Thank you for downloading this free sampler of: THANKSGIVING ALL YEAR ROUND GAVRIEL SHAPIRO Series: Jews of Russia & Eastern Europe and Their Legacy Hardcover | $69.00 ($41.40 with promotional code SHAPIRO) August 2016 | 9781618115058 | 294 pp.; 57 illus. Paperback | $25.00 (forthcoming May 2017) Forthcoming November 2016 | 9781618115171 | Click here to preorder now SUMMARY This book first delves into the author’s ancestry, thereby providing a partial slice of Russian Jewish history. It then offers an individual perspective on what it meant to grow up in the Soviet Union in the aftermath of WWII. It also gives a personal account of the rise and development of Jewish national awareness. It next describes a struggle for the immigration to Israel in the late 1960s and the early 1970s through job loss, persecution, arrests, imprisonment, and trial. It further relates the author’s life in Israel, including his work at the Voice of Israel, study at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and service in the Israel Defense Forces. Finally, it explores the author’s academic career in the United States, from the graduate school at the University of Illinois to professorship at Cornell University. ABOUT THE AUTHOR Gavriel Shapiro is Professor of Comparative and Russian Literature at Cornell University. His major publications include Nikolai Gogol and the Baroque Cultural Heritage (1993), Delicate Markers: Subtexts in Vladimir Nabokov’s “Invitation to a Beheading” (1998), (ed.) Nabokov at Cornell (2003), The Sublime Artist’s Studio: Nabokov and Painting (2009), and The Tender Friendship and the Charm of Perfect Accord: Nabokov and His Father (2014). 40% off hardcover with promotional code SHAPIRO click www.academicstudiespress.com to order now PRAISE “The story of the struggle of Soviet Jews for self-determination and freedom of emigration is an account of global forces in collision. However, it is also the story of individuals with hopes and dreams and a willingness to risk all they have for the chance for self-fulfillment. Therefore, together with learned analyses of politics and policies, it is important to keep focus on the individual—and there is nothing like an autobiography to do this. Gavriel Shapiro’s Thanksgiving All Year Round is precisely such an account. It is full of fascinating detail, well based self-analysis, and also a fair degree of drama. It is a great read and a valuable introduction to a world that is thankfully gone. The fall of the Soviet Union was far from predictable in the seventies—and this book reminds us of the power of humanity to overcome obstacles that appeared to be insurmountable.” — Shaul Stampfer, Rabbi Edward Sandrow Professor of Soviet and East European Jewish History, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem “Gavriel Shapiro’s academic reputation is enhanced by an impressive memoir of his life. It is fascinating to follow Shapiro’s account of his life trajectory from the rise of his Jewish identity in the assimilated family, to his struggle with the Soviet authorities for the right to emigrate, to his career as a nationally and internationally recognized literary scholar. Had these events been merely recorded, the book would already be gripping and compelling reading. In actuality, what makes the book even more meaningful is that the events are depicted, together with reflective interludes, allusions to contemporary political affairs, and bits of Jewish folklore, in the context of the history of Russian Jewry.” — Tatyana Novikov, Professor of Russian, University of Nebraska at Omaha “There’s no question in my mind that future historians will find themselves Thanksgiving the author of All Year Round. By meticulously recreating, with scholarly depth and comprehensiveness, his own fight for freedom and his further fate as a scholar and human being that took him to three continents, Professor Shapiro has produced an invaluable document of the epoch. So far, the Soviet Jewry struggle of breaking the bondage and for regaining human dignity hasn’t found a better chronicler.” — Emil Draitser, Professor of Russian, Hunter College, author of Shush! Growing up Jewish under Stalin “Written by one of the most notable representatives of the ‘third wave’ of Russian emigration, the memoirs cover the destinies of several generations of a remarkable Russian Jewish family. It will become a classic of memoir literature to be studied by all students of this burgeoning genre.” — Henrietta Mondry, Professor and Director of the Russian Program at University of Canterbury, New Zealand “Thanksgiving All Year Round is most appropriately named. It is the buoyant saga of an incorrigible optimist. Nothing daunted, Shapiro first flings himself against the all-powerful Soviet regime by which he is made to feel a misfit and then against the red-tape and apparent idiosyncrasies of the free societies to which he has escaped and where he is determined to make good. Written by a person with an obvious literary flair, Shapiro’s book provides manifestly authentic details of everyday life in the intellectual milieu of Moscow after Stalin and will be read avidly by students of Soviet society and of the Soviet Jewish movement.” — Yaacov Ro'i, Professor of Russian history emeritus, Tel Aviv University THANKSGIVING ALL YEAR ROUND A MEMOIR JEWS OF RUSSIA AND EASTERN EUROPE AND THEIR LEGACY SERIES EDITOR Maxim D. Shrayer (Boston College) EDITORIAL BOARD Ilya Altman (Russian Holocaust Center and Russian State University for the Humanities) Karel Berkhoff (NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies) Jeremy Hicks (Queen Mary University of London) Brian Horowitz (Tulane University) Luba Jurgenson (Universite Paris IV—Sorbonne) Roman Katsman (Bar-Ilan University) Dov-Ber Kerler (Indiana University) Vladimir Khazan (Hebrew University of Jerusalem) Mikhail Krutikov (University of Michigan) Joanna Beata Michlic (Bristol University) Alice Nakhimovsky (Colgate University) Antony Polonsky (Brandeis University) Jonathan D. Sarna (Brandeis University) David Shneer (University of Colorado at Boulder) Anna Shternshis (University of Toronto) Leona Toker (Hebrew University of Jerusalem) Mark Tolts (Hebrew University of Jerusalem) THANKSGIVING ALL YEAR ROUND A MEMOIR GAVRIEL SHAPIRO Boston 2016 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data: A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN 978-1-61811-505-8 (hardback) ISBN 978-1-61811-506-5 (electronic) ©Academic Studies Press, 2016 Cover design by Ivan Grave. On the cover: (top). The prison release paper. Moscow, June 30, 1972; (left). The author in front of the Tower of David. Jerusalem, Israel, ca. 1980; (right). After the doctoral graduation. University of Illinois, Urbana–Champaign, May 1984. Book design by Kryon Publishing, www.kryonpublishing.com Academic Studies Press 28 Montfern Avenue Brighton, MA 02135, USA [email protected] www.academicstudiespress.com To my visionary father, in blessed and loving memory Enter into His gates with thanksgiving, and into His courts with praise: be thankful unto Him, and bless His name. —Psalm 100:4 If you will it, it is no dream. —Theodor Herzl CONTENTS Note on Transliteration viii List of Illustrations ix Acknowledgments xi Foreword 1 1. Ancestry 5 2. Immediate Family 50 3. Growing Up in Postwar Soviet Russia 70 4. Emergence of National Awareness and the Struggle for Immigration to Israel 119 5. Arrest, Imprisonment, Trial, and Aftermath 153 6. Life in Israel 194 7. Graduate Studies in the United States 220 8. Living, Teaching, and Writing in America 233 Afterword 272 Index 273 NOTE ON TRANSLITERATION This book employs a somewhat simplified version of the Library of Congress system for transliterating the Russian alphabet. The only exceptions are Russian names whose spellings have become standard in English (e.g., Yuri, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Gorbanevskaya). The book follows the Encyclopedia Judaica and YIVO systems for respective transliterations of Hebrew and Yiddish. The only exceptions are which is romanized as “ch,” and Hebrew names whose spellings ”,ח“ have become standard in English (e.g., Haifa, Hadassah, Itzchak, Tchernichovsky, Zion). ILLUSTRATIONS All photographs, unless stated otherwise, are from the family archives Frontispiece: The author, aged twenty-seven, shortly after his arrival in Jerusalem. 1. Berko Leizerovsky, maternal great-grandfather. 6 2. Evgenia Leizerovsky (née Shafran), maternal great-grandmother. 7 3. Sara Leizerovsky (née Zil´bershmidt), maternal grandmother. 11 4. Gavriel Leizerovsky, maternal grandfather, in a group photo. 12 5. Gavriel Leizerovsky’s calling card. 13 6. Yaakov Kontorer, maternal great-great-grandfather. 14 7. Enta-Reiza Zil´bershmidt (née Kontorer), maternal great- grandmother. 15 8. Gersh Zil´bershmidt, maternal great-grandfather. 15 9. Barukh Shapiro, paternal great-grandfather. 18 10. Chaia Ashbel (née Reines), paternal great-great-grandmother. 21 11. Iosef Menachem Ashbel, paternal great-grandfather. 22 12. Zisl Shapiro (née Ashbel), paternal grandmother. 26 13. Zisl, Matl, and Eliyahu Shmuel. 27 14. Hirsch and Zisl Shapiro. 28 15. Father and Shura as first-grade classmates. 34 16. Father’s last drawing. 40 17. Uncle Dov at his meteorological station. 41 18. The Ashbel family. 49 19. Father among pupils and teachers of the Soviet Trade Mission School in the company of Maxim Gorky. 54 20. Father as a freshman at the Moscow Aviation Institute. 55 21. Father meditating. 58 22. Mother with her parents and maternal grandmother. 60 23. Mother taking part in Professor Vinogradov’s hospital round. 60 Illustrations x 24. Mother with her students at the First Moscow Medical Institute. 62 25. Luba as a schoolgirl. 66 26. Luba with parents on the eve of her departure for Israel. 67 27. My birthplace. 71 28. With Grandma Sara at a dacha. 72 29. With parents at Clean Ponds. 73 30. With parents in Gudauta, Abkhazia. 80 31. As a first grader at school no. 312. 81 32. The “wee Geordie” of the class. 83 33. Called upon in English class. 89 34. “Starring” in the movie The Grandmaster. 104 35. A stamp commemorating the eighth Independence Day of the State of Israel.