Dispatches from Russia’s Jewish Autonomous Region

Sara Ivry — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 17:19:12 +0000

Seventy-five years ago, 600 Jews from Ukraine and Belarus traveled across Siberia to be the first settlers of Birobidzhan, a Jewish autonomous region 50 miles short of the Chinese border. To research a book she’s writing on the would-be homeland for Nextbook Press, journalist Masha Gessen retraced their path across Russia. She arrived at a train station marked by “two signs, one in Hebrew letters and one in Russian,” she writes on Slate. “The Hebrew faces the tracks, and though it is a fair bet that virtually no one on the Trans-Siberian can read it, it communicates all the necessary information. (I assume it says Birobidzhan, but I can’t read it, either.)” The mountainous region is by turns rocky, wet, and crowded with insects, all factors which made the establishment of Birobidzhan no less than “the worst good idea ever.”

Jewish Mother Russia [Slate]

The Things We Carry

Vox Tablet — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 16:00:05 +0000

Five years ago, Moscow-based journalist Masha Gessen learned that she had inherited a genetic mutation—one which disproportionately affects women of Ashkenazi descent—that put her at high risk for breast and ovarian cancer. A decade earlier, her mother, who carried the same mutation, had died of breast cancer.

Armed with this knowledge, Gessen was forced to make some nearly impossible decisions about her future: Should she take the radical step of having her breasts and ovaries removed to prevent illnesses that might never come? If so, when (given that she was still breastfeeding her daughter, and had considered having another child)?

In her book, Blood Matters: From Inherited Illness to Designer Babies, How the World and I Found Ourselves in the Future of the Gene, Gessen writes about these dilemmas, and about those that others have faced, as genetic testing shines a new—and not always welcome—light on our futures. She speaks with Nextbook about the scientific, philosophical, and emotional implications of this complex new way of understanding ourselves.

Tablet Magazine » Masha Gessen

Dispatches from Russia’s Jewish Autonomous Region

The Things We Carry