Yiddishlands

A panoramic history of Yiddish culture as seen through the life and career of a son whose family embodied its trajectory, Yiddishlands is both an intimate memoir and scholarship of the highest order. In this welcome new edition of his classic book, the foremost historian of modern Jewish literatures and languages has preserved the treasures of the past in his own life story.

~Eric J. Sundquist, Editor of Writing in Witness: a Holocaust Reader

David G. Roskies's marvelous Yiddishlands is at once rollicking and haunting, profoundly sad as well as uplifting. This idiosyncratic Yiddish Bildungsroman moves from Montreal to Jerusalem to Somerville to New York but is always circling around Roskies's mother's (largely fictive) Vilna. Roskies is a master storyteller, and his readers will delight in this memoir.

~Michael Stanislawski

Yiddishlands drops you directly into the uniqueness of a world that was destroyed and then into the multitude of attempts within one family to reconstruct it—not through 'history' but through the vivid and unforgettable voices of those who lived it, in a whirlwind of conversation, song, and storytelling that conjures up a city in multiple reincarnations. It's a virtuoso performance that resurrects the dead.

~Dara Horn

This second edition of Roskies's memoir comes 15 years after the original. Rather than an update on his life, Roskies ... has recontextualized the original material and restored its final chapter... He depicts European Jewish life in the first half of the 20th century as a vibrant world full of art, love affairs, and clashes between various Jewish communities and their languages. Its disappearance and the trauma they experienced become more evident through this memoir. Roskies also explores ways how splintered Jewish communities were rebuilt in North America and Israel. VERDICT This updated edition makes an already fascinating, important story more accessible for readers of Jewish history and storytelling.

~Margaret Heller