This issue of the magazine includes:

• Names: S.An-sky (1863–1920)

One hundred and fifty years ago, on October 27, 1863, Shloyme-Zanvl Rappoport, better known by his pen name S.An-sky, the writer, folklorist, and revolutionary, founding father of Jewish ethnography, and author of the world-famous play The Dybbuk, was born in the shtetl of Chashniki, near Vitebsk. On the occasion of this anniversary, our magazine presents the first Russian publication of prominent Jewish historian Saul Ginsburg’s memoir of An-sky, originally published in 1930 in the Warsaw-based Yiddish weekly Literarishe bleter.

• History: Unknown Letter to Gleb Uspensky from S.Ansky

S.An-sky’s letter to well-known Russian writer Gleb Uspensky, written in 1892 and dealing with the idea of solving the “Jewish question” in Russia by employing Jews in agricultural work, is not only a personal testimony to the spiritual evolution of a young Russian-Jewish intellectual but also striking witness to life in the Russian Empire during the dark reign of Tsar Alexander III. The publication is based on the original letter, held in the Manuscript Department of the Institute of Russian Literature (Pushkin House), St. Petersburg.

• Review: The Wandering Soul Returns

Gabriella Safran’s The Wondering Soul, a comprehensive biography of S. An-sky, was published by Harvard University Press in 2010. The reviewer insists that this book must be published in Russian translation as well, because Russian Jewish studies can no longer be advanced without the availability of such works.

• Memoirs: Jews and Others, or, Ten Years at a Jewish Newspaper

The magazine concludes its publication of a series of excerpts from a new book of memoirs by Moscow journalist Nikolay Propirny on the emergence of Jewish community institutions in the Soviet Union during the early years of perestroika.

• Jewish Calendar of Significant Dates:
November–December 2013