This issue of the magazine includes:

• Problem: Why Translate from English?

The author of the article, Nina Brumberg, is a mathematician who lives in Moscow. In the mid-1980s she read Isaac Bashevis Singer's novel Shosha and decided to translate it from English into Russian. Her translation of this novel first appeared in a samizdat version (“self-publishing” – underground, unofficial publications, thus by definition illegal) but later it was published in a Soviet literary magazine Ural and "opened" Bashevis Singer for the Russian reading audience. During the last decade Nina Brumberg has become a recognized translator of Bashevis Singer's works. In her article she continues the discussion about the quality of Russian translations of Singer. In particular, she touches on the question of which version of Singer should serve as the source of the translation—the original Yiddish or the English translation of the Yiddish.

• Survey: Mishpokha Magazine, Vitebsk

The reviewer considers the Vitebsk-based magazine Mishpokha to be an "almanac for family reading." Published since 1995, the magazine is oriented first of all toward Jews from Eastern Byelorussia and their descendants who are interested in tracing their family histories. Major topics of the magazine are: the history of small Byelorussian shtetles, the history of the Holocaust, biographies of famous personalities who were natives of this area, memoirs, and family stories. Of course, a lot of material in the magazine is dedicated to the famous painter Marc Chagall, who was born in Vitebsk and glorified his native town by his art.

• Synopses: Two New Books about the Holocaust

There are brief reviews on two books recently published in Russian—Marat Botvinnik's The Memorials of Jewish Genocide in Belarus (Minsk, 2000) and Primo Levi's If This is a Man? (Moscow, 2001, translated from Italian).

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

• Jewish Calendar of Significant Dates: July–August 2001.