List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Maps
Introduction
1 Bist a Yid?
Roots schmoots!
Nostalgie de la boue
2 The Jews of Rome
A basket and a truss of hay
3 From the Mediterranean to the Baltic
As strange as a circumcised unicorn
Sennan and zippan
4 The Remaking of Western Europe
Charles’s elephant
New borders, new allegiances
Drang nach osten
5 At the Crossroads
In every castle a king
A blessing upon mieszko, king of poland
6 The New Yiddish World
The language
The literature
The religion
The scholarly tradition
7 Political Consolidation
Landowners, merchants, artisans, servants
At the jewish inn
8 The Reformation
Hussites
Luther
Now a miracle happened
9 The Yiddish Renaissance
Cracow
Prague
Dovid gans
10 Wide Horizons
Wealth and honour
The great divide
11 The Deluge
The cossacks
Poverty and disgrace
12 Decline . . .
Who permits the forbidden
The holy creed of edom
The famous ba’al shem tov,
May his light long shine
Oppose them strongly
13 . . . and Fall
The “jewish problem”
Words that fall on us like lashes
Shakespearean tragedy
14 A Winter Flowering
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Paul Kriwaczek was born in Vienna in 1937 and, with his parents, narrowly escaped the Nazis in 1939, fleeing first to Switzerland and then to England. He grew up in London and graduated from London Hospital Medical College. After several years spent working and traveling in the Middle East, Central Asia, and Africa, he joined the BBC, where he spent the next quarter of a century as a program producer and filmmaker. Since leaving television in the 1990s, he has devoted himself to writing full-time, catching up on the unfinished business of a life spent exploring places, times, and ideas. He is married and lives in London.
“A highly enjoyable and surprisingly positive account of how Jewish culture helped shape European history and vice versa.” –The Sunday Telegraph “An outstanding survey. . . . Kriwaczek tracks the origins, flowering, and destruction of this unique, vibrant, and tenacious culture with a fine mixture of pride, regret, and eloquence.” –Booklist“Evocative and precise. . . . An enjoyable narrative that captures the intricacies of a very complicated history.”–Publishers Weekly“Informative and very entertaining . . . conjures up and re-creates baroque images and marvelous set pieces of feverish activity, long lost towns and shtetls [as well as] wonderful pictures of lost communities of Jews.”–The Irish Times
Kriwaczek, the British author of In Search of Zarathustra, has written a warm, anecdotal, and captivating account of the story of Yiddish (an amalgam of many languages, including German, Hebrew, and Aramaic), the 1000-year-old language that served as the mother tongue for central and eastern European Jews (also known as Ashkenazi Jewry). Although Yiddish is spoken by only a minority of Jews today, Kriwaczek believes that many people view Yiddish from the wrong end of the telescope and, sadly, perceive it as a language headed for extinction. The author tries to show a brighter side of Yiddish by chronicling the great achievements of Yiddish speakers through the ages. The book is not a dry study of the etymological growth of Yiddish; nor is it a scholarly study based on original research. It is popular history at its best, and it is recommended for medium and large libraries. Dovid Katz's Words on Fire: The Unfinished Story of Yiddish is probably more authoritative, but libraries would do well to own both books as they complement each other.-Paul Kaplan, Lake Villa Dist. Lib., IL Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.
"A highly enjoyable and surprisingly positive account of how Jewish culture helped shape European history and vice versa." -The Sunday Telegraph "An outstanding survey. . . . Kriwaczek tracks the origins, flowering, and destruction of this unique, vibrant, and tenacious culture with a fine mixture of pride, regret, and eloquence." -Booklist"Evocative and precise. . . . An enjoyable narrative that captures the intricacies of a very complicated history."-Publishers Weekly"Informative and very entertaining . . . conjures up and re-creates baroque images and marvelous set pieces of feverish activity, long lost towns and shtetls [as well as] wonderful pictures of lost communities of Jews."-The Irish Times
|
Ask a Question About this Product More... |
|
