Re: Zhankoye

[Andy Rubin <andyrubin...>]

2/1/99

Isabelle-  Please thank your husband for his absolutely fascinating
response to my question on Zhankoye. And thank you also to Eve and Judith
for your very interesting perspectives. Leave it to the participants on the
Jewish music list to provide gold mines of wonderful information!!

-Andy Rubin
The Freilachmakers Klezmer String Band


>My husband, Abbie Lipschutz - who is not a member of the Jewish
>Music (at) Shamash list, answered Andy Rubin's question as follows
>and I am forwarding it to all.
>
>Isabelle Ganz
>
>-------------Forwarded Message-----------------
>
>From:  Abbie Lipschutz, INTERNET:lipschu (at) ibm(dot)net
>To:    iganz, IGanz
>
>Date:  1/31/99  7:01 PM
>
>RE:    Re: Zhankoye
>
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>Date: Sun, 31 Jan 1999 18:01:18 -0600
>From: Abbie Lipschutz <lipschu (at) ibm(dot)net>
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>Subject: Re: Zhankoye
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>iganz wrote:
>
>> -------------Forwarded Message-----------------
>>
>> From:   INTERNET:jewish-music (at) shamash(dot)org,
>> INTERNET:jewish-music (at) shamash(dot)org
>> To:     "World music from a Jewish slant.",
>> INTERNET:jewish-music (at) shamash(dot)org
>>
>> Date:   1/31/99  4:20 AM
>>
>> RE:     Zhankoye
>>
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>> Date: Sun, 31 Jan 1999 03:27:22 -0800
>> To: "World music from a Jewish slant." <jewish-music (at) shamash(dot)org>
>> From: Andy Rubin <andyrubin (at) jps(dot)net>
>> Subject: Zhankoye
>> Reply-To: jewish-music (at) shamash(dot)org
>> Sender: owner-jewish-music (at) shamash(dot)org
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>>
>> 1/31/99
>>
>> Could someone perhaps provide me with some background to the Yiddish
>> song
>> Zhankoye? Ruth Rubin (no relation), in her collection of Yiddish
>> folksongs,
>> introduces it this way:  "Dzhankoye was a depot in the Crimea to which
>> the
>> Jewish collective farmers from the surrounding region would bring
>> their
>> produce. During the German occupation the entire region was burnt to
>> the
>> ground."
>>
>> It interests me that there were, apparently, Jewish collective farms
>> (or
>> farmers) outside of the "Jewish autonomous region" of Birobidjian.
>> Does
>> anyone know anything about this? Were there Jewish farmers in the
>> Crimea
>> that were forced into collectives during the Stalinist decades? Did
>> these
>> collectives maintain some sort of Jewish identity?
>>
>> The lyrics have a Soviet propagandistic ring to them. Was the song
>> meant as
>> some type of recruiting song to collective farms?
>>
>> Any information would be much appreciated.
>>
>> -Andy Rubin
>> Sacramento, CA
>>
>
>
>
>Jewish agricultural settlements in the Ukraine began under Czarist
>impetus in 1804 and just before WW-1, there were a number of Jewish
>settlements in the Ukraine. In the late Twenties, the Soviet govt.
>encouraged and promoted Jewish agriculture in the southern part of the
>Crimea; Jewish collectives which were concentrated around Dzankoye, "...
>nit vayt fun Simferopol." These settlements, some 50 villages in the
>southern Ukraine and the Crimean peninsula, were relatively propsperous,
>were supported by financial contributions from outside the USSR,
>particularly by monies from the United States. They were a matter of
>pride for its Jewish inhabitants as well as for other Soviet Jews who
>believed in the goal of Jewish national revival. Under Lenin a policy of
>Affirmative Action, which aimed at the normalization of Jewish
>existence, away from the petty-bourgeois ways of the shtetls, was
>promulgated. The song "Dzankoye" is a Soviet propaganda song indeed, but
>may not have been atypical of the spirit of the times among Jews.
>
>Whatever Jewish settlements still existed, were destroyed by the Nazis
>and their Jewish populations murdered in the Shoah.
>
>The first Jewish immigration into Birobidzhan dates from 1928 and in
>1934 it was awarded the title of Jewish autonomous region. Over one
>thousand individuals from outside the USSR also settled in Birobidzhan,
>among them Jews from America and Palestine. At its maximum, it had
>40,000 Jews. There were Jewish schools where Yiddish was taught, Yiddish
>publications and newspapers were published and the street names were
>marked in both Russian and Yiddish.
>
>The Stalinist purges beginning in 1936, which resulted in wholesale
>liquidation of leading Soviet Jews, began the destruction of Jewish
>cultural and physical existence in the USSR, a process that was
>temporarily interrupted during WW-2, when Stalin needed international
>Jewish support which he manipulated by means of the Jewish Anti-Fascist
>Committee. Between 1948 and 1952 nearly all its leading members were
>liquidated. (Only very few, such as Ilyah Ehrenburg, survived after
>Stalin's death in early 1953)
>
>>From 1948 on, anti-Semitism became a tool of Soviet policy. Jewish
>publications and culture were suppressed, Yiddish was abolished in
>Birobidzhan and only some 14,000 Jews were left of its original
>population. Many of the leading personalities had been liquidated as
>Trotskyists, Zionists and Nationalists during the purges of the
>Thirties, including most of its foreign immigrants.
>
>Abbie Lipschutz
>
>
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>