The book-centric nature of Jewish traditional culture is well known, and its various manifestations - the fundamental role of the Bible for all Jewish literature, the place of biblical studies in religious education, the importance of education and bookishness in society, the image and functions of the Torah scroll in ritual practice, etc.-are well studied. This article suggests considering the place of the Bible, religious books, and books in general in the culture of Soviet and post-perestroika Jewry in the late 1910s-early 2000s - the culture of fading, almost extinct and revived Judaism, at the same time, at least in part, the culture of the emerging and established Soviet intelligentsia, and, finally, the culture of the hidden, but not a forgotten, sorrowful and proud national minority. Our sources will be sources of personal origin (memoirs) and mainly "oral history": several hundred interviews with Soviet (mostly Ukrainian, but also Russian, Belarusian, Moldavian, and Baltic) Jews born in the 1910s-1930s, recorded in the 1990s-2000s.1
Parts of this article were originally presented as reports at the conference "Religious Practices in the USSR: Survival and Resistance in Conditions of Forced Secularization" (Russian State University for the Humanities, February 16-18, 2012) and the symposium " Bookworthiness of Ethno-Confessional Cultures of the Past and Present: methodology, Methodology and Research Practice "(Tomsk State University,Tomsk, Russia). June 14-15, 2012). The study was carried out as part of the HSE's Basic Research program in 2012.

1. Collections of interviews "Witnesses of the Jewish Age" and "Jewish Destinies of Ukraine", archive of the Institute of Judaics (Kiev); as well as fragments of collections of interviews taken by the author.

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"Remnants of Yiddishkite are lost somewhere in the fourth generation"

Before turning to the decline of Jewish bookishness, it is necessary to outline the background of this process-to describe the dynamics of the religiosity of Soviet Jews in the pre-war and post-war years. The degree of preservation of the tradition varied depending on several factors, primarily on the place of residence and generation. The regions that were annexed to the USSR only before the war or immediately after the war (Northern Bukovina, Transcarpathia, and the Baltic States) stand apart - on the eve of the war, traditions were observed there, as in the Soviet territories 20 years before. As a rule, in cities, especially large ones, Jews quickly moved away from religion and tradition, in small towns the traditional way of life was preserved longer. The older generation (the informants ' grandparents), almost without exception, were observant: they went to synagogue, celebrated holidays, honored the Sabbath, adhered to Kashrut, and wore traditional clothing. The generation of informants ' parents, 30 - to 40-year - olds, showed some diversity in this regard; their attachment to Judaism depended on both their place of residence, their professional environment, and their gender-many interviews note such a characteristic phenomenon for crypto-religious groups as female-dominated participation in the preservation of religious practices: many respondents note that the majority of respondents believe that the majority of respondents that my mother was "more religious than my father", that she was in charge of the holidays in the house, that they learned the traditions from her (and / or from my grandmother)2. This phenomenon can be explained both by the fact that with the gradual cancellation of the public sphere (closing of synagogues), the tradition went into a private, home (kitchen, festive meals, etc.), in which they refueled

among Soviet Jews, from The Steven Spielberg Film and Video Archive and the Frankel Center for Judaic Studies at the University of Michigan, op.cit. based on the copies stored in the archive of the Institute of Judaics (Kiev); I thank L. K. Finberg for providing access to these materials. Ethnographic interviews taken in the late 2000s and early 2010s from the Archive of the RSUH Center for Biblical Studies and Judaism are also used for context; I thank M. M. Kaspin for providing access to the RSUH CBI Archive. By default, cited interviews belong to the archive of the Institute of Judaics; interviews from the archive of the RSUH CBI are marked specifically.

___

2. See similar remarks, for example, in the following interviews: Russian Mikhail Anatolyevich, born in 1926, Pliskov town, Vinnytsia region, zap. 1997, Melbourne; Shmushkevich Mikhail (nee. Rakhmil) Yurievich, born in 1913, Rzhishchev, Kiev region; Balan Naum Markovich, born in 1928, Odessa; zap. in 2003, ibid.

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women, and that women were more loyal to older relatives, especially their parents, and therefore preserved traditions; in addition, many mothers did not work (older informants tend to report that the mother is a housewife) and children observed their behavior much more than the behavior of their fathers, and we talked to them more.

There were also parents who were revolutionaries, ardent communists, and, accordingly, zealous atheists, but even in general, people often ignored certain commandments, including for economic reasons, and did not set out to instill the tradition in their children - including for the sake of their better integration into Soviet society. Informants repeatedly recall that their parents "did not force them to do anything"3, realizing that" time is already different, they are no longer able to influence the fate of their children, because they were both morally and financially demoralized, and, so to speak, let everything go by chance"4. One of the oldest informants tells the following story, showing the extreme flexibility of his family:

We had an intelligent family, clerical, but modern. [ ... ] [Father] gave freedom, not full will and not officially, but so... I closed my eyes. And we, all children, are grateful to him all our lives. [ ... ] Came to bar mitzvah5, at the age of thirteen. I realized that I would not be able to perform all these rites, go to the synagogue, impose these straps on my hands, the so-called phylacteries. [ ... ] She [my grandmother] heard my prayer and my request to God to release me from this duty [ ... ] And the next day, on the second, on the third I I see that I am not reminded of this, that I need to prepare for a bar mitzvah, there is no conversation. And so a long time passed - two, three, four months. And then I found out that my grandmother [... I told my mom, my mom told my dad... In any case, he did not remind me in all the following years, and they forgave me for not fulfilling the duties of a devout Jew [ ... ] And I, on the contrary, became a great activist in the labor school ... 6

3. Dukhan Dina Shuevna, born in 1910, Bobruisk.

4. Anna Yefimovna Lemongrass (Khantsia Khaimovna), born in 1906, Tulchin; zap. in Kiev.

5. The boy reaches the age of religious and legal majority and the corresponding ceremony.

6. Shapiro Natan Iosifovich, born in 1906, Vinnytsia; zap. in 1995, Kiev.

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Education contributed to secularization: Jewish schools that somehow introduced students to the tradition were closed during the 1930s, and children continued their education in Russian or Ukrainian atheist schools.

In retrospect, informants tend to immediately deny or downplay their parents ' religiosity (the remark "no fanaticism" is especially popular), although the following description usually shows that the family was quite observant of religion. The level of observance of traditions in their own families of many informants can be defined as a degrading intermediate-between the "kosher" nature of older relatives and the complete secularity of children and grandchildren (the latter, however, especially in conditions of emigration, can return to "kosher", or even reach "fanaticism") .8
The traumatic experience of the war, and especially the Holocaust, reinforced Soviet Jews in two opposing tendencies: national isolationist ("don't forget" and "stick to your own") and assimilationist; they manifested themselves in various social and marital strategies, but compliance rates fell in both cases (with the rare exceptions of targeted crypto-Jews, such as, Chabad books 9). As a result of the war and genocide, small towns - houses, synagogues, ritual utensils and books-were destroyed, and with them the whole shtetl way of life; large families were decimated, especially at the expense of the older generation, which is most observant and serves as a support for traditions and at the same time is least able to survive the hardships of occupation or evacuation:

With the war, all was lost. This was already the case even after the war, when there were no holidays, there were no fees, and the whole family was no longer there.10
7. See, for example: Shmushkevich M. Yu.; Bursuk Iosif Abramovich, born in 1931, Chernivtsi; zap. 2002, Chernivtsi.

8. See, for example: Ivankovitser Anna Iosifovna, born in 1930, Shargorod; zap. 2002, Chernivtsi; She. Zap. 2005, 2006, 2007, ibid. Archive of the RSUH Center for Biblical Studies and Judaism. For more information about the pre-war and occupation religious experience, see: Zelenina G. "Jews conduct agitation": religious practices of Soviet Jews during the war years."Staroe" i "novoe" v slavyanskoi i evreiskoi kul'turnoi traditsii [Old " and " new " in the Slavic and Jewish Cultural Tradition].

9. See, for example, the memoirs of elderly Chabad people recorded by D. Schechter in Israel, partially published in the Lehaim journal, NN 4-11, 2012.

10. Gelfer Ida Moiseevna, born in 1918, Vinnytsia; zap. in 1995, Kiev.

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In the second half of the century, identity was maintained by socializing and marrying in one's own environment, observing certain rites, 11 solidarity in the face of anti-Semitism, and solidarity with Israel (which coexisted with indifference to Judaism).

In the 1990s, a renaissance of Jewish life began in the former Soviet republics, but, as a rule, it did not consist in the actual revival of local traditions, but in the import of external ones - Israeli, Chabad or other. This phenomenon is evaluated positively, but it is not considered, of course, as closing the cycle and returning to the pre-war way of life, although the echoes of the latter remain and, to one degree or another, are integrated into the new Jewish life. One of the informants, a Kiev intellectual who studies Jewish history, reflected on the decline of tradition and shared his "tentative calculations": "Yiddishkite is lost in the first generation. But the remnants of Yiddishkite are lost somewhere in the fourth generation. " 12
Next, we will look at the degradation of religious bookishness among Soviet Jews, trace how the role and place of the Bible and other texts that are undoubtedly central to Orthodox Judaism changed, and what replaced them. Interviews allow you to find out who, with whom and under what circumstances read the Bible or its surrogates, as well as what they read from it, or, using the terminology of M. Foucault and R. Chartier, shed light on the strategies and tactics of appropriation.13
"Or the Bible, or the Gospel, such a healthy book, I don't remember"

A minimal set of religious books (Pentateuch, prayer book, special prayer books for holidays) - an attribute of any traditional Jewish home; an expanded body of religious literature (Tanakh [i.e., the Scriptures and Prophets in addition to the Pentateuch], Talmud and later Halakhic works)

11. For example, circumcision is an extremely important rite in Judaism, although it is difficult and dangerous to perform. See: Zelenina G. S. "The Circus that cost many people their lives": circumcision among Soviet Jews and its consequences during the war//Religious studies. 2012. N 2. pp. 56-67.

12. Kantor Kh., born in 1933, Crimea; zap. in 1997, Kiev.

13. See Chartier R. Written Culture and Society, Moscow: New Publishing House, 2006, pp. 14, 198 and beyond.

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- an attribute of the house of some educated Jew. Members of the older generation - grandparents of informants born in the 1930s or parents of informants born in the 1920s, especially in non-Soviet areas, owned and used the Bible, and in this capacity - as part of the family library and as a subject of reading and discussion by older relatives

- The Bible and other " holy books "(sifrei-kodesh) were recorded in the children's memory of informants:

The pope had a magnificent library, there were books in leather bindings, this is something incredible. [ ... ] sacred books! [ ... ] I remember them: these are such large books, only in leather bindings with gold lettering, wonderful 14.

There is a noticeable change in reading practices from the generation of grandparents to the generation of parents, and there is a further secularization of these practices in the generation of informants themselves:

"My grandmother had religious books.

"Were your parents social?"

- Yes, Grandma Betty had various books, she read a lot. My parents had secular books 15.

Having grown up in such families, my parents, although, of course, spoke Russian, but they could not completely tear themselves away. My father was a doctor, he graduated from the Kiev Medical Institute in 1926, and he sat down with his father and they discussed what medical recommendations are in the Talmud. So my dad knew the Talmud, but I didn't hear it. 16
14. Shapiro N. I.; see also: Averbukh Debora Yakovlevna, born in 1921, Medzhibozh; zap. 2001, Kiev ("My father was very educated. Before the war, we had a great library in Hebrew"); Ernest Ishaevich Galpert, born in 1923, Mukachevo; zap. in 2003, Uzhgorod ("The Talmud, the whole set, then Humash, Tanakh, the abyss of Jewish literature we had at home"); and in a number of others. interviews with references to the Bible or Tanakh, Talmud as books that were available in the house (Golub Mark Grigoryevich, born in 1928, Kiev; zap. after 2000, Kiev; Sadynskaya Irina Davydovna, born in 1909, Freiburg; zap. in 1997, Kiev, etc.).

15. Averbukh Leonid Grigoryevich, born in 1930, Odessa; zap. 2003, Odessa.

16. Cantor Kh.

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Another function of the home Bible, which deviates, of course, from the traditional one (since the publications are meant not traditional, but bilingual and illustrated), is an aesthetically entertaining function: the Bible is like an art album, like a beautiful thing:

My father bought [ ... ] A red-bound Bible with illustrations by Dore [ ... ] This is a great edition of the Bible, in Hebrew, in Hebrew and Old German font, it's not even Russian. But I grew up with this Bible, because the child was ill, there were no vitamins, there was no nutrition... So when I get sick, they put this Bible on my lap, so I remember all the Bible stories performed by Dore. Illustrations by Dore, these are such great drawings that they are unsurpassed so far 17.

Some informants-mostly older men (born in the 1910s - early 1920s)-mention Tanakh 18, more often Torah or Humash (Homesh, Himesh)19 and Rashi 20 as your school subject. Even those who taught Torah in the Cheder do not show bibliographic clarity (later we will consider cases of considerable confusion among younger informants, including women) - perhaps due to the overlap of generally accepted Christian nomenclature (Old Testament, New Testament) traditional Hebrew (Humash, Neviim, Ktuvim, Gemara):

...my grandmother took me to Cheder [ ... ] I studied Hebrew, then we read various stories from the Bible, I think after that it was not the Old Testament, it was most likely a summary of the history of the Jewish people. I, for one, still remember such a strange story... [tells the story of Sodom and Lot's wife]21.

17. Usherenko Elizaveta Moiseevna, born in 1922, Kiev; zap. in 2002, Kiev; see also about the Bible as a "very beautiful book "with" beautiful pictures" in int.: Krishtal Evgeniya Grigoryevna, born in 1922, Izyaslav; zap. in 2002, Kiev.

18. For example: Loshak Mikhail Tsalevich, born in 1918, Vinnytsia; zap. in 1994, Vinnytsia; Geller Evgeny Moiseevich, zap. in New York.

19. Shvartz Nikolay Isidorovich, born in 1918, Vinogradov; zap. in 2003, Uzhgorod; Galpert Ernest Ishaevich, born in 1923, Mukachevo; zap. in 2003, Uzhgorod; Shapiro N. I.

20. Krupnik Abram Yankelevich, born in 1918, Novoselitsa; zap. in 1998, ibid.

21. Samuil Davidovich Sukhenko, born in 1908, Grigoriopol; zap. in 2001, Kiev.

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Boys from wealthier families, as well as girls, did not go to cheder, but studied Hebrew and Torah at home - with a melamed 22, rabbi 23, or father 24:

- Did everyone go to kheder?

- The rebbe came to us, and the boys always went to the cheder. [ ... ] And the rebbe came to the girls. I was about four or five years old, and I also had to sit at the table when the rebbe [...] came with a white beard. The girls sat and taught, and I crept under the table and pinched the rebbe's legs 25.

A notable terminological difference: as a rule, what they had at home and studied in Cheder - the Bible as a codex-is called the Humash (Pentateuch), and the Torah is called the Torah scroll that was read in the synagogue. The boy was called to the scroll during a bar mitzvah , another type of childhood memory associated with the Bible.:

This day has come [... my father took me to the synagogue, I put a talon on my head (this is a cube), the second on my hand, and then I wrapped a strap around my left hand, in short, they took out the Torah, and I read it loudly to the whole synagogue [ ... ] This was the custom. My growing up 26.

But more often-especially in the case of women (girls did not go to the cheder, and poor families could not invite the rebbe home) and younger informants (2 half of the 1930s, when Jewish schools were closed)-the Bible was learned orally from parents or grandparents. In general, in many interviews, the grandmother acts as the main translator of the tradition for grandchildren, if not as a carrier - it can also be a grandfather - (as a rule, she lives longer and communicates more closely with her children and grandchildren):

22. Marjasis Leonid Shapsovich, born in 1928, Bendery; zap. in 2002, Lviv; Kleiman Isai Davidovich, born in 1931, Vodrashkov; zap. in 2003, Chernivtsi.

23. Peretyatko Genya, born in 1920, Odessa; zap. in 1998, Brooklyn.

24. Anatoly Petrovich Shor, born in 1922, Bershad; zap. in the same place.

25. Gelfer I. M.

26. Chepovsky Myron Ilyich, born in 1909, Kiev; zap. in 2000, Kiev. See also: Shor A. P.; Bursuk Iosif Abramovich, born in 1931, Chernivtsi; zap. 2007, Chernivtsi (archive of the Central Library of the Russian State Pedagogical University).

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Dad told a lot of stories from the Bible, fairy tales, jokes ... 27

My grandmother was praying, and she had her Bible with her. Grandpa knew everything. If I asked him, for example: "Grandpa, tell me about Samson and Delilah." He told me this not from the opera, but on the basis of the holy Scriptures, the Tanakh. He knew everything 28.

She always told me, I went to bed with her - she lay down more. [ ... ] The Bible, she knew this Bible by heart. I've already seen it badly. I asked my mother: "Mom, after all, my grandmother can't see. How does she pray every day, look at the Bible, and read? "The mother says," No, she just knows all the words by heart. " 29
In oral transmission, the Bible undergoes some tendentious changes that can be called atheism - for security reasons:

They told us some fairy tales, stories [... They even told us something from the Bible, but very carefully, very carefully. [ ... ] They did not focus our attention on what the Bible is, what it is, what God is, this and that. This was out of the question 30.

When talking about traditions, holidays, and ethical norms, informants often see the source of them in the Bible, which is sometimes true, sometimes not true, but almost always not based on knowledge of the text:

The Bible says: a man comes and asks you for alms. It doesn't matter - Jew, Russian, Gypsy, Moldavian. Still need to give 31.

27. Rysina Anna Grigoryevna, born in 1926, Lyutinovo; zap. 2008, Bryansk. Archive of the Central Library of the Russian State Pedagogical University; see also about" Biblical legends " performed by my father in int. I. M. Gelfer

28. Rapai-Markish Olga, born in 1929, Changar village, Zaporozhye region, zap. in 1998, Kiev; see also: Gutnik Basia, born in 1920, Kiev.

29. Dovgalevskaya Klara Lazarevna, born in 1914, Trypillya village, Kiev region; zap. in 2001, Kiev.

30. Pinchuk Yuriy Klimentyevich, born in 1930, Shpola; zap. in 1998, Vinnytsia; see also others. memories of how the Bible was retold "as either fairy tales or stories": Rimma Markovna Rozenberg, born in 1928, Odessa; zap. in 2003, Odessa; Lazar Veniaminovich Sherishevsky, born in 1926, Kiev; zap. after 2003, Moscow.

31. Frimer Moishe Khaimovich, born in 1926, Khotin; zap. in gop G., Chernovtsy. Archive of the RSUH Central Library.

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Jewish names are given by the name of parents or relatives [ ... ] this is the law, they do not give arbitrary names, it is written in Torah 32.

We see that the Bible, to which various traditions and beliefs are ascribed, serves as a universal "legitimator". There is also the opposite situation: biblical stories are told without reference to the Bible, and post-biblical (haggadic) stories are told without reference to Midrashim and other sources, but simply as true stories. Both situations seem adequate for the community, where the Book retains its authority, but loses close familiarity with it and control of the "scribes"over the knowledge of the "flock" 33.

* * *

In the declining Judaism of Soviet Jews, certain ritual practices, especially culinary ones, were better preserved (the holiday menu was carefully reproduced) than the practice of reading and studying the Scriptures. This is due both to the loss of the books themselves-in the fire of war and the Holocaust, as well as as a result of moving (both in evacuation and on peaceful-work, study, service-occasions), and to the oblivion of the language, and, in addition, the dominant role of women in the domestic underground observance and transmission of traditions: women in the Middle East and in In Judaism, as is well known, they do not participate in the public reading of the Torah and are not required to study it (according to some authorities, this is even forbidden), as well as to learn Hebrew. The notorious "feminine" position is expressed, for example, in the following statement, which, however, belongs to a rather young informant::

- What does the Torah mean to you? [...]

32. Gitman Reuven (Grigory Vladimirovich), zap. in 2009, Chernivtsi. Archive of the RSUH Central Library. There are rarely experts (obviously from among those who managed to go to a cheder or Jewish school or studied with a rabbi at home) who distinguish between Torah and post-Biblical tradition and report that this or that practice "is not specified in the Torah" - it was "invented by the rabbis" (Gurfinkel Lazar Mikhailovich, born in 1924, Khotyn. Archive of the RSUH Central Library).

33. Or for a society where the gap between "the people" and "the scribes"is great. Folklore existence of biblical stories ("folk Bible") it is well studied in the Slavic environment (see, for example: Belova O. V. "The People's Bible": East Slavic Etiological Legends, Moscow: Indrik, 2004) and in recent years it has been studied during expeditions to the former shtetls.

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— I don't know. The Torah is something that shines for me. [...] what does it matter to me? I didn't read it in the original. And if you did, how do I know if I would understand? I just have enough feeling. It seems to me that the feelings are somehow correct, on an intuitive level. But there is no knowledge. [...] Although for a Jewish woman, they say, it is enough to be a good wife, mother, and she will already go to heaven. It is more difficult for men 34.

But it is wrong to think that this position is universal for Soviet Jewish women, much less for their mothers and grandmothers. Grandmothers, as already mentioned, are repeatedly mentioned as a source of deep knowledge in the Bible, obtained by reading, and not by oral transmission of tradition; other grandmothers also read the Talmud. In the following example - the description of two grandmothers - a remarkable differentiation is made between bookish religiosity, coupled with great piety, and simple (mechanical?) compliance issues:

My mother's mother, Grandmother Etl, never parted with the Talmud. She was very pious. And Haika's grandmother always observed all Jewish traditions, but there was no special piety. But traditions were always observed 35.

Women (as well as men) who did not know Hebrew used special Bibles with Yiddish translations - taichimesh 36:

..she had a prayer book called taichhimosh, which was written in Hebrew and then translated into Yiddish, the first upper half was Hebrew, and the lower half was Yiddish. Naturally, the children, and there were already two of us [ ... ], sat around her and listened to her prayers, and she prayed aloud. And so, until my youth, I remembered the content of these prayers, it was from the day of the creation of the world, and I have long, long remembered in my life these images, from the day of the creation of the world - the story of Adam and Eve, and their sons, and so on up to Moses, and then the story of Exodus 37.

34. Elena Kasavina, born in 1952, Kiev; zap. in 1997, Kiev.

35. Yefim Shoylovich Zhornitsky, born in 1919, Tulchin; zap. in 2002, Odessa.

36. Taich (German, then Yiddish, and Yiddish interpretation) + Himesh (Pentateuch). Translations into Yiddish of the Tanakh and prayer books were made in the early Modern period; the Yiddish translation also included a commentary, hence the word Taich acquired its corresponding meaning.

37. Limonnik A. E.

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Girls born in the 1920s, before the widespread closure of Jewish schools in the mid-1930s, managed to learn and gain some knowledge of the Bible there - including in a non-trivial way: they staged biblical stories 38; some even remember that they were taught in the Talmud Torah " the Holy Pentateuchs "39 or" according to the Bible". blatu" got into kheder (elementary school for boys):

There was no gymnasium there... there was a progymnasium [ ... ] and a Jewish school for poor children. When the war broke out, it was not possible to send me to the progymnasium, because I had to pay a lot. They didn't want to send me to a poor Jewish school. It turned out that I wasn't rich enough for a progymnasium, and I wasn't poor enough for a Jewish school. So I couldn't get into any school, and I was already eight years old. Then they decided to send me to cheder, because for such pious people, it was such a big tragedy for their children not to get an education on time. But they didn't take girls to the heder, only boys went. But because my father had good friends in the synagogue who influenced these melameds, they influenced him to enroll me in this cheder with another girl, so that I would not be alone. But with one condition: that we are not beaten ... 40

* * *

One of the symptoms of forgetting the "holy books" is the loss of titles. The corresponding terms-Tanakh, Humash, Gemara-are used by a minority of informants, usually those who studied at the cheder or Jewish gymnasium, as well as children of rabbis. Some informants remember (for example, thanks to Yiddish folklore, songs) and use these words, but do not remember their correct meaning:

38. " They put on live pictures, pictures, in Hebrew. Although we didn't know Hebrew, but as far as I understand, this is a biblical story. Because the children were sheathed... from paper, paper dresses, and wreaths were woven from multicolored paper flowers [... there was no limit to my joy " (A. E. Limonnik).

39. Nisman Sura-Dora, born in 1912, Orhei district.

40. Lemongrass. E.

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Very educated in this respect, he [the father] knew the Tanakh, this, this is the highest teaching, so. It's even a philosophical teaching, Tanakh 41.

- Once there were rebbe's, they taught Hebrew, taught Gemora, Homesh. At home, in the heder.

"What's a hemorrhoid?"

- Hemorrhoids are prayers.

"And you said something else." Hemorrhoids and what?

- Homesh. [ ... ] It's the same thing. These are Jewish prayers to God. This is also history, these are Bible stories. There is such a song [... A mother sings a lullaby to a child. Sleep, my boy, my baby. [ ... ] Soon you will go to cheder and teach Homesh and Gemore, and you are already a bridegroom, you are already a bridegroom, and you are lying in a wet...42

I remember Rebbe Yankl, who studied with me. [ ... ] I learned to read, [ ... ] and then moved on to the study of translation, himesh-this meant translating 43.

In place of the Torah left behind in childhood, with its various forgotten names, various surrogates are emerging - sources of knowledge about both biblical history and Jewry in general. First, the Gospel:

When I was eight years old, my father decided that I needed to know Russian. So I was sent to a parochial school. [ ... ] I read the pages of the Gospel, and I became addicted to the Gospel. I began to study well, knew the gospel, and now I know it well, and later I learned the Gospel. And the gospel led me to atheism. (Laughs)44

In the Soviet years, I didn't read the Bible, I didn't read it. But I could be struck by the words, their harmony, capacity. When you start the Bible, there's:

41. Polina Yakovlevna Leibovich, born in 1924, Chisinau; written in 2004, Chisinau.

42. Herman Esfir Borisovna, born in 1922, Rostov-on-Don;

43. Driz Yakov Abramovich, born in 1937, Tomashpol; zap. in 2002, Kiev; see also int. Shor A. P., who also finds it difficult to explain what a Himesh is, which he passed in cheder.

44. Sukhenko S. D. This is not a standard case, but it is also not an exceptional one: several informants mention parish schools as the basis of their own or parental education.

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"In the beginning was the Word," see? This is already so capacious, meaningful, deep, musically strong ... 45

Second, the Jewish "classical" texts-Sholem Aleichem, Babel, and anecdotes:

I only knew about the Torah from Sholom Aleichem's stories. About kashrut, which was never observed in our house, I knew only from anecdotes 46.

There were no thoughts of giving up their origin, but they knew very little. My wife could hardly get out Babel's books to read. There are no living ancestors left to tell, although my wife's grandmother enlightened us a little.47
Retellings of the Bible, first of all, by Zenon Kosidovsky, as well as "biblical" novels were available only to the intelligent urban public:

A staunch atheist, S. G. knew the Pentateuch and, among other things, criticized Thomas Mann for his overly bold treatment of the Torah in Joseph and His Brothers. He didn't like this novel or The Master and Margarita. I reveled in both books, but I didn't dare object, because at that time I hadn't read the Bible yet and probably hadn't even seen it, and my sources of biblical history were the Hermitage and Zenon Kosidovsky's popular book "Bible Tales", 1963. (By the way, it was very difficult to get a Bible in those years. It wasn't sold in bookstores.) 48

"I subscribe to three libraries"

Since the 1930s, the place of religious literature has gradually been occupied by fiction (Russian classics, foreign fiction), and in place of the standard, if not Op.-

45. Mikhail Saulovich Turovsky, born in 1933, Kiev; zap. in 2001, Kiev.

46. Trachtenbroit Berta Solomonovna, born in 1924, Odessa; zap. in 2002, Odessa.

47. Gonopolsky Simon Nusievich, born in 1927, Odessa; zap. in 2003, Odessa.

48. Mazya Vladimir Gilelevich, born in 1937, Leningrad; memoirs " Childhood, youth, adolescence and youth "(manuscript).

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the standard of "culture", which necessarily includes the cult of reading, "well-read", takes over the orthodox, then traditional behavior. Not so much chronologically as meaningfully intermediate - between the Bible and Pushkin (or Jules Verne) - reading was Jewish secular, nonfiction literature, including Yiddish: Sholom Aleichem, Moicher Sforim, etc. These Yiddish books were read and collected by older relatives:

She [grandmother] was, in general, an interesting woman. You could talk to her about a lot of things, because she read a lot. [ ... ] And she read a lot of different literature, including Jewish literature. There, of course, are Sholom Aleichem, Bialik, Frug, etc. 49

My dad, as soon as there were new Jewish books in Yiddish, he immediately started buying them. Although it was a little unsafe for him, because he was the head of the department of the district hospital and, of course, he was followed... Even he may not have always read them. But how so? You have a Jewish book, a Soviet one, but he doesn't have it in his house?50

The popular "statistics" are well known, according to which Sholom Aleichem's books were an indispensable attribute of any more or less intelligent society of the Soviet Jewish home. Our sources confirm the love for this main writer of Soviet Jews, but it should be noted that in any more or less intelligent Soviet Jewish home, there were certainly books by another author-A. S. Pushkin. We can say that Pushkin - by its significance, by the role of the main book in the house, by the tradition of being in the first place in any book list-took the place of the Bible. Pushkin is invariably included in the long descriptions of home libraries, topping the list of Russian ones

49. Rozenberg R. M.

50. Cantor Kh.

51. It is difficult to define this group more clearly and objectively, as cultural level has not always been adequately reflected in professional and social status, both because of life difficulties, including those caused by the war, and because of anti-Semitic discrimination in education and employment. E. Limonnik, a typist by profession, describes her reading range in many paragraphs and is expressed in words like "parity" and"indifferent".

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both Soviet classics (Tolstoy, Nekrasov, Chernyshevsky, Korolenko, Kuprin, Gorky, etc.) and popular foreign novelists (Walter Scott, Dumas, Sienkiewicz)52, but is often mentioned alone, as a favorite author, or together with Tolstoy (the main poet and the main prose writer) or Lermontov (the two main poetsPushkin was taught by heart in whole poems and - in the absence of books-orally transmitted, like the Bible, to children:

- Pushkin's favorite [author]...

"What piece?"

- I liked everything about him 53.

Well, my mother knew Lermontov and Pushkin very well by heart. And now there were no books, and that's how I perceived it by ear 54.

As noted, the widespread Pushkinization of literary tastes in the pre-war Soviet Union is not an accidental phenomenon, but an artificially formed one, and is not unique to Jews. "The mythology of Pushkin's invisible presence in the USSR in the late 1920s-1930s ("Pushkin is a participant in our life, our cultural construction") is quite comparable to similar forms of sacralization of Lenin. [...] Pushkin is the head of a host of Russian poets, a martyr who died "in the struggle against autocracy", one of the patrons of the Russian Revolution. new Soviet Russia"55. But in the case of Jews, the substitution is particularly obvious: Pushkin is quoted on key issues - in the story and in life - that is, he, as the main reference source, replaces the traditional Torah. The informant was taken to a prisoner-of-war camp and at first was in a barn that could collapse at any moment, from there he was dragged into a column, where he was ordered to take off his pants and was almost exposed as a Jew, but did not have time, because the barn collapsed and everyone ran to him:

52. See, for example: Viktor S. Feldman, born in 1915, Odessa; zap. in 2003, Odessa; Goren Motel, born in 1932, Tishla village, Chernivtsi region; zap. in 1998, Khotyn.

53. Fenya Aronovna Kleiman, born about 1929, Chernivtsi.

54. Saltzman Yakov Rafailovich-in int.: Bronstein Hana Davydovna, born in 1919, Zhmerinka; zap. in 1995, ibid.; about knowing Pushkin by heart, see also: Zhornitsky E. Sh.; Sherishevsky L. V.; Dukhan D. Sh.

Spiritism and Russian literature: From the history of social therapy//Proceedings of the Department of Historical and Philological Sciences of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, 2005, p. 539.

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There would be no happiness, but misfortune helped. Because when this whole roof collapsed on the wounded, of course, everyone who got under the log was crushed there. And I in tsey chas buv, nache OK there could shoot, could be and under a roof crushed, so there is no same OK need to, as Pushkin wrote: "The fate of Onegin preserved..." and so on...56

They try to link Pushkin as a representative of the pantheon and at the same time "a participant in our life" to their family history: "Just think, Pushkin already lived in Chisinau then. And my great-grandmother was already born. The connecting chain of times " 57. A volume of Pushkin as the most expensive book is taken out for evacuation-Pushkin, and not the Torah, which, as we successfully learn, was also present in the library of this informant:

My father left us a very good library. She died during the war. The only thing that has been preserved is a volume of Pushkin, which I took with me during the evacuation. He then returned with me to Odessa. [... The mother of Yasha Shikhtman, my brother's classmate, gave me a Bible before the war. Moreover, there one side of the text was in Russian, the other-in Hebrew 58.

Reverence for Pushkin and a good knowledge of his poetry marked the process of entry of our heroes and their parents into the ranks of the Russian - speaking intelligentsia-Russian, then Soviet. At the same time, the subject of reading is not always important - it can be Russian, Soviet or foreign classics, or it can be adventure literature, political economy 59 and even the press 60-the culture of reading itself is important: regular reading practice, started in early childhood, the volume of reading ("readability"), the availability of books at home, visiting libraries, awareness of literary innovations; all this, in particular, distinguished the urban intellectual from the small-town Jew

56. Leonid Borisovich Serebryakov (nee. Wolf Kagan), born in 1922, Tarashcha; zap. in 1998, Kherson.

57. Boris G. Molodetsky, born in 1921, Odessa; zap. in 2003, ibid.

58. Trachtenbroit BS

59. "...[My husband] got into a group of drunks, Jewish by the way, lived in a basement, had a bed, but he spent all day in the library and studied Marxism-Leninism" (Dukhan D. Sh.)

60. " She [grandmother] she didn't work, but she was a very well-read person. She read newspapers without glasses until the last year of her life "(R. M. Rosenberg).

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with an accent 61. Here are just a few of the dozens of declarations of love for books and commitment to binge reading:

..I've been reading since I was 4 years old. I learned to read when there were newspapers on the windowsill, and I myself learned to read, I read in Russian, in German 62.

..I was already following the writers I liked, whether prose writers or poets, I was following their creative work and the works that were published for the general public 63.

My mother read a lot. My brother got such unique books, I don't know where he got them. [...] My brother put on a battery and a light bulb and read under the covers, because my parents objected to reading. We read a lot, read a lot of books.

When I was still in school, I read a lot, I generally read a lot. Literature is my habitat 65.

The epithet "well-read" is often found when informants describe themselves or their relatives, the mention of an addiction to reading is the second, if not the first characteristic, even if there are only two of them. For example:

He [grandfather] was engaged in some kind of entrepreneurship, I know one thing, that he was well-read, enjoyed authority, was an adviser to everyone. [ ... ] [Grandmother] this small, very active. Well-read. [...] [Tell us about your mother. I've read a lot. Outwardly, she was pretty. [... Their clothes were so modest, but they were satisfied with life. I never remember whining at home, there were a lot of books, read a lot of books.

61. An example of such a dissociation from parochialness: "There were such employees, very much... from small towns. They bore the imprint of the shtetl. But still, they were quite cultured, only their appearance gave them away, and a little accent " (Dukhan D. Sh.).

62. Rozenberg R. M.

63. Limonnik A. E.

64. Averbukh D. Ya.

65. Goldbaum Shifra Salyevna, born in 1919, Cherkassy; zap. in 1997, Geronimovka village.

66. Gonopolsky S. N.

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On the one hand, this cult of reading was and was perceived as a legacy of Jewish bookishness-both on a personal, family, and cultural level: the Jewish religious tradition demanded (supposedly) universal literacy, the latter generated the habit and love of reading, and the ancestors who had this trait passed it on to their descendants:

In general, I know that before the revolution, all children of Jewish nationality were literate, they all had to go to school, including their grandmother. But she learned to read Russian only at the age of 52. She read a lot, and she was very fond of reading, sitting by the window with her glasses on her nose and a footstool under her feet.67
We used to heat the stove with sunflower husks. [ ... ] And we would sit with her [grandmother] for hours and pour this husk into the oven. [ ... ] And she would tell me these Bible stories. [ ... ] I know that she was a believer, and she was very well read [... she instilled in me an interest in reading literature ... 68

On the other hand, it was part of the ideal of "culture", formulated by Soviet propaganda in the 1930s in the context of the project to create a "new man"69 and persisted in the following decades 70. The concept of culturality consisted of various everyday, behavioral, ideological and spiritual components: from personal hygiene and new consumption standards to the fight against "linguistic lack of culture" and political vigilance; reading was also encouraged within the framework of two main categories of culture.

67. Kagosova Luiza Abramovna, born in 1939, Halkalaki, Georgia; zap. in Kiev.

68. Gonopolsky S. N.

69. For the concept of "culture", see Fitzpatrick Sh. The Cultural Front: Power and Culture in Revolutionary Russia. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992. P. 149-182; Volkov V. V. Kontseptsiya kul'turnosti [The concept of culture]. 1935_1938 years. Soviet civilization and everyday life in Stalin's time//Sociological Journal. 1996. N 1/2. pp. 194-212; as well as local studies of the same phenomenon by the same parameters, for example: Klimochkina A. Y. Household culture of Soviet citizens in the 1930s//Bulletin of SamSU, 2006, N10 / 1 (50), pp. 86-93.

70. " Although this movement was not officially revived after the war, many cultural imperatives continued to be implemented on a daily level in the 1950s, turning the norms of cultural life into everyday habits. When this happened, they simply forgot about culture as a familiar thing and continued to talk mainly about culture" (Volkov V. V. Decree. op. p. 211).

71. " The book should be the most powerful means of educating, mobilizing and organizing the masses around the tasks of economic and cultural construction."

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components - expanding your horizons and properly organizing your leisure time, which means, in addition to reading - including in the library, visiting concert halls and theaters, playing sports, and going out in nature. Informants often paint a picture of their leisure time that corresponds to these priorities; sometimes, obviously, this is the result of their natural tastes and needs, perhaps instilled since childhood; sometimes, as it seems, a somewhat idealized description, a demonstration of "correctness", or perhaps the fruit of systematic self-education ("I tried to instill in myself..."). Cultural leisure including reading and buying books is also a mandatory part of raising children:

We traveled and photographed the entire southern coast of Crimea. And then, when I went to the resort in Mineralnye Vody, I also took them [children] I tried to instill in my son, wife, and myself a love of nature and beauty. We read a lot, subscribed to a lot of magazines and had interesting friends. [ ... ] And then it became a universal passion to subscribe to thick magazines. And my wife tried so hard to get them that we sometimes denied ourselves food in order to buy something from books. [ ... ] My son grew up very well-read ... 72

The source of books is the library, which is the most important cultural locus in the life narratives of Soviet Jews. Children's memories include home libraries, mainly those of their grandfathers and fathers, while youth memories include public ones, which also dominate memories of their mature years (1930s-1950s - the heyday of Soviet public libraries, which performed both their direct function and the function of a club-with a shortage of other divertissements). and finally, in the era of the Jewish Renaissance, in the 1990s, libraries of "Chesedovs"74 and other Jewish organizations appeared. Sometimes these" generations " of libraries flowed into one another:

(Resolution of the Central Committee of the CPSU (b) of August 15, 1931 "On publishing work"//The Red librarian. 1931-No. 6. P. 2).

72. Gonopolsky S. N.; see also: Zhornitsky E. Sh.

73. See about Soviet mass libraries in this period: Dobrenko E. A. Forming a Soviet reader: social and aesthetic prerequisites for the reception of Soviet literature. St. Petersburg: Academic Project Publ., 1997, pp. 152-167.

74. The name or part of the name of Jewish charity centers established in the 1990s in many cities of the former USSR (chesed - "mercy").

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Did you still find your grandfather's rabbi's library alive?

No. [ ... ] It was deposited in the library of the Academy of Sciences sometime after the rabbi's death, or perhaps even during his lifetime, sometime in 1926-27.75
My father had the most magnificent library, he was a great book lover, and it was books that made him a man. [ ... ] [During the evacuation] we lived in a fairly good merchant town of Serdobsk, which had the most beautiful library. The reason for this was most likely the confiscation of many private libraries76.

When he left for Israel, he [a friend] gave me a large library of Jewish books by Jewish writers. I kept a few Jewish books for myself, and the rest I gave to the Jewish library of our society. [ ... ] I treat these books like a shrine 77.

Many informants or their relatives, mostly women, worked in libraries; this work had a high social status, ranked among the intelligentsia - in their own eyes and in the eyes of those around them:

My aunts sang in the famous Leontovich Choir. One of them was the head of the Ukrainian library. [ ... ] They were considered intellectuals and everyone listened to them 78.

Librarians and bibliographers themselves speak about their activities with considerable self-respect:

In 1947, I graduated from the Institute and joined the regional scientific library. I have been working in this library since I was 47 and still am 79.

75. Drobyazko Lev Yevgenyevich, born in 1937, Moscow; zap. in 2001, Kiev.

76. Rosina Larisa (Klara) Alexandrovna, born in 1931, Kiev.

77. Gelfer I. M.

78. Zhornitsky E. Sh. See also: Rozenberg R. M.; Shabad Rakhil Davidovna, born in 1918, Ekaterinoslav; zap. in 2004, Moscow.

79. Trachtenbroit BS

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I so adored my medical institute, where I worked, was the head of the bibliography department of 80.

I was the chief bibliographer. [ ... ] I slept four hours a day, because I came with a mountain of books, read, got acquainted. [ ... ] It was an extremely interesting job! I can be proud: I worked in the library for 52 years and for 52 years I went to work every morning with pleasure. Not everyone was able to do this 81.

The assessment of this profession changes in the next generation - the generation of children of informants, when the salary of state-funded librarians becomes insultingly low:

My daughter went to different libraries. Both in the nursery and not in the nursery. For the last 7 years, she worked at a medical school. [ ... ] When her salary became equal to the amount she spent on bus rides and back, she quit, although she worked as the head of the faculty hall 82.

"I read the Torah two years ago with great pleasure"

With all the internationalization of the cultural horizon and reading circle, Jewish identity before perestroika was certainly manifested, but rather in terms of national and political rather than cultural and religious: they collected a "library of Russian classics of Jewish nationality" 83, were interested in Israel, read "Exodus" by Leon Juris 84, and in the absence of suitable literature developed skills in using hostile language. discourse - reading between the lines:

He [the husband] bought all sorts of books "Beware of Zionism", read them carefully and took some phrases like " ... they believe that they are supposedly...", and cut out all the garbage from there, like "allegedly". Then

80. Shpitalnik Sarra Solomonovna, born in 1928, Chisinau; zap. in 2004, ibid.

81. V. S. Feldman

82. Molodetsky B. G.

83. Shapiro N. I.

84. Drobyazko L. E.

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the phrase had a completely different meaning. [... This was how he received information about Israel. He also took the newspapers where we were scolded there, also cut them out and understood between the lines how things were really going."
The situation changed with the beginning of the Jewish revival in the post-Soviet space in the 1990s: religious and cultural identity was reanimated - or rather, re - educated-and the Torah returned to the bookshelves - at least in the Chesed libraries. Many informants note that they started reading the Torah "quite recently", "two years ago", "retired","when independent Ukraine emerged" 86. Some reflect on the change in their Jewish interests compared to the Soviet period:

My grandmother also told me Bible stories. Now, in the mid-1990s, I read these stories in the Bible myself. I wasn't interested in it before. Although everything that happened in Israel, we were always interested, and we were happy with the success and victories of 87.

The renaissance was built on different pillars than the fading underground observance of the Soviet era; if then the key concepts were: family, privacy, prohibitions, traditional cuisine , then in the 1990s they became: community, publicity, positive commandments and new ritual dishes.88 The tradition is not so much revived as imported, and the books that participate in the religious revival are not the same Bibles that were in my grandfather's or father's library: they are most likely lost, and in Chesed they "give" us a "new" Torah and prayer books. And the attitude of secularized older Jews to them, as a rule, is far from traditional: they find it "pleasantly readable", refer to it as "the most magnificent literary and historical work".-

85. Rozina L. A.

86. See Stelmakh Grigory Isaakovich, born in 1939, Chernobyl; Kantor Kh.; Lerner Zelda Aronovna, born in 1932, Slavuta; zap. in 1997, Slavuta; Goldbaum Sh. S.; Rozenberg RM.

87. Zhornitsky E. Sh.

88. See, for example, about replacing the traditional Eastern European Hanukkah dish - potato pancakes (latkes) - with Israeli doughnuts (sufganiyot): Amosova S., Kaspina M. Jews and Slavs: childhood Memories of Winter holidays//Lekhaim. 2010. N 12. P. 26.

89. Morris Schiff, born in 1931, Tallinn; written in 2006, ibid.

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mu trudu", as to fiction "of the highest level", "very informative book"90. Some, however, feel more inspired, and most importantly-try on the biblical subjects and images for themselves, that is, they reproduce the essence of the traditional Jewish attitude to the Torah: The Torah is always relevant, everything that happens in modern times is only a renovation of biblical archetypes:

Our names are: his name is Isaac, and my name is Rimma, which means Riva. And Reeva is Rebekah. Now, when we started reading the Bible, and we didn't start reading it so early, we came to the conclusion that we are descendants of the biblical Isaac and Rebekah. [...] since we have a friendly union and we have been married for 50 years, it means that this is not an accident and this is a blessing. We are not religious, but there is some such moment 91.

The link between the times, of course, could not be completely broken, and for some informants, a fresh acquaintance with the Bible evokes pre-war memories that appear through a veil several decades thick: "when a chapter of the Torah is read in Chesed" - "from the recesses of my memory, my grandfather's stories come to me" 92.

From the "constitution" to the "imaginary book" and its development

In the context of the deteriorating Soviet-era crypto-Judaism, the Bible and religious literature are gradually losing their dominant position in culture and their significance for identity. The Jewish community is transformed from a community of" scribes " who read the holy books and read the Torah as a kind of constitution into a so-called "textual community" (Brian Stock's term 93): the majority do not read and cannot read the holy books (the heretics described by Stock are illiterate; Soviet Jews do not speak the relevant language), except for

90. Ibid.; Dusman Leonid Moiseevich, born in 1930, Odessa; zap. in 2003, ibid.; Kantor Kh.

91. Rozenberg R. M.

92. Rysina A. G.; Stelmakh G. I.; Shkolnik Mikhail Yankelevich, born in 1927, Khotin; zap. in 1998, ibid.

Stock B. 93. Listening for the Text: On the Uses of the Past. Baltimore: John Hopkins UP, 1990.

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in addition, they simply do not exist (banned, destroyed). Thanks to individual experts, representatives of the older generation, and individual copies, the memory of these books is preserved, first of all, the Bible, thanks to which it is written - although almost in absentia

- retains its value of authority; in particular, it is sometimes falsely attributed to all sorts of norms and beliefs.

The community is content with surrogates (translations of the Bible into another language and retellings that lose their sacredness, completeness and accuracy), the Bible now exists as an "imaginary book" that is known and remembered, but to which there is no access and in reality it does not exist at all.94 Accordingly, the sacred books cease to be the core of the crypto-Jewish tradition, identity, and society (which gradually ceases to be a "textual community"), and other components take their place: prohibitions (as the least visible and least time-consuming), rituals, especially festive ones, and especially their culinary component (we are dealing with the "women's religion"). They also share a common threat-national and state anti-Semitism - and a common, albeit external, hope and comfort in this world.

- Israel. The "Jewish revival" of the 1990s, the emergence of new Jewish institutions, and the restoration of religious life are bringing the Torah back to the elderly 95 post-Soviet Jews, but its significance is far from the same: it is becoming a component of the Jewish experience for them, along with the holidays at Chesed, the Jewish press, Sholom Aleichem, and news from Israel. there is, in fact, an optional component.

94. See about this concept: Melnikova E. "The Imaginary Book": essays on the history of folklore about books and reading in Russia, St. Petersburg: Publishing House of the European University in St. Petersburg, 2011.

95. The" appropriation " of the Torah by their children and grandchildren born after the war is a separate topic on which our sources shed little light.

Speculatively, it can be assumed that their perception and assimilation of Jewish religious literature differed from the one described by us for a number of reasons: the lack of previous experience (we do not take into account the families of practicing crypto-Jews, primarily Chabad people, see note. 9), a more active life position and a greater willingness to change, a different degree of involvement in the religious revival of the 1990s, a different type of participation in the programs of Jewish organizations, a slightly different cultural background, and a different degree of criticism of Soviet ideology. The study of this topic (together with other strategies of the Chabad Lubavitch movement's missionary activity, first of all) may help answer the question of why ultra-Orthodoxy prevailed in the post-Soviet space out of all the trends of Judaism.

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