The View from the Jews’ Rock: Jewish Poetic Emplacement in Crimea

Abstract

ABSTRACT While not a central locale in modern Jewish poetry, Crimea nevertheless garnered the attention of several important poets in significant works. Their interest was galvanized at the intersection of their individual biographies and earlier classic literature on Crimea and the Black Sea. This article will focus on key works by the Hebrew poet Shaul Tshernikhovski and the Yiddish poet Perets Markish as writers in Jewish languages, and will then turn briefly to the work of a Jewish poet in a non-Jewish language, the Russian poet Osip Mandelstam, with the goal of understanding the ways in which Crimea became a focal site for Jewish literary considerations of emplacement.