How Yiddish Changed America and How America Changed Yiddish

How Yiddish Changed America and How America Changed Yiddish
Edited by Ilan Stavans and Josh Lambert (Restless Books)

A stunning and rich anthology of the interplay of Yiddish and American culture that starts with the arrival of Ashkenazi immigrants to New York City's Lower East Side and follows Yiddish as it moves into Hollywood, Broadway, literature, politics, and resistance. The editors take deep dives into cuisine, language, popular culture, and even Yiddish in the other Americas, including Canada, Argentina, Cuba, Mexico, and Colombia. The book presents a bountiful menu of genres: essays, memoir, song, letters, poems, recipes, cartoons, conversations, and much more. Authors include Nobel Prize–winner Isaac Bashevis Singer and luminaries such as Grace Paley, Cynthia Ozick, Chaim Grade, Michael Chabon, Abraham Cahan, Sophie Tucker, Blume Lempel, Irving Howe, Paula Vogel, and Liana Finck.

In conjunction with the release of How Yiddish Changed America and How America Changed Yiddish (Restless Books, 2020), and as part of the Yiddish Book Center's Decade of Discovery, a series of author talks will be presented across the country. 

AUTHOR TALKS | How Yiddish Changed America and How America Changed Yiddish

Date:            CANCELED
Time:            
Location:     Betsy Hotel
                     1440 Ocean Drive
                     Miami, FL 33139
Cost:            Free to the public

Information about this event will be available on the Betsy Hotel website in early 2020.

Date:            Sunday, May 31, 2020 -please note, this event may be rescheduled due to health emergency.
Time:            2:00 PM
Location:     Vilna Shul
                     18 Phillips Street
                     Boston, MA 02114
Cost:            General Admission | $10

Information and tickets for this event are available on the Vilna Shul website.

The Decade of Discovery is a new initiative of the Yiddish Book Center designed to foster a deeper understanding of Yiddish and modern Jewish culture. Beginning with the Center’s 40th anniversary in 2020, and continuing for each of the next ten years, the Center will select an annual theme around which it will hold special events, courses, conferences, exhibits, performances, and other programs, often in partnership with other organizations. In doing so, the Center will create new relationships with individuals and institutions to expand and strengthen engagement with Yiddish and modern Jewish culture—creating spaces for collaboration, testing of ideas, and the discovery of new perspectives.

​The Decade of Discovery is made possible in part through the generous support of the Leona and Ralph W. Kern Foundation.