{"product_id":"how-the-soviet-jew-was-made-by-sasha-senderovich","title":"How the Soviet Jew Was Made by Sasha Senderovich","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-bold\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eListen to our podcast with translator and author Sasha Senderovich\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-bold\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eA close reading of postrevolutionary Russian and Yiddish literature and film recasts the Soviet Jew as a novel cultural figure: not just a minority but an ambivalent character navigating between the Jewish past and Bolshevik modernity.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThe Russian Revolution of 1917 transformed the Jewish community of the former tsarist empire. In particular, the Bolshevik government eliminated the requirement that most Jews reside in the Pale of Settlement in what had been Russia’s western borderlands. Many Jews quickly exited the shtetls, seeking prospects elsewhere. Some left for bigger cities, others for Europe, America, or Palestine. Thousands tried their luck in the newly established Jewish Autonomous Region in the Far East, where urban merchants would become tillers of the soil. For these Jews, Soviet modernity meant freedom, the possibility of the new, and the pressure to discard old ways of life.\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThis ambivalence was embodied in the Soviet Jew―not just a descriptive demographic term but a novel cultural figure. In insightful readings of Yiddish and Russian literature, films, and reportage, Sasha Senderovich finds characters traversing space and history and carrying with them the dislodged practices and archetypes of a lost Jewish world. There is the Siberian settler of Viktor Fink’s \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-italic\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eJews in the Taiga\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e, the folkloric trickster of Isaac Babel, and the fragmented, bickering family of Moyshe Kulbak’s \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-italic\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThe Zemlenyaners\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e, whose insular lives are disrupted by the march of technological, political, and social change. There is the collector of ethnographic tidbits, the pogrom survivor, the émigré who repatriates to the USSR.\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eSenderovich urges us to see the Soviet Jew anew, as not only a minority but also a particular kind of liminal being. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-italic\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eHow the Soviet Jew Was Made\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e emerges as a profound meditation on culture and identity in a shifting landscape.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"TRIL","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":48176384245918,"sku":"pga1787285418030","price":30.34,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0708\/6345\/4366\/files\/how-the-soviet-jew-was-made-by-sasha-senderovich_1.jpg?v=1787285422","url":"https:\/\/urbanwearstore.shop\/products\/how-the-soviet-jew-was-made-by-sasha-senderovich","provider":"My Store","version":"1.0","type":"link"}