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Lesson 8 of 9·The Wisdom of Jewish Literature

“My First Goose” by Isaac Babel

Isaac Babel embedded into the Red Army as a journalist during the Russian Civil War. In this story, he offers a stark, unflinching look at the moral and emotional complexities of being Jewish during that time, contrasting the pull of violent revolution on one end to prosaic Jewish tradition on the other.

Taught By

Ruth R. Wisse
Ruth R. Wisse is professor emerita of Yiddish and comparative literatures at Harvard and a distinguished senior fellow at Tikvah. Her memoir Free as a Jew: a Personal Memoir of National Self-Liberation, chapters of which appeared in Mosaic in somewhat different form, is out from Wicked Son Press.