RADICAL JEWISH TRAVELER: Adventures in Yiddishland |
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Recreating a Photograph from 100 Years Ago
July 23, 2019
After being woken up by a woman dressed in traditional Belarusian costume who brought our breakfast, we went on a tour of the Nanosy Complex. Among the stunning views of the two lakes surrounding the complex was a German bunker from World War I, a bizarre relic that seemed to be pruned back to remind…
Exploring the Present through Memory Maps: Volozhin and Smorgon
July 21, 2019
In an oversized bus that Clare Fester and Robby Adler-Peckerar procured for Helix, we arrived at the Nanosy Complex, a postmodern, post-Soviet reconstruction of a “traditional” Belarusian village on the beautiful banks of Lake Narach. The village was the brainchild of a very wealthy Russian who enjoyed hunting, fishing, and recreating “authentic” Belarusian villages. This…
Life and Death: A Tour of Minsk and Its Surroundings
July 18, 2019
Our first day in Minsk began with our morning poem (a daily Helix tradition) and then we embarked on a walking tour of the city. As we started out, we learned that the factory across the street from our hotel was the historic factory that features in Moyshe Kulbak’s Zelmenyaners. This late 1920s Kulbak novel,…
Helix 2019, The Adventure Begins
July 16, 2019
Minsk—the letters at the airport screamed out my arrival for my second Helix adventure. I had just come from a family cruise in the Baltics, where I had a few harrowing moments like being interrogated by the Russian secret police in St. Petersburg on behalf of my friend from Moscow who had broken the law…
Two (White) Jews in Dixie
November 24, 2018
Charlestonians say that the 1896 statue of John C. Calhoun was raised up so high over the square that protestors couldn’t pelt his image with rotten food, stones, or other signs of displeasure as they had in its initial incarnation which had Calhoun much closer to the ground in 1872. Our host David Slucki regaled…
When Nazism Came to Los Angeles
May 14, 2016
Lately I’ve been thinking about the 1930s, Hitler’s rise to power, and Nazism not just in Germany but around the world. I’m writing a book about a Dutch Jewish cabaret singer, who married a non-Jewish German socialist, who had settled in Holland in 1936. In my search for information about his time in Holland, I…
From Lukashenko’s Belarus to the EU: Polotsk, Breslau, Daugavpils, and Lithuanian Shtetls
Vilna Says Its Final Goodbye to Its Nearly 50 Year Soviet Past
Vilnius, Vilna, Wilno, ווילנע: Once the Jerusalem of Lithuania
Coming Home to Chagall in Lyozna and Vitebsk
Mogilev and Shklov, A Tale of Two Cities
A Day Full of Presence: Smilovichi, Bobruisk, Bychov
Slutsk, Mayn Sluts (or Slutsk, My Slutsk, a popular Yiddish song sung before World War II and in 2015 on a Helix bus)
Why Belarus is a Fascinating Place for a Jewish History Tour
Arrival in the Land of Lenin
Reading Babel in Ojai
Radical Jewish Traveler heads to Belarus
