Language:
English
Year of publication:
2018
Titel der Quelle:
East European Jewish Affairs
Angaben zur Quelle:
48,3 (2018) 391-415
Keywords:
Jews Books and reading
;
Jews Identity
;
Jews Intellectual life
;
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) Influence
Abstract:
The article proposes a new approach to reconstructing post-Holocaust Soviet Jewish identity and culture through the concept of the Soviet Jewish bookshelf as the basis of Soviet Jews' makeshift Jewish heritage. Using Michael Rothberg's notion of "multidirectional memory", it argues that the post-Holocaust tasks of bearing witness to the destruction and of preserving the Jewish remnant gave birth to a Jewish reading culture in the Soviet Union, which in many, if not most cases, was not explicitly Holocaust centered. The article analyzes three case studies emerging out of this culture and the various "Aesopian" reading strategies it elicited: the first Soviet guidebook to Israel, science fiction prose of the Strugatskii brothers, and the historical novels of Lion Feuchtwanger.
DOI:
10.1080/13501674.2018.1504195
URL:
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