The Story of Yiddish: How a Mish-Mosh of Languages Saved the Jews | 
| Author: Neal Karlen
Publisher: William Morrow
Category: Book
List Price: $25.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  3 reviews
Sales Rank: 177361
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 336
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.9
Dimensions (in): 8.3 x 5.5 x 1.3
ISBN: 006083711X
Dewey Decimal Number: 439.109
EAN: 9780060837112
ASIN: 006083711X
Publication Date: April 8, 2008
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Condition: Brand New. 100% money back guarantee. All books shipped from Strand Bookstore, New York City, USA.
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Product Description
Yiddish—an oft-considered "gutter" language—is an unlikely survivor of the ages, much like the Jews themselves. Its survival has been an incredible journey, especially considering how often Jews have tried to kill it themselves. Underlying Neal Karlen's unique, brashly entertaining, yet thoroughly researched telling of the language's story is the notion that Yiddish is a mirror of Jewish history, thought, and practice—for better and worse. Karlen charts the beginning of Yiddish as a minor dialect in medieval Europe that helped peasant Jews live safely apart from the marauders of the First Crusades. Incorporating a large measure of antique German dialects, Yiddish also included little scraps of French, Italian, ancient Hebrew, Aramaic, the Slavic and Romance languages, and a dozen other tongues native to the places where Jews were briefly given shelter. One may speak a dozen languages, all of them Yiddish. By 1939, Yiddish flourished as the lingua franca of 13 million Jews. After the Holocaust, whatever remained of Yiddish, its worldview and vibrant culture, was almost stamped out—by Jews themselves. Yiddish was an old-world embarrassment for Americans anxious to assimilate. In Israel, young, proud Zionists suppressed Yiddish as the symbol of the weak and frightened ghetto-bound Jew—and invented modern Hebrew. Today, a new generation has zealously sought to explore the language and to embrace its soul. This renaissance has spread to millions of non-Jews who now know the subtle difference between a shlemiel and a shlimazel; hundreds of Yiddish words dot the most recent editions of the Oxford English Dictionary. The Story of Yiddish is a delightful tale of a people, their place in the world, and the fascinating language that held them together.
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Karlen has sidestepped academic gobbledygook, and as we can appreciate, this book is a labor of love May 9, 2008
Neal Karlen points out in The Story of Yiddish: How a Mish-Mosh of Languages Saved the Jews that for hundreds of years mavens have considered Yiddish to have as many linguistic meanings as the word oy. It has been considered a jargon, dialect, vulgar street slang, language, secret code, medium of high art, punishment, Jewish Esperanto, or at times even an embarrassment to its people. Yet as Karlen reminds us, "it's always been anything but trivial."
Moreover, it has saved the Jews from assimilation or disappearance. It is a unique language that has always been considered to be dying and that is unable to find its mother, father, or, as with the Hebrew language, divine roots. Instead, as Karlen rightfully states, "it sprung naturally from the Jewish experience and need to survive the murderous sabers of Crusaders on the way to Jerusalem. The Language, for good and rotten over the last thousand years, held the Chosen together with their own Esperanto as they were chased and kicked around the world."
Dividing itself into fifteen chapters the book attempts to answer the following question: "Not long ago, this mish-mosh of other peoples languages and worlds was thought to be a dialect of Jewish pig Latin. How could such a mongrel tongue that includes French, Italian, ancient Hebrew, Aramaic, the Slavic and Romance Languages, and a dozen other tongues native to places where Jews were briefly given shelter save the Jews at the same time it was so derided? The answer is this: The Story of Yiddish."
In order to answer the question as completely as possible in what makes Yiddish such a different language from any other, Karlen explores such topics as what is Yiddishkeit, the soul of Yiddish, its history, sounds and secrets, what does Bob Dylan, Sandy Koufax, the Duchess of York, Fergie and Woody Guthrie have to do with Yiddish, the Chasidim and Yiddish, the old world shtetls and ghettos, Yiddish weaklings, beliefs, God, and Yiddish revenge, coming to American and German-Jewish self-loathing, the Yiddish daily newspapers, and present day Yiddish and Yiddishkeit today.
The beauty of these chapters is that they don't have to be read in sequence and can easily be read out of order, by pages, paragraphs, or sentences.
As the book mentions, Yiddish was conceived as slang meant for illiterate Jewish peasants, women, children, and intellectual nincompoops. And yet it was voted least likely to succeed even by its own people as it eventually began to morph into a linguistic sponge borrowing from every country from which the Jews were chased out of as they wandered the globe during their mostly hideous Diaspora. In the words of Karlen, it was invented piece by piece by the Jews.
In writing this book, Karlen has sidestepped academic gobbledygook, and as we can appreciate, The Story of Yiddish: How a Mish-Mosh of Languages Saved the Jews is a labor of love as well as reflective scholarship evidencing a great deal of exhaustive research which at the same time is not exhausting for the reader.
There have been other books about Yiddish, however, Karlen's tome will probably take us as close as we can get to the truth about why and how it has survived, and it is a most enjoyable journey for anyone, Jewish and non-Jewish, who wishes to know more about a language that was supposed to have died years ago.
Karlen began speaking Yiddish at home well before he became a staff writer at Newsweek and Rolling Stone. He is a regular contributor to the New York Times, and he has authored six books. He studied Yiddish at Brown University, New York's Inlingua Institute, and the University of Minnesota's Graduate School of Journalism, where he teaches non-fiction writing.
Norm Goldman, Publisher & Editor Bookpleasures
A Talented Journalist Gives Us a Funny, Wise and Hopeful Look at Yiddish as a Spiritual and Cultural "Home" April 25, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
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 "outsider's book" written for people who are not likely to learn the language - but who will appreciate a whole lot more about the world's beauty and diversity by understanding the aching hopes, the clever wisdom and the tenacious bravery all embedded in this language.
In the middle of his book, Karlen quotes Isaac B. Singer, the Yiddish novelist who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1978. Singer explained eloquently the essential importance of the language: "The Yiddish mentality is not haughty. It does not take victory for granted. It does not demand and command, but it muddles through, sneaks by, smuggles itself amidst the powers of destruction, knowing somewhere that God's plan for Creation is still at the very beginning. ... In a figurative way, Yiddish is the wise and humble language of us all, the idiom of frightened and hopeful Humanity."
That's precisely the story Karlen tries to tell, especially concerning Jewish culture's interwoven American tapestry. It's not The Only Book on Yiddish you should own. But that kind of recommendation is a hopeful sign about Yiddish and about Karlen's delightful new book, as well.
Karlen stomps Michael Wex, Yiddish isn't about kvetching and whining , but magic and loss. April 11, 2008
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
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.
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