New Approaches to Russian and East European Jewish Culture Series

Eli Gumener’s 1921 Yiddish memoir, A Ukrainian Chapter, is a rare historical source about relief work spanning the two most devastating years of the pogroms in the Russian Civil War. He concentrates on the collapse of Jewish communities in Podolia, a region in southwest Ukraine. Gumener worked for the major Russian and American organizations that were active in providing aid to Jewish victims during both World War I and the Russian Civil War. Thus, he presents a unique perspective on leaders, parties, and institutions struggling to respond to the suffering and dislocation that came with wild episodes of violence. This annotated translation serves as a roadmap for the reader by clarifying the social and political contexts in which the events took place. A Ukrainian Chapter is a contribution to the history of pogroms, relief work, and Jewish party politics, through the day-to-day experience of a witness “in the trenches.” Born in Marijampole (near Vilnius) in 1886 and trained for the law in St. Petersburg, Eli (Illia) Gumener (1886–1941?) was a representative and investigator for the Committee to Aid Jewish Pogrom Victims (EKOPO) and the Russian Red Cross. After the Civil War, he worked on behalf of Jewish war orphans for the American Joint Distribution Committee (AJC) in the Białystok region. A Ukrainian Chapter was published in Vilnius in 1921. In 1925 Gumener moved to Novogrudok, Poland (now in Belarus) where he continued to be engaged in communal affairs, including as a city councilman from 1929 to 1934. He and his wife and daughter were murdered during the Holocaust in late 1941 or early 1942.

At the turn of the 20th century, the Russian Empire's 5.2 million Jews were in crisis. Having quintupled in number since 1800, they were substantially impoverished and crammed into Russia's 25 westernmost provinces. Some pinned their hopes on emigration, others on being granted permission to live in the Russian interior. Some labored with hand tools in dingy workshops, but most were forced to eke out a living as petty merchants and paupers. Hardly any were able to find work in Russia's large, mechanized factories.

In this context, the young Yakov Leshchinsky, influenced in equal measure by Marx and the Zionist thinker Ahad Ha-am, embarked on a lifelong task of analyzing the fate of the Jewish people. In The Jewish Worker in Russia (1906), a combination political pamphlet, theoretical excursus, and empirical analysis, he established a foundation for the ideology of the Zionist Socialist Workers' Party, presaged modern sociological concepts explaining the limited proletarianization and industrialization of the Jewish working class, and gave substance to the theory by analyzing a large body of unique statistical data, mainly from official sources and a quasi-census of Russian Jews funded by the Jewish Colonization Association. It was a landmark work that underscored the limitations of pure Marxism, Zionism, and liberalism; led eventually to the view that Jews would be best off seeking democracy, socialism, and personal and cultural autonomy in many geographical centers; and foretold the course of Leshchinsky's own life and career as a founding father of Jewish social science, director of YIVO's Economics and Statistics Department, and resident of Ukraine, Switzerland, Russia, Poland, Germany, and the United States who spent his last years in Israel.

World War I’s Eastern Front was located in the midst of the Russian Pale of Settlement, where up to a third of the urban population was Jewish. The war resulted in thousands of civilian deaths and severe damage to the entire region’s economy. Urban populations suffered the worst from artillery shell-ing, requisitions, and outright robbery. In addition, each retreating army made an effort to destroy all that it could before surrendering a city to the enemy, lest valuable resources fall into hostile hands. As early as the first months of the war, a large portion of the Jews in Warsaw, Lodz, and Vilna were bankrupt and destitute, becoming fully dependent on welfare societies.

This book is Volume 5 of the series New Approaches to Russian and East European Jewish Culture.

A recently published review of the book by the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee can be accessed here.

A simple tailor, the protagonist of the great Yiddish author Sholem Aleichem’s last theatrical drama, suddenly becomes rich, but loses his money on account of an obscure cinema deal. The author’s son-in-law and assistant, Y.D. Berkowitz, insisted that the issue of moviemaking be removed from the plot. It seems he tried, among other things, to conceal his father-in-law’s “cinema obsession,” which played itself out between Moscow and New York during the final years of his short life. Until now this story of Sholem Aleichem’s “last love” remained virtually unknown because the majority of relevant documents, written in Yiddish, Russian, Hebrew, English, and other languages, as well as the author’s film scripts, have never been published. By reconstructing the picture of Sholem Aleichem’s extensive contacts with the world of cinema in Europe, Russia, and the US, this monograph throws new light on the famous writer’s life and work, on the background of the incipience of early Jewish cinematography.

"Rare is a book that reverses the laws of electronics, making a negative into a positive. Professor Ber Kotlerman of Bar-Ilan University treats the failed attempt by Sholem Aleichem to make a movie. But it is more than that. It is a study of Sholem Aleichem's relationship with Modernity, technology, and visual media. If he had lived long enough, Sholem Aleichem would have adopted other media in addition to fiction writing. This professional piece of writing should find its audience in students of Jewish literature and cinema."

-Brian Horowitz, Tulane University

"The Disenchanted Tailor is an enrapturing investigation of not only a virtually unknown moment in the career of the author commonly dubbed the 'father of modern Yiddish literature,' but a whole world of buried histories and startling associations. Ber Kotlerman's earlier In Search of Milk and Honey was a groundbreaking achievement of Yiddish arts history and critique. Here Kotlerman does it once again."

-Shelley Salamensky, University of California, Los Angeles

Yiddish Modernism: Studies in Twentieth-Century Eastern European Jewish Culture is a presentation of what enters into the construction of Yiddish modernism, with “Yiddish modernism” being a working term. In 25 articles published over the course of more than three decades of research, Seth L. Wolitz engagingly illustrates the renaissance of Jewish plastic arts, literature, poetry, drama, and music through a critical study of comparative literature, history, art theory, and linguistics. This tome is rich with insights regarding the Golem, the Dybbuk, Walpurgisnacht, expressionism, Art Nouveau, contemporary play construction, and love. Wolitz demonstrates how the artists reached for and joined the cutting edge of twentieth-century Western culture—and achieved in specific cases pure abstraction in the plastic arts, music, and poetry—by crafting yidishkayt in a modernist approach.

Seth L. Wolitz is Marie and Edwin Gale Chair of Jewish Studies at the University of Texas at Austin.

This book is Volume 3 of the series New Approaches to Russian and East European Jewish Culture.

In Bounded Mind and Soul, twelve leading scholars grapple with questions about the complex relationship between Israel and Russia. What are their mutual interests? What are the areas of conflict? And how has the immigration of more than one million Jews from the former Soviet Union affected Israeli culture, society, and politics? These essays range from studies of literature and intellectual history to in-depth examinations of the treatment of Jewish dissidents in Soviet times and new immigrants in Israel. The collection provides unexpected answers to the questions: what is the extent of Russia in Israel and Israel in Russia?

This book is Volume 4 of the series New Approaches to Russian and East European Jewish Culture.