You don't need to be Jewish to love Levy's rye bread, nor do you need to read Yiddish to appreciate these wise tales. This engaging collection offers access to modern works--translated for the first time into English--for anyone who appreciates a well-told story rich with timeless wisdom. A year-round book for families. Includes a comprehensive introduction on Yiddish culture. Largely overlooked or forgotten, these hidden treasures from the early and middle twentieth century by some of the most respected Yiddish writers of their time—including Jacob Kreplak, Moyshe Nadir, and Rachel Shabad—remain surprisingly resonant for a contemporary audience. Folktales can be scary, as wrongdoers often get their comeuppance in unsuspected or even macabre ways, but the reinvigoration of values sometimes perceived as quaint makes for a stimulating read. In this collection you’ll meet a king who loves honey so much that instead of ruling over his people, he licks honey all day. You’ll ponder the conundrum of the moon, who longs for a playmate—but where to find a child who isn’t fast asleep at night? You’ll enter a forest in which the king of mushrooms and the queen of ants coexist autonomously but face the same threat: the little hands and trampling feet of children at play. And you’ll learn how flavoring food with the salt from tears can pose a challenging dilemma. "Collected and arranged with the lightest of touches by David Stromberg, this gathering of little-known Yiddish tales enchants with an always-new old-world magic. In the Land of Happy Tears is utterly and actively refreshing, for the wide-eyed child in every grownup and children wising up everywhere." —poet, translator, and MacArthur Prize winner Peter Cole

Winner, 2021 Reference & Bibliography Award in the 'Reference' Section, given by the Association of Jewish Libraries An unprecedented treasury of Yiddish children’s stories and poems enhanced with original illustrations While there has been a recent boom in Jewish literacy and learning within the US, few resources exist to enable American Jews to experience the rich primary sources of Yiddish culture. Stepping into this void, Miriam Udel has crafted an exquisite collection: Honey on the Page offers a feast of beguiling original translations of stories and poems for children. Arranged thematically—from school days to the holidays—the book takes readers from Jewish holidays and history to folktales and fables, from stories of humanistic ethics to multi-generational family sagas. Featuring many works that are appearing in English for the first time, and written by both prominent and lesser-known authors, this anthology spans the Yiddish-speaking globe—drawing from materials published in Eastern Europe, New York, and Latin America from the 1910s, during the interwar period, and up through the 1970s. With its vast scope, Honey on the Page offers a cornucopia of delights to families, individuals and educators seeking literature that speaks to Jewish children about their religious, cultural, and ethical heritage. Complemented by whimsical, humorous illustrations by Paula Cohen, an acclaimed children’s book illustrator, Udel’s evocative translations of Yiddish stories and poetry will delight young and older readers alike.

This book turns our search for intimacy on its head, suggesting that our way to creativity in love may be through idiocy. The book takes its readers on a journey through the work of Plato and Melanie Klein in theorizing the dynamics of intimacy while exploring some of the paradoxical aspects of love in works by Fyodor Dostoevsky and French filmmaker Catherine Breillat. Revisiting core concepts of how we think about relationships, the book lays out a model for relational breakdown—the idiot lovecycle—in which we are constantly in the flux between seeing ourselves and seeing the other. Effecting close readings of literary, philosophical, and psychoanalytical sources, the book draws on parallels between these fields of inquiry while tracing their shared intellectual genealogy, suggesting that the tension between Narcissus and Cassandra, with its inherent conflicts, is also the space through which love emerges from intimacy.

"These stories follow the author's life in reverse, from Israel in the 1950s to his experiences in the postwar Soviet Union and his childhood in Poland"--

More than a quarter of a century ago, Leo Rosten published the first comprehensive and hilariously entertaining lexicon of the colorful and deeply expressive language of Yiddish. Said “to give body and soul to the Yiddish language,” The Joys of Yiddish went on to become an indispensable tool for writers, journalists, politicians, and students, as well as a perennial bestseller for three decades. Rosten described his book as “a relaxed lexicon of Yiddish, Hebrew, and Yinglish words often encountered in English, plus dozens that ought to be, with serendipitous excursions into Jewish humor, habits, holidays, history, religion, ceremonies, folklore, and cuisine–the whole generously garnished with stories, anecdotes, epigrams, Talmudic quotations, folk sayings, and jokes.” To this day, it is considered the seminal work on Yiddish in America–a true classic and a staple in the libraries of Jews and non-Jews alike. With the recent renaissance of interest in Yiddish, and in keeping with a language that embodies the variety and vibrancy of life itself, The New Joys of Yiddish brings Leo Rosten’s masterful work up to date. Revised for the first time by Lawrence Bush in close consultation with Rosten’s daughters, it retains the spirit of the original–with its wonderful jokes, tidbits of cultural history, Talmudic and Biblical references, and tips on pronunciation–and enhances it with hundreds of new entries, thoughtful commentary on how Yiddish has evolved over the years, and an invaluable new English-to-Yiddish index. In addition, The New Joys of Yiddish includes wondrous and amusing illustrations by renowned artist R.O. Blechman.

"The exile book of...anthology series, number six."

Itsik Malpesh was born the son of a goose-plucking factory manager during the Russian pogroms - his life saved on the night it began by the young daughter of a kosher slaughterer. Or so he believes… Exiled during the war, Itsik eventually finds himself in New York, working as a typesetter and writing poetry to his muse, the butcher's daughter, whom he is sure he will never see again. But it is here in New York that Itsik is unexpectedly reunited with his greatest love - and, later, his greatest enemy - with results both serendipitous and tragic. His story is recounted in his memoirs thanks to the most unlikely of translators - a twenty-one-year-old Boston Catholic college student who, in meeting Itsik, has embarked upon a great lie that will define his future and the most extraordinary friendship he'll ever know.

Narrative Faith engages with the dynamics of doubt and faith to consider how literary works with complex structures explore different moral visions. The study describes a literary petite histoire that problematizes faith in two ways—both in the themes presented in the story, and the strategies used to tell that story—leading readers to doubt the narrators and their narratives. Starting with Dostoevsky’s Demons (1872), a literary work that has captivated and confounded critics and readers for well over a century, the study examines Albert Camus’s The Plague (1947) and Isaac Bashevis Singer’s The Penitent (1973/83), works by twentieth-century authors who similarly intensify questions of faith through narrators that generate doubt. The two postwar novelists share parallel preoccupations with Dostoevsky’s art and similar personal philosophies, while their works constitute two literary responses to the cataclysm of the Second World War—extending questions of faith into the current era. The book’s last section looks beyond narrative inquiry to consider themes of confession and revision that appear in all three novels and open onto horizons beyond faith and doubt—to hope.

The author describes the remarkable similarities among the Jewish diaspora throughout the world -- from those living in Germany a generation after the Holocaust, to those in Argentina, Ireland, and the Ukraine.