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The legacy of Isaac Babel, Russia’s Jewish Hemingway, is dissected in new Chicago play
CHICAGO (JTA) — All writers strive for a good story. How far they will go to find it depends on their ambition, their wherewithal and their sanity.
Isaac Babel, a Russian-Jewish writer who came from a relatively stable, privileged background in Odessa in the late 1800s, would go to war among Cossacks who murdered Jews, make friends with Soviet agents and then cuckold one of them. The reason why Babel constantly put himself in harm’s way may have been simple, according to another writer.
“I think he wanted something to write about,” said Rajiv Joseph, whose play at Steppenwolf Theater in Chicago, “Describe the Night,” centers on Babel. “He was a young man who had wanted to be a writer but had nothing to write about.”
“Describe the Night” blends three stories from different eras that engage with questions of who controls the truth. The first portrays Babel, the Soviet secret police head Nikolai Yezhov and Yezhov’s wife, Yevgenia, with whom Babel begins an affair. The second follows a young Soviet agent rising through the ranks just before the Berlin Wall falls, and the third dives into a conspiracy behind a 2010 plane crash near Smolensk, Russia.
Babel himself may not rise to the ranks of Tolstoy or Dostoevsky in terms of immediate name recognition in the United States, but the journalist, author and playwright is remembered as one of Russia’s preeminent 20th-century writers. His modernist and bloody tales in “Red Cavalry,” a collection of short stories inspired by his time on the frontlines of the Polish-Soviet War of 1919, vaulted him to the status of a Russian Hemingway. The pithy American war correspondent once expressed his admiration, perhaps even jealousy, of Babel’s writing, saying “Babel’s style is even more concise than mine.”
Like Hemingway, Babel went to war in search of a good story. Combat itself was not the only threat to him: as a Jew, he bore witness to the Cossack cavalry’s antisemitic atrocities. Babel tamped down his Jewish identity while covering the war, though he would feel a sense of isolation in both societies or as his grandson would later describe him “a Jew among the Cossacks, and a Cossack among the Jews.” In his own diary, Babel wrote “Talking to the Jews, I feel kin to them, they think I’m Russian and my soul is laid bare.”
Joseph, who is not Jewish and authored the Pulitzer-nominated play “Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo,” had read “Red Cavalry” years ago but was inspired to write “Describe the Night” after discovering the poetic journal Babel had kept during the war. The title of the play comes directly from the diary, which repeats the word several times in Babel’s own prompts to describe things ranging from kitchens to marketplaces to women to horses. Sometimes Babel successfully answers his own prompts by forcing himself to write, and other times he doesn’t, Joseph said.
Lead actor James Vincent Meredith is also not Jewish and admitted he had concerns about “the choice of casting a black man in the role of a Jewish man living in the world of Russia, the Ukraine and Paris.” He partly found his way to the character by watching the 2015 documentary “Finding Babel,” which follows Babel’s grandson across Russia and Ukraine as he searches for his famous ancestor’s remains.
“I can read Babel’s work (I have), I can travel to Israel (I have, decades ago), I can take Hebrew as an elective in college (I did, not very well), I can read Chaim Potok (I have). But these are at their best, however well intentioned, tourist pursuits for one who is not Jewish,” he said. “I will never come close to knowing the true soul of a Jewish person. Thankfully, Rajiv has created this character that by his design, anyone can inhabit.”
Yasen Peyankov and James Vincent Meredith in a scene from the play about Isaac Babel. (Michael Brosilow)
He added that the play isn’t meant to be historically accurate. “The character of Isaac, as well as others in the play, is meant to be an entry point into a world where the scalpel crafting the ‘truth’ is rarely placed in the hands of those who are adversely affected by it. As a black male and father of a black male in the U.S., I’m certainly cognizant of that world.”
Joseph feels that he and other artists share the instinct Babel had to leave his comfort zone. He wanted to be a writer, but growing up in suburban Cleveland gave him little inspiration. After college, he joined the Peace Corps and spent three years in West Africa.
“That was a real life-changing event for me that opened my world and opened my mind,” Joseph said. “Not nearly as traumatic as traveling with the cavalry through Poland in 1920, but the same impulse to break out of your norms.”
Yet Joseph believes Babel’s desires went beyond pushing boundaries and into a deep, pathological need to associate with danger.
“The thing I find really interesting about Babel, both through his writing and through his personal life, is this inexorable draw towards danger and filth,” Joseph said, adding that Babel would hang out in taverns with Soviet soldiers, members of the secret police and executioners like Yezhov. “He was already treading on such thin ice. So he had a recklessness, you could call it a death wish if you want.”
Meredith was also stunned by the writer’s intense flirtations with danger.
“Why get that close to the flame? That to me is one of the things that really appealed to me about this guy,” Meredith said. “I tend to play it safe, as safe as an actor can play it, but I see this guy who had these kinds of desires, he had this quest to make this amazing art as far as his stories and I just I’m just so attracted to that.”
Joseph said he saw some parallels between Babel’s story and the exodus of some of his artistic peers in Russia, who have fled to Europe. In his time, Babel was seen as subversive by nature, existing as a Jewish man in early Soviet Russia. His relished writing about prostitutes and mobsters, transforming underworld characters into urban legends. His 1935 political play “Maria” was canceled during rehearsals and by 1939, Soviet police arrested him and confiscated his writing. Throughout the 1940s, his works disappeared from circulation. Though some believed Babel had spent time throughout that decade in a prison camp, the government had executed him in 1940.
“In the 1930s and ‘40s, I think if you are a Jewish creative writer, you’re automatically subversive,” Joseph said. He noted one pivotal scene where Nikolai Yezhov labels Babel as such because his writing portrays Russia as gloomy rather than inspiring.
“If you’re telling the truth, you are subversive,” Joseph added. “So I think that pretty much any creative writer worth his or her weight would be considered subversive at that moment.”
“Describe the Night” runs until April 9 at the Steppenwolf Theater in Chicago.
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Why the Forward has launched a Yiddish podcast
In April 2022, right after the COVID virus sequestered us all in our homes, the Forward staff huddled about what we could do for the many people who felt isolated, unable to go to work or to see their friends and family.
A colleague turned to me and said: “Hey Rukhl, how about starting a YouTube series called ‘Yiddish Word of the Day’?” I did, and to my surprise, it immediately drew in many viewers and is still going strong four years later.
This was a wake-up call. Judging from the comments on YouTube and Facebook following each episode, I realized that there were many people who were fond of Yiddish but didn’t necessarily speak or even understand it. Although we had been producing Yiddish videos with English subtitles for decades, geared towards those who didn’t know Yiddish (like our cooking shows), this was our first entry into actually teaching the language to our viewers.
I learned something else from the viewers’ reactions to YWOD. Many said that it was great to hear the Yiddish, that they understood most of it but sadly, never heard anyone speak it anymore. Others said they weren’t Jewish but understood a lot of it because they knew German.
As a way of reaching those readers who understand Yiddish but can’t or don’t have time to read it, we’ve now launched a podcast, called simply Yiddish With Rukhl, where I read two Forverts articles in Yiddish related to a given theme. The first episode was about coffee; the second — about seeking love.
As I explain in my introduction to each episode, listeners don’t have to understand every word. What’s important is getting an opportunity to hear the language, to learn how these words are pronounced and to absorb the intonation, or the musical cadence of the Yiddish language.
To my surprise, within the first three days of launching the podcast, it had been downloaded over a thousand times. Many people emailed me or commented on Facebook about it. One woman wrote: “Your two podcasts were really enjoyable and got me through 40 minutes on the treadmill.”
Another listener wrote: “With near to zero knowledge of Yiddish, but with my native Dutch and fairly good German, I could understand quite a lot, even at speed 1.5! Listening a second and third time helped to understand more. Very clear and quiet diction. Many thanks. Hoping for more.”
Several listeners also gave us a great suggestion: that the landing page of the podcast include the links to the original printed articles, since being able to read and listen to the article simultaneously could turn the podcast into a great language learning tool. Happily, we obliged.
Yiddish with Rukhl can be accessed from the Forward’s landing page, as well as on Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music and Spotify.
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Why New York’s Sephardic Jews are more Zionist — and more wary of Mamdani — than their Ashkenazi neighbors
Differences between Ashkenazi, Mizrahi, and Sephardic Jews have come sharply into focus since Zohran Mamdani became mayor. In the greater New York City area, 10% of Jews identify as Mizrahi or Sephardic, two groups that report stronger connections to Israel and more conservative political views than Ashkenazi Jews, according to a new national study.
Aaron Cohen, a Moroccan Jew raised in Venezuela, and a New York City–based financial adviser, said, “I think it will be hard to find Sephardic Jews who voted for Mamdani because of how important Israel is to us.” For us, he said, “there is no divide between being against Israel and antisemitism.” He added that many in these communities who escaped socialist countries are also wary of Mamdani’s democratic socialist policies.
Unlike Ashkenazi Jews, most Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews arrived in the United States between the 1950s and 1990s, often fleeing openly anti-Jewish regimes and socialist regimes in the Middle East, North Africa, Central Asia, and Latin America. While some were able to immigrate to the U.S., many found that their only viable refuge was Israel, under the Law of Return, which grants every Jew the right to Israeli citizenship.
“Sephardic Jews are very Zionistic, because the state of Israel changed our lives,” Cohen said. “A lot of Jews from Morocco were saved by the fact that they were able to go to Israel. The same was true for Iranian Jews, Egyptian Jews, and so on.”
According to the study, conducted for JIMENA: Jews Indigenous to the Middle East and North Africa, 31% of Mizrahi Jews and 28% of Sephardic Jews in the U.S. hold Israeli citizenship, compared with just 5% of Ashkenazi Jews. And 80% of Mizrahi and Sephardic Jews say they feel somewhat or very emotionally connected to Israel, compared with 69% of Ashkenazi Jews.
Mamdani has been outspoken in his criticism of Israel and identifies as anti-Zionist. He has repeatedly stated Israel does not have a right to exist as a Jewish state, but rather “as a state with equal rights.” An Anti-Defamation League report from December found that 20% of Mamdani’s administrative appointees have ties to anti-Zionist groups.
Those positions land poorly in these communities where, for many, Israel functioned as a lifeline. Ralph Betesh, a 22-year-old Syrian Jew from Midwood, described the Syrian Jewish community in New York, the city’s largest Sephardic community, as “super, super pro-Israel.” Before the election, he said, “In every Syrian group chat, they were sending things like, ‘Please everyone, go register to vote. This is crucial. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime election,’” Batesh said. “Even in shul, they would urge people to go vote.”
The primarily Syrian congregation Shaare Zion in Brooklyn, one of the largest Sephardic synagogues in North America, sent a letter to congregants before the High Holidays stating that to attend services, one must show proof of voter registration. While the synagogue did not endorse a specific candidate, the letter warned of “a very serious danger that can affect all of us.”
Memories of persecution and socialism
For Yisrael Cohen-Vásquez, a 21-year-old Lebanese, Iranian, Spanish, and Moroccan Jew who grew up in Buenos Aires and moved to New York at 13, the intensity of the reaction is rooted in the proximity of persecution. “The pogroms that happened to us are as recent as the 1990s,” he said. “This is not generational trauma. This is my parents’ trauma that I grew up listening to.”
Michael Anwarzadeh, an Iraqi Jew from Manhattan, expressed a similar view. “We understand, Iraqis, what having someone who is anti-Jewish in power means,” he said. “I can say that because my parents lived through it. I grew up listening to them, and I learned those lessons.”
Cohen-Vásquez is particularly alarmed by Mamdani’s recent decision to revoke the IHRA definition of antisemitism and lift restrictions on boycotts of Israel. “All these policies that are being changed are exactly what was introduced to Mizrahi communities in the ’70s and ’80s,” he said. “These were the indicators, the litmus tests, for the beginning of the pogroms.”
Beyond concerns over antisemitism and Jewish safety, Cohen-Vásquez said his family’s experiences “whether Lebanese, Argentinian, or Iranian” have also made him deeply skeptical of Mamdani’s “socialist policies.”
That perspective, he added, has often left him feeling misunderstood when sharing his views with Ashkenazi peers. “I feel like I had to defend myself and explain my family story,” Cohen-Vásquez said. At the same time, he said he was heartened by conversations with non-Jews in New York who had immigrated from socialist countries and, as he put it, “got it.”
“I felt more seen and understood by the Dominicanos and the Puerto Ricans in Washington Heights, and by African American communities in Harlem and Queens, than by Ashkenazi Jews.”
While Mizrahi and Sephardic Jews emphasize their deep attachment to New York, many describe a relationship shaped by repeated displacement and hard-earned lessons about how quickly safety can erode. “When you talk to anybody in our community now, you say, ‘Okay, where would you go?” Aaron Cohen said. “What’s your plan B? What’s your plan C?’”
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She thought she knew her mother. Then she learned about the concentration camp
Marisa Fox always knew her mother Tamar Fromer-Fox had secrets. Tamar never shared the circumstances under which her family had left Poland for Mandatory Palestine, only saying that they avoided the worst of the Holocaust. But years after her mom’s death in 1993, while searching for family records in Dąbrowa-Górnicza, Poland, Fox learned her mom had spent four and a half years in Gabersdorf, a labor camp that became a concentration camp in what was then Czechoslovakia.
In the documentary My Underground Mother, Fox, who is also an occasional Forward contributor, tries to piece together her family history (such as that her mother’s birth name was Alta, not Tamar) and understand why her mother never admitted she was a Holocaust survivor.
Making the film took more than a decade. Fox’s search took her across the globe: Tel Aviv; Berlin; Melbourne; Malmö, Sweden; Silver Spring, Maryland. She tracked down and interviewed dozens of women who had grown up with her mother or survived Gabersdorf with her. Most of them, including Fox’s mother, were teenagers when they were taken.
Although the film starts with Fox’s mother, it quickly expands into a larger story about the experiences of Jewish women during the Holocaust. The narrative is primarily driven by the survivors’ interviews, which are particularly powerful given how few Holocaust survivors are left to tell their stories. At the film’s New York Jewish Film Festival premiere, Fox said that only a handful of the people she interviewed are still alive.
Among their memories of the labor camp are those of brutal sexual violence. The women recall being lined up naked and paraded for visiting SS officers, who would then choose which of the girls — many of whom were 16 or younger — they wanted to sleep with.
These organized assaults are an aspect of the Holocaust that have not received much attention, partially because they were not highlighted on the international stage at the Nuremberg trials. Benjamin Ferencz, a chief prosecutor for the United States Army at the trials, told Fox that the American lawyers thought it would be difficult to convice Russians to prosecute sexual violence as a crime against humanity, given that Soviet troops themselves committed mass rape in liberated areas (American soldiers were also known to perpetrate this offense).
But amid the horror, the women in the camp bound together. One woman, Helene, remembers teaching the other girls Hebrew songs. When Fox’s mother fell ill during a shift, one of her friends did her work for her when the guards weren’t looking. The women also documented their experiences in a shared diary and wrote about their hopes that they would soon be free. Miraculously, the diary survived the war and its owner, Regina, passed it onto her daughter. Fox was able to use excerpts from the diary in the film, including a passage her mother had written.
After the war, Alta was smuggled to Mandatory Palestine by the Haganah and joined the Lehi, a Zionist paramilitary organization, and adopted the name Tamar. She later immigrated to the United States where she started college at 30. She married a native Brooklynite and created a new life for herself.
While some of the survivors condemn Tamar’s decision to hide her past, others understand that it could be easier to invent a whole new identity than try to reckon with such a traumatic experience. One woman, Sara, tells Fox that she named her son Christian so that he wouldn’t be seen as Jewish. Fox herself was originally named Mary Teresa (she changed it as soon as she could).
Growing up, Fox always heard her mother say “I was a hero, never a victim,” and her secrecy may have been essential to keeping that narrative alive. But by shining a new light on the strength of female survivors, My Underground Mother shows that telling the hard truths can also be heroic.
My Underground Mother will be screening at the Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival starting and the Boca International Film Festival in February.
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