Aaron Schimmel is currently a PhD student in Jewish History at Stanford University. His research interests include nationality, language politics, and the relationship between traditional religious Judaism and Zionism in the late Russian Empire. He enjoys continuing to study Russian language at Stanford and hopes his research will soon take him to Russia.
Aaron’s interest in Russian began when he picked up Aleksander Solzhenitsyn’s novel Cancer Ward. After reading Solzhenitsyn he began to explore other Russian writers, feeling drawn towards their work, and developed an interest in learning the language in which this literature were originally written. In addition to wanting to learn the language, he also began to explore the historical context that produced the literature. With interests in Russian literature and history, choosing to study Russian at Lewis & Clark was an easy decision.
Upon returning to Lewis & Clark from his study abroad program in St. Petersburg, Russia, Aaron began leading first-year conversation groups, which he did through his Senior year. He spent his Senior year researching and writing an honors thesis in history which explored the political and ideological roles of Yiddish and Hebrew among Jews in the late Russian Empire and Soviet Union.