Voices of Jewish-Russian Literature

Maxim D. Shrayer, a bilingual author, scholar and translator, is Professor of Russian, English, and Jewish Studies at Boston College and Director of the Project on Russian & Eurasian Jewry at Harvard’s Davis Center. Born in Moscow in 1967 to a writer’s family, Shrayer emigrated to the United States in 1987. He has authored and edited fifteen books in English and Russian, among them the internationally acclaimed memoirs Leaving Russia: A Jewish Story and Waiting for America: A Story of Emigration, the story collection Yom Kippur in Amsterdam, and the Holocaust study I Saw It: Ilya Selvinsky and the Legacy of Bearing Witness to the Shoah, and the travelogue With or Without You: The Prospect for Jews in Today’s Russia. Shrayer is the recipient of a 2007 National Jewish Book Award and a 2012 Guggenheim Fellowship. Visit Shrayer’s website at www.shrayer.com.

Acknowledgments
Note on Transliteration, Spelling of Names, and Dates
Note on How to Use This Book
General Introduction: The Legacy of Jewish-Russian Literature, by Maxim D. Shrayer
Early Voices: 1800s-1850s
Editor's Introduction
Leiba Nevakhovich (1776-1831) from Lament of the Daughter of Judah (1803)
Leon Mandelstam (1819-1889) “The People” (1840)
Ruvim Kulisher (1828-1896) From An Answer to the Slav (1849; pub. 1911)
Osip Rabinovich (1817-1869) From The Penal Recruit (1859)Seething Times: 1860s-1880s


Editor's Introduction
Lev Levanda (1835-1888) From Seething Times (1860s; pub. 1871-73)
Grigory Bogrov (1825-1885) “Childhood Sufferings” from Notes of a Jew (1863; pub. 1871-73)
Rakhel Khin (1861-1928) From The Misfit (1881)
Semyon Nadson (1862-1887) From “The Woman” (1883)
    “I grew up shunning you, O most degraded nation…” (1885)On the Eve: 1890s-1910s


Editor's Introduction
Ben-Ami (1854–1932) Preface to Collected Stories and Sketches (1898)
David Aizman (1869-1922) “The Countrymen” (1902)
Semyon Yushkevich (1868-1927) From The Jews (1903)
Vladimir Jabotinsky (1880-1940) “In Memory of Herzl” (1904)
Sasha Cherny (1880-1932) “Judeophobes” (1909)
S. An-sky (1863-1920) “The Book” (1910)
Samuil Marshak (1887-1964) “Palestine” (1916)
Sofia Parnok (1885-1933) “My anguish does the Lord not heed…” (1913-22)
Hagar” (1913-22)
Not for safekeeping for awhile…” (1913-22)
Leonid Kannegiser (1896-1918) “A Jewish Wedding” (1916)
Regimental Inspection” (1917)Revolution and Emigration: 1920s-1930s


Editor's Introduction
Veniamin Kaverin (1902-1989) “Shields (and Candles)” (1922)
Lev Lunts (1901-1924) “Native Land” (1922)
Vladislav Khodasevich (1886-1939)“Not my mother, but a Tula peasant woman…” (1917; 1922)
In Moscow I was born. I never…” (1923)
Andrey Sobol (1888-1926) “The Count” (1922-23)
Ilya Ehrenburg (1891-1967) “The Teacher's Prophecy Concerning the Destinies of the Tribe of Judah” from The Extraordinary Adventures of Julio Jurenito and His Disciples (1922)
Viktor Shklovsky (1893-1984) From Zoo, or Letters Not about Love (1923)
Matvey Royzman (1896-1973) “Kol Nidrei” (1923)
Mark Aldanov (1886-1957) “The Assassination of Uritsky” (1923)
Osip Mandelstam (1891-1938) “Judaic Chaos” from Noise of Time (1925)
One Alexander Herzovich…” (1931)
Say, desert geometer, shaper…” (1933)
Evgeny Shklyar (1894-1942) “Where's Home?” (1925)
Dovid Knut (1900-1955) “I, Dovid-Ari Ben Meir…” (1925)
A Kishinev Burial” (1929)
The Land of Israel” (1938)
Isaac Babel (1894-1940) “The Rabbi's Son” (1925)
Awakening” (1931)
Vera Inber (1890-1972) “The Nightingale and the Rose” (1925)
Elizaveta Polonskaya (1890-1969) “Encounter” (1927)
Viktor Fink (1888-1973) “The Preachers” and “The New Culture” from Jews on the Land (1929)
Semyon Kirsanov (1906-1972) “R” (1929)
Eduard Bagritsky (1895-1934) “Origin”(1930)
   From February (1934)
Mark Egart (1901-1956) From Scorched Land (1932)
Ilya Ilf (1897-1937) and Evgeny Petrov (1903-1942) “The Prodigal Son Returns Home” (1930) by Ilf
   From The Little Golden Calf (1931) by Ilf and Petrov
Raisa Blokh (1899-1943?) “A snatch of speech came floating on the air…” (1932)
Remember, father would stand…” (1933)War and Shoah: 1940s


Editor's Introduction
Boris Yampolsky (1921-1972) “Mr. Dykhes and Others”
   from Country Fair (ca. 1940)
Ilya Ehrenburg (1891-1967) “To the Jews” (1941)
“Six Poems” (The January 1945 Novy mir cycle)
Ilya Selvinsky (1899-1968) “I Saw It”; “Kerch” (1942)
Sofia Sofia Dubnova-Erlikh (1885-1986) Two Wartime Essays: “Shtetl” (1943);
Scorched Hearth” (1944)
Vasily Grossman (1905-1964) “The Hell of Treblinka” (1944)
Pavel Antokolsky (1896-1978) “Death Camp” (1945)
Yury German (1910-1967) from Lieutenant Colonel of the Medical Corps (1949)
Boris Pasternak (1890-1960) “In the Lowlands” (1944)
Odessa” (1944)
   From Doctor Zhivago (1946-[1955]; pub. 1957)The Thaw, 1950s-1960s


Editor's Introduction
Boris Slutsky (1919-1986) “These Abrám, Isák and Yákov…” (1953; pub. 1989)
Of the Jews” (1952-56; pub. 1961)
Horses in the Ocean” (1956)
Prodigal Son” (1956)
Puny Jewish children…” (1957-58; pub. 1989)
Vasily Grossman (1905-1964) From Life and Fate (1960; pub. 1980)
Joseph Brodsky (1940-1996) “Jewish graveyard near Leningrad…” (1958; pub. 1965)
I'm not asking death for immortality…” (ca. 1961; pub. 1992)
Vladimir Britanishsky (1933-2015) “A German Girl” (1957-58; pub. 1993)
Yuly Daniel (1925-1988) From This Is Moscow Speaking (1961)
Emmanuil Kazakevich (1913-1962) “Enemies” (1962)
Yan Satunovsky (1913-1982) “Girls with golden eyes..."" (1960; pub. 1990s)
You're mistaken…” (1961; pub. 1990s)
It's the end of our nation…” (1962; pub. 1990s)
My Slavic language is Russian…” (1963; pub. 1990s)
I'm Moyshe from Berdichev…” (1963; pub. 1990s)
Eve, a civilized Jewess…” (1964; pub. 1990s)Late Soviet Empire and Collapse: 1960s-1990s


Editor's Introduction
Vassily Aksyonov (1932-2009) “Victory: A Story with Exaggerations” (1965)
Aleksandr Kushner (b. 1936) “When that teacher in Poland, so as not…” (1966)
Letters” (1966)
Genrikh Sapgir (1928-1999) “In Memory of My Father” (1962; pub. 1999)
Psalm 3” (1965-66; pub. 1979)
Psalm 132 (133)” (1965-66; pub. 1988)
Psalm 136 (137)” (1965-66; pub. 1993)
Psalm 150” (1965-66; pub. 1993)
A Pole Rode” (1985; pub. 1992)
Semyon Lipkin (1911-2003) “Khaim” (1973; pub. 1979)
Yuri Karabchievsky (1938-1992) From Life of Aleksandr Zilber (1974-75)
Inna Lisnianskaia (1928-2014) “My father, a military doctor…” (1975; pub. 1980)
An Incident” (1981; pub. 1983)
Boris Slutsky (1919-1986) “Let's cross out the Pale…“ (1970s; pub. 1985)
The rabbis came down to the valley…” (before 1977; pub. 1989)
Anatoly Rybakov (1911-1998) From Heavy Sand (1975-77; pub. 1978)
Yuri Trifonov (1925-1981) “A Visit with Marc Chagall” (1980) from The Overturned House
Lev Ginzburg (1921-1980) From Only My Heart Was Broken (1980)
Evgeny Reyn (b. 1935) “For the Last Time” (1987)
Sara Pogreb (b. 1921) “I'm going to see my grandparents. The cart…” (1986)
I'm bidding farewell to the slush….” (1989)
   Izrail Metter (1909-1996) From Pedigree (1980s)
Aleksandr Mezhirov (1923-2009) From Blizzard (1986-2000)
Bella Ulanovskaya (1943-2005) A Journey to Kashgar (1973-1989)
Aleksandr Melikhov (b. 1947) From The Confession of a Jew (1993)
Ludmila Ulitskaya (b. 1943) “Genele the Purse Lady” (1993)The Jewish Exodus: 1970s-1990s


Editor's Introduction
Lev Mak (b. 1937 [1939] “A Farewell to Russia” (1974)
August in Odessa” (1974)
Boris Khazanov (b. 1928) From The King's Hour (1968-69; pub. 1976; 1980)
Ilia Bokstein (1937-1999) “Afánta-Utóma” (“Fantasia-Judaica”) from Glints of the Wave (late 1960s-1970s; pub. 1978)
David Markish (b. 1938) “The Appearance of Prophet Elijah, 1714” from The Jesters (1981-82)
Michael Kreps (1940-1994) “Cat with a Yellow Star” (1980s)
Call of the Ancestors” (1980s)
Philip Isaac Berman (b. 1936) “Sarah and Rooster” (1988)
Ruth Zernova (1919-2004) “All Vows” (1988)
David Shrayer-Petrov (b. 1936) “Chagall's Self-Portrait with Wife” (1975; pub. 1990)
My Slavic Soul” (1975; pub. 1990)
Villa Borghese” (1987-90)
Hände Hoch!” (1999)
Marina Temkina (b. 1948) “1995: Happy New Year” (1995)
Dina Rubina (b. 1953) From Here Comes the Messiah (1996)
Friedrich Gorenstein (1932-2002) “The Arrest of an Antisemite” (1998)
Anna Gorenko (1972-1999) “The Golem” (1997)
Translating from the European” (1999)An Outline of Jewish-Russian History by John D. Klier

Bibliography of Primary Sources


Index of Authors
Index of Translators
Index of Names, Places and Works
About the Editor