Yiddish Civilisation: The Rise and Fall of a Forgotten Nation | 
|  | | | Title: | Yiddish Civilisation: The Rise and Fall of a Forgotten Nation | | Author: | Paul Kriwaczek | | Publisher: | Vintage | | Type: | Book / Paperback | | Publication Date: | 31 October, 2006 | | ISBN / ISBN-13: | 1400033772 / 9781400033775 | | List Price: | $15.95 | | You Save: | $3.99 | | Amazon Price: | $11.96 | |
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Product Description
Paul Kriwaczek begins this illuminating and immensely pleasurable chronicle of Yiddish civilization during the Roman empire, when Jewish culture first spread to Europe. We see the burgeoning exile population disperse, as its notable diplomats, artists and thinkers make their mark in far-flung cities and found a self-governing Yiddish world. By its late-medieval heyday, this economically successful, intellectually adventurous, and self-aware society stretched from the Baltic to the Black Sea. Kriwaczek traces, too, the slow decline of Yiddish culture in Europe and Russia, and highlights fresh offshoots in the New World.
Combining family anecdote, travelogue, original research, and a keen understanding of Yiddish art and literature, Kriwaczek gives us an exceptional portrait of a culture which, though nearly extinguished, has an influential radiance still.
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Customer Reviews:
• A Great Book 06 September, 2006
This is a wonderful book that gives a wide berth to both Yiddish civilization and Jewish history from the Roman period to the present. The author begins with a commentary on the loss of tradition among Yiddish speaking English Jews and the fake heritage of many of ape Yiddish by enjoying its music as an instant pass to heritage without 'ties' to religious observance. Then the book begins a whirlwind tour of Jewish history and the movements and diversity of the Jewish people in the Roman empire and Spain. It trie to understand which Jews lived in Eastern Europe before the Yiddish penetration that followed the German colonization of Eastern Europe between the 13th and 16th centuries. With wonderful detail we are given glimpses into Jewish life down through the ages. Religious innovation and the great Rabbis of the period are described as well as the pogroms and the diversity of Jewish life.
The body of the book covers the period from the 15th century to the 19th when Yiddish civilization, the thesis of this book, crystallized. Here there was the Pale of settlement and the autonomous Yiddish council. This was also a period of upheavel bracketed by the reformation, including the false Messiah Shabtai Tzvi, as well as Moses Mendelsohn and the Baal Shem Tov. We learn bout the Mitnagdim or Lithuanians and get insights into those many many non-Jews who converted over the years for a variety of reasons.
In the end we read of the decline and fall of this civilization and how parts of it came to the New World. A wonderful book full of color and understanding, a brilliant work.
Seth J. Frantzman
- Reviewed by customer ID: A2Z4KA3EFQWZOX
• A Most Enjoyable And Informative Historical Review 28 April, 2008
Paul Kriwaczek's survey of the history of the Yiddish Civilization in Eastern Europe was a most informative and eye-opening text for me to read. It has answered many questions about that phase of Jewish history that had puzzled me for a long time. Why did the Jews migrate to the banks of the Rhine and the Danube in the first place and in what phase of history? And why did they move into the east after having lived in German lands long enough to have adopted the German language? How did that linguistic variation develop that was called Yiddish Toytch? And it went on from there to what was it that split the Eastern from the Western Jews, who were those Chasidim who had separated from rabbinical Judaism, and so much more.
So I learned their entry into Germany coincided with the Carolingian Empire. Their eastern migration was part of the migration of Germans, Dutch, Flemish, and French settlers in the 13th century. It was interesting to hear that the Jews and the other Westerners were actually invited by Slavic nobles as promoters of trade and prosperity and that they were given charters of self-government as early as in 1264 in the Charter of Kalisz. One wonders whether it was this autonomy granted from the early beginning that was responsible for the ultimate failure of the Slavic, German and Jewish elements to blend into one. The Kabalistic deviation from Torah and Talmud became popular in the 16th century and Kriwaczek is brutal in criticizing its mysticism and irrationality. He reports about the ba'al shem tov, the masters of the Divine Name, who were anti-rabbinical preachers, seers, and exorcists and who attempted to derive God's Truth out of the Torah in mysterious ways. So then, it was around 1750 that they were united into the movement of Chasidism and became prominent all over the Yiddish realm. It was at the same time that their famous philosopher Moses ben Menachem Mendel spread his advice for the Jews to seek entry into the age of Enlightenment and science. I hadn't known that he was the grandfather of Felix Mendelssohn, the composer, nor that the Jews praised him as the Third Moses - as in "Moses, Maimonides, and Mendelssohn".
I won't continue listing the numerous additional items of historical and cultural interests brought forth in this book. I will only mention two further phenomena the author mentions that draw attention even in our time. During the rule of Alexander II in the 19th century, there appeared the Jewish Enlightenment in which, after the abolishment of various anti-Semitic restrictions, many Jews rapidly evolved into a modern, educated and productive society. That, in turn, let loose a new wave of vicious anti-Semitism as the host population was evidently alarmed by the minority's progress and rising power and affluence. It is interesting because it parallels the same upsurge of resentment in the western countries, which also accompanied the rapid growth of Jewish economic and cultural prowess and thus hints at a similar or identical pathogenetic mechanism. The other noteworthy comment the author made relates to the reasons for the Jewish exodus from Eastern Europe a hundred years ago. Certainly they left in order to escape from the brutal pogroms in Tsarist Russia, but they also sought refuge from the claustrophobic and stifling existence in their shtetls, which they felt were dominated by an outdated and kabalistic religion. We have known about Zionism all along as that Jewish thing that drove them to Palestine, but it rather appears that the spirit of Zionism was the same as what was seizing hold of many other countries: the search for modernism, social justice, nationalism, freedom, and independence. Zionism, so it appears to me, was an inescapable consequence of the historical evolution of the Yiddish-speaking realm in Eastern Europe.
I see, other reviewers have been reluctant in praising this book, but as far as I am concerned, it was one of the most enjoyable I have read in recent years.
- Reviewed by customer ID: A2JGO18J0PBRH4
• Good Intentions 21 January, 2007
This book was difficult for me. I first of all found its subtitle misleading. There was not a Yiddish 'nation' A nation as I understand it has a specific territory of its own. The Jews really had in the Disapora no territory of their own , and certainly no means of defending it. The term 'civilization' seems to be better but here too the great limitations placed on Jews in terms of livelihood and profession raise the question of how it is possible to see their world as a civilization.
As for the History itself I found it instructive but confusing. One - third of the book deals with History of the Jews before there is a Yiddish speaker around. When the Yiddish world is come to we are not told really about the lives of individuals , do not get the feel of the worlds in different ways. Here I would contrast this book with the Zborowski and Herzog classic work on the Shtetl , " Life is with People"
I did learn from it about certain historical realities I knew little or nothing about , for instance the history of the Jews of Regensburg, or the role Jews played in the Islamic -Christian conflicts which dominated the Middle Ages, the significance of the Slavic elements in formation of Yiddish, the horrifying picture of the disastrous fourteeth century in Western Europe, the place great Jewish travelers had in the development of Yiddish civilization, and much else.
Perhaps this is one of those books that needed a better reading than I gave it.
- Reviewed by customer ID: AHD101501WCN1
• An Appreciative Reader 05 March, 2006
The author captures the broad sweep of history while at the same time personalizing it with vignettes of various areas, families, individuals, and even buildings. He gives the reader a taste of many different kinds of people, famous and ordinary. And he tells this story with compassion and even humor. I've lost count of how many friends and relatives I have recommended this book to. I hope they all read it.
- Reviewed by customer ID: A2FXW8SNH4APAP
• Well-written, But Seriously Flawed 21 January, 2007
Dr. Kriwaczek, in fascinating and well-chosen detail, begins with the little-told story of the Jews as a substantial and multi-ethnic population of well-assimilated Roman citizens. He tells of the dawn and rise of Europe, in parallel with the dawn and rise of what becomes a vast Yiddish "state" east of the Rhine. In fact, the thesis of the book is that because of their well-structured and highly effective system of self-government, these Jews constituted a true state within and across the ever-shifting poorly defined boundaries of the conglomerate nations of medieval Europe, one that should be considered in every sense to be a "founder nation" of modern Europe.
He makes his case well up to the end of the eighteenth century. At that point, Jews in Western Europe were seeking to assimilate, either by working towards full citizenship in France, England, etc. or by converting outright. In Eastern Europe, Poland-Lithuania had disappeared, swallowed by Prussia, Austria-Hungary, and Russia. At this point, the Jewish "state" was gone or all but gone, the Kahals bankrupted, the people stripped of whatever privilege and protection they might have once enjoyed. In other words, in the sense of this book, their civilization was dead.
Here's the problem: another 150 years of Jewish life in Europe, crammed into the last few pages of the book. In this final chapter, Kriwaczek undoes every point he has made toward Yiddish statehood. For example, when he writes of the "Yiddish Renaissance," the late nineteenth century literary movement founded by Sholem Aleichem, Mendele the Book-Seller, and I. L. Peretz, he speaks in detail of the shame and frustration these authors felt in being forced to write in Yiddish if they were to be read by the Jewish masses. He quotes an early poem from I. L. Peretz decrying the limitations of the language, its inability to express an undiluted positive emotion. But why was that? Because buried in the very structure and vocabulary of Yiddish is the overwhelming sense of the shame and grief of exile. Was there ever a true state if its citizens had no right to protect themselves, were constantly being expelled from their homes, lacked any sense of statehood? And nowhere does he mention how these same authors became champions of the language, fighting for its preservation.
More troubling to me are other statements that stretch credulity. "...Contrary to the common myth it was not just anti-Semitism that emigrants wanted to leave behind...but more the claustrophobia of shtetl existence...its self-imposed limitations on living a full, rich and successful life." Of course, a small, isolated village could be a stifling backwater, but Jewish life at the turn of the century was as heterogeneous as it is now. Many left the shtetls for the cities, lifted the burden of exile by becoming Socialists, Bundists, Communists, and Zionists. Modern education had become compulsory, and even in the shtetls, some were shaving their beards, and many were less strictly observant. Some immigrants brought their narrow views with them and set up similar communities here. I know from my grandmother and her sisters, from other immigrants, from first-generation works, that the vast majority came here to escape hunger, poverty, and economic uncertainty, as well as the pogroms and conscription.
What a shame that after a fine book describing the evolution of Yiddish and the accomplishments of its speakers, the author ends on a note of contempt.
- Reviewed by customer ID: A3RWM2GF7M1DPS
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