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The House of Twenty Thousand Books
The House of Twenty Thousand Books is the story of Chimen Abramsky, an extraordinary polymath and bibliophile who amassed a vast collection of socialist literature and Jewish history. For more than 50 years, Chimen and his wife, Miriam, hosted epic gatherings in their house of books that brought together many of the age's greatest thinkers. The atheist son of one of the century's most important rabbis, Chimen was born in 1916 near Minsk, spent his early teenage years in Moscow while his father served time in a Siberian labor camp for religious proselytizing, and then immigrated to London, where he discovered the writings of Karl Marx and became involved in left-wing politics. He briefly attended the newly established Hebrew University in Jerusalem, until World War II interrupted his studies. Back in England, he married, and for many years he and Miriam ran a respected Jewish bookshop in London's East End. When the Nazis invaded Russia in June 1941, Chimen joined the Communist Party, becoming a leading figure in the party's National Jewish Committee. He remained a member until 1958, when, shockingly late in the day, he finally acknowledged the atrocities committed by Stalin. In middle age, Chimen reinvented himself once more, this time as a liberal thinker, humanist, professor, and manuscript expert for Sotheby's auction house. Journalist Sasha Abramsky re-creates here a lost world, bringing to life the people, the books, and the ideas that filled his grandparents' house, from gatherings that included Eric Hobsbawm and Isaiah Berlin to books with Marx's handwritten notes, William Morris manuscripts and woodcuts, an early 16th-century Bomberg Bible, and a first edition of Descartes' Meditations . The House of Twenty Thousand Books is a wondrous journey through our times, from the vanished worlds of Eastern European Jewry to the cacophonous politics of modernity.
336 pages, Kindle Edition
First published June 26, 2014
115 people are currently reading
1398 people want to read
About the author
Sasha Abramsky
24 books64 followersSasha Abramsky studied politics, philosophy, and economics at Oxford University. He is now a freelance journalist and senior fellow at Demos who reports on political personalities and cultural trends.
His work has appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, The Huffington Post, Rolling Stone, The Nation, The New York Times, The Village Voice, The Guardian, and Mother Jones, among other publications.
He lives in Sacramento, California.
His work has appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, The Huffington Post, Rolling Stone, The Nation, The New York Times, The Village Voice, The Guardian, and Mother Jones, among other publications.
He lives in Sacramento, California.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 78 reviews
July 13, 2017
This wasn't a bad book but one that wasn't for me. It may be cold to say so but I don't care about someone's dead grandfather. My interests don't happen to include rare books, extensive socialist theory, or judaistic history and ideology. I know there are people who may enjoy those things but since my own interests don't line up I felt bored the whole time I was reading this book. It's always nice to read about people working hard and achieving success and knowledge so Chimen story is one that may be inspiring for others. People with leftist views are always okay with me as well because I'm biased and I'm not even going to pretend otherwise and so I like Chimen from what we read about him. Liking him wasn't enough for me to enjoy reading 300+ pages about the other things plus someone's life and how great they were though, sorry. Again I'm sure someone else would enjoy this more, someone familiar with the topics I mentioned that the book covers since Chimen seemed to be pretty involved with them.
October 10, 2016
Of all the books I’ve read this year, this one really hit me where I live. So here comes a longish, personal review, a little like the one I wrote for
Excellent Sheep
last year. You’ve been forewarned.
The book is journalist Sasha Abramsky’s tribute to his late grandfather, Chimen (Shimon) Abramsky, a collector and dealer in rare books and Judaica. Both the right and left are represented in his collection and in his life. He became a Communist as a teenager and stuck with it years past World War Two, eventually abandoning it in bitter disillusionment after Stalin’s crimes were exposed in the 1950’s. But till that time, he was considered the world’s greatest living authority on leftist philosophy and activism, particularly as practiced by Jews like himself. That interested me because, I too considered myself a communist when I was a teenager. But of much greater interest to me was this: Chimen was the son of Rav Yechezkel Abramsky, who was the leading rabbi of 20th century Europe, basically, England’s equivalent of Rav Moshe Feinstein. (I learned, not from this book but in discussing it with someone, that when Rav Moshe received a phone call from Rav Yechezkel, he stood up throughout the conversation to honor him.)
What the book makes clear over and over again is that Chimen inherited his father’s erudition, but applied it to history rather than Talmud. It also makes clear just how Jewish his values were. He and his wife Mimi kept an open home that exemplified hachnossas orchim (hosting guests) on a very high level. But instead of talking in Torah at the table, the guests talked leftist ideology. The food, I should add, was all kosher. Mimi may not have had as illustrious a lineage as Chimen, but she came from a frum home and knew how to keep the responsibilities of a traditional Jewish woman.
But here’s what really knocks my socks off: Rav Chatzkel never severed ties with his communist son, and Chimen always honored his father. For those of you who don’t know, the Ultra-Orthodox world is undergoing a crisis parallel to what happened in Chimen’s generation: great numbers of kids raised Orthodox are leaving. As I’ve mentioned before, my son is one of them, so I belong to a support group for mothers like me. And now that I’ve read this book, I want to give it out to all my friends in the support group to show them, “Look! Let’s follow Rav Chatzkel’s shining example in maintaining relationships with our irreligious kids!” Honestly, I think this book needs to be rewritten for the Ultra-Orthodox world, just focusing on the relationship between father and son. It’s a lesson we sorely need, and who better to give it than one of the gedolim of the previous dor.
I doubt a non-Jew would have as passionate a reaction to this book as I have. But to a Jew, especially one who’s lived on both the right and the left as I have, this was an absolute gem. Thank you, Bentley, Teri, and the History Book Club, for choosing it.
The book is journalist Sasha Abramsky’s tribute to his late grandfather, Chimen (Shimon) Abramsky, a collector and dealer in rare books and Judaica. Both the right and left are represented in his collection and in his life. He became a Communist as a teenager and stuck with it years past World War Two, eventually abandoning it in bitter disillusionment after Stalin’s crimes were exposed in the 1950’s. But till that time, he was considered the world’s greatest living authority on leftist philosophy and activism, particularly as practiced by Jews like himself. That interested me because, I too considered myself a communist when I was a teenager. But of much greater interest to me was this: Chimen was the son of Rav Yechezkel Abramsky, who was the leading rabbi of 20th century Europe, basically, England’s equivalent of Rav Moshe Feinstein. (I learned, not from this book but in discussing it with someone, that when Rav Moshe received a phone call from Rav Yechezkel, he stood up throughout the conversation to honor him.)
What the book makes clear over and over again is that Chimen inherited his father’s erudition, but applied it to history rather than Talmud. It also makes clear just how Jewish his values were. He and his wife Mimi kept an open home that exemplified hachnossas orchim (hosting guests) on a very high level. But instead of talking in Torah at the table, the guests talked leftist ideology. The food, I should add, was all kosher. Mimi may not have had as illustrious a lineage as Chimen, but she came from a frum home and knew how to keep the responsibilities of a traditional Jewish woman.
But here’s what really knocks my socks off: Rav Chatzkel never severed ties with his communist son, and Chimen always honored his father. For those of you who don’t know, the Ultra-Orthodox world is undergoing a crisis parallel to what happened in Chimen’s generation: great numbers of kids raised Orthodox are leaving. As I’ve mentioned before, my son is one of them, so I belong to a support group for mothers like me. And now that I’ve read this book, I want to give it out to all my friends in the support group to show them, “Look! Let’s follow Rav Chatzkel’s shining example in maintaining relationships with our irreligious kids!” Honestly, I think this book needs to be rewritten for the Ultra-Orthodox world, just focusing on the relationship between father and son. It’s a lesson we sorely need, and who better to give it than one of the gedolim of the previous dor.
I doubt a non-Jew would have as passionate a reaction to this book as I have. But to a Jew, especially one who’s lived on both the right and the left as I have, this was an absolute gem. Thank you, Bentley, Teri, and the History Book Club, for choosing it.
March 30, 2016
A personal library is a funny sort of thing. The key word being “personal.” A person who loves reading, doesn't, generally, love reading everything. Similarly, one person's absolutely fabulous library may be of little interest to another, even another very enthusiastic reader. My point here is that, delightful as a “house of twenty thousand books” sounds, most of the actual, highly specialized collection described here would have been beyond my ability to appreciate, even if Chimen Abramsky had invited me in to explore.
Sasha Abramsky's grandfather's collection's main concentration was on socialist/communist literature, with an emphasis on Marx, and a lesser focus on Jewish intellectual history and religious literature. He was a serious collector, an expert and a professional bookman, taking pride in owning one of the finest collections of both socialist literature and Judaica in the world in his time. Pretty esoteric stuff. That said, some of the books had remarkable historical significance (not to mention the art, which even I could appreciate!), and I think most book lovers will appreciate the sensual appeal of the vellum pages, soft leather bindings, one-of-a-kind 16th and 17th century manuscripts, etc. that Abramsky lovingly describes.
Chimen's library, however, is not really the real subject of this book. Chimen himself, whose life was inextricably intertwined with his fabulous collection, is. Chimen Abramsky, a Russian (Atheist) Jew, who emigrated to England in the early 1930's, and his wife, Mimi, are at the center of his grandson's book. Through his stories of their early involvement in the Communist party, and their eventual disillusionment with communism, when they shifted to liberal politics and a passion for Israel, he offers insights into the motivations of many young idealists in the period between and immediately after the world wars. Reacting against Fascism and religious conservatism, Abramsky's grandparents were actively involved in the English Communist community, their home becoming a “salon” in which lively political discussion and debates were regularly conducted around Mimi's well-stocked table. In the later 1950's and beyond, after they could no longer avoid recognizing the crimes of Soviet Communism, their politics changed, but the passionate intellectual gatherings continued, with some alterations in the guest list. Abramsky clearly recognizes that many of his readers will find his grandfather's years of enthusiasm for Stalin either disconcerting or dull (or both), and, unfortunately, his “apologies” become almost as wearisome as the topic itself.
The room by room organizational structure is clever, and I very much appreciated the photos of the library and of the various rare books. Pictures of “Beauty and the Beast” type libraries in mansions are all very well, but I really enjoyed reading here about the way the Abramsky family lived in a fairly ordinary sized home with their enormous collection. Different rooms house different subjects, and Abramsky uses these divisions to organize the tale of his grandparents' lives. Regrettably, there gets to be a certain sameness about the story. His grandfather collects books for and with other enthusiasts, he travels and lectures, he and Mimi host gatherings at which friends and family talk and argue about politics, and Mimi cooks rich, delicious meals. And Chimen eventually repents his astonishingly lengthy support for Stalin. Move to a new room and repeat, with slight variations.
Despite a long “3 star” section halfway through, this was mostly a 3 ½ star book for me and I'm rounding it up. Abramsky's love and admiration for his grandparents shine from the pages, and they were clearly kind, passionate, idealistic people. The portrait here, of a family and their community, deeply engaged in intellectual debate and surrounded by books, is memorable and appealing. My only qualification is that I've had enjoyed it even more with some of the repetitiveness eliminated.
Sasha Abramsky's grandfather's collection's main concentration was on socialist/communist literature, with an emphasis on Marx, and a lesser focus on Jewish intellectual history and religious literature. He was a serious collector, an expert and a professional bookman, taking pride in owning one of the finest collections of both socialist literature and Judaica in the world in his time. Pretty esoteric stuff. That said, some of the books had remarkable historical significance (not to mention the art, which even I could appreciate!), and I think most book lovers will appreciate the sensual appeal of the vellum pages, soft leather bindings, one-of-a-kind 16th and 17th century manuscripts, etc. that Abramsky lovingly describes.
Chimen's library, however, is not really the real subject of this book. Chimen himself, whose life was inextricably intertwined with his fabulous collection, is. Chimen Abramsky, a Russian (Atheist) Jew, who emigrated to England in the early 1930's, and his wife, Mimi, are at the center of his grandson's book. Through his stories of their early involvement in the Communist party, and their eventual disillusionment with communism, when they shifted to liberal politics and a passion for Israel, he offers insights into the motivations of many young idealists in the period between and immediately after the world wars. Reacting against Fascism and religious conservatism, Abramsky's grandparents were actively involved in the English Communist community, their home becoming a “salon” in which lively political discussion and debates were regularly conducted around Mimi's well-stocked table. In the later 1950's and beyond, after they could no longer avoid recognizing the crimes of Soviet Communism, their politics changed, but the passionate intellectual gatherings continued, with some alterations in the guest list. Abramsky clearly recognizes that many of his readers will find his grandfather's years of enthusiasm for Stalin either disconcerting or dull (or both), and, unfortunately, his “apologies” become almost as wearisome as the topic itself.
The room by room organizational structure is clever, and I very much appreciated the photos of the library and of the various rare books. Pictures of “Beauty and the Beast” type libraries in mansions are all very well, but I really enjoyed reading here about the way the Abramsky family lived in a fairly ordinary sized home with their enormous collection. Different rooms house different subjects, and Abramsky uses these divisions to organize the tale of his grandparents' lives. Regrettably, there gets to be a certain sameness about the story. His grandfather collects books for and with other enthusiasts, he travels and lectures, he and Mimi host gatherings at which friends and family talk and argue about politics, and Mimi cooks rich, delicious meals. And Chimen eventually repents his astonishingly lengthy support for Stalin. Move to a new room and repeat, with slight variations.
Despite a long “3 star” section halfway through, this was mostly a 3 ½ star book for me and I'm rounding it up. Abramsky's love and admiration for his grandparents shine from the pages, and they were clearly kind, passionate, idealistic people. The portrait here, of a family and their community, deeply engaged in intellectual debate and surrounded by books, is memorable and appealing. My only qualification is that I've had enjoyed it even more with some of the repetitiveness eliminated.
October 9, 2015
This was the most moving book I've ever read. It also consoled me, in my middle age, that changing one's philosophical platform late in life can be sorrowful and liberating at the same time. Sorrowful because of the loss of one's past, but liberating in opening up new pathways to new ideas.
March 26, 2020
Me ha gustado más el concepto que el desarrollo. Una lástima
April 6, 2018
Excelente crónica, expuesta en base a la disposición de las habitaciones de una casa, de la situación que vivieron muchos de los judíos exiliados (los más afortunados) de la URSS a lo largo del siglo XX.
La figura de Chimen Abramsky se hace enorme según vamos leyendo los distintos episodios que conformaron su apasionante vida, y en los cuales se nos da un fiel reflejo de la sociedad político-intelectual de la Inglaterra judía pre y post Segunda Guerra Mundial: desde una ferviente (y algo cerril) defensa de la Rusia de Stalin, pasando por el desencanto político aparejado a los horrores del comunismo, hasta una suerte de mezcolanza ideologicoreligiosa que es la que defendió Chimen en los últimos años de su vida; una vida siempre circunscrita a su casa, la Casa de los Libros, lugar de reunión de diversos intelectuales (políticos, periodistas, historiadores, estudiantes, etc) que acoge en su interior los veinte mil libros (o quizá quince mil, o quizá no importa el número) que dan lugar al título. Veinte mil libros que son, ni más más ni más menos, que el resultado de una pulsión coleccionista, de una pasión por la letra impresa y escrita y, al fin y al cabo, el reflejo físico de toda una vida.
La figura de Chimen Abramsky se hace enorme según vamos leyendo los distintos episodios que conformaron su apasionante vida, y en los cuales se nos da un fiel reflejo de la sociedad político-intelectual de la Inglaterra judía pre y post Segunda Guerra Mundial: desde una ferviente (y algo cerril) defensa de la Rusia de Stalin, pasando por el desencanto político aparejado a los horrores del comunismo, hasta una suerte de mezcolanza ideologicoreligiosa que es la que defendió Chimen en los últimos años de su vida; una vida siempre circunscrita a su casa, la Casa de los Libros, lugar de reunión de diversos intelectuales (políticos, periodistas, historiadores, estudiantes, etc) que acoge en su interior los veinte mil libros (o quizá quince mil, o quizá no importa el número) que dan lugar al título. Veinte mil libros que son, ni más más ni más menos, que el resultado de una pulsión coleccionista, de una pasión por la letra impresa y escrita y, al fin y al cabo, el reflejo físico de toda una vida.
February 8, 2017
Últimamente vengo leyendo bastante acerca de la Unión Soviética y todo lo que supuso para sus habitantes, tanto los que la apoyaban como los que la sufrían.
En La casa de los veinte mil libros se habla de ese segundo grupo, el de los sufridores; además, por si fuera poco, los protagonistas eran judíos que tuvieron que huir de las purgas de Stalin, recalando en Inglaterra. La historia principal la protagoniza Chimen Abramsky, el abuelo de Sasha Abramsky, que es quien escribe a modo de memorias un relato que además de ser familiar es el de toda una comunidad, la judía, durante toda la segunda mitad del siglo XX.
Además, es también una suerte de ensayo acerca de la literatura judía desde la Edad Media, que a través de la afición de Chimen se explaya en la descripción de obras, ediciones y ejemplares extraños de libros relacionados con la Torá, el Talmud y otros textos sagrados del judaísmo.
Si te gusta la historia, es un documento más que interesante acerca de una época y unos tiempos que por desgracia a veces tengo la sensación que volveremos a vivir. La literatura como diversión y aprendizaje es muy valiosa, pero debería serlo más como recordatorio de los errores del pasado y así no volverlos a repetir jamás.
En La casa de los veinte mil libros se habla de ese segundo grupo, el de los sufridores; además, por si fuera poco, los protagonistas eran judíos que tuvieron que huir de las purgas de Stalin, recalando en Inglaterra. La historia principal la protagoniza Chimen Abramsky, el abuelo de Sasha Abramsky, que es quien escribe a modo de memorias un relato que además de ser familiar es el de toda una comunidad, la judía, durante toda la segunda mitad del siglo XX.
Además, es también una suerte de ensayo acerca de la literatura judía desde la Edad Media, que a través de la afición de Chimen se explaya en la descripción de obras, ediciones y ejemplares extraños de libros relacionados con la Torá, el Talmud y otros textos sagrados del judaísmo.
Si te gusta la historia, es un documento más que interesante acerca de una época y unos tiempos que por desgracia a veces tengo la sensación que volveremos a vivir. La literatura como diversión y aprendizaje es muy valiosa, pero debería serlo más como recordatorio de los errores del pasado y así no volverlos a repetir jamás.
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August 26, 2018ABANDONO
November 22, 2015
Sasha Abramsky had known for years that he was going to write a biography of his grandparents, but he probably didn't know that he would achieve this via a room-by-room profile of the house they occupied in London. But that's what he did and, to my surprise, Sasha's approach worked for me. In telling the story of Chimen and Mimi Abramsky, he provides a window on the tragic and inspiring experience of European Jewry in the twentieth century.
Abramsky may have set out to write a biography of both his grandparents, but he ended up with a biography of Chimen, with special attention to Chimen's relationship with his lifelong partner, Mimi. She deserves her own biography, which would probably focus less on the amount of time and effort she put into cooking for Chimen and the constant stream of visitors to 5 Hillway.
Chimen grew up in the Soviet Union, in what is now Belarus, the son of a prominent Rabbi. In large part due to his spiritual and intellectual leadership of the Jewish community, Chimen's father faced persecution at the hands of the Stalin. He was dispatched to Siberia for three years and eventually received a death sentence, but before that sentence was carried out, Chimen's father managed to secure a travel visa to leave the Soviet Union with his family. They ended up in London, alongside no small number of people with similar experiences.
Given his family background and experience, Chimen might well have become a religious Jew with strongly anti-communist sentiments. He could certainly have followed his father's footsteps (and his grandfather's and his great grandfather's) into the rabbinate, but his life took another path.
In the pre-war political ferment of London, Chimen became an unlikely Communist and eventually joined the Communist Party. His father could not have approved of his son's path, but Chimen had internalized enough of the culture of Orthodox Judaism to prevent a complete break with his father. He met Mimi, began to develop an interest in collecting books and ephemera and moved into the house at 5 Hillway, a short distance from the resting place of Karl Marx. There begins the story that occupies the majority of Sasha Abramsky's attention in this book.
Chimen's interest in history and its expression via the written word becomes a vocation, and then an obsession. Under the tutelage of some of London's premier book collectors and sellers, Chimen is able to earn a modest living for his family as a buyer and seller of rare materials. The house fills with the fruits of his obsession.
Chimen's fascination with the written word dovetails nicely with immersion in Communist politics. He moves in lock-step with his fellow Communists as they first oppose war against Germany and then do a complete 180-degree reversal when Hitler attacks the Soviet Union. When it becomes clear that the repression faced by his own father has reached millions across the Soviet Republics, Chimen is quite willing to join his Party friends in looking the other way. He never forgives himself for this complete surrender of his critical faculties.
The author tells this story by taking the reader on a tour of Chimen and Mimi's Hillway home, as he remembers it. The house tour eventually follows Chimen through a rejection of Communism, the resulting loss of connection with his entire social network, and the discovery of a totally new network through an immersion in Judaica and Jewish history, and a kind of reconciliation with his father and his own Jewish heritage.
Sasha Abramsky became a writer, and a fine one at that. While I don't believe his partner would tolerate twenty thousand books in their home, I expect that Sasha's children did not grow up strangers to books. Sasha probably left out a great deal about Chimen and Mimi in pursuing his focus on Chimen's politics and his accompanying fascination with history as represented in words. But regardless of what was left out of the book, what went in makes for a marvelous and compelling story for one who grew up in a house without books, but developed his own book obsession through his own immersion in the politics of social change and elusive utopias. For this, I am highly appreciative of the tremendous labor of love that is this book.
Abramsky may have set out to write a biography of both his grandparents, but he ended up with a biography of Chimen, with special attention to Chimen's relationship with his lifelong partner, Mimi. She deserves her own biography, which would probably focus less on the amount of time and effort she put into cooking for Chimen and the constant stream of visitors to 5 Hillway.
Chimen grew up in the Soviet Union, in what is now Belarus, the son of a prominent Rabbi. In large part due to his spiritual and intellectual leadership of the Jewish community, Chimen's father faced persecution at the hands of the Stalin. He was dispatched to Siberia for three years and eventually received a death sentence, but before that sentence was carried out, Chimen's father managed to secure a travel visa to leave the Soviet Union with his family. They ended up in London, alongside no small number of people with similar experiences.
Given his family background and experience, Chimen might well have become a religious Jew with strongly anti-communist sentiments. He could certainly have followed his father's footsteps (and his grandfather's and his great grandfather's) into the rabbinate, but his life took another path.
In the pre-war political ferment of London, Chimen became an unlikely Communist and eventually joined the Communist Party. His father could not have approved of his son's path, but Chimen had internalized enough of the culture of Orthodox Judaism to prevent a complete break with his father. He met Mimi, began to develop an interest in collecting books and ephemera and moved into the house at 5 Hillway, a short distance from the resting place of Karl Marx. There begins the story that occupies the majority of Sasha Abramsky's attention in this book.
Chimen's interest in history and its expression via the written word becomes a vocation, and then an obsession. Under the tutelage of some of London's premier book collectors and sellers, Chimen is able to earn a modest living for his family as a buyer and seller of rare materials. The house fills with the fruits of his obsession.
Chimen's fascination with the written word dovetails nicely with immersion in Communist politics. He moves in lock-step with his fellow Communists as they first oppose war against Germany and then do a complete 180-degree reversal when Hitler attacks the Soviet Union. When it becomes clear that the repression faced by his own father has reached millions across the Soviet Republics, Chimen is quite willing to join his Party friends in looking the other way. He never forgives himself for this complete surrender of his critical faculties.
The author tells this story by taking the reader on a tour of Chimen and Mimi's Hillway home, as he remembers it. The house tour eventually follows Chimen through a rejection of Communism, the resulting loss of connection with his entire social network, and the discovery of a totally new network through an immersion in Judaica and Jewish history, and a kind of reconciliation with his father and his own Jewish heritage.
Sasha Abramsky became a writer, and a fine one at that. While I don't believe his partner would tolerate twenty thousand books in their home, I expect that Sasha's children did not grow up strangers to books. Sasha probably left out a great deal about Chimen and Mimi in pursuing his focus on Chimen's politics and his accompanying fascination with history as represented in words. But regardless of what was left out of the book, what went in makes for a marvelous and compelling story for one who grew up in a house without books, but developed his own book obsession through his own immersion in the politics of social change and elusive utopias. For this, I am highly appreciative of the tremendous labor of love that is this book.
January 31, 2016
The concept of writing a biography of his grandfather, through his collection of 20,000 books and the rooms of the home they occupied, is a marvelous idea. Reading Sasha Abramsky’s book, we learn that his grandfather, Chimen, once owned one of the largest collections of Judaica and Marxism. Sasha takes us, literally room by room, through the life of Chimen and the book collectors, Jewish scholars, and fellow-travelling Marxists that spent time there. This is a clever approach to biography, but it also can become repetitive. We are reminded over and over again of Chimen and his wife’s inexhaustible hospitality; we often return to the themes of Chimen’s strained relationship with his father and the enthusiastic cooking of his wife. This is my main complaint of an otherwise engrossing book.
Abramsky is generous when he takes us into important historical context of the books and their subjects. For a layman like me, I finished the book feeling informed of Jewish world history, particularly in relation to Russian history and the rise of communism. The bad faith and delusion of the British Communist Party is particularly saddening.
Much of the story of Chimen Abramasky is his surprising conversion to the Soviet communism (given the persecution of Jews like his prominent rabbi father), his long tenure as host of prominent British party members like Eric Hobsbawn in his book-stuffed home, and his eventual abandonment of the party, following the indisputable facts of its murderous and anti-semitic nature.
There is an interesting parallel between Chimen’s rabbi father’s religious orthodoxy and Chimen’s communist orthodoxy. Sasha quotes from historian Arie Dubnov who posits that “modern ideologies were essentially a translation of old religious yearnings into secular and political frameworks,” a theory that casts light on Chimen’s life (273).
One Goodreads reviewer writes that the book illustrates how changing one’s philosophy can be sorrowful and liberating. Sasha goes to great lengths both criticizing and attempting to understand Chimen’s long-time dedication to Soviet Communism, clinging to it even after Stalin’s crimes were widely known. His eventual abandonment was certainly sorrowful and mostly liberating. But he never quite recovered. He embraced a sort of liberalism, but reading the book, we are not left with the impression that it really took the same kind of hold that communism once had. Chimen was already old, he was still reeling from the emotional toll of losing the faith, and he was suffering the social consequences of unforgiving comrades still clinging to the blind ideology and rejecting his company. Ultimately, the experience seems to have largely de-politicized him altogether. For me, this book serves as a warning of the power of orthodoxy that can sustain wishful thinking and intellectual dissonance.
Abramsky is generous when he takes us into important historical context of the books and their subjects. For a layman like me, I finished the book feeling informed of Jewish world history, particularly in relation to Russian history and the rise of communism. The bad faith and delusion of the British Communist Party is particularly saddening.
Much of the story of Chimen Abramasky is his surprising conversion to the Soviet communism (given the persecution of Jews like his prominent rabbi father), his long tenure as host of prominent British party members like Eric Hobsbawn in his book-stuffed home, and his eventual abandonment of the party, following the indisputable facts of its murderous and anti-semitic nature.
There is an interesting parallel between Chimen’s rabbi father’s religious orthodoxy and Chimen’s communist orthodoxy. Sasha quotes from historian Arie Dubnov who posits that “modern ideologies were essentially a translation of old religious yearnings into secular and political frameworks,” a theory that casts light on Chimen’s life (273).
One Goodreads reviewer writes that the book illustrates how changing one’s philosophy can be sorrowful and liberating. Sasha goes to great lengths both criticizing and attempting to understand Chimen’s long-time dedication to Soviet Communism, clinging to it even after Stalin’s crimes were widely known. His eventual abandonment was certainly sorrowful and mostly liberating. But he never quite recovered. He embraced a sort of liberalism, but reading the book, we are not left with the impression that it really took the same kind of hold that communism once had. Chimen was already old, he was still reeling from the emotional toll of losing the faith, and he was suffering the social consequences of unforgiving comrades still clinging to the blind ideology and rejecting his company. Ultimately, the experience seems to have largely de-politicized him altogether. For me, this book serves as a warning of the power of orthodoxy that can sustain wishful thinking and intellectual dissonance.
June 29, 2025
Sasha Abramsky is an American Jewish political journalist, and this book is a tribute to his grandfather Chimen Abramsky who was a collector of Communist books and letters, and Hebraic texts in London. Abramsky family immigrated from Russia to London as my Jewish grandparents did, but my family were not intellectuals or members of the Jewish Communist Party as Chimen was. It was very ironic that Chimen supported Communism as his father, Rabbi Yelensky Abramsky, spent a great deal of time imprisoned in Russia. Chimen had no formal academic qualifications but his house in London was packed to the rafters with books and full of authors, journalists, and book collectors interested in discussing politics and philosophy. Chimen later lost faith in the Communist Party and became a Zionist, but his belief in a political system that was inherently a death cult mirrors many liberals allegiance to the so called Palestinians today. His first influence was Karl Marx, but as he got older and was awarded a college teaching position, his philosophy shifted more towards Spinoza. It is a fascinating book for a particular reader. If you are Jewish, love books about books, and are interested in learning about Jewish history then this book is worth your time.
March 3, 2017
I don't think I've read a book that resonated so deeply with me on a personal level. It wasn't just an eye-opener into the life of a man I never knew, who I now treasured. It wasn't jusn't the loving details, and the welcome and richly explanatory doses of philosophy and politics.
It was this:
I, too, am drafting the history of my own grandfather.
I, too, have begun this project 3 years following his death.
He, too, was the son of a man of high royal bearing.
He, too, like my wife's late grandfather, exulted in his academic existence late in life, and wore ties and shirt to the beach in Bournemouth, and spent the latter half of his life in London, and by golly, I just checked a map. They lived not even 5 miles apart from each other!
My book, too, contains lines of descent in the closing pages.
I, too, remember my grandfather fondly, and honor him when and how I can, and believe that a book is the best, most possibly everlasting name and memorial.
I read the book slowly, so I could savor it, and fall in love with it, and admire the author for creating it. It is an inspiration to me, and is one of those literary masterpieces which will dominate my thoughts all the while as I exist.
It is a blessed work, and I place a blessing on the head of Sasha Abramsky for bringing it into the world.
It was this:
I, too, am drafting the history of my own grandfather.
I, too, have begun this project 3 years following his death.
He, too, was the son of a man of high royal bearing.
He, too, like my wife's late grandfather, exulted in his academic existence late in life, and wore ties and shirt to the beach in Bournemouth, and spent the latter half of his life in London, and by golly, I just checked a map. They lived not even 5 miles apart from each other!
My book, too, contains lines of descent in the closing pages.
I, too, remember my grandfather fondly, and honor him when and how I can, and believe that a book is the best, most possibly everlasting name and memorial.
I read the book slowly, so I could savor it, and fall in love with it, and admire the author for creating it. It is an inspiration to me, and is one of those literary masterpieces which will dominate my thoughts all the while as I exist.
It is a blessed work, and I place a blessing on the head of Sasha Abramsky for bringing it into the world.
October 25, 2023
I wasn't prepared for the specifics of Marxism, Socialism, and Judaica discussed in Abramky's book, but I am still glad that I read it. I enjoy reading books about books, so the title caught my eye. Sasha Abramsky is the grandson of Chimen Abramsky, a revered book collector who filled his London home with thousands of books, hence the title.
But this isn't (just) a family memoir. The grandson is a scholar, so he discusses the contents of the book as well as the historical, political, and academic context of Chimen Abramsky's book collections.
Chimen lived outside of Moscow as a youth and later studied in Jerusalem and then London. He was a faithful follower of Marx and then Stalin, hoping that Communism could usher in a more just political system. Over time, Chimen (and other European and American Communist party members) came to understand the horrors of Stalin's rule. Chimen left the party and tempered his ideals to be a progressive.
By moving from room to room of his grandparents' house, Sasha reviews his grandfather's life while reviewing Chimen's collection of books, letters, pamphlets and other documents. We also meet many members of the salon that Chimen and his wife hosted at their home. His wife made contributions to the discussions, but she also made bread daily, which I find significant. It recalls the phrase "to break bread" and the words communion, commune, community, and communication. Also, the meaning of "companion" is to with-bread or to eat bread with another. (Also, the Epic of Gilgamesh uses bread as a marker or time and a symbol of the frailty / corruptibility of life itself.)
As a person married to a book enthusiast, I am afraid to let my husband see this particular book. On the other hand, I admire the life that Chimen built as a book collector, book seller, book cataloger, an educator and as a host of lively political debates. He made a great contribution to many people's lives and developed a great collection that is now dispersed over several libraries and available to future generations of scholars.
But this isn't (just) a family memoir. The grandson is a scholar, so he discusses the contents of the book as well as the historical, political, and academic context of Chimen Abramsky's book collections.
Chimen lived outside of Moscow as a youth and later studied in Jerusalem and then London. He was a faithful follower of Marx and then Stalin, hoping that Communism could usher in a more just political system. Over time, Chimen (and other European and American Communist party members) came to understand the horrors of Stalin's rule. Chimen left the party and tempered his ideals to be a progressive.
By moving from room to room of his grandparents' house, Sasha reviews his grandfather's life while reviewing Chimen's collection of books, letters, pamphlets and other documents. We also meet many members of the salon that Chimen and his wife hosted at their home. His wife made contributions to the discussions, but she also made bread daily, which I find significant. It recalls the phrase "to break bread" and the words communion, commune, community, and communication. Also, the meaning of "companion" is to with-bread or to eat bread with another. (Also, the Epic of Gilgamesh uses bread as a marker or time and a symbol of the frailty / corruptibility of life itself.)
As a person married to a book enthusiast, I am afraid to let my husband see this particular book. On the other hand, I admire the life that Chimen built as a book collector, book seller, book cataloger, an educator and as a host of lively political debates. He made a great contribution to many people's lives and developed a great collection that is now dispersed over several libraries and available to future generations of scholars.
July 12, 2017
This was a great idea for framing an overview of Jewish/socialist physical and cultural history, family lore, and musings on the power of the written word—not so much a tour through a library as a series of Venn diagrams highlighting the macro and micro worlds of Abramsky's grandfather. I'm using it as an anchor for an essay I'm writing on dealing with my mother's library when I had to pack it up, and it was definitely the right choice—a lot to think about in terms of family, aspiration, and Jewishness.
I thought the first part of this was a bit on the recursive side, circling back heavy-handedly to the emphasize the political, cultural, and family history more than Abramsky really needed to (or maybe just more than I needed him to). I do understand how much he wanted to establish that base of knowledge in the reader, and I think once he hit what he imagined that point to be, the book hit its groove and was a really fascinating intersection of all those histories, and a great ode to bookishness in a non-precious or readers-are-superior-beings way, which always bothers me when it crops up. This is a very Jewish book, in an entirely good and holistic way, and definitely recommended for anyone with an interest in that side of 20th-century arts and letters.
I thought the first part of this was a bit on the recursive side, circling back heavy-handedly to the emphasize the political, cultural, and family history more than Abramsky really needed to (or maybe just more than I needed him to). I do understand how much he wanted to establish that base of knowledge in the reader, and I think once he hit what he imagined that point to be, the book hit its groove and was a really fascinating intersection of all those histories, and a great ode to bookishness in a non-precious or readers-are-superior-beings way, which always bothers me when it crops up. This is a very Jewish book, in an entirely good and holistic way, and definitely recommended for anyone with an interest in that side of 20th-century arts and letters.
October 10, 2015
I loved this book. It's a biography of Chimen Abramsky, a Marxist Jew in London with an unparalleled library of Judaica and Socialist texts. Pretty much my ideal book. Although the subject matter was fascinating I found some of the commentary a little pat. I also thought it was in need of a good editor, there is a lot of unnecessary repetition.
November 24, 2020
As an unabashed bibliophile--I grew up in a house full of books and my own house is book-crammed--I was naturally drawn to The House of Twenty Thousand Books. And what a treat it is.
Sasha Abramsky tells the story of his grandfather Chimen Abramsky (and, in far less detail, the story of his grandmother Miriam Abramsky.) Chimen, born in 1916 in Minsk (now in the Republic of Belarus) was the son of a well-known Talmud scholar, Yehezkel Abramsky. Imprisoned for two years in a brutal Siberian labour camp under the tyrannical rule of Joseph Stalin, Yehezkel Abramsky was released in 1931 and later headed the London Beth Din rabbinical court for 17 years.
Chimen Abramsky, sent into exile from the Soviet Union when he was 15, was a scholar like his father: a polymath, a dealer in rare books, and--rejecting his father's Orthodoxy--a devout Communist for many decades. In his modest London home, Chimen assembled an enormous repository of thousands and thousands of books, manuscripts, and handwritten documents, including a rare library of socialist literature and memorabilia and antiquarian Hebrew books and manuscripts. Miriam and Chimen's home was also a popular salon where writers and thinkers gather to drink tea, talk and eat enormous meals cooked up by Miriam.
"For Chimen, a man who had been born in pre-revolutionary Russia, whose childhood had encompassed civil war and famine, and whose formative adult years had involved world war and Holocaust, theories and philosophies, words and books provided structure to his world; they staved off the chaos, the anarchy, the fearsomeness of daily existence," Sasha Abramsky writes of his grandfather.
Chimen's love and reverence for books is fascinating, but what makes this memoir even more engrossing is the way in which Sasha grapples with his grandfather's dedication to the Communist Party, even as Chimen's own father had been imprisoned by Stalin. In the 1930s, when Communism was seen as a bulwark against the rise of Nazi Germany, Chimen and Miriam's activism in the Party was understandable. But later, when news of Soviet atrocities trickled out to the outside world, their devotion seems impossible to defend or comprehend.
Under the pseudonym "C. Allen" Chimen himself wrote a slavish obituary of Stalin in the May 1953 edition of The Jewish Clarion. Titled 'The Debt Jews Owe to Joseph Stalin,' it was written five years after Stalin had embarked on a massive campaign to eliminate Jewish intellectuals from public life in the Soviet Union. The obituary begins: 'Progressive Jews everywhere grieve deeply over the death of Joseph Stalin, leader of progressive mankind, builder of Socialism and architect of Communism...." On reading this obituary, Sasha writes, "I want to scream that [C. Allen] has sullied the memory of my grandfather."
Chimen Abramsky later renounced his membership in the Communist Party. Many of his former friends who remained in the party refused to speak to him again.
Sasha Abramsky writes with great love for his grandfather and with warmth and humor; his descriptions of Passover seders with the Abramskys' Marxist friends are endearing and very funny. But I was rather disappointed to see that far less space is devoted to his grandmother Miriam--a social worker who was appointed head of the Royal Free Hospital's Psychiatric Social Work Department--and those few pages mainly describe her obsessive cooking for the guests who streamed through their house.
In addition, among the many scholars, philosophers and revolutionaries Sasha Abramsky mentions - including Marx, Freud, Pascal, Aristotle, Plato, Rousseau, Voltaire, Spinoza, and Kant - I counted precisely two women: Polish-German revolutionary socialist Rosa Luxemberg and German Marxist theorist, activist, and advocate for women's rights Clara Zetkin, whom Abramsky mysteriously includes in a list of "second-rank thinkers."
Note to the author: A co-founder of International Women's Day on March 8th, Clara Zetkin represented the German Communist Party in the Reichstag from 1920 until 1933. According to The Guardian (March 8, 2012) "Zetkin's election to the Reichstag in 1932 made her its oldest member, and tradition dictated she opened the parliamentary session. She did so with a 40 minute attack on Hitler and the Nazi party." She died in 1933, and in her obituary the Manchester Guardian referred to her as the 'grandmother of communism.'
It would have been interesting to hear more of these women's voices.
Sasha Abramsky tells the story of his grandfather Chimen Abramsky (and, in far less detail, the story of his grandmother Miriam Abramsky.) Chimen, born in 1916 in Minsk (now in the Republic of Belarus) was the son of a well-known Talmud scholar, Yehezkel Abramsky. Imprisoned for two years in a brutal Siberian labour camp under the tyrannical rule of Joseph Stalin, Yehezkel Abramsky was released in 1931 and later headed the London Beth Din rabbinical court for 17 years.
Chimen Abramsky, sent into exile from the Soviet Union when he was 15, was a scholar like his father: a polymath, a dealer in rare books, and--rejecting his father's Orthodoxy--a devout Communist for many decades. In his modest London home, Chimen assembled an enormous repository of thousands and thousands of books, manuscripts, and handwritten documents, including a rare library of socialist literature and memorabilia and antiquarian Hebrew books and manuscripts. Miriam and Chimen's home was also a popular salon where writers and thinkers gather to drink tea, talk and eat enormous meals cooked up by Miriam.
"For Chimen, a man who had been born in pre-revolutionary Russia, whose childhood had encompassed civil war and famine, and whose formative adult years had involved world war and Holocaust, theories and philosophies, words and books provided structure to his world; they staved off the chaos, the anarchy, the fearsomeness of daily existence," Sasha Abramsky writes of his grandfather.
Chimen's love and reverence for books is fascinating, but what makes this memoir even more engrossing is the way in which Sasha grapples with his grandfather's dedication to the Communist Party, even as Chimen's own father had been imprisoned by Stalin. In the 1930s, when Communism was seen as a bulwark against the rise of Nazi Germany, Chimen and Miriam's activism in the Party was understandable. But later, when news of Soviet atrocities trickled out to the outside world, their devotion seems impossible to defend or comprehend.
Under the pseudonym "C. Allen" Chimen himself wrote a slavish obituary of Stalin in the May 1953 edition of The Jewish Clarion. Titled 'The Debt Jews Owe to Joseph Stalin,' it was written five years after Stalin had embarked on a massive campaign to eliminate Jewish intellectuals from public life in the Soviet Union. The obituary begins: 'Progressive Jews everywhere grieve deeply over the death of Joseph Stalin, leader of progressive mankind, builder of Socialism and architect of Communism...." On reading this obituary, Sasha writes, "I want to scream that [C. Allen] has sullied the memory of my grandfather."
Chimen Abramsky later renounced his membership in the Communist Party. Many of his former friends who remained in the party refused to speak to him again.
Sasha Abramsky writes with great love for his grandfather and with warmth and humor; his descriptions of Passover seders with the Abramskys' Marxist friends are endearing and very funny. But I was rather disappointed to see that far less space is devoted to his grandmother Miriam--a social worker who was appointed head of the Royal Free Hospital's Psychiatric Social Work Department--and those few pages mainly describe her obsessive cooking for the guests who streamed through their house.
In addition, among the many scholars, philosophers and revolutionaries Sasha Abramsky mentions - including Marx, Freud, Pascal, Aristotle, Plato, Rousseau, Voltaire, Spinoza, and Kant - I counted precisely two women: Polish-German revolutionary socialist Rosa Luxemberg and German Marxist theorist, activist, and advocate for women's rights Clara Zetkin, whom Abramsky mysteriously includes in a list of "second-rank thinkers."
Note to the author: A co-founder of International Women's Day on March 8th, Clara Zetkin represented the German Communist Party in the Reichstag from 1920 until 1933. According to The Guardian (March 8, 2012) "Zetkin's election to the Reichstag in 1932 made her its oldest member, and tradition dictated she opened the parliamentary session. She did so with a 40 minute attack on Hitler and the Nazi party." She died in 1933, and in her obituary the Manchester Guardian referred to her as the 'grandmother of communism.'
It would have been interesting to hear more of these women's voices.
July 8, 2024
«Era, sin duda, una empresa intelectual grandiosa, tanto una biblioteca de investigación a la que Chimen recurría cuando se documentaba para sus ensayos y libros, como una obra de amor, de respeto al pasado, en la que se preservaban la memoria y las ideas de hombres y mujeres muertos tiempo atrás, sus mundos, tan perdidos como sus voces, sus sonrisas, sus cuerpos».
«La casa de los veinte mil libros», de Sasha Abramsky, es un hermoso homenaje del autor a su abuelo Chimen Abramsky. El escritor nos regala la historia de una persona increíble, un comprador de libros raros, difíciles de conseguir, que fue acumulando en su casa en Londres hasta alcanzar la sorprendente cifra de veinte mil, constituyéndose en una de las bibliotecas privadas más importantes de Inglaterra.
Es apasionante conocer la vida de Chimen, desde su niñez y adolescencia en la Unión Soviética, su educación en Jerusalén, hasta su periplo en Gran Bretaña. Su amor por la lectura, la forma en que conoce a la abuela del autor con quién regentó una librería y editorial judía, y cómo se convierte en uno de los grandes escritores de cartas de su época. El ingreso como miembro destacado al Partido Comunista, su posterior desilusión y viraje ideológico al apoyar las ideas liberales al ser una perspectiva menos utópica. Su rol como profesor universitario, conferencista internacional, fundador del mercado moderno de subastas para manuscritos y libros hebreos, y tasador de bibliotecas.
El relato tiene como fondo la historia de la familia Abramsky durante las dos guerras mundiales, y la 5 de Hillway, la legendaria casa. Sasha describe cada uno de sus espacios, el recibidor, el comedor, la cocina, la habitación del segundo piso, el salón. Y es que la casa fue un centro de debates, un lugar de aprendizajes y de charlas profundas, en la que se vivieron los mayores debates acerca de la coyuntura mundial. Es increíble la cantidad de personas que viajaron solo para asistir a estas reuniones y los que acudieron con fines investigativos.
Las primeras páginas son difíciles por la cantidad de información, después es imposible parar de leer este fascinante libro.
¡Super recomendado!
¿Ya lo leyeron?
*Más reseñas en mi blog de instagram @luzangelalectora
«La casa de los veinte mil libros», de Sasha Abramsky, es un hermoso homenaje del autor a su abuelo Chimen Abramsky. El escritor nos regala la historia de una persona increíble, un comprador de libros raros, difíciles de conseguir, que fue acumulando en su casa en Londres hasta alcanzar la sorprendente cifra de veinte mil, constituyéndose en una de las bibliotecas privadas más importantes de Inglaterra.
Es apasionante conocer la vida de Chimen, desde su niñez y adolescencia en la Unión Soviética, su educación en Jerusalén, hasta su periplo en Gran Bretaña. Su amor por la lectura, la forma en que conoce a la abuela del autor con quién regentó una librería y editorial judía, y cómo se convierte en uno de los grandes escritores de cartas de su época. El ingreso como miembro destacado al Partido Comunista, su posterior desilusión y viraje ideológico al apoyar las ideas liberales al ser una perspectiva menos utópica. Su rol como profesor universitario, conferencista internacional, fundador del mercado moderno de subastas para manuscritos y libros hebreos, y tasador de bibliotecas.
El relato tiene como fondo la historia de la familia Abramsky durante las dos guerras mundiales, y la 5 de Hillway, la legendaria casa. Sasha describe cada uno de sus espacios, el recibidor, el comedor, la cocina, la habitación del segundo piso, el salón. Y es que la casa fue un centro de debates, un lugar de aprendizajes y de charlas profundas, en la que se vivieron los mayores debates acerca de la coyuntura mundial. Es increíble la cantidad de personas que viajaron solo para asistir a estas reuniones y los que acudieron con fines investigativos.
Las primeras páginas son difíciles por la cantidad de información, después es imposible parar de leer este fascinante libro.
¡Super recomendado!
¿Ya lo leyeron?
*Más reseñas en mi blog de instagram @luzangelalectora
December 30, 2019
Chimen Abramsky, the author's grandfather, became an intellectual force in the study of both Jewish history and leftwing political movements, largely through his reading of his own book collection, which grew to take over his house during a period of six decades. Abramsky was born in White Russia (now Belarus), in the Russian Empire in 1916. After war and revolution, the family moved to Moscow, where his father Yehezkel, a rabbi, ran afoul of the communist government. In 1931, they were allowed to leave the country and go to London, where Yehezkel would rise to lead the beth din (rabbinic court). Meanwhile, Chimen would become a communist and an atheist. He attended Hebrew University in Jerusalem, then came back to Britain just before the war.
He took up dealing rare books, specializing in Marxism and other leftwing movements of the 19th and 20th centuries, later moving to Judaica as his interests and the book market changed. Chimen bought the house that would hold his book collection in 1944, and it soon became a gathering place for people like Eric Hobsbawm and Isaiah Berlin. Late in life, Chimen took an academic position at University College London. He died in 2010.
Sasha Abramsky lovingly chronicles the people and books who filled the house. After a couple of chapters of introduction, he goes through each room of the house discussing the prominent books in each and how they reflected the life of the family.
A couple of complaints: Much is said about how Abramsky's grandmother, Miriam, cooked and entertained all the visitors to the house, but not enough about her career as a psychiatric social worker. Abramsky consulted Chimen's voluminous records -- he kept copies of all his letters -- but also many books on the Chimen's milieu. I think the book could have used a selected bibliography.
This book hit many of my interests -- books, Jewish history, leftwing politics. I could see that if these are not your interests, this book many not be for you.
He took up dealing rare books, specializing in Marxism and other leftwing movements of the 19th and 20th centuries, later moving to Judaica as his interests and the book market changed. Chimen bought the house that would hold his book collection in 1944, and it soon became a gathering place for people like Eric Hobsbawm and Isaiah Berlin. Late in life, Chimen took an academic position at University College London. He died in 2010.
Sasha Abramsky lovingly chronicles the people and books who filled the house. After a couple of chapters of introduction, he goes through each room of the house discussing the prominent books in each and how they reflected the life of the family.
A couple of complaints: Much is said about how Abramsky's grandmother, Miriam, cooked and entertained all the visitors to the house, but not enough about her career as a psychiatric social worker. Abramsky consulted Chimen's voluminous records -- he kept copies of all his letters -- but also many books on the Chimen's milieu. I think the book could have used a selected bibliography.
This book hit many of my interests -- books, Jewish history, leftwing politics. I could see that if these are not your interests, this book many not be for you.
June 19, 2024
Really enjoyed this. It is the biography of a house and a family, but specifically of Chimen and Miriam Abramsky. With the main focus being Chimen, whose books are those referred to in the title. He collected thousands of books. Two particularly specialisations: Jewish literature and history and Socialist/Marxist history. Sasha Abramsky is the grandson of Chimen and Miriam.
It is told by rooms. Each room has a different meaning. But Sasha Abramsky uses them as hooks to tell the life story of his grandparents and particular Chimen's intellectual journey. It is full of quotations and book titles. It is full of names. It is full of events.
There is a part of me that I think is changed by this book. It made me think about how I have come to my opinions and how I see the world. There is something in Chimen's story that appeals to me, even though my life is uneventful in a way that Chimen's never was.
There is a degree of repetitiveness in the book. Some facts are told more than once. Or mentioned then expanded upon. But that's not too much of a problem. Because the central story is so interesting.
I got this from the library, but at some point I'm going to buy my own copy and re-read it.
Is this a review? Who knows. I really liked it. What more do you need to know?
It is told by rooms. Each room has a different meaning. But Sasha Abramsky uses them as hooks to tell the life story of his grandparents and particular Chimen's intellectual journey. It is full of quotations and book titles. It is full of names. It is full of events.
There is a part of me that I think is changed by this book. It made me think about how I have come to my opinions and how I see the world. There is something in Chimen's story that appeals to me, even though my life is uneventful in a way that Chimen's never was.
There is a degree of repetitiveness in the book. Some facts are told more than once. Or mentioned then expanded upon. But that's not too much of a problem. Because the central story is so interesting.
I got this from the library, but at some point I'm going to buy my own copy and re-read it.
Is this a review? Who knows. I really liked it. What more do you need to know?
May 19, 2020
Realmente es una delicia como Sasha, nos pasea por los rincones y nos vive la vida de sus abuelos, aunque a veces, he tenido la sensación de que la idealizaba un poco.
Si bien, es imperdible esta dosis de cultura judía, entre otras.
Si bien, es imperdible esta dosis de cultura judía, entre otras.
February 28, 2018
One of the most interesting books I’ve read in a while. A truly fascinating intellectual journey through a ‘cathedral of the mind’ that was the late Chimen Abramsky.
November 28, 2022
This is nominally a memoir about the authors grandfather and his collection of socialist and Jewish religious texts, but it is in reality an intellectual biography of many great currents of thought of the 20th century. The interweaving currents of socialism and liberalism, the realization from Western activists of the horrors occurring under Soviet regimes, the flowering and embrace of Zionism, and the loss of cultural life that occured through the pogroms of the late 19th and the Holocaust of the 20th century. The subject of the book, although fascinating himself, is a window into a literary and intellectual world that is mostly gone in the early 21st century. Superbly written, and overflowing with wonderful book collecting anecdotes, Ambrasky wrote one of the best memoirs about a person whom I, or most people, know nothing about.
June 29, 2024
Endlessly fascinating. Such an insight into so many corners of the world, so many histories. It seemed like every page I was jotting down something interesting to look into later; in that regard, Abramsky is surely following in the tradition of his grandfather.
Read
May 29, 2025Leseabbruch, weil es überhaupt kein Interesse in mir wecken konnte. Es mag eher für jemanden interessant sein, der mit der Geschichte kommunistischer und jüdischer Intellektueller und Literatur bestens vertraut ist.
October 7, 2017
This book uses the format of a family memoir to examine an era and a vanished subculture. The author's grandfather, Chimen Abramsky, is the central figure of this book, and his story is well worth reading. Born in Russia as the son of a very well-respected rabbi who was imprisoned by the Soviet regime, Chimen later fled to the West, and after a while in Palestine (Israel didn't exist yet), he ended up in London. He married into a family that owned a bookstore, and settled into life in the Jewish world around Hampstead Heath. His job in the bookstore led him to the collecting of books, pamphlets and other printed matter regarding his greatest passion : the Marxist revolution that was surely going to happen soon. His house became a sort of salon for exiled Jews from Eastern Europe, as well as revolutionaries of the communist persuasion. This went on for about two decades - the Communist Party (with a capital letter) had replaced religion as the driving force in the lives of Chimen and his wife Miri. Totally committed to the Cause, it took him until 1958, and until after repeated exposures of the horrors of the Stalinist regime, to abandon the Party. This was more than a mere political decision - it was considered a schism, an abandonment, treason even, and many of his former comrades shunned him as an apostate. So then Chimen started to turn his prodigious memory and voracious appetite for historical knowledge (no matter how trivial) to books about Jewish history. Entirely an autodidact, he managed to obtain a University post in the 1960s and spent a couple of decades as a type of roving lecturer on Jewish history. And so the house in London, decrepit and neglected, contained 20,000 books about Marxist theory and Jewish history, including some treasures that came close to achieving an importance equivalent to those of relics in the Medieval Catholic faith. The original membership card of Karl Marx in the Internationale was a specially treasured possession.
The book fascinated me because it described a world I can only imagine : a book-crammed house in London in the 1940s and 1950s where dozens of friends and acquaintances would constantly stop by for long discussions about Marxist theory - followed by a couple of decades where the discussions would be about Judaism, Zionism, the Holocaust and related topics. I know nothing about these topics, and it seem that the author feels more familiar with the latter topic, treating us to some quick introductions to a slew of Jewish rabbis and philosophers. I can only imagine the scenes in that house : long passionate debates about the theories of various schools of communism, while Chimen's wife, Miri, cooked endless meals. Discussions in Russian, German, Yiddish, Hebrew and English - and topics that one can't imagine anyone getting excited about today. A vanished era, a forgotten type of passion, dusty dreams of revolution.
The author uses the structure of going through the house room-by-room to describe his grandfather's life. That is an original approach,but it has the drawback that it leads to repetition. Chimen and his friends/co-revolutionaries argued about Marx in the living room, in the drawing room, in the front room, in the kitchen... at some point the story about people talking and drinking tea became repetitive, as did his description of his grandmother cooking for an endless stream of visitors and guests. One wonders what she thought of it all, since her taste in literature tended to run to detective mysteries and her preferred entertainment was watching a British soap opera.
Although this book is a celebration of Chimen's life, I found it fundamentally a sad life. The first source of sadness is probably the desolation of the emigrant, the refugee, who can never recreate in his adoptive country what he left behind in the mother country. The second source was the fact that Chimen, having lost his faith as a young man, went through some fairly elaborate charades to spare the feelings of his father, a famous but rather rigid Rabbi. I noticed that Chimen's household was strictly kosher and Passover and other Jewish holidays were celebrated, despite his atheism. I guess this compares to lapsed Catholics putting a creche under the Christmas tree. The third source of sadness was of course the loss of faith in the Communist regime in Moscow, which seems to have been extremely traumatic. The term "loss of faith" are not exaggerated, because the blind, absolute loyalty to Moscow (despite mounting evidence as to its anti-Semitism and internal purges) can only be compared to a religious conviction that formed the underpinning of Chimen's entire world view. All of this happens decades before the author's birth and so he has only indirect evidence for this - he does mention that he wanted to gag when he unearthed some of the obsequious Communist propaganda written by Chimen. Finally, I think there is something sad in the idea of this man, a self-educated intellectual, having his head full of arcane knowledge but being essentially unable to put it all on paper in an organized manner. He wrote only one full-length book, and that was probably beaten into shape by his co-author. After that, he never seemed able to organize that teeming mass of detail in his head into a coherent story. So he left letters, articles and some lectures, but no major works of history or biography.
As I mentioned above, I found the book stimulating because I know nothing about Marxism or Jewish history - but I can always sympathize with anyone who stuffs his house full of books.
In my review I did subtract one star because the author felt it necessary to cite several dreams he had, all with convenient symbolic meanings. Sorry, Sasha, I find that trite and cheap.
The book fascinated me because it described a world I can only imagine : a book-crammed house in London in the 1940s and 1950s where dozens of friends and acquaintances would constantly stop by for long discussions about Marxist theory - followed by a couple of decades where the discussions would be about Judaism, Zionism, the Holocaust and related topics. I know nothing about these topics, and it seem that the author feels more familiar with the latter topic, treating us to some quick introductions to a slew of Jewish rabbis and philosophers. I can only imagine the scenes in that house : long passionate debates about the theories of various schools of communism, while Chimen's wife, Miri, cooked endless meals. Discussions in Russian, German, Yiddish, Hebrew and English - and topics that one can't imagine anyone getting excited about today. A vanished era, a forgotten type of passion, dusty dreams of revolution.
The author uses the structure of going through the house room-by-room to describe his grandfather's life. That is an original approach,but it has the drawback that it leads to repetition. Chimen and his friends/co-revolutionaries argued about Marx in the living room, in the drawing room, in the front room, in the kitchen... at some point the story about people talking and drinking tea became repetitive, as did his description of his grandmother cooking for an endless stream of visitors and guests. One wonders what she thought of it all, since her taste in literature tended to run to detective mysteries and her preferred entertainment was watching a British soap opera.
Although this book is a celebration of Chimen's life, I found it fundamentally a sad life. The first source of sadness is probably the desolation of the emigrant, the refugee, who can never recreate in his adoptive country what he left behind in the mother country. The second source was the fact that Chimen, having lost his faith as a young man, went through some fairly elaborate charades to spare the feelings of his father, a famous but rather rigid Rabbi. I noticed that Chimen's household was strictly kosher and Passover and other Jewish holidays were celebrated, despite his atheism. I guess this compares to lapsed Catholics putting a creche under the Christmas tree. The third source of sadness was of course the loss of faith in the Communist regime in Moscow, which seems to have been extremely traumatic. The term "loss of faith" are not exaggerated, because the blind, absolute loyalty to Moscow (despite mounting evidence as to its anti-Semitism and internal purges) can only be compared to a religious conviction that formed the underpinning of Chimen's entire world view. All of this happens decades before the author's birth and so he has only indirect evidence for this - he does mention that he wanted to gag when he unearthed some of the obsequious Communist propaganda written by Chimen. Finally, I think there is something sad in the idea of this man, a self-educated intellectual, having his head full of arcane knowledge but being essentially unable to put it all on paper in an organized manner. He wrote only one full-length book, and that was probably beaten into shape by his co-author. After that, he never seemed able to organize that teeming mass of detail in his head into a coherent story. So he left letters, articles and some lectures, but no major works of history or biography.
As I mentioned above, I found the book stimulating because I know nothing about Marxism or Jewish history - but I can always sympathize with anyone who stuffs his house full of books.
In my review I did subtract one star because the author felt it necessary to cite several dreams he had, all with convenient symbolic meanings. Sorry, Sasha, I find that trite and cheap.
March 20, 2016
Abramsky's admiring and affectionate biography of his grandfather is told through his vast personal collection of rare and specialized books and the rooms that contained them. A vivid and moving celebration of the intellect, history, books, and love.
October 27, 2015
An amazing book collection and an interesting Collector. This biography of a Jewish man who collected rare and special books is a lesson in what we read at different times of our lives and the ideals in which we hold dear.
May 2, 2016
Not just a book about books, but also a history of modern Judaism, Communism and the British Left. Belongs to be included among the ranks of my favorite books on Jewish history.
June 21, 2016
I read this book to learn how/why such a large collection had been gathered. I hadn't expected the Marxist/Jewish connection. Such an erudite man.
February 13, 2018
Chimen Abramsky war ein bemerkenswerter Mann. Klein an Statur, dafür umso größer an Wissen und Gelehrsamkeit. Geboren Anfang des letzten Jahrhunderts in Minsk, erlebte er als Sohn des berühmten Rabbis Yehezkel die Verwerfungen des letzten Jahrhunderts besonders deutlich. Als sein Vater in eines von Stalins Arbeitslagern deportiert wurde, flüchtete die Familie nach London, wo sie nach der Haftzeit wieder zusammenfanden. Yehezkel wurde Vorsitzender des Londoner Rabbinatsgerichtes (Beit Din), einer sehr konservativ ausgerichteten Institution, während Chimen eines der führenden Mitglieder der Kommunistischen Partei Englands wurde, trotz der Erfahrungen in seiner Familie. Doch in den 60er Jahren gelingt es auch ihm nicht mehr, über die Greueltaten und den Antisemitismus der Sowjetunion hinwegzusehen. Er verlässt die Partei schweren Herzens und der neue Schwerpunkt seines Interesses ist nunmehr die Judaica und die jüdische Geschichte.
In dieser gesamten Zeit, also fast sein ganzes Leben, las Chimen nicht nur Alles, was er zu diesen Themengebieten finden konnte, er sammelte auch sämtliche Ausgaben, Manuskripte und Dokumente, deren er habhaft werden konnte. Das Haus von ihm und Mimi, seiner Ehefrau, quoll über von Gedrucktem - und dennoch war immer Platz für Gäste, die jeden Abend zahlreich erschienen und von Mimi verköstigt wurden; Gäste, die von der Aussicht auf geistreiche Diskussionen und Streitgespräche angelockt wurden, aber auch von Mimis guter Küche.
Ein wirklich außergewöhnlicher Mensch, über den sein Enkel Sasha Abramsky, der Autor, dieses Buch geschrieben hat. Es ist keine chronologische Erzählung, stattdessen durchschreitet Sasha A. das Haus Zimmer für Zimmer und berichtet, welche Bücher dort verwahrt wurden. Doch für eine Biographie wäre das etwas wenig und so werden anhand der jeweiligen Bücher Situationen und Abschnitte aus Chimens abenteuerlichem Leben erzählt.
Sasha A. hat einen wirklich schönen Schreibstil, es ist eine Freude seine Worte und Sätze zu lesen. Doch was das Vergnügen deutlich trübt, sind diese endlosen Namen, Fremdwörter und Geschehnisse, die teilweise wie Perlen an einer Kette aufgereiht werden. Beispielsweise auf Seite 143: In 15 Zeilen werden 12 Personen namentlich aufgeführt, von denen 10 nicht wieder im Buch erscheinen. Oder Seite 165: Jarmulkes, Haggadot, Seder. Irgendwo weiter vorne wurden die Begriffe kurz erklärt, aber bei der Vielzahl konnte ich sie mir leider nicht merken. Zudem liebt es der Autor, thematisch hin- und herzuspringen: Von privaten zu geschichtlichen Ereignissen, von kulturellen zu politischen Erklärungen - und das teilweise mit einer solchen Menge von Namen und Jahreszahlen, dass ich die betreffenden Passagen nur noch quer gelesen habe.
Schade, denn so empfinde ich dieses Buch über diesen wirklich interessanten Menschen als lediglich durchschnittlich. Sein Enkel hätte mehr über ihn als beispielsweise über den Kommunismus schreiben sollen ;-)
In dieser gesamten Zeit, also fast sein ganzes Leben, las Chimen nicht nur Alles, was er zu diesen Themengebieten finden konnte, er sammelte auch sämtliche Ausgaben, Manuskripte und Dokumente, deren er habhaft werden konnte. Das Haus von ihm und Mimi, seiner Ehefrau, quoll über von Gedrucktem - und dennoch war immer Platz für Gäste, die jeden Abend zahlreich erschienen und von Mimi verköstigt wurden; Gäste, die von der Aussicht auf geistreiche Diskussionen und Streitgespräche angelockt wurden, aber auch von Mimis guter Küche.
Ein wirklich außergewöhnlicher Mensch, über den sein Enkel Sasha Abramsky, der Autor, dieses Buch geschrieben hat. Es ist keine chronologische Erzählung, stattdessen durchschreitet Sasha A. das Haus Zimmer für Zimmer und berichtet, welche Bücher dort verwahrt wurden. Doch für eine Biographie wäre das etwas wenig und so werden anhand der jeweiligen Bücher Situationen und Abschnitte aus Chimens abenteuerlichem Leben erzählt.
Sasha A. hat einen wirklich schönen Schreibstil, es ist eine Freude seine Worte und Sätze zu lesen. Doch was das Vergnügen deutlich trübt, sind diese endlosen Namen, Fremdwörter und Geschehnisse, die teilweise wie Perlen an einer Kette aufgereiht werden. Beispielsweise auf Seite 143: In 15 Zeilen werden 12 Personen namentlich aufgeführt, von denen 10 nicht wieder im Buch erscheinen. Oder Seite 165: Jarmulkes, Haggadot, Seder. Irgendwo weiter vorne wurden die Begriffe kurz erklärt, aber bei der Vielzahl konnte ich sie mir leider nicht merken. Zudem liebt es der Autor, thematisch hin- und herzuspringen: Von privaten zu geschichtlichen Ereignissen, von kulturellen zu politischen Erklärungen - und das teilweise mit einer solchen Menge von Namen und Jahreszahlen, dass ich die betreffenden Passagen nur noch quer gelesen habe.
Schade, denn so empfinde ich dieses Buch über diesen wirklich interessanten Menschen als lediglich durchschnittlich. Sein Enkel hätte mehr über ihn als beispielsweise über den Kommunismus schreiben sollen ;-)
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