{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.019969278033794162, 'fraction_numerical': 0.0, 'mean_word_length': 5.15839243498818, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
Yiddish in Weimar Berlin: at the crossroads of diaspora politics and culture

determined to immortalize the communities, families, and civilizations that were destroyed, and to preserve some of that world. At the same time, they recognized that they were writing for a declining readership and that the pool of writers would quickly diminish. Isaac Bashevis Singer (Yitzhok Bashevis in his Yiddish works) stood almost alone among Yiddish writers in his willingness to write Yiddish books that would reach an English-speaking audience. For these writers, their task was not simply urgent, but holy. Without exception, each writer describes their mission as sacred and imbues the Yiddish language with religious significance. There is this sense of holy duty in Schwarz’s own writing. He demonstrates a determination not only to give greater visibility to underappreciated Yiddish writers, but to make Yiddish itself more visible, insisting as he does on quoting the works in the original Yiddish letters. The transnational aspect of the book can be uneven. Although the reader gets a sense of the way in which Dos poylishe yidntum, in particular, was a transnational venture, more material showing the truly global nature of this civilization would have been welcome. For example, Sutzkever aside, there is little material on Yiddish literature in Israel and the way that Jewish statehood shaped its development, or on Soviet Yiddish literature. Further-flung locations like Australia and South Africa might also have provided telling comparisons and added richness to the analysis, particularly when it comes to trying to understand how different circumstances shaped the trajectories of Yiddish culture. The Americas, by contrast, are extensively covered. This aside, this book not only contributes to filling a gap in the history of post-Holocaust Jewish life, but is also a fitting and moving tribute to a group of writers whose work has been, thus far, underappreciated in scholarly treatment of Jewish culture in the twentieth century. Although they are not available to a large readership, Schwarz’s study provides a platform for students of modern Jewish culture to explore more deeply what is perhaps the largest body of works mourning the destruction of a lost civilization. Moreover, given the care with which he treats his subjects, this book is itself a memorial to Yiddish culture, a veritable yizker bukh to a community and civilization that is lost, but whose personalities, institutions, and cultural output ought to be remembered and canonized alongside the greats of Yiddish literature.