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Ḥad Gadya (One Little Goat) is a song customarily sung at the end of the Passover seder. It recounts a sequence of events beginning with a young goat purchased by the protagonist’s father that is then…
Dedicated to my sister and friend Sarah Rappoport
A people’s poetry depicts, vividly and in clear relief, the hidden inner world of national life, to which we are admitted neither by the pen of the…
for V. Kaverin [Veniamin Kaverin, born Zilber, Soviet writer]
The small town resounded with whistling and shouting. The smell of stewing, the smell of frying, the smell of boiling.
Mr. Dykhes had sold all his defective soap to the army.
Mus…
In every village in the region, in every farmhouse you’d meet them, the Boyars. The first Boyar, family legend had it, had settled in the Polesian forests many generations ago. His name had been Ezra…
The audience at the first formal performance by the Habima theater troupe in 1918. This set of short plays, Neshef bereshit (A Festival of Our Beginning), was performed in the Moscow Art Theatre under…
We must not repeat the mistake made by western Jews . . . in denying their nationality and in assimilating completely in all areas of life except religion. . . . We eastern Jews have seen all the…
[Gordon and Zhivago were on their way home in the evening. The sun was going down.] In one village [they passed through] they saw a young Cossack surrounded by a crowd…
Ethnic minorities—majorities, too—did not suffer any particular persecution in our town. Rise as high as you can go, earn as much as you can manage, build something out of what you achieve—all you…
Three Idlers [finish chanting]:Why, oh why,Did the soul descendFrom the highest heightTo the deepest end?The greatest fallContains the upward flight.[A long pause. All three sit motionless, lost in…