Yiddish Lost and Found: Eavesdropping on the Ancestors

Yiddish learner and novelist Ellen Galford (author of The Dyke and the Dybbuk, The Fires of Bride and other feminist cult classics) takes a short, sharp look at the fragmentary, battered but tenacious Yiddish that survived three generations of her family’s journey from the Russian Pale of Settlement to the fleshpots of the Bronx and the wilds of New Jersey. In an irreverent but resolutely schmaltz-free exploration of their favourite words and expressions, she breaks down the barriers between language-study and 1950s tribal gossip, bringing to life a fast-talking clan of saints and sinners, socialists and social climbers, kitchen-table philosophers and one legendary exotic dancer.