Words on Fire: The Unfinished Story of Yiddish

Words on Fire offers a rich, engaging account of the history and evolution of the Yiddish language. Drawing on almost thirty years of scholarship, prominent Yiddish scholar Dovid Katz traces the origins of Yiddish back to the Europe of a thousand years ago, and shows how those origins are themselves an uninterrupted continuation of the previous three millennia of Jewish history and culture in the Near East. Words on Fire narrates the history of the language from medieval times onward, through its development as written literature, particularly for and by Jewish women. In the wake of secularizing and modernizing movements of the nineteenth century, Yiddish rose spectacularly in a few short years from a mass folk idiom to the language of sophisticated modern literature, theater, and journalism. Although a secular Yiddish culture no longer exists, Katz argues that its resurgence among religious Jewish communities ensures that Yiddish will still be a thriving language in the twenty-first century. For anyone interested in Jewish history and tradition, Words on Fire will be a definitive account of this remarkable language and the culture that created and sustained it.

Katz, Dovid

Religion & Spirituality

Basic Books

Words on Fire offers a rich, engaging account of the history and evolution of the Yiddish language. Drawing on almost thirty years of scholarship, prominent Yiddish scholar Dovid Katz traces the origins of Yiddish back to the Europe of a thousand years ago, and shows how those origins are themselves an uninterrupted continuation of the previous three millennia of Jewish history and culture in the Near East. Words on Fire narrates the history of the language from medieval times onward, through its development as written literature, particularly for and by Jewish women. In the wake of secularizing and modernizing movements of the nineteenth century, Yiddish rose spectacularly in a few short years from a mass folk idiom to the language of sophisticated modern literature, theater, and journalism. Although a secular Yiddish culture no longer exists, Katz argues that its resurgence among religious Jewish communities ensures that Yiddish will still be a thriving language in the twenty-first century. For anyone interested in Jewish history and tradition, Words on Fire will be a definitive account of this remarkable language and the culture that created and sustained it.

History

World

Grammar of the Yiddish Language

Reference

Foreign Language Study & Reference

Duckbacks

Dovid Katz has written dozens of short stories that depict the life and Dovid Katz explores the culture of the old-time Lithuanian Jews (Litvaks), especially their misnagdic religious tradition and psyche, which differed greatly from that of the khasidim, whose culture is far more familiar to most American Jews. He set himself the task of redressing the balance by masterfully and immersing himself in the long-lost milieu that he brings to life on these pages. The present volume comprises 13 of his most compelling and accessible stories, translated into English by Barnett Zumoff, America s leading translator of Yiddish literature. DOVID KATZ, born and educated in New York City, has become one of the world s leading authorities on the origins, history, and dialects of the Yiddish language and on the culture of the northeastern European (Lithuanian or Litvak) Jewish civilization. He has written and edited many scholarly books in these fields, among them Origins of the Yiddish Language (1987); Dialects of the Yiddish Language(1988); Oxford Yiddish IIII (1990-1995); Words on Fire--The Unfinished Story of Yiddish (revised edition, 2007); Windows to a Lost Jewish Past (2008); Seven Kingdoms of the Litvaks (2008); and Lithuanian Jewish Culture (revised edition, 2010). He was also the founder of the Yiddish Studies programs at Oxford University and at Vilnius University in Lithuania. His book of charming and brilliantly written short stories about the old-time Lithuanian Jews, Misnagdishe Mayses fun Vilner Gubernye (Tales of the Misnagdim from Vilna Province) (1996) is the basis of the current volume, which presents translations of 13 of the stories from that book.

The City in the Moonlight: Stories of the Old-Time Lithuanian Jews

Literature & Fiction

World Literature

Ktav Pub & Distributors Inc

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