Customer Reviews

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

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

The mish-mosh is Karlen's book. This guy just does not know enough about Yiddish to write a book about it. There are numerous errors throughout, and the thesis is very thin. Why do people who speak a little Yiddish think they can write a book about it? I eat, but I don't write gourmet cookbooks. And shame on William Morrow, a once fine publishing house. They couldn't even edit it enough to make sure words are spelled correctly or consistently throughout (the English words, that is--the Yiddish is beyond help). What a huge disappointment.

About fifty pages into this book the reader confirms what he or she suspected almost from the beginning - that the author knows no Yiddish, has done little or no research, and has essentially no knowlege of the subject matter. The book has the quality of a high school essay in which the student, having done no preparation, sets out to write as many words as he can about something he knows nothing about. I received this book as a gift from someone who knows of my interest in languages in general, and in Yiddish (I'm a native speaker) in particular. The title led the gift-giver, and me, to believe that the book would present some of the rich linguistic and clutural history of the language. No such luck. This book is pure junk. Pass it by.

Neal Karlen starts his book by describing what he calls "the bipolar worldview" of Yiddish. I'm not sure Yiddish has any more of a bipolar outlook than any other language, but this book does. There may be a dichotomy between the way "der yidn" and "der goyim" look at the world. And Karlen does make the point that you can have Yiddishkeit and not be Jewish, or be Jewish and not get Yiddish. (Carl Reiner said about The Dick Van Dyke Show that he would "write Jewish, cast Gentile.")

But in order to make the argument that Yiddish is "better" than German, Karlen has to ignore well-known facts about the nature of language.

The book starts out with way too many metaphors and similies about Yiddish. Yiddish is the "Robin Hood" of languages. It's "a linguistic sponge." It's like a Johnny Cash song. It's "Jewry's Silly Putty."

Ultimately, Yiddish "is not just another Jewish language," it's "Judaism's savior." From the standpoint of the late twentieth century, remembering the millions of people who once lived in Yiddish-speaking central and eastern Europe, Yiddish might seem like the most widely spoken Jewish language. But there were times when Aramaic, Spanish, even the sometimes hated German were the everyday languages of Jewish people.

It was probably biblical Hebrew that bound the Jewish people throughout
the centuries, specificially because it was ritually fixed and therefore not a spoken language that changed as rapidly as all natural human languages do.

Karlen definitely wants us to know that Yiddish is NOT a dialect of German. Of course that's true. Yiddish isn't a dialect of German any more than German is a dialect of Yiddish. But they are related. They're both West Germanic languages that split off from Old High German (see The Horse, the Wheel, and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World, David W. Anthony's book about the development of Indo-European languages and cultures).

"German is guttural, while Yiddish is from the guts." That's just linguistic prejudice. Karlen quotes the evocative Yiddish phrase for "She's good in bed" - - literally, "She can dance the mattress polka." In German, simply, "Sie is gut im Bett." Which is better, the author asks. Well, neither. No natural human language is "better" than any other. Every language has some things it says more humorously or eloqently than another about particular things.

Karlen even quotes Shakespeare from the Yiddish theater that's long gone: "Tsu zayn oder nisht tsu zayn." It would sound the same in the Berliner dialect of German.

The thing I disliked most about this book was a quotation by comedian/actor Richard Belzer. Karlen holds up Belzer as "America's funniest, most extreme improvising "badchen" and "spritzer."

Karlen says Belzer (at a Friars Club roast) "followed a ridiculous dance performed by Sandra Bernhard by saying, 'I wouldn't f*** her with Bea
Arthur's d***.' " That so-called joke doesn't make Belzer the heir to Lenny Bruce. I remember reading Bruce's memoirs and he always seemed to have a humane attitude. If Belzer did say that, he's just a disgusting pig who went for the easy laugh.

If you want to read interesting, funny books about Yiddish, try Just Say Nu: Yiddish for Every Occasion (When English Just Won't Do), Born to Kvetch: Yiddish Language and Culture in All of Its Moods (P.S.), and Yiddish with Dick and Jane. For a detailed historical look at the language, read Yiddish: A Nation of Words. Something fun to listen to was Yiddish Radio Project, which was in the Hamilton remainder book catalog as of a few weeks ago.

I agree completely with W. Tovey and "Found Highways". In my opinion, this book exploits the latest wave of Yiddish revivalism without adding anything original or worthwhile to the subject. There is obviously a divide among the reviewers between those who appreciate an anecdotal book depicting the impassioned, subjective views of the author and those who are disappointed by the author's rather obvious lack of knowledge of his subject matter and the missing editing.

You might expect from the title some historical explanation of the evolution of Yiddish. What you get is rambling, often repetitive musings about what the author thinks he knows about Yiddish. The few things stated as facts are often wrong. A glaring misconception is the author's assertion that the mainstream theory of Yiddish is now that it spread from East to West and not the other way around as previously held. This is blatant nonsense as the incontrovertible fact about Yiddish is that it is a Germanic language which obviously began as the vernacular of the Jews of Germany and spread Eastward with the migration, often compelled, of those people.

The numerous phrases of Yiddish spread throughout the author's ramblings betray the lack of an even elementary knowledge of basic Yiddish grammar and no attempt was made at a consistent transliteration, which would have been readily available from any book of Yiddish instruction or any of the other fine books recently written on this subject.

It sounds from the other reviews that the author's issues with his own Jewishness were adequately explored in his other book. In my opinion, there isn't much here that's sufficiently new and fresh to justify the publication of this book.

Oy. As in, av"oy"d this book. It contains approximately 15% interesting historical nuggets and 85% long winded, weak analogies and fluffy metaphors explaining why Yiddish is important to Jews and vice versa. "Jews are like this, yiddish is like this, Jews and yiddish are as this as yiddishkeit is to this." I think Yiddishkeit "is to" everything in the known universe at this point. I "got it" after about five pages and didn't need the rest, but finished it out of spite and anger that I paid money for this book. Pure treyf!

Rambling and repepetive, with an odd obessesion about the Altalena Incident, but no objective description of what it was or what was at stake. Broad unfair generalizations, as: Poland was always deeply anti-Semitic. It was not: the 14th and 15th Centuries were something of a Golden Age for Polish Jewry. King Casimir welcomed the Jews and so they migrated east from germany and Bohemia, bringing the Yiddish language with them.

Yes, this can be an enjoyable read. But, it is a bit haphazard, and blatant historical falsehoods get in the way of my ability to trust in much of what the author is trying to say. For example, the author REPEATEDLY claims as fact that Moses Mendelssohn converted to Christianity. This is FALSE. He says it too many times to be a typo. While Mendelssohn was the spiritual father of Reform Judaism, he did not convert. Four of his six children converted.
Very sloppy. Bad history.

This is quite chaotic and somewhat amorphous book, sometimes interesting, sometimes a little boring. That resonates with the very nature of the subject - in a way Yiddish itself does look like as a linguistic medley. Author is probably aware of missing entirety of the text for he himself advises to read the book any way one finds suitable. Such categories as chaos and amorphism are not supposed to be defining characteristics for well-written book. Why did I still assign 4 stars (wanted to make it 4 and half actually)? Explanation will take few lines.

Yiddish can be found abundantly in examples of a very fine literature. Isaak Babel, Saul Bellow, Shalom Aleichem and Efraim Sevela (to name few) stamped that now vanishing language in immortal form of written word for posterity. But it would not be exaggeration to say that for overwhelming majority of those who was born in Soviet Union, familiarity with Yiddish began from completely different source. Songs and verses of Alexander Rosenbaum, a brilliant Russian poet and singer, were extremely popular in masses back in 80s and 90s, especially his collection of songs about underworld of Soviet Odessa. "Guten aben maina liben! Bela, kitten - don't be bored!" - that string from his song was so universally known it could compete in its popularity with Soviet hymn.

Long time ago I used to share room with the guy who was also my classmate in university. One day we were crunching some heavy duty calculus preparing for exams while listening Rosenbaum's songs peppered with Yiddish phrases on a very old stereo. It was incredibly cold January. Snowfalls were heavy and I had to stretch out my neck to see the street from the window - outside it was covered with frozen crust up to half of its height. My friend went to the post office to get some mail. When he returned he brought a parcel, which we promptly unpacked. It was some pastry from his relatives. "Auntie Fira strudels from Moldavia!" - exclaimed my friend excitingly. We heated them up on our rusty portable stove. It was very fine strudels indeed, very rich, stuffed with dried apricots, raisins and walnuts. They smelled so good I remember I felt dizzy for a moment. Those were not times of gastronomical abundance; that era sometimes referred to as Gaidar's shocking therapy. Strudels of auntie Fira, whom I never seen or heard, were probably brightest culinary remembrance of mine from that epoch. "You see," - my friend told me seriously, - "auntie Fira she loves me". We were eating that pastry and listening Rosenbaum's creaking voice and even though I, gentile who never knew Yiddish, never been to Moldavia and never ate strudels before, somehow felt that utmost love of far-and-away auntie Fira conveyed through those memorable strudels. That love was like riped yeast dough - it was spreading about in all imaginable directions from the holding pan.

Something similar I saw in this book - author loves his topic so much you can almost feel it. Reading it is like eating auntie's Fira strudels - the power of that love is so great it draws a reader in even though a reader may not be so enthusiastic about rapidly disappearing languages. Such admiration about the topic of research is a rare thing and this is why I assigned 4 stars.

On the other note one particular observation about Yiddish should be mentioned here. Due to the last century turbulent history, Yiddish and Hebrew swapped their roles in some inconceivable way. It is Yiddish now that is rarely spoken and known rather than Hebrew, which become a language of the whole state and is very much alive. It used to be diametrically different some 65 years ago.

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.

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.