Description
A rich, sweeping memoir by David G. Roskies, Yiddishlands proceeds from the premise that Yiddish culture is spread out among many different people and geographic areas and transmitted through story, song, study, and the family. Roskies leads readers through Yiddishlands old and new by revisiting his personal and professional experiences and retelling his remarkable family saga in a series of lively, irreverent, and interwoven stories. Beginning with a flashback to his grandmother's storybook wedding in 1878, Yiddishlands brings to life the major debates, struggles, and triumphs of the modern Yiddish experience, and provides readers with memorable portraits of its great writers, cultural leaders, and educators.
Roskies's story centers around Vilna, Lithuania, where his mother, Masha, was born in 1906 and where her mother, Fradl Matz, ran the legendary Matz Press, a publishing house that distributed prayer books, Bibles, and popular Yiddish literature. After falling in love with Vilna's cabaret culture, an older man, and finally a fellow student with elbow patches on his jacket, Masha and her young family are forced to flee Europe for Montreal, via Lisbon and New York. It is in Montreal that Roskies, Masha's youngest child, comes of age, entranced by the larger-than-life stories of his mother and the writers, artists, and performers of her social circle. Roskies recalls his own intellectual odyssey as a Yiddish scholar; his life in the original Havurah religious commune in Somerville, Massachusetts, in the 1970s; his struggle with the notion of aliyah while studying in Israel; his visit to Russia at the height of the Soviet Jewry movement; and his confrontation with his parents' memories in a bittersweet pilgrimage to Poland. Along the way, readers of Yiddishlands meet such prominent figures as Isaac Bashevis Singer, Melekh Ravitch, Itsik Manger, Avrom Sutzkever, Esther Markish, and Rachel Korn.
With Yiddishlands, readers take a whirlwind tour of modern Yiddish culture, from its cabarets and literary salons to its fierce ideological rivalries and colorful personalities. Roskies's memoir will be essential reading for students of the recent Jewish past and of the living Yiddish present.
About the Author
David G. Roskies is the Sol and Evelyn Henkind Chair in Yiddish Literature and Culture and professor of Jewish Literature at the Jewish Theological Seminary. He is author of numerous books, including Against the Apocalypse and A Bridge of Longing: The Lost Art of Yiddish Storytelling.
Reviews
"Yiddishlands drops you directly into the uniqueness of a world that was destroyed and then into the multitude of attempts within one family to reconstruct it-not through 'history' but through the vivid and unforgettable voices of those who lived it, in a whirlwind of conversation, song, and storytelling that conjures up a city in multiple reincarnations. It's a virtuoso performance that resurrects the dead."-Dara Horn, author of People Love Dead Jews: Reports from a Haunted Present
Book Information
ISBN 9780814333976
Author David G. Roskies
Format Hardback
Page Count 240
Imprint Wayne State University Press
Publisher Wayne State University Press
Weight(grams) 588g
Roskies's story centers around Vilna, Lithuania, where his mother, Masha, was born in 1906 and where her mother, Fradl Matz, ran the legendary Matz Press, a publishing house that distributed prayer books, Bibles, and popular Yiddish literature. After falling in love with Vilna's cabaret culture, an older man, and finally a fellow student with elbow patches on his jacket, Masha and her young family are forced to flee Europe for Montreal, via Lisbon and New York. It is in Montreal that Roskies, Masha's youngest child, comes of age, entranced by the larger-than-life stories of his mother and the writers, artists, and performers of her social circle. Roskies recalls his own intellectual odyssey as a Yiddish scholar; his life in the original Havurah religious commune in Somerville, Massachusetts, in the 1970s; his struggle with the notion of aliyah while studying in Israel; his visit to Russia at the height of the Soviet Jewry movement; and his confrontation with his parents' memories in a bittersweet pilgrimage to Poland. Along the way, readers of Yiddishlands meet such prominent figures as Isaac Bashevis Singer, Melekh Ravitch, Itsik Manger, Avrom Sutzkever, Esther Markish, and Rachel Korn.
With Yiddishlands, readers take a whirlwind tour of modern Yiddish culture, from its cabarets and literary salons to its fierce ideological rivalries and colorful personalities. Roskies's memoir will be essential reading for students of the recent Jewish past and of the living Yiddish present.
About the Author
David G. Roskies is the Sol and Evelyn Henkind Chair in Yiddish Literature and Culture and professor of Jewish Literature at the Jewish Theological Seminary. He is author of numerous books, including Against the Apocalypse and A Bridge of Longing: The Lost Art of Yiddish Storytelling.
Reviews
"Yiddishlands drops you directly into the uniqueness of a world that was destroyed and then into the multitude of attempts within one family to reconstruct it-not through 'history' but through the vivid and unforgettable voices of those who lived it, in a whirlwind of conversation, song, and storytelling that conjures up a city in multiple reincarnations. It's a virtuoso performance that resurrects the dead."-Dara Horn, author of People Love Dead Jews: Reports from a Haunted Present
Book Information
ISBN 9780814333976
Author David G. Roskies
Format Hardback
Page Count 240
Imprint Wayne State University Press
Publisher Wayne State University Press
Weight(grams) 588g
