An American scientist presented his book at the Ostroh Academy

June 13, 2018

On June 12, the National University of Ostroh Academy hosted a presentation of the Professor Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern’s book "The Anti-Imperial Choice: The Making of the Ukrainian Jew", which was published in English in 2009 at Yale University Press.

The Doctor of Philology, Professor Dmytro Tsolin moderated the meeting.

An American and Ukrainian historian, philologist, cultural researcher, essayist and translator Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern was born in Kyiv. Currently, he is a professor of Jewish studies at the Faculty of History of the Northwestern University in Chicago. Now he is a professor of Jewish studies at the Faculty of History of the Northwestern University in Chicago. Petrovsky-Shtern explores and teaches the early modern and modern history of Jews, the problems of Ukrainian-Jewish relations and Slavic-Jewish literatures, the history of Jewish mysticism and bondage. The professor visited the Ostroh Academy with a course of lectures "Jews and Ukrainians: the Millennium of Co-Existence (Part II (1917-2017))".

During the book presentation, the author talked about the conception and the history of the publication. The book refers to Jews who chose to integrate into a non-stateless non-Imperial culture of the national democratic environment of the people, oppressed by colonizers.

«Like the representatives of any other ethnic group, the Jewish elites were modernized, integrating into a dominant culture, often state or imperial. They chose the German language in the Czech Republic, the French in the colonies of North Africa, and Russian in the areas of the Dnieper Ukraine, Sloboda Ukraine and Southern Ukraine. The author suggests to consider linguistic and cultural choice, which is opposite to the customs of Jewish integration, the imperial assimilation vector, and the traditional choice in favor of self-preservation by virtue of one's nature, on the example of life and work of the five writers of the last century who grew mainly in the Yiddish and Russian-speaking media but eventually came to Ukrainian literature: Hrytsko Kernerenko, Ivan Kulyk, Raisa Troianker, Leonid Pervomaiskyi and Moisei Fishbein. » - says in the book annotation.

Also during the meeting, Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern presented the book "Jews and Ukrainians: Millennium of Co-Existence", created in co-authorship with Robert-Paul Magocsi.

«This book may be the first step that will open up the truth to the Ukrainians about the Jews and the Jews about the Ukrainians. It can also be evaluated as a long-awaited source of information for those who are interested in learning more about the incredible country and its two nations. » - the author said.