{"product_id":"9781586422103","title":"Yiddish: A Nation of Words","description":"This first-ever popular history of Yiddish is so full of life that it reads like a biography of the language.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFor a thousand years Yiddish was the glue that held a people together. Through the intimacies of daily use, it linked European Jews with their heroic past, their spiritual universe, their increasingly far-flung relations. In it they produced one of the world's most richly human cultures.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eImpoverished and disenfranchised in the eyes of the world, Yiddish-speakers created their own alternate reality - wealthy in appreciation of the varieties of human behavior, spendthrift in humor, brilliantly inventive in maintaining and strengthening community. For a people of exile, the language took the place of a nation. The written and spoken word formed the Yiddishland that never came to be. Words were army, university, city-state, territory. They were a people's home.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe tale, which has never before been told, is nothing short of miraculous - the saving of a people through speech. It ranges far beyond Europe, from North America to Israel to the Russian-Chinese border, and from the end of the first millenium to the present day. This book requires no previous knowledge of Yiddish or of Jewish history - just a curious mind and an open heart.","brand":"Steerforth Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47175625539824,"sku":"9781586422103","price":13.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9781586422103_p0.jpg?v=1763784252","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9781586422103","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}