THIS FIRST-EVER popular history of Yiddish is so full of life that it reads like a biography of the language. For a thousand years Yiddish was the glue that held a people together. Through the intimacies of daily use, it linked European Jews with their heroic past, their spiritual universe, their increasingly far-flung relations. In it they produced one of the world's most richly human cultures. Impoverished and disenfranchised in the eyes of the world, Yiddish-speakers created their own alternate reality - wealthy in appreciation of the varieties of human behavior, spendthrift in humor, brilliantly inventive in maintaining and strengthening community. For a people of exile, the language took the place of a nation. The written and spoken word formed the Yiddishland that never came to be. Words were army, university, city-state, territory. They were a people's home. The tale, which has never before been told, is nothing short of miraculous - the saving of a people through speech. It ranges far beyond Europe, from North America to Israel to the Russian-Chinese border, and from the end of the first millenium to the present day. This book requires no previous knowledge of Yiddish or of Jewish history - just a curious mind and an open heart. "Yes God we are your chosen people. But why did you have to choose us?"--(Yiddish saying)
"Positive, upbeat, practical, deeply rooted in Jewish history. That's our language. That's Yiddish." These words refer to the first recognizable Yiddish sentence extant, dated 1272, translated as "A good day will happen to the person who brings this mahzor [prayer book] to the synagogue." Yiddish: A Nation of Words is a popular history of this dying Jewish language, an amalgam of Hebrew and European languages, which dates to the early Middle Ages. Author Mariam Weinstein, a freelance journalist in Massachusetts who grew up in the Bronx when Yiddish could still be heard on almost any street corner, takes to her subject with enthusiasm. Her casual tone doesn't compromise her considerable intelligence, which shines especially in her discussion of the leading roles that women have played in the history of the language. (For centuries, women were not educated in Hebrew, so Yiddish became their particular idiom.) Another of the book's strengths is its account of the demise of Yiddish, which Weinstein attributes primarily to the trauma of the Holocaust and its aftermath of rapid assimilation. Perhaps the most pleasing and important thing about Weinstein's book, however, is that it does for Yiddish something like what, she argues, Yiddish did for Hebrew. "By letting words and phrases slip from the prayers of the older language into the younger, it kept the sacred tongue available to people who did not speak it every day." --Michael Joseph Gross
Customer Reviews:
Avg. Customer Rating: 5.0 / 5.0
Simply the Best:
Unlike pathetic academics like Dovid Katz and Ruth Wisse, engaged in their vicious little turf wars, Miriam Weinstein has written a delightful, informative and narrative history of Yiddish. Not without poignancy, the book celebrates the language and the tremendous achievements of the great writers and poets from whose pens flowed marvelous works of the imagination. While not a "scholarly" work, the author has obviously done a great deal of research and knows whereof she speaks. I recommend this book to... more info
Yiddish Language:
A wonderful history of the language which some are trying to tell you is a dying one. However, it is alive and well and living as is mentioned in this account, particularly at the National Yiddish Book Center. This is a great account of how the language evolved and originated and where it is headed. It helps to clear up the erroneous impression that it is a street language but shows that it has a history of a culture and a marvelous literature.
Part History, Memoir and Phrasebook of a Glorious Tongue:
I admit to being surprised by this book, knowing that it was the first effort from a former journalist. (I have found that most writers coming from the worlds of journalism or academia lack the ability to communicate on the same level as those of us outside of the twin ivory towers.) But here is an utterly delightful, at times moving, history of one of the most unique languages on the planet. Part history, part memoir, part dictionary and phrasebook, this book could not have been put together with greater... more info
The best ever history of Yiddish for the general reader:
Yiddish: A Nation of Words is the kind of book you don't want to put down once you've started. Weinstein has the perfect touch for getting across the facts about this almost lost language, neither weighing the reader down with the terrible sadness of the story nor degrading the story with humorous cliches. The research the book is based on is thorough and trustworthy. You will learn a lot about the Jewish diaspora, about Europe and the Middle East, about America in the last century--and enjoy doing it.... more info
