Weinberg, Robert

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Swarthmore College Works History Faculty Works History Summer 2010 Review Of "The Anti-Imperial Choice: The Making Of The Ukrainian Jew" By Y. Petrovsky-Shtern Robert Weinberg Swarthmore College, rweinbe1@swarthmore.edu This work is brought to you for free and open access by . It has been accepted for inclusion in History Faculty Works by an authorized administrator of Works. For more information, please contact myworks@swarthmore.edu. Follow this and additional works at: https://works.swarthmore.edu/fac-history  Part of the History Commons Let us know how access to these works benefits you  Recommended Citation Robert Weinberg. (2010). "Review Of "The Anti-Imperial Choice: The Making Of The Ukrainian Jew" By Y. Petrovsky-Shtern". Slavic Review. Volume 69, Issue 2. 469-469. https://works.swarthmore.edu/fac-history/90  ReviewAuthor(s): Robert WeinbergReview by: Robert WeinbergSource: Slavic Review, Vol. 69, No. 2 (SUMMER 2010), p. 469Published by: Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian StudiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25677122Accessed: 11-04-2016 13:42 UTC Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available athttp://about.jstor.org/terms JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusteddigital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information aboutJSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies is collaborating with JSTOR todigitize, preserve and extend access to Slavic ReviewThis content downloaded from 130.58.65.20 on Mon, 11 Apr 2016 13:42:21 UTCAll use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms Book Reviews 469 The Anti-Imperial Choice: The Making of the Ukrainian Jew. By Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009. xv, 344 pp. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Illus trations. Photographs. $65.00, hard bound. This book is an ambitious and bold attempt to reconsider the encounter between Jews and non-Jews in eastern Europe, specifically Ukraine. By examining the literary output of five Jewish writers who wrote in Ukrainian (Hryts'ko Kernerenko, Ivan Kulyk, Raisa Troianker, Leonid Pervomais'kyi, and Moisei Fishbein), Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern explores a sub section of the Jewish intelligentsia that identified with Ukrainian culture, history, and national aspirations from the late imperial era to the independent Ukraine of the 1990s. Traditional wisdom posits that Jewish intellectuals in Ukraine embraced the language and culture of Russia, but Petrovsky-Shtern demonstrates that a strong Ukrainian-Jewish identity emerged among Jews living in the colonized Ukraine of the Russian and Soviet empires. The decision of Jewish literati to construct a Ukrainian-Jewish identity via literature, especially poetry, was historically informed and underscores a conscious choice to speak on behalf of suppressed Ukrainian national, linguistic, and cultural ambitions. In short, an emphasis on cultural relations between Jews and Ukrainians reveals the existence of Ukrainophile Jews whose creative output represents the rapprochement between two mi nority peoples who have been historically wary and suspicious of each other and reflex ively pronounce their victimization by the other. As the author notes, the book traces, "the spiritual biographies of the Jews who considered identification with the Ukrainian national cause part of their personal spiritual quest. This integration buttressed their at tempts to reconcile Jewish and Ukrainian historical narratives traditionally regarded as incompatible" (23). Petrovsky-Shtern's findings force us to rethink the paradigm about Jewish accultura tion and integration into the societies and cultures of eastern Europe. For many scholars the creation of a Ukrainian-Jewish identity seems an unlikely, if not oxymoronic, enter prise given that the socioeconomic and cultural characteristics of Jews distinguished them from the rural, agrarian world of peasants. Yet there were Jews living in Ukraine who preferred to speak and write Ukrainian to Yiddish and Russian and who took up the cause of the Ukrainian nation and culture, choosing to side with what they considered the colo nized oppressed. For Petrovsky-Shtern the poems and stories he examines can be read as "reflections on the colonial status of Ukraine and a plea for its national revival" (11). In other words, the writers Petrovsky-Shtern studies chose to adopt an anti-imperial stance, an unusual position for the Jews of the Russian and Soviet empires. The Anti-Imperial Choice is an impressive piece of scholarship that benefits from ex haustive research in libraries, archives, and collections held in private hands. Petrovsky Shtern is equally at home with literature, history, and biography. He mixes sensitive and nuanced analyses of literary texts with extensive reconstruction of the historical and bio graphical forces that shaped the intellectual and cultural milieus of the writers examined in the book. The book is too specialized for a general audience, but specialists in Jewish and Ukrainian history and literature will find it rewarding, as will those interested in colo nial studies and postcolonial theory. Finally, the author displays a flair for writing, all the more commendable and remarkable given that English is his adopted language. Robert Weinberg Swarthmore College History of the Yiddish Language. By Max Weinreich. Ed. Paul Glasser. Trans. Shlomo Noble, with the assistance of Joshua A. Fishman. 2 vols. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008. xiv, 732 pp. Appendix. Notes. Bibliography. Index. $300.00, hard bound. Max Weinreich's History of the Yiddish Language is regarded as almost sacred in Yiddish studies. This does not mean that every Yiddish scholar in the field has ever read the four volume Yiddish edition (1973) or will now read this two-volume English edition. EspeciallyThis content downloaded from 130.58.65.20 on Mon, 11 Apr 2016 13:42:21 UTCAll use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

Review Of  The Anti-Imperial Choice: The Making Of The Ukrainian Jew  By Y. Petrovsky-Shtern

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Review Of The Anti-Imperial Choice: The Making Of The Ukrainian Jew By Y. Petrovsky-Shtern

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