Words on fire
Subtitle: the unfinished story of Yiddish
By: Dovid Katz.
Publisher: Basic Books, a member of the Perseus Books Group; Basic Books
Published: 2004
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 430
Subjects: Yiddish language -- History
Description: "Drawing on thirty years of research, Words on Fire traces the arc of a language identified from medieval times onward with women and uneducated men, and relates how efforts to raise its prestige were often met by opposition from the powers that be. Katz highlights the rise of literary Yiddish in the Renaissance - widely read translations of knightly epic poems and guides for daily living - particularly by and for Jewish women. In the wake of secularizing and modernizing movements of the nineteenth century, Yiddish rose spectacularly in a few short years from a mass folk idiom to the language of sophisticated modern literature, theater, journalism, and scholarship." "From the rise of the Hasidic movement to the fiction of Isaac Bashevis Singer, from its complex relationship with the Zionist movement to its appearance on the Internet, Words on Fire argues that Yiddish represents a high point in Jewish civilization. Words on Fire is a definitive account of this remarkable language and the culture that created and sustained it."--BOOK JACKET.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Notes to the reader; title: Introduction; title: Genesis; title: The three languages of Ashkenaz; title: Old Yiddish literature; title: What should a lady read; title: Yiddish and Kabbalah; title: In the East; title: Westernization and language; title: New visions of Judaism; title: The twentieth century; title: In the twenty-first century; title: The future of Yiddish