Splendor, Decline, and Rediscovery of Yiddish in Latin America

Lieden: Brill, 2018. First edition. Hardcover. Fine. Octavo. x, 253, (1)pp. Index and bibliography. Colored pictorial boards with white lettering on a black spine, and brown wraparound band at foot. Illustrated with 9 photographs. A fine, as new copy.

"The editors explain the renewed interest in-or 'revival' of-Yiddish in Latin America from the 1980s on as part of a broader global phenomenon. This volume sheds light on that phenomenon, while also being a part of it."
-Amy Kerner, Brown University, Estudios Interdisciplinarios de América Latina 30.1 (2019)

"As a pioneering scholarly anthology in its field, Splendor, Decline, and Rediscovery of Yiddish in Latin America is to be warmly greeted."
-Zachary M. Baker, Stanford University, Journal of Jewish Identities 13.1 (2020)

Splendor, Decline, and Rediscovery of Yiddish in Latin America presents Yiddish culture as it developed in an area seldom associated with the language. Yet several countries-Argentina, Brazil, Cuba, Mexico and Uruguay-became centers for Yiddish literature, journalism, political activism, theater, and music. Chapters by historians, linguists, and literary critics explore the flourishing of Yiddish there in the early 20th century, its retraction in the 1960's, and contemporary endeavors to rescue this marginalized legacy.
Topics discussed in the volume include the literary figures of the "Jewish gaucho" and the peddler, the regional Yiddish press, the communal struggle against trafficking in women, cultural responses to the Holocaust, intra-Jewish conflict during the Cold War, debates on assimilation versus tradition, and emergent postvernacular Yiddish. (Publisher)

Contents: The Yiddish side of Jewish Brazil: cultural endeavors and literary heritage / Roney Cytrynowicz -- Yiddish culture after the Shoah: refugee writers and artists as "fresh creative energies" for Buenos Aires / Malena Chinski -- The abandonment of Yiddish by the Jewish-Argentine communist icuf / Israel Lotersztain -- Baginen by José Winiecki: the dawn of the Ashkenazic Jewish community of Mexico in a didactic key / Tamara Gleason Freidberg -- Yiddish and criollismo: the case of Mordkhe Alperson's Der "lindzhero" / Susana Skura and Lucas Fiszman -- Stories by two Yiddish writers in Uruguay: Shloyme Zytner and Elie Verblun / Alan Astro -- Simja Sneh: a language in solitude / Perla Sneh -- Pinie Katz and I / Javier Sinay -- Becoming Cuban in Yiddish: the poetry of Eliezer Aronowsky / Rosa Perelmuter -- Der freylekhster yid in Argentine: the life and death of Jevl Katz, popular artist of the 1930s / Ariel Svarch. (OCLC)

Volume 10 of the Brill series, "Jewish Latin America; Issues and Methods."