Reviews
Review
Review of Shira Gorshman’s Hanah’s Sheep and Cattle, translated by Edith Otchin McCrea
An unflinching account of a woman who lived a passionate and committed life at a time of enormous destruction and chaos.
May 27, 2026
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.
Feb 27, 2023
Review
Sisyphus: A Review of Harriet Murav's David Bergelson’s Strange New World: Untimeliness and Futurity
With this monumental study, Harriet Murav provides the first comprehensive literary biography of Bergelson and a rich intercultural contextualization of the Yiddish writer’s work
Dec 08, 2021
Review
Review of Der Nister’s Soviet Years: Yiddish Writer as Witness to the People by Mikhail Krutikov.
Krutikov’s philological skillset and meticulous archival research shine throughout this book, a landmark study of both Der Nister and Yiddish literature under Stalin.
Jan 12, 2021
Review
How to be Both: Officials and Artists Vying for the Limelight
Mayhill Fowler’s book shines light on the blind spots of national cultural histories of turn of the century Ukraine, following the often uneasy interface between authorities and art institutions.
Mar 26, 2018
Review
Judgment
In time for the one hundredth anniversary of the October revolution, Dovid Bergelson’s novel Mides-hadin is out in a new translation by Harriet Murav and Sasha Senderovich.
Nov 07, 2017
Review
“The Worst Good Idea Ever”? The Birobidzhan Project and Soviet Jewish Culture
Masha Gessen’s new book explores the history of the Jewish Autonomous Region of Birobidzhan through the story of David Bergelson and Simon Dubnow, whose thought and writing influenced its development.
Jun 26, 2017
Review
“To what might the yard have been compared?”
“Ach, the things a poor tailor has lived to see! We live in times when the coats go around making themselves.” A review of a recent translation of Kulbak’s Zelmenyaner.
Oct 11, 2015
Review
Review of Socialist Yiddishlands: Language Politics and Transnational Entanglements between 1941 and 1991, edited by Miriam Chorley-Schulz and Alexander Walther
Socialist Yiddishlands sets the stage for what could be a shift in how scholars think about the relationships among Yiddish, the Cold War, the effects of the Cold War on Jews around the world, the Soviet Bloc countries, and the lived realities of those who actively participated in the development of state socialism.
Jan 05, 2026