The Story of Yiddish: How a Mish-Mosh of Languages Saved the Jews

by Neal Karlen

Book Overview

A delightfully unconventional tale of a people, their place in the world, and the fascinating language that held them together.Yiddish is an unlikely survivor of the ages, much like the Jews... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 006083711X
• ISBN13: 9780060837112
• Release Date: April 2008
• Publisher: William Morrow & Company
• Length: 336 Pages
• Weight: 1.00 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 5.5" x 8.3"

Customer Reviews

a book about man's largest truths

This book is about larger truths of life, and is written for both Jews and non-Jews: especially non-Jews--some of those truths: "a halbe emes is a ganzen lign"--"a half-truth is a whole lie," "mentsch tract, Gott lacht"--"people plan, God laughs," etc. Reviewers who don't like this book seem hung up on things like spelling, which is weird considering Yiddish is a phonetic language. The author tried to make all these great truths pronouncable to anybody who wants to say them, or share them. Those larger truths need to be SPOKEN and discussed, not rendered in the unpronouncable ways that the Jewish intellectual Mafia, as is pointed out, has decided is the "correct" and largely unpronouncable ways of spelling. I think he made the right choice; to paraphrase the old saw....20 Jewish reviewers, 20 Jewish opinions.

""Story of Yiddish" is a delightful read.

Neal Karlen's "The Story of Yiddish" makes for delightful reading. He deftly combines history and humor with his own outstanding story-telling skills and makes an important contribution to the growing literature on Yiddish. What I perhaps appreciate most about this book is Karlen's concern for Yiddishkeit and not the perpetual in-fighting amongst the experts. He knows the scholarship and respects it and he also knows the people who live with Yiddish in one way or another everyday--those who still read it and those who make up the community of students (of all ages) speakers and singers for whom the world of Yiddish is an on-going fascination. This is the part Karlen really understands and why his book has a secure place on my shelf next to those by Dovid Katz and Tony Michels.

good subject well covered

The subject of Yiddish never held any interest for me until I read this book. Not that now I'm embarking on a study of it, but at least now I get what the "Jewishness" I've always been aware of but unable to define is, and where it comes from. I can't say whether Yiddish has ever been covered as well or not, but I can say there's no way it's been done the same way, by someone as open about his reasons for doing so and as capable of such elaborate and entertaining excurses as Neal Karlen. It could be that it isn't as heavy on comparative linguistics as it could be, but I see that as a good thing. This is exactly what it promises to be, a storybook with a stunning amount of accurate cultural references, pithy anecdotes, and the devotion of earnest study. In a phrase, dripping with life.

A Talented Journalist Gives Us a Funny, Wise and Hopeful Look at Yiddish as a Spiritual and Cultural

Over the decades as a journalist specializing in the impact of religion in our lives, I've collected books on religious cultures, including everything I could find from mainstream publishers about Yiddish. Nevertheless, that little section of my library remains pretty slim. I've got a Complete Idiot's Guide, a handful of novelty books on Yiddish themes, Michael Wex's funny "Born to Kvetch," and a couple of different editions of Leo Rosten's modern milestone, "The Joys of Yiddish," published 40 years ago in 1968. So, here comes journalist-scholar Neal Karlen, whose pieces have appeared in the New York Times and Rolling Stone, borrowing on the popular "How (someone) Saved (something)" genre in religious-cultural publishing these days. And, I opened his book with a mixture of hope (because there's just not enough good mainstream literature out there about such an amazing religious phenomenon as Yiddish) and of skepticism (considering how well Rosten's "Joys" and it's sequels and books like Wex's "Kvetch" have covered the field). But, I must tell you: This is a gem! It's not an exhaustive, one-volume source book on Yiddish. Neither Karlen nor his publisher were trying to pull another Rosten out of the hat. Nor did Karlen feel he had to tangle with Wex's book - trying to take issue with Wex or to "one up" Wex's attempt to cover the linguistic roots of Yiddish. You actually won't find much in Karlen's book about the origins and early histories of Hebrew and Yiddish. That's not Karlen's field - nor the focus of this book. Instead, what Karlen has given us is a wide-ranging, often-funny and sometimes deeply stirring account of how Jewish communities resiliently formed and reformed themselves around the world - with the Yiddish tongue and cultural concepts embedded in Yiddish always helping to form the shape of home. From the gutters to the heights of prosperity, the community toggled itself together over and over again - just as Yiddish itself was toggled together form bits of Hebrew and European languages hammered and stitched together into what became an almost universal tongue among Jews by the 1930s. Of course, the bulk of his book is about the U.S. and American culture. That's Karlen's specialty and central focus. What you will find here is a lot of fascinating reading about interwoven global cultures and lots of examples out of American popular culture. In one cool little anecdote, you'll learn why Steve McQueen studied some Yiddish - and you'll get a very funny analysis of the Marx Brothers' use of Yiddish language and culture. This book isn't really a spiritual memoir, but it dips into that genre for several chapters. I particularly enjoyed Karlen's story from his childhood about learning the amazing story of the Golem, the mythic monster who now shows up with some regularity as a literary figure once again. This isn't an "insider's book" written for people who are eager to find like-minded readers to help them preserve Yiddish. It's an "out

Karlen stomps Michael Wex, Yiddish isn't about kvetching and whining , but magic and loss.

What planet is that Publishers Weekly reviewer on? Honestly?!?! Must be planet Michael "born to kvetch" Wex. I thought Wex was a shmendrick about Yiddish, so I advance ordered a copy of Karlen's book from my bookstore 'round the corner. I figured anything a reviewer hated so much must be really good. ;-) I read it in two days and found NONE of those errors that the reviewer goes on and on about. In fact, it was a really fun read. Karlen is the anti-Wex and is infinitely more hip, funny, & solidly grounded in Yiddish history; Wex made Yiddish seem like a language for whiners -- but not so, as Karlen points out! It's about "survivors" being able to simultaneously laugh, cry, and believe during the horrific Diaspora. Karlen also quotes Leo Rosten (love his Joys of Yiddish) and professor Ilan Stevens about Yiddish becoming more popular amongst non-Jews than Jews. In exploring this theme, Karlen interestingly poses the question of how Jimmy Cagney knew Yiddish fluently, Steve McQueen spoke Yiddish on the stage, and Adolph Eichmann studied Yiddish, while few of Israel's Prime Ministers know anything of the language beyond a few words. Yiddish isn't about kvetching and whining, which is the prevailing philosophy of Michael Wex and the Yiddish establishment (who Karlen irreverently, but good-naturedly, describes as the "Yiddish mafia"). Karlen argues that Yiddish is about magic and loss -- and I am inclined to agree. I recommend Karlen, the challenger, over Wex, that shlemiel of the Yiddish establishment.