Author: Dan Miron
Publisher: Syracuse University Press
ISBN: 9780815628583
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 436
Book Description
While A Traveler Disguised focused on the rhetoric of the speaking voice or the persona in these classics, the nine essays gathered here concentrate on the artistic reconstruction of the "world" conveyed by that persona. As much as the earlier volume put to rest the conventional understanding of "Mendele the Book-Peddler" as a mere representative of the author, Sh. Y. Abramovitsh, this book invalidates the common views of the literary shtetl as a mere mimetic reflection of the historical Jewish shtetl of Eastern Europe and examines its structure as an autonomous aesthetic construct. These essays dwell particularly on the fictional modalities displayed in some of Sholem Aleichem's major works. They also offer innovative insights into the works of both earlier and later masters such as A. M. Dik, Y. Aksenfeld, Y .Y. Linetski and Sh. Y. Abramovitsh, Y. L. Peretz, I. M. Vaysenberg, Sh. Asch, D. Bergelson, and I. B. Singer.
The Image of the Shtetl and Other Studies of Modern Jewish Literary Imagination
Author: Dan Miron
Publisher: Syracuse University Press
ISBN: 9780815628583
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 436
Book Description
While A Traveler Disguised focused on the rhetoric of the speaking voice or the persona in these classics, the nine essays gathered here concentrate on the artistic reconstruction of the "world" conveyed by that persona. As much as the earlier volume put to rest the conventional understanding of "Mendele the Book-Peddler" as a mere representative of the author, Sh. Y. Abramovitsh, this book invalidates the common views of the literary shtetl as a mere mimetic reflection of the historical Jewish shtetl of Eastern Europe and examines its structure as an autonomous aesthetic construct. These essays dwell particularly on the fictional modalities displayed in some of Sholem Aleichem's major works. They also offer innovative insights into the works of both earlier and later masters such as A. M. Dik, Y. Aksenfeld, Y .Y. Linetski and Sh. Y. Abramovitsh, Y. L. Peretz, I. M. Vaysenberg, Sh. Asch, D. Bergelson, and I. B. Singer.
Publisher: Syracuse University Press
ISBN: 9780815628583
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 436
Book Description
While A Traveler Disguised focused on the rhetoric of the speaking voice or the persona in these classics, the nine essays gathered here concentrate on the artistic reconstruction of the "world" conveyed by that persona. As much as the earlier volume put to rest the conventional understanding of "Mendele the Book-Peddler" as a mere representative of the author, Sh. Y. Abramovitsh, this book invalidates the common views of the literary shtetl as a mere mimetic reflection of the historical Jewish shtetl of Eastern Europe and examines its structure as an autonomous aesthetic construct. These essays dwell particularly on the fictional modalities displayed in some of Sholem Aleichem's major works. They also offer innovative insights into the works of both earlier and later masters such as A. M. Dik, Y. Aksenfeld, Y .Y. Linetski and Sh. Y. Abramovitsh, Y. L. Peretz, I. M. Vaysenberg, Sh. Asch, D. Bergelson, and I. B. Singer.
A Taytsh Manifesto
Author: Saul Noam Zaritt
Publisher: Fordham Univ Press
ISBN: 1531509185
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 154
Book Description
A Taytsh Manifesto calls for a translational paradigm for Yiddish studies and for the study of modern Jewish culture. Saul Noam Zaritt calls for a shift in vocabulary, from Yiddish to taytsh, in order to promote reading strategies that account for the ways texts named as Jewish move between languages and cultures. Yiddish, a moniker that became dominant only in the early twentieth century, means “Jewish” and thus marks the language with a single identity: of and for a Jewish collective. In contrast, this book calls attention to an earlier and, at one time, more common name for the language: taytsh, which initially means “German.” By using the term taytsh, speakers indicated that they were indeed speaking a Germanic language, a language that was not entirely their own. In time, when the word shifted to a verb, taytshn, it came to mean the act of translation. To write or speak in Yiddish is thus to render into taytsh and inhabit the gap between languages. A Taytsh Manifesto highlights the cultural porousness that inheres in taytsh and deploys the term as a paradigm that can be applied to a host of modern Jewish cultural formations. The book reads three corpora in modern Yiddish culture through the lens of translation: Yiddish pulp fiction, also known as shund (trash); the genre of the Yiddish monologue as authored by Sholem Aleichem and other prominent Yiddish writers; and the persistence of Yiddish as a language of vulgarity in contemporary U.S. culture. Together these examples help revise current histories of Yiddish while demonstrating the need for new vocabularies to account for the multidirectionality of Jewish culture. A Taytsh Manifesto develops a model for identifying, in Yiddish and beyond, how cultures intertwine, how they become implicated in world systems and empire, and how they might escape such limiting and oppressive structures.
Publisher: Fordham Univ Press
ISBN: 1531509185
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 154
Book Description
A Taytsh Manifesto calls for a translational paradigm for Yiddish studies and for the study of modern Jewish culture. Saul Noam Zaritt calls for a shift in vocabulary, from Yiddish to taytsh, in order to promote reading strategies that account for the ways texts named as Jewish move between languages and cultures. Yiddish, a moniker that became dominant only in the early twentieth century, means “Jewish” and thus marks the language with a single identity: of and for a Jewish collective. In contrast, this book calls attention to an earlier and, at one time, more common name for the language: taytsh, which initially means “German.” By using the term taytsh, speakers indicated that they were indeed speaking a Germanic language, a language that was not entirely their own. In time, when the word shifted to a verb, taytshn, it came to mean the act of translation. To write or speak in Yiddish is thus to render into taytsh and inhabit the gap between languages. A Taytsh Manifesto highlights the cultural porousness that inheres in taytsh and deploys the term as a paradigm that can be applied to a host of modern Jewish cultural formations. The book reads three corpora in modern Yiddish culture through the lens of translation: Yiddish pulp fiction, also known as shund (trash); the genre of the Yiddish monologue as authored by Sholem Aleichem and other prominent Yiddish writers; and the persistence of Yiddish as a language of vulgarity in contemporary U.S. culture. Together these examples help revise current histories of Yiddish while demonstrating the need for new vocabularies to account for the multidirectionality of Jewish culture. A Taytsh Manifesto develops a model for identifying, in Yiddish and beyond, how cultures intertwine, how they become implicated in world systems and empire, and how they might escape such limiting and oppressive structures.
Jews and Crime in Medieval Europe
Author: Ephraim Shoham-Steiner
Publisher: Wayne State University Press
ISBN: 0814345603
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 510
Book Description
The intended readership goes beyond scholars and students of medieval Jewish studies, medieval European history, and crime in pre-modern society.
Publisher: Wayne State University Press
ISBN: 0814345603
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 510
Book Description
The intended readership goes beyond scholars and students of medieval Jewish studies, medieval European history, and crime in pre-modern society.
Yiddish
Author: S.A. Birnbaum
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
ISBN: 1442665343
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 540
Book Description
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.
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
ISBN: 1442665343
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 540
Book Description
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.
Yiddish in Israel
Author: Rachel Rojanski
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253045185
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 338
Book Description
Yiddish in Israel: A History challenges the commonly held view that Yiddish was suppressed or even banned by Israeli authorities for ideological reasons, offering instead a radical new interpretation of the interaction between Yiddish and Israeli Hebrew cultures. Author Rachel Rojanski tells the compelling and yet unknown story of how Yiddish, the most widely used Jewish language in the pre-Holocaust world, fared in Zionist Israel, the land of Hebrew. Following Yiddish in Israel from the proclamation of the State until today, Rojanski reveals that although Israeli leadership made promoting Hebrew a high priority, it did not have a definite policy on Yiddish. The language's varying fortune through the years was shaped by social and political developments, and the cultural atmosphere in Israel. Public perception of the language and its culture, the rise of identity politics, and political and financial interests all played a part. Using a wide range of archival sources, newspapers, and Yiddish literature, Rojanski follows the Israeli Yiddish scene through the history of the Yiddish press, Yiddish theater, early Israeli Yiddish literature, and high Yiddish culture. With compassion, she explores the tensions during Israel's early years between Yiddish writers and activists and Israel's leaders, most of whom were themselves Eastern European Jews balancing their love of Yiddish with their desire to promote Hebrew. Finally Rojanski follows Yiddish into the 21st century, telling the story of the revived interest in Yiddish among Israeli-born children of Holocaust survivors as they return to the language of their parents.
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253045185
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 338
Book Description
Yiddish in Israel: A History challenges the commonly held view that Yiddish was suppressed or even banned by Israeli authorities for ideological reasons, offering instead a radical new interpretation of the interaction between Yiddish and Israeli Hebrew cultures. Author Rachel Rojanski tells the compelling and yet unknown story of how Yiddish, the most widely used Jewish language in the pre-Holocaust world, fared in Zionist Israel, the land of Hebrew. Following Yiddish in Israel from the proclamation of the State until today, Rojanski reveals that although Israeli leadership made promoting Hebrew a high priority, it did not have a definite policy on Yiddish. The language's varying fortune through the years was shaped by social and political developments, and the cultural atmosphere in Israel. Public perception of the language and its culture, the rise of identity politics, and political and financial interests all played a part. Using a wide range of archival sources, newspapers, and Yiddish literature, Rojanski follows the Israeli Yiddish scene through the history of the Yiddish press, Yiddish theater, early Israeli Yiddish literature, and high Yiddish culture. With compassion, she explores the tensions during Israel's early years between Yiddish writers and activists and Israel's leaders, most of whom were themselves Eastern European Jews balancing their love of Yiddish with their desire to promote Hebrew. Finally Rojanski follows Yiddish into the 21st century, telling the story of the revived interest in Yiddish among Israeli-born children of Holocaust survivors as they return to the language of their parents.
Joseph Opatoshu
Author: Sabine Koller
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351192019
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 314
Book Description
"At the turn of the twentieth century East European Jews underwent a radical cultural transformation, which turned a traditional religious community into a modern nation, struggling to find its place in the world. An important figure in this 'Jewish Renaissance' was the American-Yiddish writer and activist Joseph Opatoshu (1886-1954). Born into a Hassidic family, he spent his early childhood in a forest in Central Poland, was educated in Russia and studied engineering in France and America. In New York, where he emigrated in 1907, he joined the revitalizing modernist group Di yunge - The Young. His early novels painted a vivid picture of social turmoil and inner psychological conflict, using modernist devices of multiple voices and mixed linguistic idioms. He acquired international fame by his historical novels about the Polish uprising of 1863 and the expulsion of Jews from Regensburg in 1519. Though he was translated into several languages, Yiddish writing always fostered his ideas and ideals of Jewish identity. Although he occupied a key position in the transnational Jewish culture during his lifetime, Opatoshu has until recently been neglected by scholars. This volume brings together literary specialists and historians working in Jewish and Slavic Studies, who analyse Opatoshu's quest for modern Jewish identity from different perspectives. The contributors are Shlomo Berger (Amsterdam), Marc Caplan (Baltimore, MD), Gennady Estraikh (New York), Roland Gruschka (Heidelberg), Ellie Kellman (Boston), Sabine Koller (Regensburg), Mikhail Krutikov (Ann Arbor, MI), Joshua Lambert (Amherst, MA), Harriet Murav (Urbana-Champaign, IL), Avrom Novershtern (Jerusalem), Dan Opatoshu (Los Angeles), Eugenia Prokop-Janiec (Krakow), Jan Schwarz (Lund), Astrid Starck (Basel/Mulhouse), Karolina Szymaniak (Krakow) and Evita Wiecki (Munich)."
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351192019
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 314
Book Description
"At the turn of the twentieth century East European Jews underwent a radical cultural transformation, which turned a traditional religious community into a modern nation, struggling to find its place in the world. An important figure in this 'Jewish Renaissance' was the American-Yiddish writer and activist Joseph Opatoshu (1886-1954). Born into a Hassidic family, he spent his early childhood in a forest in Central Poland, was educated in Russia and studied engineering in France and America. In New York, where he emigrated in 1907, he joined the revitalizing modernist group Di yunge - The Young. His early novels painted a vivid picture of social turmoil and inner psychological conflict, using modernist devices of multiple voices and mixed linguistic idioms. He acquired international fame by his historical novels about the Polish uprising of 1863 and the expulsion of Jews from Regensburg in 1519. Though he was translated into several languages, Yiddish writing always fostered his ideas and ideals of Jewish identity. Although he occupied a key position in the transnational Jewish culture during his lifetime, Opatoshu has until recently been neglected by scholars. This volume brings together literary specialists and historians working in Jewish and Slavic Studies, who analyse Opatoshu's quest for modern Jewish identity from different perspectives. The contributors are Shlomo Berger (Amsterdam), Marc Caplan (Baltimore, MD), Gennady Estraikh (New York), Roland Gruschka (Heidelberg), Ellie Kellman (Boston), Sabine Koller (Regensburg), Mikhail Krutikov (Ann Arbor, MI), Joshua Lambert (Amherst, MA), Harriet Murav (Urbana-Champaign, IL), Avrom Novershtern (Jerusalem), Dan Opatoshu (Los Angeles), Eugenia Prokop-Janiec (Krakow), Jan Schwarz (Lund), Astrid Starck (Basel/Mulhouse), Karolina Szymaniak (Krakow) and Evita Wiecki (Munich)."
Encyclopedia of Jewish Folklore and Traditions
Author: Raphael Patai
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317471709
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 1641
Book Description
This multicultural reference work on Jewish folklore, legends, customs, and other elements of folklife is the first of its kind.
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317471709
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 1641
Book Description
This multicultural reference work on Jewish folklore, legends, customs, and other elements of folklife is the first of its kind.
Hebrew Gothic
Author: Karen Grumberg
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253042291
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 328
Book Description
“Makes a persuasive argument” that gothic ideas “play a vital role in how Hebrew writers have confronted history, culture, and politics.” —Robert Alter, author of Hebrew and Modernity Sinister tales written since the early twentieth century by the foremost Hebrew authors, including S.Y. Agnon, Leah Goldberg, and Amos Oz, reveal a darkness at the foundation of Hebrew culture. The ghosts of a murdered Talmud scholar and his kidnapped bride rise from their graves for a nocturnal dance of death; a girl hidden by a count in a secret chamber of an Eastern European castle emerges to find that, unbeknownst to her, World War II ended years earlier; a man recounts the act of incest that would shape a trajectory of personal and national history. Reading these works together with central British and American gothic texts, Karen Grumberg illustrates that modern Hebrew literature has regularly appropriated key gothic ideas to help conceptualize the Jewish relationship to the past and, more broadly, to time. She explores why these authors were drawn to the gothic, originally a European mode associated with antisemitism, and how they use it to challenge assumptions about power and powerlessness, vulnerability and violence, and to shape modern Hebrew culture. Grumberg provides an original perspective on Hebrew literary engagement with history and sheds new light on the tensions that continue to characterize contemporary Israeli cultural and political rhetoric.
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253042291
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 328
Book Description
“Makes a persuasive argument” that gothic ideas “play a vital role in how Hebrew writers have confronted history, culture, and politics.” —Robert Alter, author of Hebrew and Modernity Sinister tales written since the early twentieth century by the foremost Hebrew authors, including S.Y. Agnon, Leah Goldberg, and Amos Oz, reveal a darkness at the foundation of Hebrew culture. The ghosts of a murdered Talmud scholar and his kidnapped bride rise from their graves for a nocturnal dance of death; a girl hidden by a count in a secret chamber of an Eastern European castle emerges to find that, unbeknownst to her, World War II ended years earlier; a man recounts the act of incest that would shape a trajectory of personal and national history. Reading these works together with central British and American gothic texts, Karen Grumberg illustrates that modern Hebrew literature has regularly appropriated key gothic ideas to help conceptualize the Jewish relationship to the past and, more broadly, to time. She explores why these authors were drawn to the gothic, originally a European mode associated with antisemitism, and how they use it to challenge assumptions about power and powerlessness, vulnerability and violence, and to shape modern Hebrew culture. Grumberg provides an original perspective on Hebrew literary engagement with history and sheds new light on the tensions that continue to characterize contemporary Israeli cultural and political rhetoric.
Uprooting the Diaspora
Author: Sarah A. Cramsey
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253064988
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 462
Book Description
In Uprooting the Diaspora, Sarah Cramsey explores how the Jewish citizens rooted in interwar Poland and Czechoslovakia became the ideal citizenry for a post–World War II Jewish state in the Middle East. She asks, how did new interpretations of Jewish belonging emerge and gain support amongst Jewish and non-Jewish decision makers exiled from wartime east central Europe and the powerbrokers surrounding them? Usually, the creation of the State of Israel is cast as a story that begins with Herzl and is brought to fulfillment by the Holocaust. To reframe this trajectory, Cramsey draws on a vast array of historical sources to examine what she calls a "transnational conversation" carried out by a small but influential coterie of Allied statesmen, diplomats in international organizations, and Jewish leaders who decided that the overall disentangling of populations in postwar east central Europe demanded the simultaneous intellectual and logistical embrace of a Jewish homeland in Palestine as a territorial nationalist project. Uprooting the Diaspora slows down the chronology between 1936 and 1946 to show how individuals once invested in multi-ethnic visions of diasporic Jewishness within east central Europe came to define Jewishness primarily in ethnic terms. This revolution in thinking about Jewish belonging combined with a sweeping change in international norms related to population transfers and accelerated, deliberate postwar work on the ground in the region to further uproot Czechoslovak and Polish Jews from their prewar homes.
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253064988
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 462
Book Description
In Uprooting the Diaspora, Sarah Cramsey explores how the Jewish citizens rooted in interwar Poland and Czechoslovakia became the ideal citizenry for a post–World War II Jewish state in the Middle East. She asks, how did new interpretations of Jewish belonging emerge and gain support amongst Jewish and non-Jewish decision makers exiled from wartime east central Europe and the powerbrokers surrounding them? Usually, the creation of the State of Israel is cast as a story that begins with Herzl and is brought to fulfillment by the Holocaust. To reframe this trajectory, Cramsey draws on a vast array of historical sources to examine what she calls a "transnational conversation" carried out by a small but influential coterie of Allied statesmen, diplomats in international organizations, and Jewish leaders who decided that the overall disentangling of populations in postwar east central Europe demanded the simultaneous intellectual and logistical embrace of a Jewish homeland in Palestine as a territorial nationalist project. Uprooting the Diaspora slows down the chronology between 1936 and 1946 to show how individuals once invested in multi-ethnic visions of diasporic Jewishness within east central Europe came to define Jewishness primarily in ethnic terms. This revolution in thinking about Jewish belonging combined with a sweeping change in international norms related to population transfers and accelerated, deliberate postwar work on the ground in the region to further uproot Czechoslovak and Polish Jews from their prewar homes.
Enforced Marginality
Author: Bluma Goldstein
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520249682
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 233
Book Description
Explores the problem of abandoned Jewish wives, or agunes ("chained wives") - women who under Jewish law could not obtain a divorce and of the men who deserted them. This book also explores representations of abandoned wives while tracing the demographic movements of Jews in the West. It describes the dynamics of power between men and women
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520249682
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 233
Book Description
Explores the problem of abandoned Jewish wives, or agunes ("chained wives") - women who under Jewish law could not obtain a divorce and of the men who deserted them. This book also explores representations of abandoned wives while tracing the demographic movements of Jews in the West. It describes the dynamics of power between men and women