Investigates American klezmer music: its roots, evolution and the revival that began in the 1970s.

Originally published in hardcover in 2002.

You can hear it in the hottest clubs in New York, the hippest rooms in New Orleans, Chicago, and San Francisco, and in top concert halls around the world. It's a joyous sound that echoes the past. It's Old World meets New World. It's secular and sacred. It's traditional and experimental. It's played by classical violinist Itzhak Perlman (his all-klezmer album in his all-time best-seller!), the hypno-pop band Yo La Tengo, and avant-gardist John Zorn. It made the late great Benny Goodman's clarinet wail. It's klezmer and it's hot! The Essential Klezmer is the definitive introduction to a musical form in the midst of a renaissance. It documents the history of klezmer from its roots in the Jewish communities of medieval Eastern Europe to its current revival in Europe and America. It includes detailed information about the music's social, cultural, and political roots as well as vivid descriptions of the instruments, their unique sounds, and the players who've kept those sounds alive through the ages. Music journalist Seth Rogovoy skillfully conveys the emotional intensity and uplifting power of klezmer and the reasons for its ever widening popularity among Jews and Gentiles, Hasidim and club kids, grandparents and their grandkids. A comprehensive discography presents the "Essential Klezmer Library," extensive lists of recordings, artists, and styles, as well as an up-to-the-minute resource of music retailers, festivals, workshops, and klezmer Web sites. The Essential Klezmer is as entertaining as it is enlightening.

A collection of 120 melodies meticulously transcribed from recordings by the masters of the klezmer style, including Dave Tarras, Naftule Brandwine, Abe Schwartz and many more. Written in standard notation for C instruments, this book includes chordal accompaniment, program notes for each piece, and interviews with master klezmer musician Andy Statman and ethnomusicologist Dr. Walter Zev Feldman.

Graphic novel in which nomadic Jewish musicians meet, clash, fall in love and make music at the birth of klezmer.

More than a quarter of a century ago, Leo Rosten published the first comprehensive and hilariously entertaining lexicon of the colorful and deeply expressive language of Yiddish. Said “to give body and soul to the Yiddish language,” The Joys of Yiddish went on to become an indispensable tool for writers, journalists, politicians, and students, as well as a perennial bestseller for three decades. Rosten described his book as “a relaxed lexicon of Yiddish, Hebrew, and Yinglish words often encountered in English, plus dozens that ought to be, with serendipitous excursions into Jewish humor, habits, holidays, history, religion, ceremonies, folklore, and cuisine–the whole generously garnished with stories, anecdotes, epigrams, Talmudic quotations, folk sayings, and jokes.” To this day, it is considered the seminal work on Yiddish in America–a true classic and a staple in the libraries of Jews and non-Jews alike. With the recent renaissance of interest in Yiddish, and in keeping with a language that embodies the variety and vibrancy of life itself, The New Joys of Yiddish brings Leo Rosten’s masterful work up to date. Revised for the first time by Lawrence Bush in close consultation with Rosten’s daughters, it retains the spirit of the original–with its wonderful jokes, tidbits of cultural history, Talmudic and Biblical references, and tips on pronunciation–and enhances it with hundreds of new entries, thoughtful commentary on how Yiddish has evolved over the years, and an invaluable new English-to-Yiddish index. In addition, The New Joys of Yiddish includes wondrous and amusing illustrations by renowned artist R.O. Blechman.

The author explores the phenomenon of the Jewish culture in Europe. In this book she askes in what way do non-Jews embrace and enact Jewish culture and for what reasons.