(1860–1941), Russian Jewish historian and ideologue of Jewish Diaspora nationalism. Simon Dubnow was born in Mstislavl in the Belorussian sector of the Russian Pale of Settlement to a religiously observant family; his father worked in the lumber business, a common Jewish occupation at the time. One of Dubnow’s brothers, Wolf, became a Biluist (a group of Russian Jewish youth who pioneered modern settlement in the Land of Israel) and emigrated temporarily to Palestine after the pogroms of 1881–1882. Their grandfather Bentsiyon was known throughout the region as an esteemed rabbinic scholar who taught according to the rigorous methods of the Gaon of Vilna.
