ABSTRACT
Peretz Markish’s screenplay for the 1932 Russian film Vozvrashchenie Neitana Bekkera (The Return of Nathan Bekker), Solomon Mikhoels’s role in the film, and Markish’s own subsequent reworking of the screenplay into a Yiddish novel Eyns af eyns (One by One, 1934) offers a rare opportunity to explore the workings of Soviet and Yiddish culture in two media — film and literature — and to trace the significance of traditional Jewish motifs adapted for a new artistic world. The cinematic and literary versions of Nathan Bekker’s return serve the ideological purpose of making Jews into Soviets. Both productions, however, refuse to deny the value and meaning of the Jewish past that was supposed to be overcome. As was typical for Markish, the language of his novel emphasizes the body, its pain, and the marks left on it by history and experience.
