This essay is part of our ongoing series, Outside the Bubble: Class and Inequality in the Jewish Community. It explores the class divides in Jewish communities of all denominations, and the financial struggles belonging to these communities can incur. Please email your thoughts and essays to batya@forward.com. As I look ahead to the New Year,…
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. In the center of Moscow stands the historic Choral Synagogue – a beautiful yellow-white Neoclassical structure, the most famous shul in the Russian capital. The building, which now belongs to the Lithuanian Jewish community and its “Federation of Jewish Communities of Russia,” was built in 1891 by…
Ever since the days of Isaac Babel, Vasily Grossman and Ilya Ehrenburg, Russia’s Jewish journalists and commentators have been at the forefront of those fearlessly speaking truth to power. Today’s Russian media is swarming with misinformation, or “fake news” in American terms — ‘news’ stories that are farmed and placed by government propagandists across languages….
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. Three Cities of Yiddish: St. Petersburg—Warsaw—Moscow. Edited by Gennady Estraikh and Mikhail Krutikov. Oxford: Legenda, 2017, 201 pages The British book series “Studies in Yiddish,” published by Legenda (and known among academics as “the Legenda series”), is in my estimation the most important venue for contemporary research…
Gary Cherkassky’s grandmother, who is 80 years old, isn’t on Facebook or Instagram. She doesn’t even have a smartphone. But if you are a Russian Jew, chances are you’ve probably heard what she has to say somewhere on the internet. That’s because she is the inspiration behind Baba Fira (“baba” is short for babushka, which…
My 80-year-old Russian Jewish grandmother did not vote for Donald Trump. She lives in Massachusetts, so it didn’t make much of a difference in the election’s outcome. Qualitatively, however, her vote mattered. Having started out in Trump’s corner, like the overwhelming majority of ex-Soviet Jews, particularly older ones, she allowed herself to be persuaded by…
A Russian-born Israeli woman who was 2 days old when World War II broke out was crowned Miss Holocaust Survivor. Anna Grinis, 75, was crowned Sunday at the fifth annual pageant in Haifa for women who survived the Holocaust and the war. Fourteen finalists competed for the crown, according to reports; some 300 women had…
As a Jewish immigrant from the Former Soviet Union whose family came to the United States in 1980, I’ve been dismayed to see so many liberals looking down their noses at Russian Jews who support Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump. Writing in the Forward, Margarita Gokun Silver recently asked, “How Can Russian Jews Be So…
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