{"id":6285,"date":"2017-02-21T23:15:21","date_gmt":"2017-02-21T23:15:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ukrainianjewishencounter.org\/?p=6285\/"},"modified":"2017-08-18T19:25:03","modified_gmt":"2017-08-18T19:25:03","slug":"monster-savior-many-myths-bohdan-khmelnytsky","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ukrainianjewishencounter.org\/en\/monster-savior-many-myths-bohdan-khmelnytsky\/","title":{"rendered":"Monster and Savior: The Many Myths of Bohdan Khmelnytsky"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"fb-root\"><\/div>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"860\" height=\"484\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/4OR6MKc_bww?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat do we do with this figure?\u201d asks Amelia Glaser, professor of literature at the University of California, San Diego and editor of the UJE sponsored\u00a0book, <em>Stories of Khmelnytsky: Competing Literary Legacies of the 1648 Ukrainian Cossack Uprising<\/em>, in this lively and informative interview.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe wanted to look at the history of Khmelnytsky face on,\u201d notes Glaser. \u201cIn Jewish stories it is just assumed that Khmelnytsky is an evil figure of biblical proportions, a precursor to Hitler. In Ukrainian stories Khmelnytsky carved out a Ukrainian territory and he is tantamount to George Washington. Is he a hero or is he a villain?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Glaser explains that the book arose out a desire to try to hold these myths up against one another. The book addresses stereotypes in all directions. An esteemed group of academics\u2014both historians and scholars of literature\u2014examine early and contemporary portrayals of the controversial historical figure.\u00a0 The contributors recognized that each of their individual chapters had to speak to what is not usually their readership.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe ask big questions,\u201d says Glaser, who stresses that \u201cthe more we can integrate the very good histories that have been done of Jewish and Ukrainian relations, the more we can discuss the intersections between these two cultures rather than talking about each one in isolation.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The book does not whitewash the troubled history between Jews and Ukrainians. \u201cWe need to be okay moving forward absorbing the complexities of the past,\u201d underlines Glaser. \u201cHistory needs to be probed in nuanced and sometimes painful ways before we can address a future relationship.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Glaser points out however that national memory can sometimes be simplified for the purposes of group solidarity and that it is worth approaching national memories with a healthy skepticism in order to have the ability to think about those stories in broader terms.<\/p>\n<p><em>Stories of Khmelnytsky<\/em> is published by <a href=\"http:\/\/stanford.universitypressscholarship.com\/view\/10.11126\/stanford\/9780804793827.001.0001\/upso-9780804793827\">Stanford University Press<\/a> and is available on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Stories-Khmelnytsky-Competing-Literary-Ukrainian\/dp\/0804793824\">Amazon.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cWhat do we do with this figure?\u201d asks Amelia Glaser, professor of literature at the University of California, San Diego and editor of the UJE sponsored\u00a0book, Stories of Khmelnytsky: Competing Literary Legacies of the 1648...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":6659,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[124,40,114,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6285","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sponsored-projects","category-literature","category-publications","category-culture","primary-category-124","primary-category-sponsored-projects"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ukrainianjewishencounter.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6285","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ukrainianjewishencounter.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ukrainianjewishencounter.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ukrainianjewishencounter.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ukrainianjewishencounter.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6285"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/ukrainianjewishencounter.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6285\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6289,"href":"https:\/\/ukrainianjewishencounter.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6285\/revisions\/6289"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ukrainianjewishencounter.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6659"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ukrainianjewishencounter.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6285"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ukrainianjewishencounter.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6285"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ukrainianjewishencounter.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6285"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}