Abstract: " A fascinating and enlightening collection of comics and writings that explore the Yiddish language and the Jewish experience ( The Miami Herald ). We hear words like  nosh ,  schlep , and  schmutz , but how did they come to pepper American English? In  Yiddishkeit , Harvey Pekar and Paul Buhle trace the far-reaching influences of Yiddish from medieval Europe to the tenements of New York's Lower East Side. This comics anthology contains original stories by such notable writers and artists as Barry Deutsch, Peter Kuper, Spain Rodriguez, and Sharon Rudahl. Through illustrations, comics art, and a full-length play, four major themes are explored: culture, performance, assimilation, and the revival of the language. The book is about what Neal Gabler in his introduction labels 'Jewish sensibility.'...he writes: 'You really can't define Yiddishkeit neatly in words or pictures. You sort of have to feel it by wading into it.' The book does this with gusto. 8212 The New York Times As colorful, bawdy, and charming as the culture it seeks to represent. 8212 Print  magazine Brimming with the charm and flavor of its subject...a genuinely compelling, scholarly comics experience. 8212 Publishers Weekly A book that truly informs about Jewish culture and, in the process, challenges readers to pick apart their own vocabulary. 8212 Chicago Tribune A postvernacular tour de force. 8212 The Forward With a loving eye Pekar and Buhle extract moments and personalities from Yiddish history. 8212 Hadassah Gorgeous comix-style portraits of Yiddish writers.8211 8211 Tablet   Yiddishkeit has managed to survive, if just barely...because [it] is an essential part of both the Jewish and the human experience. 8212 Neal Gabler, author of  An Empire of Their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood , from his introduction A scrumptious smorgasbord of comics, essays, and illustrations...concentrated tastes, with historical context, of Yiddish theater, literature, characters and culture. 8212 Heeb  magazine"

Abstract: Biographisches: "Paul Buhle, retired from Brown University, has written and edited 42 books, including the award-winning Art of Harvey Kurtzman, Jews and American Comics, and the three-volume Jews and American Popular Culture. He lives in Madison, Wisconsin. Harvey Pekar (19398211" Rezension(2): "〈a href=http://www.publishersweekly.com target=blank〉〈img src=https://images.contentreserve.com/pw_logo.png alt=Publisher's Weekly border=0 /〉〈/a〉: September 12, 2011 The term “Yiddishkeit” is open to several interpretations, including “Yiddish culture” and “Yiddish sensibility,” but the concept is too expansive to be fully conveyed with a mere word. The same can be said of this book itself, which is a fascinating and dense examination—mostly in comics format—of Yiddish as a language and culture and how it became inextricably woven into the tapestry of America when it arrived with Jewish immigrants. While it’s impossible to fully explore the breadth and depth of Yiddish literature, performing arts, humor, and its key creators within the confines of a 240-page book, the contributors succeed in providing the very detailed basics in a visually engaging manner, with much of its written content being the final work of the late indie comics scribe Pekar, himself the scion of a Yiddish-speaking household. The art is provided by a number of notables, including Spain Rodriguez, Peter Kuper, and Sharon Rudahl, every bit of it brimming with the charm and flavor of its subject and seamlessly meshing with the text to create a genuinely compelling, scholarly comics experience. " Rezension(3): "〈a href=http://lj.libraryjournal.com/ target=blank〉〈img src=https://images.contentreserve.com/libraryjournal_logo.png alt=Library Journal border=0 /〉〈/a〉: November 15, 2011 Yiddish is a Germanic language with infusions from other tongues and written in the Hebrew alphabet. As Jewish culture grew in Europe, a Yiddish literary tradition developed that immigrants brought to the United States. This anthology dramatizes in comics and occasional prose pieces this tradition on both continents: historical overviews broad and narrow, cameos by writers, anecdotes about events and noteworthy figures, and several memoirs. The variety results in lively if sometimes maddeningly brief reading. Sholem Aleichem meets Mark Twain,Paul Robeson sings Yiddish in Russia. We meet Zero Mostel, actress/yenta extraordinaire Molly Picone, MAD cartoonist Harvey Kurtzman, and the Noah-like Aaron Lansky who rescued over a million discarded Yiddish books to found the National Yiddish Book Center. We glimpse the wildly successful Yiddish film Grine Felder (Green Fields) and compare cantors Al Jolson with Moishe Oysher. VERDICT Not a reference or a language textbook, Yiddishkeit works best as a semischolarly introduction to a sprawling yet dense tangle of personalities that should intrigue high schoolers and adults. Serious students can dig further via the bibliography. The art (some color) is lively and compelling, and the publisher notes this is the late Pekar's final fully realized work. --M.C.Copyright 2011 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission. " Rezension(4): "〈a href=https://www.booklistonline.com target=blank〉〈img src=https://images.contentreserve.com/booklist_logo.png alt=Booklist border=0 /〉〈/a〉: November 15, 2011 The last project neorealist comics creator Pekar completed before his death, in 2010, is a lively museum-in-a-book about Yiddishkeit, the popular culture birthed by Yiddish, the German-Hebrew hybrid that was the lingua franca of East European Jewry. Four big chapters focus, respectively, on literature, drama on stage and screen, Yiddish-indebted American popular culture, and the recent Yiddish cultural revival in America. The contents include single-page biographical sketches, longer real-life and fictional stories, old and new prose-only pieces, and a documentary play on Yiddish theater. As Pekar and coeditor Buhle present it, Yiddishkeit from the beginning was, though steeped in nostalgia, politically radical. Hence, its leading lights were often firebrands of the labor movement and the Left generally, and many fell afoul of HUAC and entertainment-industry blacklists after WWII (those who weren't and didn't, like Irving Berlin, are completely omitted). Despite some inaccuracies by the writers and some failed caricatures by the artists, the volume looks very spiffy, thanks to art-book publisher Abrams and the illustrators' different styles.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.) "