Editorial Reviews
Product Description
With its rich history, comic-stoic worldview, and unforgettable phrases, Yiddish has become part of the world's culture. In Yiddish: A Nation of Words, Miriam Weinstein takes the reader on a witty romp through a language and a lifestyle that has mostly vanished. Weinstein consulted everyone from language mavens to her own relatives to trace the crucial part Yiddish has played in keeping alive a culture often under siege. Through its daily use across the globe, it linked European Jews with their heroic past, their spiritual universe, and their increasingly far-flung relations. Impoverished and marginalized by much of the world, Yiddish speakers created their own alternate reality. Weinstein doggedly tracks that reality, from the early days when Yiddish was spoken only by women and the untutored, to the present, when chutzpah is part of everyone's vocabulary and Americans of all ethnic backgrounds shrug dramatically and say, What am I, chopped liver?
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