Исповедь одного еврея

Pp. 3-185, "Ispoved odnovo yevreya", presents a biography of Arkadii (Avraham Uria) Kovner (1842-1909), a Russian-Jewish journalist. Focuses on a letter Kovner wrote to Dostoyevsky in 1877 (the text is presented on pp. 99-111) in which he defended the Jews and responded to Dostoyevsky's antisemitism, which seemed to him incompatible with Dostoyevsky's humanism. In 1903, under the impression of the Kishinev pogrom, Kovner sent a letter to another antisemitic writer, Rozanov. Pp. 165-181 contain Grossman's essay "Dostoyevsky and Judaism", dealing with the novelist's attempts to understand Jewry and with his antisemitism. In "Lermontov i kultury vostoka" (pp. 183-262), pp. 230-252, "'Ispantsy' i velizhskoye delo" ("'The Spaniards' and the Velizh Affair"), argue that Lermontov's early tragedy "The Spaniards", in which he depicts the persecution of Jews by the Spanish Inquisition, was inspired by the blood libel trial held in Velizh in 1827-34. Lermontov knew personally some of the people involved in the investigation. (From the Bibliography of the Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism - The Hebrew University of Jerusalem)