Realistic Pessimist reviewed Yiddishkeit by Paul Buhle
Review of 'Yiddishkeit' on 'Goodreads'
3 stars
To me the biggest downside is the fundamental difficulty of the chosen medium: it's so difficult to get into the subject of Yiddish when you don't hear it. But hey, I bought into this dilemma when I decided to get this book. Maybe a future project like this could combine sound and graphics...?
The only other complaint I have is the mixture of excessive name dropping and lack of a critical view. I don't expect such a project to be very critical about its subject, the book is not a scientific essay. And it is a positive experience to learn about a topic from somebody who sparks of excitement for it. But working my way through Yiddishkeit, I rather got very aware of my lacking knowledge of this culture and had to stop reading and to look things/names up excessively, to put some meat to the information skeleton I was …
To me the biggest downside is the fundamental difficulty of the chosen medium: it's so difficult to get into the subject of Yiddish when you don't hear it. But hey, I bought into this dilemma when I decided to get this book. Maybe a future project like this could combine sound and graphics...?
The only other complaint I have is the mixture of excessive name dropping and lack of a critical view. I don't expect such a project to be very critical about its subject, the book is not a scientific essay. And it is a positive experience to learn about a topic from somebody who sparks of excitement for it. But working my way through Yiddishkeit, I rather got very aware of my lacking knowledge of this culture and had to stop reading and to look things/names up excessively, to put some meat to the information skeleton I was presented with. The book ended up to be a tiresome read for me at some stages.
Apart from this, I still enjoyed digging my way through it and learning about Yiddish and its social history. Plus: This book introduced me to Barry Deutsch's stuff, his cartoon website (leftycartoons.com/) and his blog (www.amptoons.com/blog) are well worth a read!