City of Rogues and Schnorrers

Jarrod Tanny

Description

Odessa—celebrated and vilified as a Jewish city of sin

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 19th 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 19th 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.

Acknowledgments
A Note on Transliteration
Introduction. Why is This Town Different from All the Rest?
1. The Birth of Old Odessa
2. Crafting Old Odessa
3. The Battle for Old Odessa
4. Revival and Survival
5. Rewriting Old Odessa
Epilogue. The End of Old Odessa
Notes
Bibliography

Sujets

• Jewish Studies
• Jewish
• HISTORY
• Histoire
• Jews
• Literature
• General officer
• Eastern Europe
• Russian
• Russia
• General
• Russie

Informations

• Publié par: Indiana University Press
• Date de parution: 14 novembre 2011
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780253001382
• Langue: English

Extrait

City of Rogues and Schnorrers
RUSSIA S JEWS AND THE MYTH OF OLD ODESSA
JARROD TANNY
Indiana University Press Bloomington and Indianapolis
This book is a publication of
Indiana University Press
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Bloomington, Indiana 47404-3797 USA
www.iupress.indiana.edu Telephone orders 800-842-6796 Fax orders 812-855-7931
2011 by Jarrod Tanny
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of American University Presses Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition.
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Tanny, Jarrod.
City of rogues and schnorrers: Russia s Jews and the myth of old Odessa / Jarrod Tanny.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-253-35646-8 (hardcover: alk. paper)
ISBN 978-0-253-22328-9 (pbk.: alk. paper)
ISBN 978-0-253-00138-2 (e-book)
1. Jews-Ukraine-Odesa-History. 2. Jewish criminals-Ukraine-Odesa-Biography. 3. Odesa (Ukraine)-Social conditions. 4. Odesa (Ukraine)-Ethnic relations. 5. Odesa (Ukraine)-In literature. 6. Cultural pluralism-Ukraine-Odesa-History. I. Title.
DS135.U420358 2011 947.7 2-dc23 2011019922
1 2 3 4 5 16 15 14 13 12 11
For Allie, Sarah, and Max
Your father, he once said to me, was one of your real wild Jews. A bonditt. A mazik. A devil. I could have sworn he was out of Odessa.
-MORDECAI RICHLER, Barney s Version
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
Note on Transliteration
INTRODUCTION
Why Is This Town Different from All the Rest?
CHAPTER 1
The Birth of Old Odessa
CHAPTER 2
Crafting Old Odessa
CHAPTER 3
The Battle for Old Odessa
CHAPTER 4
Revival and Survival
CHAPTER 5
Rewriting Old Odessa s Mythical Past
EPILOGUE
The End of Old Odessa
Notes
Bibliography
Index
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Lest you tire of reading this book before reaching the end of these acknowledgments, I would like to thank the most important people first. My wife, Allison Rosen, who has supported me emotionally, intellectually, and in every other way possible through the many, many years of graduate school at University of California, Berkeley, my two-year postdoctoral stint at Ohio University, and now in my new home, the history department at the University of North Carolina, Wilmington. Of no less significance are our twin children, Max and Sarah, who have yet to read this book in its entirety, even though I have read their collected works on Elmo s escapades from cover to cover.
I have accumulated many intellectual debts over the years, scholars who have shaped my thinking and stimulated my mind. Yuri Slezkine embodies everything one could want in a mentor-intelligence, open-mindedness, an unrivaled understanding of history, and exceptional translation skills for cryptic Judeo-Odessan criminal slang. At various stages of writing, I received invaluable feedback and advice from John Efron, Victoria Frede, Eric Naiman, Peggy Anderson, and Ned Walker. Reggie Zelnik exerted a profound influence on my scholarship, and his tragic death in 2004 meant the loss of a teacher, a friend, and a family member.
Numerous other friends and colleagues have helped me in countless ways with this project at various stages. Eleonor Gilburd, Elena Shulman, and Victoria Smolkin-two authentic Odessans and one Odessan in spirit-were always there to help me with convoluted Russian translations whenever my dictionary (surprisingly often) failed me. David Shneer has similarly bailed me out of innumerable thorny Yiddish-related problems. Eugene Avrutin, Stephen Brain, Nicole Eaton, Olga Gershenson, David Shneer, Christine Evans, and Greg Thomas each read and commented on specific portions of this book. My best friend Billy Druker, whom I have known since the Brezhnev era, has been incessantly hearing about this project from its very inception, and was even kind enough to read some of it.
I could never have become a specialist on Odessa were it not for Patricia Herlihy and Roshanna Sylvester. Through their own scholarship, their constant advice, and their help in getting me indispensable contacts in Odessa, my research trip was a smashing success, and I was able to briefly transform myself from a Montrealer into an Odessit and thus get the most out of my time in Russia s (now Ukraine s) Eldorado.
In 2005 Odessa was my home away from home. This would not have been possible without the kindness of Tat iana Khersonskaia who opened up her humble apartment to me, and always insured that I had a warm place to sleep and a bublik for breakfast, even if she could guarantee neither a stable water supply nor electricity. A successful research trip would have been impossible without the immeasurable help of Ana Misiuk, Alena Iavorskaia, Elena Karakina, Liliana Belousova, and Mikhail Rashkovetskii. They facilitated my acquisition of material by providing me with advice, contacts, and resources; they opened doors and cleared the many passageways obstructed by post-Soviet bureaucracy. I also thank Michael and Mary Katz, whose trip to Odessa coincided with mine. They provided me with great company and an occasional much-needed refuge from the libraries, archives, and power outages of Odessa.
Between 2008 and 2010 Ohio University s history department served as my second home. My fellow faculty members in history and Jewish studies welcomed me with open arms, providing a most hospitable work environment. In particular, I would like to thank Norman Goda, Patrick Barr-Melej, Marvin Fletcher, Patricia Weitsman, and Danielle Leshaw. Without their tireless support, I could never have managed Ohio University s nascent Jewish studies program while devoting the necessary time and energy to my own research. Living across the street from Gillian Berchowitz proved to be a blessing in more ways than one.
In 2010 I moved the gantseh meshpuchah eastward once again, this time to the Carolinas, where I assumed an endowed professorship in Jewish history at the University of North Carolina (UNCW), Wilmington. In the brief time I ve been here, my new colleagues and their families have gone out of their way to help four displaced Canadians acclimate to Dixieland. Paul Townend, Michael Seidman, Lisa Pollard, Sue McCaffray, and Mark Spaulding, in particular, have given me their time, advice, and resources to complete this project and get on with the serious business of building up Jewish Studies at UNCW.
It has been an absolute pleasure to work with Indiana University Press. Janet Rabinowitch and Angela Burton have gone beyond the call of duty in guiding me through the process of transforming a manuscript into a monograph. My anonymous peer reviewers prudently compelled me to take a step back and rethink my project s intent, while drawing my attention to the ambiguities and inconsistencies that seemed to undermine my thesis. While I write these words, my meticulous copy editor Rita Bernhard is returning dozens of frantic emails from me, as we work together in refining my prose, eliminating far too many typos, and sorting out the frustrating array of diacritical marks from far too many alphabets.
Portions of chapters 3 and 4 were previously published as Kvetching and Carousing under Communism: Old Odessa as the Soviet Union s Jewish City of Sin in East European Jewish Affairs 39, no. 3 (December 2009). I am grateful to Taylor Francis Ltd., http://www.informaworld.com , for permission to reprint these segments.
Finally, I thank my parents Laurence and Rosalie Tanny for always supporting me in every way possible; Cordell Tanny for being a great brother and uncle; my in-laws Joel and Julie Rosen for allowing their daughter to move far, far away from home; and my grandparents Professor Edward and Sarah Rosenthall, and Phil and Phyllis Tanny.
NOTE ON TRANSLITERATION
For Russian transliteration, I have adopted the Library of Congress System. For a handful of personal names known to English readers, I have used the more familiar spelling (such as Isaac Babel instead of Isaak Babel ). For transliterating Yiddish, I have used the YIVO system. In the case of individuals and terminology that are rendered differently in Russian, Yiddish, Hebrew, and English, I have used the most common spelling, in the interest of clarity and consistency.
City of Rogues and Schnorrers
INTRODUCTION Why Is This Town Different from All the Rest?
DURING THE CHAOS of the Russian Revolution and civil war, Konstantin Paustovskii witnessed a curious and somewhat comical incident. Observing a street-corner queue in Odessa, Paustovskii noted the presence of

a short, old, Jewish gentleman in a dusty bowler and a worn black coat reaching to his ankles. Smiling and nodding benevolently, he observed the queue through unusually thick spectacles. Now and then he took out of his pocket a small black book with the Star of David embroidered in gold on the cover, read a page or two and returned the book to his pocket.
Paustovskii was certain that he must have been a scholar, perhaps even a tsaddic, an old philosopher from Portofrank Street, a figure not uncommon in early-twentieth-century Ukraine. Suddenly, a young rather insolent-looking man appeared wearing a black skullcap and canary-colored leather shoes. The young man, Paustovskii continues,

was wondering how to jump the queue without causing a fuss and a row. He saw the old gentleman with the book, and naturally took him for the very embodiment of mildness and non-resistance to evil. Making up his mind, he skillfully inserted his shoulder between him and his neighbou