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Isaac Babel’s Easter—or Is It Passover?

JL;DR SUMMARY Isaac Babel's use of the word "Paskha," which can denote both Passover and Easter, in his Odessan stories often leads to translation challenges. A way out west there was a fella, fella I want to tell you about, fella by the name of Jeff Lebowski. At least, that was the handle his lovin' parents gave him, but he never had much use for it himself. This Lebowski, he called himself the Dude. Now, Dude, that's a name no one would self-apply where I come from. But then, there was a lot about the Dude that didn't make a whole lot of sense to me. And a lot about where he lived, likewise. But then again, maybe that's why I found the place s'durned innarestin'.

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Tags

PassoverIsaac BabelOdessa StoriesJewish LifeEasterTranslationReligious SymbolsPaskhaCultural AmbiguityRussian Jewish Literature

Places mentioned

Odessa, Saint Petersburg, Russian Federation
"The word PaskhaRussian for Passover or Easterappears at key moments throughout the stories of the Odessan Jewish writer Isaac Babel."
Russian Federation
"This evening, he said, when you see the old man killing us, come up to him and bash his head in with the colander."

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This item was indexed and curated by Cairo, JL;DR's web crawler.
Cairo Item ID 79301
Cairo Source ID 10
Retrieved 2026-04-07 05:30:47 UTC
Curated 2026-04-07 08:30:58 UTC