Stories abound of immigrant Jews on the outside looking in, clambering up the ladder of social mobility, successfully assimilating and integrating into their new worlds. But this book is not about the success stories. It's a paean to the bunglers, the blockheads, and the just plain weird-Jews who were flung from small, impoverished eastern European towns into the urban shtetls of New York and Warsaw, where, as they say in Yiddish, their bread landed butter side down in the dirt. These marginal Jews may have found their way ...
Read More
Stories abound of immigrant Jews on the outside looking in, clambering up the ladder of social mobility, successfully assimilating and integrating into their new worlds. But this book is not about the success stories. It's a paean to the bunglers, the blockheads, and the just plain weird-Jews who were flung from small, impoverished eastern European towns into the urban shtetls of New York and Warsaw, where, as they say in Yiddish, their bread landed butter side down in the dirt. These marginal Jews may have found their way into the history books far less frequently than their more socially upstanding neighbors, but there's one place you can find them in force: in the Yiddish newspapers that had their heyday from the 1880s to the 1930s. Disaster, misery, and misfortune: you will find no better chronicle of the daily ignominies of urban Jewish life than in the pages of the Yiddish press. An underground history of downwardly mobile Jews, Bad Rabbi exposes the seamy underbelly of pre-WWII New York and Warsaw, the two major centers of Yiddish culture in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. With true stories plucked from the pages of the Yiddish papers, Eddy Portnoy introduces us to the drunks, thieves, murderers, wrestlers, poets, and beauty queens whose misadventures were immortalized in print. There's the Polish rabbi blackmailed by an American widow, mass brawls at weddings and funerals, a psychic who specialized in locating missing husbands, and violent gangs of Jewish mothers on the prowl-in short, not quite the Jews you'd expect. One part Isaac Bashevis Singer, one part Jerry Springer, this irreverent, unvarnished, and frequently hilarious compendium of stories provides a window into an unknown Yiddish world that was.
Read Less
Add this copy of Bad Rabbi and Other Strange But True Stories From the to cart. $73.77, new condition, Sold by Books2anywhere rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Fairford, GLOUCESTERSHIRE, UNITED KINGDOM, published 2017 by MK-Stanford University Press.
Choose your shipping method in Checkout. Costs may vary based on destination.
Seller's Description:
PLEASE NOTE, WE DO NOT SHIP TO DENMARK. New Book. Shipped from UK in 4 to 14 days. Established seller since 2000. Please note we cannot offer an expedited shipping service from the UK.
Add this copy of Bad Rabbi: And Other Strange But True Stories from the to cart. $97.41, new condition, Sold by Booksplease rated 3.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Southport, MERSEYSIDE, UNITED KINGDOM, published 2017 by Stanford University Press.
Add this copy of Bad Rabbi and Other Strange But True Stories From the to cart. $78.38, new condition, Sold by Paperbackshop International rated 2.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Fairford, GLOS, UNITED KINGDOM, published 2017 by MK-Stanford University Press.
Choose your shipping method in Checkout. Costs may vary based on destination.
Seller's Description:
PLEASE NOTE, WE DO NOT SHIP TO DENMARK. New Book. Shipped from UK in 4 to 14 days. Established seller since 2000. Please note we cannot offer an expedited shipping service from the UK.
Add this copy of Bad Rabbi: and Other Strange But True Stories From the to cart. $19.09, good condition, Sold by ThriftBooks-Reno rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Reno, NV, UNITED STATES, published 2017 by Stanford University Press.
Add this copy of Bad Rabbi: and Other Strange But True Stories From the to cart. $19.20, very good condition, Sold by Midtown Scholar Bookstore rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Harrisburg, PA, UNITED STATES, published 2017 by Stanford University Press.
Add this copy of Bad Rabbi: and Other Strange But True Stories From the to cart. $19.21, good condition, Sold by Midtown Scholar Bookstore rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Harrisburg, PA, UNITED STATES, published 2017 by Stanford University Press.
Choose your shipping method in Checkout. Costs may vary based on destination.
Seller's Description:
Good-Bumped and creased book with tears to the extremities, but not affecting the text block, may have remainder mark or previous owner's name-GOOD Standard-sized.
Add this copy of Bad Rabbi: And Other Strange But True Stories from the to cart. $99.59, new condition, Sold by Ingram Customer Returns Center rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from NV, USA, published 2017 by Stanford University Press.
Add this copy of Bad Rabbi: and Other Strange But True Stories From the to cart. $50.92, good condition, Sold by Bonita rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Newport Coast, CA, UNITED STATES, published 2017 by Stanford University Press.
Add this copy of Bad Rabbi: and Other Strange But True Stories From the to cart. $171.99, new condition, Sold by Bonita rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Newport Coast, CA, UNITED STATES, published 2017 by Stanford University Press.
This is a history of the Yiddish Press, in Europe and the US, and a compilation of published stories. It is slightly less sensational than the title and cover picture imply. As with journalism everywhere, stories of people behaving well rarely make the news. There are accounts of physical fights over which rebbe should say prayers at a wedding, who should hold the baby at a bris, whose husband or wife is cheating with someone else's spouse, brothers assaulting their sister's reluctant fiancé, who should speak first at a funeral, sheets being stolen as they hang out to dry in preparation for Passover, a variety of grifter and scam artist's shenanigans and the occasional murder.
After the first dozen stories, it got a little repetitive. It didn't take much for people to start throwing punches, rocks, or sticks. Still, if you're interested in cultural studies or anthropology, you'll enjoy this.
The book includes copies of original pictures and newspaper pages.
