Vladimir Nabokov’s Faith, and His Converted Jews

Sept. 12 2023

The Russian-born poet and novelist Vladimir Nabokov was married to a Jewish woman, a fact that led the couple to flee from Berlin to Paris with their son in 1937, and then from Paris to the U.S. in 1940. Less known is the fact that Nabokov’s own maternal great-grandfather was born a Jew. With this in mind, Maxim Shrayer considers the converted Jews and Christians of Jewish descent who populate Nabokov’s English and Russian fiction, and what they signify about the author’s attitudes toward religion and Judaism:

Vladimir Nabokov regularly returned to the topics of religious transformation and religious conversion in his letters and autobiographical writing. His views of religious conversion, however, would be less interesting if they didn’t set some of the central axes of his Russian- and English-language fiction. Aspects of mimicry in nature fascinated and excited Nabokov as “signs and symbols” of complexity and beauty. Mimicry in society, and especially religious mimicry—from dissimulation to conversion—reminded him of the unresolved—unresolvable—contradictions of his own family and marriage.

Forming an imperfectly monosyllabic pair in both of Nabokov’s main languages, two of Nabokov’s great novels, the Russian-language The Gift (Dar, partially serialized 1937-38, complete book edition 1952) and the English-language Pnin (partially serialized 1953-55, complete book edition 1957), clamor to be recognized for their dynamic exploration of the religious conversion of Jews born in the former Russian empire. Structural differences and compositional ambitions apart, in a number of ways The Gift, including its abandoned Part 2, could be considered a pre-Shoah dress rehearsal of Pnin.

Pnin’s last name, not easily pronounceable for a native speaker of English, is usually treated as a truncated one (from Repnin or Cherepnin, and perhaps signaling his ancestor’s illegitimate birth) or as one derived from the Russian noun pen (tree stump). However, the last name Pnin also suggests a Hebrew origin and a meaningful connection with Peninah, a character in the Hebrew Bible.

Read more at Tablet

More about: Conversion, Jews in literature, Russian Jewry

Egypt Is Trapped by the Gaza Dilemma It Helped to Create

Feb. 14 2025

Recent satellite imagery has shown a buildup of Egyptian tanks near the Israeli border, in violation of Egypt-Israel agreements going back to the 1970s. It’s possible Cairo wants to prevent Palestinians from entering the Sinai from Gaza, or perhaps it wants to send a message to the U.S. that it will take all measures necessary to keep that from happening. But there is also a chance, however small, that it could be preparing for something more dangerous. David Wurmser examines President Abdel Fatah el-Sisi’s predicament:

Egypt’s abysmal behavior in allowing its common border with Gaza to be used for the dangerous smuggling of weapons, money, and materiel to Hamas built the problem that exploded on October 7. Hamas could arm only to the level that Egypt enabled it. Once exposed, rather than help Israel fix the problem it enabled, Egypt manufactured tensions with Israel to divert attention from its own culpability.

Now that the Trump administration is threatening to remove the population of Gaza, President Sisi is reaping the consequences of a problem he and his predecessors helped to sow. That, writes Wurmser, leaves him with a dilemma:

On one hand, Egypt fears for its regime’s survival if it accepts Trump’s plan. It would position Cairo as a participant in a second disaster, or nakba. It knows from its own history; King Farouk was overthrown in 1952 in part for his failure to prevent the first nakba in 1948. Any leader who fails to stop a second nakba, let alone participates in it, risks losing legitimacy and being seen as weak. The perception of buckling on the Palestine issue also resulted in the Egyptian president Anwar Sadat’s assassination in 1981. President Sisi risks being seen by his own population as too weak to stand up to Israel or the United States, as not upholding his manliness.

In a worst-case scenario, Wurmser argues, Sisi might decide that he’d rather fight a disastrous war with Israel and blow up his relationship with Washington than display that kind of weakness.

Read more at The Editors

More about: Egypt, Gaza War 2023