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.


77

December 2008

This issue of the magazine includes:


Names: Jews and Jewry in the Books of Oleg Yuriev


Oleg Yuriev, the poet, prose writer, and playwright, was born in 1959 in St. Petersburg, and has lived in Germany since 1991. He is one of the most significant representatives of a trend in modern Russian literature that approaches the creative task for its own sake, rather than with the intention of moralizing, entertaining the audience, or expressing social criticism. This article analyzes the “Jewish aspects” of Yuriev’s works, including his plays and his famous trilogy of novels, Peninsula Zhidyatin, New Golem, and Vineta.


Review: The Beilis Affair from a Juridical Perspective


On July 21, 1911, Menachem Mendel Beilis was arrested and charged with the ritual murder of a Russian boy. Since then, this modest Kiev resident has become world renowned, and, almost 100 years later, new books about the Beilis Trial continue to appear. This book, by Latvian lawyer Andris Grūtups, was published in Riga in 2007, and presents the Beilis Affair from an unusual, purely juridical, perspective. The author feels that he himself is disconnected from both sides of the conflict—the Jewish and the anti‑Semitic. Thus, he aspires to the role of an independent observer, and analyzes the Beilis Trial from the point of view of a professional lawyer. This reviewer finds Grūtups’ position to be weak, as the trial was not just against Beilis, but against the Jewish people as a whole.


Jewish Calendar of Significant Dates: January–February 2009


Bibliography: 30 New Books