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ABSTRACT
The article examines contemporary Israeli poetry and visual art by Russian-Jewish artists of the 1.5 generation, artists who were born in the Soviet Union but resettled in Israel during the 1990s. By focusing on the representation of the Soviet–Jewish past in their works, I show that in contrast to the largely negative view of the Soviet experience by the previous generations of Russian-Israeli authors, the historical understanding of the 1.5 generation is fundamentally different. This cohort of artists resists the lachrymose portrayal of Jewish life in the USSR and the “Happily Ever After” finale in Israel. Instead, they propose a counter-narrative that is hinged on a romanticized depiction of life in the USSR and disillusionment in Israel that followed. I argue that nostalgic representations of the Soviet–Jewish past by these artists derive from the suffering, humiliation, and rapid downwards social mobility that the Russian-speaking community experienced in Israel.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes on contributor
Alex Moshkin is an SSHRC postdoctoral fellow in the Centre for Comparative Literature at the University of Toronto. He received his PhD in Comparative Literature and Literary Theory from the University of Pennsylvania. His research focuses on multilingual Russian–Jewish literature, cinema, and visual art in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century in Israel, contextualized in a comparative framework with other Russian–Jewish diasporic formations in the United States, Canada, and Germany. He is currently working on a book project, Russian–Israeli Culture: In Search of Identity, that examines how Russian–speaking émigrés to Israel created a cultural identity for themselves in synch with the Israeli society. He is also editing an English-language anthology of contemporary Israeli poetry by Russian-speaking immigrants.
Notes
1. Cherkassky-Nnadi and Horst, “Towards a Socialist Abundance.”
2. For scholarship on Soviet material culture in the second half of the twentieth century, see Chernyshova, Soviet Consumer Culture in the Brezhnev Era and Ivanova, Magazini ‘Berezka’.
3. For methodological analysis of the Soviet Jewish Movement, see Zisserman-Brodsky, “The ‘Jews of Silence’ – the ‘Jews of Hope’ – the ‘Jews of Triumph’.”
4. Yurchak, Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More and Krutikov, “Four Voices from the Last Soviet Generation.”
5. Remennick, “The 1.5 Generation of Russian Jewish Immigrants in Israel.” The term “1.5 generation” has been introduced by Cuban-American sociologist, Ruben Rumbaut, in an attempt to differentiate the immigration experience of children and young adults both from the experiences of their parents (the first generation) and of their younger siblings who were born in the receiving country (the second generation).
6. Smola, “Israel and the Concept of Homeland in Russian Jewish Literature after 1970”; Rubins, “A Century of Russian Culture(s) ‘Abroad’”; Weiskopf, “Myi byli kak vo sne.”
7. Weiskopf, “Myi byli kak vo sne”, 249.
8. For the study of Red Army WWII Veterans in Israel, see Roberman, Zikaron behagirah.
9. On biographical detail of Alex Rif’s brother, see interview: Zetterberg, “Kama ze ole” (“How Much Does It Cost”).
10. Rif, Tipshonet mishtarim, 49. All translations of poetry are those of the author, unless otherwise indicated.
11. The contrast between idealized representations of life in the Soviet Union and those of a precarious reality in Israel runs through much of Rif’s poetry. For instance, the poem, “Zionism” undermines Israel’s ideological narrative that perceives Jewish life in the diaspora as dangerous and advocates a national rebirth in Israel. Instead, poem subverts this metanarrative by describing the opposite—the speaker’s deteriorating psychological state that results from immigration to Israel. It concludes with the ominous line: “One day I wanted to be, the other I did not.”
12. This was largely due to Soviet Union’s official anti-religious policies, popular antisemitism, acculturation, and a desire to hide one’s Jewishness and “pass” as Russians. According to Remennick and Prashizky, only 6% of Soviet-born Jews in Israel had been circumcised. Remennick and Prashizky, “Russian Israelis and Religion.”
13. Circumcision is an important topic in literary and visual art by Russian Jews. Zoya Cherkassky-Nnadi has created several gory paintings that deal with adult circumcision such as “The Circumcision of Uncle Yasha” (2013). In addition, Russian-American writer Gary Shteyngart describes his own adult circumcision in his biography Little Failure (2014), and also touches on this topic in his novel Absurdistan (2006).
14. On Chabad’s outreach activities that target Russian-speaking Jews, see Aviv and Shneer, New Jews, 26–50, and Zelenina, “‘Our Community is the Coolest in the World’.”
15. Derrida, Writing and Difference, 230 and 295.
16. Rif, “Evgeni,” Tipshonet mishtarim, 12.
17. On Israel’s language politics, “Hebrew only,” and the role of Hebrew in the state-building project, see Safran, “Language and Nation-building in Israel.”
18. Remennick, “Silent Mothers, Articulate Daughters.”
19. Prashizky and Remennick, “Subversive Identity and Cultural Production by the Russian-Israeli Generation 1.5.”
20. Alex Rif, “Halom hozer,” in Tipshonet mishtarim, 34.
21. Sex work is a common theme that runs through Zoya Cherkassky-Nnadi “Israeli” paintings in the series, Pravda. For instance, see: “The Aliyah of the 90's” (2016) and “Overdose” (2017).
22. Lemish, “The Whore and the Other.”
23. Rif, “Agiley ha’yaalom shel ima,” in The Big Trauma Blog. Facebook. 2015.
24. Dekel, Transnational Identities, 41.
25. For instance, see Zoya Cherkassky-Nnadi’s paintings “First Job in Israel” (2010) and “Bamba” (2014).
26. Kogan, Rishayon li-shegiot ketiv.
27. Cherkassky-Nnadi’s painting “Itzik” (2012) from the series Pravda captures the sexual harassment and traumatic experience that many Russian-speaking women went through in Israel, and the asymmetry of power between them and local men in social and professional relations.
28. Remennick, “Silent Mothers, Articulate Daughters,” 62.
29. On the longevity of discrimination and harassment of Russian-speaking women in Israel, see: Remennick, “Silent Mothers, Articulate Daughters.”
30. Istoshina and Zamir, Women’s Security Reports 2012 and 2013. The survey was also analyzed in Remennick (2018), 62 and Dekel, 36.
31. Golden, “A National Cautionary Tale” and Lemish, “The Whore and the Other.”
32. Lomsky-Feder and Rapoport, Visibility in Immigration, 79. (Hebrew). Quoted in English in Dekel, 37.
33. Kogan, Sus bahatzait (Horse in Skirt), 82.
34. On the celebration of Soviet holidays in Israel, read: Prashizky and Remennick, The Russian 1.5 Generation in Israel, 76–82. Fialkova and Yelenevskaya, In Search of the Self, 147–82.
35. Boym, The Future of Nostalgia, 19.
36. Ibid., 132.
37. Ibid., 30.
38. Ibid., 152.
39. Sasha Senderovich describes the State of Israel as a “restorative nostalgia” nation par excellence in his article, “In Memoriam: Svetlana Boym,” Tablet, August 7, 2015, http://www.tabletmag.com/scroll/192730/in-memoriam-svetlana-boym
40. For analysis of Cherkassky-Nnadi’s painting series that focuses on the experiences of Russian speakers in Israel, Pravda, see: Cherkassky, Pravda.
41. Zoya Cherkassky-Nnadi, Soviet Childhood, Facebook. www.facebook.com/zoya.cherkassky/media_set?set=a.10153945822422542.1073741863.784252541&type=3.
42. On push factors that motivated Soviet Jews to emigrate, see Fialkova and Yelenevskaya, Ex-Soviets in Israel, 39–87.
43. For stylistic analysis of Cherkassky-Nnadi’s art, see: Amitai Mendelsohn, “Zoya Cherkassky: Immigration Project” in Pravda, 165–59 (the book goes from right to left, in the Hebrew-language fashion)
44. Marta Rabikowska, “The Memory of the Communist Past—An Alternative Present?”, 15–16.
45. On the ideological complexity of the post-Soviet nostalgia, see Nadkarni and Shevchenko, “The Politics of Nostalgia in the Aftermath of Socialism’s Collapse” and Platt, “Russian Empire of Pop.”
46. In the last years of the Soviet Union, the government expanded paid maternity leave to 18 months, and unpaid leave was given for additional 18 months. On this topic, see Malkova, “Can Maternity Benefits Have Long-Term Effects on Childbearing?” 692–3.
47. Wanner, Out of Russia, 190.
48. Tsirkin-Sadan, “Between Marginal and Transnational.”
49. Ibid., 264.
50. These authors immigrated to America and Germany at roughly the same age as Rif, Kogan, and Cherkassky-Nnadi.
51. Prashizky and Remennick, The Russian 1.5 Generation in Israel, 12.
52. Rozovsky, “Missing Communism.”
53. Prashizky and Remennick, “Ethnic Awakening,” 1.