The culture of Odesa is a unique blend of Russian, Yiddish, and Ukrainian cultures, and Odesa itself has played a notable role in Russian and Yiddish folklore. [1]
The Russian language as spoken in Odesa is influenced by Yiddish and Ukrainian in grammar, vocabulary, and phraseology. As a result, many phrases sound inherently and uniquely humorous to Russian speakers and constitute a staple of Odesa humour. Also, the Odesa dialect of Yiddish has plenty of Russianisms. [1]
To a significant extent the image of Odesa in Russophone culture is influenced by The Odessa Tales of Isaac Babel. Odesa is often referred to by the collocation "Odesa Mama" (Mom Odesa), a term that originated in Russian criminal ( blatnoy ) subculture. [1] The reputation of the city as a criminal center originated in Imperial Russian times and the early Soviet era, and is similar to the reputation of Al Capone era Chicago. [2]
Odesa humor is a notable part of both Jewish humor and Russian humor. [3]
Since 1972 Odesa has been hosting the annual festival of humor, Humorina. For this and other reasons Odesa was known as the "capital of humor" in the Soviet Union. [4]
Many places in Odesa are memorable not only for their intrinsic cultural value, but also for their place in Odesa folklore.
Yiddish is a West Germanic language historically spoken by Ashkenazi Jews. It originated in 9th century Central Europe, and provided the nascent Ashkenazi community with a vernacular based on High German fused with many elements taken from Hebrew and to some extent Aramaic. Most varieties of Yiddish include elements of Slavic languages and the vocabulary contains traces of Romance languages. Yiddish has traditionally been written using the Hebrew alphabet; however, there are variations, including the standardized YIVO orthography that employs the Latin alphabet.
Odesa is the third most populous city and municipality in Ukraine and a major seaport and transport hub located in the south-west of the country, on the northwestern shore of the Black Sea. The city is also the administrative centre of the Odesa Raion and Odesa Oblast, as well as a multiethnic cultural centre. As of January 2021, Odesa's population was approximately 1,010,537. On 25 January 2023, its historic city centre was declared a World Heritage Site and added to the List of World Heritage in Danger by the UNESCO World Heritage Committee in recognition of its multiculturality and 19th-century urban planning. The declaration was made in response to the bombing of Odesa during the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which has damaged or destroyed buildings across the city.
Isaac Emmanuilovich Babel was a Soviet writer, journalist, playwright, and literary translator. He is best known as the author of Red Cavalry and Odessa Stories, and has been acclaimed as "the greatest prose writer of Russian Jewry". Babel was arrested by the NKVD on 15 May 1939 on fabricated charges of terrorism and espionage, and executed on 27 January 1940.
The tradition of humor in Judaism dates back to the compilation of the Torah and the Midrash in the ancient Middle East, but the most famous form of Jewish humor consists of the more recent stream of verbal and frequently anecdotal humor of Ashkenazi Jews which took root in the United States during the last one hundred years, it even took root in secular Jewish culture. In its early form, European Jewish humor was developed in the Jewish community of the Holy Roman Empire, with theological satire becoming a traditional way to clandestinely express opposition to Christianization.
Ilya Ilf and Yevgeny Petrov were two Soviet prose authors of the 1920s and 1930s. They did much of their writing together, and are almost always referred to as "Ilf and Petrov". They were natives of Odessa.
The history of the Jews in Ukraine dates back over a thousand years; Jewish communities have existed in the modern territory of Ukraine from the time of the Kievan Rus'. Important Jewish religious and cultural movements, from Hasidism to Zionism, arose there. According to the World Jewish Congress, the Jewish community in Ukraine constitutes Europe's third-largest and the world's fifth-largest.
Odessa Mama is a Yiddish song of Russian origin, which enjoyed popularity in numerous East European countries, as well as the United States before the Holocaust. It has been recorded by notable performers like Pesach Burstein, Aaron Lebedeff and Herman Yablakoff. There are Ukrainian language and Russian language versions of the song as well. The song is about the love for the city of Odesa, looked upon as a mother by locals and is an ode to Odesa's sidewalks, electric lights, hotels, and other modern amenities. Odessa Mama is a term used by people of Odesa to refer to their city. The song was thus popular with immigrants, in a similar vein to the Yiddish American showtune Romania, Romania.
Odessa Stories, also known as Tales of Odessa, is a collection of four short stories by Isaac Babel, set in Odessa in the last days of the Russian empire and the Russian Revolution. Published individually in Soviet magazines between 1921 and 1924 and collected into a book in 1931, they deal primarily with a group of Jewish thugs that live in Moldavanka, a ghetto of Odessa. Their leader is Benya Krik, known as the King, and loosely based on the historical figure Mishka Yaponchik.
Benya Krik is a 1927 Soviet black comedy silent film, directed by Vladimir Vilner and starring Yuri Shumsky as Benya Krik.
Mishka Yaponchik was an Odesa gangster, Jewish revolutionary, and a Soviet military leader.
Moisei Beregovsky was a Soviet Jewish folklorist, musicologist and ethnomusicologist from the Ukrainian SSR who was a key figure in the study of Jewish music. He collected, studied and published about klezmer music, Yiddish song, wordless nigun melodies, and the music of Purim plays. His published collections of the music remain important sources of Jewish music from the late Russian Empire and early Soviet period. Most of his research was done during the period of 1927–1949, during the Stalin era, during which he was faced not only with censorship and self-censorship, but a period of imprisonment in a forced labour camp from 1950 to 1955. He was rehabilitated after 1955 and continued his work in his final years during the Khrushchev-era.
The Ukrainian mafia is a collective of various organized crime related elements originating in Ukraine. Such organizations are regarded as one of the most influential types of organized crime coming out of the former USSR, including also the Russian mafia, the Georgian mafia, the Chechen mafia, the Armenian mafia and the Azerbaijani mafia. Ukrainian criminal organizations are involved in a significant number of illegal activities. Although Ukrainian criminal organizations are for the most part independently operating enterprises, they are sometimes connected with Russian mafia organizations, such as the case with Semyon Mogilevich.
Blatnaya pesnya or blatnyak is a genre of Russian song characterized by depictions of criminal subculture and the urban underworld which are often romanticized and have criminally-perverted humor in nature.
The Brodsky Synagogue is a Reform Jewish synagogue, located at Zhukovskoho Street 18, in Odesa, Ukraine.
Eliyahu "Elye" Spivak was a Soviet Jewish linguist, philologist, and pedagogue.
Oleksandr Rojtburd was a participant of the Ukrainian New Wave and co-founder of the theory of the Ukrainian Transavantgard. He worked as a painter and installation artist, among other things with video and photo projects. He belongs to the first wave of post-independence, post-Soviet, and post-traditional Ukrainian artists.
The history of the Jews in Odesa dates to 16th century. Since the modern city's founding in 1795, Odesa has been home to one of the largest population of Jews in what is today Ukraine. They comprised the largest ethno-religious group in the region throughout most of the 19th century and until the mid-20th century.
The Wise Men of Chelm are foolish Jewish residents of the Polish city of Chełm, a butt of Jewish jokes, similar to other towns of fools: the English Wise Men of Gotham, German Schildbürger, Greek residents of Abdera, or Finnish residents of the fictional town of Hymylä. Since at least 14th century Chełm had a considerable population of Jews.
Vladislav Grigorievich Davidzon is an artist, writer, editor and publisher, film producer best known for his journalism and chronicling on post-Soviet politics with an emphasis on cultural affairs. Davidzon is the former publisher and editor-in-chief of The Odessa Review, an anglophone publication that focused on the cultural life of Odesa, Ukraine. Davidzon is a nonresident fellow with the Atlantic Council at the Eurasia Center and is the author of From Odessa with Love, a novel about modern Odesa. He is known for his daily practice of keeping an artistic daybook/diary and also for his work as a collage artist. In March 2022 he burned his Russian passport in front of the Russian embassy in Paris with former Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves holding the lighter.
Odesan Russian is a regional dialect of the Russian language spoken in and around the city of Odesa, Ukraine. Influenced heavily by Yiddish, Bulgarian, Turkic and Ukrainian, the Odesan dialect has been variously described by linguists as a Koiné language, a Jewish language, or a mixed language. It is a staple of Odesan culture, appearing in the works of Isaac Babel and Mark Bernes, and is also a source of parts of the fenya criminal jargon.