This issue of the magazine includes:

• Survey: Jewish Culture on Postage Stamps

Postage stamps have been effective agitprop tools. Politics and ideology are reduced to terse images on tiny pieces of paper backed by the weight of the state. Landmark historical events, public figures, architectural monuments and artworks are transformed into persuasive messages to the whole world by issuing them as stamps. The Soviet government also made effective use of this tool. For obvious reasons, however, Jewish history and culture were rarely addressed on Soviet stamps. After the Soviet empire’s dissolution, philatelists interested in Judaica have been able to expand their collections considerably. The article analyzes how stamps on Jewish topics issued by former Soviet republics reflect divergent political trends there.

• Point of View: How to Write a Book on Traditional Jewish Clothing

The article deals with three recent books on the topic of traditional Jewish clothing. The reviewer is full of praise for The Jewish Wardrobe (Jerusalem: Israel Museum, 2012) and The Traditional Dress of Bukharan Jews (St. Petersburg: Russian Museum of Ethnography, 2012). According to the reviewer, the third book, published in Lithuanian and Russian in Vilnius, and entitled The Wanderings of Jewish Costume in Time and Space (2017), exists “only to show, in no uncertain terms, how not to write a book.”

• Looking through Russian Literary Magazines: Novels and Articles of Jewish Interest

• Jewish Calendar of Significant Dates: January–February 2019