City of Rogues and Schnorrers: Russia's Jews and the Myth of Old Odessa“Outstanding . . . A delightfully written work of serious scholarship.” —Jewish Book World Old Odessa, on the Black Sea, gained notoriety as a legendary city of Jewish gangsters and swindlers, a frontier boomtown mythologized for the adventurers, criminals, and merrymakers who flocked there to seek easy wealth and lead lives of debauchery and excess. Odessa is also famed for the brand of Jewish humor brought there in the nineteenth century from the shtetls of Eastern Europe and that flourished throughout Soviet times. From a broad historical perspective, Jarrod Tanny examines the hybrid Judeo-Russian culture that emerged in Odessa in the nineteenth century and persisted through the Soviet era and beyond. The book shows how the art of eminent Soviet-era figures such as Isaac Babel, Il’ia Ilf, Evgenii Petrov, and Leonid Utesov grew out of the Odessa Russian-Jewish culture into which they were born and which shaped their lives. “Traces the emergence, development, and persistence of the myth of Odessa as both Garden of Eden and Gomorrah . . . A joy to read.” —Robert Weinberg, Swarthmore College |
Contents
CHAPTER 1 | |
Revival and Survival | |
Rewriting Old Odessas Mythical Past | |
EPILOGUE | |
Bibliography | |
Index | |
Other editions - View all
City of Rogues and Schnorrers: Russia's Jews and the Myth of Old Odessa Jarrod Tanny Limited preview - 2011 |
City of Rogues and Schnorrers: Russia's Jews and the Myth of Old Odessa Jarrod Tanny Limited preview - 2011 |
Common terms and phrases
Aleksandr Aleksandr Kuprin anecdotes archetypal Arkadii bandits Benia Krik Black Sea Bolshevik cafés celebrated chap characters city’s crime criminal folksongs decades depicted Dzhekobson Eldorado ethnic film Fishke folklor Gambrinus Glasnost Golden Calf Haskalah Herlihy Ibid Il'f and Petrov Isaac Babel Iushkevich Jabotinsky Jewish city Jewish community Jewish criminals Jewish culture Jewish gangsters Jewish humor Jewry Jews Jews of Odessa joke klezmer Kuprin kvetching language Leon Drei Leonid Utesov live memoirs Menakhem-Mendl Mishka Iaponchik Moldavanka Moscow musicians myth of old nineteenth century Odessa myth Odessa-Mama Odessa's mythmakers Odessit Odesskaia pochta odesskii iazyk old Odessa Ostap Bender Pale of Settlement Paustovskii percent played pogrom popular population post-Stalin prerevolutionary proletarian revelry Revolution revolutionary rogues Russian Sashka schnorrer Sholem Aleichem shtetl Shulim songs Soviet Union Stalin streets swindlers theater thief thieves traditional tsarist Twelve Chairs twentieth century underworld USSR Vechernie izvestiia Vladimir Vladimir Vysotskii Vysotskii wedding writing Yiddish Zipperstein