Zydokomuna are Real Jews Shternshis

Soviet and Kosher: Jewish Popular Culture in the Soviet Union, 1923-1939, by Anna Shternshis. 2006

An Inadvertent Riposte To The Rather Silly Exculpatory Argument That Jewish Communists Were “Not Really Jews”

The eye-opening book upends the notion that Jews of the Soviet Union had been Jews in name only. They were not: They were practitioners of an alternative Judaism.

JEWISH COMMUNISTS DID NOT REJECT JUDAISM: THEY COMMUNIZED THEIR JUDAISM

Jewish radicals may have rebelled against their parents, against their rabbis, and against God, but at no time did they feel that they had to abandon or disavow their Judaism. To the contrary: They reformed their Judaism to conform to their radicalism. Shternshis writes, “By the end of the nineteenth century Jewish radicals in Poland, the United States, and Canada were employing the Passover seder for the promotion of political views as well as to criticize their opponents.” (p. 27).

For examples of Jewish Communists who practiced various aspects of Judaism, see my review of: BECOMING SOVIET JEWS, by Bemporad:

AFTER THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION

Evidently placing “getting ahead” as of greater importance than loyalty to God, most Jews did not object too much to the forced atheization of Communism, because, to them, the opportunities for self-advancement offered by Communism outweighed such considerations. (p. 3). Besides, Jews had already been undergoing self-atheization before the Revolution, and the pressures of Communism just accelerated the process. (p. 11).

Synagogues were closed, and reopened as secular community centers for Jews. (p. 7, 14). The Jewish clientele used them as clubs, schools, and theaters. (p. 14).

The new Communist reality, and conventional Jewish ways, far from being in conflict, went hand-in-hand. For instance, the author writes, “In the 1920s and 1930s Jewish Bolsheviks saw Yiddish songs as a powerful propaganda tool…The first revolutionary Yiddish songs were modifications of old folk tunes. In 1919 a collection of these works, RED FREEDOM SONGS, was published in Petrograd.” (pp. 106-107).

The Passover was divested of its prayers and of its belief in God. The new “Red Passover” changed the traditional Passover song (its reference to one is God, two scrolls of Torah, and three the number of the Jewish fathers [Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob]) to: One is Karl Marx, two is Lenin-Trotsky, three means three Internationals. (p. 38)

THE “NEW JEW” OF THE USSR AND HIS “NEW” JUDAISM

Decades after the Russian Revolution, the Communization of Judaism had become second nature to Soviet Jews. Shternshis comments, “Despite the antireligious content of the Red seders, they were distinctly Jewish events, organized for Jews, by Jews, and equally important, they were conducted in Yiddish. Even the building in which the event took place was frequently a former synagogue. Most Jews did not perceive these activities as anti-Jewish. They saw them as Soviet Jewish events, created for their entertainment, and also as traditional holidays. Even after the most successful Red seders, which were attended by large audiences, the majority would go home and celebrate traditional Passover seders.” (p. 39).

Even kosher was frequently not abandoned: It was simply redefined. This enabled the consumption of pork to be considered kosher, and it enabled the ways of Communism to be not only compatible with Judaism, but also compatible with kosher. Author Anna Shternshis writes, “While many American Jews do not strictly observe the laws of kashrut, most know that pork is not kosher, whether prepared by a Jew or not. Yet in the vocabulary of Soviet Jews who lived through the government policies of the 1920s and 1930s, the word ‘kosher’ means something that ‘Jews do’ (this applies to secular, religious, AND EVEN ANTIRELIGIOUS ACTIVITIES). If a Jew prepares pork, and eats it in the company of Jews, it is ‘kosher pork’. The word ‘kosher’ in the title of the book refers to this unorthodox definition of kashrut.” (p. xiv; Emphasis added).