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[ . . . ] And we get out of their way; we move in the opposite direction, toward where they’ve come from, toward Petroshi.And you see, they do not forbid it. And it may be that in Petroshi, where they…
On Russian fields, in the twilights of winter!
Where can one be lonelier, Where can one be lonelier?
The doddering horse, the squeaking sleigh,
the path under snow—that is my way.
Below, in a…
Osher Margolis was one of a handful of Soviet professional historians of Jewry. Like the others, he brought a Marxist perspective to his work. The work below, though focused on the nineteenth…
We’re laughing our heads off:
None of us wears a top-hat
We just go around with heads—or without heads—
But the Rabbi of Uman
Holds up a mirror to the sun.
We laugh our heads off
When a gang comes…
The new Rabbi pleased everybody, because he was beyond all doubt a righteous man. I was then a boy of twelve. My father received two letters from Rabbi Yukel on the subject of a good match for me in…
There are two sorts of biography: the biography a famous person writes for his admirers, because the public likes to know everything about celebrities, and [the] autobiography, usually written because…
This is a night of vigil for me,
in the shudder of my soul
I shall conceal
the secret of my youth.
I shall stand on guard:
No sleep nor slumber!
And in just one moment
the veil was taken away.
A…
Anyone familiar with our Russian Poland knows what Jews mean by a small shtetl, a little town.
A small shtetl has a few small cabins, and a fair every other Sunday. The Jews deal in liquor, grain…
You will assuredly regard it as wondrous, and it will gladden your heart that I too regarded as wondrous the vision vouchsafed to me by the Almighty in relation to the aliyot “ascents”—wondrous things…
I heard from the venerable rabbinic scholar, R. Nahman, an interpretation of the words of [the Besht] that one should intend in every word that he utters submissiveness…