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October 14, 2015

A Yiddish Masterpiece Uncovers the Lives of Ordinary Jews in the Soviet Union

Moyshe Kulbak’s Zelmenyaners.

In his own day, Moyshe Kulbak (1896-1937) was best known for his poetry; today he is known mostly to specialists. His literary masterpiece may be his novel The Zelmenyaners, written and published in the Soviet Union in the 1930s and lately available in an English translation by Hillel Halkin. The novel tells the story of a Jewish extended family living around a courtyard in a Belarusian city, and their experience of the Russian revolution and Soviet rule. Madeleine Cohen writes in her review:

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October 14, 2015

  1. The False Assumptions of American Policy in the Middle East

    Solving the Israel-Palestinian conflict won’t bring regional peace.

  2. Israel’s Jews Are Not on Their Way to Becoming a Minority

    The myth of a demographic time bomb.

  3. Is Russian Anti-Semitism in Decline?

    Only on the surface.

  4. A Yiddish Masterpiece Uncovers the Lives of Ordinary Jews in the Soviet Union

    Moyshe Kulbak’s Zelmenyaners.

  5. Is Conservative Judaism Failing?

    Not at all.