Reinventing Tradition - Russian-Jewish Literature between Soviet Underground and Post-Soviet Deconstruction

Klavdia Smola explores how the Jewish tradition was 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.

List of contents

Acknowledgments

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 Trends and Research Deficits
State of the Art
Perspective and Boundaries of the Study

Russian Jewish Literature as a Bicultural Phenomenon

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

“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

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

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”

Efraim Sevela’s Zionist Counter-Narratives
Iakov Tsigel′man’s Novel-Palimpsest

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

Neo-Zionist Essentialist Narratives
Jewish Revival

(Post)Memorial Literature: Palimpsests, Residuals, Reinvention

Jewish Deconstruction of the Empire

Conclusion

Klavdia Smola is professor and chair of Slavic Literatures at the University of Dresden. She (co-)edited among others The Oxford Handbook of Soviet Underground Culture (2022); (Multi)national Faces of Socialist Realism: Beyond the Russian Literary Canon (special issue of Slavic Review, 2022), and Russia - Culture of (Non-)Conformity: From the Late Soviet Era to the Present (special issue of Russian Literature, 2018).

Summary

How 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.

Product details

• Authors: Klavdia Smola
• Publisher: Ingram Publishers Services
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 25.07.2023
• EAN: 9798887191904
• ISBN: 979-8-88719-190-4
• No. of pages: 428
• Series: Jews of Russia & Eastern Europe and Their Legacy
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Linguistics and literary studies > General and comparative literary studies; European History, HISTORY / Social History, HISTORY / Jewish, HISTORY / Middle East / Israel & Palestine, LITERARY CRITICISM / Comparative Literature, LITERARY CRITICISM / Subjects & Themes / Religion, Social & cultural anthropology, Social Integration & assimilation, Literature: history & criticism, Middle Eastern history, Literary studies: from c 1900 -, Literary studies: c 1900 to c 2000, LITERARY CRITICISM / Russian & Soviet