Reviews

Review

Review of Marina Mogilner’s A Race for the Future: Scientific Visions of Modern Russian Jewishness

With a focus on Russ­ian Jew­ish race sci­en­tists, Mogilner traces how biol­o­gy informed notions of Jew­ish dif­fer­ence mobi­lized by com­mu­nal orga­ni­za­tions and polit­i­cal activists in impe­r­i­al Rus­sia and the ear­ly Sovi­et period.

Review

Review of From a Distant Relation by Mikhah Yosef Berdichevsky, edited and translated by James Adam Redfield

Berdichevsky’s Yid­dish writ­ing focused on the world he had left behind, and frankly strug­gled with his ambiva­lence about these communities.

Review

Review of Kenneth B. Moss’s An Unchosen People

In this study of Jew­ish grass­roots thinkers, Ken­neth B. Moss offers an account of Jew­ish thought, cul­ture, and choic­es in inter­war Poland.

Review

Review of Anne-Christin Klotz's Gemeinsam gegen Deutschland

In this study of the Jew­ish press in Poland, Anne-Christin Klotz iden­ti­fies Pol­ish Jew­ry, and specif­i­cal­ly local Yid­dish writ­ers and jour­nal­ists, as cen­tral to under­stand­ing the Nazi threat in the 1930s.

Review

Review of Sasha Senderovich's How the Soviet Jew Was Made

In this recent­ly-pub­lished study, Senderovich chal­lenges this fixed notion of the Sovi­et Jew, and recounts a com­plex pre­his­to­ry of the Sovi­et Jew in the imme­di­ate con­text of inter­war Sovi­et culture.

Review

Review of Samuel J. Spinner's Jewish Primitivism

With his ele­gant new study, Jew­ish Prim­i­tivism, Samuel J. Spin­ner offers a new approach to the rela­tion­ship between Ger­man and East Euro­pean Jew­ish cul­ture while also con­sid­er­ing to what degree and in which ways dif­fer­ences among Jew­ish cul­tures reflect dif­fer­ences and inter­ac­tions with the non-Jew­ish culture(s) around them.

Review

Review of From the Jewish Provinces by Fradl Shtok, translated by Jordan D. Finkin and Allison Schachter

From the Jew­ish Provinces is a valu­able and high­ly read­able addi­tion to Yid­dish lit­er­a­ture in translation.

SIGN UP FOR OUR MONTHLY NEWSLETTER