Sasha Senderovich is the author of How the Soviet Jew Was Made (Harvard University Press, 2022) and translator, with Harriet Murav, of In the Shadow of the Holocaust: Short Fiction by Jewish Writers from the Soviet Union (Stanford University Press, 2026) and David Bergelson's novel Judgment (Northwestern University Press, 2017). He is an Associate Professor in Slavic Languages & Literatures and the Jackson School of International Studies, and a faculty affiliate at the Stroum Center for Jewish Studies at the University of Washington in Seattle. In addition to scholarly work, he has also published essays on literary, cultural, and political topics in the Los Angeles Review of Books, the New York Times, the Forward, Lilith, Jewish Currents, the Stranger, and the New Republic.
CONTRIBUTOR
Sasha Senderovich
University of Washington, Seattle
RELATED ARTICLES
Blog
Teaching Guide to In the Shadow of the Holocaust: Short Fiction by Jewish Writers from the Soviet Union
Sasha Senderovich and Harriet Murav
The stories gathered in In the Shadow of the Holocaust offer distinctive vantage points on how people continue to live after a catastrophe. We suggest some avenues for class discussion that offer a framework for approaching postwar Soviet Jewish writing as literature of persistence rather than of catastrophe alone.
Feb 23, 2026
Review
Review of Marat Grinberg’s The Soviet Jewish Bookshelf
Sasha Senderovich
Reading “between the lines,” specifically for submerged “Jewish knowledge” in the context of the Soviet state’s suppression of the full scope of Jewish tradition and history, is for Grinberg the key attribute of Soviet Jewish identity.
Nov 16, 2023
Blog
Briv funem arkhiv: An American Package for Soviet Jews
Sasha Senderovich
A melodramatic studio photograph illustrates the widening gap between the American and Soviet branches of the author’s family.
Jan 18, 2023
Blog
A Clan on the Move: A Zelmenyaner Family Tree
Sasha Senderovich and David Coons
How to make sense of a family saga that charts the very creation of the Soviet Jew: begin by making a family tree.
Oct 13, 2015
Texts & Translation
מידת־הדין
Harsh Judgment
David Bergelson
Translation by Sasha Senderovich and Harriet Murav
Mides hadin (1929) is one of David Bergelson’s most innovative and experimental works. An aura of mystery infuses the opening chapter: three riders go out on an evening patrol that seems more like dream than reality.
Aug 14, 2015