Promotional Information

A civilisation which has had a profound impact on the world's cultural evolution Yiddish society had survived since medieval times in its east European heartland until Hitler completely destroyed it Rescues and re-evaluates a vanished culture Yiddish influence lives on in the American language, humour and way of life 'Paul Kriwaczek's essential argument is simple: this is, or rather was, a civilization. Its people were a nation. So his book is essentially descriptive, showing that the culture was indeed broad and deep and widespread enough to justify those terms. The description is well done and makes the point very effectively...I do not know what Jews will make of YIDDISH CIVILISATION, but for Christians it could not have been published at a more opportune time' Spectator

About the Author

Paul Kriwaczek, an Austrian Jew, was born in 1937 in Vienna. He grew up in north-west London, where the Yiddish language and culture were still strong among his friends' parents. After a career with the BBC External Services and as a successful programme-maker for BBC television, he retired in the mid 1990s and lives in north London.

Reviews

"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"

Kriwaczek's charming but frustratingly rambling history places Yiddish in a very broad historical context. Admitting that he is neither "a learned Jew nor a professional historian," Kriwaczek (In Search of Zarathustra) cuts a broad swath through history as he moves, in the opening chapters, from the forum in Rome to the emergence of a distinct "Yiddish civilization" in medieval eastern Europe. Kriwaczek's insistence on defining Yiddish as a culture, or civilization, rather than a language is smart and useful-it allows him to capture the intricacies of a very complicated history and to avoid a simple "black-and-white clash between gentiles and Jews"-but it also means that his tapestry is sometimes too large. When he does narrow his focus-on, say, the autobiography of Glikl of Hamlin, born 1646, whose memoir is the first major Yiddish work by a woman-he is evocative and precise. While there is an endless amount of fascinating detail (Slavic fashions in shoes became trendy in 14th-century Europe), and all is presented in an enjoyable narrative, the book becomes more of a rumination on a number of related issues than a concise examination of a culture and a language. 16 pages of illus. not seen by PW; maps. (Nov. 3) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.