Roots, #20
July-December
2003
The section Articles. Researches opens the
magazine. The first work in the section is the article by the permanent author
of the magazine Roots Steve Levin from Israel A.P. Chekhov in the Search of
Jewish Mentality. The author shows on concrete examples how the famous Russian
writer reflected the Jewish theme in his creative work, tells that the
description of Jews by A. Chekhov was not always positive.
The author of the next article of the section, a
historian Yulia Matushanskaya from Kazan tells in her article Did Josef
Flavius Write the History Impartially about traditions of the Hellenistic
historiography followed by Josef Flavius.
The next article of the section is entitled
Multi-Linguism (Jewish Ethnic Conscience in Age of Rome). The author Yelena
Zyablikova from Ivanovo analyses the effect of the multi-lingual situation that
was formed in the beginning of Common Era in Jewish environment upon the ethnic
conscience of Jewish people.
The next section of the magazine The Present
and the History is opened by the article by Alexander Mindlin from Moscow
History of Percent Norms (Limitations in General Education of Jews in 19
early 20th century). The author tells about development of general
education of Jews in Russia and observes origin and transformation of percent
norms establishing quota for entering high and secondary educational
institutions of Russia by Jews.
The next article, War and Myth, is written by
an Israeli author Leonid Matsih. The author compares the stories about real
events of Six-day war of June 5-10 1967 of Israel and Arab countries with folk
myths and legends about events of this war.
Professor Alexander Atanasov from Bulgaria
presented for judgement of readers the polemical article Tsar Boris III and
the Jews. Saviour or Participant of Holocaust. The author tries to decide to
what extent tsar of Bulgaria Boris II was guilty for extermination of Jews of
Macedonia and Thrace that were included into Bulgaria in 1941.
The article Oryol City and its History of
Bloody Calumny by Bella Vishnevskaya from Oryol takes the reader back to the
history of Jews of Russia. The author tells about cases connected with ruefully
known bloody calumny that took place in Oryol province.
The section Cultural Heritage is opened by a
block of articles devoted to outstanding scholar-philologist, theorist of
translation Yefim Etkind. The first article Stray Cosmopolitans in Tula is
written by Antonina Oksman (Tula) and devoted to the period of life of Ye.
Etkind when he worked in Tula pedagogical university. The author also dwells on
other events of Etkinds life that show his character.
The second article is the article by prof. Vladislav
Krivonos from Samara Ours or Alien? Jewish Theme in Memoirs Prose by
Etkind. The author tells in it about the fact that Soviet reality put the Jews
into position of aliens, meaningly dividing, pushing them out of society.
And the third article of the block is an
abstract from the book by Ye. Etkind Notes of Non-Plotter published in London
in 1977. The abstract is called Digression about Emigration and gives the
reflections of the author on motives of emigration and fates of emigrants.
Irina Shchivel from Nizhni Novgorod tells in
her work Jewish Small Town in Creative Work of Itskhak-Leibush Perets about
the life of the outstanding Jewish writer and that part of his creative work
that was devoted to description of life and customs of a Jewish small town at
the boundary of XIX-XX centuries.
Saratov historians .I. Avrus and .P. Novikov prepared for publication the
article Yiddishist against Hebrew (response to H. Zhitlovsky). Its author,
Victor Chernov, is a famous politician of Russia, the minister of agriculture
of Provisional government of Russia (1917). Chernov is the author of a number
of articles devoted to Jewish problem. One of these articles was published in
the previous issue of the magazine.
The section is completed by an article of Dr.
Matvey Geiser from Moscow I Consider Myself as a Russian Writer (Notes on
Creative Work of Grigory Kanovich). The famous writer-Jew speaks about himself
as about Russian writer writing about Jews.
The section Memoirs is opened by an article by
Michail Rabinovich (Smolensk) My Father Isak Rabinovich. This is the story
about authors father who was in the past the TASS newspaper photographer in
Smolensk and Bryansk regions. This is the story about honest and decent man who
lived through happy life, brought up good children and was acknowledged as
a specialist and professional.
The series of stories Meetings by Vladimir
Sosnovsky from Biysk, Altay region. The author is a man of complicated fate who
was subjected to repressions during time of Stalin regime and spent many years
in camps and exile, he tells about his meetings with interesting and famous
people (writers F. Iskander and S. Lvov, poets D. Samoylov and M. Svetlov etc)
that took place after his release from Stalin camps.
The last section of the magazine is Comments. Reviews. Criticism. It contains numerous letters of the magazine readers to materials published in No 19 of the magazine.