![]() In this formulation, the pre-Soviet Jew lived and breathed the Mishnah and Gemara, sometimes only putting aside the ancient texts (and his leatherworking tools) to catch up on his Jabotinsky or some other favorite Zionist. Works about Soviet Jews have often focused on reclaiming the Jewish part of the equation. Whether as an idealistic but ultimately failed Communist, a Zionist in training, an eternal refugee, or a Tevye-like throwback for his nostalgic American brethren, the Soviet Jew wanders across the imagination with a counterfeit passport always in need of stamping. In academia the Soviet Jew has long been seen as an ideological suitcase ripe for stuffing. Google cofounder Sergey Brin, born in Moscow in 1973, was resettled in Maryland by 1979, part of a large wave of Soviet Jewish immigrants (which included me). Alisa Zinovyevna Rosenbaum, better known as Ayn Rand, left the USSR in 1926 and spent most of her days perfecting her egoism in the United States. ![]() For example, the painter Moishe Shagal (later Marc Chagall), who was born in 1887 near Vitebsk in what is today Belarus, traveled extensively throughout Western Europe before World War I and moved to Paris in 1923, having spent no more than seven years in the new Bolshevik state. Many Soviet Jews familiar to Western readers are defined at least in part by their absence from the USSR. How the Soviet Jew Was Made by Sasha Senderovich is a scholarly work, but it also presents urgent perspectives for any post-Soviet Jewish American who has ever entertained the question What made my parents the way they are? What accounts for their dark view of the world, their elevated sense of humor and irony, and, perhaps most poignantly for this particular group, their unquenchable anxiety? Cynthia was aghast at how her companions were able to ignore Ireland's troubles and pretend everything was nice and pleasant.David Gutman in Boris Shpis and Rashel Milman’s film The Return of Neitan Bekker, 1932 The story the stranger told Cynthia concerned the suffering of the Irish at the hands of the English. Milly realizes that because of the kind of man Strafe is Cynthia will never be taken to a mental hospital, or have to suffer at all for embarrassing herself and the rest of them in this way. Cynthia has a breakdown-talking loudly and inappropriately, embarrassing her friends and the Malseeds with melodramatic and personal remarks. At first they think the man made some kind of pass at her-then it becomes apparent that he told her a story about his past which convinced her that he drowned by suicide. When they come back they find that the uncouth looking man has drowned. One day Strafe, Dekko, and Milly go for a walk and leave Cynthia at the hotel. But there is another guest at the hotel, a man alone, who seems uncouth. At first, this year's vacation is exactly like the others the four have spent together. Cynthia is small and ineffectual, and has always been melancholy and set apart somewhat from her husband and Milly and Dekko. ![]() Milly is a widow who, because of her affair with Strafe, has never married again. Milly and Strafe have been having an affair for years. ![]() An English group, Dekko, Strafe, Strafe's wife Cynthia, and Milly play bridge together, and have always spent their June holiday together in an Irish inn run by a respectable old couple named the Malseeds. ![]()
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