YIVO and the Making of Modern Jewish Culture

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Author :
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1107014204
Total Pages : 325 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (7 download)

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Book Synopsis YIVO and the Making of Modern Jewish Culture by : Cecile Esther Kuznitz

Download or read book YIVO and the Making of Modern Jewish Culture written by Cecile Esther Kuznitz and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2014-04-21 with total page 325 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is the first history of YIVO, an important center for Jewish culture and politics in the early twentieth century.

Yiddish in Israel

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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.

The Genius

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Publisher : Yale University Press
ISBN 13 : 0300179308
Total Pages : 338 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (1 download)

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Book Synopsis The Genius by : Eliyahu Stern

Download or read book The Genius written by Eliyahu Stern and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2013-01-08 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Elijah ben Solomon, the "Genius of Vilna,” was perhaps the best-known and most understudied figure in modern Jewish history. This book offers a new narrative of Jewish modernity based on Elijah's life and influence. While the experience of Jews in modernity has often been described as a process of Western European secularization—with Jews becoming citizens of Western nation-states, congregants of reformed synagogues, and assimilated members of society—Stern uses Elijah’s story to highlight a different theory of modernization for European life. Religious movements such as Hasidism and anti-secular institutions such as the yeshiva emerged from the same democratization of knowledge and privatization of religion that gave rise to secular and universal movements and institutions. Claimed by traditionalists, enlighteners, Zionists, and the Orthodox, Elijah’s genius and its afterlife capture an all-embracing interpretation of the modern Jewish experience. Through the story of the “Vilna Gaon,” Stern presents a new model for understanding modern Jewish history and more generally the place of traditionalism and religious radicalism in modern Western life and thought.

YIVO and the Making of Modern Jewish Culture

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Author :
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1139867385
Total Pages : 325 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (398 download)

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Book Synopsis YIVO and the Making of Modern Jewish Culture by : Cecile Esther Kuznitz

Download or read book YIVO and the Making of Modern Jewish Culture written by Cecile Esther Kuznitz and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2014-04-21 with total page 325 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is the first history of YIVO, the original center for Yiddish scholarship. Founded by a group of Eastern European intellectuals after World War I, YIVO became both the apex of secular Yiddish culture and the premier institution of Diaspora Nationalism, which fought for Jewish rights throughout the world at a time of rising anti-Semitism. From its headquarters in Vilna, Lithuania, YIVO tried to balance scholarly objectivity with its commitment to the Jewish masses. Using newly recovered documents that were believed destroyed by Hitler and Stalin, Cecile Esther Kuznitz tells for the first time the compelling story of how these scholars built a world-renowned institution despite dire poverty and anti-Semitism. She raises new questions about the relationship between Jewish cultural and political work, and analyzes how nationalism arises outside of state power.

I. L. Peretz and the Making of Modern Jewish Culture

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Publisher : University of Washington Press
ISBN 13 : 0295805676
Total Pages : 147 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (958 download)

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Book Synopsis I. L. Peretz and the Making of Modern Jewish Culture by : Ruth R. Wisse

Download or read book I. L. Peretz and the Making of Modern Jewish Culture written by Ruth R. Wisse and published by University of Washington Press. This book was released on 2015-07-01 with total page 147 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: I. L. Peretz (1852–1915), the father of modern Yiddish literature, was a master storyteller and social critic who advocated a radical shift from religious observance to secular Jewish culture. Wisse explores Peretz’s writings in relation to his ideology, which sought to create a strong Jewish identity separate from the trappings of religion.

The YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe

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Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 1224 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (91 download)

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Book Synopsis The YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe by : Gershon David Hundert

Download or read book The YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe written by Gershon David Hundert and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 1224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This unprecedented reference work systematically represents the history and culture of Eastern European Jews from their first settlement in the region to the present day. More than 1,800 alphabetical entries encompass a vast range of topics, including religion, folklore, politics, art, music, theater, language and literature, places, organizations, intellectual movements, and important figures. The two-volume set also features more than 1,000 illustrations and 55 maps. With original and up-to-date contributions from an international team of 450 distinguished scholars, the Encyclopedia covers the region between Germany and the Ural Mountains, from which more than 2.5 million Jews emigrated to the United States between 1870 and 1920. Even today the majority of Jewish immigrants to North America arrive from Eastern Europe. Engaging, wide-ranging, and authoritative, this work is a rich and essential reference for readers with interests in Jewish studies and Eastern European history and culture. Published in cooperation with YIVO Institute for Jewish Research

Free as a Jew

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Author :
Publisher : Wicked Son
ISBN 13 : 1642939714
Total Pages : 381 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (429 download)

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Book Synopsis Free as a Jew by : Ruth R. Wisse

Download or read book Free as a Jew written by Ruth R. Wisse and published by Wicked Son. This book was released on 2021-09-21 with total page 381 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First came parents with the good sense to flee Europe in 1940 and the good fortune to reach the land of freedom. Their daughter, Ruth, grew up in the shadow of genocide—but in tandem with the birth of Israel, which remained her lodestar. She learned that although Jewishness is biologically transmitted, democracy is not, and both require intensive, intelligent transmission through education in each and every generation. They need adults with the confidence to teach their importance. Ruth tried to take on that challenge as dangers to freedom mounted and shifted sides on the political spectrum. At the high point of her teaching at Harvard University, she witnessed the unraveling of standards of honesty and truth until the academy she left was no longer the one she had entered.

East European Jews in Two Worlds

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Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 348 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (91 download)

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Book Synopsis East European Jews in Two Worlds by : Deborah Dash Moore

Download or read book East European Jews in Two Worlds written by Deborah Dash Moore and published by . This book was released on 1990 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "East European Jews in Two Worlds: Studies from the "YIVO Annual""includes articles by some of the most prominent figures in contemporary Jewish scholarship.This collection from "YIVO Annual'"searlier issues provides a variety of perspectives historical, sociological, and literary on modern Jewish life."

The Book Smugglers

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Publisher : University Press of New England
ISBN 13 : 1512601268
Total Pages : 359 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (126 download)

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Book Synopsis The Book Smugglers by : David E. Fishman

Download or read book The Book Smugglers written by David E. Fishman and published by University Press of New England. This book was released on 2017-10-03 with total page 359 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Book Smugglers is the nearly unbelievable story of ghetto residents who rescued thousands of rare books and manuscripts-first from the Nazis and then from the Soviets-by hiding them on their bodies, burying them in bunkers, and smuggling them across borders. It is a tale of heroism and resistance, of friendship and romance, and of unwavering devotion-including the readiness to risk one's life-to literature and art. And it is entirely true. Based on Jewish, German, and Soviet documents, including diaries, letters, memoirs, and the author's interviews with several of the story's participants, The Book Smugglers chronicles the daring activities of a group of poets turned partisans and scholars turned smugglers in Vilna, "The Jerusalem of Lithuania." The rescuers were pitted against Johannes Pohl, a Nazi "expert" on the Jews, who had been dispatched to Vilna by the Nazi looting agency, Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg, to organize the seizure of the city's great collections of Jewish books. Pohl and his Einsatzstab staff planned to ship the most valuable materials to Germany and incinerate the rest. The Germans used forty ghetto inmates as slave-laborers to sort, select, pack, and transport the materials, either to Germany or to nearby paper mills. This group, nicknamed "the Paper Brigade," and informally led by poet Shmerke Kaczerginski, a garrulous, street-smart adventurer and master of deception, smuggled thousands of books and manuscripts past German guards. If caught, the men would have faced death by firing squad at Ponar, the mass-murder site outside of Vilna. To store the rescued manuscripts, poet Abraham Sutzkever helped build an underground book-bunker sixty feet beneath the Vilna ghetto. Kaczerginski smuggled weapons as well, using the group's worksite, the former building of the Yiddish Scientific Institute, to purchase arms for the ghetto's secret partisan organization. All the while, both men wrote poetry that was recited and sung by the fast-dwindling population of ghetto inhabitants. With the Soviet "liberation" of Vilna (now known as Vilnius), the Paper Brigade thought themselves and their precious cultural treasures saved-only to learn that their new masters were no more welcoming toward Jewish culture than the old, and the books must now be smuggled out of the USSR. Thoroughly researched by the foremost scholar of the Vilna Ghetto-a writer of exceptional daring, style, and reach-The Book Smugglers is an epic story of human heroism, a little-known tale from the blackest days of the war.

The Oxford Handbook of Jewish Studies

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Publisher : Oxford Handbooks Online
ISBN 13 : 9780199280322
Total Pages : 1060 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (83 download)

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Book Synopsis The Oxford Handbook of Jewish Studies by : Martin Goodman

Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Jewish Studies written by Martin Goodman and published by Oxford Handbooks Online. This book was released on 2002 with total page 1060 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Oxford Handbook of Jewish Studies reflects the current state of scholarship in the field as analyzed by an international team of experts in the different and varied areas represented within contemporary Jewish Studies. Unlike recent attempts to encapsulate the current state of Jewish Studies, the Oxford Handbook is more than a mere compendium of agreed facts; rather, it is an exhaustive survey of current interests and directions in the field.

My Future Is in America

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Publisher : NYU Press
ISBN 13 : 0814716954
Total Pages : 341 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (147 download)

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Book Synopsis My Future Is in America by : Jocelyn Cohen

Download or read book My Future Is in America written by Jocelyn Cohen and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2008-04-05 with total page 341 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1942, YIVO held a contest for the best autobiography by a Jewish immigrant on the theme “Why I Left the Old Country and What I Have Accomplished in America.” Chosen from over two hundred entries, and translated from Yiddish, the nine life stories in My Future Is in America provide a compelling portrait of American Jewish life in the immigrant generation at the turn of the twentieth century. The writers arrived in America in every decade from the 1890s to the 1920s. They include manual workers, shopkeepers, housewives, communal activists, and professionals who came from all parts of Eastern Europe and ushered in a new era in American Jewish history. In their own words, the immigrant writers convey the complexities of the transition between the Old and New Worlds. An Introduction places the writings in historical and literary context, and annotations explain historical and cultural allusions made by the writers. This unique volume introduces readers to the complex world of Yiddish-speaking immigrants while at the same time elucidating important themes and topics of interest to those in immigration studies, ethnic studies, labor history, and literary studies. Published in conjunction with the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research.

Legacy of Blood

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Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN 13 : 0190466456
Total Pages : 253 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (94 download)

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Book Synopsis Legacy of Blood by : Elissa Bemporad

Download or read book Legacy of Blood written by Elissa Bemporad and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2019 with total page 253 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Pogroms and blood libels constitute the two classical and most extreme manifestations of tsarist antisemitism. They were often closely intertwined in history and memory, not least because the accusation of blood libel, the allegation that Jews murder Christian children to use their blood for ritual purposes, frequently triggered anti-Jewish violence. Such events were and are considered central to the Jewish experience in late tsarist Russia, the only country on earth with large scale anti-Jewish violence in the early twentieth century. Boasting its break from the tsarist period, the Soviet regime proudly claimed to have eradicated these forms of antisemitism. But, alas, life was much more complicated. The phenomenon and the memory of pogroms and blood libels in different areas of interwar Soviet Union-including Ukraine, Belorussia, Russia and Central Asia-as well as, after World War II, in the newly annexed territories of Lithuania, Western Ukraine and Western Belorussia are a reminder of continuities in the midst of revolutionary ruptures. The persistence, the permutation, and the responses to anti-Jewish violence and memories of violence suggest that Soviet Jews (and non-Jews alike) cohabited with a legacy of blood that did not vanish. This book traces the "afterlife" of these extreme manifestations of antisemitism in the USSR, and in doing so sheds light on the broader question of the changing position of Jews in Soviet society. One notable rupture in manifestations of antisemitism from tsarist to Soviet times included the virtual disappearance-at least during the interwar period-of the tight link between pogroms and blood allegations, indeed a common feature in the waves of anti-Jewish violence that erupted during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries." --

From That Place and Time: A Memoir, 1938-1947

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Author :
Publisher : Plunkett Lake Press
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 284 pages
Book Rating : 4./5 ( download)

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Book Synopsis From That Place and Time: A Memoir, 1938-1947 by : Lucy S. Dawidowicz

Download or read book From That Place and Time: A Memoir, 1938-1947 written by Lucy S. Dawidowicz and published by Plunkett Lake Press. This book was released on 2019-08-17 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this memoir, Lucy S. Dawidowicz recounts her time in Vilna where she went to study in 1938-39. She also reconstructs the history of Vilna Jews through the centuries and gives a first-hand account of Vilna’s Jewish community right before its destruction by the Nazis. Dawidowicz fled days before the German invasion of Poland, and returned to the American zone in Germany in 1946-47 to help Jews in Displaced Persons camps with the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee. It was in that role that Dawidowicz helped salvage remnants of YIVO’s Vilna archives that were shipped to New York. “Dawidowicz, a well-known historian of the Jews, has presented us... a memoir on Vilna, a city she left on Aug. 24, 1939, just before World War II began. It is a tremendous collection of facts and names. There are sketches depicting the everyday life of a thriving community and reflections upon its unique culture. But the book is more than that: it is a monument to the community destroyed, not by forces of nature, but by the evil human hand.” — Tomas Venclova, The New York Times “In this deeply moving personal reminiscence, eminent historian Dawidowicz recounts the year she spent in Vilna, Poland [in 1938-39]... [a] poignant memoir... Her piercingly eloquent narrative gives us a sharp first-hand impression of a world in ruins and of the irreparable losses suffered by European Jewry.” — Publishers Weekly “The story of Dawidowicz’s early years and a tribute to the Jewish community and culture of Vilna... Crammed with descriptive details of a people and culture now destroyed and of WW II's chaotic aftermath: chastening, compelling, powerful.” —Kirkus Reviews “A leading historian of the Holocaust, Dawidowicz transports the reader from 1938, when she studied in Vilna, Poland, through 1946, when she returned to Europe to assist Jewish survivors. This is a powerful and absorbing memoir” — Library Journal “Lucy Dawidowicz's memoir comprises several books for the price of one: it portrays Jewish Vilna as the plucky American student encountered it in 1938, describes the fate of Jewish cultural treasures as she helped recover them after the War, and exposes the mind and spirit of an intrepid historian-in-the making.” — Ruth R. Wisse, Harvard University “Lucy Dawidowicz was an historian of monumental importance, best known for her classic The War Against the Jews. But she was also a vital chronicler of the world of European Jewry before its destruction... [A] compelling memoir of Vilna on the brink of destruction.” — Jonathan Rosen, author of The Talmud and the Internet: A Journey Between Worlds

Languages of Modern Jewish Cultures

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Author :
Publisher : University of Michigan Press
ISBN 13 : 0472121677
Total Pages : 452 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (721 download)

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Book Synopsis Languages of Modern Jewish Cultures by : Anita Norich

Download or read book Languages of Modern Jewish Cultures written by Anita Norich and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2016-04-28 with total page 452 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of essays brings to Jewish Language Studies the conceptual frameworks that have become increasingly important to Jewish Studies more generally: transnationalism, multiculturalism, globalization, hybrid cultures, multilingualism, and interlingual contexts. Languages of Modern Jewish Cultures collects work from prominent scholars in the field, bringing world literary and linguistic perspectives to generate distinctively new historical, cultural, theoretical, and scientific approaches to this topic of ongoing interest. Chapters of this edited volume consider from multiple angles the cultural politics of myths, fantasies, and anxieties of linguistic multiplicity in the history, cultures, folkways, and politics of global Jewry. Methodological range is as important to this project as linguistic range. Thus, in addition to approaches that highlight influence, borrowings, or acculturation, the volume represents those that highlight syncretism, the material conditions of Jewish life, and comparatist perspectives.

A Time to Gather

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Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 019756352X
Total Pages : 281 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (975 download)

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Book Synopsis A Time to Gather by : Jason Lustig

Download or read book A Time to Gather written by Jason Lustig and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021-12-14 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How do people link the past to the present, marking continuity in the face of the fundamental discontinuities of history? A Time to Gather argues that historical records took on potent value in modern Jewish life as both sources of history and anchors of memory because archives presented oneway of transmitting Jewish culture and history from one generation to another as well as making claims of access to an "authentic" Jewish culture. Indeed, both before the Holocaust and in its aftermath, Jewish leaders around the world felt a shared imperative to muster the forces and resources ofJewish life and culture. It was a "time to gather," a feverish era of collecting and conflict in which archive making was both a response to the ruptures of modernity and a mechanism for communities to express their cultural hegemony.Jason Lustig explores these themes across the arc of the twentieth century by excavating three distinctive archival traditions, that of the Cairo Genizah (and its transfer to Cambridge in the 1890s), folkloristic efforts like those of YIVO, and the Gesamtarchiv der deutschen Juden (Central or TotalArchive of the German Jews) formed in Berlin in 1905. Lustig presents archive-making as an organizing principle of twentieth-century Jewish culture, as a metaphor of great power and broad symbolic meaning with the dispersion and gathering of documents falling in the context of the Jews' longdiasporic history. In this light, creating archives was just as much about the future as it was about the past.

Making Jews Modern

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Publisher : Indiana University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780253110794
Total Pages : 382 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (17 download)

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Book Synopsis Making Jews Modern by : Sarah Abrevaya Stein

Download or read book Making Jews Modern written by Sarah Abrevaya Stein and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2003-12-22 with total page 382 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On the eve of the 20th century, Jews in the Russian and Ottoman empires were caught up in the major cultural and social transformations that constituted modernity for Ashkenazi and Sephardi Jewries, respectively. What language should Jews speak or teach their children? Should Jews acculturate, and if so, into what regional or European culture? What did it mean to be Jewish and Russian, Jewish and Ottoman, Jewish and modern? Sarah Abrevaya Stein explores how such questions were formulated and answered within these communities by examining the texts most widely consumed by Jewish readers: popular newspapers in Yiddish and Ladino. Examining the press's role as an agent of historical change, she interrogates a diverse array of verbal and visual texts, including cartoons, photographs, and advertisements. This original and lively study yields new perspectives on the role of print culture in imagining national and transnational communities; Stein's work enriches our sense of cultural life under the rule of multiethnic empires and complicates our understanding of Europe's polyphonic modernities.

Bad Rabbi

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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.