My fifth pick for the top works of the Soviet-Jewish decade is Operation Wedding, a documentary about an almost forgotten story of true heroism that helped thrust the Soviet-Jewry movement into the spotlight.
Soviet-Jewish Decade Top 10: Operation Wedding Continue Reading
Today’s pick for the Soviet-Jewish Decade Top 10 list is Boris Fishman’s A Replacement Life. I first read it in 2014 when it came out, and somehow, with the politics of the last few years, the book feels more important now than it did then — less for the insight into Slava’s split identity, and more for the close-up of his grandfather’s generation.
Soviet-Jewish Decade Top 10: A Replacement Life Continue Reading
My third pick for the top works in the Soviet-Jewish world this decade is Breaking Stalin’s Nose, by Eugene Yelchin. It’s one of the very few books for kids about the Soviet period, and explains the mechanisms of the Stalinist era the eyes of a 10-year-old.
Soviet-Jewish Decade Top 10: Breaking Stalin’s Nose Continue Reading
My second pick for the top Soviet-Jewish works of the past decade is Yiddish Glory: Lost Songs of World War II, which has completely changed what we thought we knew about how Soviet Jews made sense of the war. Its significance cannot be overstated.
My first selection for the top 10 Russian-Jewish works of the decade is journalist Gal Beckerman’s When They Come For Us, We’ll Be Gone. Published in 2010, the book was — and remains — the first and most comprehensive history of the Soviet-Jewry movement. It won the National Jewish Book Award and the Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature, and was named a book of the year by the Washington Post.
Soviet-Jewish Decade Top 10: When They Come For Us We’ll Be Gone Continue Reading
As the decade comes to a close, I’m looking back at how the Russian-Jewish world has changed. Ten years on, we’re awash in words, in music, in art, in film, and more coming out all the time.
Announcing the Soviet-Jewish Decade: A 2010s Top 10 Continue Reading
Today is Holocaust Memorial Day—sharing some thoughts on the Russian-Jewish Holocaust experience. There’s a thread making its way around Twitter about #FirstSurvivors, asking people about the first survivor they ever met. This was my response, which I’m posting here too, with some tweaks, before it disappears into the abyss of updates. Like many Russian-Jews, there is no “First Survivor” in my family, because the Holocaust
On #FirstSurvivor and the Russian-Jewish Holocaust experience Continue Reading
A while ago I interviewed Anat Zalmanson-Kuznetsov for an article about her award-winning documentary, Operation Wedding, still one of just a tiny handful of docs on the Soviet-Jewish immigration. It’s the story of her parents’ attempt to escape the USSR in 1970, by hijacking an empty plane and flying it across the border to Sweden. Also known as the Leningrad Hijacking, it sounds daring and
Operation Wedding: A conversation with Anat Zalmanson-Kuznetsov Continue Reading