ABSTRACT
The novella Yoysef Shor underwent a long period of gestation during which its text was structured through various levels of signification to create a profoundly pessimistic picture of the upper-class Jewish world of late tsarist Russia, caught in the transition from traditional observance to modern secularism. In 'the mating game', David Bergelson found the ideal situation through which to depict the clash of two antithetical worlds. With Bergelson's customary ironic care in choosing onomastics, the surname Yoysef Shor is rendered subtly pejorative. Bergelson's Jewish upper-middle-class characters are defined by their different generations, their dwelling places, and their socio-political outlook. By using the Passover period as his novella's temporal grid, Bergelson satirizes the love story as both limited and spatially ungrounded. Plot, characters, and situations are developed with liberal use of the comic, chiefly through a free indirect style that undercuts all utterances and attitudes.
