Yudl

Yudl
Author: Layle Silbert
Publisher: Seven Stories Press
Total Pages: 305
Release: 2013-08-06
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1609804414

Set in 1920s Chicago, the short novel Yudl follows its eponymous protagonist, a middle-aged editor at a left-leaning newspaper called The Yiddish Courier. Yudl and his wife have decided to become landlords, purchasing a vacant lot and hiring an acquaintance—aptly named Mason—to oversee the construction of their future apartment building. However, delays in the construction leave Yudl and his family without a home, forcing them to stay with Mason and his family until the construction is finally complete. Told with wry wit and a masterful sensibility for metaphor, the story explores gender, Zionism, and the immigrant experience in the US. The selection of short stories that follow the novel in this volume were selected by the author from her deathbed during her last weeks and then hours on earth. Silbert's graceful short stories focus on the family, allowing the reader glimpses of a child's happiness, the cripplingly contradictory demands of femininity, the complexity of grief, and a sustained meditation on life and death.

The Golem and the Wondrous Deeds of the Maharal of Prague

The Golem and the Wondrous Deeds of the Maharal of Prague
Author: Yehudah Yudl Rozenberg
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 255
Release: 2007-01-01
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 030013472X

This collection of interrelated stories about a sixteenth-century Prague rabbi and the golem he created became an immediate bestseller upon its publication in 1909. So widely popular and influential was Yudl Rosenberg's book, it is no exaggeration to claim that the author transformed the centuries-old understanding of the creature of clay and single-handedly created the myth of the golem as protector of the Jewish people during times of persecution. In addition to translating Rosenberg's classic golem story into English for the first time, Curt Leviant also offers an introduction in which he sets Rosenberg's writing in historical context and discusses the golem legend before and after Rosenberg's contributions. Generous annotations are provided for the curious reader. The book is full of adventures, surprises, romance, suspense, mysticism, Jewish pride, and storytelling at its best. The Chief Rabbi of Prague, known as the Maharal, brings the golem Yossele to life to help the Jews fight false accusations of ritual murder-the infamous blood libel. More human, more capable, and more reliable as a protector than any golem imagined before, Rosenberg's Golem irrevocably changed one of the most widely influential icons of Jewish folklore.

The Dworskys of Lazdei

The Dworskys of Lazdei
Author: Michoël Ronn
Publisher:
Total Pages: 474
Release: 1990
Genre: Jews
ISBN:

The Dworskys of Lazdei is the celebration of a family's Jewish heritage. Their story spans almost 250 years, extends ten generations beginning in the mid-1700s, and includes approximately 2000 relatives. Reb Peretz is the earliest known ancestor of the Dworsky family. He lived northwest of Suvalk, Lithuania in the mid-18th century. Peretz had at least two children, Sora born in 1768, and Yosef born circa 1774. Descendants and relatives lived in Lithuania, New York, Minnesota, Florida, California, Israel, and elsewhere.

A Dictionary of Ashkenazic Given Names

A Dictionary of Ashkenazic Given Names
Author: Alexander Beider
Publisher: Avotaynu
Total Pages: 740
Release: 2001
Genre: Foreign Language Study
ISBN:

Dictionary of 7000 Ashkenazic given names from the 11th century to the present. Names are traced to specific localities at specific times. Includes a history of Yiddish and a history of Ashkenazic Jews and their migrations. Also includes information of borrowings from non-Jewish groups.

From a Ruined Garden

From a Ruined Garden
Author: Zachary M. Baker
Publisher: Bloomington : Indiana University Press
Total Pages: 400
Release: 1998
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN:

In the years after World War II, Polish Jewish survivors of the Holocaust who had made their way to the Americas and Israel compiled memorial books to preserve the memory of their destroyed communities. From a Ruined Garden gathers some 77 sections from the nearly 1,000 memorial books published. The texts describe daily life in the shtetl as well as everyday life during the Holocaust and the experiences of returning survivors.

Rememberings

Rememberings
Author: Pauline Wengeroff
Publisher: Eisenbrauns
Total Pages: 336
Release: 2000
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN:

Pauline Wengeroffs memoir tells what it was like to be a Jewish girl and a Jewish woman in 19th-century Russia, as foundations of faith and tradition eroded around her with the onset of the Jewish Enlightenment in Russia. No other work like this survives. The book has been translated into English from her original German memoir.

The Free Thinkers

The Free Thinkers
Author: Layle Silbert
Publisher:
Total Pages: 328
Release: 2000-05-02
Genre: Fiction
ISBN:

Silbert gives lost lives new voices as she describes in exacting, often witty detail the world of Eastern European Jews newly arrived in turn-of-the century America.