Outwitting History The Amazing Adventures of a Man Who Rescued a Million Yiddish Books

by Lansky, Aaron

• ISBN13: 9781565124295
• ISBN10: 1565124294
• eBook ISBN(s): 9781565126367
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2004-10-05
• Publisher: Algonquin Books

Summary

The great Yiddish scholar Max Weinreich was delivering a lecture in Finland when the Nazis invaded his native Poland. The lecture saved his life. He made his way to New York, where he opened his doors to new students. Many thought his work was hopeless-especialy since half of the world's Yiddish speakers had been killed in the Holocaust. Asked why he persevered, Weinreich answered simply: "Because Yiddish has magic, it will outwit history." And so it has-though in ways few could have imagined. In 1980, a twenty-three-year-old student named Aaron Lanksy set out to rescue the world's abandoned Yiddish books before it was too late. Precious volumes that had survived Hitler and Stalin were being passed down from older generations of Jewish immigrants to their non-Yiddish-speaking children-only to be thrown away or destroyed. With little more than his own chutzpah, Lansky issued a worldwide appeal for unwanted Yiddish books, and the response was overwhelming. Outwitting History is an adventure tale filled with unforgettable characters and told with the exuberance of a man whose passion led him from house to house, country to country, collecting treasured books and heartfelt, often hilarious stories of the vibrant intellectual world these older Jews inhabited. Lansky and a team of young volunteers crisscrossed America, shlepping books from attics and basements, demolition sites and Dumpsters, while shmoozing with their owners, who insisted on feeding them a little nosh-gefilte fish, kasha, blintzes, latkes, kugel-before handing over, one book at a time, their beloved literary history. When Lansky started out, experts believed that fewer than 70,000 Yiddish-language books still existed. Twenty-five years and 1.5 million books later, the organization Lansky founded, the National Yiddish Book Center, is one of the largest and fastest-growing Jewish cultural groups in the world. As he takes us along on his groundbreaking journey, Lansky explores the roots of the Yiddish language and introduces us to the brilliant Yiddish writers-from Mendele to Sholem Aleichem to I.B. Singer-whose lasting cultural relevance is evident on every page. He shares the humor, tenacity, and love for the written word that unites Jewish immigrants with everyone who cares about the future of great literature. And he enables us to see how an almost-lost culture is the bridge between the old world and the future.

Author Biography

Aaron Lansky is the founder and president of the National Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, Massachusetts

Table of Contents

Foreword	ix
Part One: Learning Yiddish	1	(40)
Out of the Dumpster	3	(6)
Bread and Wine	9	(10)
``Come Back after Yontef!''	19	(10)
``What Is Mendele Doing in a Fruit Basket on the Floor?''	29	(12)
Part Two: On the Road	41	(82)
A Ritual of Cultural Transmission	43	(4)
``Don't You Know That Yiddish Is Dead?''	47	(10)
A Day in the Life	57	(12)
A Brief History of Yiddish Literature	69	(10)
``People Are Dying Today Who Never Died Before''	79	(7)
``Pretty Soon We'll Have a Whole Forest in Israel and No More Members Here''	86	(7)
``Love and Peace''	93	(9)
``Ostroff! Sea Gate!''	102	(16)
The Great Newark Book Heist	118	(5)
Part Three: ``Him I Don't Talk To!''	123	(58)
``You're a Liar!''	125	(15)
``They're Tearing Apart the Library''	140	(10)
A Ghost in the Attic	150	(9)
``If Not Higher''	159	(11)
``Hitler's Fault''	170	(11)
Part Four: Ganvenen dem Grenets---Crossing the Border	181	(78)
Squandered at the Concord	183	(11)
Kaddish	194	(16)
A Job for the Young	210	(9)
The Four Corners of the Earth	219	(22)
Back in the U.S.S.R.	241	(18)
Part Five: Bringing It All Back Home	259	(54)
Der Oylem Redt---The World Takes Notice	261	(16)
A Home of Our Own	277	(12)
Immortality	289	(12)
The Valise at the Bottom of the Sea	301	(12)
Notes	313	(4)
Acknowledgments	317