Zusatztext A highly enjoyable and surprisingly positive account of how Jewish culture helped shape European history and vice versa. The Sunday Telegraph An outstanding survey. . . . Kriwaczek tracks the origins! flowering! and destruction of this unique! vibrant! and tenacious culture with a fine mixture of pride! regret! and eloquence. Booklist Evocative and precise. . . . An enjoyable narrative that captures the intricacies of a very complicated history. Publishers Weekly Informative and very entertaining . . . conjures up and re-creates baroque images and marvelous set pieces of feverish activity! long lost towns and shtetls [as well as] wonderful pictures of lost communities of Jews. The Irish Times Informationen zum Autor Paul Kriwaczek Klappentext 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.Chapter 1 1 Bist a Yid? Back at the beginning of the 1950smemory suggeststhe world was all in Technicolor and it never rained in summer. Nat King Cole headed the hit parade with They Try to Tell Us We're Too Young, Tottenham Hotspur was top of the football league and Newcastle United beat Blackpool to the Football Association cup. Butter, meat and sweets were still rationed in Britain and the average weekly wage was around £7, though you could buy a house for under five hundred. Money was tight, particularly pocket money. When the weather was fine, schoolboys like me would save our bus fares for fizzy drinks and walk the couple of miles to school instead. Our school in north-west London drew its pupils from a wide and diverse area. Every morning, teenage boysin the rigidly enforced uniform of grey flannel trousers, school blazers and caps (plus satchels and shining morning faces)could be seen converging on the red-brick Victorian building like wildlife towards a waterhole. We assembled from every part of the suburb: many poorer boys from the working-class terraces leading off the busy, grimy high street, middle-class pupils from upper-bracket apartment blocks with pretentious names like Grosvenor Mansions, and a small number of rich kids from spacious six-bedroomed detached houses with carriage drives, double garages and acres of garden. One young turbaned Sikh was daily delivered to the school gates by chauffeur-driven Bentley. He was the exception; by far the largest religious minority were Jews, for whom Britain's post-war grammar schools offered the irresistible attraction of a free quasi-public-school education. Back in those days, there was little town-and-gown trouble. True, gangs of adolescent roughnecks did gather in the seedier parts of the district, but we all knew which routes to avoid and which were safe. For some of us, however, there was one peril that was much harder to escape. A section of my route took me through one of the wealthier areas, along streets lined by big houses with wrought-iron gates and plaster-pillared porticoes, past flowery front gardens, tennis courts and recreation groundsa mock-rural setting which still somehow recalled the real orchards, market gardens and country v...

Autorentext

Paul Kriwaczek

Klappentext

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.

Leseprobe
Chapter 1

1

Bist a Yid?

Back at the beginning of the 1950s—memory suggests—the world was all in Technicolor and it never rained in summer. Nat King Cole headed the hit parade with “They Try to Tell Us We’re Too Young,” Tottenham Hotspur was top of the football league and Newcastle United beat Blackpool to the Football Association cup. Butter, meat and sweets were still rationed in Britain and the average weekly wage was around £7, though you could buy a house for under five hundred. Money was tight, particularly pocket money. When the weather was fine, schoolboys like me would save our bus fares for fizzy drinks and walk the couple of miles to school instead.

Our school in north-west London drew its pupils from a wide and diverse area. Every morning, teenage boys—in the rigidly enforced uniform of grey flannel trousers, school blazers and caps (plus satchels and shining morning faces)—could be seen converging on the red-brick Victorian building like wildlife towards a waterhole. We assembled from every part of the suburb: many poorer boys from the working-class terraces leading off the busy, grimy high street, middle-class pupils from upper-bracket apartment blocks with pretentious names like Grosvenor Mansions, and a small number of rich kids from spacious six-bedroomed detached houses with carriage drives, double garages and acres of garden. One young turbaned Sikh was daily delivered to the school gates by chauffeur-driven Bentley. He was the exception; by far the largest religious minority were Jews, for whom Britain’s post-war grammar schools offered the irresistible attraction of a free quasi-public-school education.

Back in those days, there was little town-and-gown trouble. True, gangs of adolescent roughnecks did gather in the seedier parts of the district, but we all knew which routes to avoid and which were safe. For some of us, however, there was one peril that was much harder to escape. A section of my route took me through one of the wealthier areas, along streets lined by big houses with wrought-iron gates and plaster-pillared porticoes, past flowery front gardens, tennis courts and recreation grounds—a mock-rural setting which still somehow recalled the real orchards, market gardens and country villas of no more than a generation or two earlier. It was just before entering this quiet would-be pastoral neighbourhood that menace lurked for young Jewish boys like me—a danger that could result in a severe beating.

If we kept our wits about us and our eyes open, we could catch sight of the threat: a group of apparently respectable middle-aged men in dark suits, loitering around the entrance to the alley which led to the local synagogue. If we were quick enough, we could take rapid evasive action. But teenage boys are much given to dreaming, and the long walk to school was the perfect opportunity to let our imaginations wander, leaving our mental autopilots to look after the practical business of working our legs and navigating them towards our destination. All too often a boy would accidentally stray within …