Considerations of space made it impossible for us to publish a full-length review of The Life and Soul of a Legendary Jewish Socialist: The Memoirs of Vladimir Medem, translated and edited by Samuel A. Portnoy (Ktav, 70 Varick St., New York, N.Y. 10013. 608 pp. $20.) Quite apart from its value as a document in the history of the Jewish Labor Bund (a much neglected chapter of socialist and Jewish history), the reader will find this autobiography of a remarkable man most appealing. Medem was born into a family converting from Judaism to various branches of Christianity in Czarist Russia. Baptized in the Russian Orthodox faith, he found his way to the labor movement and to himself as a Jew in his late teens. He had to learn Yiddish from scr...