Consider My Inmost Thoughts - (Ukrainian Voices) by Joseph Zissels (Paperback)

About the Book

A reflection on the scholarly and media activity of the former Soviet political prisoner and Jewish-Ukrainian public intellectual, Joseph Zissels.

Book Synopsis

The reflections and deliberations in this book represent different aspects of the publishing, scholarly and media activity of the former Soviet political prisoner and Jewish-Ukrainian public intellectual, as well as co-initiator of Ukraine's First of December Group, Joseph Zissels, over the past years. The book starts with outlines of Zissels's self-understanding and comprehension of his involvement in the dissident movement. Based on his own research, the author offers his model of seeing modern Ukraine through the prism of the coordinates basic to the European system of values. The main themes of the book's articles, lectures and interviews are civil society, identity formation, social tolerance, and Jewishness.

The book's title has been chosen, by the author, from Psalm 5, Verse 2 of the Complete Jewish Bible: "Give ear to my words, Adonai, consider my inmost thoughts."

Review Quotes

The texts by the intellectual, activist of the Ukrainian Jewish movement, and Soviet dissident Joseph Zissels contained in this book are mainly speeches, presentations at conferences and seminars, supplemented by interviews for television and radio. The topics range from dissidence to the problem of identity, civil society, Polish-Ukrainian relations, and the Russian-Ukrainian war. The last dates of publication are 2006 and 2019. In fact, the only interview in 2019, which Zissels gave to Ostap Drozdov in connection with a public letter from the First of December group, of which Zissels is a representative, in support of President Petro Poroshenko, is perhaps the most revealing in terms of the fundamental absence of 'hate speech' that characterizes all of Zissels's texts without exception. No matter how provocative and sharp, sometimes downright rude, the journalist's questions are, the interlocutor takes the blow with dignity, remaining unmoved.--Dr Olesia Naidiuk, Press Secretary of the National Philharmonic of Ukraine, Kyiv

About the Author

Joseph Zissels is Co-President of the Association of Jewish Organizations and Communities (VAAD) of Ukraine, Chairman of the General Council of the Euro-Asian Jewish Congress, and Executive Vice President of the Congress of National Communities of Ukraine in Kyiv. In Soviet times, he was a member of the human rights movement, a member of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group, and a political prisoner.