Yiddishkeit: Jewish Vernacular and the New Land

by Harvey Pekar (Editor), Paul M. Buhle (Editor), Nick Thorkelson

Yiddish is everywhere. We hear words like nosh, schlep, and schmutz all the time, but how did these words come to pepper American English? In Yiddishkeit: Jewish Vernacular and the New Land, Harvey Pekar and Paul Buhle trace the influence of Yiddish from medieval Europe to the tenements of New York’s Lower East Side. This comics anthology contains original stories by notable writers and artists such 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 last fully realized work by Harvey Pekar, this book is a thoughtful compilation that reveals the far-reaching influences of Yiddish.

Praise for Yiddishkeit:

“The book is about what Neal Gabler in his introduction labels ‘Jewish sensibility.’ It pervades this volume, which he acknowledges is messy; 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.” —New York Times

“Yiddishkeit is as colorful, bawdy, and charming as the culture it seeks to represent.” —Print magazine
“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” —Publishers Weekly

“Yiddishkeit is a book that truly informs about Jewish culture and, in the process, challenges readers to pick apart their own vocabulary.” —Chicago Tribune “a postvernacular tour de force” —The Forward

“A fascinating and enlightening effort that takes full use of the graphic storytelling medium in an insightful and revelatory way.” —The Miami Herald

“With a loving eye Pekar and Buhle extract moments and personalities from Yiddish history.” —Hadassah
“gorgeous comix-style portraits of Yiddish writers”
 ––Tablet 

“Yiddishkeit has managed to survive, if just barely, not because there are individuals dedicated to its survival, though there are, but because Yiddishkeit is an essential part of both the Jewish and the human experience.” 
—Neal Gabler, author of An Empire of Their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood, from his introduction

Genres: Comics, History, Graphic Novels, Nonfiction, Language, Jewish, Judaism

240 pages, Hardcover

First published September 1, 2011

About the author

Harvey Pekar was an American writer and comics creator whose groundbreaking autobiographical series American Splendor helped redefine the possibilities of graphic storytelling. Frequently called the poet laureate of Cleveland, he developed a body of work that approached everyday life with candor, humor, frustration, and philosophical reflection. Pekar’s voice became central to the evolution of comics into a medium capable of serious literary expression, and his influence extended to criticism, journalism, and popular culture through his essays, radio work, and memorable television appearances.
Pekar grew up in Cleveland, where his parents operated a small grocery store, and his early experiences shaped much of the sensibility that later defined his writing. His deep love of jazz led him into criticism, and through that world he befriended artist Robert Crumb. Their shared interest in music eventually led him to try writing comics. Pekar wrote his first scripts in the early seventies, sketching out stories with simple figures before passing them to Crumb and other underground artists who encouraged him to continue. With the first issue of American Splendor in 1976, Pekar began chronicling the small battles, anxieties, and fleeting moments that made up his daily life in Cleveland. His day job as a file clerk, his marriages, conversations with coworkers, frustrations with bureaucracy, and the struggle to make ends meet all became material for a series that often blurred the line between observation and confession. Over the years, he worked with a wide range of artists who interpreted his scripts in styles that mirrored the emotional tone of each story.
The success of American Splendor brought Pekar national attention. Collections such as The Life and Times of Harvey Pekar received strong critical praise, and his unpredictable, often confrontational appearances on late-night television became a defining part of his public persona. The 2003 film adaptation of American Splendor, in which Paul Giamatti portrayed him, earned major festival awards and introduced Pekar’s work to a wider audience. He continued to write graphic memoirs, biographies, collaborations, and cultural commentary, expanding his range while maintaining the blunt honesty that characterized his voice. Pekar’s work remains central to the development of literary comics, influencing generations of writers and artists who followed his example.

Reviews

[Regina · Rating 3 out of 5]

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 (http://leftycartoons.com/) and his blog (http://www.amptoons.com/blog) are well worth a read!

[Doris Jean · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lots of focus on comics and Yiddish theater, a good reminiscence on early twentieth century New York city and its yiddeles on stage, writing, drawing comics and the history of the ashkenazy immigrants.
There were reprints of both color and black-and-white comics as well as recaps of plays, articles and poetry in newspapers and the like. It had song lyrics (Bei Mir Bistu Shein) profiles of some actors and singers and the like. I enjoyed it.

[Benjamin Fasching-Gray · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think Paul Buhle and Pekar are right on when they suggest that Yiddish language writing, theater and music has an affinity to comics in that they are both maligned "low-culture" spheres... and that's just a kick ass starting off point for looking at Yiddishkeit.

Probably the best stuff in here is Pekar's reviews of Yiddish literature (he hated Isaac Bashevis Singer!) Lots of left-leaning yiddishkeit here... I wish there had been some more about Yosl Cutler and Zuni Maud, but that there was any of that at all shows how deep they went in that direction. They also don't skimp on Soviet yiddish culture or its demise either.

I loved this.

[Samuel Rood · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’m not sure how many people would enjoy this book, but I’m sure one of them. It’s a great survey of Yiddish culture, literature, art and history and as such there are hits and misses. If you’re new, or like me, familiar but removed from Yiddish culture this is a great introduction. The focus is much more on the secular side of Yiddish culture, so if you’re looking for insight into Orthodox Jewish culture this won’t scratch where you’re itching. However, if you are curious about what Yiddish theater is and it’s impact on popular culture, this book is a great resource. It’s a fun and extremely accessible gateway into the Yiddish world.

[Amy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had higher hopes for this one. I spoke with a former colleague who worked on the book and he said it seemed "a bit all over the place" and that was my take as well. The design and art are top notch but it seems like they took front-and-center over content. This not what I would call a good introduction to Yiddish culture or even a good encapsulation about what makes Yiddish, Yiddish. It's hard because I found Wex's Born to Kvetch so incredibly dry/boring so I can't recommend that either. The best book non-fiction book where the importance and color of Yiddish actually comes through is in
Outwitting History: The Amazing Adventures of a Man Who Rescued a Million Yiddish Books by Aaron Lansky, by the founder of the Yiddish Book Center. His book isn't even about Yiddish culture per se so much as his own personal journey but Yiddish culture comes through so much better as he re-tells each interaction with elderly Yiddish folks all over the country. This book is a collection - very little of it is Pekar's and his is the best stuff -- I wish they had left it all up to him.

[Jim · Rating 3 out of 5]

a bit detailed for me, more than a dozen authors i've not heard of have their works gone into some detail by pekar, got kind of lost for a while. the sections on theatre/film and american popular culture were fun, learned a lot, enjoyed the art (peter kuper started out out as an inker on richie rich?! i don't enjoy his spy vs. spy so seeing the work here really impressed me.) dan archer and the woman that did the isadora duncan graphic bio have beatuiful work here as well.

pekar's final book and, if it isn't spain's last work i imagine it is close.

[Emilia P · Rating 3 out of 5]

DONE. I am done with my 60 reviews. And this one -- PEKAR this was frustrating -- I felt like it had lot of nice bits of info on individual stories of Yiddish luminaries, but all in all it felt a bit too much like you had to have a strong prior knowledge of Yiddish art and literature going into it. Which...as a comic book reader and not a Yiddish scholar -- my knowledge is middling. Feh. I know it's one of your "last works" but I felt some stronger editing and a more comprehensive narrative rather than just enticing snapshots would have held this together a lot better. Alas. DONE.

[Peacegal · Rating 3 out of 5]

Harvey Pekar, you will be sorely missed.

[Rachel · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a hard book to rate. I had to force myself through it; it was not easy to read despite being mostly comics. I did want to know the information in it, but it was more like taking a class than reading for fun.

The blurb is misleading. This is not about the American Yiddish-speaking culture. It's more an extensive in-depth history of Yiddish literature from its earliest origins in Eastern Europe to almost present-day in the USA, with bios of authors and some performers, and including politics and activism. This is a worthy project. I don't know if there are other books that cover all this, but if so, this has to be a valuable addition. I had no idea that Pekar was such a historian.

The book is done well. It's largely graphics, including the bios and graphic treatments of some of the literature itself. It also has a fair amount of text, including a long play that I found hard to read and to picture.

I'd expected more of accounts of everyday lives of Yiddish speakers, i.e., vignettes of the milieu in which my grandparents brought up my parents. There's not much of that. Not the authors' fault. It's likely that it should be rated higher than the three stars I'm giving it, but that was my reading experience.

[Victor · Rating 4 out of 5]

Close to a 4.5 but dragged down by some scattered mediocre art mixed in with the great stuff and the fact that I'm biased against introductory non-fiction works.

A conceptual buffet/introduction to secular Yiddish culture, primarily in its golden age from the mid-1850s until the Holocaust, but with some interesting bits of postwar continuation. Enthusiastic, hilarious, moving, gorgeous stories interspersed with illustrated text pieces (notably a longish script from a revue of classic set-pieces from Yiddish theater presented in both English and the original). Amazing art by Peter Kuper, Spain Rodriguez and the perpetually underrated Sharon Rudahl, amongst others, and some of the late Harvey Pekar's last writing. This is a perfect entry volume on Yiddish culture for anyone.

[Debra Golden · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed much of the material, but small lettering made many sections difficult to read.
There were some great stories and illustrators.
I'll look up some the people discussed such as Celia Dropkin, David Ignatov, Moyshe Leyb Halpern, Myse Nadur, Kayda Molodowsky, and Molly Picon.
It felt like they tried to put everything in this, and it was a bit much to get through especially with such a variety of styles. It came through at times as anthology.

[China]

I don’t know how to rate a book like this—it’s not a graphic novel but a collection of comics, sort of a Yiddish Culture 101. No major lessons I’ll remember in the long term, but it name checked so many people and works that I’ve set aside to look up. There are also mini lessons in Yiddish vocabulary and theatre scenes written and translated from Yiddish to English so you can follow along. I’m certain I’ll refer back to this now and then.

[Chelsea Martinez · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a dense, idiosyncratic book that I didn't give myself enough time to sit with; I think it's the kind of book that's good to have around on your shelf and appreciate different parts of at different times (similar to how I sometimes feel like I'm racing through a book that I didn't realize was short stories and not a novel).

[Scott Campbell · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wasn't really a fan of this book. Most of the art was ugly and the treatment of the subject was superficial. The prose pieces were especially disappointing. There was a vintage Yiddish piece about Coney Island that I couldn't finish and the script of a three person revue about Yiddish theater that I found rather dull (but seeing it live probably would have been more enjoyable).

[Lisa · Rating 2 out of 5]

Fascinating topic, but I was surprised to find that the graphic novel format detracted rather than added to the information conveyed. The text was quite dense and the illustrations ended up obscuring all of the facts.

[Sten-Erik Toos · Rating 3 out of 5]

Topic is fascinating, but the form was more lile a crazy hodge podge of small snippets of Yiddish history and culture, not giving a that complete picture of the subject matter. I guess one could acquaint themselves a bit more of the Yiddishkeit with other books before dwelling into this one

[Maggie Lynne]

3.5 stars
Difficult to read (literally, the letters are tiny and squihed together and the font is not easy to decipher sometimes). Wildly uneven. But very informative and an important book, nontheless, with interesting historical ancedotes and great art

[Dara · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars. This is actually a history of Yiddish America. Like many collections, some articles are less engaging, some felt encyclopedic. Overall it was a neat overview.

[Greg · Rating 4 out of 5]

Probably not quite 4 stars, but still a really happy way to scratch the surface of Yiddishkeit for a interested party. Which I’m. So lovely visuals, too.

[Dan Cohan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really nice Graphic Novel about yiddish culture and its impact from a master of the Comix genre: Harvey Pekar.

[Cathy Craig · Rating 1 out of 5]

I like the premise but I found it too dense for this format.

[Melissa · Rating 3 out of 5]

A history of Yiddish culture in the USA.

[Paula Kirman · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an excellent and accessible overview of Yiddish language and culture, with beautiful artwork by a variety of contributors, as well as traditional narrative.

[Drew Canole · Rating 3 out of 5]

Harvey Pekar and others walk us through a history of Yiddishkeit, something like Jewish culture. My favourite part was Pekar going through all the notable Yiddish language literary figures. He's very honest about who he thinks is overrated, who should be read more. I do need to go back through and pick out a novel or two to check out.

[Josephus FromPlacitas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another readable compilation from Buhle and Pekar, both of whose works I've read here and there over the years. These compilations sometimes don't etch into my memory very strongly (or maybe they often don't), but there are always details that stick with me. This was similar. It's so weird to imagine this parallel linguistic universe here in the states, one that interacted heavily with non-Yiddish speakers, and one that had a flourishing culture and economy all its own. In the much more Anglicized world of the Internet and electronic media, I have a hard time conceiving it. And it's also funny to think of this hodge-podge trans-European goulash of a lingua franca crossing the continent, into western Asia.

It was also interesting that a lot of the early Yiddish novelists were anti-Chasidic, while it seems like living Yiddish today mostly belongs to the Chasidim.

The Pekar aesthetic was again a little alienating and simultaneously compelling. His matter-of-fact criticism with what feels like a frequent disregard for dramatic narrative arc has always hit me a bit askew. Maybe there's a sound to his voice that I'm deaf to. His book with Dean Haspiel was the only one of his books that really grabbed me, although I never do dislike his stories/article-style review orations.

[Ariel · Rating 3 out of 5]

An exploration of all things Yiddish in America (and elsewhere), literature, theater, newspapers, edited by the late great author of American Splendor. There's a wealth of information in this book and the contributors are an impressive list. I really like the idea of combining these different media--graphic novel format, conventional prose, play script and so on--to talk about all these different aspects of Jewish culture, but I didn't enjoy the experience of reading them. It's choppy, almost assaultive. Also, at the risk of sounding like a dinosaur, I find the graphic novel format to be a horrible means of conveying information. The graphic novel is great for memoirs, because the author gets to convey his or her own individual experience in both words and pictures. But for more abstract ideas, it's a little like TV news. The pictures wind up dominating, often at the expense of the greater meaning. Pekar clearly knew a great deal about Yiddish writers and I'm planning to follow up on some of the more obscure ones he profiles here, but the pictures made that section drag on and on. I probably would have finished this book months ago if it had been issued in a more conventional format.

[Rick · Rating 4 out of 5]

The last fully realized work by the late Pekar, this anthology unveils the lasting influence of Yiddish on American culture. The beautiful, original stories (which includes a play and numerous essays), crafted by a host of creators including co-editor Buhle, Barry Deustsch, Peter Kuper, Allen Lewis Rickman, Spain Rodriguez, Sharon Rudahl, Gary Dumm, David Lasky, Sam Marlow, Danny Fingeroth, Joe Zabel and Pekar himself, explore the history, origins, and the meaning of Yiddishkeit ("Jewishness" as in "a Jewish way of life") in an insightful, intelligent, and entertaining manner. Perhaps the most unusual and unexpected graphic work of the year, the impressive Yiddishkeit successfully peels back centuries of scholarship and dogma while revealing the nuances of the colorful language and its impact on contemporary society.

[Spicy T AKA Mr. Tea · Rating 3 out of 5]

A really neat anthology of Yiddish—spoken, written, and sung! This graphic novel offers a diverse set of writers and illustrators penning different narratives, histories, and plays about Yiddish language and culture all the way from medieval Europe to the present day America. A really curious piece of work! My one issue is that because I am not versed in Yiddish, it was hard to read Yiddish words and sentence because I had no way of hearing the word or the cadence of how a sentence should be spoken. I have an idea based on all the popular culture that uses bits of Yiddish—and to be fair there is a pronunciation guide—but it got tedious going back and forth. Would have loved to have seen an audio cd come with this. All in all, a really interesting look at Yiddishkeit!

[Karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I got this as a gift and it was a true gift, since it is a book I never would have thought to get for myself but it is nice to have it. The content (it's not exactly a story) encompasses the history of Yiddish writing in the 19th and 20th centuries. And it is careful to explain that the very fabric of Yiddish culture is found in the writing and language. The fact that this this
book is largely a graphic novel--or, in fact, a series of shorter strips that are somewhat interconnected-- makes the material much easier to follow and digest. I definitely found myself wishing I knew more Yiddish, while simultaneously understanding that I know more Yiddish than I thought!

[Kristin]

This is a book that I'd like to download to my brain without having to go through the experience of reading it. Similar to A Most Imperfect Union: a Contrarian History of the United States by Ilan Stavans, it's full of some great stuff, but the format is ultimately inappropriate to deliver it. When graphic novels are great, they tell very real stories through images and experiences which complement and support each other. In books like this, an attempt is made to cram a full-on nonfiction textbook in with a bunch of hasty, busy drawings that have nothing to do with the text, and you have a seizure trying to take it all in. I made multiple attempts, but arrived at it being unreadable.