Yiddishlands: A Memoir, Second Ed.

This second edition of Roskies’s memoir comes 15 years after the original. Rather than an update on his life, Roskies (emeritus, Yiddish literature and culture, Jewish Theological Seminary of America) has recontextualized the original material and restored its final chapter, a dreamlike magical journey into the past. The tension between reality and fiction, especially in his mother’s life—the center of the first part of the book—becomes more palpable in this version. A family tree and biographical sketches of the people in the text help readers gain an understanding of the author’s family, along with pertinent details about important Yiddish writers. He depicts European Jewish life in the first half of the 20th century as a vibrant world full of art, love affairs, and clashes between various Jewish communities and their languages. Its disappearance and the trauma they experienced become more evident through this memoir. Roskies also explores ways how splintered Jewish communities were rebuilt in North America and Israel.