With or Without You: The Prospect for Jews in Today’s Russia

Maxim D. Shrayer

Published by Academic Studies Press 2017

With or Without You

The Prospect for Jews in Today’s Russia

Maxim D. Shrayer

https://doi.org/10.1515/9781618116604

Overview
Contents

About this book

In his captivating new book, author and scholar Maxim D. Shrayer offers a richly journalistic portrait of Russia’s dwindling yet still vibrant Jewish community. This is simultaneously an in-depth exploration of the texture of Jewish life in Putin’s Russia and an émigré’s moving elegy for Russia’s Jews.

Author / Editor information

Shrayer Maxim D. :

Maxim D. Shrayer, translingual author, scholar and translator, was born in Moscow and emigrated in 1987 with his parents, David Shrayer-Petrov and Emilia Shrayer. He is Professor of Russian, English, and Jewish Studies at Boston College and Director of the Project on Russian and Eurasian Jewry at the Davis Center, Harvard University. Shrayer is the author and editor of over 15 books of criticism and biography, fiction and nonfiction, and poetry. His books include The World of Nabokov’s Stories, Russian Poet/Soviet Jew, Yom Kippur in Amsterdam, Bunin and Nabokov: A History of Rivalry (which was a bestseller in Russia), Leaving Russia: A Jewish Story, and, most recently, Antisemitism and the Decline of Russian Village Prose and Of Politics and Pandemics: Songs of a Russian Immigrant. He is the editor of An Anthology of Jewish-Russian Literature and Voices of Jewish-Russian Literature. Shrayer is a Guggenheim Fellow and the winner of a National Jewish Book Award. Shrayer’s works have appeared in ten languages.Maxim D. Shrayer, a bilingual author and translator, is a professor of Russian, English, and Jewish Studies at Boston College. Born in Moscow in 1967 to a writer’s family, Shrayer emigrated to the United States in 1987. He has authored over ten books in English and Russian, among them the internationally acclaimed memoirs “Leaving Russia: A Jewish Story” and “Waiting for America: A Story of Emigration,” the story collection “Yom Kippur in Amsterdam,” and the Holocaust study “I SAW IT.” Shrayer’s “Anthology of Jewish-Russian Literature” won a 2007 National Jewish Book Award, and in 2012 he received a Guggenheim Fellowship. Visit Shrayer’s website at www.shrayer.com

Reviews

In Maxim D. Shrayer’s study With or Without You: The Prospect for Jews in Today’s Russia, the complicated nature of what it means to live as a Jew in Russia is delicately addressed. ... Having written and translated numerous books, including two memoirs, Shrayer has become an expert in Russian-Jewish literature and culture.

[With or Without You: The Prospect for Jews in Today’s Russia] is a slim, engaging and elegant read that goes beneath the surface to reveal a multi-layered portrait of Jewish life in Russia today.

“Did the Creator make a mistake by placing the Jews in the confines of the Russian Empire, asks one of Isaac Babel’s characters. Maxim D. Shrayer asks a different question: Did the Creator try to correct this mistake by letting the Jews out of Russia in the course of the last several decades? The answers Shrayer provides in his rich, multi-layered and thought-provoking book put into conversation two different narratives of the Jewish past, one of the Jews who have left, the other of those who have stayed. One cannot grasp the future of the Jews of Russia without reading Maxim D. Shrayer’s book.”

“For anyone with an interest in Russian Jewry or post-Soviet Russia this book is a must-read. Wonderfully written, it is full of thought-provoking insights about the past and future of what had once been the largest Jewish community in the world.”

“In this concise and clear-headed book Maxim D. Shrayer has managed to convey all the complexity of the present-day condition of Russia’s Jewry. Sociological analysis is intertwined with a former refusenik’s acute personal observations; youthful memories of Moscow (all émigrés are forever frozen in the age when they left) are superimposed on adult ruminations of a father showing his eleven-year old daughter around his native city. A remarkable investigation, emotionally colored and unerringly precise.”

“From the perspective of an émigré who spent his formative years in Moscow, Maxim D. Shrayer reflects on his visit to his native city in 2016. His interviews with several types of Jews and his own acute observations, those of an ‘outsider-insider,’ yield penetrating insights into the complex situation of Russian Jews today. No longer the objects of overt public antisemitism, their ties to Jewishness are ever more tenuous as their numbers continue to decline rapidly and as they, like many other diaspora Jews, ‘integrate’ ever more into Russian society.”

“An illuminating first-person narrative about the minority of Russian Jews who have remained, against all odds, in their mother country—and also about Russia, a country continuously losing its Jews. At this point, we know more about the refuseniks of the past than about Russia’s Jews of the present. Any information about these remaining Jews—a peculiar crowd, vulnerable and powerful at once—is precious. This book does an excellent job in telling their collective and personal stories with the ease and humor of an experienced Jewish storyteller."

“Lucid and insightful, Maxim D. Shrayer reminds why so many Russian Jews left the country they once called their own, and explains why those who stayed are still unsure if they belong. Clearly written and very readable.”

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	1
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	7
Prologue: “G-d Gave Me as a Jew Such a Place in Life” Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	8
1. A Visit to the Museum Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	12
2. A Streetcar Named Oblivion Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	22
3. Gauging Russian Antisemitism Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	35
4. The Ambassador of Jewish Pride Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	54
65 5. Staying or Leaving Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	65
6. Almost Folklore Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	84
In Closing: Jewish Clowns in Moscow Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	88
Acknowledgments Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	92
List of Photos Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	94
Works Cited Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	96
Index of Names Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	98
About the Author Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	100

Language: English
Publisher: Academic Studies Press
Audience: College/higher education;Professional and scholarly;General/trade;
Pages
- Main content: 100
Keywords: Social: religious groups and communities; jews in Russia; Jewish life; history; culture; refusenik; minority; anti-semitic hate; Vladimir Putin's government; nationalist forces; czars; Soviets; History of Religion; Politics; thought-provoking book

eBook

Published: October 31, 2017
ISBN: 9781618116604