Interpretations of the Aggadah in the Commentaries of the Maharal of Prague, the Gaon of Vilna and R. Nachman of Bratslav

This article examines three commentaries on the Aggadah story of the Talmudic sage Rabbah bar bar Hana’s incredible journeys: by the Maharal of Prague (16th cent.), the Gaon of Vilna (18th cent.) and Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav (end 18th – 19th cent.) While all three authors see the story in an allegorical vein, each one has their own focus and seems to wander away from the text proper and interpret it through the lens of their own set of ideas, be it philosophy, metaphysics, ethics, asceticism or mysticism. So Maharal of Prague sees the Haggadah as kind of philosophical and mystical treatise. He hints to the reader that this Haggadah contains the secrets of metaphysics and Kabbalah. For the Vilna Gaon the story has an ethical message. He sees the crow as talmid haham whose face is black from malnutrition and studying the Torah at night. Rabbi Nachman is the most exalted and ecstatic scholar of all three. He uses the interpretation of Haggadah as part of his mystical lessons. The topic of his lesson is Messianic Deliverance.

The Divine-Human Unity in the Context of the Hasidic Doctrine of the Tsaddik’s Power

For the founders of Hasidism, its fundamental principle is a spiritual practice that ensures an unceasing connection between the believer and his Creator. This doctrine is not purely theological: it serves as a rationale behind the societal hierarchy proposed by the Hasidim. The leader, having achieved the highest point of unity with the Lord, sets a pattern to be followed by the community members in their relationship with him as the one who rules over them, thus justifying the all-encompassing power of the Tsaddiks. The paper discusses three basic concepts of God-man unity. The essence of the first is the perception of the believer as immersing himself in the deity and dissolving there like a water drop in an ocean. The other two envision the unity as a peculiar interpersonal communication. The paper argues that within the Hasidic doctrine all three concepts are on an equal footing and shows the principles of their coexistence.

«I see a Jew in me…»: the Jewish Studies of Leonid Frizman

The article discusses the role of Jewish topics in the scholarly heritage of Leonid Frizman, a Kharkov-born historian of Russian literature. Turning to Jewish Studies quite late in life, Frizman outlined potentially fruitful areas of research on a number of writers and created an experimental platform that allowed him to test and challenge widely accepted assumptions and arrive at new perspectives on various historical, literary and philosophical issues.

A Historical and Philological Commentary on Genesis 1:1–3

The article examines phonetic, lexical, grammatical and mor-phological devices employed in Gen 1:1–3 in the light of the literary tra-ditions of the Middle East, in particular that of ancient Mesopotamia.

Peretz Markish on the Holocaust in 1942 and in 1947

The paper focuses on two Holocaust writings by Peretz Markish: the play An Eye for an Eye (1942) and the magnum opus The March of Generations. The play was later reworked into the first parts of the novel that was written in 1947 and published posthumously in 1966. Two incomplete copies of the play are available at the Russian State Archive of Literature and Arts. From the original Yiddish text, only a few episodes survived, each of them in 2–3 versions. The Russian translation by M.Shambadal is opening episodes and the last page. The article attempts to reconstruct the play’s plot, to analyze its motif structure against the backdrop of Markish’s other Holocaust-related plays, and to trace the transformations it underwent when incorporated into the first part of the novel. Both works also provide us with some historical insights telling what the JAFC members knew about the Holocaust as early as in 1942, and suggesting the hand of the Soviet censorship.

Jacob Brafman’s The Book of the Kahal: the Jew Who Was Afraid of Jewishness

The article discusses the narrative structure and rhetorical devices of The Book of the Kahal (1869)– an influential pamphlet by the baptized Jew Jacob Brafman. The book breathes conspiracy theories and portrays the Jews as a state within a state governed by the Kahal and regulated by the Talmud, even when they try to pass themselves as a confession to fool gullible Christians. In line with the traditions of collaboration literature, the author, obsessed with the glorious Imperial might and full of disdain for all things Jewish, demands that the Jews abandon their treacherous “multifaceted” identity in favor of Russia.

The Role of Religion in Shaping Ethnic Identity in Jewish Children of Contemporary Russia

It is commonly believed that for the majority of the Soviet-raised Russian Jews, Judaism and its practices have not played a significant part in shaping their Jewish identity. For today’s Russian Jewish children, however, the personal development is mainly defined by their families, so the religious education and practical observance of Jewish rites and customs form the very basis for their identity. Studying the specifics of this mechanism in Russian Jewish children also reveals a correlation between the parents’ religious views and their determination to raise their offspring within the Jewish tradition.

About Origin of Some Jewish Manuscripts (Fond 182 of the RNL Manuscript Department)

In the Soviet time, libraries only preserved the names of private and, occasionally, institutional collections. Standalone manuscripts or small sets of manuscripts would become part of the collections in national languages. The information concerning the origins of new arrivals was not considered valuable enough to keep record of. Such was the case of Fond 182 of the Manuscript Department of the Russian National Library, commonly referred to as the Schneerson Library. Close examination of the content, handwriting, binding, stickers and owners’ inscription may allow us to identify some of the manuscript’s former owners. Thus, the collection contains not only the manuscripts of the Schneerson family proper, but also those belonging to Zelig Persits, Yaakov Maze, Benyamin Epstein, Bentsion Ettlinger, and the Karaite national library “Karay Bitikligi”, as well as the materials – mostly fragments – that should have been ascribed to the Günzburg Collection and some “trophy” manuscripts that were brought over to the USSR after the WWII and due to the lack of qualified scholars, wound up in Fond 182.

Pauline Wengeroff’s Memoirs of a Grandmother: The Evolution of One Household Item and Its Metaphoric Value Through Generations

Memoirs of a Grandmother: Scenes from the Cultural History of the Jews of Russia in the Nineteenth Century byPauline Wengeroff (published in 1908–1910 in Berlin) is a unique example of a Jewish autobiography written by a woman that depicts the Jewish traditional, preassimilation mode of life as the Golden Age. Reminiscing on the bygone times, the author also muses over her own, rather complicated relationship with the traditional and the modern. For her, the conflict between the two signifies the battle of sexes that was lost by women. A knife, described in some contexts as a household object, in others assumes a metaphorical value symbolizing the idyllic Jewish past and the dramatic changes undergone by the Jewish people, by Jewish women and by the memoirist herself. A woman with a knife, featured in the first volume as a symbol and a defender of the Jewish tradition, later morphs into a tragic figure, both a sacrifice and a sacrificer.

Jewish Education and the “Spiritual Problems of Rationalism” under the Reign of Nicholas I

The article discusses the reasons that caused public Jewish schools founded at the time of the Jewish educational reforms in the Russian Empire in the 1840s, to restrain from hiring foreign instructors. Based on the analysis of historiographic sources, it is shown that the de-cision was mainly due to the discrepancy between the original modernist vision of the reform and the traditionalist nature of its implementation.