Daughter of the Shtetl - The Memoirs of Doba-Mera Medvedeva

Daughter of the Shtetl is an unusual memoir by an uneducated but sharply observant Jewish woman. Through the eyes of Doba-Mera, we experience the class divisions in shtetl and synagogue; pogroms and wars; working conditions in sewing shops; revolutionary circles around 1905; as well as aspects of everyday life such as education, courtship, housing, food, and illness.

List of contents

Acknowledgments
Translator’s Note

My Babushka and Her Memoirs
Michael Beizer

A Unique Memoirist in Turbulent Times
Alice Nakhimovsky

A DIARY OF MY DAYS
Doba-Mera Izrailevna Medvedeva (Gurevich)

About the author

Alice Nakhimovsky is Distinguished Professor of Jewish Studies and Professor of Russian and Eurasian Studies at Colgate University. She is best known for her book Russian Jewish Literature and Identity (Johns Hopkins, 1991). Her latest book, Dear Mendel, Dear Reyzel: Yiddish Letter Manuals in Russia and America (Indiana University Press, 2015), written with Roberta Newman, won a National Jewish Book Award.
Historian Michael Beizer of Hebrew University, Jerusalem, is the author of numerous books and articles on Russian Jewry. His Jews of St. Petersburg, out in three languages, was a groundbreaking study of a group whose existence, at the time, was barely acknowledged. His latest book is Relief in a time of Need: Russian Jewry and the Joint, 1919-1924 (Slavica, 2015).

Summary

Doba-Mera Medvedeva belongs to a vanishing group of memoirists who are neither elite nor highly literate, but whose observations from the ground cast a vivid light on a lost world. A born story-teller whose first language was Yiddish, Medvedeva kept Russian-language notebooks to preserve her past for her Russian-speaking grandchildren.

Product details

• Authors: Doba-Mera Medvedeva
• Assisted by: Michael Beizer (Editor), Alice Nakhimovsky (Editor), Alice Nakhimovsky (Translation)
• Publisher: Academic Studies Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 31.12.2019
• EAN: 9781618114358
• ISBN: 978-1-61811-435-8
• No. of pages: 158
• Dimensions: 161 mm x 240 mm x 13 mm
• Weight: 408 g
• Series: Jews of Russia & Eastern Europe and Their Legacy; Jews of Russia & Eastern Europ; Jews of Russia & Eastern Europe and Their Legacy
• Subjects: Fiction > Narrative literature > Letters, diaries; Humanities, art, music > History > General, dictionaries; Social sciences, law, business > Sociology > General, dictionaries