JACKSON, N.J., Sept. 18, 2008 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Marvin A. Goldberg revisits Tsarist Russia and develops an extensive family background in Zhid: A Russian Odyssey. While he manages to trace his bloodline, Goldberg also uncovers the far-reaching oppression of his and other Jewish families living in the Ukrainian Pale of Settlement over three centuries.
After a foresighted interview with his father before he died in 1981, Goldberg ultimately traced his ancestry to his great-grandfather, Hayem Itzuk Zhidovetsky (b1828), a local inn keeper and whiskey brewer in Romanovka, Kherson Province, Ukraine, his wife, Sarah, and his five children and their ultimate politically important roles in the socialist, communist, and anti-communist communities.
During his research, while sorting through the New York Times archives, Goldberg stumbled upon a year 2000 obituary and magazine article describing Ella Goldberg Wolfe, hailed by the Times as one of ten most influential women of the twentieth century. From there he discovered the amazing true life story of this complex woman, a first cousin of his father, who was married to renowned Russian historian and author Bertram David Wolfe.
Goldberg uncovers the reasons for the staunch Socialist views of these cousins that rubbed elbows with prominent Socialist figures such as Jack Reed, Jay Lovestone, Leon Trotsky, Diego Rivera, and Frida Kahlo.
However strong their socialist views were, the Wolfes became virulent anti-communists after Stalin, Trotsky's sworn enemy, instigated attempts on their lives. Though the Wolfes soak in the main literary spotlight of this book, other members of the prominent Goldberg - Zhidovetsky bloodline are also given the same careful attention.
In his foreword, Goldberg, appropriately paints a vivid background on Jewish life in Tsarist Russia, revealing widespread oppression and restrictions on Jewish traditions and religious and economic freedoms. Although other creeds were similarly suppressed, Judaism received the brunt of the Tsar's tyrannical ruling hand and the inexplicable hatred of the general citizenry as well. Though chiefly personal and significant to his family and kin, Goldberg's informative Zhid reaches out to the Jewish people, historians and to anyone building their own ancestral trees. To obtain a copy of this articulate family biography, log on to www.Xlibris.com.
About the Author
The author grew up in Boro Park, a mixed Jewish and Italian neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York. Military service, international and national politics, and the history of war and aftermath became both his interests and obsessions. His cousin Ella Goldberg Wolfe, considered one of the ten most influential women of the 20th century by the New York Times, and her husband, famed Russian historian and author Bertram David Wolfe, were an integral part of the New York socialist "Lyric Left" intelligentsia that included John (Jack) Reed, Eugene O'Neill, Emma Goldman, Max Eastman, Jay Lovestone and Ella's brother Harry Goldberg. Their involvements in international politics and intrigues over the breadth of three centuries provided the author with the impetus to write this biography.
Zhid * by Marvin A. Goldberg
A Russian Odyssey
Publication Date: October 10, 2007
Trade Paperback; $17.84; 166 pages; 978-1-4257-4773-2
Cloth Hardback; $27.89; 166 pages; 978-1-4257-4774-9
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