Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern

Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern studied at Lomonosov Moscow State University, Brandeis University and Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv. The recorded working language is English, German and Spanish. The field of work recorded is history, Judaism and philology. Employment is recorded with Northwestern University. Distinctions recorded are Fulbright Scholarship.

• Name — Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern • Native Name — Йоханан Петровський-Штерн • Birth Name — Ivan Myronovych Petrovsky • Born — 6 April 1962 • Birthplace — Kiev, Ukrainian SSR, Soviet Union (now Kyiv, Ukraine) • Other Names — Ivan Petrovsky • Occupation — Historian, Philologist, Academic • Discipline — Jewish History and Religion • Workplaces — * Northwestern University • Hebrew University of Jerusalem • University of Warsaw • Harvard University • Alma Mater — * Moscow University (PhD) • Brandeis University (PhD) • Doctoral Advisor — * Antony Polonsky • Moshe (Murray) Rosman • Shaul Stampfer

Petrovsky-Shtern was born in Kyiv in 1962 to the family of Miron Petrovsky (Петровський Мирон Семенович), a Ukrainian philologist. His birth name was Ivan Petrovsky, as attested by his published translations of Jorge Luis Borges.

Petrovsky-Shtern had several solo exhibitions, including such venues as the French Institute in July 2019 in Kyiv, Ukraine; the Ukrainian Institute of America in spring 2015 in New York City; Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art in February–March 2014 in Chicago; and in November 2012 at the museum of the Spertus Institute for Jewish Learning and Leadership in Chicago. Petrovsky-Shtern analyses the folkways and fantasies of his Jewish and Ukrainian heritage through “revisiting foundational narratives from the Hebrew Bible, Eastern European Jewish folk-characters and folk-tales, images and artifacts from his native Ukraine, and—of course—the Holocaust,” wrote Jerome Chanes in Jewish Week. “Although Petrovsky-Shtern’s main fields of interest are history and literature, ranging from the Jewish Middle Ages to Hasidic folklore, from the prose of Gabriel Garcia Marquez to the Ukrainian renaissance of the 1920s, it is on canvas that the depth of his knowledge of various religions and cultures is transformed into a mysterious world of tales and myths,” wrote the poet Vasyl Makhno.

He holds a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in Comparative Literature from Moscow University and a second Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in Jewish History from Brandeis University. He has been a Rothschild Fellow at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, a Sensibar Visiting Professor at Spertus Institute for Jewish Learning and Leadership in Chicago, a Visiting Scholar at École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, a research fellow at The National Endowment for the Humanities, in Poland, and a Fulbright Scholar at Kyiv Mohyla Academy in Kyiv.

Petrovsky-Shtern’s scholarship focuses on the social, political, and cultural history of Jews in Eastern Europe, particularly in the territories of the Russian Empire, Poland–Lithuania, and Ukraine. His work frequently reexamines established narratives in Jewish historiography through archival research in Russian, Polish, and Ukrainian sources. In Jews in the Russian Army, 1827–1917: Drafted into Modernity (2009), he studies the institution of Cantonism and the conscription of Jewish youth into the Russian military, arguing that military service played a significant role in shaping modern Jewish identities in the Russian Empire. In The Anti-Imperial Choice: The Making of the Ukrainian Jew (2009), Petrovsky-Shtern explores the emergence of modern Ukrainian Jewish identity in the nineteenth century, contending that some Jews aligned themselves with Ukrainian national movements rather than with imperial Russian structures. His book The Golden Age Shtetl: A New History of Jewish Life in East Europe (2015) challenges the traditional depiction of the shtetl as economically stagnant and socially isolated, arguing instead that many Jewish communities in early modern Poland–Lithuania were economically integrated and culturally dynamic.