The Shochet (Vol. 2)

A Memoir of Jewish Life in Ukraine and Crimea

Pinkhes-Dov Goldenshteyn, Michoel Rotenfeld

$54.99

Paperback

Forthcoming
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English

Academic Studies Press
29 January 2025

Social & cultural history; Religious intolerance, persecution & conflict; Jewish studies

""You have to read this book... It's not like anything you read before."" -Tablet Magazine

Set in Ukraine, Crimea, and Israel, this unique two-volume autobiography offers a fascinating, detailed picture of life in Tsarist Russia and Israel during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Goldenshteyn (1848-1930), a traditional Jew who was orphaned as a young boy, is a master storyteller. Folksy, funny, streetwise, and self-confident, he is a keen observer of his surroundings. His accounts are vivid and readable, sometimes stunning in their intensity.

The memoir is brimming with information for a student of history. Goldenshteyn's adventures shed light on communal life, persecution, family relationships, religious practices and beliefs, social classes, local politics, interactions between Jews and other religious communities, epidemics, poverty, competition for resources, migration, war, technology, modernity and secularization. In chronicling his own life, Goldenshteyn inadvertently tells a bigger story-the story of how a small, oppressed people, among other minority groups, struggled for survival in the massive Russian Empire and in the Land of Israel.

Volume two begins in 1873, when Goldenshteyn obtains his first position as a shochet in Slobodze, and it follows him to the Crimea, where he endures 34 years of vicissitudes. In 1913, he fulfills a dream of immigrating to the Land of Israel, hoping to find tranquility in his old age. Instead, he is met with the turbulence of the First World War, as battles rage between the retreating Ottoman Turks and the advancing British forces. Informed by research in Ukranian, Israeli, and American archives and personal interviews with the few surviving individuals who knew Goldenshteyn personally,The Shochetis a magnificent new contribution to Jewish and Eastern European history.

By: Pinkhes-Dov Goldenshteyn
Translated by: Michoel Rotenfeld
Imprint: Academic Studies Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 233mm, Width: 155mm,
ISBN: 9798887196138
Pages: 500
Publication Date: 29 January 2025
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming

Michoel Rotenfeldis a historical researcher who has long been fascinated by Jewish memory in its myriad forms, especially the genre of Jewish autobiography. He is the director of Touro University Library'sProject Zikaron, a permanent collection of previously uncollated and undigitized historical material from Jewish communities across the world. He also coordinated the digitization of David Tidhar's nintn-volumeEncyclopedia of the Founders and Builders of Israel(www.tidhar.tourolib.org), which has received over two million page views.