Yiddishkeit: Jewish Vernacular and the New Land

Plot

Yiddish is everywhere. We hear words like 'nosh', 'shlep', and 'schmutz', all the time, but how did these little bits of Yiddish come to pepper American English? In "Yiddishkeit: Jewish Vernacular and the New Land", Pekar and Buhle trace the influence of Yiddish from the popular author Sholem Asch, who wrote in the early 1920s-1950s, to the modern day archivist Aaron Lansky, who started the National Yiddish Book Centre. This illustrated anthology contains original stories by notable writers and artists (listed below). Through essays, illustrations, a complete one-act play, and comics, four major themes concerning the Yiddish language are explored: culture, performance, assimilation, and revival of the language. Each contributor examines Yiddish from a different angle: for example, Harvey Pekar writes about his childhood experience with Yiddish as a first language growing up in his Cleveland blue-collar family in the 1940s, and Sharon Rudahl illustrates stories about famous Yiddish performers like Molly Picon. This anthology, written and edited by Pekar and Buhle, is a sincere and thoughtful compilation that skilfully uses comics, to reveal the surprising and far-reaching influence of Yiddish.