Description
Book SynopsisHow was the Jewish tradition reinvented in Russian-Jewish literature after a long period of assimilation, the Holocaust, and decades of Communism? The process of reinventing the tradition began in the counter-culture of Jewish dissidents, in the midst of the late-Soviet underground of the 1960-1970s, and it continues to the present day. In this period, Jewish literature addresses the reader of the ‘post-human’ epoch, when the knowledge about traditional Jewry and Judaism is received not from the family members or the collective environment, but rather from books, paintings, museums and popular culture.
Klavdia Smola explores how contemporary Russian-Jewish literature turns to the traditions of Jewish writing, from biblical Judaism to early-Soviet (anti-)Zionist novels, and how it ‘re-writes’ Haskalah satire, Hassidic Midrash or Yiddish travelogues.
Trade Review“The reader, thanks to the author’s deep dive into the literary works she brings forward to make her case, will come away from this book with a recognition and appreciation of the work of a number of well-regarded (although not widely known) authors, whether resident in Russia, Israel, the US or elsewhere, concerned with Jewish identity as shaped and perceived through Soviet and Russian experience. … Reinventing Tradition is a distinguished contribution to the understanding of this revitalization and rediscovery, looking to make the search by Soviet and Russian Jewish authors more widely known and a source of insight and wisdom to be brought near.”
— Mindy C. Reiser, AJL News & Reviews
“It is well known that a driving force for the formation of underground cultures in former republics of the USSR was the national revival. In her excellent monograph, Klavdia Smola, a prominent scholar of the Soviet nonconformism, focuses on underground literature born by Jewish national revival—a decentralized process that engaged Jews from all republics and regions of the Soviet Union. She meticulously reconstructs a cultural dimension of the political movement for Jewish immigration from the USSR and through the analysis of Russophone Jewish underground literature, traces the development of its main myths and discourses, from their emergence in the 1960s prose of exodus to their ironic deconstructions in postmodernist writings of the 1980s-90s and essentialization in neo-Zionist narratives in the 2000s. This book will be invaluable not only for students of Jewish cultural history but also in courses on national revival in the late Soviet Union and on Russophone literature as a growing new field of studies. Klavdia Smola’s book is pioneering in all these directions.”
— Mark Lipovetsky, Columbia University
“Klavdia Smola’s superbly researched and deeply illuminating book is a must have for anyone interested in the pathways of Jewish creativity in Russian during the late Soviet and post-Soviet epochs. Especially noteworthy are Smola’s intricate readings of the little known writers who were part of the underground scene in the Soviet Union and later immigrated to Israel. With its breadth of the material covered and innovative theoretical approaches, Smola’s volume makes an invaluable contribution to the study of Russian Jewish literature and culture.”
— Marat Grinberg, Professor of Russian and Humanities, Reed College, Author of The Soviet Jewish Bookshelf: Jewish Culture and Identity between the Lines
“The course of Russian-Jewish literature never did run smooth: not when most Russian-speaking Jews were forced by the Tsars to live within the Pale of Settlement; not under Lenin, Stalin, Khrushchev et al.; not after the collapse of the Soviet Empire—how much less so with the successive waves of mass Jewish emigration to Israel, Germany, and North America. Only an expert cartographer like Klavdia Smola, therefore, could see what no one else has seen: that it was through prose fiction and storytelling that three generations of Russian-Jewish writers have constructed their own ‘bridge of longing’ across the historical abyss. As this densely argued book demonstrates, the story doesn’t end with those who experienced corporate Jewish life first-hand. Rather, through all the tricks of the literary trade and by drawing creatively from a century of modern Yiddish writing, they succeeded in fashioning a complex new identity and a new Jewish mythology.”
— David G. Roskies, Emeritus Professor of Yiddish Literature and Culture, the Jewish Theological Seminary
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments
Introduction
Tradition and Innovation in Judaism—Text and Commentary
Semantics of the Posthuman Era: The (Re)Invention of Jewishness
Semiotic Context
Cultural-Historical Context
Poetics of (Anti-)Imperial (Anti-)Assimilation
Research Approaches
Research Trends and Research Deficits
State of the Art
Perspective and Boundaries of the Study
Above the Ground
Refocusing Jewish Studies
Literary History, Poetics, and Cultural Studies
Text Selection: Time and Geography
Russian Jewish Literature as a Bicultural Phenomenon
Jewish Dissent of the Late Soviet Era: Underground, Exodus, Literature
Soviet Jews: Collective Images and Myths
Jews as Translators: Literary Mimicry
Political Context and Literary Reflections of Jewish Counter-Culture: An Overview
Emigration, Literary Institutions, and Readers
Prose of Exodus
“The Excitement of Memory”: Efrem Baukh’s Jacob’s Ladder
The Martyrdom of Refusal: David Shrayer-Petrov’s Herbert and Nelli
Mysticism of the Exodus: Eli Liuksemburg
“The Third Temple”
The Tenth Hunger
Education of the New Jew: David Markish’s Preamble
Late Soviet Exodus Novels: Poetics and Message
Bipolar Models: The Zionist and the Socialist-Realist Novel
Axes of Nonconformist Jewish Literature
Iuz Aleshkovskii: “Carousel”
Grigorii Vol′dman: Sheremetyevo
Feliks Kandel′: The Gates of Our Exodus and Semen Lipkin: Pictures and Voices
Iakov Tsigel′man: The Funeral of Moishe Dorfer
Iuliia Shmukler: “This Last Day”
Negated Dichotomies: The Failed Utopia of Aliyah
Efraim Sevela’s Zionist Counter-Narratives
Iakov Tsigel′man’s Novel-Palimpsest
Time and Space Structures in Nonconformist Jewish Literature
Reinvention of Yiddish Storytelling
Jewish Narrative and Semiotics of Yiddish
Shlemiels and Rogues: Efraim Sevela’s The Legends of Invalidnaia Street
An Old Jewess in a Monologue with the Reader: Filipp Isaak Berman’s “Sarra and the Little Rooster”
Conclusion: Yiddish as a Quote
Aftermath and Impact of Jewish Counter-Culture
Neo-Zionist Essentialist Narratives
Jewish Revival
Russian Jewish Literature after Communism
(Post)Memorial Literature: Palimpsests, Residuals, Reinvention
(Post)Memorial Jewish Writing
Memory as Obsession and Fragment: Izrail′ Metter’s “Family Tree”
(Post)Memorial Topographies: Grigorii Kanovich’s “Dream about the Disappeared Jerusalem”
Jewish Deconstruction of the Empire
Archaic Language of the Dictatorship: Mikhail Iudson’s Dystopia The Ladder onto the Closet
Postcolonial Mimic Man: Aleksandr Melikhov’s The Confession of a Jew
Oleg Iur′ev’s Hybrid Poetics: Peninsula Zhidiatin
Iakov Tsigel′man’s Postmodern Midrash: Shebsl the Musician
Conclusion
Bibliography
Literary Works
Research Literature
Index of Names
