In the 1920s the Soviet Union invested a group of talented, mostly socialist, occasionally Commun... more In the 1920s the Soviet Union invested a group of talented, mostly socialist, occasionally Communist, Jewish writers and thinkers to use the power of the state to remake Jewish culture and identity. The Communist state had inherited a multiethnic empire from its tsarist ...
Prooftexts: A Journal of Jewish Literary History, 2004
Sefer, an organization whose o³ces are located in the Academy of Sciences building in Moscow, is ... more Sefer, an organization whose o³ces are located in the Academy of Sciences building in Moscow, is one of several Jewish studies centers that have sprung up since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Sefer hosts conferences, publishes edited volumes, supports ...
Since the birth of 'Ashkenaz' as a Jewish cultural entity in the Middle Ages, A... more Since the birth of 'Ashkenaz' as a Jewish cultural entity in the Middle Ages, Ashkenazi Jews have created their culture in at least two Jewish languages: the vernacular Yiddish and the high-status, textual language Hebrew/Aramaic. But nineteenth-century Romantic ...
The East European Jewish Affairs peer-reviewed version of the article that appeared in the 2014 e... more The East European Jewish Affairs peer-reviewed version of the article that appeared in the 2014 edited volume on Holocaust and representation.
From 1990 until 2008, about 200,000 Jews from the former Soviet Union migrated to Germany. At the... more From 1990 until 2008, about 200,000 Jews from the former Soviet Union migrated to Germany. At the same time, Germany re-unified and took its place at the centre of the new Europe. In a global world, in which people maintain multiple homes, languages, identities and means of communication across thousands of miles, these migrants challenged German Jewish notions of identity, rootedness and community. Their particular Soviet and post-Soviet approaches to these issues also challenged the liberalising tendencies of an emerging European Jewish identity. This review essay examines how Soviet and post-Soviet Jewish migration to Germany interacted and intersected with new notions of European Jewish identity in Germany, with special focus on Berlin, the largest, most cosmopolitan Jewish community in Germany. Rather than continuing to bemoan the ‘failed integration’ of post-Soviet Jewry into some notion of fixed German Jewish identity or into liberal European notions of identity, a global approach would allow for the co-existence of many Jewish identities in a diverse German Jewish community.
During World War II, the first media outlets to publish photographs of the Nazi mass murder of Je... more During World War II, the first media outlets to publish photographs of the Nazi mass murder of Jews and others were Soviet newspapers and magazines. The problem with Soviet photographs was that the Soviet media was considered unreliable from a Western standpoint, because unlike in the West, which saw the clear ideological differentiation of art from photojournalism, Soviet photography blurred those distinctions. According to Western standards of evidence, Soviet photography would never be taken seriously as photojournalism, precisely because the photographer was always metaphorically present. Since Soviet photojournalism failed the test of the documentary imperative, it rarely convinced people of the truth of its subject matter. In this epistemological context when photographs might fail to convince, the act of physically bearing witness, of seeing with one's own eyes, became the most important way of proving to a disbelieving public the veracity of Nazi atrocities. The search for reliable evidence continues in the 21st century as archaeologists began exploring Sobibor, the only site of an extermination camp left relatively undisturbed since the German army dismantled it during the War. They use new photographic technology to map the ground to find evidence of the atrocities that took place there in order to provide more evidence of the truth of Nazi atrocities.
Ajs Review-the Journal of The Association for Jewish Studies, 2010
I loved this book. It made me cry, think, and once, I even threw it down saying, This is bullshi... more I loved this book. It made me cry, think, and once, I even threw it down saying, This is bullshit. (Caron uses the word shit quite a bit, so if it offends, I'd turn back now.) The book is framed as a fatherson meditation between the elder Caron, who during the writing of this book is ...
... 7 although Yiddishism was something of a dirty word among Communists who condemned too much a... more ... 7 although Yiddishism was something of a dirty word among Communists who condemned too much attention to Yiddish as a ... In various countries such as argentina, australia, Belgium, Brazil, denmark, France, germany, great Britain, Holland, latvia, lithuania, South africa ...
In the 1920s the Soviet Union invested a group of talented, mostly socialist, occasionally Commun... more In the 1920s the Soviet Union invested a group of talented, mostly socialist, occasionally Communist, Jewish writers and thinkers to use the power of the state to remake Jewish culture and identity. The Communist state had inherited a multiethnic empire from its tsarist ...
Prooftexts: A Journal of Jewish Literary History, 2004
Sefer, an organization whose o³ces are located in the Academy of Sciences building in Moscow, is ... more Sefer, an organization whose o³ces are located in the Academy of Sciences building in Moscow, is one of several Jewish studies centers that have sprung up since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Sefer hosts conferences, publishes edited volumes, supports ...
Since the birth of 'Ashkenaz' as a Jewish cultural entity in the Middle Ages, A... more Since the birth of 'Ashkenaz' as a Jewish cultural entity in the Middle Ages, Ashkenazi Jews have created their culture in at least two Jewish languages: the vernacular Yiddish and the high-status, textual language Hebrew/Aramaic. But nineteenth-century Romantic ...
The East European Jewish Affairs peer-reviewed version of the article that appeared in the 2014 e... more The East European Jewish Affairs peer-reviewed version of the article that appeared in the 2014 edited volume on Holocaust and representation.
From 1990 until 2008, about 200,000 Jews from the former Soviet Union migrated to Germany. At the... more From 1990 until 2008, about 200,000 Jews from the former Soviet Union migrated to Germany. At the same time, Germany re-unified and took its place at the centre of the new Europe. In a global world, in which people maintain multiple homes, languages, identities and means of communication across thousands of miles, these migrants challenged German Jewish notions of identity, rootedness and community. Their particular Soviet and post-Soviet approaches to these issues also challenged the liberalising tendencies of an emerging European Jewish identity. This review essay examines how Soviet and post-Soviet Jewish migration to Germany interacted and intersected with new notions of European Jewish identity in Germany, with special focus on Berlin, the largest, most cosmopolitan Jewish community in Germany. Rather than continuing to bemoan the ‘failed integration’ of post-Soviet Jewry into some notion of fixed German Jewish identity or into liberal European notions of identity, a global approach would allow for the co-existence of many Jewish identities in a diverse German Jewish community.
During World War II, the first media outlets to publish photographs of the Nazi mass murder of Je... more During World War II, the first media outlets to publish photographs of the Nazi mass murder of Jews and others were Soviet newspapers and magazines. The problem with Soviet photographs was that the Soviet media was considered unreliable from a Western standpoint, because unlike in the West, which saw the clear ideological differentiation of art from photojournalism, Soviet photography blurred those distinctions. According to Western standards of evidence, Soviet photography would never be taken seriously as photojournalism, precisely because the photographer was always metaphorically present. Since Soviet photojournalism failed the test of the documentary imperative, it rarely convinced people of the truth of its subject matter. In this epistemological context when photographs might fail to convince, the act of physically bearing witness, of seeing with one's own eyes, became the most important way of proving to a disbelieving public the veracity of Nazi atrocities. The search for reliable evidence continues in the 21st century as archaeologists began exploring Sobibor, the only site of an extermination camp left relatively undisturbed since the German army dismantled it during the War. They use new photographic technology to map the ground to find evidence of the atrocities that took place there in order to provide more evidence of the truth of Nazi atrocities.
Ajs Review-the Journal of The Association for Jewish Studies, 2010
I loved this book. It made me cry, think, and once, I even threw it down saying, This is bullshi... more I loved this book. It made me cry, think, and once, I even threw it down saying, This is bullshit. (Caron uses the word shit quite a bit, so if it offends, I'd turn back now.) The book is framed as a fatherson meditation between the elder Caron, who during the writing of this book is ...
... 7 although Yiddishism was something of a dirty word among Communists who condemned too much a... more ... 7 although Yiddishism was something of a dirty word among Communists who condemned too much attention to Yiddish as a ... In various countries such as argentina, australia, Belgium, Brazil, denmark, France, germany, great Britain, Holland, latvia, lithuania, South africa ...
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