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This collection of essays covers a hundred-year history of Russian-language literature in Israel, including the pre-state period. Some of the studies are devoted to an overview of the literary process and the activities of its participants, others—to individual genres and movements. As a result, a complex and multifaceted picture emerges of a not quite fully defined, but very lively and dynamic community that develops in the most difficult conditions. The contributors trace the paths of Russian-Israeli prose, poetry and drama, various waves of avant-garde, fantasy, and critical thought. Today, in Russian-Israeli literature, the voices of writers of various generations and waves of repatriation are intertwined: from the "seventies" to the "war aliyah" of the recent times. Both the Russian-Israeli authors and their critics often hold different opinions of their respective roles in Israel’s historical and literary storms. While disagreeing on the definition of their place on the map of modern culture, Russian-Israeli writers are united by a shared bond with the fate of the Jewish state.
“While this book features many different authors and diverse objects of investigation, it also creates a panoramic view of Russian-Israeli literature—both in style and in chronology. The book should be of great interest to scholars and general readers alike. The very notion of ‘Russian-Israeli literature’ (similarly to the notion of ‘Russian-American literature’) will doubtless illicit questions. Some readers might even ask: And where does the writer belong if she or he has two addresses, sometimes even simultaneously, in two different countries? In what category should we place translations into the Russian language? What is the principal difference between Russian-Israeli literature and, say, Yiddish-Israeli or Polish-Israeli literatures? In other words, this book not only offers a great deal of new materials but also invites us to think of the directions of further research.”
—Gennady Estraikh, Professor, New York University, author of Transatlantic Russian Jewishness
Roman Katsman is an Israeli scholar of Hebrew and Russian literature. He was born in Ukraine in 1969, repatriated to Israel in 1990, and is currently a full professor at Bar-Ilan University and head of the program for Jewish-Russian literature. His most recent books, published by Academic Studies Press, examine Israeli Russian-language literature.
Maxim D. Shrayer, bilingual author, scholar, and translator, is a professor at Boston College. Shrayer was born in Moscow in 1967 and immigrated to the US in 1987. His recent books include A Russian Immigrant: Three Novellas and Of Politics and Pandemics. Shrayer’s new literary memoir, Immigrant Baggage, was published in 2023.
From the Editors
Russian-Language Literature in Eretz Israel (Basic Outlines and Authors)
Vladimir Khazan
Julius Margolin and His Times
Luba Jurgenson
Israeli-Soviet Literary Ties in the 1950s–1980s: from Translations to Aliyah Library
Marat Grinberg
Leaving Russia: Russian-Israeli Literature of the 1970s–1980s
Aleksei Surin
Paths of Russian Avant-Garde Poetry in Israel
Maxim D. Shrayer
Prose of the Aliyah of the 1990s–2000s
Roman Katsman
Russian-Israeli Prose in the Second Decade of the Twenty-First Century
Elena Promyshlianskaia
Genres of Israeli-Russian Fantastic Fiction
Elena Rimon
The Phenomenon of Russian-Israeli Dramaturgy of the 1970s–2020s
Zlata Zaretsky
From the History of Russian Israeli Literary Criticism (On One Method of Delineating Literary Contacts between Russia and Israel)
Leonid Katsis
About the Contributors
Index