Students and teachers of Yiddish studies will enjoy this innovative collection.

Fewer than one percent of all books written and published in Yiddish have been translated into English. Those that have give us a window into a culture that celebrates the full range of the human condition. This collection of stories, poems and folk songs offers work by Mendel Mykher-Sforim, Yitzhak Leib Peretz and Sholom Aleichem, the three figures who revitalised the language and its literature, as well as works by Shimon An-ski, I.B. Singer and others.

One of the great Yiddish scholars of the twentieth century, S.A. Birnbaum (1891–1989) published Yiddish: A Survey and a Grammar in 1979 towards the end of a long and prolific career. Unlike other grammars and study guides for English speakers, Yiddish: A Survey and a Grammar fully describes the Southern Yiddish dialect and pronunciation used today by most native speakers, while also taking into account Northern Yiddish and Standard Yiddish, associated with secularist and academic circles. The book also includes specimens of Yiddish prose and poetic texts spanning eight centuries, sampling Yiddish literature from the medieval to modern eras across its vast European geographic expanse. The second edition of Yiddish: A Survey and a Grammar makes this classic text available again to students, teachers, and Yiddish-speakers alike. Featuring three new introductory essays by noted Yiddish scholars, a corrected version of the text, and an expanded and updated bibliography, this book is essential reading for any serious student of Yiddish and its culture.

In print for over 20 years, Choosing Judaism has become a classic guide for individuals considering conversion. By sharing her own story, Lydia Kukoff creates a remarkable work about what it means to make this significant choice. Years after her own conversion she continues to question, grow, and learn, and encourages others to do the same.

“The tongue is the pen of the heart/Di tsung iz der feder fun di hartz” and more sayings that sum up Jewish character and culture from generations past. Decade after decade, Yiddish proverbs continue to capture the humor, warmth, and traditions of Jewish life. Now, the beloved Yiddish Wisdom has been expanded with even more proverbs and fresh illustrations to be cherished by a new generation. With more than 150 folk sayings translated in Yiddish and English—from the whimsical and witty (Dress up a broom and it will also look nice/Az men batziert a bezem iz er oich shain) to the poignant (When one must, one can/Az me muz, ken men) and practical (When you look to the heights, hold on to your hat/Az du kukst oif hoicheh zachen, halt tsu dos hitl)—this treasured volume is the perfect gift for any celebration.

In these sixteen stories, available in English for the first time, prize-winning author Yenta Mash traces an arc across continents, across upheavals and regime changes, and across the phases of a woman's life. Mash's protagonists are often in transit, poised "on the landing" on their way to or from somewhere else. In imaginative, poignant, and relentlessly honest prose, translated from the Yiddish by Ellen Cassedy, Mash documents the lost world of Jewish Bessarabia, the texture of daily life behind the Iron Curtain in Soviet Moldova, and the challenges of assimilation in Israel. On the Landing opens by inviting us to join a woman making her way through her ruined hometown, recalling the colorful customs of yesteryear—and the night when everything changed. We then travel into the Soviet gulag, accompanying women prisoners into the fearsome forests of Siberia. In postwar Soviet Moldova, we see how the Jewish community rebuilds itself. On the move once more, we join refugees struggling to find their place in Israel. Finally, a late-life romance brings a blossoming of joy. Drawing on a lifetime of repeated uprooting, Mash offers an intimate perch from which to explore little-known corners of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. A master chronicler of exile, she makes a major contribution to the literature of immigration and resilience, adding her voice to those of Jhumpa Lahiri, W. G. Sebald, André Aciman, and Viet Thanh Nguyen. Mash's literary oeuvre is a brave achievement, and her work is urgently relevant today as displaced people seek refuge across the globe.

Yiddish: Biography of a Language presents the story of the foundational vernacular of Ashkenazi Jews, from its origins to the present, spoken around the world. This book examines the uses of Yiddish and values invested in it to trace the dynamic interrelation of the language, its speakers, and their cultures.

Paul Kriwaczek begins this illuminating and immensely pleasurable chronicle of Yiddish civilization during the Roman empire, when Jewish culture first spread to Europe. We see the burgeoning exile population disperse, as its notable diplomats, artists and thinkers make their mark in far-flung cities and found a self-governing Yiddish world. By its late-medieval heyday, this economically successful, intellectually adventurous, and self-aware society stretched from the Baltic to the Black Sea. Kriwaczek traces, too, the slow decline of Yiddish culture in Europe and Russia, and highlights fresh offshoots in the New World.Combining family anecdote, travelogue, original research, and a keen understanding of Yiddish art and literature, Kriwaczek gives us an exceptional portrait of a culture which, though nearly extinguished, has an influential radiance still.

A momentous and diverse anthology of the influences and inspirations of Yiddish voices in America—radical, dangerous, and seductive, but also sweet, generous, and full of life—edited by award-winning authors and scholars Ilan Stavans and Josh Lambert. Is it possible to conceive of the American diet without bagels? Or Star Trek without Mr. Spock? Are the creatures in Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are based on Holocaust survivors? And how has Yiddish, a language without a country, influenced Hollywood? These and other questions are explored in this stunning and rich anthology of the interplay of Yiddish and American culture, edited by award-winning authors and scholars Ilan Stavans and Josh Lambert. It starts with the arrival of Ashkenazi immigrants to New York City’s Lower East Side and follows Yiddish as it moves into Hollywood, Broadway, literature, politics, and resistance. We take deep dives into cuisine, language, popular culture, and even Yiddish in the other Americas, including Canada, Argentina, Cuba, Mexico, and Colombia. The book presents a bountiful menu of genres: essays, memoir, song, letters, poems, recipes, cartoons, conversations, and much more. Authors include Nobel Prize–winner Isaac Bashevis Singer and luminaries such as Grace Paley, Cynthia Ozick, Chaim Grade, Michael Chabon, Abraham Cahan, Sophie Tucker, Blume Lempel, Irving Howe, Paula Vogel, and Liana Finck. Readers will laugh and cry as they delve into personal stories of assimilation and learn about people from a diverse variety of backgrounds, Jewish and not, who have made the language their own. The Yiddish saying states: Der mentsh trakht un got lakht. Man plans and God laughs. How Yiddish Changed America and How America Changed Yiddish illustrates how those plans are full of zest, dignity, and tremendous humanity. Most of all, the book shows us that Yiddish, far from being an endangered language, is more vibrant than ever. Praise for How Yiddish Changed America and How America Changed Yiddish: “A wide-ranging, eclectic anthology of work by Yiddish writers. Stavans and Yiddish Book Center academic director Lambert have assembled an impressive collection of essays, fiction, drama, memoir, poetry, cartoons, and interviews, all showing how ‘Yiddish is so deeply woven into the fabric of the United States that it can sometimes be difficult to recognize how much it has transformed the world we live in today.’... Among all these are some stunners—e.g., ‘Oedipus in Brooklyn,’ a story by Blume Lempel (1907-1999) that begins with the line, ‘Sylvia was no Jocasta.’ Emma Goldman (1869-1940) writes fiercely about marriage, which she compares to an ‘iron yoke.’ In a poem about Coney Island, Victor Packer (1897-1958) writes, ‘Beauty and crudity / Go hand in hand and / Launch a united front / Right there are on the sand.’ [Cynthia] Ozick (b. 1928) compares Sholem Aleichem to Dickens, Twain, and Will Rogers. ‘He was a popular presence, and stupendously so. His lectures and readings were mobbed; he was a household friend; he was cherished as a family valuable.’ For readers unfamiliar with Yiddish writing, a revelation; for readers and aficionados of the language, a treasure.” —Kirkus Reviews, Starred Review “For many people, this will be a poignant, surprising, and engrossing introduction to the epic survival story of a singular culture, requiring no foreknowledge of Yiddish, by two of the field's luminaries. For those of us whose grandparents spoke and understood, and whose parents only understood—no need to explain that we do neither—this book is the way back to a language that once meant everything.” —Boris Fishman, author of A Replacement Life and Savage Feast “This volume is not a chronological exploration of the Yiddish language in America. Instead, the editors offer portions of some of the major works of Yiddish literature, poetry, comics, and political thought, by writers including Isaac Bashevis Singer, Chaim Grade, Cynthia Ozick, and Sophie Tucker, among others. A delightful chapter concentrates on culinary offerings with some recipes included. Finally, a fascinating chapter focuses on the influence of Yiddish in Canada, Argentina, Cuba, Mexico, and Columbia, offering a glimpse of Yiddishkeit outside Eurocentric views. VERDICT A wonderful compilation sure to please new and old lovers of Yiddish culture, Jewish history, and linguistics.” —Library Journal “Who could resist the lure of a jar of kosher dills on a bright yellow book cover? Not I. In addition to the pickles what the cover promised was a certainty that the work represented on its pages, between essays, fiction, poems, cartoons, etc., would be co-chosen by the indefatigable Ilan Stavans, whose work I have followed for years. Divided into six parts, starting with ‘Politics and Possibilities’ and ending with ‘The Other Americas,’ one cannot help but be amazed by the breadth of Yiddish documents that have been found and preserved from the past, while marveling at the more contemporary writers who have added richness and are keeping Yiddish alive. This book is utterly fascinating and a true cultural artifact.” —Lucy Kogler, Literary Hub “Stavans and Lambert, both accomplished scholars, aspire to something far more substantial than the Yiddishisms and Jewish jokes that have come to be associated with Yiddishkayt in American pop culture…. [T]he reader is offered an astonishingly rich and diverse selection of poems, stories, memoirs, essays, plays, letters, conversations, recipes and reminiscences, as well as drawings, cartoons and posters by Yiddish artists, each one refracting a different point of view and a different point of light.” —Jonathan Kirsch, Jewish Journal

After the Holocaust’s near complete destruction of European Yiddish cultural centers, the Yiddish language was largely viewed as a remnant of the past, tragically eradicated in its prime. In Survivors and Exiles: Yiddish Culture after the Holocaust, Jan Schwarz reveals that, on the contrary, Yiddish culture in the two and a half decades after the Holocaust was in dynamic flux. Yiddish writers and cultural organizations maintained a staggering level of activity in fostering publications and performances, collecting archival and historical materials, and launching young literary talents. Schwarz traces the transition from the Old World to the New through the works of seven major Yiddish writers—including well-known figures (Isaac Bashevis Singer, Avrom Sutzkever, Yankev Glatshteyn, and Chaim Grade) and some who are less well known (Leib Rochman, Aaron Zeitlin, and Chava Rosenfarb). The first section, Ground Zero, presents writings forged by the crucible of ghettos and concentration camps in Vilna, Lodz, and Minsk-Mazowiecki. Subsequent sections, Transnational Ashkenaz and Yiddish Letters in New York, examine Yiddish culture behind the Iron Curtain, in Israel and the Americas. Two appendixes list Yiddish publications in the book series Dos poylishe yidntum (published in Buenos Aires, 1946–66) and offer transliterations of Yiddish quotes. Survivors and Exiles charts a transnational post-Holocaust network in which the conflicting trends of fragmentation and globalization provided a context for Yiddish literature and artworks of great originality. Schwarz includes a wealth of examples and illustrations from the works under discussion, as well as photographs of creators, making this volume not only a critical commentary on Yiddish culture but also an anthology of sorts. Readers interested in Yiddish studies, Holocaust studies, and modern Jewish studies will find Survivors and Exiles a compelling contribution to these fields.