Yiddish Civilisation

A portrait of a civilisation which flourished within living memory and left an indelible mark on history In the 13th century Yiddish language and culture began to spread from the Rhineland and Bavaria slowly east into Austria, Bohemia and Moravia, then to Poland and Lithuania and finally to western Russia and the Ukraine, becoming steadily less German and more Slav in the process. In its late-medieval heyday the culturally vibrant, economically successful, intellectually adventurous and largely self-ruling Yiddish society stretched from Riga on the Baltic down to Odessa on the Black Sea. In the 1650s the Chmielnicki Massacres in the Ukraine by the Cossacks killed 100,000 Jews, forcing those that were left to spread out into the small towns (shtetls) and villages. The break-up of Poland-Lithuania - a safe haven for Jews in previous centuries - in the late 18th century further disrupted Yiddish society, as did the Russian anti-Jewish pogroms from the 1880s onwards, at the very time when Yiddish was producing a rich stream of plays, poems and novels. Paul Kriwaczek describes the development, over the centuries, of Yiddish language, religion, occupations and social life, art, music and literature. The book ends by describing how the Yiddish way of life became one of the foundation stones of modern American, and therefore of world, culture.

Paul Kriwaczek begins this illuminating and immensely pleasurable chronicle of Yiddish civilization during the Roman empire, when Jewish culture first spread to Europe. We see the burgeoning exile population disperse, as its notable diplomats, artists and thinkers make their mark in far-flung cities and found a self-governing Yiddish world. By its late-medieval heyday, this economically successful, intellectually adventurous, and self-aware society stretched from the Baltic to the Black Sea. Kriwaczek traces, too, the slow decline of Yiddish culture in Europe and Russia, and highlights fresh offshoots in the New World.Combining family anecdote, travelogue, original research, and a keen understanding of Yiddish art and literature, Kriwaczek gives us an exceptional portrait of a culture which, though nearly extinguished, has an influential radiance still.

Paul Kriwaczek begins this illuminating and immensely pleasurable chronicle of Yiddish civilization during the Roman empire, when Jewish culture first spread to Europe. We see the burgeoning exile population disperse, as its notable diplomats, artists and thinkers make their mark in far-flung cities and found a self-governing Yiddish world. By its late-medieval heyday, this economically successful, intellectually adventurous, and self-aware society stretched from the Baltic to the Black Sea. Kriwaczek traces, too, the slow decline of Yiddish culture in Europe and Russia, and highlights fresh offshoots in the New World.Combining family anecdote, travelogue, original research, and a keen understanding of Yiddish art and literature, Kriwaczek gives us an exceptional portrait of a culture which, though nearly extinguished, has an influential radiance still.

Looking at Montreal's Jewish community during the first half of the twentieth century, Margolis explores the lives and works of activists, writers, scholars, performers, and organizations that fuelled a still-thriving community. She also considers the foundations and development of Yiddish cultural life in Montreal in its interaction with broader issues of diasporic Jewish culture. An illuminating look at the ways in which Yiddish culture was maintained in North America, Jewish Roots, Canadian Soil is the story of how a minority culture was transplanted and transformed.

This book explains why the best way to understand the Jewish historical experience is to look at Jewish people, not just as a religious or ethnic group or a nation or "people," but, as bearers of civilization. This approach helps to explain the greatest riddle of Jewish civilization, namely, its continuity despite destruction, exile, and loss of political independence. In the first part of the book, Eisenstadt compares Jewish life and religious orientations and practices with Hellenistic and Roman civilizations, as well as with Christian and Islamic civilizations. In the second part of the book, he analyzes the modern period with its different patterns of incorporation of Jewish communities into European and American societies; national movements that developed among Jews toward the end of the nineteenth century, especially the Zionist movement; and specific characteristics of Israeli society. The major question Eisenstadt poses is to what extent the characteristics of the Jewish experience are distinctive, in comparison to other ethnic and religious minorities incorporated into modern nation-states, or other revolutionary ideological settler societies. He demonstrates through his case studies the continuous creativity of Jewish civilization.

The problem of being a stranger is present in every culture. In this context, “the Jewish question” is often discussed, since the Jews have been present in other nations for centuries, constituting the social and cultural minority and being almost always perceived as strangers. This volume presents a detailed analysis of Jewish self-perceptions and attitudes, often very complex, towards other societies and communities living in the same lands. The contributors to this book explore the lengthy discussions between both the supporters and adversaries of assimilation within the Jewish environment and also between the assimilated Jews and non-Jews, which often further complicate this issue. As the authors show here, the “methods of assimilation” of eastern European Jews were not straightforward, but were rather often rather complicated and rough. Many Jewish people were trying to find the best solution to their own, “Jewish question”, and adapt themselves reasonably to the gentile environment and to the changing realities of the world in which they had to exist, regardless of their will, or in which they freely chose to live having made autonomic and personal decisions. As such, this volume explores Jewish assimilation issues from a wide and multifaceted perspective.

"To what extent do Yiddish language and literature derive from the dominant values of mainstream European culture? How far did this culture shape the self-perception of Yiddish-speaking Jews of Central and Eastern Europe? How far did the ambivalent, antagonistic attitude adopted towards Jews over many centuries in Christian Europe shape modern Jewish identity and culture? Sherman deals with such questions in his close examination of the recurring treatment of the myth of the Jewish Pope in four Yiddish literary texts dating from between 1602 and 1943. The roots of this myth - that one day a Jewish apostate might come to rule the world as Pope - lie deep in the Biblical story of the assimilation of Joseph (Genesis 37-50), from which it branches out into numerous Messianic fantasies informing Jewish existence through two thousand years of exile. Concerned with broader questions of cultural identity, this study should be of interest to a general readership."