One of the books I brought back from my mother s library is The Bewitched Tailor by Sholom Aleikhem. That s how his name is spelled on the cover. Inside I see his name and another phrase in Cyrillic letters. There s no.
A visit to Birobidzhan, where Jewish autonomy hasn’t exactly worked out and yet, the sign for Lenin Street is still written in Yiddish and public monuments commemorate Sholem Aleichem. By Yakov Rabkin Last summer, after three months of teaching in Japan, I decided to return home to Montreal via Birobidzhan, in Russia’s Far East. The Jewish Autonomous…