Eastern Russia, September 2011 Rostov-on-Don is currently a large metropolis in Central Russia. This was the first time I had gone so deep into Russia. The city is pretty, with big boulevards, wide sidewalks, and intense traffic. In late September, a warm wind still blows over the Azov Sea. On the day of our arrival,…
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. The American singer Paul Robeson is mostly remembered today for his hauntingly beautiful bass voice, his groundbreaking career as an actor and as his political activism and involvement in the Communist party. Often forgotten is his mixed and tragic role in Yiddish literary history. Besides his musical…
13-year-old Zoya Cherkassky couldn’t look away from the window of her apartment in Kiev. The winter of 1990 was snowy and cold, yet even so, people were waiting in a bread line that stretched out the door of the shop across the street. “It was weird, because there were lines during that period, but not…
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. The film “Finding Babel” portrays theater professor Andrei Malaev-Babel’s journey across the former USSR seeking traces of his grandfather, Russian-Jewish author Isaac Babel. The film was recently released on Vimeo in English-, Russian- and Ukrainian-language versions. In the English version of the film, Isaac Babel’s quotes are…
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. I love attending academic conferences. As I sit there, taking notes, I feel like I’m back in college, eagerly soaking up facts and analyses provided by the invited scholars. It’s also an opportunity to chat with fellow participants who happen to share my interests. Sometimes, though, a…
A new Jewish religious school opened today in the city of Kazan, the capital of the Republic of Tatarstan — Russia’s largest Muslim republic. The November 8 opening of school, a branch of Chabad’s Yeshiva Tomchei Temimim, was lauded as a “major breakthrough” for Kazan’s Jewish community by the website Chabad.org. The inauguration was timed…
Defying the KGB agents milling around, thousands of Jews tried to get into the great hall of the synagogue
In the new normal of 2017, in which far-right and far-left militants clash openly in America’s public square, a contentious 20th century debate is newly relevant: is the extreme left as dangerous and repugnant as the extreme right? Should the hammer and sickle be as offensive as the swastika? Was Communism as evil as Nazism…
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