Imagining Russian Jewry: Memory, History, Identity

by Steven J. Zipperstein

Book Overview

This subtle, unusual book explores the many, often overlapping ways in which the Russian Jewish past has been remembered in history, in literature, and in popular culture. Drawing on a wide range of sources--including novels, plays, and archival material--Imagining Russian Jewry is a reflection on reading, collective memory, and the often uneasy, and also uncomfortably intimate, relationships that exist between seemingly incompatible ways...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0295977906
• ISBN13: 9780295977904
• Release Date: November 2013
• Publisher: University of Washington Press
• Length: 152 Pages
• Weight: 0.45 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 5.5" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

brilliant and powerfully evocative

In these lectures the author opens a whole universe which is unknown to most comtemporary readers. Fascinating discussion of how we recapture the past - is it possible, for example, to arrive at a vision of rural stetl life that is not colored or distorted by the holocaust that followed? The Jewish secular life of Odessa and the institution of the Heder are poignantly depicted. Not only are the intellectual rewards considerable but the prose is quite wonderful. I recommend this book highly.

Title misleading, should be for limited audience.

This was a really good book and well worth reading. However, I do not think the book is for everyone, as I think you need to already have some understanding of Russian Jewish life. You may be misled by the title, as I was. I thought the author would describe the daily life of the Russian Jew, how he lived, what he thought about, what his environment looked like. This he did not do at all. Instead he picked four topics and compared how time, distance or opinion may have colored the historical event. He cites many examples from newspapers, books, movies, etc. One really good example is how American Jewry has romanticized the Cheder. My mother even has a picture hanging on the living room wall of a boy getting his ear tweaked (hard!) by the Melamed. The author did a very good job of explaining how fifty years later we could come to feeling nostalgic over events such as these.

This is one of the best books I have read!

My stupid teenage cousin got on my computer while I was in the bathroom (I was half finished reviewing this book)and he changed my review and sent it to you. He is an idiot. I don't know what he said, but since he was mad at me about something else, I'm sure it was stupid. I loved this book (as he well knows), and HE has not read it. He reads comic books. Please don't publish the review he sent you. It is a fake. I give the book five stars.