Journey into the Land of the Zeks and Back: a memoir of the Gulag

Abstract

Jewish internationalism. According to Glaser, the Yiddish poets of her study sought to “build a new religious tradition, modeled on Judaism” that would be “consecrated through its affiliation with the Communist Party” (p. 2) This formulation, it appears, seems to share so much with the construction of the European Christian mission to “distant” and “exotic” souls across empires, Jews included. While many topics relating to Yiddish poets’ complex self-identification remain to be explored, Glaser has provided us with a fine start. The usefulness of this book extends beyond the scholar’s shelf to the classroom, where its contents will no doubt spur lively debate. Songs in Dark Times is an important and sensitive translation and analysis of overlooked poets traversing moral crises, pointing toward a critique that resists analogy while recognizing the full presence of Yiddish colonial and racial discourse from its inception in the 17th century until the present day.