How Yiddish Changed America and How America Changed Yiddish
How Yiddish Changed America and How America Changed Yiddish
Edited by Ilan Stavans and Josh Lambert
2020 Foreword INDIES Silver Award for Anthologies
Winner of the Canadian Jewish Literary Award (Yiddish)
A momentous and diverse anthology of the influences and inspirations of Yiddish voices in America—radical, dangerous, and seductive, but also sweet, generous, and full of life—edited by award-winning authors and scholars Ilan Stavans and Josh Lambert.
Hardcover • ISBN: 9781632062628
Publication date: Jan 21, 2020
Paperback ISBN: 9781632062260
Publication date: Apr 25, 2023
Other buying options:
About the Book
Is it possible to conceive of the American diet without bagels? Or Star Trek without Mr. Spock? Are the creatures in Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are based on Holocaust survivors? And how has Yiddish, a language without a country, influenced Hollywood? These and other questions are explored in this stunning and rich anthology of the interplay of Yiddish and American culture, edited by award-winning authors and scholars Ilan Stavans and Josh Lambert.
It starts with the arrival of Ashkenazi immigrants to New York City’s Lower East Side and follows Yiddish as it moves into Hollywood, Broadway, literature, politics, and resistance. We take deep dives into cuisine, language, popular culture, and even Yiddish in the other Americas, including Canada, Argentina, Cuba, Mexico, and Colombia. The book presents a bountiful menu of genres: essays, memoir, song, letters, poems, recipes, cartoons, conversations, and much more. Authors include Nobel Prize–winner Isaac Bashevis Singer and luminaries such as Grace Paley, Cynthia Ozick, Chaim Grade, Michael Chabon, Abraham Cahan, Sophie Tucker, Blume Lempel, Irving Howe, Paula Vogel, and Liana Finck.
Readers will laugh and cry as they delve into personal stories of assimilation and learn about people from a diverse variety of backgrounds, Jewish and not, who have made the language their own. The Yiddish saying states: Der mentsh trakht un got lakht. Man plans and God laughs. How Yiddish Changed America and How America Changed Yiddish illustrates how those plans are full of zest, dignity, and tremendous humanity. Most of all, the book shows us that Yiddish, far from being an endangered language, is more vibrant than ever.
Praise for How Yiddish Changed America and How America Changed Yiddish
“A wide-ranging, eclectic anthology of work by Yiddish writers. Stavans and Yiddish Book Center academic director Lambert have assembled an impressive collection of essays, fiction, drama, memoir, poetry, cartoons, and interviews, all showing how ‘Yiddish is so deeply woven into the fabric of the United States that it can sometimes be difficult to recognize how much it has transformed the world we live in today.’... Among all these are some stunners—e.g., ‘Oedipus in Brooklyn,’ a story by Blume Lempel (1907-1999) that begins with the line, ‘Sylvia was no Jocasta.’ Emma Goldman (1869-1940) writes fiercely about marriage, which she compares to an ‘iron yoke.’ In a poem about Coney Island, Victor Packer (1897-1958) writes, ‘Beauty and crudity / Go hand in hand and / Launch a united front / Right there are on the sand.’ [Cynthia] Ozick (b. 1928) compares Sholem Aleichem to Dickens, Twain, and Will Rogers. ‘He was a popular presence, and stupendously so. His lectures and readings were mobbed; he was a household friend; he was cherished as a family valuable.’ For readers unfamiliar with Yiddish writing, a revelation; for readers and aficionados of the language, a treasure.”
—Kirkus Reviews, Starred Review
“For many people, this will be a poignant, surprising, and engrossing introduction to the epic survival story of a singular culture, requiring no foreknowledge of Yiddish, by two of the field's luminaries. For those of us whose grandparents spoke and understood, and whose parents only understood—no need to explain that we do neither—this book is the way back to a language that once meant everything.”
—Boris Fishman, author of A Replacement Life and Savage Feast
“This volume is not a chronological exploration of the Yiddish language in America. Instead, the editors offer portions of some of the major works of Yiddish literature, poetry, comics, and political thought, by writers including Isaac Bashevis Singer, Chaim Grade, Cynthia Ozick, and Sophie Tucker, among others. A delightful chapter concentrates on culinary offerings with some recipes included. Finally, a fascinating chapter focuses on the influence of Yiddish in Canada, Argentina, Cuba, Mexico, and Columbia, offering a glimpse of Yiddishkeit outside Eurocentric views…. A wonderful compilation sure to please new and old lovers of Yiddish culture, Jewish history, and linguistics.”
“Who could resist the lure of a jar of kosher dills on a bright yellow book cover? Not I. In addition to the pickles what the cover promised was a certainty that the work represented on its pages, between essays, fiction, poems, cartoons, etc., would be co-chosen by the indefatigable Ilan Stavans, whose work I have followed for years. Divided into six parts, starting with ‘Politics and Possibilities’ and ending with ‘The Other Americas,’ one cannot help but be amazed by the breadth of Yiddish documents that have been found and preserved from the past, while marveling at the more contemporary writers who have added richness and are keeping Yiddish alive. This book is utterly fascinating and a true cultural artifact.”
—Lucy Kogler, Literary Hub
“Stavans and Lambert, both accomplished scholars, aspire to something far more substantial than the Yiddishisms and Jewish jokes that have come to be associated with Yiddishkayt in American pop culture…. [T]he reader is offered an astonishingly rich and diverse selection of poems, stories, memoirs, essays, plays, letters, conversations, recipes and reminiscences, as well as drawings, cartoons and posters by Yiddish artists, each one refracting a different point of view and a different point of light.”
—Jonathan Kirsch, Jewish Journal
About the Editors
Ilan Stavans is the Publisher of Restless Books and the Lewis-Sebring Professor of Humanities, Latin American and Latino Culture at Amherst College. His books include On Borrowed Words, Spanglish, Dictionary Days, The Disappearance, and A Critic’s Journey. He has edited The Norton Anthology of Latino Literature, the three-volume set Isaac Bashevis Singer: Collected Stories, The Poetry of Pablo Neruda, among dozens of other volumes. He is the recipient of numerous awards and honors, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, Chile’s Presidential Medal, the International Latino Book Award, and the Jewish Book Award. Stavans’s work, translated into twenty languages, has been adapted to the stage and screen. A cofounder of the Great Books Summer Program at Amherst, Stanford, Chicago, Oxford, and Dublin, he is the host of the NPR podcast "In Contrast.”
Josh Lambert is the academic director of the Yiddish Book Center and visiting assistant professor of English at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He’s the author of American Jewish Fiction: A JPS Guide (2009) and Unclean Lips: Obscenity, Jews, and American Culture (2014), which received a Jordan Schnitzer Book Award from the Association of Jewish Studies and a Canadian Jewish Book Award. His reviews and essays have been published by the New York Times Book Review, the Los Angeles Times, the Los Angeles Review of Books, Haaretz, Tablet, the Forward, New England Public Radio, and many other publications.
THIS BOOK IS PUBLISHED WITH SUPPORT FROM THE YIDDISH BOOK CENTER AND TERRY SEGAL
Book details
Hardcover • $29.99
ISBN: 9781632062628
Publication date: Jan 21, 2020
6" x 9" • 512 pages
Paperback • $22.00
ISBN: 9781632062260
Publication date: Apr 25, 2023
6" x 9" • 512 page
eBook ISBN: 9781632062635
Cultural History—Jewish / Yiddish / Anthology
Territory: World
Books Featuring Ilan Stavans and Josh Lambert
by Juan Pablo Iglesias Yacher
Illustrations by Alex Peris
Translated from the Spanish by Ilan Stavans
Translated into Hebrew by Eliezer Nowodworski and Frieda Press-Danieli
Translated into Arabic by Randa Sayegh
Yonder: Restless Books for Young Readers | Ages 3–6
A one-of-a-kind picture book about an Israeli boy and a Palestinian boy who bond on the soccer field—translated into English, Hebrew, and Arabic.
Hardcover • ISBN: 9781632061560
Publication date: Aug 20, 2019
Paperback • ISBN: 9781632063793
Paperback publication date: May 7, 2024
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A riveting, one-of-a-kind anthology of the diversity, strangeness, and power of American English, featuring a tremendous array of essays, letters, poems, songs, speeches, stories, jeremiads, manifestos, and decrees across history, from Sojourner Truth and Abraham Lincoln to Henry Roth and Zora Neale Hurston, from Bob Dylan and James Baldwin to Richard Rodríguez and Amy Tan, from Tony Kushner and Toni Morrison to Louise Erdrich and Donald Trump.
Hardcover • ISBN: 9781632062659
Publication date: Feb 14, 2023
Edited by Ilan Stavans and Josh Lambert
2020 Foreword INDIES Silver Award for Anthologies
Winner of the Canadian Jewish Literary Award (Yiddish)
A momentous and diverse anthology of the influences and inspirations of Yiddish voices in America—radical, dangerous, and seductive, but also sweet, generous, and full of life—edited by award-winning authors and scholars Ilan Stavans and Josh Lambert.
Hardcover • ISBN: 9781632062628
Publication date: Jan 21, 2020
Paperback ISBN: 9781632062260
Publication date: Apr 25, 2023
by Ilan Stavans
Illustrations by Gabriela Larios
Foreword by Homero Aridjis
2020 Foreword INDIES Gold Winner for Multicultural Fiction
2020 Mass Book Awards Must Read Fiction
An inspired and urgent prose retelling of the Maya myth of creation by acclaimed Latin American author and scholar Ilan Stavans, gorgeously illustrated by Salvadoran folk artist Gabriela Larios and introduced by renowned author, diplomat, and environmental activist Homero Aridjis.
Hardcover ISBN: 9781632062406
Publication date: Nov 10, 2020
Edited by Ilan Stavans
In this rich, eye-opening, and uplifting anthology, dozens of esteemed writers, poets, artists, and translators from more than thirty countries send literary dispatches from life during the pandemic. A portion of proceeds benefit booksellers in need.
World Literature Today’s 75 Notable Translation of 2020
Paperback • ISBN: 9781632063021
Publication date: Aug 25, 2020
by Miguel de Cervantes
Translated from the Spanish by John Ormsby
Introduction and Video Lecture Series by Ilan Stavans
Illustrations by Eko
Newly introduced by leading Quixote scholar Ilan Stavans, this 400th Anniversary edition of Don Quixote of La Mancha—called the most popular book in history after the Bible and the first modern novel—inaugurates Restless Classics: interactive encounters with great books and inspired teachers. Each Restless Classic is beautifully designed with original artwork, a new introduction for the trade audience, and an online video teaching series led by passionate experts.
Paperback • ISBN: 9781632060754
Publication date: October 6, 2015
By Ricardo Piglia
Introduction by Ilan Stavans
Translated from the Spanish by Robert Croll
Work published within the framework of "Sur" Translation Support Program of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Worship of the Argentine Republic
Obra editada en el marco del Programa "Sur" de Apoyo a las Traducciones del Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores y Culto de la República Argentina
“Cognizant of his impending death, Piglia, the Argentine titan of letters who died of A.L.S. in January, prepared his 327 notebooks for publication in a trilogy…. Splendidly crafted and interspliced with essays and stories, this beguiling work is to a diary as Piglia is to “Emilio Renzi”: a lifelong alter ego, a highly self-conscious shadow volume that brings to bear all of Piglia’s prowess as it illuminates his process of critical reading and the inevitable tensions between art and life.”
—The New York Times Book Review, Editors' Choice
Paperback • ISBN: 9781632061621
Publication date: Nov 14, 2017
For Yiddish enthusiasts and novices alike, How Yiddish Changed America and How America Changed Yiddish is a smorgasbord of essays, poems, cartoons, and other dispatches from Yiddish America—a place where we all live, whether we know it or not. We’re thrilled to share the preface—the tasty appetizer before the feast—from editors Ilan Stavans and Josh Lambert.
This spring, join Ilan Stavans and Josh Lambert at events across the country as they celebrate the release of their monumental new anthology.
By Nezahualcóyotl
Retold from the Nahuatl by Ilan Stavans
Illustrated by Cuauhtémoc Wetzka
From award-winning author, editor, and translator Ilan Stavans comes a one-of-kind retelling of a legendary Aztec ruler’s timeless verses.
Hardcover • ISBN: 9781632063861
Publication date: March 25, 2025