Adventures in Yiddishland
Subtitle: postvernacular language and culture
By: Jeffrey Shandler.
Publisher: University of California Press
Published: 2005
Place of publication: Berkeley
Language: eng
Number of pages: 263
Subjects: Yiddish language; Yiddish language -- Social aspects; Jews -- Languages; Language and culture
Description: "Adventures in Yiddishland examines the transformation of Yiddish in the six decades since the Holocaust, tracing its shift from the language of daily life for millions of Jews to what the author terms a postvernacular language of diverse and expanding symbolic value. With a thorough command of modern Yiddish culture as well as its centuries-old history, Jeffery Shandler investigates the remarkable diversity of contemporary encounters with the language. His study traverses the broad spectrum of people who engage with Yiddish - from Hasidim to avant-garde performers, Jews as well as non-Jews, fluent speakers well as those who know little or no Yiddish - in communities across the Americas and in Europe, Israel, and other outposts of "Yiddishland.""

"Shandler takes a wide-ranging look at Yiddish culture, including language learning, literary translation, performance, and material culture. He examines children's books, board games, summer camps, klezmer music, cultural festivals, language clubs, Web sites, cartoons, and collectibles - all touchstones of the meaning of Yiddish as it enters its second millennium. Rather than mourn the language's demise, Adventures in Yiddishland calls for taking an expansive approach to the possibilities for the future of Yiddish. Shandler's conceptualization of postvernacularity sheds important new light on contemporary Jewish culture generally and offers insights into theorizing the relation between language and culture."--Jacket.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Encountering Yiddishland; title: Beyond the mother tongue; title: Founded in translation; title: Yiddish as a performance art; title: Absolut tchotchke; title: Wanted dead or alive?