Alina Adams has contributed to A Writer of History in the past with a post on the ease of writing historical fiction and another on why historical fiction must keep tackling controversial topics. Today, as her new novel Go On Pretending launches, Alina is back with a topic on Jewish heritage. Welcome, Alina.
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Writers of historical fiction are always asked about the research they do. And writers of historical fiction do quite a bit of research (or, at least, they should). But for writers delving into a world utterly foreign to them, it can sometimes be difficult to suss out subtle differences within a group that can seem monolithic to an outsider.
Take, for example: Jews. You have no idea how many books I’ve read where writers, historical and modern, ascribe Ashkenzai Jewish customs to Sephardic Jews, or fail to differentiate between Orthodox, Modern Orthodox, Conservative, Reconstructionist or Reform Jews, assuming that what applies to one sect applies to all. (Let’s not even delve into the sub-groups within all those groups. I know here are people reading this right now who disagree with how I’ve classified them already!)
One particular misunderstanding I’ve noted, in fiction and in real life, is between American Jews (many of whom are descended from Russian, Ukrainian, Latvian, Lithuanian, etc… Jews), and Soviet Jews (who are descended from the same people, but spent the 20th century in very different places).
The average American Jew – excluding the ultra-Orthodox and Hasidim (who, no, aren’t the same thing, either) – tends to come from what they consider a proudly progressive background. They are the so-called “red diaper babies,” who grew up attending clubs like Workmen’s Circle, supporting organized labor, and canvassing for the most left-leaning Democratic candidates they could find if no Socialist candidate was on the ballot.
Woody Allen pegged it perfectly in “Annie Hall,” when he described Carol Kane’s character as, “You’re like New York, Jewish, left-wing, liberal, intellectual, Central Park West, Brandeis University, the socialist summer camps and the father with the Ben Shahn drawings, right, and the really, y’know, strike-oriented kind of, red diaper, stop me before I make a complete imbecile of myself.”
“No, that was wonderful. I love being reduced to a cultural stereotype,” she deadpans.
“Right, I’m a bigot, I know, but for the left.”
There is no question that the American Jews Allen so pointedly skewers did a lot of good, especially for Soviet Jews.
It were these American Jews, with their history of organizing for causes they believed in, who marched for Soviet Jewry starting in 1964 and reaching its apex with Freedom Sunday in 1987, when a crowd of over 200,000 gathered in Washington, DC, calling on Premiere Gorbachev to, “Let my people go!”
That wasn’t the problem. The problem began when the Soviet Union did as demanded.
Soviet Jews began arriving in the US in the mid-1970s, with that wave culminating in 1979, before picking up again during Glasnost and post the dissolution of the USSR in 1991.
The American Jews who’d battled so hard for their release were confused. They thought these newcomers would be just like them. After all, hadn’t their own grandparents left Russia because they were warriors for socialism who were being cruelly repressed by the Czar? Isn’t that why they came to the United States at the turn of the 20th century? To continue the political struggles on the Lower East Side of Manhattan and elsewhere across the country? Chicago? San Francisco? Boston?
What do you mean the Soviet Jewish refugees were anti-socialism? What could have possibly turned them against it? What do you mean a lifetime spent having a glorious socialist future shoved down their throats only to witness the reality of it, the political repression, the lack of food and housing, the arbitrary arrests for not properly towing the party line or the re-education camps for those deemed not progressive enough, made them think that maybe the left side of the political spectrum wasn’t all it was cracked up to be?
Who were they going to believe, their own eyes, or what people who’d gotten political science degrees from Brandeis and Columbia and Barnard wrote their dissertations about?
The American Jews who initially welcomed their Soviet brethren with open arms first tried to teach them the error of their ways. When that didn’t work, they threw up their arms in surrender and decided it must be the neocons who’d brainwashed the poor, uneducated masses, so what could they do? They were a lost cause.
Even now, American Jews repeatedly express shock that Soviet Jews as a group tend to vote Republican, while American Jews continue their tradition of voting Democrat. They try to soften the implications by guessing it’s because Soviet Jews are hawkish on Israel. It can’t possibly be because they instinctually reject anything with the word “union” in the title, or candidates like Bernie Sanders, who visited Moscow in 1969 to wax poetic about how wonderful everything was. For some reason, that continues to not sit well with those who also were in Moscow in 1969… without the option of going back to Vermont after a few days.
In Go On Pretending, I dive straight into the schism between American and Soviet Jews. The historical saga begins with Rose Janowitz, who kicks off her career writing the world’s only Yiddish language radio soap opera, Mayn Muter Un Ikh, for New York City’s WEVD before moving over to the more mainstream The Guiding Light for Procter & Gamble. Between Rose’s secret past as a member of the American Abraham Lincoln Brigade fighting Franco’s forces in Spain, and her forbidden romance with her program’s African-American leading man, Rose finds herself leaving the United States for what she presumes will be greater personal and professional freedom in the Soviet Union.
Thirty years later, her daughter, Emma, returns to the country of her mother’s birth, and finds herself smack in the middle of the push and pull between American and Soviet Jews.
It’s the kind of nuanced conflict someone merely researching “Jews in America” is unlikely to unearth. And it’s why I continue writing historical fiction, to shine a light on times and places people think they know.
But they only know part of the story.
Many thanks, Alina. It’s clearly a complicated subject! I wish you great success with Go On Pretending!
Go On Pretending by Alina Adams
Three generations of women battle against the tides of history, from segregated 1950s America to the fall of the USSR and the rise of revolutionary Rojava.
Rose Janowitz is a pioneer in the 1950s golden age of television, as she navigates the transition from radio to TV soap operas. But beneath the glitz and glamor lies a web of secrets. Rose’s radical past and her hidden romance with Jonas Cain, the African-American leading man who made Guiding Light a hit on radio. How long will Rose be able to hide Jonas Cain’s identity—and their romantic relationship—from the public, and from Irna Phillips, the formidable doyenne who invented the soap-opera, a woman who makes—and breaks—professional careers on a whim.
In the 1980s, Rose’s daughter Emma Kagan abandons her privileged life in the USSR as the daughter of high-profile American defectors, to return to the country of her parents’ birth just as Mikhail Gorbachev announces the new openness known as glasnost. In the US, Emma navigates the hypocrisy and inherent contradictions of the political left and the right, as the collapse of the Soviet Union sends her scrambling for survival. Emma’s search for a place to fully belong finds her looking for personal freedom in the strangest of places—with unexpected and often life-threatening results.
In 2012, Libby, Emma’s daughter and Rose’s granddaughter, embarks on a bold journey to Rojava, Syria, joining the Women’s Revolution. Her search for utopia pulls Rose and Emma into the fray, where family secrets long buried are unearthed amid the anarchy of war.
Go On Pretending offers a powerful exploration of the struggles for personal freedom and the enduring strength of family bonds.
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M.K. Tod writes historical fiction. Her latest novel THAT WAS THEN is a contemporary thriller. Mary’s other novels, THE ADMIRAL’S WIFE, PARIS IN RUINS, TIME AND REGRET, LIES TOLD IN SILENCE and UNRAVELLED are available from Amazon, Nook, Kobo, Google Play and iTunes. She can be contacted on Facebook or on her website www.mktod.com.
One Response
sounds fascinating, especially as spent a fair amount of time with “refusniks” in the Soviet Union during the winter of 1979. This will most certainly go on my list.