First published in a Yiddish edition in 1958, Profiles of a Lost World is a source of information about Eastern Europe before World War II as well as an touchstone for understanding a rich and complex cultural environment. Hirsz Abramowicz (1881-1960), a prominent Jewish educator, writer and cultural activist, knew that world and wrote about it, and his writings provide an eyewitness account of Jewish life during the first half of the twentieth century. Abramowicz was a witness to war, revolution and major cultural transformations in the Jewish world. His essays, written and originally published in Yiddish between 1920 and 1955, document the local history of Lithuanian Jewry in rural and small-town settings, and in the city of Vilna-the "Jerusalem of Lithuania"-which was a major center of East European Jewish intellectual and cultural life. They shed light on the daily life of Jews and the flourishing of modern Yiddish culture in Eastern Europe during the early 20th century and offer a personal perspective on the rise of Jewish radical politics. The collection incorporates local history of Lithuanian Jewry, shtetl folklore, observations on rural occupations, Jewish education, and life under German occupation during World War I. It also includes a series of profiles of leading social and intellectual Jewish personalities of the author's day, from traditional scholars to revolutionaries. Together the selections provide a blend of social and personal history and a window on a lost world.

Magnetic duo and stars of the Brooklyn food scene, Liz Alpern and Jeffrey Yoskowitz revitalize Old World food traditions for today's modern kitchens in their debut cookbook.

Preliminary Material -- Introduction -- Acknowledgements -- Lithuanian Historical Background -- Origins of Anti-Semitism -- Jewish Life in Lithuania between World Wars -- The Holocaust in Lithuania -- Issues of Compliance and Collaboration -- The Human Dimension -- Why Did it Happen? -- From Black and White to Shades of Grey -- Conclusion -- Bibliography -- Index of Names -- About the Author.

In Yankel's Tavern, Glenn Dynner investigates the role of Jews in tavern-keeping in the Kingdom of Poland between 1815 and the uprising of 1863-4 and its aftermath.

The librarian walks the streets of her beloved Paris. An old lady with a limp and an accent, she is invisible to most. Certainly no one recognizes her as the warrior and revolutionary she was, when again and again she slipped into the Jewish ghetto of German-occupied Vilnius to carry food, clothes, medicine, money, and counterfeit documents to its prisoners. Often she left with letters to deliver, manuscripts to hide, and even sedated children swathed in sacks. In 1944 she was captured by the Gestapo, tortured for twelve days, and deported to Dachau. Through Epistolophilia, Julija Šukys follows the letters and journals—the “life-writing”—of this woman, Ona Šimaitė (1894–1970). A treasurer of words, Šimaitė carefully collected, preserved, and archived the written record of her life, including thousands of letters, scores of diaries, articles, and press clippings. Journeying through these words, Šukys negotiates with the ghost of Šimaitė, beckoning back to life this quiet and worldly heroine—a giant of Holocaust history (one of Yad Vashem’s honored “Righteous Among the Nations”) and yet so little known. The result is at once a mediated self-portrait and a measured perspective on a remarkable life. It reveals the meaning of life-writing, how women write their lives publicly and privately, and how their words attach them—and us—to life.

JewishLithuanian Political Co. Discusses the political cooperation between Jews and Lithuanians in the Tsarist Empire from the last decades of the 19th century until the early 1920s. These years saw the transformation of both Jewish and Lithuanian political life. Within the Jewish community, the previously dominant integrationists were now challenged both by those who believed that the Jews were not a religious but an ethnic or proto-nationalist group and those who believed that only with the abolition of capitalism and the establishment of a socialist state would Jewish integration be possible. Among the Lithuanians, the

World War I marks a huge break in Central European Jewish history. Not only had the violent wartime events destroyed Jewish life and especially the living space of Eastern European Jews, but the impacts of war, the geopolitical change and a radicalization of anti-Semitism also led to a crisis of Jewish identity. Furthermore, during the process of national self-discovery and the establishing of new states the societal position of the Jews and their relationship to the state had to be redefined. These partially violent processes, which were always accompanied by anti-Semitism, evoked Jewish and Gentile debates, in which questions about Jewish loyalty to the old and/or new states as well as concepts of Jewish identity under the new political circumstances were negotiated. This volume collects articles dealing with these Jewish and gentile debates about military service and war memory in Central Europe.

“Anyone who studies nationalism, genocide, mass violence, or war in these regions, from the Enlightenment through the mid-20th century, needs to read [this].”—Central European History Shatterzone of Empires is a comprehensive analysis of interethnic relations, coexistence, and violence in Europe’s eastern borderlands over the past two centuries. In this vast territory, extending from the Baltic to the Black Sea, four major empires with ethnically and religiously diverse populations encountered each other along often changing and contested borders. Examining this geographically widespread, multicultural region at several levels—local, national, transnational, and empire—and through multiple approaches—social, cultural, political, and economic—this volume offers informed and dispassionate analyses of how the many populations of these borderlands managed to coexist in a previous era and how and why the areas eventually descended into violence. An understanding of this specific region will help readers grasp the preconditions of interethnic coexistence and the causes of ethnic violence and war in many of the world's other borderlands, both past and present.

"Among the finest prose stylists in Yiddish literature, David Bergelson (1884-1952) was caught up in many of the twentieth century's most defining events. In 1909 he emerged as a pioneer of modernist prose, observing the slow decay of the Tsarist empire. In 1917 he welcomed the Revolution, but the bloodshed of the ensuing Civil War and the dogmatism of the Bolsheviks drove him to emigration. For more than a decade (1921-1934), he lived in Weimar Germany, travelling extensively in Europe and the United States. Shocked by the Wall Street Crash of 1929, disheartened by the decline of Yiddish culture in the West, and inspired by Soviet promises to create a Jewish republic, Bergelson became a Communist sympathiser and moved towards socialist realism. Returning to the Soviet Union after Hitler's rise to power, Bergelson flourished in a state-sponsored cultural environment in which his work was widely read both in Yiddish and in Russian translation. After Hitler's invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, Bergelson became a prominent member of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, writing extensively about the Holocaust. In the paranoia of the Cold War years, the Stalinist regime accused him of anti-Soviet activities and, after a secret military trial he was executed on 12 August 1952, his 68th birthday. For years, critics have argued that Bergelson produced his best work before the Revolution, and afterwards largely wrote Communist propaganda. David Bergelson: From Modernism to Socialist Realism challenges this view by examining Bergelson's entire oeuvre. The book argues that Bergelson continually reinvented himself as a writer, experimenting with style and narrative technique even under the most severe restrictions of Party dogma. With contributions from an international team of Bergelson experts, the volume offers a full-length biography, the first complete bibliography of Bergelson's work, translations of two of his most influential programmatic articles, and a range of essays dealing with all periods of the writer's life. With the contributions: Joseph Sherman- David Bergelson (1884-1952): A Biography Lev Bergelson- Memories of My Father: The Early Years (1918-1934) Daniela Mantovan- Language and Style in Nokh alemen (1913): Bergelson's Debt to Flaubert Kerstin Hoge- For Children and Adults Alike: Reading Bergelson's 'Children's Stories' (1914-1919) as Narratives of Identity Formation Seth L. Wolitz- Yoysef Shor (1922): Between Two Worlds Sasha Senderovich- In Search of Readership: Bergelson Among the Refugees (1928) Mikhail Krutikov- Narrating the Revolution: From 'Tsugvintn' (1922) to Mides-hadin (1929) Ellen Kellman- Uneasy Patronage: Bergelson's Years at Forverts (1922-1926) Gennady Estraikh- David Bergelson in and on America (1929-1949) Ber Boris Kotlerman- 'Why I am in Favour of Birobidzhan': Bergelson's Fateful Decision (1932) Harriet Murav- Memory and Monument in Baym Dnyepr (1932-1940) David Shneer- From Mourning to Vengeance: Bergelson's Holocaust Journalism (1941-1945) Jeffrey Veidlinger- 'Du lebst, mayn folk': Bergelson's Play Prints Ruveni in Historical Context (1944-1947) Joseph Sherman- 'Jewish Nationalism' in Bergelson's Last Book (1947) Roberta Saltzman- A Bibliography of David Bergelson's Work in Yiddish and English David Bergelson- Appendix A. Belles-lettres and the Social Order (1919) David Bergelson- Appendix B. Three Centres (Characteristics) (1926)"

A history of the Eclectic Medical Institute (EMI), and an account of the history of eclectic medicine, which competed with regular medicine in the 19th century. It recounts the feuds, successes, adversity and ultimate failure of this bastion of freedom in medical thought.