“A fitting conclusion to a well-researched and meticulously edited memoir translation.” — Kirkus Reviews

“You have to read this book… It’s not like anything you read before.” — Tablet Magazine

Set in Ukraine, Crimea, and Israel, this unique two-volume autobiography offers a fascinating, detailed picture of life in Tsarist Russia and Israel during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Goldenshteyn (1848-1930), a traditional Jew who was orphaned as a young boy and became a shochet (kosher slaughterer) as a young man, is a master storyteller. Folksy, funny, streetwise, and self-confident, he is a keen observer of his surroundings. His accounts are vivid and readable, sometimes stunning in their intensity. 

The memoir is brimming with information. Goldenshteyn’s adventures shed light on communal life, persecution, family relationships, religious practices and beliefs, social classes, local politics, interactions between Jews and other religious communities, epidemics, poverty, competition for resources, migration, war, technology, modernity and secularization. In chronicling his own life, Goldenshteyn inadvertently tells a bigger story—the story of how a small, oppressed people, among other minority groups, struggled for survival in the massive Russian Empire and in the Land of Israel.

Volume two begins in 1873, when Goldenshteyn obtains his first position as a shochet in Slobodze, and it follows him to the Crimea, where he endures 34 years  of vicissitudes. In 1913, he fulfills a dream of immigrating to the Land of Israel, hoping to find tranquility in his old age. Instead, he is met with the turbulence of the First World War, as battles rage between the retreating Ottoman Turks and the advancing British forces.

 

Informed by research in Ukrainian, Israeli and American archives and personal interviews with the few surviving individuals who knew Goldenshteyn personally, The Shochet is a magnificent new contribution to Jewish and Eastern European history.

Piety and Rebellion examines the span of the Hasidic textual tradition from its earliest phases to the 20th century. The essays collected in this volume focus on the tension between Hasidic fidelity to tradition and its rebellious attempt to push the devotional life beyond the borders of conventional religious practice. Many of the essays exhibit a comparative perspective deployed to better articulate the innovative spirit, and traditional challenges, Hasidism presents to the traditional Jewish world. Piety and Rebellion is an attempt to present Hasidism as one case whereby maximalist religion can yield a rebellious challenge to conventional conceptions of religious thought and practice.

Охватывая в своем исследовании более двух десятилетий политической, социальной и экономической трансформации, в ходе которых Венгрия прошла путь от оптимизма конца восьмидесятых и до недавнего правого поворота, Майя Надкарни анализирует следы социализма — от демонтированных статуй Ленина до газировки Bambi, от дискредитированных официальных нарративов и до публикации скандальных секретов информаторов коммунистического режима. Ее анализ показывает, что эти «пережитки» были не просто остатками нежелательного прошлого. В конечном счете, борьба за судьбу социалистического наследия в постсоциалистической Венгрии представляла собой попытку определить будущее — и оплакать то будущее, которое так и не наступило. 

“Bethea’s book conveys the story of an amazingly ambitious attempt to preserve the humanities while also saving the future of disadvantaged high school students in Chicago. … Highly recommended.” — Library Journal (starred review)

The Pushkin Project tells the story of how a Russian studies professor changes course late in his career by reeducating himself in evolutionary thought and founding a summer institute that partners with inner-city high schools to implement a new set of learning strategies for underserved youth.

These “cognitive cross-training” strategies involve introducing students from Hispanic and Black neighborhoods in the west and south sides of Chicago to the Russian culture and language, with an emphasis on poet, playwright, and novelist Alexander Pushkin. Through the lens of modern evolutionary thought, students adopt not only a new and different language and culture, but also a different sort of literary hero, one whose African heritage within the majority culture speaks to them directly. This inspiring and compelling story provides fascinating insights into Russia's national poet, brings the sciences and humanities together, and provides new directions in teaching young people from historically disadvantaged backgrounds.

“Bethea’s book conveys the story of an amazingly ambitious attempt to preserve the humanities while also saving the future of disadvantaged high school students in Chicago. … Highly recommended.” — Library Journal (starred review)

The Pushkin Project tells the story of how a Russian studies professor changes course late in his career by reeducating himself in evolutionary thought and founding a summer institute that partners with inner-city high schools to implement a new set of learning strategies for underserved youth.
These “cognitive cross-training” strategies involve introducing students from Hispanic and Black neighborhoods in the west and south sides of Chicago to the Russian culture and language, with an emphasis on poet, playwright, and novelist Alexander Pushkin. Through the lens of modern evolutionary thought, students adopt not only a new and different language and culture, but also a different sort of literary hero, one whose African heritage within the majority culture speaks to them directly. This inspiring and compelling story provides fascinating insights into Russia's national poet, brings the sciences and humanities together, and provides new directions in teaching young people from historically disadvantaged backgrounds.