Staff of Figures and Jewish Characters in Dina Rubina’s Novels

Dina Rubina is one of the most important Jewish woman writers of the Russian literature in the 21st century. She was born in Tashkent, lived in Russia for many years and migrated to Israel due to her marriage, where she lives currently. Socio-cultural life, traditions and customs, religious beliefs and even languages used by people where she lived and lives, accompanied the writer in her literary life. All these were an immense source, which she masterfully used in her works. Having a rich cultural background derived from different societies, the writer handles such cultural elements in her works within mythological and folkloric motifs. In modern style novels, the existence of such elements granted them cultural diversity. As Rubina has mentioned in her interviews very often, some topics are prominent in her literary works: As a woman writer, who prefers to touch upon topics as children, women and family life, Rubina’s novels usually shine out with their woman characters. Some of such characters carry autobiographic elements – imprints from the writer’s life or her personal features. For example, writer N from the novel “See the Messiah is Coming”, the main character of the novel “Syndicate” – Dina, also the main character of the novel “Last Wild Boar of the Pontevedra Forest” – Dina of Matnasa resemble Dina Rubina herself with some of their features. Despite that Rubina doesn’t accept such resemblance between writers and one of their characters (usually, main characters), it is commonly known that sometimes characters inevitably carry such imprints. Together with women, men also play important roles in Rubina’s novels. Another attention grabbing element in her novels is the characteristic resemblance between some male figures. Lenya in “The Sunny Part of the Street” and Boris in “The Petrushka Syndrome” remarkably resemble each other both in life experience and personal features. Both of them cannot get favorable answer to their loves, but they always stand by the women they are in love with. If to handle the staff of figures in Rubina’s novels as a whole, we can observe a common feature in almost all of them, especially in main characters. Thus, almost all of them are artists or performers. For instance, the main character in “Leonardo’s Manuscript” – Anna is a circus performer, Petya in “The Petrushka Syndrome” is a puppeteer, Kordovin in “Kordova’s White Dove” and Vera in “The Sunny Part of the Street” are painters, while the main character in the “Russian Canary” – Leon is a tenor with a beautiful voice. So, main characters in all novels are