I’m not really sure why, especially considering I was raised
Catholic, but I really enjoy Yiddish. My
sister apparently appreciates it as well, or she is just interested in
endangered languages, because she was the one who found this book and insisted
that I read it.
Aaron Lansky started studying Yiddish in college and was constantly
fighting to find copies of the books he needed for class. Since there were almost no copies to be found
on campus or in bookstores, he started to go around to older Jewish families
and ask if they had any Yiddish books they were willing to part with. Many Jewish immigrants had books in Yiddish,
but their children and grandchildren often did not speak the language, so all
of these books were wasting away or being thrown out after their owners
died. Lansky chronicles his and his
collaborator’s efforts to preserve these books and the eventual founding of the
National Yiddish Book Center. Their
efforts have helped to keep Yiddish from dying out and given hope to people who
felt that their culture was being abandoned.
I really enjoyed this book.
It gave me an opportunity to learn more about the history of Yiddish as
well as the Jewish culture and how it transformed when people immigrated out of
Europe. It was pretty exciting for a
book about books—there were many times where they had to race to save books
from being ruined. There were also so
many people that I felt for in their desperation to pass on their knowledge to
others in a world were few cared.
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