In his captivating new book, based on new evidence and a series of interviews, author and scholar Maxim D. Shrayer offers a richly journalistic portrait of Russia’s dwindling yet still vibrant and influential 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, which forty years ago constituted one of the world’s largest Jewish populations and which presently numbers only about 180,000. Why do Jews continue to live in Russia after the antisemitism and persecution they had endured there? What are the prospects of Jewish life in Russia? What awaits the children born to Jews who have not left? With or Without You asks and seeks to answer some of the central questions of modern Jewish history and culture.
Price: $19.00
Pages: 100
Publisher: Academic Studies Press
Imprint: Academic Studies Press
Publication Date:
31 October 2017
Trim Size: 8.00 X 5.00 in
ISBN: 9781618116598
Format: Paperback
BISACs:
Social groups: religious groups and communities
[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.
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
Prologue: “G-d gave me as a Jew such a place in life” 1. A Visit to the Museum 2. A Streetcar Named Oblivion 3. Gauging Russian Antisemitism 4. The Ambassador of Jewish Pride 5. Staying or Leaving 6. Almost Folklore In Closing: Jewish Clowns in Moscow Acknowledgments List of Photos Works Cited Index of Names
