Full text: Kirkus Reviews on The Story of Yiddish

 

THE STORY OF YIDDISH; How a Mish-Mosh of Languages Saved the Jews

SECTION: NONFICTION

New York Times contributor Karlen (Shanda: The Making and Breaking of a Self-Loathing Jew, 2004, etc.) proffers an idiosyncratic take on Yiddish, the heroic vernacular that gets no respect.

This wide-ranging survey rejoices in Jewishness rather than Judaism. The author sporadically quotes Lenny Bruce, Isaac Bashevis Singer's Nobel speech and Three Stooges movies to support his notions. He attempts, with easygoing chutzpah (you know, "nerve") to draw apt lessons in linguistics and philology from history, philosophy, sports, literature and showbiz in the old countries as well as here in the goldene medina ("golden country.")

He comes to praise, not to bury a language often lamented as moribund. Yiddish, the lingua franca and soul music of Jews around the world for a millennium is ever-dying and evergreen, Karlen reports.

Its vibrancy has been regularly and popularly proclaimed, Karlen writes, from Leo Rosten's The Joys of Yiddish in 1968 to Michael Wex's Born to Kvetch in 2005. Nowadays, universities teach Yiddish, and in full spritz mode, he offers ironic illustrative jokes embroidered with bubbemeises ("old wives' tales") and bupkis ("beans.")