About the Book
In the summer of 1947, three years before his death in a labor camp hospital, one of the most significant Soviet Yiddish writers Der Nister (Pinkhas Kahanovitsh, 1884-1950) made a trip from Moscow to Birobidzhan, the Jewish Autonomous Region in the Russian Far East. He traveled there on a special migrant train, together with a thousand Holocaust survivors. The present study examines this journey as an original protest against the conformism of the majority of Soviet Jewish activists. In his travel notes, Der Nister described the train as the "modern Noah's ark," heading "to put an end to the historical silliness." This rhetoric paraphrasing Nietzsche's "historical sickness," challenged the Jewish history in the Diaspora, which "broke" the people's mythical "wholeness." Der Nister formulated his vision of a post-Holocaust Jewish reconstruction more clearly in his previously unknown notes ("Birobidzhan Manifesto"), the last that have reached us from Der Nister's creative legacy, which are being discussed for the first time in this book. Without their own territory, he wrote, the Jews were like "a soul without a body or a body without a soul, and in either case, always a cripple." Records of the fabricated investigation case against the "anti-Soviet nationalist grouping in Birobidzhan" reveal details about Der Nister's thoughts and real acts. Both the records and the manifesto are being published here for the first time.
About the Author :
Ber Kotlerman is Associate Professor at the Department of Literature of the Jewish People, Bar Ilan University, where in 2011-14 he served as Academic Director of the Rena Costa Center for Yiddish Studies. His fields of interest include Jewish history in Russia, Eastern Europe, and Far East, Yiddish and Hebrew literature, Jewish theater and cinema. He is the author of Disenchanted Tailor in "Illusion" Sholem Aleichem behind the Scenes of Early Jewish Cinema (Bloomington, IN, 2014), The Cultural World of Soviet Jewry (Raanana, 2014), In Search of Milk and Honey: The Theater of "Soviet Jewish Statehood" (Bloomington, IN, 2009), and Bauhaus in Birobidzhan (Tel Aviv, 2008); the editor of Mizrekh: Jewish Studies in the Far East, 2 vols. (Frankfurt am Main, 2009 and 2011), Yiddish Theater: Literature, Culture, and Nationalism (Ramat Gan, 2009); and the co-editor of Around the Point: Studies in Jewish Literature and Culture in Multiple Languages (Newcastle upon Tyne, 2014)
Review :
"Broken Heart/Broken Wholeness is an exemplary historical case study that combines meticulous archival research with insightful analysis of an event that had fateful consequences for the Soviet Birobidzhan project. It is also a valuable contribution to Jewish cultural history in the Soviet Union, as it shows how the Soviet Jewish elite sought to play an active role in shaping the reconstruction of Jewish life in the wake of the Second World War. Last but not least, this book tells a dramatic personal story of a Yiddish writer who emerged as a spiritual leader of his people, and who paid for his actions with his life."
--Mikhail Krutikov, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Studies in Contemporary Jewry
"Kotlerman's book not only vividly recounts Der Nister's experiences in Birobidzhan but also provides the first English translations of the powerful, moving essays he composed while travelling on the eshelon from Vinnytsia, as well as a substantial excerpt from the hitherto unexamined six thick volumes of Russian transcripts of the subsequent trumped-up 'Birobidzhan Affair, ' in which Der Nister, Emiot, Kerler, and others were accused of being Jewish conspirators. ... [Kotlerman] clearly demonstrates that Der Nister went from being a reclusive, secretive symbolist who kept as far from politics as he could to being a fearless champion of Soviet Jewish nationalism, while taking on an increasingly public role as a kind of secular tzaddik, who blesses, consoles, and advises all who come to him for counsel." --Allan Nadler, Drew University, Jewish Review of Books (Summer 2019)
--Allan Nadler "Jewish Review of Books"
This book makes a contribution to the study of minorities in general, and Jews in particular, during the early years of the Soviet Union. It is also of use for those interested in issues related to the relationship between writers and Soviet authorities in this period.--Ayse Dietrich, Middle East Technical University, International Journal of Russian Studies Issue no. 6, Jan 2017 "International Journal of Russian Studies"
