Description
Book SynopsisIn his captivating new book, based on new evidence and a series of interviews, author and scholar Maxim D. Shrayer offers a richly journalistic portrait of Russia’s dwindling yet still vibrant and influential Jewish community. This is simultaneously an in-depth exploration of the texture of Jewish life in Putin’s Russia and an émigré’s moving elegy for Russia’s Jews, which forty years ago constituted one of the world’s largest Jewish populations and which presently numbers only about 180,000. Why do Jews continue to live in Russia after the antisemitism and persecution they had endured there? What are the prospects of Jewish life in Russia? What awaits the children born to Jews who have not left?
With or Without You asks and seeks to answer some of the central questions of modern Jewish history and culture.
Trade Review[
With or Without You: The Prospect for Jews in Today’s Russia] is a slim, engaging and elegant read that goes beneath the surface to reveal a multi-layered portrait of Jewish life in Russia today. *
Jewish Telegraphic Agency *
In Maxim D. Shrayer’s study With or Without You: The Prospect for Jews in Today’s Russia, the complicated nature of what it means to live as a Jew in Russia is delicately addressed. ... Having written and translated numerous books, including two memoirs, Shrayer has become an expert in Russian-Jewish literature and culture.
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The Jewish Journal *
Table of Contents
- Prologue
- G-d gave me as a Jew such a place in life
- 1. A Visit to the Museum
- 2. A Streetcar Named Oblivion
- 3. Gauging Russian Antisemitism
- 4. The Ambassador of Jewish Pride
- 5. Staying or Leaving
- 6. Almost Folklore In Closing: Jewish Clowns in Moscow
- Acknowledgments
- List of Photos
- Works Cited
- Index of Names
