The People of the Book in the World of Books is a Russian bimonthly publication for serious readers with Jewish interests. Our English website includes only the summaries of the published articles. To access the complete text of them, please visit the Russian version of this website.


67

April 2007

This issue of the magazine includes:


• Memoirs: On the History of Jewish Press in Russia


The magazine continues to publish fragments from the memoirs of the prominent Jewish historian and journalist Saul Ginsburg (1866–1940). The memoirs deal with the history of Der fraynd—the first Yiddish daily in Russia. The latest fragment discusses two prominent contributors to Der fraynd—Yiddish writer Yitzhok-Leibush Peretz (1852–1915) and Jewish journalist and editor Yehuda-Leib Kantor (1849–1915).


Survey: Three Books about Yiddish Theater


This article discusses books recently published in Russia, Ukraine, and Israel. Dedicated to the history of Yiddish theaters in St. Petersburg, Lvov and Uzbekistan, these valuable monographs represent the growing interest in the phenomenon of Soviet Yiddish culture among researchers and publishers.


Review: Quiet Revolution


According to the reviewer, some books create real revolutions in science that are not obvious to contemporaries but became clear over time. He believes that Arkady Zeltser’s monograph The Jews of the Soviet Provinces: Vitebsk and the Shtetls, 1917–1941 (Moscow, 2006) will create such a “quiet revolution” in Jewish historiography. This book is the first attempt to show how, during the 1920s and 1930s, traditional Russian Jews of the shtetls were transformed into “Soviet Jews.” The reviewer writes: “Modern Russian Jewry, if it wants to survive as a cultural unit, should do the hard work of self‑understanding, of developing an understanding of its historical essence. Arkady Zeltser’s book is one of the first steps on this path—and it is a very important step.”


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


Jewish Calendar of Significant Dates: March–June 2007


Bibliography: 60 New Books