The Soviet-German Non-Aggression Treaty, also known as the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, disconcerted or even shocked people in American pro-Soviet circles, including the staff, contributors, and readers of the Yiddish communist daily Morgn-Frayhayt (Morning-Freedom), and other activists linked with the communist-aligned Yiddish subculture. Many, especially those who were already distressed about political repressions in the Soviet Union, faced a difficult test of their ability to rationalize and accept this unexpected step taken by the Soviet government. Some of them saw it as Soviet perfidy with regard, in particular, to European Jews. The Morgn-Frayhayt circulation of over 50,000 in 1939 dropped to around 20,000 in 1940, and it hardly recovered after Germany attacked the Soviet Union in June 1941. Yiddish speakers' sympathy for the Red Army largely did not translate into support for local communists. This article focuses on the Yiddish literati who left the communist circles in protest against the treaty. Among them were the poets Moyshe Nadir (1885-1943) and Leon Feinberg (1897-1969), as well as the journalist and lay historian Melech Epstein (1889-1979). Several notable literary figures, such as the poet and playwright H. Leivik (1888-1962) and the novelist Joseph Opatoshu (1886-1954), resigned from the Soviet-leaning Yiddish Cultural Association (IKUF).
This article discusses how Irish writer Sally Rooney takes up the moral universe outlined in the novels and essays of Jewish-Italian writer Natalia Ginzburg (1916-1991). Through a close reading of Rooney's Beautiful World, Where Are You (2021), it argues that Rooney partly draws her ethics of interpersonal entanglement from Ginzburg's specifically Jewish ethical sensitivity to fragility and contingency and her essays on human relationships in the modern world. Secondly, it suggests that the pursuit of happiness undertaken by Rooney's protagonists constitutes a deepening and reframing of Ginzburg's discourse on contentment and discontentment in the novel Happiness, As Such (2019 [1973]). The marriage of these two elements (Rooney through Ginzburg and Ginzburg through Rooney) situates Natalia Ginzburg firmly within a genealogy of Italian women writers on whom contemporary Anglophone women writers are drawing to depict their own broken worlds and troubled selves.
This study examines the fate of synagogues in Hungary between 1945 and 1956, focusing on the immediate post-war years and the early period of state socialism under M & aacute;ty & aacute;s R & aacute;kosi. While Hungary did not experience the large-scale physical destruction of synagogues seen in other parts of East Central Europe, the post-war decades posed severe challenges to Jewish built heritage. In the short democratic interlude after 1945, Jewish communities attempted to reorganize, yet no coherent state policy addressed the protection of abandoned or damaged synagogue buildings. Following the communist takeover in 1949, the suppression of Holocaust memory and the subordination of religious institutions to state control further marginalized Jewish heritage. Synagogues were rarely recognized as historic monuments, and their preservation was not a governmental priority. Through three case studies - the synagogues of M & aacute;d and & Oacute;buda, and a regional survey of Transdanubia - this article explores how individual Jewish intellectuals and heritage professionals sought to document and protect these buildings despite limited institutional support. Their efforts, often tolerated rather than endorsed by the regime, highlight the complex interplay between memory politics, state socialism, and the survival of Jewish architectural heritage in post-war Hungary.
