An Amateur Performance: (Reminiscences of a Student in the 1850s)

Lev Levanda

Published by Academic Studies Press 2022

An Amateur Performance

(Reminiscences of a Student in the 1850s)

Lev Levanda
Edited by: Brian Horowitz and Conor Daly
With contributions by: William Craft Brumfield
Translated by: Hugh McLean

In the series Jews of Russia & Eastern Europe and Their Legacy

https://doi.org/10.1515/9798887190181

Overview
Contents

About this book

Russia’s best Jewish writer in the nineteenth-century, Lev Levanda (1835-1888), is still barely known in the English-speaking world. Here for the first time is one of his major novels in his entirety, An Amateur Performance (Reminiscences of a Student in the 1850s, translated with elegance by Hugh McLean and edited by Brian Horowitz and Conor Daly. This work from 1882 describes the rush by Jews to the government schools, secular education, and the lights of enlightenment.

Author / Editor information

Lev Levanda was born in Minsk. He studied in a local Jewish school and a rabbinical school in Vilna, after which he took a teaching job in Minsk, where he also assisted with editing state textbooks for Jewish children. He began to write articles and fiction in the early 1860s for various Jewish publications in Odessa, St. Petersburg, and Vilna. While he was an assimilationist rather than traditionalist at the beginning of his career, he later became a proponent of Jewish self-defense during pogroms, critic of extreme assimilation, and spokesperson for early Zionism. Levanda’s best known work is the novel Seething Times (1873), which depicts the Jewish response to the Polish uprising of 1863.

Brian Horowitz attended New York University and University of California, Berkeley where he studied Slavic Languages. He holds the Sizeler Family Chair and is professor of Jewish Studies at Tulane University. A recipient of many major awards including Yad Hanadiv, Lady Davis, Alexander Von Humboldt, and Fulbright, he is the author of six books including Vladimir Jabotinsky’s Russian Years (2020); Russian Idea-Jewish Presence (2013); Empire Jews (2009); and Jewish Philanthropy and Enlightenment in Late-Tsarist Russia (2009). His present research is focused on the radical right-wing Zionism in the Mandate period.

Reviews

“Beautifully translated, and eruditely introduced, An Amateur Performance is a fundamental source for anyone interested in the history of Jewish culture and identity in nineteenth-century Russia. Written by Lev Levanda, one of the most prominent Jewish writers in the Russian language, and a pioneer proponent of the Jewish integrationist dream, this semi-autobiographical novella captures the quandaries of modernization, russification, and reform that faced the Jewish minority in the Russian empire, at a time when optimism began to give way to disillusionment.”

— Elissa Bemporad, Jerry and William Ungar Chair in East European Jewish History and the Holocaust, Queens College and the CUNY Graduate Center

“Lev Levanda was one of the most important Russian Jewish intellectuals of his generation; he was a colorful and poignant writer and ideological proponent of the Russian language. Horowitz should be commended for introducing him to the English reading public with An Amatuer Performance, Levanda's portrait of mid nineteenth-century student life in the state sponsored Vilna rabbinical academy.”

— Jeffrey Veidlinger, Joseph Brodsky Collegiate Professor of History and Judaic Studies, University of Michigan

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	1
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	5
Acknowledgements Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	6
Preface William Craft Brumfield Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	8
Introduction Brian Horowitz Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	12
An Amateur Performance (Reminiscences of a Student in the 1850s) Lev Osipovich Levanda Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	51
On Hugh and a Berkeley PhD: Recollections of Hugh McLean, Translator and Professor of Slavic Studies Brian Horowitz Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	113
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	116

Language: English
Publisher: Academic Studies Press
Audience: College/higher education;Professional and scholarly;General/trade;
Pages
- Main content: 250
Illustrations
- Illustrations: 7
Keywords: Modern Jewish literature; Jews in Eastern Europe; Russian-Jewish; Jews; 19th century; novel; coming-of-age; students; education

eBook

Published: December 27, 2022
ISBN: 9798887190181