Observation ·
Isaac Babel’s Odessa Tricksters
By Gary Saul MorsonThe great Jewish writer evoked a city—now under threat from Russia's armies—with a character of its own that has entered into folklore, literature, and the popular imagination.
East European Jewry
Latest Mosaic Content for East European Jewry
Observation ·
The World Knows It as Kiev or Kyiv. To Jews, It’s Yehupetz.
By PhilologosThe name is comical and magical at once, designating a city of broad boulevards and fancy shop windows known to Sholem Aleichem's Tevye the dairyman and others.
Observation ·
Survival; or, How My Family Beat the Odds in 1940
By Ruth R. WisseIt wasn't easy for an entire Jewish family to escape Eastern Europe in the mid-20th century. Ruth Wisse's did.
Observation ·
A Romanian Jew’s Private Judgment of a World Bent on Condemning Him
By Ruth R. WisseIn brilliantly charting the psychological effects of anti-Semitism on both its perpetrators and its victims, a newly translated 1934 novel outdoes even such master analysts as Freud and Proust.
Observation ·
Szymon Laks’s Music of Another World
By Simon WynbergA Polish-Jewish composer who survived Auschwitz as the camp's musical conductor wrote in an elegant style out of step with his times. Now the times are coming around.
Response ·
Where Would Russia’s Jews Go?
By Konstanty GebertThe situation for Jews in Russia is far from ideal. But where is it ideal?
Observation ·
The Most Tragic Jewish Writer of Modern Times
By Hillel HalkinWhy did the great Micha Yosef Berdichevsky, who called on Jews to take personal responsibility for Zionism, never settle in or even visit Palestine?
Monthly Essay ·
Where Is the Jews’ Homeland?
By Hillel HalkinElsewhere than Zion, said the greatest Hebrew poet of the 19th century—until he changed his mind, paving the way for others.
Observation ·
Nothing Like It in 3,000 Years of Jewish Literature
By Hillel HalkinThe second Hebrew novelist was the first to imagine the pageantry and passion of life in ancient Israel—and thereby excited the dreams of emergent Zionists.
Observation ·
Sex, Magic, Bigotry, Corruption—and the First Hebrew Novel
By Hillel HalkinIn 1819, Joseph Perl published Hebrew literature's first novel. A riotous satire of the ḥasidic movement, it remains largely and unjustly forgotten.
