I am grateful to my colleagues, Gregory Freidin, Lazar Fleishman, Monika Greenleaf, and Steven J. Zipperstein, for their helpful comments, to Caryl Emerson, who suggested that I look at this story, to Inessa Medzhibovskaya, who talked about Isaak Babel “s language with me, to my referees at Slavic Review, and to Brian Horowitz and Ruth Rischin, my panel chair and commentator at the December 1998 conference of the American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages in San Francisco.

1 Levin, Fedor, I.Babel': Ocherk tvorchestva (Moscow, 1972), 17 Google Scholar. A similar analysis appears in Lionel Meney, l'Art de récit chez Isaac Babel: Étude stylistique et thematique (Quebec, 1983), 223. Other critical voices protest this view: see, for example, Freidin, Gregory, “Isaac Babel (1894-1941?),” in Stade, George, ed., European Writers: The Twentieth Century (New York, 1990)Google Scholar

2 Dubnova-Erlich, Sofiia, “Iz vospominanii o Gor'kom,” Novosel'e, no. 21 (September- October 1945): 47 Google Scholar. In memoirs she published fifty years later, Dubnova describes the same scene but relates Gor'kii’s words differently, though without changing the fundamental meaning: “Gendemen, congratulate me and I will congratulate you. A new, talented writer has entered our literature.” Dubnova-Erlich, Sofiia, Khleb i matsa: Vospominaniia, stikhiraznykh let (St. Petersburg, 1994), 162 Google Scholar. It seems likely that the earlier version, written just thirty years after the conversation described, gives a more accurate rendition of Gor'kii’s words. Gor'kii’s patronage of and friendship with Babel', whose beginning Dubnova records, would endure for twenty years, until Gor'kii’s death in 1936. For an analysis, see Larionova, N. G., “M. Gor'kii i I. Babel',” Izvestiia Akademii nauk, Seriia Literatury i iazyka 54, no. 4(1995)Google Scholar.

3 Gor'kii, M., “Kain i Artem,” in Gor'kii, , O evreiskom narode (rasskazy, publitsistika), ed. Vainshtain, M. (Jerusalem, 1986), 48 Google Scholar. This volume contains a number of Gor'kii’s fictional and nonfictional writings on Jews.

4 Gor'kii, “O Bunde,” in O evreiakh (Petrograd, 1919), reprinted in Gor'kii, Oevreiskom narode, 77.

5 Gor'kii, A. M., Pis'ma k K. P. Piatnitskomu (Moscow, 1954), 235, 236Google Scholar.

6 For an illuminating analysis of “Rothschild's Fiddle” that focuses on the biblical origins of the motif of laments by rivers, see Robert Louis Jackson, “‘If I Forget Thee, O Jerusalem': An Essay on Chekhov’s ‘Rothschild's Fiddle,’” Slavica Hierosolymitana: SlavicStudies of the Hebrew University, vol. 3 (1978).

7 For a discussion of the empire’s Jews during the war, see Gatrell, Peter, A Whole EmpireWalking: Refugees in Russia during World War I (Bloomington, 1999), 145–50Google Scholar.

8 Andreev, L., Gor'kii, M., and Sologub, F., eds., Shchit: Literaturnyi sbornik (Moscow, 1916)Google Scholar.

9 For a detailed analysis of the “inferior quality” and the mawkishness of the literary contributions to The Shield, see Kunitz, Joshua, Russian Literature and the Jew (New York, 1929), 127 Google Scholar.

10 Gor'kii, [Untided], in Andreev, Gor'kii, and Sologub, eds., Shchit, 52.

11 See M. Artsybashev, “Evrei,” F. Kriukov, “Sestra Ol'shvanger,” S. Gusev- Orenburgskii, “Evreichik,” and Teffi, “Dva estestva,” all in Andreev, Gor'kii, and Sologub, eds., Shchit.v

12 See Artsybashev, “Evrei,” Gor'kii, “Mal'chik,” and F. Sologub, “Svet vechernii,” all in Andreev, Gor'kii, and Sologub, eds., Shchit.

13 Cleverly, Ivanov argued that the anti-Semitic philosophy that some invoked to justify continuing the restrictive legislation reflected a German influence on Russian thought and should thus be rejected especially vehemently during the war against Germany. Viacheslav Ivanov, “K ideologii evreiskogo voprosa,” in Andreev, Gor'kii, and Sologub, eds., Shchit, 84.

14 Babel', Isaak, “Odessa,” Sochineniia v dvukh tomakh (Moscow, 1996), 1:43, 46Google Scholar.

15 Babel', “El'ia Isaakovich i Margarita Prokof’evna,” Sochineniia v dvukh tomakh, 1:23,21.

16 Zholkovskii, A. K. and Iampol'skii, M. B., Babel'/Babel (Moscow, 1994), 12–13, 317-68Google Scholar.

17 See Bristow, Edward J., Prostitution and Prejudice: The Jewish Fight against White Slavery,1870-1939 (New York, 1982)Google Scholar; Engelstein, Laura, The Keys to Happiness: Sex and the Searchfor Modernity in Fin-de-Siècle Russia (Ithaca, 1992)Google Scholar, esp. chap. 8; Laurie Bernstein, Sonia’sDaughters: Prostitutes and Their Regulation in Imperial Russia (Berkeley, 1995), esp. 161-66; Guy, Donna J., Sex and Danger in Buenos Aires: Prostitution, Family, and Nation in Argentina (Lincoln, 1991), esp. chap. 1Google Scholar; and Sander Gilman, The Jew’s Body (New York, 1991), esp. chap. 4. For statistics on Jews working in brothels, see Bristow, Prostitution and Prejudice, 48-50, Engelstein, Keys to Happiness, 307, and Bernstein, Sonia’s Daughters, 164.

18 Aleichem, Sholem, Tevye the Dairyman and the Railroad Stories, trans. Halkin, Hillel (New York, 1987), 171 Google Scholar.

19 Benjamin Nathans, “Beyond the Pale: The Jewish Encounter with Russia, 1840- 1900” (Ph.D. diss., University of California at Berkeley, 1995), 123, notes that there were a mere seventeen Jewish prostitutes in Petersburg at the 1897 census; Laurie Bernstein agrees that statistics indicate that “it does not appear that Jewish women routinely applied for a yellow ticket simply to circumvent residence restrictions” (Sonia’sDaughters, 211).

20 Nathans cites an 1881 article, “Sluchai prozhivania chestnoi devushkistenografistki po zheltomu biletu iz-za prava zhitel'stva v Moskve,” S-Peterburgskie vedomosti (1881), and a reaction in Novoe uremia (1881, p. 1932) (“Beyond the Pale,” 123). Bristow cites a similar story in Vittorio Levi, La Prostitution chez la femme et la traite des blanches (Naples, 1912); see Bristow, Prostitution and Prejudice, 55. Ruth A. Dudgeon offers an example from G. I. Gordon, “Samoubiistva uchashchikhsia zhenshchin,” Trudy po obrazovaniiuzhenshchin, 2:637-38; see Dudgeon, , “The Forgotten Minority: Women Students in Imperial Russia, 1872-1917,” Russian History/Histoire Russe 9, pt. 1 (1982): 18 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

21 (Testimony in French), Official Report of the Jewish International Conference on theSuppression of the Traffic in Girls and Women, Held on April 5 th, 6th, and 7th, 1910 in London.Convened by the Jewish Association for the Protection of Girls and Women (London, 1910), 54.

22 Graffman, Gary, I Really Should Be Practicing (New York, 1981), 10 Google Scholar.

23 Nathans cites Lifshits, G., Ispovea” prestupnika: Iumoristicheskii rasskaz iz zhizni peterburgskikhevreev (Petersburg, 1881), 21 Google Scholar (“Beyond the Pale,” 123); Bristow mentions Alexander Amfiteatrov, Der GelberPass, n.d.; see Bristow, Prostitution and Prejudice, 55.

24 For a discussion of Babel“s relationship to another of Sholem Aleichem's texts, see A. K, Zholkovskii, “Roman s gonorarom: K teme ‘Babel' i Sholom-Aleikhem,’” Literaturnoeobozrenie, 1997, no. 4.

25 Aleichem, Sholom, The Bloody Hoax, trans. Shevrin, Aliza (Bloomington, 1991), 65 Google Scholar.

26 Morton, Victoria, The Yellow Ticket, from the play by Morton, Michael (New York, 1914)Google Scholar.

27 On these films, see Friedman, Lester D., Hollywood's Image of the Jew (New York, 1982), 75–78, 330Google Scholar.

28 On these films, see Hoberman, J., Bridge of Light: Yiddish Film between Two Worlds (New York, 1991),, 43–44 Google Scholar.

29 The false prostitute’s location squarely in the center of the virgin-whore dichotomy may be reflected in the wry comment of one of the reviewers of the 1931 version: “Whether such costumes should be worn in the circumstances is a matter of opinion, for Marya appears to be asking for the attentions of miscreants when she looks so charming.“ M. H., “The Sinister Baron,” New York Times, 30 November 1931, in The New York Times FilmReviews, 1913-1968 (New York, 1970), 766.

30 Zholkovskii notes that in another story, “Moi pervyi gonorar,” Babel “s hero builds his narrative against the background of the kitschy and usually false autobiographies that prostitutes in Russian fictions frequently tell. Here as well, the story of the Jewish false prostitute offers a backdrop of kitsch that heightens the impact of Babel“s originality. See Zholkovskii, “Prilozhenie I,” in Zholkovskii and Iampol'skii, Babel'/Babel, 362.

31 One might cite Achilles, hiding among the women on Scyros, or the cross-dressing musicians running from the mob in Some Like It Hot (1959).

32 For more on the scandal surrounding Andreev’s story, see Barratt, Andrew, “Maksim Gor'kii and Leonid Andreev: At the Heart of ‘Darkness,’” in Luker, Nicholas, ed., TheShort Story in Russia, 1900-1917 (Nottingham, Eng., 1991)Google Scholar.

33 Babel', “El'ia Isaakovich i Margarita Prokof’evna,” Sochineniia v dvukh tomakh, 1:21,23.

34 As Gregory Freidin notes of the two stories Babel' published in Letopis’, “El'ia Isaakovich and Margarita Prokof’evna” points “toward the other shore, where the view of human misery and ugliness was unclouded by conventional compassion” and shows that “Babel' was ready to make the crossing.” Freidin, “Isaac Babel (1894-1941?),” 1903.

35 Babel', “Moi pervyi gus’,” Sochineniia v dvukh tomakh, 2:34.

36 The story was not published during Babel“s lifetime and cannot be dated precisely, but was probably written in the 1920s.

37 Babel', “Moi pervyi gonorar,” Sochineniia v dvukh tomakh, 2:282.

38 The idea that Jewish men are threatening to Russians because of their femininity was developed at length by Vasilii Rozanov, a peculiar and paradoxical thinker (and brilliant stylist) who shocked and fascinated the reading public of Babel“s time. In Engelstein’s analysis, he saw Jewish men as “quintessentially and primitively female” and also as possessing a sexual power that Christians should try to master. Engelstein, Keys to Happiness, 320-28. While observing the apparent coincidence of their imagery and agreeing with Engelstein that Rozanov’s writings cannot be excluded from any analysis of the Russian Silver Age, I do not want to argue for a causal or a logical connection between Rozanov’s obsessive and contradictory idealization of Jewish fecundity and femininity and the feminine characteristics of Babel“s masculine (and usually Jewish) heroes. Engelstein, Keys to Happiness, 303.

39 Shklovsky, Viktor, “Isaac Babel: A Critical Romance,” in Bloom, Harold, ed., ModernCritical Views: Isaac Babel (New York, 1987)Google Scholar. Shklovsky describes Babel“s contradictory art: “Babel “s principal device is to speak in the same tone of voice of the stars above and of gonorrhea” (12).

40 In addition, one could read the character's patronymic as a gesture toward the biblical “son of Isaac,” meaningjacob, who, like Babel“s hero, is a master of disguises who benefits from the help of women: remember the episode in Genesis 27 when Rebekah dresses Isaac up as his twin Esau in order to fool Isaac into giving the younger son the blessing meant for the older one.

41 I thank Ruth Rischin for this insight into the story. Note the assertion of Dov Noy that “the present mainstream of Elijah traditions does not originate in the Bible.” Noy, Dov, “Foreword,” in Schram, Penninah, ed., Tales of Elijah the Prophet (Northvale, N.J., 1991), xiii Google Scholar.

42 Elijah “appears significantly more often in folktales than does any other character.“ Peninnah Schram, “Introduction,” in Schram, ed., Tales of Elijah the Prophet, xxii. This collection includes thirty-six English translations of representative Elijah stories, culled from the largest collection of Jewish folklore in the world, the Israel Folklore Archives at Haifa University. For some representative stories of Elijah the Prophet collected among Russian Jews, see Evreiskie narodnye skazki: Predaniia, bylichki, rasskazy, anekdoty, collected and trans. Raize, E. S., ed. Dymshits, Valery (St. Petersburg, 1999), 53–58 Google Scholar.

43 Schram, ed., Tales of Elijah the Prophet, 78, 30, 10, 6.

44 Babel' parodies a similar Jewish folkloric motif in another early story, “Shabosnakhamu“ (published 1918), which combines the story of a wandering stranger who rewards his generous host with the character of the trickster Hershele Ostropoler who loves to fleece the wealthy.

45 Babel', “El'ia Isaakovich i Margarita Prokof’evna,” Sochineniia v dvukh tomakh, 1:24.

46 “Things Could be Far Worse” and “The Proper Response,” in Schram, ed., Tales ofElijah the Prophet, 57, 186.

47 Babel', “El'ia Isaakovich i Margarita Prokof’evna,” Sochineniia v dvukh tomakh, 1:22-23.

48 See Safran, Gabriella, Rewriting the Jew: Assimilation Narratives in the Russian Empire (Stanford, 2000)Google Scholar.

49 Babel', “El'ia Isaakovich i Margarita Prokof’evna,” Sochineniia v dvukh tomakh, 1:23.

50 Ibid., 24.

51 Babel', “Odessa,” Sochineniia v dvukh tomakh, 1:43.

52 Babel', “El'ia Isaakovich i Margarita Prokof’evna,” Sochineniia v dvukh tomakh, 1:23.

53 Liberman, la. L., Isaak Babel' glazami evreia (Ekaterinburg, 1996), 27 Google Scholar.

54 Babel', “El'ia Isaakovich i Margarita Prokof’evna,” Sochineniia v dvukh tomakh, 1:23.

55 Ibid., 20, 21,24.

56 For an etymological discussion of a related Ukrainian word, navrochiti, meaning “to do harm to someone by the magical power of the eye,” see Mitropolit Ilarion, Etimologichno-Semantichnii slovnik ukrainskoi movi (Winnipeg, 1988), 168. Many thanks to Inessa Medzhibovskaya for consultations about how Jews speak in Kishinev, and to Shaya Mitelman, Iosif Vaisman, and Robert Rothstein, who responded to my inquiries on the listserve “Mendele: Yiddish Language and Literature” (23 February 1998, http://www.mendele@lists.yale.edu, vol. 07.154).

57 Tannen, Deborah and Oztek, Piyale Cömert, “Health to Our Mouths: Formulaic Expressions in Turkish and Greek,” in Whistler, Kenneth et al., ed., Proceedings of the ThirdAnnual Meeting ofthe Berkeley Linguistics Society (Berkeley, 1977)Google Scholar, cited in Matisofl”, James A., Blessings, Curses, Hopes, and Fears: Psycho-Ostensive Expressions in Yiddish (Philadelphia, 1979), 115 Google Scholar.

58 A few such Russian apotropaic formulae appear in M. A. and Peskov, A. M., eds., Oberegi i zaklinaniia russkogo naroda (Moscow, 1994), 102–9Google Scholar. For a lengthy discussion of the phenomenon in Yiddish and many examples, see Matisoff, Blessings, Curses, Hopes, andFears, chap. 7, “Malo-Fugition: Deliver Us from Evil!“

59 See Dundes, Alan, “Wet and Dry, the Evil Eye: An Essay in Indo-European and Semitic Worldview,” in Dundes, Alan, ed., The Evil Eye: A Folklore Casebook (New York, 1981)Google Scholar; for more details on beliefs about the evil eye, see the other essays in the volume and in Clarence Maloney, ed., The EvilEye (New York, 1976).

60 Sicher, Efraim, Style and Structure in the Prose of Isaac Bahel (Columbus, Ohio, 1986), 77 Google Scholar.

61 Cynthia Ozick, “Isaac Babel and the Question of Identity: The Year of Writing Dangerously,” New Republic, 6 May 1995, 36.

62 Babel', “El'ia Isaakovich i Margarita Prokof’evna,” Sochineniia v dvukh tomakh, 1:24.