of view. Lederhandler's work will be the first to examine in depth the actual political functioning of a Jewish community in its relations with the non-Jewish state and with its own citizens.