Yiddish Language

Here is the remarkable story of how this humble language took vigorous root in Eastern European shtetls and in the Jewish quarters of cities across Europe; how it achieved a rich literary flowering between the wars in Europe and America; how it was rejected by emancipated Jews; and how it fell victim to the Holocaust. And also how, in yet another twist of destiny, Yiddish today is becoming the darling of academia. Yiddish is a history as story; a tale of flesh-and-blood people with manic humor.

At the end of the 19th century, Jewish writers began writing in Yiddish and creating for the first time popular literature that brought alive the small dramas, struggles, and joys of ordinary life. Sholem Aleichem was one of the very few modern writers who spoke for an entire people. This collection of stories includes the title piece and seven other tales.

Centuries ago in middle Europe, a coded language appeared, scrawled in graffiti and spoken only by people in the know. This hybrid language, dubbed Rotwelsch, facilitated survival for people in flight - whether escaping persecution or just down on their luck. It was a language of the road associated with vagabonds, travelers, Jews, and thieves that blended words from Yiddish, Hebrew, German, Romani, Czech, and other European languages and was rich in expressions for police, jail, or experiencing trouble, such as being in a pickle. This renegade language unsettled those in power.

As the main spoken language of the Jews for more than a thousand years, Yiddish has had plenty to lament, plenty to conceal. Its phrases and expressions paint a comprehensive picture of the mind-set that enabled the Jews of Europe to survive persecution: they never stopped kvetching about God, gentiles, children, and everything else.

More than a quarter of a century ago, Leo Rosten presented 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 best seller for three decades.

For 60 years Jewish refugees and their descendants have prospered in the federal district of Sitka, a temporary safe haven created in the wake of the Holocaust and the shocking 1948 collapse of the fledgling state of Israel. The Jews of the Sitka District have created their own little world in the Alaskan panhandle, a vibrant and complex frontier city that moves to the music of Yiddish. But now the district is set to revert to Alaskan control, and their dream is coming to an end.

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 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 NYC's Lower East Side and follows Yiddish as it moves into Hollywood.

Set in the years around 1492, Yiddish for Pirates recounts the compelling story of Moishe, a Bar Mitzvah boy who leaves home to join a ship's crew, where he meets Aaron, the polyglot parrot who becomes his near-constant companion. From a present-day Florida nursing home, this wisecracking yet poetic bird guides us through a world of pirate ships, Yiddish jokes, and treasure maps. But Inquisition Spain is a dangerous time to be Jewish and Moishe joins a band of hidden Jews trying to preserve some forbidden books.

Tracing Yiddish civilization from its roots in the Diaspora to the present, Paul Kriwaczek combines intimate family anecdote, travelogue, historical research, and interviews with scholars to give us a rich portrait of a nearly extinguished culture as it survived across the centuries. He begins his chronicle in Jerusalem, with the destruction of the Jewish temple at the hands of the Romans in the year 70. We see the burgeoning exile population disperse, moving outward and northward throughout the following centuries, making their mark in more far flung cities under Roman rule.

What if you woke up one morning and found you’d acquired another self—a double who was almost you and yet not you at all? What if that double shared many of your preoccupations but, in a twisted, upside-down way, furthered the very causes you’d devoted your life to fighting against? Not long ago, the celebrated activist and public intellectual Naomi Klein had just such an experience—she was confronted with a doppelganger whose views she found abhorrent but whose name and public persona were sufficiently similar to her own that many people got confused about who was who.

Molly Katz is Jewish and her husband is not. To help him—and every other poor soul who might believe a Jewish mother-in-law's "don't bother driving me, I'll take a cab"—here is the indispensable guide to the complex twists, unexpected nuances and hidden meanings of Jewish language and culture. Learn all the family secrets, from the Positive Insult, the Negative Compliment, the Shrugs, the Faces, and the Hands to the Viennese Table, the Buying of the Suit/the Returning of the Suit, and the Basic Psychology of Raising a Jewish Child.

Moscow, February 1953. A week before Stalin's death, his final pogrom, "one that would forever rid the Motherland of the vermin", is in full swing. Three government goons arrive in the middle of the night to arrest Solomon Shimonovich Levinson, an actor from the defunct State Jewish Theater. But Levinson, though an old man, is a veteran of past wars, and his shocking response to the intruders sets in motion a series of events both zany and deadly as he proceeds to assemble a ragtag group to help him enact a mad-brilliant plot: the assassination of a tyrant.

Just say Nu is a practical guide to using Yiddish words and expressions in day-to-day situations. Along with enough grammar to enable listeners to put together a comprehensible sentence and avoid embarrassing mistakes, Wex also explains the five most useful Yiddish words–shoyn, nu, epes, takeh, and nebakh–what they mean, how and when to use them, and how they can be used to conduct an entire conversation without anybody ever suspecting that the listener doesn't have the vaguest idea of what anyone is actually saying.

Use your mind's natural rhythm to learn a language with Rhythms Easy Yiddish from EuroTalk. It's naturally easier to learn something when it's set to rhythmic music, so that is exactly what we've done. Rhythms puts your mind painlessly to work: you don't even need to focus! Simple words and phrases are set to a varied pattern of rhythms and music designed to help you learn and to keep you engaged so that you won't just switch off after five minutes.

Il est naturellement plus facile d'apprendre au son d'une musique rythmée, et c'est ce que nous avons mis en pratique. Vous n'arrivez pas à rester concentré plus de cinq minutes? L'association de phrases et de mots simples à une variété de rythmes et de musiques spécialement conçues pour vous aider dans votre apprentissage contribuera à retenir votre attention. C'est le moyen le plus simple pour commencer à apprendre une toute nouvelle langue.

In this hilarious new primer-style book, George, Laura, and the entire Bush family communicate with uncharacteristic expressiveness, conveying shades of feeling and nuances of meaning that plain old English can't deliver--by peppering their conversation with Yiddishisms.

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