Available May 1, 2026

The Penny
Is Gone

A Story of Jewish Dignity

A profound meditation on systemic antisemitism, survival, and identity — told through the eyes of a physicist who lived through the Siege of Leningrad and the long shadow of Soviet oppression.

The Penny Is Gone book cover
May 1, 2026 — Ben Yehuda Press

Why did the Jews leave the Soviet Union?

Through essays, personal vignettes, and historical reflection, Emil Bezverkhny examines one of the defining questions of Soviet Jewish life — weaving his own experience as a physicist, a survivor of the Siege of Leningrad, and a witness to systematic persecution into a luminous, heartbreaking testament.

The Penny Is Gone captures the resilience of the human spirit amidst oppression: the struggle to preserve dignity, the indelible mark of exile on identity, and the meaning of belonging when the world you knew has been taken from you.

Translated by Emil Pitkin, this is a book for anyone who has asked what it means to endure — and what is lost, and what is kept, when a people are forced to leave their home.

Book Details

Title The Penny Is Gone
Subtitle A Story of Jewish Dignity
Author Emil Bezverkhny
Translator Emil Pitkin
Publisher Ben Yehuda Press
Publication Date May 1, 2026
Genre Memoir / Historical Essays

What Readers Are Saying

Antisemitism is the politics of the pointing finger. The Penny Is Gone points a finger back and cries 'j'accuse!'

Ruth Wisse Professor Emerita of Yiddish and Comparative Literature, Harvard University

More to come

Emil Bezverkhny

Emil Bezverkhny was a physicist, artist, mountaineer, musician, and man of letters. Born in 1928 in Vynkovtsy, a Ukrainian shtetl in the Soviet Union, Emil graduated from the country’s premier physics university in Leningrad and pursued a productive career in applied physics at a classified research institute. He earned a PhD in physics after personally conducting ozone-measurement experiments atop Europe’s highest peak, Mt. Elbrus. He died in Leningrad in 1984.

Translated by Emil Pitkin

Emil Pitkin is Emil Bezverkhny’s grandson. Born in 1987 in Leningrad, he was brought to America by his parents in 1989. He graduated from Harvard with an AB degree in mathematics and earned a PhD in statistics from the Wharton School. He is an author who has founded and led technology companies and now serves on the business school faculty at the Wharton School. His next novel, Fate and Chance, is slated for publication in 2026.

Available May 1, 2026

Pre-order your copy today through Amazon or directly from the publisher, Ben Yehuda Press.

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