![]() ![]() These ideological struggles - over the role of peasants in a revolutionary strategy, over the meaning of Jewish identity in a modern Russia, over the use of Yiddish rather than Russian, over assimilation versus Jewish nationalism- laid the basis for An-sky’s ultimate life’s work, the ethnography of Russian Jews. Safran, a professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures, is aware that her readers may know little of late 19th and early 20th century Russian history, so she carefully details the alignments and divisions he faced. As a young Jewish man leaving the Pale to try to change Russian society, An-sky had to negotiate a complex, constantly shifting political environment. An-sky ( 1863 – 1920) may be best known for The Dybbuk, but this play, considered one of the most popular Yiddish theater pieces of all time, was almost a footnote to this man’s extraordinary career. ![]()
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