Архив еврейской истории. Том 14

The article examines the book The Jew at Home by the noted American painter-etcher Joseph Pennell, placing it back in its original historical, literary and artistic surroundings. This essay constitutes a remarkable and in many respects unique account of the expulsion of Jews from Moscow and their existence in Southwestern Region of the Russian Empire in the early 1890s, but since most scholars consider it to be an antisemitic pamphlet, the documentary value of the book has traditionally been ignored. Placing the text and its illustrative material in simultaneous contexts allows to understand the mechanics of its impact on the reader, how it was perceived and appreciated by contemporaries and later critics and why, the standing of the essay and its drawings within the literary and artistic tradition, and, finally, how it corresponded to contemporary ethical norms. Together this affords us the opportunity, for the first time, to form an accurate and evidence-based assessment of Pennell’s book and to bring it back into the scholarly discourse as a controversial, but noteworthy historical document.

Feldman Dmitriy Z. Prisoner of the Peter and Paul Fortress — Hasidic rabbi: to the history of two investigative processes of the reigns of Paul I and Alexander I

The article, based on published and archival sources, tells about the history of the origin, progress and results of two investigative cases accusing the spiritual leader of the Lithuanian-Belarussian Hasidic Jews, Rabbi Shneur Zalman ben Barukh of Lyady, of political unreliability (1798–1801). These trials became part of the internecine struggle between Hasidim and Mithnag-dim (rabbinists) and led to the release of Shneur Zalman, who was found innocent, and the strengthening of the position of Hasidism in the western provinces of the Russian Empire.

“This desperate material situation changes the Jewish physiognomy, Jewish psychology”. I. M. Geizman’s memoirs about the anarchist movement among Jews in Russia at the beginning of the XX century. Edited and introduced by Dmitriy L Rublev

The publication includes a report by I. M. Geizman, read on November 27,1931 in Moscow at a meeting of the Section on the Study of the Revolutionary Working Movement among Jews at the VOPKS. Geizman was one of the leaders of the anarchist movement in the Western provinces of Russia in 1905–1908. His report combines memories about anarchists known to the author (organizers, propagandists and militants) with an analysis of their psychology and worldview. Geizman tries to link the emergence of the anarchist movement among Jewish workers and intellectuals with the political and socio-economic situation of Jews in the Russian Empire, as well as with certain cultural characteristics of the Jewish people.

“Your Translation is Intended for the Large Russian Public”: Correspondence between Sholem Aleichem and Sarah Ravich. Edited and introduced by Alexander Frenkel

Sarah Ravich (1879–1957), a member of the Bolshevik faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party and Vladimir Lenin’s closest ally, was among those who translated Sholem Aleichem’s works into Russian during the writer’s lifetime. The collaboration between the most popular early 20th century Yiddish author and this professional revolutionary lasted about a year and a half, from the autumn of 1912 to January 1914. Both of them then lived outside of Russia, mainly in Switzerland. The result of their collaboration was the appearance of the Russian version of the novel The Bloody Hoax, inspired by the infamous Beilis trial. The correspondence between Sholem Aleichem and Sarah Ravich, preserved in Russian and Israeli archives, contains rich historical, literary and philological material. This publication includes 62 letters from Sholem Aleichem written directly by him or by his daughter Emma Rabinovich, either under his dictation or on his behalf, as well as 36 reply letters written by Sarah Ravich.