East European Jews Research Articles

The Wretched Refuse of Jewish American Literary History

The Wretched Refuse of Jewish American Literary History

Book Review: An Israeli in Palestine: Resisting Dispossession, Redeeming Israel, by Jeff Halper

Jeff Halper An Israeli in Palestine: Resisting Dispossession, Redeeming Israel, Pluto Press: London, 2008; 317 pp.: 9780745322261 17 [pounds sterling](pbk) One of the longest and most brutal conflicts of the 20th century, which still continues, is the Israeli-Palestine conflict. It has always been a locus of special attention for politicians, journalists and academics, as well as peace activists. Pertaining to the subject, there exist hundreds of academic works enriched by different perspectives and theoretical orientations. Yet this book by Jeff Halper is of a rare kind, based on his years of experience as a peace activist in Palestine. The most pronounced contribution of this book arises from its ability to synthesise the personal experiences gained in the middle of the conflict, and its sophisticated political analysis of Israeli society and state. The book has four main parts. In the first part, entitled 'Comprehending oppression', Halper writes about his own personal and ideological evolution in Palestine. He explains to the reader how the course of his life changed when he became an Israeli citizen and settled in Palestine, and how his ideological orientation shifted from Zionism to anti-Zionism while preserving his belief towards Judaism, which he approaches as an ethical doctrine. He asserts that 'the claim of exclusivity renders Zionism an either/or equation: either the country is made ours or we lose it to them' (73). Thus he distances himself from this exclusionary equation and defends more inclusive Judaist beliefs. As he witnesses and resists the unjust and inhumane Israeli demolitions of Palestinian homes, he grasps what oppression means and how it affects Palestinians' lives dramatically. His personal and autobiographical style of writing makes the first part easily readable. The second part of the book, entitled 'The sources of oppression', provides a very detailed elaboration of the social psychology of Israeli Jews and an original political analysis of the Israeli state. Halper identifies three major impediments for Israeli citizens to achieve a just peace with Palestinians: 'A national ideology and the political system emerging out of it--an ethnocracy; a closed-circuit security framing; and a small group decision making'. His original and lucid analysis of ethnocracy in the chapter entitled 'Impossible dream: Constructing a Jewish ethnocracy in Palestine' acquaints us with a critical view of Israeli politics. While placing emphasis on a key concept indispensable to understanding Israeli politics and society, Halper demonstrates that democracy has been substituted by ethnocracy, which has its roots in tribal nationalism of the 19th-century East European Jewish communities alongside the Zionist ideology prevailing in all social classes in Israel. An ethnocratic system of politics turns Israeli citizens into a mass incapable of thinking and acting critically and taking initiatives for a just peace, thinks Halper. Another impediment to a just peace is the Israeli security framing, which confers the political resolution as impossible and replaces it with an incessant militarisation, thus pushing Israeli society into the arms of 'civilian militarism'. Moreover, Halper denounces the political elites and decision-makers for missing the opportunities for a just peace ever since the creation of Israel in 1948. …

Mit den Waffen der Aufklärung gegen den Antisemitismus

AbstractThe rise of political anti-Semitism in Imperial and Weimar Germany met with public opposition initiated primarily by Jews. From various perspectives, jewish journalists and intellectuals investigated the origin of this anti-Semitism, its different manifestations as well as possibilities of its public rejection. Journalist Binjamin W. Segel (1866-1931) hereby focused his efforts on debunking antiSemitic myths, such as the Jewish World Conspiracy, as popularized by the text "The protocols of the Elders of Zion". In his writings, Segel, with an Eastern European background, pays attention to the discrimination of "Ostjuden" (EastEuropean Jews) in particular. Furthermore, Segel deals with questions regarding the origins of anti-Semitism, and the effectiveness of Jewish opposition towards it. The following article outlines his life and discusses his work.

Hasidic Drag: Jewishness and Transvestism in the Modern Dances of Pauline Koner and Hadassah

Hasidic Drag: Jewishness and Transvestism in the Modern Dances of Pauline Koner and Hadassah Rebecca Rossen On February 27, 1932, Pauline Koner, an emerging talent in U.S. concert dance, presented a series of solos at New York City's Town Hall. For this occasion, Koner, who was Jewish, premiered Chassidic Song and Dance, in which the choreographer portrayed a young Hasidic Jew.1 To a certain extent, the folksy and mystical Chassidic Song and Dance was not so different from the other dances that constituted Koner's repertory in the early 1930s. Indeed, aided by an array of vibrant costumes, the U.S.-born soloist would effortlessly transform herself over the course of an evening into a bouquet of foreign types—Hindu goddess, Moorish gypsy, Javanese temple dancer, Andalusian maid, Spanish flamenco dancer, and Russian peasant girl. However, Chassidic Song and Dance offered one critical distinc tion. In all of her other ethnic solos, Koner portrayed female characters; in Chassidic Song and Dance, she presented herself as a boy—in Jewish drag. Koner was not the only female dancer performing in Jewish drag on New York stages in the 1920s and 1930s. In Bar Mitzvah(1929), Belle Didjah depicted an Orthodox boy on the verge of manhood; YeshivaBachur(1932) was one of several dances in which Dvora Lapson portrayed a Talmudic student; Benjamin Zemach, a male choreographer, adorned an ensemble of Jewish women and men in Hasidic outfits for a 1931 concert; and Lillian Shapero offered a more abstract rendition in her Hasidic Sketches (1936). Jewish drag was also prevalent on U.S. and European Jewish stages and Feminist Studies37, no. 2 (Summer 2011), © 2011 by Feminist Studies, Inc. 334 Rebecca Rosseti 535 screens in the early-twentieth century. The Viennese choreographer Gertrud Kraus cross-dressed in The Jewish Boy and Song of the Ghetto in the late 1920s and early 1930s, and Judith Berg danced in drag throughout Poland in Menachem Mendel and Pilpul Tants in the years leading up to World War II.2 The most famous female-to-male drag performer was Molly Picon, an influential figure in Yiddish theater and film who frequently cross-dressed in such Second Avenue stage hits as Yankele (1922-1925) and the films Ost undWest(East and West; 1923) and Yidl mitn Fidl(Yidl with His Fiddle; 1937), presaging Barbra Streisand's Yeshiva "boy" in Yentl (1983). Feminist schol ars working in Jewish cultural studies have discussed Picon's Jewish trans vestism, but there are no studies that consider this substantial trend in U.S. concert dance more broadly.3 Although Koner did not perform on Yiddish stages in Manhattan, many of her peers did, demonstrating that performers, choreography, and representational modes flowed sinuously across town and genre. In these drag performances, stagings of Jewishness became entangled with choreographies of gender and nation, resulting in ethnically ambiguous and androgynous figures who simultaneously bolstered and evaded the frameworks that defined them. The role of gender in the staging of Jewishness in U.S. modern dance cannot be underestimated. Indeed, Jewish American choreographers have not only struggled with the ethnic and racial histories that have been in scribed on their bodies but also with their gendered histories.1 When choreographers such as Koner staged Jewishness, they inevitably staged gender as well. This article considers the provocative intermingling of gender, Jewishness, and embodiment in U.S. modern dance during the interwar and immediate postwar years in the dance works of Koner and the Pales tinian-born Hadassah, who, like Koner, perpetuated, and even capitalized on, an exotic persona. However, in Hadassah's 1947 signature work, Shuvi Nafshi (Return Oh My Soul),5 she replaced cross-dressing with cross gesturing. Instead of presenting Jewish drag, this choreographer's dances effectively appropriated and recontextualized ritual gestures restricted to Jewish men. Both Koner and Hadassah undeniably reproduced certain stereotypes about the East and Eastern European Jews. Nonetheless, their ethnic (and gestural) transvestism challenged essentialist notions of 336 Rebecca Rossen gender and ethnicity and, in Hadassah's case, dramatically undermined the androcentrism of traditional Judaism. To a certain degree, this article aims to coalesce feminist studies, Jewish cultural studies, and dance studies in order to more fully...

Volver a Berlín by Eliah Germani

bythree African American soldiers ina Jeep, whotransmit their loveof boxingandjazz tohim.A believer in universalhuman rights,Laurent 'sfather is shockedthatblack soldiers havetoplaytheir jazz separated from theother soldiers, andhe mournsprofoundly the assassinationofDr . Martin Luther KingJr. Ironically, Laurent's altruistic father was killedby a black policeman whenhe attended a rallylinkedto thecommemoration oftheAmericancivilrights leader. Thememory, thevoiceoftheassassinofhisinnocent , unmourned father haunts Laurent throughout hislife. Mamad and Laurentare part of theirseparateculturalworlds, a world neithercan escape. The author's epilogue, however, allows us toenvision a reconceptualization ofthefamily that bothmitigates the tension betweenthetwomenand provides narrative closure. Allwith Dalembert's ever-present irony. Robert H.McCormick Jr. Franklin College, Switzerland Eliah Germani. Volver a Berlin. Santiago de Chile. RilEditores. 2010.168pages. CLP$5,780. isbn 978-956-284-745-2 The arduous experienceof East European Jewish immigrants tothe agricultural colonies of northern Argentina iswelldocumented inthe works ofAlberto Gerchunoff, Cesar Tiempo, Jose Rabinovich, andother pioneering writers. Theirchildren did notremainin thecountry but movedtothebigcities, wherethey andtheir offspring wrote abouttheir urbanexperiences. The cityis central notjusttoArgentines (Bernardo Verbitsky, AliciaSteimberg, Marcos Aguinis), butitis alsoimportant to theworksofother LatinAmerican Jewish writers, including thenovels of TeresaPorzekansky (Uruguay), Isaac Chocron (Venezuela), and Angelina Muniz(Mexico). Eliah Germani'sshortstories from Volver a Berlin arestriking for theircosmopolitan, sophisticated tone.His characters are cultured, professional, sensitive people constantly surprised by theunexpected behaviorofthosetheythought they knewwell:bychancea grandson discoversthathis introverted grandmother was, in her youth, a revolutionary communistwho foughtagainstthe Nazis during WorldWar II ("El secretode la bobe");a recently widowedoldman turnsout to be farmoreenergetic and outgoing thanwhathisgrandson feared("Floresdel camino"); a marriedwoman feelsashamed after spending a night withherbest friend's husband,onlyto discover thefollowing morning that herown husband hasbeencommitting adultery withthesamefriend. Chile,Germani'scountry of birth, playsa central roleinhisstories .Whileitwas a shelter for Jewishrefugees during World WarII,it was also thecause ofmanyexiles, including Jews, during thePinochet dictatorship in the 1970s.During the following decade it emerged as a country thatassumedresponsibility foritspastcrimes and created a "Comisionde la Tortura" to prosecute thosewho committed criminal abusesduring themilitary regime("jSi ni siquieraestejardin estalimpio!"). WhatgivesGermani's writing a distinctive "Jewish" toneis the pervasive spirituality heinfuses into hisstories. He integrates traditional and religious issuesintohisnarrative ,goingbeyondtheinclusion of concrete Jewish objectssuch as a mezuzah, a candelabra, or a prayer shawl.There areabundant references to thevanishing Yiddishworld. The Yiddish glossaryat the end provides helpfor readers unfamiliar withthelanguage ofEastEuropean Jews. Yiddishis associated withthe m Dhaka Dust 9 Dilruba Ahmed 1 WWi flfBM traditions and religioushabitsof theshtetl generation, remembered and reveredby theirgrandchildren ,who return to theold world to reconstruct theirlives.As they learnabout themselves, theyalso confront anti-Semitic incidents that tookplacein Polandbefore World WarII ("Flowers ontheRoad"). Themysticism pervading Germani 'sstories stemsfrom theTalmud . God offers man a gift:the "intuition of luminosity ," a splendorthatilluminates hischaracters, a lightthattouchestheir soul.The Shechina orDivinePresence appears againand againinGermani's writing .Webecomeawarethat Messiah has thesameletters as theHebrew word Simcha,meaning "happiness ."Shaddai, oneofthenamesof God, can also be perceivedas an eroticmetaphor meaning"female breasts." In sum, Eliah Germani'sstoriesprovide many delights: they are puzzling, entertaining and intellectually stimulating. NoraGlickman Queens College, CUNY Paolo Giordano. The Solitude of Prime Numbers. Shawn Whiteside, tr. NewYork. Penguin. 2011.271pages. $15.isbn 978-0-14-311859-6 The youngest winnerever of the prestigious Italian PremioStrega (2008),thethentwenty-three-yearold graduatestudentof particle physics, Paolo Giordano, surprised theliterary worldwitha chillingly brilliant and pessimistic novel,La solitudine dei numeri primi. It has been translatedinto thirtylanguagesandwas madeintoa movie in 2010.It was hailedas a special literary achievement, although the youngphysicist assertshe could havenever written ithadhestudied literature. Thenoveliscomposed offortysix episodes,distributed in seven majorportions. These chronologicallyfollow thedevelopment ofthe two main characters, Mattiaand Alice,children ofwealthy middleclassprofessional parents. Giordano depicts thelivesoftwodysfunctional youngpeople fromelementary through highschool, surrounded by a dysfunctional world(family and school), andillustrates thealarming situation existing formanyyoung adultstoday. Mattia'sand Alice's growing painsoriginate in traumatic childhood eventsand are compounded bytheir environment: Mattiaallegedly caused the drowning of his retarded twinsister, Michela.In a never-ending seriesofself-inflicted punishments, hecuts himself repeatedlyandbecomes obsessed with his scars, which becomea barometer of hismental anxiety. Onlyhisscientific visionoftheworldand obsessive studying seem to help him. Alice,on theother hand,has been crippled in a skiaccident after her father's insistence that shebecome a proficient skier. During hisAmerican booktour thisApril, Giordano discussed various aspectsof his work thathe called"sort ofa lovestory" butalso a noveloffear andofrage:Mattia's ragetowardhisfather...

Exemplary Bodies: Constructing the Jew in Russian Culture, since the 1880s. By Henrietta Mondry. Borderlines: Russian and East European Jewish Studies. Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2009. 301 pp. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Illustrations. Photographs. $58.00, hard bound.

Exemplary Bodies: Constructing the Jew in Russian Culture, since the 1880s. By Henrietta Mondry. Borderlines: Russian and East European Jewish Studies. Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2009. 301 pp. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Illustrations. Photographs. $58.00, hard bound. - Volume 70 Issue 1

“I am to be read not from left to right, but in Jewish: from right to left”: The Poetics of Boris Slutsky. By Marat Grinberg. Borderlines: Russian and East European-Jewish Studies. Boston, Mass: Academic Studies Press, 2011. 482 pp. Notes. Bibliography. Indexes. Illustrations. Photographs. $69.00, hard bound.

“I am to be read not from left to right, but in Jewish: from right to left”: The Poetics of Boris Slutsky. By Marat Grinberg. Borderlines: Russian and East European-Jewish Studies. Boston, Mass: Academic Studies Press, 2011. 482 pp. Notes. Bibliography. Indexes. Illustrations. Photographs. $69.00, hard bound.

Aestheticism and the flight from Jewishness

Like socialism and science, aestheticism served as a programmatic rationale for the transcendence of Judaism and Jewishness in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It offered cultivated young Jewish men and, to a lesser extent, women a way of distancing themselves from the popular connection between Jews and the pursuit of commercial profit. This article examines the career of the Lithuanian-born art critic Bernard Berenson and his ultimately unsuccessful efforts to establish himself as a disinterested, high-minded connoisseur, free of the taint of trade and his East European Jewish origins.

Aleksandr Dugin’s transformation from a lunatic fringe figure into a mainstream political publicist, 1980–1998: A case study in the rise of late and post-Soviet Russian fascism

The paper 1 1 The paper expands on my earlier survey : Toward an Uncivil Society? Contextualizing the Recent Decline of Parties of the Extreme Right Wing in Russia, 2002. On Dugin’s fascism, see Griffin, Loh, and Umland (2006); Umland (2006b, 2006c, 2006d), reprinted in: Verkhovskii (2006), and Laruelle (2007). was completed in 2008 and complements previous analyses of post-communist Russian right-wing extremism, in general, and studies of “neo-Eurasianism,” in particular, surveying some circumstances of the emergence of its major ideologist Aleksandr Dugin (b. 1962). It introduces some teachers and collaborators of Dugin who influenced him before he became a known journalist, writer and commentator in the late 1990s. It also sketches some of Dugin’s initiatives and activities until he rose to the position of an official advisor to Gennady Seleznev, the Speaker of the State Duma, the lower house of the Russian parliament, in 1998. The footnotes provide a comprehensive bibliography on Western and Russian sources on the Russian “New Right.” It concludes with some suggestion where further research into the Dugin phenomenon could go. Current position Assistant Professor of Contemporary Russian History at The Catholic University of Eichstaett-Ingolstadt, Bavaria, and editor of the book series Soviet and Post-Soviet Politics and Society ( http://www.ibidem-verlag.de/spps.html), Stuttgart and Hannover. Biographical sketch CertTransl (Leipzig), MA (Stanford), MPhil (Oxford), DipPolSci, DrPhil (FU Berlin), PhD (Cambridge). Visiting fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution in 1997–1999, and Harvard’s Weatherhead Center in 2001–2002. Bosch visiting lecturer at Yekaterinburg’s Urals State University in 1999–2001, and Kyiv’s Mohyla Academy in 2003/2005. In January-December 2004, temporary lecturer in Russian and East European studies at St. Antony’s College Oxford. In 2005–2008, German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) Lecturer Kyiv’s Shevchenko University. Papers in Problems of Post-Communism, East European Jewish Affairs, Osteuropa, Österreichische Zeitschrift für Politikwissenschaft, Politicheskie issledovaniya, European Political Science, Political Studies Review, The Journal of Slavic Military Studies, Voprosy filosofii, Obshchestvennye nauki i sovremennost’, Forum für osteuropäische Ideen- und Zeitgeschichte, Ab Imperio and other journals. Editor of The Implementation of the European Convention on Human Rights in Russia: Philosophical, Legal und Empirical Studies (Stuttgart: Ibidem 2004), Geistes- und Sozialwissenschaftliche Hochschullehre in Osteuropa. Vols. 1, 2, 3 & 4 (Frankfurt a.M. u.a.: Peter Lang 2005, 2006, 2007 & 2009), and, with Roger Griffin and Werner Loh, Fascism Past and Present, West and East: An International Debate on Concepts and Cases in the Comparative Study of the Extreme Right. With an afterword by Walter Laqueur (Stuttgart: Ibidem-Verlag 2006).

Where Did the East European Jews Come From?: An Explosive Debate Erupts from Old Footnotes

Where Did the East European Jews Come From?: An Explosive Debate Erupts from Old Footnotes

Zwischen Selbstreflexion und Projektion. Die Bilder von Ostjuden in zionistischen und orthodoxen deutsch-jüdischen Periodika während des Ersten Weltkriegs

Until today, the First World War represents a neglected aspect in Jewish history and historiography – even though the war itself hardly left a Jewish community unaffected. One effect of the war was the tremendous suffering of Jewish civilians in Eastern Europe. Another effect, especially for German Jews, was the encounter with East European Jews, or as the stereotype was termed, the Ostjuden. Many German-Jewish soldiers who served at the eastern front were now able to experience the life of the Jewish masses in the East firsthand. Before that many German Jews were oftentimes only familiar with Eastern Jews through anecdotes and descriptions. Contrary to many studies focusing on the liberal current within German Jewry, this essay concentrates on the images of East European Jews within the zionist and orthodox currents. This analysis thus asks in what way the images of East European Jews that were created by these two currents, served as a projection screen and a mirror for self-reflections of own identity constructions. While the discourse about Ostjuden had already existed before the outbreak and continued after the end of the First World War, the war itself, the developments abroad and at home, increasing antisemitism and fear of immigration of Ostjuden, but also a fascination with the authenticity of the Ostjude, could serve as a catalyzer of the discourse about Ostjuden. Hence, while stereotypes are usually conceived to be negative, the sources analyzed in this essay display existing positive stereotypes as well. First World War (1915-1918) Following a successful offensive in the late summer of 1915, the Central Powers, Austria-Hungary and the German Reich, divided Russian Poland between them. The military government of the Dual Monarchy, located in Lublin, constituted Austria- Hungary’s first and longest-lasting government of occupation. Although administered separately from the army at the front, it was still charged with standard military functions: securing peace, law and order, utilisation of provincial finance, as well as maintaining lines of communication. In addition the entire administration was initially taken over by civilian and military staff from the Dual Monarchy. The occupation of Poland was characterised by certain special features which distinguished it from other Austro-Hungarian military governments. One example is the effort made, notwithstanding its military functions, to win the hearts and minds of the population by employing Polish civil servants and military personnel from Galicia or by presenting themselves as a Catholic great power. By supporting Polish national consciousness they were, however, working in contravention of the terms of the Hague Convention as this was occupied Russian territory. Even by the end of the war no clear concepts for the future, which might have provided a rallying point for the population, had been developed. For one thing decisions were always taken with one eye on their German ally, for another there was an influential Polish lobby operating in the Imperial capital, Vienna. Disagreements with their German ally, arising from the separate administrations of the two occupied territories compounded the situation and led to increasing discontentment among the Poles in Austria and the Polish population as a whole.

“WE ARE HERE TO BRING THE WEST, NOT ONLY TO OURSELVES”: ZIONIST OCCIDENTALISM AND THE DISCOURSE OF HYGIENE IN MANDATE PALESTINE

During the British Mandate period Zionist health organizations and professional groups made an extensive effort to educate the Jewish public in health and hygiene. This article analyzes the Hebrew popular-scientific discourse of hygiene. It looks at the inculcation of hygienic models of conduct as part of a project of modernization and Westernization. As the analysis demonstrates, Zionist identity was constructed as modern and Western in opposition to the Orient and Oriental ways of life. At the same time, “Occidental” and “Oriental” were unstable and sometimes ambivalent categories in the hygienic discourse. Not only the value of the categories sometimes differ (as Jews were depicted both as European settlers and as natives of the Orient), but also East European Jews appeared both as objects and as subjects of a “civilizing mission.” As a consequence, the construction of difference between European Jews and Orientals was not always grounded in different practices attributed to each of these groups but sometimes in the different value attached to the same practices when performed by members of different groups.

Exile, Homeland, and Milieu in the Oral Lore of Carpatho-Russian Jews

In her article "Exile, Homeland, and Milieu in the Oral Lore of Carpatho-Russian Jews" Ilana Rosen analyzes oral narratives of Central and East European Jewish communities. The Jewish people have spent most of their lifetime outside their promised land. Accordingly, their ethos, as reflected by holy teachings, expresses a yearning for a return to the holy land by divine agency once the nation is purified of its sins. In modern times, with the rise of nationalism, this creed changed into activist political Zionism, although traditional and conservative religious circles resisted this change. In the oral narratives of Central and East European Jewish communities, these dilemmas inevitably involve or touch upon those of living among other nations and communities. Therefore, in the oral lore of Jews of Carpatho-Russia in inter-war eastern Czechoslovakia (presently the western part of Ukraine), narratives about the life of Jews in exile present intricate and at times surprising notions about coping with the new political borders following World War I, the symbiotic yet stressful life with both Ruthenians and Hungarians, the abrupt ending of Jewish life in this area in World War II and the Holocaust, and its memory amongst contemporary Israelis coming from the region.

Bücher zum Trauern und zum Leben - Druckerei und Bibliothek im Displaced-Persons-Camp Bergen-Belsen (1945-1950)

In 2007 the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Library in Hanover acquired two Hebraic reprints of religious Judaic manuscripts written in Poland in the 19th century. These reprints were created - probably in 1947- in the Displaced Persons Camp Bergen-Belsen. Immediately after WW2 it served as a way station primarily for East European Jews and was the largest of its kind in the British Occupation Zone. As a means for mourning and a way to instill hope in the future, these books played a special role in the lives of Holocaust survivors. Books represented a homeland for Jews in the Diaspora and gave expression both to mourning and to the joy of being (still) alive. Consequently, the nearly complete lack of any books in the camp initially posed a considerable problem. In Bergen-Belsen, as in other displaced persons camps, the Jewish Autonomous Administration quickly began to establish libraries and publish their own works - primarily political, religious and historical works for general reading.This article traces the history of the press and the library of the DP Camp Bergen-Belsen and gives recognition to the significance of the Hebrew and Jewish book culture for the Holocaust survivors who had to restart their lives after 1945.

Мошко Имперский

SUMMARY: “Moshko the Imperial” is a chapter from the book Lenin’s Jews (forthcoming from Yale University Press). The book discusses urban culture in the towns where Moshko Blank lived in the first half of the nineteenth century (ch. 1, “From Nowhere to Zhitomir”); contextualizes Lenin’s attitude to Jews in his milieu and his conceptualization of Jews in general and in the Russian Empire in particular (ch. 3, “Lenin, Power, and Jews”); reconstructs consistent attempts of the Bolsheviks to suppress any mention of Lenin’s Jewish roots in the Soviet historical discourse (ch. 4, “Glue for the Vertebrae”); and sheds light on the questions of the Judaization of Lenin and the Bolsheviks in the writings of the Russian far right (ch. 5, “How Lenin Became Blank”). The second chapter of the book, “Moshko the Imperial,” offered to the readers of Ab Imperio in the authorized translation, utilizes the existing narratives about Lenin’s maternal grandfather from Starokonstantinov and introduces a number of recently uncovered primary documents. It seeks to contextualize Moshko Blank against the broad backdrop of contemporary political, cultural, and ideological trends among East European Jews. Moshko is portrayed as an ingratiating individual who hated his brethren and a Jew in himself and who achieved notoriety among Russian administration as the author of claims, appeals, protests, and denunciations. A master of denunciations, Moshko bowed down before imperial power: the Russian imperial authorities, the Russian Orthodox Church, and Russian state symbols were his utmost values. As a close analysis of his letters to Tsar Nicholas I has proved, Moshko was neither a harbinger of Jewish religious reform nor a champion of the Haskalah. He planned to uproot Judaism, not to modify it. Ultimately, he should be placed among other Jewish informers of his time – individuals who sought to solve their personal financial or social problems, to be remunerated by the administration, or to achieve upward mobility by denouncing the Jews to the Russian authorities. “Moshko the Imperial” tells the story of the romance of Moshko Blank with the Russian imperial “vertical of power,” a romance that had both a happy and unsettling end.

Jews among the Indians: The Fantasy of Indigenization in Mordecai Richler's and Michael Chabon's Northern Narratives

Jews among the Indians:The Fantasy of Indigenization in Mordecai Richler's and Michael Chabon's Northern Narratives Sarah Phillips Casteel (bio) It seems to make no difference at all, descendants of East European Jews or Dublin Irish, at home and abroad, everyone who thinks of himself as being in some sense an American feels the stirrings in him of a second soul, the soul of the Red Man. Leslie A. Fiedler, The Return of the Vanishing American In the self-reflexive and rather controversial conclusion to his study The Turn to the Native, the literary critic Arnold Krupat offers an extended meditation on the relationship between his scholarly interest in Native American literature and his working-class, immigrant Jewish origins.1 In a chapter entitled "A Nice Jewish Boy among the Indians," Krupat proposes and then finally dismisses the possibility that his "turn to the Native" was attributable to his ethnic background: "My grandfather was killed for being a Jew just as Native Americans were killed for being what they [End Page 775] were; my grandmother … was a person of oral culture; I grew up in a bounded enclave, the Projects, which has some distant and minimal relation to reservation experience. Yet not even in retrospect, when the impulse to produce causes for effects is particularly acute, does this go very far in explaining why I do what I do" (127). While Krupat "comes out" as Jewish (in Jon Stratton's sense) in this chapter in order to consider parallels between Jewish and Native American experiences of dispossession, he ultimately identifies his underprivileged, working-class upbringing in 1940s and 1950s New York, rather than his Jewishness, as the key factor in determining the direction of his scholarship.2 A different reading of Krupat's "vocational autobiography," however, is suggested by the extent to which it is structured as the narrative of his Americanization. The chapter charts his path from a culturally and economically marginalized Jewish upbringing toward both American values and American literature. It was while spending a year in France that Krupat came to recognize that despite being "a Jewish boy from the New York projects," he was nonetheless "deeply American" (117), a realization that prompted him to shift his academic focus from European to American literature. After devoting his graduate studies and early career to "not quite … canonical" twentieth-century American writers, Krupat encountered in D. H. Lawrence and William Carlos Williams the "sense that if you wanted to understand 'America,' you would have to take into account the original, indigenous, Indian presence on this continent" (119). "So, belatedly," he recalls, "it occured to me that for anyone who wanted to think of himself or herself as 'American,' the most important names to explore might not be names in English at all but rather names in the native languages of indigenous America" (120). Krupat's twin revelations—that he was "deeply American" despite his immigrant Jewish origins, and that to be American is to confront the indigenous presence—correspond to a broader pattern [End Page 776] of indigenizing motifs in twentieth-century Jewish North American culture. The nexus of associations that emerges in Krupat's autobiographical chapter among Jewishness, Americanization, and an interest in Native peoples informs indigenizing gestures that have been made by a variety of historical and fictional "Jews among the Indians." These include social scientists such as Franz Boas (whom Krupat cites as a forefather of sorts), fellow literary critics such as Leslie Fiedler, "redface" stage performers of the early twentieth century such as Eddie Cantor, and a variety of authors who composed Yiddish, Hebrew, and English-language texts on indigenous themes.3 In particular, Krupat's account of his "indigenization" recalls encounters between Jews and Native peoples that feature in several major works of contemporary Jewish North American fiction. My concern in this essay will be with two novels by Mordecai Richler and Michael Chabon that stage the Jewish immigrant fantasy of indigenization against the backdrop of northern frontier landscapes. I adopt this focus here as part of a larger attempt to situate Jewishness in the context of transcultural, interethnic contact rather than considering ethnic minorities in isolation or purely in terms of...

Invention of a Vanished World Photographs of Traditional Jewish Life in the Russian Pale of Settlement

The article explores the tradition and making of ethnographic photography of the East European Jews in the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth century. In the early Twentieth century in particular, Jewish ethnography identified and established religious Jews as national Jews. Ethnographic photography was part of a general trend among secular Jewish intellectuals to gather the remnants of the Jewish past in order to give rise to a Jewish historical awareness. Research into the history of photography of religious Jews in the Russian Empire thus affects the topic of Jewish nationalism, historiography, ethnography and the modem search for Jewish identity. It connects also to Russian Jewish art history, the primitivism of the Russian avant-garde and its sources in nineteenth century realism. The tradition of the photographs was strongly affected by the vicissitudes of Russian and Soviet history in the twentieth century, and almost as significantly by the modes and practices of scientific treatment of photographs in historical sciences. A new and careful approach to the rich variety of ethnographic photographs of Jews will thus enhance a new reading and understanding of those sources. This methodological innovation has already been applied very successfully to the historical understanding of Jewish literature from this period. A translation of those findings into visual culture is overdue.

Dixie Diaspora: An Anthology of Southern Jewish History (review)

Dixie Diaspora: An Anthology of Southern Jewish History, edited by Mark K. Bauman. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2006. 480 pp. $65.00 (c); $35.00 (p). Connoisseurs of the complications of ethnicity, writes Brandeis Professor Stephen J. Whitfield in his 1988 article Braided Identity of Southern Jewry, one of sixteen well-chosen articles by Mark K. Bauman, editor of Dixie Diaspora: An Anthology of Southern Jewish History, can much to meditate in the experience of Southern Jewry. Similarly, historical connoisseurs of American Jewish history, Southern Jewish history as well as numerous other fields of American history in general will find much to meditate upon in this collection of recent, critical historical scholarship by one of the senior and most distinguished scholars of Southern Jewish This anthology, the editor maintains, designed to expose different audiences to the subfield and particularly to the scholarship of the last twenty-five years, and to encourage the integration of southern Jewish history into American, southern, religious, ethnic and Jewish history. At least in this case, the design of the anthology has succeeded both in highlighting the major themes of southern Jewish history and in showcasing many of the new methodological and historiographical approaches employed by contemporary critical scholars. Selection, Bauman further explains, was based on methodological innovation, how well articles opened discussion of key themes, and how well they complemented one another. Moreover, the editor notes that rather than chronology, the articles are organized topically to provide a clearer understanding of contemporary debates and questions. Five topics in all are used as major rubrics for Dixie Diaspora, including I. Jews and Judaism; II. Small-Town Jewish Life; III. Business and Governance; IV. Interaction; and V Identity. With respect to chronology, Dixie Diaspora includes articles from the Colonial period to the present A brief Introduction to the entire book as well as Introductions to each of the anthology's five sections provide helpful conceptual frameworks for the book's readers. An excellent Bibliographical Essay offers a virtual tour of the secondary literature of the southern Jewish experience. The book's only flaw is the absence of a topical index which would have increased its utility as a general research tool. In addition to articles by Bauman and Whitfield, articles by Leonard R. Rogoff (The Racial Place of the Southern Jew), Deborah R. Weiner (Appalachian Jewish Women), Lee Shai Weissbach (East European Jews in the South), and Gary P. Zola (Southern Rabbis) are representative of the book's depth and scope. …

Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry XVIII: Jewish Women in Eastern Europe (review)

Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry XVIII: Jewish Women in Eastern Europe, edited by Chaeran Freeze, Paula Hyman, and Antony Polonsky. Oxford: Liftman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2005. 470 pp. $29.95. In recent years there has been a fair amount of research and publication on East European Jewish women. Two of the editors of this volume have taken a leading role in the field and have written path-breaking books on the topic. However, many of the studies are scattered, and not all are easily accessible. Therefore, the decision to devote a volume of Polin to the topic of Jewish Women in Eastern Europe was very justified. Not surprisingly, the editors were able to collect some exceUent studies that make this book essential reading for both gender issues and East European Jewish history. authors employ a variety of methodologies and use diverse sources. However, most of the studies can be characterized by a palpable excitement and enthusiasm for the topic, their readers, and most of all-for the subjects of the papers. In these days of full text and downloads, one can ask: What is the special virtue of a volume like this? In this case, the answer is in the reading. Like certain novels, it is useful to look at the first chapter and the last. In this case, the introduction is a very comprehensive and readable historiographical survey written by the editors of the volume. They made a real effort to integrate the topic of Jewish women in Eastern Europe into both the general literature about women in the past and the literature on the history of Jews in Eastern Europe, and they were quite successful. Hyman and Freeze were able to apply theory without being esoteric, and they made it clear how important it is to consider theory. At the same time, they covered most of the important work done on the field. This article is an ideal starting point for students who want to write or read systematically on the topic. In other words, opening this volume with a survey yielded a major contribution. From this point, it is possible to go to the bibliography of Jewish women in Eastern Europe that closes the section. Prepared by Karen Auerbach, it has sections on memoirs (pp. 273-288), secondary sources (pp. 288-302), and theses (pp. 302-303). memoirs are all annotated and include topics, places described, and information on the author. list is very complete and reflects both a great deal of work and a mastery of the literature. Auerbach and the editors who took the trouble to have it prepared deserve credit. first article, that of Moshe Rosman, has a rather misleading title. title is The History of Jewish Women in Early Modern Poland: An Assessment, but what it really gives the reader is two fine articles for the price of one. first part is devoted to a very close and critical analysis of three previously published studies dealing with East European Jewish Women after the early modern period-one of them my own. …

Introduction

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes 1. A different set of myths, perhaps even less rooted in the actual varieties of the East European Jewish and immigrant experience, obtains of course in Jewish diaspora communities. For the case of American Jewry's East European myths, see Steven Zipperstein Zipperstein, Steven J. 1999. Imagining Russian Jewry: Memory, History, Identity, Seattle: University of Washington Press. [Google Scholar], Imagining Russian Jewry, chap. 1. In Israel, arguably, such myths have been less total and more consistently disrupted by serious public interest and reflection on the actual, complex history of East European Jewry than their American Jewish counterpart. The most dramatic and lasting exception to this may be attitudes toward the Yiddish language and cultural expression, but even this seems to be changing. Two especially impressive recent examples of this change are the journal Davka: Eretz yidish ve-tarbutah and Shachar Pinsker's series of essays on “Batei kafeh sifrutiim” (literary coffee houses) in Eastern and Central Europe carried serially in the Literature and Culture supplement to Ha'aretz, April–May 2008. 2. Among the senior scholars who have long made such analysis a central part of their research agenda, we might include Israel Bartal, Hamutal Bar-Yosef, Dan Miron, Anita Shapira, and the late Jonathan Frankel. The recent revisionist work of Gur Alroey on the Second Aliyah should also be noted. Alroey Alroey, Gur. 2004. Imigrantim: Ha-hagirah ha-yehudit le-Eretz-Yisrael be-reshit ha-me'ah ha-esrim, Jerusalem: Yad Itzhak Ben-Zvi. (Immigrants: Jewish immigration to Palestine in the early twentieth century) [Google Scholar], Imigrantim. 3. This is paralleled by the larger disembedding of Israel studies from Jewish history; cf. Penslar Penslar, Derek. 2007. “Is Israel a Jewish State?”. In Israel in History: The Jewish State in Comparative Perspective, New York: Routledge. [Google Scholar], “Is Israel a Jewish State?” Here, it should be noted that those scholars who have continued to interrogate the relationship between East European Jewish and Israeli experience have sometimes come to similar conclusions about the primacy of the local. This can be seen in pivotal works like Jonathan Frankel Frankel, Jonathan. 1981. Prophecy and Politics: Socialism, Nationalism, and the Russian Jews, 1862–1917, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]'s monographic chapter in Prophecy and Politics on the travails and transformation of Russian socialist-Zionist ideology in Palestine 1904–1914, Anita Shapira Shapira, Anita. 1992. Herev ha-yonah: Ha-tziyonut veha-koah, 1881–1948, Tel Aviv: Am Oved. Translated as Land and Power: The Zionist Resort to Force. Trans. William Templer. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992 [Google Scholar]'s analysis of changing Yishuv attitudes toward the use of force and the inevitability of armed confrontation between Jews and Arabs in Herev ha-yonah (in English, Land and Power), and Dan Miron Miron, Dan. 1987. “Mi-yotzrim u-vonim le-vnei bli bayit”. In (From creators and builders to homeless children). In idem, Im lo tihiyeh Yerushalayim: Masot al ha-sifrut ha-ivrit be-heksher tarbuti-politi, Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad. (If there should be no Jerusalem: Essays on Hebrew literature in cultural-political context) [Google Scholar]'s packed examination of the changing status of the Hebrew writer in relation to Zionist politics in Russia and the Yishuv in “Mi-yotzrim u-vonim li-vnei bli bayit.” 4. This special issue stems from a conference on “East European Jewish Modernity: Legacies, Dialogues, Comparisons,” held on 5–6 June 2006, under the auspices of the Nevzlin Research Program in Contemporary Jewish Civilization at the Chaim Weizmann Institute for the Study of Zionism and Israel, Tel Aviv University. Organized by Anita Shapira, Derek Penslar, Meir Chazan, and myself, the conference brought together specialists in many facets of East European Jewish history with scholars of Jewish history in Palestine and Israel. Four of the five articles that follow grew out of conference presentations; the article by Marcos Silber was written especially for this volume. Other participants included Hamutal Bar-Yosef, Jonathan Dekel-Chen, Chana Kronfeld, Olga Litvak, Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern, Scott Ury, Seth Wolitz and myself, with responses provided by Daniel Gutwein, Ezra Mendelsohn, Penslar, and Shapira.