In Of Lodz and Love, Chava Rosenfarb revisits her themes of the the shtetl and pre-Holocaust Poland, of economic and political oppression, and of the upheavals that would herald a new Jewish national and political awakening. The story takes Yacov, son of Hindele, and Binele, the daughter of the chalk vendor Yossele Abedale, to the industrial town of Lodz during the first years of Poland's independence, both before and after the country entered the war with the Bolsheviks. The would-be young lovers evolve separately against the backdrop of the city's own struggle for economic survival. In sometimes tragic turns, they make their way in the strange urban culture, rapidly acquiring the skills to survive. Translated from the original Yiddish, this book serves as prologue and as counterpoint to the urbanization of Jewish life in Poland. In its elegance and subtle wit, and overwhelming human dignity, it is not only the testimony of a vanished world, but a powerful love story.

This unique and rich anthology of Yiddish stories ranges from the beginning of Yiddish literature through I.B. Singer.

Driven from their homes in Russia, Poland, and Romania by pogroms and poverty, many Jews who came to Canada in the wave of immigration after the 1905 Russian revolution were committed radicals. A Future Without Hate or Need brings to life the rich and multi-layered lives of a dissident political community, their shared experiences and community-building cultural projects, as they attempted to weave together their ethnic particularity—their identity as Jews—with their internationalist class politics.

In Yiddish, shtetl simply means “town.” How does such an unassuming word come to loom so large in modern Jewish culture, with a proliferation of uses and connotations? By examining the meaning of shtetl, Jeffrey Shandler asks how Jewish life in provincial towns in Eastern Europe has become the subject of extensive creativity, memory, and scholarship from the early modern era in European history to the present. In the post-Holocaust era, the shtetl looms large in public culture as the epitome of a bygone traditional Jewish communal life. People now encounter the Jewish history of these towns through an array of cultural practices, including fiction, documentary photography, film, memoirs, art, heritage tourism, and political activism. At the same time, the shtetl attracts growing scholarly interest, as historians, social scientists, literary critics, and others seek to understand both the complex reality of life in provincial towns and the nature of its wide-ranging remembrance. Shtetl: A Vernacular Intellectual History traces the trajectory of writing about these towns—by Jews and non-Jews, residents and visitors, researchers, novelists, memoirists, journalists and others—to demonstrate how the Yiddish word for “town” emerged as a key word in Jewish culture and studies. Shandler proposes that the intellectual history of the shtetl is best approached as an exemplar of engaging Jewish vernacularity, and that the variable nature of this engagement, far from being a drawback, is central to the subject’s enduring interest.

Kanade, di Goldene Medine offers a broad study of its field, with equal attention to English- and French-language materials and contexts. The volume’s essays highlight the fundamental link between the culture and life of Canadian Jews and their Polish roots. This focus brings Yiddish to the fore, in essays focusing on the history of Canadian Yiddish literature, and the relevance of the language for contemporary Canadian Chasidic communities. However, essays in this volume also highlight the writings of contemporary authors, working both in French and English. Thus, the collection explores culture at the borderlands of three languages, with an eye for the link between New Worlds and Old. Kanade, di Goldene Medine apporte une contribution importante à l’étude de la littérature et la culture juives canadiennes, tout en étant attentif aux textes et contextes anglophone et francophone ainsi qu’à l’univers particulier des juifs hassidiques de Montréal. Le volume tient également compte du lien fondamental entre la créativité des juifs canadiens et leurs racines est-européennes, en particulier polonaises, et de la présence de la langue yiddish − ou de son imaginaire − dans leurs textes sous forme de traduction ou autotraduction. Le lecteur pourra cerner dans ce livre des perspectives transversales qui mettent en relation des itinéraires multiples et diversifiés noués entre le Nouveau Monde et le Vieux.

Contemporary Jewish Writing in Canada brings together important and innovative works from modern Jewish writers living in Canada. This anthology presents a variety of male and female voices, both established and new, some translated from French or Yiddish. Caught between a conservative British tradition and an aggressive American influence with a long immigrant history, Canadian Jewish literature has charted a unique, intermediate course. The largest community of Jewish writers in Canada can be found in Montreal, where a vibrant Yiddish culture has flourished, surrounded by a Francophone majority. Beginning with A. M. Klein and carrying through the works of Leonard Cohen and Mordecai Richler, Jewish writing in Montreal has adapted to changing political and linguistic pressures over the course of the twentieth century. A number of Jewish authors in this anthology write in French and are involved in translation?not just of language, but of cultural values as well. The second largest concentration of Jewish writers in Canada is in Winnipeg and the western part of the country, where Jewish communities have strong Yiddish and socialist roots. A generation of younger writers, however, have shifted from these earlier centers to Toronto, where they form part of a multicultural mosaic, blending Jewish, Canadian, and cosmopolitan values. From Anne Michaels?s Greek island to Aryeh Lev Stollman?s Berlin and Michael Redhill?s Irish synagogue, Canadian-Jewish literature engages exile?at home abroad and abroad at home.

It's 1958 and Australia is becoming a different place. The Melbourne working-class suburb of Carlton is now home to many immigrant families trying to begin new lives and make sense of the old. Romek and Zofia, liberated from the camps in Poland, work hard at the local market, but their love is in ruins. Bloomfield is king and custodian of Curtin Square and is rarely absent from his post. The resplendent Valerio, stylish and soccer-mad, has just arrived from Italy. War veteran Mr Sommers sits alone on his verandah, while Yiddish actors gather at the barber's to reminisce and curse. Romek and Zofia's skinny twelve-year-old son Josh takes up boxing and becomes bewitched by the Swedish Girl. But Zofia is tormented, and as she falls further into madness, Josh wonders if she can ever be made whole again. Scraps of Heavenis a stunning evocation of a changing world, where optimism is tinged with sorrow at the raw memories of war. Arnold Zable's irresistible storytelling becomes a celebration of survival, a reminder that all lives are to be lived and that scraps of heaven can be found everywhere.