Yiddishlands: A Memoir (Non-Series) [Hardcover]

David Roskies (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0814333974 | ISBN-13: 978-0814333976 | Publication Date: July 22, 2008 | Edition: Har/Com

A rich, sweeping memoir by David G. Roskies, Yiddishlands proceeds from the premise that Yiddish culture is spread out among many different people and geographic areas and transmitted through story, song, study, and the family. Roskies leads readers through Yiddishlands old and new by revisiting his personal and professional experiences and retelling his remarkable family saga in a series of lively, irreverent, and interwoven stories. Beginning with a flashback to his grandmother's storybook wedding in 1878, Yiddishlands brings to life the major debates, struggles, and triumphs of the modern Yiddish experience, and provides readers with memorable portraits of its great writers, cultural leaders, and educators.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“David G. Roskies’s passionate narrative of a brilliant family is more than a memoir of rupture and renewal—it is a history of a civilization, its languages, its lost cities, its living songs.” —Cynthia Ozick, recipient of the National Book Critics Circle Award, and finalist for the Pulitzer Prize “David Roskies is the only one of his generation who can map the Yiddish literary world after the war with personal stories, vivid portraits of the key players, and extraordinary acumen and wit. Yiddishlands is a tour de force.” —Hana Wirth-Nesher, professor of English and American studies and director of the Goldreich Family Institute for Yiddish Language, Literature, and Culture at Tel Aviv University --This text refers to the Kindle Edition edition.

About the Author

David G. Roskies is the Sol and Evelyn Henkind Chair in Yiddish Literature and Culture and professor of Jewish Literature at the Jewish Theological Seminary. He is author of numerous books, including the award-winning Against the Apocalypse (Harvard University Press, 1984) and A Bridge of Longing: The Lost Art of Yiddish Storytelling (Harvard University Press, 1995).

Product Details

• Hardcover: 240 pages
• Publisher: Wayne State Univ Pr; Har/Com edition (July 22, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0814333974
• ISBN-13: 978-0814333976
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.3 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,599,472 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Passionate portrait of Yiddish language, life, and literature, March 10, 2009

By 

Ellen Cassedy (Takoma Park, MD) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Yiddishlands: A Memoir (Non-Series) (Hardcover)

An entertaining and immensely readable presentation of the stories David Roskies heard as he grew up in a home devoted to honoring the treasures of Yiddish language and literature. You feel as if you're right at the dinner table, listening in on the indignant, funny, scandalous, lyrical stories he grew up on. Along the way, you find you're learning a great deal about the Jewish Old World and the cataclysms and displacements of the 20th century.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Oedipus, Schmoedipus, I love my Yiddishe Mamme!, October 19, 2009

By 

Ruby Namdar (New York) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Yiddishlands: A Memoir (Non-Series) (Hardcover)

Yiddishlands is an unusual, unprecedented and unforgettable cultural autobiography written by one of Yiddish's last champions. Roskies converses -- and the emphasis here is on "converse" because the book cleverly uses conversational as well as textual tactics in order to capture the full cultural and linguistic experience of growing up in "Yiddishlands" -- with one of the juiciest characters lately to be seen on the stages of cultural biography: Masha Roskies. Masha is a charming, clever, ever opinionated Jewish-Lithuanian beauty turned Montreal Jewish mother. The stories told by, about and around her speak not only of her life, but of the surprisingly vital world of Yiddish culture which shaped the life and career of her young son Dovid -- lovingly burdening him with the task of preserving and carrying on its memory. Roskies' mercurial style, with its playful transitions between genres and standpoints makes this book into a most pleasurable journey into the lost world of Yiddish culture.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars David, it's not always about you even if you think so, April 30, 2011

By 

Grey Wolffe "Zeb Kantrowitz" (North Waltham, MA United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Yiddishlands: A Memoir (Non-Series) (Hardcover)

There are two things I look for in a memoir (autobiography), first is chronology which makes it easy to follow a life (not you own), second is tales of both good and bad. Prof. Roskies seems to think that even his mistakes are not truly that bad and could happen to anyone. He would have been better served in trying to tell his mother's story in some reasonable template, so that it would make sense to the rest of us.

What ruined this book for me, which I expected to be about life in the "Pale" before the Shoah, was the constant anecdotes about himself that Roskies keeps throwing in. I could care less about his adolescent sexual adventures or the 'famous' people he met. I was much more interested in his mother and her life in Vilna prior to WW2. With all the other 'dreck' he throws in, he never explained why in Yiddish he calls himself "Roskes" and "Roskies" in English (makes no sense). He seems to have had a great time writing about himself, unfortunately I ended up reading it and found myself asking, "so what".

Zeb Kantrowitz