Jewish Writers Research Articles

Nationalism and Monolingualism: the “Language Wars” and the Resurgence of Israeli Multilingualism

With the establishment of a Jewish settlement in Palestine in the early 20th century, and a Hebrew culture with it, furious debates arose among Jewish writers about the future of Jewish literary multilingualism. Until this period, the idea that Jewish monolingualism was a preferred mode of cultural existence or that a writer would have to choose between the two primary languages of European Jewish cultural production was a relatively new one. Polylingualism had been characteristic of Jewish culture and literary production for millennia. But in modernity, Jewish nationalist movements, particularly Zionism, demanded a monolingual Jewish culture united around one language. Nonetheless, polylingual Jewish culture has persisted, and despite the state of Israel’s insistence on Hebrew as the national language, Israeli multilingualism has surged in recent years. This article surveys a number of recent developments in translingual, transcultural, and transnational Israeli literary and cultural forms

Matthias Henze. Mind the Gap: How the Jewish Writings between the Old and New Testament Help Us Understand Jesus

No abstract is available.

Anthropology and New Testament Theology

Anthropology and New Testament Theology

Images of women in the murals of Islamic society in the era of globalization challenges (for example, images of street art of Istanbul)

The study is devoted to the interpretation of the image of women in the modern murals of cities in Muslim countries. Taking into account the globalization processes, trends in the art of murals in Turkey are considered, the capital of which is located simultaneously on two continents — in Europe and Asia. Based on the multicultural space of the capital of the marked state, a city where over 15 million people currently live permanently, and together with numerous tourists from different parts of the world, up to 17 million, the de-velopment of the newest artistic landmarks here seems to be parallel in several planes.The iconography of the images of women, proposed in Istanbul by artists from Chile (under the pseudo ІNTI), is comprehended by the mural «Resistencia» on Rasimpasha Mahallesi Street in Macyt Еrbudak Sokak; Russia (Tatarstan) under the pseudo Qbic — Mural «Miracle»; USA (artists Levi Ponce and Kristi Sapndoval) — mural «Man» («Being a man») based on the Hagia Sophia in Constantinople. A comparative analysis of their works was carried out with the masterpieces of contemporary English artist Jonathan Darby in Jordan (mural «Force» in the village of Kharjah), American Jewish writer Shepard Feyri (fresco depicting a Muslim woman, Cincinnati, USA) and Afghan spray art artist Hassani Shamcia (a fragment of an unnamed mural in Kabul with a provisional depiction of a woman without a veil).The specificity of the modern iconography of the image of women from Islamic society by artists of different ethnic and religious affiliation, which has developed precisely in urban art, has been clarified. The modern canons are outlined in their image without a face; with a face of flower petals, or a rose-shaped chairperson and in a hijab or veil; with a conditional face and closed eyes in the al-amira without burqa; with the present upper part of the face with the eyes open in the veil (with the closed lower part of the face).

Jacobson’s Celebration of Comedy in Kalooki Nights

Most scholars agree that Jewish humour is a relatively modern phenomenon born out of the unique Jewish experience of exile, segregation and persecution. Howard Jacobson is a British Jewish writer who has always praised comedy and paid special attention to Jewish comic sensibility. He has emphasised the coping and liberating function that humour has exercised for the Jews, allowing them to transcend the terrible circumstances of their lives. Jacobson does not believe that humour removes pain, but that it contributes an emotional factor that makes the pain more bearable by affirming and celebrating life. He is convinced that there is something particularly Jewish about the way in which he fuses comedy and tragedy in his novels, since Jews have always joked in the face of affliction. Jacobson also stresses how from the very beginning the novel has been defined by its subversive and God-defying character. After explaining Jacobson’s main ideas on comedy and how they are shared by scholars who have examined the characteristic features of Jewish humour, I will analyse how they are reproduced by the narrator in Kalooki Nights (2006).

Tale Of A Pariah: Zoroastrian Worldview In Cyrus Mistry’s Chronicle Of A Corpse Bearer

The contribution of Parsee writers to the corpus of postcolonial discourse is singular. They are akin to the Jewish writers like Saul Bellow and Bernard Malamud who sought to express their ethnic identity in artistic terms. The Zoroastrian worldview, which is life – affirming, provides sustenance to the Parsee community. The Parsee system of the disposal of the dead is unique. This paper attempts to study Cyrus Mistry`s novel Chronicle of a Corpse Bearer which deals with the trauma of a nussesalar, a corpse bearer. Phiroze, the centre of consciousness represents the khandhias, the ostracized among the marginalized Parsee community. His tale gives us a peep into the abysmal and turbulent psyche of the khandhias. It is the account of a pariah who rejects the Zoroastrian worldview and leads a life of his volition.

New Vistas on Early Judaism and Christianity: From Enoch to Montréal and Back

New Vistas on Early Judaism and Christianity: From Enoch to Montréal and Back

Writing the Displaced Person: H. G. Adler’s Poetics of Exile

This article discusses the work of the Prague Jewish writer H. G. (Hans Günther) Adler (1910–1988) as an important contribution to the poetics of German-Jewish displacement in the wake of World War II. It demonstrates the significance of Adler’s early response to questions of refugee status, displacement and human rights in literature. The article argues that Adler’s work can be seen as providing in part a response to the question raised by Hannah Arendt, Joseph Slaughter and other recent theorists of literature and human rights: what poetic form is adequate to give literary expression to the mass displacements of the late twentieth and early twenty-first century? Adler’s short story ‘Note of a Displaced Person’ and his lengthy novel The Wall demonstrate the role that modernist poetics of fragmentation, in particular the legacy of Kafka, can have in bearing witness to this experience. They also demonstrate that the space of exile and displacement provides Adler with a vantage point from which to comment on the rights catastrophe of the twentieth century. Adler’s work develops a theological understanding of the crisis of displacement, a crisis that can only be resolved by restoring a relation between the divine and the human.

Portrayal Of Holocaust Andalienation In The Light Of Trauma In Elie Wiesel’s Trilogynight, Day, Dawn

The Holocaust was the systematic, bureaucratic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of six million Jews by the Nazi regime and its collaborators. Holocaust is a word of Greek origin meaning "sacrifice by fire."All the books of Elie Wiesel deal with his struggle to handle the holocaust and to find God after the horror. As a survivor of holocaust Wiesel describes his own experiences, but words are not enough to explain his struggles. His books give us a clear picture of concentration camps and brutality of alienation created by Nazis.He is an American- Romanian Jewish writer who always raised his voice for the voiceless Jews.Night is the first book in the trilogy- Night, Dawn and Day which reflects Wiesel’s state of mind during and after holocaust.

Hacia una Filosofía de la Educación con Emmanuel Levinas

The purpose of this article is to develop elements for a philosophy of education based on Emmanuel Levinas’ thinking and his experience as director of the Ecole Normale Israelite Orientale (ENIO). To that aim, some of his reports about this organisation are examined and the parallelisms between them and his philosophical and Jewish writings are emphasised. In this way, it is shown how his dedication to education imbues Totality and Infinity and arguments are introduced about how the concepts used in this book are easier to understand if they are related with his pedagogical experience. Finally, with this rereading mediated by his biography, ideas which normally are not highlighted in the Levinas’ reception become evident, like the significance of criticism, the inexhaustibility of teaching and the appreciation of the teacher. Therewith, it’s explicitly stated that Levinas’ ethical proposal can become fruitful when thinking about the phenomenon of education and that his reflections can be a point of departure for developing a philosophy of education consistent with his thinking.

Thorns into Gold: Contemporary Jewish American Responses to Antisemitism in Traditional Fairy Tales

Abstract This essay considers the responses of Jewish writers to the antisemitic fairy tale “The Jew in the Thornbush,” as well as to readings that locate antisemitism in “Rumpelstiltskin,” by analyzing four contemporary stories by Jewish writers Naomi Novik, Veronica Schanoes, and Jane Yolen. Jewish writers are able to destabilize the dominant paradigm of the Grimms’ fairy tales by demonstrating its cultural specificity. I argue that the tension that is thereby generated enacts the ambiguity characteristic of American Jewish identities, using the impetus of exclusion to fashion a response that casts the genre itself in a new light.

The Sound of the Unsayable: Jewish Secular Culture in Arnold Schönberg and Aharon Appelfeld

This article examines the use of central elements of the Jewish religious repertoire and transcendental realm, such as prophecy or revelation, within the aesthetic secular realm of musical avant-garde and modern Hebrew literature. By focusing on two case studies, I attempt to shed new light on the question of Jewish secular culture. Arnold Schoenberg (1874–1951), an Austrian Jewish composer, was born into an assimilated Viennese family and converted to Protestantism before returning to Judaism in the 1930s while escaping to the United States. Aharon Appelfeld (1932–2018), an Israeli Jewish writer, was born in Czernowitz to assimilated German-speaking parents, survived the Holocaust and emigrated to Israel in 1946. My claim is that in their works both composer and author testify to traumatic experiences that avoid verbal representation by: (1) subverting and transgressing conventional aesthetic means and (2) alluding to sacred tropes and theological concepts. In exploring Schoenberg’s opera Moses und Aron and Appelfeld’s Journey into Winter among others, this article shows how the transcendent sphere returns within the musical and poetic avant-garde (musical prose, 12-tone composition, prose poem, non-semantic or semiotic fiction) as a “sound” of old traditions that can only be heard through the voices of a new Jewish culture.

La comunicación profética en La morada en el tiempo de Esther Seligson

Of the numerous traditions that the Mexican writer Esther Seligsonadapts in La morada en el tiempo (1981), which spans Jewish history fromthe creation to the second part of the twentieth century, the present analysisfocuses on prophetic communication. This study puts forward a readingthat shows that many passages in Morada could be considered examples ofprophetic discourse. Not only does Morada include modified versions of theprophets’ stories, the central speaker also constitutes an updated figure ofthe prophet. At the same time, the speaker examines the meaning of silencein human-divine communications.Keywords: poetic prose, Esther Seligson, prophetic literature, Mexicanliterature, Spanish American Jewish writers

Françoise Mirguet. An Early History of Compassion: Emotion and Imagination in Hellenistic Judaism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017. 271 pp.

Reviewed by: An Early History of Compassion: Emotion and Imagination in Hellenistic Judaism by Françoise Mirguet R. Gillian Glass Françoise Mirguet. An Early History of Compassion: Emotion and Imagination in Hellenistic Judaism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017. 271 pp. doi:10.1017/S0364009419000151 In her second book, An Early History of Compassion, Françoise Mirguet analyzes the discourse of pity, compassion, and sympathy in Hellenic Jewish writings and demonstrates the roles these emotions play in the Jewish community's hybrid identity and cultural imagination. In this publication, Mirguet continues her work on emotions in ancient Jewish literature and contributes to the growing corpus of academic publications on the sentiments in antiquity. The book begins with an introduction that outlines the aims of the project, and the different methods and frameworks employed by the author. Mirguet draws on social scientific and postcolonial approaches, as well as on the fields of classics and religious studies. The first half of chapter 1, "Between Power and [End Page 208] Vulnerability," breaks down the three main concepts for analysis—pity (oiktos and eleos), sympathy (sumpatheia), and compassion (terms derived from splagchna, "inner organs")—contextualizing the emotions of Jewish literature within the larger framework of classical literature. This chapter goes on to provide several key examples from Josephus, the Testament of Zebulun, and Philo to show how pity and compassion result from and highlight a power imbalance or hierarchy. This tension "between power and vulnerability" is a central theme of the book, and a key concept in the subsequent chapters. In chapter 2, "Found in Translation," Mirguet argues that the role of pity and compassion in Judeo-Hellenistic literature is a product of translation, and she traces its purpose and development from the Pentateuch, where pity occupies an affective, but not emotive plane, into Greek Scriptures, where it develops into an emotion and virtue. Chapter 3, "Within the Fabric of Society," returns to the idea of relational imbalance presented in the first chapter, but broadens the discussion to include Sirach, Tobit, Job, and 4 Maccabees, and analyzes how a discourse of pity addresses the precariousness of social status and the risks inherent in pitying someone, as well as how it contributes to gender construction and raises anxieties of political subjugation. The dynamics of particularism and universalism come out in chapter 4, "Bonds in Flux," in which Mirguet examines emotions in Tobit, the Sentences of Pseudo-Phocylides, the Letter of Aristeas, Philo, and the Sibylline Oracles, revealing the ways in which compassion plays into the representation of both self and other in the Judeo-Hellenistic corpus. Chapter 5, "In Dialogue with the Empire," juxtaposes the Judeo-Hellenistic concepts of pity and compassion to their Greek and Roman counterparts, both contextualizing their use and showing influences of Roman thought on Jewish writing, paying particular attention to Stoic philosophy. The conclusion summarizes the different parts of the book nicely, and draws larger inferences about pity and compassion as means of communicating vulnerability and authority, and constructing the self and the other, both within a community and in relation to the outside world, in Judeo-Hellenistic literature. An Early History of Compassion arrives as the history of emotions is expanding as a discipline, and interdisciplinary approaches to Hellenic Jewish texts are being championed. It therefore fits in well with several other works published in the past two decades.1 Moreover, drawing on recent approaches to Hellenistic and early Roman Jewish writings, Mirguet contributes to our understanding of Hellenic Jewish writings as a part of the Greco-Roman corpus, even though it is its own bounded corpus. In other words, the author approaches Hellenic Jewish writings as a coherent group of texts that can be read together, and on their own, across genres, but also considers several texts as examples to be compared against their Greek and Roman counterparts. [End Page 209] The strengths and weaknesses of any given research are often two sides of the same coin. Mirguet has mastery of the Judeo-Hellenic corpus and deftly brings in classical literature where pertinent, innovates in her literary method and analysis, and draws nuanced conclusions. She clearly states her aims and approach, sprinkling methodology throughout the chapters as necessary...

Jay Geller. Bestiarium Judaicum: Unnatural Histories of the Jews. New York: Fordham University Press, 2018. ix + 404 pp.

Reviewed by: Bestiarium Judaicum: Unnatural Histories of the Jews by Jay Geller Ulrike Schneider Jay Geller. Bestiarium Judaicum: Unnatural Histories of the Jews. New York: Fordham University Press, 2018. ix + 404 pp. doi:10.1017/S0364009419000357 Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis, written in 1912 and first published in 1915 in René Schickele's journal Weiße Blätter, was not the only narrative that dealt with animal figures as protagonists. Readers of Kafka's work are familiar with Josephine the Singer, or the Mouse Folk; Jackals and Arabs; and the character Red Peter from A Report to an Academy. In addition to Kafka there were other German Jewish writers—from Heinrich Heine in the nineteenth century to the screenwriter and author Curt Siodmak, who escaped to the United States in 1933—who depicted anthropomorphized animals. Jay Geller interrogates the intentions of these representations in Bestiarium Judaicum: Unnatural Histories of the Jews. Focusing on the period from 1750 until the 1940s, Geller avoids a simplification of political and ideological questions. He is interested in the "development of such animal figures by Jewish-identified, pre-eminently Germanophone writers during the Era of the Jewish Question in order to inquire … about what may be going on when they are telling animal tales and composing animal poems" (5). On the one hand, he discusses different representations of animal figures and their humanization as a result of social and political developments. On the other hand, he points out the history of anti-Judaism and antisemitism in the German states from the Middle Ages and the association of Jews with animals and animality in Christian and later racist writings. His work discusses well-known and widely explored authors such as Heine and Kafka; specific studies by Sigmund Freud, including The Rat Man and The Wolf Man; prose texts by Gertrud Kolmar, Felix Salten, and Max Brod; and Maus by Art Spiegelman. However, the emphasis is on the mentioned "major" German Jewish authors. Geller's book is composed of an introduction, eight chapters, and an afterword. His notes function partly as a commentary elucidating the historical and social backgrounds of the different periods. Most of these chapters derive from lectures, as becomes noticeable with some repetitions in the analysis of Freud and Heine. The following detailed description of the first chapter should clarify the whole structure of the book. The chapter "'O Beastly Jews': A Brief History of an (Un) Natural History" gives an overview of the identification of Jews with images of nonhuman creatures and how the image of "the Jew" and "the Jew-Animal" had developed over the centuries. The depiction of Christian—and later European, especially German—imagination of Jews and pigs, wolves, dogs, apes, or goats demonstrates the formation of stereotypes, starting with the Christian polemical bestiaries of the Middle Ages. Geller incorporates illustrations that he uses to demonstrate the broad impact of antisemitism in "humorous" postcards, journals, or pamphlets since the nineteenth century. Among these images is the 1899 Museé des Horreurs from France, which caricatured Alfred Dreyfus and the Jews and non-Jews who [End Page 252] supported him. By analyzing the illustrations, Geller emphasizes that it is not only the question "of analogizing or identifying Jews with animals per se, but rather with animals that threaten the human/animal hierarchical opposition that helped sustain the social order" (44). Geller offers a complementary and extended perspective on sources about medieval Jewry. In his discussion of human-animal hybrids, the author compares several sources and confronts Christian practices with Jewish traditions where animals—in contrast to the Christian interpretation—"did not specifically represent ethnic or other such groups" (45). Most of the chapters (2 until 7) include analyses of prose texts, poems, and tales by Heine and Kafka. Geller ties his selected corpus together by pointing out processes of publication, discourses of social and political developments, discussions about Jewish identity, and attributions by the non-Jewish majority. Geller uses the example of Heine's poems, as well as some of his Travel Pictures that sketched out animal figures, to critically demonstrate both the project of Emancipation and inner-Jewish discussions on the one hand, and German scholars' defamation of Jewish writers and...

Borrowed Voices: Writing and Racial Ventriloquism in the Jewish American Imagination

Borrowed Voices: Writing and Racial Ventriloquism in the Jewish American Imagination

Women of Valor: Orthodox Jewish Troll Fighters, Crime Writers, and Rock Stars in Contemporary Literature and Culture. Karen E. H. Skinazi

Women of Valor: Orthodox Jewish Troll Fighters, Crime Writers, and Rock Stars in Contemporary Literature and Culture. Karen E. H. Skinazi

Bestiarium Judaicum: Unnatural Histories of the Jews by Jay Geller

Reviewed by: Bestiarium Judaicum: Unnatural Histories of the Jews by Jay Geller Ulrike Schneider Jay Geller. Bestiarium Judaicum: Unnatural Histories of the Jews. New York: Fordham University Press, 2018. ix + 404 pp. doi:10.1017/S0364009419000357 Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis, written in 1912 and first published in 1915 in René Schickele's journal Weiße Blätter, was not the only narrative that dealt with animal figures as protagonists. Readers of Kafka's work are familiar with Josephine the Singer, or the Mouse Folk; Jackals and Arabs; and the character Red Peter from A Report to an Academy. In addition to Kafka there were other German Jewish writers—from Heinrich Heine in the nineteenth century to the screenwriter and author Curt Siodmak, who escaped to the United States in 1933—who depicted anthropomorphized animals. Jay Geller interrogates the intentions of these representations in Bestiarium Judaicum: Unnatural Histories of the Jews. Focusing on the period from 1750 until the 1940s, Geller avoids a simplification of political and ideological questions. He is interested in the "development of such animal figures by Jewish-identified, pre-eminently Germanophone writers during the Era of the Jewish Question in order to inquire … about what may be going on when they are telling animal tales and composing animal poems" (5). On the one hand, he discusses different representations of animal figures and their humanization as a result of social and political developments. On the other hand, he points out the history of anti-Judaism and antisemitism in the German states from the Middle Ages and the association of Jews with animals and animality in Christian and later racist writings. His work discusses well-known and widely explored authors such as Heine and Kafka; specific studies by Sigmund Freud, including The Rat Man and The Wolf Man; prose texts by Gertrud Kolmar, Felix Salten, and Max Brod; and Maus by Art Spiegelman. However, the emphasis is on the mentioned "major" German Jewish authors. Geller's book is composed of an introduction, eight chapters, and an afterword. His notes function partly as a commentary elucidating the historical and social backgrounds of the different periods. Most of these chapters derive from lectures, as becomes noticeable with some repetitions in the analysis of Freud and Heine. The following detailed description of the first chapter should clarify the whole structure of the book. The chapter "'O Beastly Jews': A Brief History of an (Un) Natural History" gives an overview of the identification of Jews with images of nonhuman creatures and how the image of "the Jew" and "the Jew-Animal" had developed over the centuries. The depiction of Christian—and later European, especially German—imagination of Jews and pigs, wolves, dogs, apes, or goats demonstrates the formation of stereotypes, starting with the Christian polemical bestiaries of the Middle Ages. Geller incorporates illustrations that he uses to demonstrate the broad impact of antisemitism in "humorous" postcards, journals, or pamphlets since the nineteenth century. Among these images is the 1899 Museé des Horreurs from France, which caricatured Alfred Dreyfus and the Jews and non-Jews who [End Page 252] supported him. By analyzing the illustrations, Geller emphasizes that it is not only the question "of analogizing or identifying Jews with animals per se, but rather with animals that threaten the human/animal hierarchical opposition that helped sustain the social order" (44). Geller offers a complementary and extended perspective on sources about medieval Jewry. In his discussion of human-animal hybrids, the author compares several sources and confronts Christian practices with Jewish traditions where animals—in contrast to the Christian interpretation—"did not specifically represent ethnic or other such groups" (45). Most of the chapters (2 until 7) include analyses of prose texts, poems, and tales by Heine and Kafka. Geller ties his selected corpus together by pointing out processes of publication, discourses of social and political developments, discussions about Jewish identity, and attributions by the non-Jewish majority. Geller uses the example of Heine's poems, as well as some of his Travel Pictures that sketched out animal figures, to critically demonstrate both the project of Emancipation and inner-Jewish discussions on the one hand, and German scholars' defamation of Jewish writers and...

Jewish Physicians in Late Medieval Ashkenaz

Summary Medical writings written by Jews in late medieval Western and Central Europe demonstrate that although Jews were excluded from universities, the medical world outside of the universities was open to them. Jewish medical writers relied on Latin and vernacular sources and often they wrote in German. Emphasising the importance of knowledge of authoritative books, they attempted to secure their social standing by demonstrating that they confirmed to the generally accepted social norm that required physicians and surgeons to rely on learned medicine. Nevertheless, only a few Jewish medical practitioners wrote books.

ІСТОРИКО-КУЛЬТУРНЕ ЗНАЧЕННЯ НАДГРОБКІВ ЄВРЕЙСЬКОГО ЦВИНТАРЯ М. ГЛУХОВА

In 2018 the author of this article carried out field works at the Jewish cemetery of Glukhov town which consisted of searching of the remained gravestones, including basis fragments and also the whole monuments or their parts which went deeply to the ground and grassed. Cleaning and photofixing of all found objects were made. On the basis of these field works, the author of the article revealed 1040 objects that are in varying degrees of preservation. From them 438 objects are completely preserved gravestoness, which are among the historical burials and date from the beginning of the XIX century - 1930 year. Based on a number of works on the history of Glukhov town and the local Jewish community, as well as Jewish necropolis, ethnography, linguistics and epigraphy, the author of the article conducted (based on general scientific methods and a special method - identification) a comprehensive study of the Jewish cemetery of Glukhov and its gravestones as objects of cultural heritage. The purpose of this publication is to present the results of this research. Absolutely all these monuments of Glukhow Jewish cemetery can serve as a source of genealogical information and are of interest to genealogical researchers and descendants searching for the graves of their ancestors, and also, due to their concentration, can serve as invaluable material for various studies in the field of necropolis, socio-demographic and sanitary - municipal history. At the same time, the epitaphs of the surviving ancient Jewish gravstones are the specific literary phenomenon, occupying an intermediate position between traditional rabbinic and folk literature and culture. During this research, 2 monuments which epitaphs have literary value were revealed. These are the gravestones of the Jewish writer, publicist and the teacher Lazar Davidovich Tsveyfel and the merchant of the 2nd guild, the public official of Glukhov City Council, the juror of Glukhov district Zalman Ariev Esmansky. In addition, the gravestone inscriptions of these monuments have value in terms of the totality of the personalities of the deceased and the epitaphs on their gravestones. The carved decor of the gravestones of Glukhov Jewish cemetery is an example of original folk decorative and applied art, it has a peculiar style, figurative language and has artistic value. Of the total number of tombstones of Glukhov Jewish cemetery, 46 steles have ornaments that are distinguished by a complex, time-consuming development of carving and artistic taste.These monuments are of interest for various art criticism studies and have significance as exhibits demonstrating the most interesting elements of the art of decorative carving of gravestones, its connection with the culture and religion of the Jewish people and the influence of local factors on this type of decorative and applied art. As a historical source, the gravestones of Glukhov Jewish cemetery are confirmed by the well-known historical events of that time - the Jewish riots in Glukhov and the influx of refugees in the period 1914-1916. Of particular interest for researches are data on a concrete personnel. At the Jewish cemetery of Glukhov town, many prominent personalities who made a great contribution to the culture, economy and other spheres of the town’s life are buried. Among them are the Jewish writer, publicist and teacher Lazar Davidovich Tsveyfel, Abram Isaakovich Rusakov - the grandfather of the outstanding Soviet painter and graphic artist Alexander Isaakovich Rusakov and many others.At the time of the end of this research, at least 30 gravestones, due to the historical and cultural significance of the persons buried under them, are of interest to researchers of regional history and can be used for various genealogical, local history and historical studies, as well as in the development and conduct of lecture and sexursion programs on the Jewish places of Glukhov town and specifically on the Jewish cemetery. From the total number of surviving ancient gravestones, a group of monuments which are of interest were identified by one or by a set of criteria. Three types of criteria were taken into account: the value of an epitaph as a historical source or literary phenomenon; art value of carved decor; historical or cultural significance of buried. According to the results of the study, 76 gravestones were included in this group. The article provides a list of gravestones that can be fully considered as objects of cultural heritage and should take the appropriate place in the memorial protection activities of Ukraine.