A Chinese Soldier in Crimea’s Vineyards: Yiddish Poetry between Jewish Territorialism and Soviet Internationalism

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article explores three Yiddish poets who placed Crimea at the center of a Jewish and proletarian world-building project. Khana Levin, Esther Shumiatsher, and Peretz Markish all published their work in the Kharkiv-based Yiddish journal Di royte velt (Red World) in the late 1920s and presented Crimea as a home for outsiders. The article begins with a discussion of Khana Levin’s Crimean Motifs. It next turns to Peretz Markish’s Brothers. The final case study is of Esther Shumiatsher. These three examples present Crimea as a site for Jewish writers to radically rethink what it meant to be an “Other” in Eastern Europe.