With or Without You - by Maxim D Shrayer (Paperback)

About the Book

In his captivating new book, author and scholar Maxim D. Shrayer offers a richly journalistic portrait of Russia's dwindling yet still vibrant Jewish community. This is simultaneously an in-depth exploration of the texture of Jewish life in Putin's Russia and an émigré's moving elegy for Russia's Jews.

Book Synopsis

In his captivating new book, based on new evidence and a series of interviews, author and scholar Maxim D. Shrayer offers a richly journalistic portrait of Russia's dwindling yet still vibrant and influential Jewish community.

This is simultaneously an in-depth exploration of the texture of Jewish life in Putin's Russia and an émigré's moving elegy for Russia's Jews, which forty years ago constituted one of the world's largest Jewish populations and which presently numbers only about 180,000. Why do Jews continue to live in Russia after the antisemitism and persecution they had endured there? What are the prospects of Jewish life in Russia? What awaits the children born to Jews who have not left? With or Without You asks and seeks to answer some of the central questions of modern Jewish history and culture.

Review Quotes

In Maxim D. Shrayer's study With or Without You: The Prospect for Jews in Today's Russia, the complicated nature of what it means to live as a Jew in Russia is delicately addressed. ... Having written and translated numerous books, including two memoirs, Shrayer has become an expert in Russian-Jewish literature and culture.

-- "The Jewish Journal"

[With or Without You: The Prospect for Jews in Today's Russia] is a slim, engaging and elegant read that goes beneath the surface to reveal a multi-layered portrait of Jewish life in Russia today.-- "Jewish Telegraphic Agency"

About the Author

Maxim D. Shrayer, a bilingual author and translator, is a professor of Russian, English, and Jewish Studies at Boston College. Born in Moscow in 1967 to a writer's family, Shrayer emigrated to the United States in 1987. He has authored over ten books in English and Russian, among them the internationally acclaimed memoirs "Leaving Russia: A Jewish Story" and "Waiting for America: A Story of Emigration," the story collection "Yom Kippur in Amsterdam," and the Holocaust study "I SAW IT." Shrayer's "Anthology of Jewish-Russian Literature" won a 2007 National Jewish Book Award, and in 2012 he received a Guggenheim Fellowship. Visit Shrayer's website at www.shrayer.com