Throughout his lige Isaac Babel was torn by opposing forces, by the desire both to remain faithful to his jewish roots and yet to be free of them. This duality of vision infuses his work with a powerful energy fromthe earliest tales including "Old Shoyme" and "Childhood. With Grandmother", which affirm his Russian-jewish childhood, to the relatively non-Jewish world of his collection of stories entitled Red Cavalry. babels masterpiece, Red Cavalry is the most vivid and dramaric expression of his dualism and in his simutaneous acceptance and rejection of his heritage heralds the great American-Jewish writers from Henry Roth to Saul Bellow and Philip Roth.