Vaintrob (Weintrob) Mark Danilovich (born 1895, Kyiv or possibly Krustpils (Kreitzburg); died February 1942) - philosopher, historian, and educator.
According to his daughter Ada Mintz, Mark Vaintrob was born in Kyiv; archival sources, however, list his birthplace as Kreitzburg. He was born into the family of a lawyer and studied at the universities of Moscow and Kyiv, eventually becoming a privatdozent (lecturer) at Moscow University.
From 1920, he lived in Riga, where he taught at the Russian University Courses, the Riga Jewish People's Conservatory, and Jewish schools, and also headed Jewish pedagogical courses. In the late 1930s, he emigrated to the United States but returned to Latvia. After Latvia was annexed by the USSR, he refused to collaborate with the Soviet authorities. During the Nazi occupation, he committed suicide.
Vaintrob authored books on various branches of philosophical knowledge — logic, aesthetics, and the only book published in Riga on the history of medieval philosophy, as well as works on the Jewish question. He was a brilliant orator, nicknamed the “Golden Mouth of Riga.” His scholarly and philosophical inquiries focused on the concepts of “nation” and “national consciousness.” A proponent of moderate Zionism, he was deeply engaged in philosophical reflections on the national identity and destiny of his people.
He turned to the theory of the unconscious, suggesting that the vitality and resilience of Jewish culture, its distinctive traits, and the national consciousness of the Jews could be explained by the existence of a unique universal trait — a metaphysical-psychological “apperceptive mass,” an invisible force uniting the Jewish people. He was notably influenced by the philosophy of life (Lebensphilosophie) — Wilhelm Dilthey, Georg Simmel, and especially Oswald Spengler — which rejected Eurocentrism in the study of cultures and focused on understanding the individual, whether an individual person, the cultural history of a people, or an entire historical era.
According to Vaintrob, the uniqueness of Jewish culture lay in the absence, over many centuries, of a unified territorial base and the dispersion of its bearers across various continents. Jewish culture, thus, fell outside the closed cycle of “birth–development–death.” Consequently, the “secret language of world-feeling” (Spengler) was accessible only to one whose soul belonged to that culture, for such a person could prophetically foresee its fate.
As early as 1922, in the second part of his work On the Problem of National Creativity, Vaintrob predicted an imminent breakthrough of the Jews from a life in time to a life in space: the acquisition of Palestine would eliminate the threat of assimilation and the danger of losing national uniqueness. Thus, he addressed a major issue of aesthetics: the acquisition of territory would catalyze the development of spatial forms of art — architecture, sculpture, painting — which were not traditionally characteristic of Jewish mentality.
He also offered an original interpretation of the concept of spirit and soul, characteristic of Lebensphilosophie. According to Vaintrob, the soul of Jewish culture was embodied in the Mosaic Pentateuch. In exploring the soul of the Jew living in galut (the diaspora), he foresaw its dialectical “death” in favor of the resurrection of the soul of the Jew rooted in the land of Palestine.
Selected works: К проблеме национального творчества: В 2 ч. Рига, 1921 — 1922; Учебник логики. Рига, Русские университетские курсы, 1923; Очерк философии Анри Бергсона. Рига, 1927; О наглядности в обучении. Рига, 1927; Причины происхождения антисемитизма: опыт социально-психологического анализа. Рига, 1927; История средневековой философии. Рига, 1928; Этика иудаизма. Рига, 1929; К проблеме коэдукации. Рига, 1929; Дети-школьники и политические организации. Рига, 1929; Душа голусного еврея: опыт социально-психологического исследования. Рига, 1932; Вопросы мировоззрения и искусства. Рига, 1937; Tiesību etiskā izpratne Jurists. 1928. Nr. 3; Tiesības un valsts jēdziens Fiches filozofijā Jurists. 1928. Nr. 6; Spinozas principi mācībā par tiesībām un valsti Jurists. 1929. Nr. 15—16; Špenglera aistētiskais pasaules uzskats Daugava. 1936. Nr. 7—8; Kino un māksla Daugava. 1937. Nr. 4; Romantisma dvēsele Daugava. 1937. Nr. 8—9; Ko slēpj sevī cilvēka dvēsele? Daugava. 1938. Nr. 5—6; Telepatija filozofijas gaismā Daugava. 1939. Nr. 8—9.