The Rise Of The Modern Yiddish Theater

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The Rise of the Modern Yiddish Theater

Author : Alyssa Quint
Publisher : Indiana University Press
ISBN 13 : 0253038626
Total Pages : 300 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (53 download)

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Book Synopsis The Rise of the Modern Yiddish Theater by : Alyssa Quint

Download or read book The Rise of the Modern Yiddish Theater written by Alyssa Quint and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2019-01-24 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Alyssa Quint focuses on the early years of the modern Yiddish theater, from roughly 1876 to 1883, through the works of one of its best-known and most colorful figures, Avrom Goldfaden. Goldfaden (né Goldenfaden, 1840-1908) was one of the first playwrights to stage a commercially viable Yiddish-language theater, first in Romania and then in Russia. Goldfaden’s work was rapidly disseminated in print and his plays were performed frequently for Jewish audiences. Sholem Aleichem considered him as a forger of a new language that "breathed the European spirit into our old jargon." Quint uses Goldfaden’s theatrical works as a way to understand the social life of Jewish theater in Imperial Russia. Through a study of his libretti, she looks at the experiences of Russian Jewish actors, male and female, to explore connections between culture as artistic production and culture in the sense of broader social structures. Quint explores how Jewish actors who played Goldfaden’s work on stage absorbed the theater into their everyday lives. Goldfaden’s theater gives a rich view into the conduct, ideology, religion, and politics of Jews during an important moment in the history of late Imperial Russia.

The Rise of the Modern Yiddish Theater

Author : Alyssa Quint
Publisher : Indiana University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780253038616
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (386 download)

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Book Synopsis The Rise of the Modern Yiddish Theater by : Alyssa Quint

Download or read book The Rise of the Modern Yiddish Theater written by Alyssa Quint and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2019-01-24 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Alyssa Quint focuses on the early years of the modern Yiddish theater, from roughly 1876 to 1883, through the works of one of its best-known and most colorful figures, Avrom Goldfaden. Goldfaden (né Goldenfaden, 1840-1908) was one of the first playwrights to stage a commercially viable Yiddish-language theater, first in Romania and then in Russia. Goldfaden's work was rapidly disseminated in print and his plays were performed frequently for Jewish audiences. Sholem Aleichem considered him as a forger of a new language that "breathed the European spirit into our old jargon." Quint uses Goldfaden's theatrical works as a way to understand the social life of Jewish theater in Imperial Russia. Through a study of his libretti, she looks at the experiences of Russian Jewish actors, male and female, to explore connections between culture as artistic production and culture in the sense of broader social structures. Quint explores how Jewish actors who played Goldfaden's work on stage absorbed the theater into their everyday lives. Goldfaden's theater gives a rich view into the conduct, ideology, religion, and politics of Jews during an important moment in the history of late Imperial Russia.

Yiddish Empire

Author : Debra Caplan
Publisher : University of Michigan Press
ISBN 13 : 0472123688
Total Pages : 352 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (721 download)

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Book Synopsis Yiddish Empire by : Debra Caplan

Download or read book Yiddish Empire written by Debra Caplan and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2018-04-02 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Yiddish Empire tells the story of how a group of itinerant Jewish performers became the interwar equivalent of a viral sensation, providing a missing chapter in the history of the modern stage. During World War I, a motley group of teenaged amateurs, impoverished war refugees, and out- of- work Russian actors banded together to revolutionize the Yiddish stage. Achieving a most unlikely success through their productions, the Vilna Troupe (1915– 36) would eventually go on to earn the attention of theatergoers around the world. Advancements in modern transportation allowed Yiddish theater artists to reach global audiences, traversing not only cities and districts but also countries and continents. The Vilna Troupe routinely performed in major venues that had never before allowed Jews, let alone Yiddish, upon their stages, and operated across a vast territory, a strategy that enabled them to attract unusually diverse audiences to the Yiddish stage and a precursor to the organizational structures and travel patterns that we see now in contemporary theater. Debra Caplan’s history of the Troupe is rigorously researched, employing primary and secondary sources in multiple languages, and is engagingly written.

New York’s Yiddish Theater

Author : Edna Nahshon
Publisher : Columbia University Press
ISBN 13 : 0231541074
Total Pages : 335 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (315 download)

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Book Synopsis New York’s Yiddish Theater by : Edna Nahshon

Download or read book New York’s Yiddish Theater written by Edna Nahshon and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2016-03-08 with total page 335 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the early decades of the twentieth century, a vibrant theatrical culture took shape on New York City's Lower East Side. Original dramas, comedies, musicals, and vaudeville, along with sophisticated productions of Shakespeare, Ibsen, and Chekhov, were innovatively staged for crowds that rivaled the audiences on Broadway. Though these productions were in Yiddish and catered to Eastern European, Jewish audiences (the largest immigrant group in the city at the time), their artistic innovations, energetic style, and engagement with politics and the world around them came to influence all facets of the American stage. Vividly illustrated and with essays from leading historians and critics, this book recounts the heyday of "Yiddish Broadway" and its vital contribution to American Jewish life and crossover to the broader American culture. These performances grappled with Jewish nationalism, labor relations, women's rights, religious observance, acculturation, and assimilation. They reflected a range of genres, from tear-jerkers to experimental theater. The artists who came of age in this world include Stella Adler, Eddie Cantor, Jerry Lewis, Sophie Tucker, Mel Brooks, and Joan Rivers. The story of New York's Yiddish theater is a tale of creativity and legacy and of immigrants who, in the process of becoming Americans, had an enormous impact on the country's cultural and artistic development.

Inventing the Modern Yiddish Stage

Author : Joel Berkowitz
Publisher : Wayne State University Press
ISBN 13 : 0814335047
Total Pages : 398 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (143 download)

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Book Synopsis Inventing the Modern Yiddish Stage by : Joel Berkowitz

Download or read book Inventing the Modern Yiddish Stage written by Joel Berkowitz and published by Wayne State University Press. This book was released on 2012 with total page 398 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Collects leading scholars' insight on the plays, production, music, audiences, and political and aesthetic concerns of modern Yiddish theater. While Yiddish theater is best known as popular entertainment, it has been shaped by its creators' responses to changing social and political conditions. Inventing the Modern Yiddish Stage: Essays in Drama, Performance, and Show Business showcases the diversity of modern Yiddish theater by focusing on the relentless and far-ranging capacity of its performers, producers, critics, and audiences for self-invention. Editors Joel Berkowitz and Barbara Henry have assembled essays from leading scholars that trace the roots of modern Yiddish drama and performance in nineteenth-century Eastern Europe and span a century and a half and three continents, beyond the heyday of a Yiddish stage that was nearly eradicated by the Holocaust, to its post-war life in Western Europe and Israel. Each chapter takes its own distinct approach to its subject and is accompanied by an appendix consisting of primary material, much of it available in English translation for the first time, to enrich readers' appreciation of the issues explored and also to serve as supplementary classroom texts. Chapters explore Yiddish theater across a broad geographical span--from Poland and Russia to France, the United States, Argentina, and Israel and Palestine. Readers will spend time with notable individuals and troupes; meet creators, critics, and audiences; sample different dramatic genres; and learn about issues that preoccupied both artists and audiences. The final section presents an extensive bibliography of book-length works and scholarly articles on Yiddish drama and theater, the most comprehensive resource of its kind. Collectively these essays illuminate the modern Yiddish stage as a phenomenon that was constantly reinventing itself and simultaneously examining and questioning that very process. Scholars of Jewish performance and those interested in theater history will appreciate this wide-ranging volume.

Yiddish in Israel

Author : Rachel Rojanski
Publisher : Indiana University Press
ISBN 13 : 0253045185
Total Pages : 338 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (53 download)

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Book Synopsis Yiddish in Israel by : Rachel Rojanski

Download or read book Yiddish in Israel written by Rachel Rojanski and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2020-01-07 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Yiddish in Israel: A History challenges the commonly held view that Yiddish was suppressed or even banned by Israeli authorities for ideological reasons, offering instead a radical new interpretation of the interaction between Yiddish and Israeli Hebrew cultures. Author Rachel Rojanski tells the compelling and yet unknown story of how Yiddish, the most widely used Jewish language in the pre-Holocaust world, fared in Zionist Israel, the land of Hebrew. Following Yiddish in Israel from the proclamation of the State until today, Rojanski reveals that although Israeli leadership made promoting Hebrew a high priority, it did not have a definite policy on Yiddish. The language's varying fortune through the years was shaped by social and political developments, and the cultural atmosphere in Israel. Public perception of the language and its culture, the rise of identity politics, and political and financial interests all played a part. Using a wide range of archival sources, newspapers, and Yiddish literature, Rojanski follows the Israeli Yiddish scene through the history of the Yiddish press, Yiddish theater, early Israeli Yiddish literature, and high Yiddish culture. With compassion, she explores the tensions during Israel's early years between Yiddish writers and activists and Israel's leaders, most of whom were themselves Eastern European Jews balancing their love of Yiddish with their desire to promote Hebrew. Finally Rojanski follows Yiddish into the 21st century, telling the story of the revived interest in Yiddish among Israeli-born children of Holocaust survivors as they return to the language of their parents.

Stardust Lost

Author : Stefan Kanfer
Publisher : Vintage
ISBN 13 : 0307547477
Total Pages : 370 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (75 download)

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Book Synopsis Stardust Lost by : Stefan Kanfer

Download or read book Stardust Lost written by Stefan Kanfer and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2009-03-12 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Stardust Lost, Stefan Kanfer brings the colorful Yiddish stage roaring back to life. Born of ancient traditions stretching back to the drama of the Old Testament, the Yiddish theater was a vibrant part of the immigrant experience. Kanfer invokes the energy, belief, and pure chutzpah it took to establish and run the thriving, influential theaters. He reveals the nightly drama and comedy that played out behind the scenes as well as onstage, and introduces all the players—actors, divas, playwrights, directors, and producers—who made it possible. A richly evocative chronicle of its brief but dazzling existence in America, this is both an elegy for and a tribute to Yiddish theater—lost, but not forgotten.

Chagall and the Artists of the Russian Jewish Theater

Author : Susan Tumarkin Goodman
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 248 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (91 download)

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Book Synopsis Chagall and the Artists of the Russian Jewish Theater by : Susan Tumarkin Goodman

Download or read book Chagall and the Artists of the Russian Jewish Theater written by Susan Tumarkin Goodman and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Soviet Jewish theater in a world of moral compromise / Susan Tumarkin Goodman -- The political context of Jewish theater and culture in the Soviet Union / Zvi Gitelman -- Habima and "Biblical theater" / Vladislav Ivanov -- Yiddish constructivism : the art of the Moscow State Yiddish Theater / Jeffrey Veidlinger -- Art and theater / Benjamin Harshav -- Habima and Goset : an illustrated chronicle

The God of Vengeance

Author : Sholem Asch
Publisher : DigiCat
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 84 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (596 download)

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Book Synopsis The God of Vengeance by : Sholem Asch

Download or read book The God of Vengeance written by Sholem Asch and published by DigiCat. This book was released on 2023-11-19 with total page 84 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a drama written in 1906 that uses subject matter that would have been considered scandalous in many circles of the time. The drama is Yiddish. It involves a loving lesbian relationship, women openly talking about domestic abuse, and a desire to escape arranged marriages, and prostitution. It was first performed in 1923. One scene involves a kiss between the two lesbians - the first ever on Broadway - whereupon the whole cast was arrested.

Golem

Author : Maya Barzilai
Publisher : NYU Press
ISBN 13 : 1479889652
Total Pages : 323 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (798 download)

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Book Synopsis Golem by : Maya Barzilai

Download or read book Golem written by Maya Barzilai and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2016-10-18 with total page 323 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Introduction: The Golem condition -- 1. The face of destruction: Paul Wegener's World War I Golem films -- 2. The Golem cult of 1921 New York: between redemption and expulsion -- 3. Our enemies, ourselves: Israel's monsters of 1948 -- 4. Supergolem: revenge after the Holocaust -- 5. Pacifist computers and Jewish cyborgs: fighting for the future

Yiddish Proletarian Theatre

Author : Edna Nahshon
Publisher : Praeger
ISBN 13 : 0313290636
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (132 download)

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Book Synopsis Yiddish Proletarian Theatre by : Edna Nahshon

Download or read book Yiddish Proletarian Theatre written by Edna Nahshon and published by Praeger. This book was released on 1998-08-27 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Artef (1925-1940) began as a radical Yiddish workers' theatre and developed into a major American Yiddish theatre company. It was among the acknowledged pillars of the Theatre of Social Consciousness, a movement that redefined the course for the American stage during the half century that followed. In the 1920s and 1930s, New York was widely recognized as the world capital of the Yiddish theatre. The Artef was a principal theatrical institution during this so-called Golden Era. Established in 1925 as a proletarian theatrical organization affiliated with the Jewish section of the American communist movement, the Artef was hailed by Brooks Atkinson as one of the artistic ornaments in town. In 1934 the Artef moved to Broadway, where it continued to perform until its demise in 1940. This work examines the history of Artef and analyzes the artistic, ideological, and organizational aspects of its work. The company's major productions are discussed, with a focus on the central issues raised by script, direction, and acting. The book attempts to demonstrate that radical politics often shaped and determined the evolution of the theatre, and that its artistic and organizational life must be seen within the context of the political and cultural movement of which it was a part. The work is divided into three major segments: Chapters I-IV discuss the ideological, social, and cultural forces that gave rise to the Artef, the crystallization of the organization, and the work of its acting studio, which in 1928 became the acting collective of the Artef; Chapters V-VIII cover the period of 1929-1934, the formative years of the Artef and their correspondence to communist Third Period doctrine; Chapters IX-XIII are devoted to the theatre's successful Broadway period, which paralleled the Communist Party's liberal Popular Front era. The last chapter discusses the efforts to revive the Artef, and its inevitable demise following the 1939 German-Russian Nonaggression Pact. This is a major work in Jewish Theatre Studies that will be of great use to scholars and other researchers involved with Jewish and Performance Theatre Studies as well as the history of the American Left.

Possessed Voices

Author : Ruthie Abeliovich
Publisher : State University of New York Press
ISBN 13 : 1438474458
Total Pages : 254 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (384 download)

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Book Synopsis Possessed Voices by : Ruthie Abeliovich

Download or read book Possessed Voices written by Ruthie Abeliovich and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2019-07-01 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Analyzes audio recordings of interwar Hebrew plays, providing a new model for the use of sound in theater studies. Possessed Voices tells the intriguing story of a largely unknown collection of audio recordings, which preserve performances of modernist interwar Hebrew plays. Ruthie Abeliovich focuses on four recordings: a 1931 recording of The Eternal Jew (1919/1923), a 1965 recording of The Dybbuk (1922), a 1961 radio play of The Golem (1925), and a 1952 radio play of Yaakov and Rachel (1928). Abeliovich traces the spoken language of modernist Hebrew theater as grounded in multiple modalities of expressive practices, including spoken Hebrew, Jewish liturgical sensibilities supplemented by Yiddish intonation and other vernacular accents, and in relation to prevalent theatrical forms. The book shows how these recorded performances provided Jewish immigrants from Europe with a venue for lamenting the decline of their home communities and for connecting their memories to the present. Analyzing sonic material against the backdrop of its artistic, cultural, and ideological contexts, Abeliovich develops a critical framework for the study of sound as a discipline in its own right in theater scholarship. Ruthie Abeliovich is Lecturer in the Theatre Department at Haifa University, Israel.

Whitechapel Noise

Author : Vivi Lachs
Publisher : Wayne State University Press
ISBN 13 : 0814343562
Total Pages : 220 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (143 download)

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Book Synopsis Whitechapel Noise by : Vivi Lachs

Download or read book Whitechapel Noise written by Vivi Lachs and published by Wayne State University Press. This book was released on 2018-05-14 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Archive material from the London Yiddish press, songbooks, and satirical writing offers a window into an untold cultural life of the Yiddish East End. Whitechapel Noise: Jewish Immigrant Life in Yiddish Song and Verse, London 1884–1914 by Vivi Lachs positions London’s Yiddish popular culture in historical perspective within Anglo-Jewish history, English socialist aesthetics, and music-hall culture, and shows its relationship to the transnational Yiddish-speaking world. Layers of cultural references in the Yiddish texts are closely analyzed and quoted to draw out the complex yet intimate histories they contain, offering new perspectives on Anglo-Jewish historiography in three main areas: politics, sex, and religion. The acculturation of Jewish immigrants to English life is an important part of the development of their social culture, as well as to the history of London. In part one of the book, Lachs presents an overview of daily immigrant life in London, its relationship to the Anglo-Jewish establishment, and the development of a popular Yiddish theatre and press, establishing a context from which these popular came. The author then analyzes the poems and songs, revealing the hidden social histories of the people writing and performing them. For example, how Morris Winchevsky’s London poetry shows various attempts to engage the Jewish immigrant worker in specific London activism and political debate. Lachs explores themes of marriage, relationships, and sexual exploitation appear regularly in music-hall songs, alluding to the changing nature of sexual roles in the immigrant London community influenced by the cultural mores of their new location. On the theme of religion, Lachs examines how ideas from Jewish texts and practice were used and manipulated by the socialist poets to advance ideas about class, equality, and revolution, and satirical writings offer glimpses into how the practice of religion and growing secularization was changing immigrants’ daily lives in the encounter with modernity. The detailed and nuanced analysis found in Whitechapel Noise offers a new reading of Anglo-Jewish, London, and immigrant history. It is a must-read for Jewish and Anglo-Jewish historians and those interested in Yiddish, London, and migration studies.

The Jewish Kulturbund Theatre Company in Nazi Berlin

Author : Rebecca Rovit
Publisher : University of Iowa Press
ISBN 13 : 1609381246
Total Pages : 304 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (93 download)

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Book Synopsis The Jewish Kulturbund Theatre Company in Nazi Berlin by : Rebecca Rovit

Download or read book The Jewish Kulturbund Theatre Company in Nazi Berlin written by Rebecca Rovit and published by University of Iowa Press. This book was released on 2012-09 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Revealing the complex interplay between history and human lives under conditions of duress, Rebecca Rovit focuses on the eight-year odyssey of Berlin's Jewish Kulturbund Theatre. By examining why and how an all-Jewish repertory theatre could coexist with the Nazi regime. Rovit raises broader questions about the nature of art in an environment of coercion and isolation, artistic integrity and adaptability, and community and identity."--BACK COVER.

The Moscow State Yiddish Theater

Author : Jeffrey Veidlinger
Publisher : Indiana University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780253218926
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (189 download)

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Book Synopsis The Moscow State Yiddish Theater by : Jeffrey Veidlinger

Download or read book The Moscow State Yiddish Theater written by Jeffrey Veidlinger and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2006-10-18 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Jeffrey Veidlinger relates a fascinating and little-known piece of history. . . . [He] distills a remarkable amount of research into a pithy, well-turned account that will interest readers of cultural and political history." —Publishers Weekly Drawing from newly available archives, Jeffrey Veidlinger uses the dramatic story of the Moscow State Yiddish Theater, the premiere secular Jewish cultural institution of the Soviet era, to demonstrate how Jewish writers and artists were able to promote Jewish national culture within the confines of Soviet nationality policies. Published with the generous support of the Lucius N. Littauer Foundation.

Pastrami on Rye

Author : Ted Merwin
Publisher : NYU Press
ISBN 13 : 1479872555
Total Pages : 265 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (798 download)

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Book Synopsis Pastrami on Rye by : Ted Merwin

Download or read book Pastrami on Rye written by Ted Merwin and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2018-10-02 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the 2015 National Jewish Book Award in Education and Jewish Identity from the Jewish Book Council The history of an iconic food in Jewish American culture For much of the twentieth century, the New York Jewish deli was an iconic institution in both Jewish and American life. As a social space it rivaled—and in some ways surpassed—the synagogue as the primary gathering place for the Jewish community. In popular culture it has been the setting for classics like When Harry Met Sally. And today, after a long period languishing in the trenches of the hopelessly old-fashioned, it is experiencing a nostalgic resurgence. Pastrami on Rye is the first full-length history of the New York Jewish deli. The deli, argues Ted Merwin, reached its full flowering not in the immigrant period, as some might assume, but in the interwar era, when the children of Jewish immigrants celebrated the first flush of their success in America by downing sandwiches and cheesecake in theater district delis. But it was the kosher deli that followed Jews as they settled in the outer boroughs of the city, and that became the most tangible symbol of their continuing desire to maintain a connection to their heritage. Ultimately, upwardly mobile American Jews discarded the deli as they transitioned from outsider to insider status in the middle of the century. Now contemporary Jews are returning the deli to cult status as they seek to reclaim their cultural identities. Richly researched and compellingly told, Pastrami on Rye gives us the surprising story of a quintessential New York institution.

Bad Rabbi

Author : Eddy Portnoy
Publisher : Stanford University Press
ISBN 13 : 1503603970
Total Pages : 280 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (36 download)

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Book Synopsis Bad Rabbi by : Eddy Portnoy

Download or read book Bad Rabbi written by Eddy Portnoy and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2017-10-24 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Stories abound of immigrant Jews on the outside looking in, clambering up the ladder of social mobility, successfully assimilating and integrating into their new worlds. But this book is not about the success stories. It's a paean to the bunglers, the blockheads, and the just plain weird—Jews who were flung from small, impoverished eastern European towns into the urban shtetls of New York and Warsaw, where, as they say in Yiddish, their bread landed butter side down in the dirt. These marginal Jews may have found their way into the history books far less frequently than their more socially upstanding neighbors, but there's one place you can find them in force: in the Yiddish newspapers that had their heyday from the 1880s to the 1930s. Disaster, misery, and misfortune: you will find no better chronicle of the daily ignominies of urban Jewish life than in the pages of the Yiddish press. An underground history of downwardly mobile Jews, Bad Rabbi exposes the seamy underbelly of pre-WWII New York and Warsaw, the two major centers of Yiddish culture in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. With true stories plucked from the pages of the Yiddish papers, Eddy Portnoy introduces us to the drunks, thieves, murderers, wrestlers, poets, and beauty queens whose misadventures were immortalized in print. There's the Polish rabbi blackmailed by an American widow, mass brawls at weddings and funerals, a psychic who specialized in locating missing husbands, and violent gangs of Jewish mothers on the prowl—in short, not quite the Jews you'd expect. One part Isaac Bashevis Singer, one part Jerry Springer, this irreverent, unvarnished, and frequently hilarious compendium of stories provides a window into an unknown Yiddish world that was.