Михайло Гаухман. «Абетка життя» Лейба Квітка: метаморфози єврейської ідентичності

Leib Kvitko's “Alphabet of Life”: Metamorphoses of Jewish identity

By Mykhaylo Gaukhman

(Luhansk Museum of Local History )

Source: Judaica Ukrainica 3 (2014): 188-208

Publication date: December 1, 2014

Publication type: article

Language: Ukrainian

Full text:

 

Abstract

The article deals with the life and art of Leib Kvitko, the Soviet Yiddish children poet who was one of the most popular children’s poet in the 1930s. His biography is a excellent example of a Jew’s fate in the Soviet society. The key for investigation into Jewish identities is a case study about writer and politician Vladimir Zhabotinsky. The biography of Kvitko can be seen as three separate narratives. The first is the image of Jewish grandmother in the autobiographical texts by Kvitko, which made possible his self-presentation as a Soviet men and Yiddish children’s poet. The second narrative is of the traditional Jew studying in the context of Soviet Jewish consciousness. The third narrative concerns the tragically fnal Soviet Jewish story. We conclude that Russian/Soviet Jewish intelligentsia, which was represented particularly by Kvitko, was not able to nationalize traditional shtetl culture, because of their incapacity to unite Jewish “religion” tradition and Soviet “cosmopolitanism” modernity in modern Jewish life.

Keywords: Leib Kvitko, Jewish identity, Yiddish studies, Jews in the USSR

 

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DOI 10.14653/ju.2014.10