Nostalgia for a Foreign Land

Roman Katsman is Professor of Hebrew Literature at Bar-Ilan University. He is author of six books and numerous articles on Hebrew and Russian literatures, and Jewish-Russian literature and thought. His recent interests are concerned with laughter in S.Y. Agnon’s works and the contemporary Russian intellectual literature.

"When over a million Russians came to Israel between 1990 and 2010, they brought with them brains and brawn, violins and vodka, and the Russian language. But what could be more 'Trayf' in Israel then the Russian language? Isn't Russian in Israel a kind of Golden Calf, i.e. a manifestation of the psychological sediment formed from generations educated 'Their' way? And yet the Russian Jewish writers who 'repatriated' to Israel used Russian to give life to a 'metaphysical' literature, as Roman Katsman calls it. It is a literature that rejects the surface and speaks an inner language of transcendence and alienation. It is a Jewish literature that gives voice to an ephemeral moment--the Jew who lives in Hebrew, but whose origins in Pushkin, Gogol, Tolstoy, and Dostoevsky provide a key to home anywhere and everywhere."

• Preface Dina Rubina: A Portrait of the Artist as a Messiah and a Pirate Introduction Carnival and Sincerity Migration and Neoindigeneity Messiahs, Mothers, and Orphans Victims and Heroes From Trauma to the Real Origins and Copies Fugitives, Nomads, and Pirates The Metaphysical Leap Nekod Singer in Russian and Hebrew: Neoeclecticism and Beyond A Noble Man of Our Times The Jerusalem Trilogy of Elizaveta Mikhailichenko and Yury Nesis Ierusalimsky dvorianin (A noble man of Jerusalem, 1997): An Abortive Gesture of Violence I/e_rus.olim (2004): History, Sacrifice, and Network ЗЫ (Preemptive Revenge, 2006): The Other’s Heroism Mikhail Yudson’s Lestnitsa na shkaf (The ladder to the cabinet): The New Language of Metaphysics A Ladder to the Neoindigeneity Afterword Works Cited