Yiddish Books Research Articles

A Day, and: In Naked Autumn

A Day, and: In Naked Autumn Roshelle Weprinsky (bio) and Rebecca Weingart (bio) A Day Houses—heavy, muted headslean against the low belly of the sky,people on the country roadstumble into sleep. Flocks of birds pass south somewhere,they don't stir up the heart with their call of wings,the sun—here is the sun; she is small and sad,small and sad like my pocket mirror. [End Page 73] In Naked Autumn In naked autumn there is truth,in your fingers like naked branches,in unveiled fields,in the full fruit that stays quiet. Adorned plants like girlish bloomsdo not move me;in naked autumn there is truth,and sweet is the fruit, not the flowers. [End Page 74] Roshelle Weprinsky roshelle weprinsky (1895–1981) was born in Ukraine and moved to the United States in 1907. In New York, she began working in a sweatshop at age 13 and, after attending evening school and reading Yiddish writers, started writing at age 15. She published five poetry collections and a novel. Rebecca Weingart rebecca weingart is a PhD student in comparative literature at Washington University in St. Louis. Her translation of poems by Roshelle Weprinsky was supported by the Yiddish Book Center. She holds an mfa in creative writing and has work published or forthcoming in NonBinary Review, So It Goes, and Pakn Treger. Copyright © 2023 Rebecca Weingart

Childhood, Youth and Religious Minorities in Early Modern Europe ed. by Tali Berner and Lucy Underwood

Reviewed by: Childhood, Youth and Religious Minorities in Early Modern Europe ed. by Tali Berner and Lucy Underwood Loretta Dolan Childhood, Youth and Religious Minorities in Early Modern Europe. Edited by Tali Berner and Lucy Underwood. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019. xiii + 362 pp. Cloth $149.99, paper $149.99, e-book $109.00. This volume assembles eleven chapters that examine religious division and conflict as experienced by children and young people in early modern Europe. The extensive chronological coverage of the book starts in the 1420s and continues to 1800. This length of time is deemed necessary by the editors, who suggest that such an expanse is useful for highlighting continuity and change across the centuries. The eleven chapters are divided into three sections, although recurring themes of religious conflict are evident throughout the book. The first section focuses on how beliefs about childhood affected the religious ceremonies and rights of children as well as the lived religious experiences of children within minority communities. Tali Berner identifies the roles of children in important Jewish religious rituals, such as Passover preparations. Tali argues that these rituals were reserved specifically for children and highlight the place of religious education in the home. Anna French considers baptism in post-Reformation England. Key to French's discussion is the intersection of Protestant and Puritan beliefs on babies, childhood, and women regarding the act of baptism. A particular concern of the "Godly" puritans was the practice of emergency baptism by women, usually midwives. "Morally slippery" women were permitted by the Church of England to "deliver salvation to dying infants" (95). Children's agency can also be seen in this section, particularly in Naomi Pullin's discussion of the early Quaker household. Despite physical and mental persecution, children continued with meetings during their parents' imprisonment. Agency can also be seen to a lesser degree in Mary Clare Martin's chapter on children's denominational identity in the long eighteenth century. [End Page 162] Religious plurality is key here, with many children exposed to a number of religions throughout their childhood. The plight of persecuted families and their reaction to such persecution is discussed in the second section. As Lucy Underwood argues in her chapter, persecution shapes religious identity. In addition, the persecution can be observed in families through the recollections of earlier generations, as well as "unofficial persecution" by name calling (239). Both Susan Broomhall and Fiona McCall examine family separation, Broomhall through religious affinity and McCall through political loyalty in clerical families. Both authors emphasize the fragmentation of nuclear families and the challenge to paternal authority that occurred through children living without parents or in households other than their own. The final section considers how religious conflict and conversion directly impacted children's upbringing. Joel Harrington points out that in interfaith marriages, it was not uncommon for the boys to be baptized in the religion of their father and girls in the religion of their mother. Baptisms could be "amicable ecumenical moments" with godparents from different faiths (265). Conflict arose when children were placed with family or friends due to the death of parents and brought up in the religion of that household. This is a phenomenon discussed by Jesse Sadler, although her subjects appear to willingly adopt their new religion, unlike Harrington's, who were forced to accept religious conversion. Ahuva Liberles notes that forced conversion had grave consequences for inheritance rights. Converted Jewish children denied their inheritance would never return to the Jewish faith. Not all conversions were forced, as highlighted by Bernard Capp, but adolescents moving away from their childhood religion did lead to a challenge of parental authority. One of the strengths of this book is the variety of the sources used, which allows for a greater insight into how the religious upheaval of early modern Europe affected children across different religions. Berner, for example, examines a series of images intended for Yiddish books of customs known as Minhagim, which clearly demonstrate the importance of children in religious ceremonies. Additionally, letters such as those used by Broomhall convey not only the emotional cost of forced separation for religious minorities, but also the practical considerations of child-rearing. What could be more...

Introduction: Material Transfer—Intellectual Transfer: Salman Schocken’s Collections

Salman Schocken (Margonin, Poznań, 1877 – Pontresina, Switzerland, 1959) was the owner of a large chain of department stores in Germany and an active Zionist, but his name is first and foremost tied to the history of the Jewish book. As the founder of the Schocken Verlag in Berlin (1931–1938), he was one of the prominent Jewish publishers in the first half of the twentieth century, and continued his work with publishing houses in Jerusalem (later moving to Tel Aviv) and New York. As Volker Dahm’s trailblazing research has shown, Schocken held a central position in the renaissance of Jewish culture in Germany between the wars, and an important role in the renewal of modern Hebrew literature. The ‘Bücherei des Schocken-Verlages’ series, published between 1933 and 1938, remains a monument to German-Jewish cultural life between the world wars. Salman Schocken was an extraordinary collector of books, manuscripts, and art, too. His private interest and knowledge as a connoisseur of German as well as Hebrew books directed some of his activities as a publisher—and vice versa: he bought rare books and manuscripts in order to make them available to research through editions and scholarly studies. For Schocken, both his work as a publisher and his collection of Hebrew books and manuscripts formed part of his Zionism, and the attempt to reconnect dispersed fragments of Jewish culture. His successful chain of department stores in Germany allowed Schocken to purchase German as well as Hebrew and Yiddish books and manuscripts on a large scale during the economically turbulent years of the Weimar Republic, when many private collections were dissolved. Even after 1933, Schocken continued to enlarge and consolidate his collections. He became increasingly aware of the necessity to rescue and to preserve Jewish cultural assets from the National Socialist regime. While his publishing house was liquidated in 1938/1939 and Schocken’s department stores were sold to a German syndicate of banks for a price far below their actual value, Schocken managed to transfer his private collections to Jerusalem, as well as most of the publishing house’s stocks. The transfer was a practical move, and yet it can be considered a symbolic act of salvage, too. Schocken commissioned the architect Erich Mendelsohn (1887–1953) to design a functional, modern library in Jerusalem to house his collections.

‘May God Shield us from the Plague.’ Vernacular Remedies for the Plague from Moyshe Kalish’s Yiddish Self-help Medical Book Seyfer Yerum Moyshe (Amsterdam 1679)

Abstract Between the years 1650 and 1800, Amsterdam became the center of Yiddish printing. Vernacular medical writings were among the variety of Yiddish books published in Amsterdam. The Yiddish remedies book Seyfer Yerum Moyshe, published in 1679, was written by Moyshe Rofe mi-Kalish. In this article I intend to examine the paratexts of this book and present as a case study the doctor’s recommendations to confront the plague. He explains his remedies are credible and have been tried by many doctors. His book would not only save its readers from having to call a doctor and pay him a lot of money, but also give them remedies they can prepare in their homes or find in their pharmacies. Whether rich or poor, everyone should have access to remedies. Kalish stresses the fact that ultimately leading a pious life, together with these remedies, will promise health and longevity, with G-d’s help.

Publishing Activity of Kultur-LigPublishing Activity of Kultur-Lige in Kyiv in 1918-1931: Phases and Genres

The article covers the introduction of Yiddish publishing activities, initiated by the Jewish civic and cultural-educational organization “Kultur-Lige” in the period from 1918 to 1931. The research analyzes the historical context and preconditions of the organization beginning in the 19th century. Among the main preconditions, the author highlights the rapid modernization of Eastern European Jewry, the proclamation of Yiddish as one of the many national languages at the inter-party conference on Yiddish in Chernivtsi in 1908, and the revolutionary events of the first half of the twentieth century. In addition, the article encloses the concept of secular Jewish culture proposed by members of the Kultur-Lige and ways of its implementation through printed Yiddish-language products, the main "marketplaces" of Yiddish textbooks, teaching materials, fiction, periodicals. The article analyzes the printed products of the Kultur-Lige, after preliminary structuring and systematization of publications by category: the sources were divided into a layer of textbooks, teaching and learning materials, children's books, and fiction. The authors of the educational books, textbooks, and books for children were usually young Jewish writers and members of the Literature section of Kultur-Lige. The main consumer of such Yiddish books were the educational institutions established by the Kultur-Lige. Specifically, the Jewish public Yiddish schools, public libraries, and reading rooms, as well as Jewish Public University. Educational institutions organized by Kultur-Lige provided education for all categories of the Jewish community. The article also includes some information about the book design of Kultur-Lige artists. Among the illustrators was Mark Chagall, Sara Shor, Eliezer Lissitzky, Joseph Chaikov, Mark Epstein, etc. This organization provided unique opportunities to implement their artistic idea in the area of book illustrations. Besides that, the article includes information about the print run of some books and the financial sources of the publishing section

No More “Little Jews without Beards”: Insights into Yiddish Children’s Literature in Eastern Europe Prior to World War I1

Abstract The first modern publications in Yiddish which were intended for young readers in Eastern Europe—either original works or translations from foreign languages—appeared at the turn of the twentieth century as the sporadic initiatives of a few writers. A more systematic literature for children in Yiddish started relatively late, and was linked to the developing Yiddish school system. A growing number of writers and cultural activists, including Sholem Aleichem and Y. L. Peretz, became gradually aware of the importance and need for appropriate literature for children. Within less than a decade, the Yiddish book market was enriched with a variety of publications focused upon young readers whose ages ranged between 5 and 12 years. These publications included many translations (or adaptations) from foreign languages—either directly or indirectly—as well as original works by known Yiddish writers. The first Yiddish periodicals for youngsters, as well as textbooks, also appeared then, prior to World War I. Yiddishists and publishers established publishing companies for this purpose and initiated pretentious projects of which few were realized, or even partly realized. The current article will review and examine the first initiatives for publishing Yiddish children’s literature and periodicals, who the initiators were and what their purpose was. Also, to what extent these publications were accepted, and their contribution to modern Yiddish literature.

Jewish and Hebrew Books in Marsh’s Library: Materiality and Intercultural Engagement in Early Modern Ireland

Marsh’s Library in Dublin, Ireland, is an immaculately preserved library from the early eighteenth century. Founded by Archbishop Narcissus Marsh, the library has an extensive collection of Jewish and Hebrew books which includes Hebrew Bibles, Talmudic texts, rabbinic writings, and Yiddish books that date back to the early modern period. This study explores a cross section of the Jewish and Hebrew books in Marsh’s collection, with particular focus on issues of materiality—that is, how these books as material artefacts can inform our understanding of early modern history, religion, and intercultural engagement. We suggest that these books, a majority of which come from Marsh’s personal collection, are a valuable resource for reflection on (1) Christian engagement with Jewish culture in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, (2) the production, use, and travel of Jewish books in early modern Europe, and (3) snapshots of Jewish life in early modern Ireland and beyond.

“Yiddish has magic”: The Yiddish Book Center (Amherst, MA)

The Yiddish Book Center (YBC) is a non-profit organization located in Amherst, Massachusetts, committed to the preservation, study and celebration of Yiddish literature and culture. Over the years, this organization has overcome many obstacles, one of the most challenging and consuming being an urgent capital campaign, launched in 1991, to raise funds for a new and permanent location. This case study recounts the inspiring story of the YBC as a niche cultural organization and dissects how they managed, in face of discouraging odds, to commit wholeheartedly to their mission and successfully reach their fundraising goals.

Lament for the Living

Lament for the Living Sarah Matthes (bio) We feel them walking over us in their intolerable shoes,knocking down our stone doors. And whatwould they have us do—come outside?We will not afternoon among the pigeons,who loiter like blanched old men in a sauna,moaning "arrgargahhh" but meaning to say"shut the door" but meaning "let this dayend me." Their dicks lolling across their thighs,gummy and white as gefilte fish. Overwrought? Yes.But this is just one tunnel through the story,and it is not the one that leads to some outsidethat is sweet and green. What if we had knownwe were in the last five years of our lives?What a relief! To look around and sayhow fine it is, to awaken in the cracked sun,to knock back a berry into our mouthslike a large and living pill! To have twoand a half years to eat before our time is resetinto a new measure of halfness. And it goes.For decades we split ourselves across the longingof an asymptote, until one day we reach down to wipeand we're putting our hand through a ghost.And then it becomes intolerable. Like fruit salad —a grape disguised in the juices of a cantaloupe.We leave behind a dotted line, and all these people!They follow it like a map to heaven,when all we meant was "cut here." [End Page 240] Sarah Matthes Sarah Matthes is a poet from central New Jersey. Her debut collection of poetry Town Crier (Persea, 2021) won the Lexi Rudnitsky First Book Prize. Selected poems have appeared or are forthcoming with The Iowa Review, jubilat, American Literary Review, The Journal, Black Warrior Review, poets.org, Midst, and elsewhere. She has received support for her work from the Yiddish Book Center, and is the recipient of the 2019 Tor House Prize from the Robinson Jeffers Foundation. The managing editor of Bat City Review, she lives in Austin, TX. Find her online at sarahmatthes.com Copyright © 2020 Pleiades and Pleiades Press

Neil Weinstock Netanel. From Maimonides to Microsoft: The Jewish Law of Copyright since the Birth of Print. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016. 336 pp.

Reviewed by: From Maimonides to Microsoft: The Jewish Law of Copyright since the Birth of Print by Neil Weinstock Netanel Joshua Teplitsky Neil Weinstock Netanel. From Maimonides to Microsoft: The Jewish Law of Copyright since the Birth of Print. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016. 336 pp. Neil Netanel’s From Maimonides to Microsoft explores the concept of intellectual property in rabbinic thought through salient disputes in the history of the Hebrew and Yiddish book trade. As Netanel notes from the outset, “copyright” as it is understood in modern Western legal systems does not map perfectly onto Jewish material, and work is therefore required to apply legal concepts from one corpus onto the sources of another. In the centuries between the invention of the printing press and the Enlightenment, a system of royal privileges protected the rights of the publisher, rather than the author, who had invested significant capital in producing a book. In the eighteenth century, authors began to receive greater recognition, whether for their own economic role as producers (as in the Anglo-American context) or on account of a unique creative genius with which they endowed their creations (as on the Continent). Jewish copyright law, on the other hand, continued to derive largely from the laws of economic competition and markets, not the creativity of individual genius. Netanel explores landmark episodes in a six-hundred-year history of the evolution of concepts that approximate copyright in Jewish legal sources. He moves from the earliest known Hebrew bans on unauthorized book production —awarded to Eliyahu Bakhur by the Jewish court in Rome in 1518—through rabbinic controversies over the intricacies of regulating the book market from the sixteenth century through the nineteenth century, to a concluding chapter extending the discussion into twenty-first-century rabbinic courts in the State of Israel. Netanel does a yeoman’s job of surveying the relevant secondary literature on the regulation of published matter since the inception of printing, alongside primary sources in the history of copyright, including rabbinic pronouncements of Jewish law that were printed in the front matter of books, codes of Jewish law, and rabbinic responsa. He offers due consideration to the relationship between rabbinic understandings of copyright and that of their ambient societies, noting points of borrowing and creative adaptation. The history of law can be treated through a variety of methodological approaches. Law can be read as a source for exploring the impact of social and economic forces on governing norms, as a self-contained intellectual process, or as an effort by authoritative figures to shape and mold not just behavior but also culture itself. In a history of Halakhah, methodological questions become even more challenging, as in many Jewish communities the relationship between normative legislation and the enforcement and coercion of legal observance was somewhat more tenuous than in more conventional polities. Netanel takes recourse to different approaches to law as the book unfolds. In some of his chapters, he offers a close textual reading of legal principles, while in others he seeks to follow moments of legal dispute to enter into episodes in the history of the Jewish publication industry. There are great merits to this inclusive approach to a historical study of law, but it has its pitfalls as well, as the study sometimes seems like a fascinating collection of data without a concerted line of [End Page 263] argumentation. Netanel’s chapter on “Maharam of Padua versus Giustiniani” (chapter 3) is deeply satisfying in its explication of the lengthy ruling on the matter issued by Moses Isserles of Krakow regarding competition between two Venetian printers to publish Maimonides’s Mishneh Torah. After such a careful unpacking, his survey of selected disputes between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries (presented in chapters 6 through 8) feels somewhat thinner, and perhaps more descriptive than analytic. A methodological tension between different kinds of historical questions also obtains in other portions of the book. In treating a colloquy between two leading rabbis, Mordekhai Banet and Moses Sofer, Netanel ably itemizes the positions of each rabbi without fully justifying the significance of such an extended discussion, a practice he repeats in his chapter on the Slavuta Talmud (chapter 7), when he...

Moyshe Levin (Ber Sarin) of Yung-Vilne and His Solo Publishing Venture for Children

Moshe [Moyshe] Levin, talented author and artist, was better known by his pseudonym Ber Sarin, the pen name he used when he wrote short Yiddish books in rhyme for children who were just beginning to read. He wrote the lively texts, illustrated them in color and black and white, and self-published many of them in Vilnius (Vilna) Lithuania in the 1930s. The books were popular and successful with teachers and children. He was a graduate of the Vladimir Medem Teachers’ Seminary, a teacher in the TSYSHO school system, and a member of Yung-Vilne .2017 is the 75th anniversary of Levin’s murder at the hands of the Nazis. Levin left behind a wife and daughter who also perished during the Holocaust. Levin’s literary legacy, the books themselves, survived in limited numbers in only a handful of libraries; some are now available on the web. This article includes a brief biography of Moshe ]Moyshe] Levin (Ber Sarin), an overview and discussion of his work for children, information on the current whereabouts of his works, and a bibliography with brief annotations of the works the author was able to view.

The missing years: Yiddish writers in Soviet Bialystok, 1939–41

ABSTRACTFrom September 1939 to June 1941, Bialystok was a Soviet city that housed a group of Yiddish literati, notably refugees from German-occupied areas of Poland. This article describes the process of selecting among them people who professionally and ideologically fit criteria for integration into the Soviet Writers' Union. Special attention is paid to interactions between the refugee writers and their Soviet counterparts. Loyal Soviet citizens prior to their postwar repatriation to Poland and in most cases, sooner or later, emigrants to Israel, Western Europe, or America, these writers often appear in their memoirs to be critics of the Soviet regime. The Bialystok group of refugees included future leaders of central Jewish institutions in post-1945 Poland: Hersh Smolar (1905–93), chair of the Jewish Social–Cultural Association and editor of the Yiddish newspaper Folks-shtime (People's voice), David Sfard (1905–81), director of the publishing house Yidish-bukh (Yiddish Book) and editor of the journal Yidishe shriftn (Yiddish writings), and Ber (Bernard) Mark, director of the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw and editor of its journal Bleter far geshikhte (Folios for history).

Survivors And Exiles: Yiddish Culture after the Holocaust by Jan Schwarz (review)

Reviewed by: Survivors And Exiles: Yiddish Culture after the Holocaust by Jan Schwarz Adi Mahalel Survivors And Exiles: Yiddish Culture after the Holocaust By Jan Schwarz. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2015. xi + 355 pp. Jan Schwarz, a professor of Yiddish studies at Lund University in Sweden, sets out in this book to “present a multi-faceted picture of a transnational Yiddish culture” (3) that grew out of the near complete annihilation of its speakers during the Holocaust. Focusing on the years 1945–1971, Schwarz argues against the common portrayal of Yiddish as being in a state of “irreversible decline and extinction” during these postwar years, instead claiming that its “cultural leaders emphasized consolidation and continuity . . . completing historical and cultural projects that in some cases had been initiated during the war” (7). He symbolically derives these questions and goals from the poem “Yiddish” by Avrom Sutzkever, written in 1948: “Where will the language go down? / Maybe at the Western Wall? / If so, I shall come there, come, / Open my mouth, / And like a lion / Garbed in fiery scarlet, / I shall swallow the language as it sets. / And wake all the generations with my roar!” (3). Sutzkever (1913–2010) was born in Eastern Europe, survived the Holocaust via the Soviet Union, and settled in the Land of Israel in 1947 prior to the state’s establishment. Two-thirds of his life were spent in Israel, and it is there that the core of his literary work was produced. Schwarz’s fascinating recount of Sutzkever’s works in chapter 1, “Vilna,” continues the trend of past scholars by strongly deemphasizing Sutzkever’s “Israeliness” and highlighting instead his “European” Holocaust poetry. However, even the poem, “Yiddish,” which serves as the book’s starting point, portrays a clash between the refugee Yiddish poet and the Land of Israel, both as symbolic and physical reality. Unfortunately, the story of this clash and the creation of Yiddish Israeli culture after the Holocaust is not a part of Schwarz’s book. This omission equally applies to his chapter devoted to another Yiddish writer who also survived the Holocaust and settled in Israel, Leib Rochman (1918–1978). But more broadly, it speaks to the need for a dual outlook on Yiddish culture, both through the transnational framework, which Schwarz emphasizes, and also via the local-national perspective. Schwarz acknowledges the latter when he deals with the influential role that Yiddish American culture had within the American and the Jewish-American cultural spheres. Chapter 3 tells the story of Rochman’s memoirs. Schwarz writes that the memoir genre was “the main feature of the Yiddish cultural world, in the aftermath [End Page 128] of the Holocaust, that welcomed and encouraged the survivor writers to publish their Holocaust memoirs” (68). However, since these memoirs were written in a minor language, none of them even came close to the popularity of Anna Frank’s or Primo Levi’s works, despite their tremendous value. Schwarz uses historian Timothy Snyder to assert that they were just too Jewish and too Eastern European for mass Western consumption (76). A highly interesting fourth chapter is devoted to the monumental Yiddish Argentinean project of Dos poylishe yidntum (Polish Jewry). It was a series of hundreds of books that came out in the years 1946–1966 in Buenos Aires that were distributed in 22 countries in hundreds of thousands of copies. This project “indicates the existence of a vibrant Yiddish book market that empowered Jewish survivors to share their experience about life before, during, and in the aftermath of the Holocaust” (93). This valuable resource of survivors accounts “became a venue of hope for the continued creativity of Yiddish literature” (116); and this rich body of work remains accessible to this day almost exclusively in Yiddish. It was followed by another Argentinean project focused on republishing Yiddish literary classics (the Musterverk series). The centrality of the Yiddish cultural center established in North America, with New York City as its undisputed capital, explains why Schwarz dedicated the second half of his book to this region. Chapter 5 focuses on particular years (1953–1954) in Yiddish literature, which included I. B. Singer’s debut in English translation. Chapter 6...

Klezmer: Music and Community in Twentieth-Century Philadelphia by Hankus Netsky

Reviewed by: Klezmer: Music and Community in Twentieth-Century Philadelphia by Hankus Netsky Kenneth A. Kanter (bio) Klezmer: Music and Community in Twentieth-Century Philadelphia. By Hankus Netsky. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2015. 175 pp. “Jewish music” is, for many, Irving Berlin or Debbie Friedman, George Gershwin or Leonard Bernstein. Musician, scholar and historian Hankus Netsky broadens this perspective by sharing the rich and fascinating story of a unique genre of Jewish folk music, klezmer, in a particular Jewish community, Philadelphia. He makes the case that this music is [End Page 450] more than entertainment or contemporary popular culture; it is the door to understanding a community’s history, ethnic identity and sociology. Netsky commences Klezmer- Music and Community in Twentieth-Century Jewish Philadelphia, with these words: ”There are many ways to uncover the story of a Jewish community” (1). Employing scholarly methodology, he presents the documentary sources used to research a community, from its synagogues and organizations to scientific statistics and studies. But Netsky does so much more: he writes an historical and musical love letter to his family as viewed through the lens of his and their personal stories, overlaid with socioeconomic studies of Jewish culture and musicology. With personal reminiscences, interviews, and just a bit of family gossip, Netsky creates a compelling and fascinating web of “meises” mixed with scholarship, seen through the colorful recollections and memories of his uncles, their friends and cronies, his bandmates and, ultimately, his musical colleagues and historians. At the same time, Netsky, Chair of Contemporary Improvisation at Boston’s New England Conservatory, provides his readers with socioeconomic and ethnohistorical studies of Jewish culture as interpreted through the history of Jewish musicology from seminal historian Abraham Idelson in 1929 to today’s contemporary scholars. One cannot read this book without recognizing that its author has, almost singlehandedly, inspired the revival of the klezmer musical genre, which for decades had been a distant memory of a few surviving elderly musicians or aficionados, turning it into a musical style appreciated by Jews and non-Jews, young and old. He became to klezmer music what his friend Aaron Lansky was to Yiddish books, two young men enthralled with their Jewish cultural identity and determined to make it vibrant, contemporary and attractive again for a new generation by honoring the past while creating something new. Why Philadelphia? In part, because this is the community best known to Netsky. His family had lived there for decades. In part, because it was not New York. Was he writing as favorite son of the Philadelphia klezmer music scene or as a nationally recognized historian and musician? Netsky recognized this potential conflict himself when he wrote “I must admit that, at various times when I was working on unearthing Philly’s klezmer scene, I found myself on slightly uneasy footing as a researcher. As ethnomusicologists are so fond of asking, was I an outsider or an insider?” (6) Fortunately for the reader, he is both. He brings the training of a scholar and musicologist, and combines it with the perspective of a participant and lover of the music which he himself did so much to revive and popularize sixty and seventy years after most of the genre had largely disappeared. [End Page 451] The book is structured from the universal to the specific, beginning with the definition and history of klezmer music in Eastern Europe to the twentieth-century history of the klezmorim (musicians) in Philadelphia. As might be expected, this story is divided into “before the Holocaust” and “after.” One might assume that the immediate post-World War II story was rife with tragedy and sadness, but, in fact, Netsky tells of the blossoming of Jewish music in postwar Philadelphia. With the enormous expansion of suburban life came the mixture of old world Eastern European musicianship with modern American trained musicians, filling the demands of social and cultural events, simchas of b’nai mitzvah and wedding receptions, at synagogues and venues around the Philadelphia area. The book focuses on the musicians themselves. Netsky shows obvious respect and affection for these professionals who laid the foundation on which he has built such an amazing composing and recording career. While most...

The Continuing Story of the Yiddish Language: The Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, Massachusetts

The focus of my article is a unique place, the Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, Massachusetts, which connects Yiddish culture with the American one, the experience of the Holocaust with the descendants of the survivors, and a modern idea of Jewishness with the context of American postmodernity. Created in the 1980s, in the mind of a young and enthusiastic student Aaron Lansky, the Yiddish Book Center throughout the years has become a unique place on the American cultural map. Traversing the continents and crossing borders, Lansky and his co-workers for over thirty years have been saving Yiddish language books from extinction. The Center, however, has long stopped to be merely a storage house for the collection, but instead has grown into a vibrant hub of Yiddishkeit in the United States. Its employees do not only collect, distribute, digitalize and post online the forgotten volumes, but also engage in diverse activities, scholarly and cultural, that promote the survival of the tradition connected with Yiddish culture. They educate, offering internships and fellowships to students interested in learning Yiddish from across the world, translate, publish, and exhibit Yiddish language materials, in this way finding new users for the language whose speakers were virtually annihilated by the Holocaust. To honour their legacy, a separate project is aimed at conducting video interviews that record life testimonies of the speakers of Yiddish. Aaron Lansky’s 2004 memoir, Outwitting History, provides an interesting insight into the complexities of his arduous life mission. Today, the Center lives its own unique life, serving the world of academia and Yiddishkeit enthusiasts alike.

Producing Redemption in Amsterdam: Early Modern Yiddish Books in Paratextual PerspectiveBergerShlomo Producing Redemption in Amsterdam: Early Modern Yiddish Books in Paratextual Perspective BrillLeiden, 2013, xx, 234, €101.00ISBN 978-90-04-24785-7

Producing Redemption in Amsterdam: Early Modern Yiddish Books in Paratextual PerspectiveBergerShlomo <i>Producing Redemption in Amsterdam: Early Modern Yiddish Books in Paratextual Perspective</i> BrillLeiden, 2013, xx, 234, €101.00ISBN 978-90-04-24785-7

New Chapters in the History of Early Modern Ashkenaz

Shlomo Berger. Producing Redemption in Amsterdam: Early Modern Yiddish Books in Paratextual Perspective. Studies in Jewish History and Culture 37. Boston and Leiden: Brill Academic Publishers, 2013. Pp. xx + 234.Elisheva Carlebach. Palaces of Time: Jewish Calendar and Culture in Early Modern Europe. Cambridge, Mass, and London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2011. Pp. xii + 304.Edward Fram. A Window on Their World: The Court Diaries of Rabbi Hayyim Gundersheim, Frankfurt am Main, 1773-1794. Cincinnati, Ohio: Hebrew Union College Press, 2012. Pp. 653.Debra Kaplan. Beyond Expub ion: Jews, Chrbtians, and Reformation Strasbourg. Stanford Studies in Jewish History and Culture. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2011. Pp. xviii + 254.Robert Liberies. Jews Webome Coffee: Tradition and Innovation in Early Modern Germany. The Tauber Institute Series for Study of European Jewiy. Waltham, Mass.: Brandeis University Press, 2012. Pp. xx + 169.Among cultural turns of second half of twentieth century, translational turn has shaped Jewish studies most profoundly. Analyses of cross-cultural translation and emerging concepts of cultural transfer and entangled histories have led to a new Jewish history, told in relationship to that of surrounding majority.1 While earlier studies that marked emerging historiographic trend in mid-1990s studied Jewish and Christian perceptions of each and JewishChristian interaction expressif verbis? in postmodern age, a notion of cultural embeddedness has become a presumed factor in telling of Jewish history; rather than being an end in itself, cultural entanglement between Jews and the other has become a key to opening yet broader questions. A similar shift now treats Jews as active participants of history, and not its passive objects: Jews were not merely influenced by events or cultural developments in Christian or Muslim worlds but were major historical actors in towns, villages, and lands where they lived, making active use of and forming conditions of life they encountered (Kaplan, p. 6). They were agents of cultural change, partners in cultural encounter (even if politically weak vis-a-vis a dominant other).2 3This review essay discusses a number of recent works on history of early modem Ashkenaz that exemplify this shift. Thrs is not meant to be an exhaustive survey but rather a selection of five works from scholars from United States, Israel, and Europe that I believe are exemplary for their holistic approach to Ashkenazi culture in sixteenth through eighteenth centuries. Each honors a fundamental principal of new cultural history, namely, inclusion of voices of ordinary people and everyday culture. Based on understanding that history of Ashkenazrc Jewry is not limrted to extraordinary moments (Kaplan, p. 7) and texts written by for elite (Fram, p. 70), works under review draw on sources that have hitherto been overlooked: Jewish calendars, Yiddish paratexts, and coffee.The strategy of accessing nonelite through an unexpected source is vrsible in Shlomo Berger's Producing Redemption in Amsterdam: Early Modern Yiddish Books in Paratextual Perspective. Berger analyzes paratexts-texts subsidiary to a book's main text-of Yiddish books produced in Amsterdam, main center of Hebrew book production in seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and distributed throughout Ashkenazi diaspora. Extending new field of paratextology, a subfield of book history, for first time to Jewish books, Berger treats paratexts as a key to understanding Yiddish book production, early modem Yiddish literary corpus, cultural meaning of these books, and their roles in Ashkenazi culture and society. He demonstrates that how books in Ashkenazi vernacular are presented for public consumption tells us something about world of their authors, producers, and readers. …

Science and Yiddish Don't Mix: Really?

Mention the word ‘Yiddish’ and images of literary works—novels and plays, short stories and drama, and works on Jewish history—instantly come to mind. But science? Certainly this was not a subject most East European Jews were interested in—or so we have been led to believe. It thus came to the author as a surprise that books on science have, indeed, been published in Yiddish, sometimes translated from other languages but just as often written originally in Yiddish. These works range from popular exposition of scientific subjects to full-length textbooks intended for use by elementary and secondary students at Jewish schools. The author's interest in this aspect of Yiddish books soon led him to collect them. What he found was a true eye opener.

The Oppenheim Collection and Early Modern Yiddish Books: Prague Yiddish 1550–1750

The Oppenheim Collection and Early Modern Yiddish Books: Prague Yiddish 1550–1750

The First Yiddish Book Printed in Amsterdam: Śefer Mismor Lethode

This is a first approach to the text of Mismor-lethode a strophic retelling of parts of the Bible, first printed in Amsterdam 1644 (which has so far only been the object of short bibliographical notices), highlighting some of its specific typographical, literary and linguistic aspects: • It is a very nice piece of work and inaugurates the renowned tradition of Amsterdam Yiddish typographical works; it is also presented within the output of Amsterdam typesetters whose career is reflected in many later books. • It is remarkable as a late specimen of biblical strophic poetry that makes no use of midrashic elements (perhaps in keeping with the Sephardic influence prevalent in Amsterdam). • Linguistically it is an important document—among other idiosyncrasies— for its use of the all-purpose relative pronoun s2o and for the free usage of final unstressed vowels for reasons of euphony, rhythm and rhyme.