The Meaning of Yiddish

With a rare combination of erudition and insight, the author investigates the major aspects of Yiddish language and culture, showing where Yiddish came from and what it has to offer, even as it ceases to be a living language. Reviews Harshav s book is a first-class study of Yiddish as both language and culture, rich with linguistic detail and historical insight, expert in its literary analysis and judgments. I recommend it enthusiastically. Irving Howe, Graduate School and University Center of the City University of New York The Meaning of Yiddish is the most important contribution to the study of Yiddish language and literature in recent times. Chana Kronfeld, University of California, Berkeley The Meaning of Yiddish is explicitly intended for readers who bring to it no previous knowledge, only curiosity...My central question, Harshav writes in the preface, is: Yiddish: what was it? What kind of world was it? How can we read the intersections of meaning its texts seem to provide? How did it lead in and out of Jewish history, moving between the internal Jewish world and the cultures of Christian Europe and America? I know of no other single book in any language which could respond to these questions by conveying to the uninitiated ...such a richly textured profile of the nature and dynamics of both the Yiddish language and its literature. It is a remarkable feat of high popularization, written with great flair and without a hint of pedantry, its examples always to the point and often memorable in themselves...The book should be read by all who are interested in language, in literature, and in the modern Jewish experience. Times Literary Supplement

ISBN 0804735751   Pages 226 ISBN13 9780804735759 (What's this?)   Volumes 1 Publisher Stanford University Press   Weight (grammes) 265 Imprint Stanford University Press   Published in Palo Alto Format Paperback   Series title Contraversions: Jews & Other Differences Publication date 31 Jan 2000   Height (mm) 228 Library of Congress PD   Width (mm) 153 DEWEY 439.1   Spine width (mm) 16 DEWEY edition DC21   Academic level Undergraduate, Postgraduate, Professional / Scholarly

		Preface
Pt. 1		The Yiddish Language
1		Language and History		3
2		The Nature of Yiddish		27
3		Some Sociological Aspects		74
4		The Semiotics of Yiddish Communication		89
Pt. 2		Literature in History: Ideology and Poetics
5		The Modern Jewish Revolution		119
6		The Historical Perspective of Modern Yiddish Literature		139
7		Yiddish Poetry in America		161
8		Introspectivism: A Modernist Poetics		175
9		The End of a Language		187
		Index		195

'I know of no other single book in any language which could respond to these questions by conveying to the uninitiated...such a richly textured profile of the nature and dynamics of both the Yiddish language and its literature. It is a remarkable feat of high popularization, written with great flair and without a hint of pedantry, its examples always to the point and often memorable in themselves...The book should be read by all who are interested in language, in literature, and in the modern Jewish experience.'Times Literary Supplement

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