Dear Mendl, Dear Reyzl Yiddish Letter Manuals from Russia and America [Hardcover]

At the turn of the 20th century, Jewish families scattered by migration could stay in touch only through letters. Jews in the Russian Empire and America wrote business letters, romantic letters, and emotionally intense family letters. But for many Jews who were unaccustomed to communicating their public and private thoughts in writing, correspondence was a challenge. How could they make sure their spelling was correct and they were organizing their thoughts properly? A popular solution was to consult brivnshtelers, Yiddish-language books of model letters. Dear Mendl, Dear Reyzl translates selections from these model-letter books and includes essays and annotations that illuminate their role as guides to a past culture.

...[C]overs a neglected aspect of Jewish popular culture and deserves a wide readership. For all serious readers of Yiddish and immigrant Jewish culture and customs.Dear Mendl, Dear Reyzl delivers more than one would expect because it goes beyond a linguistic study of letter-writing manuals and explicates their genre and social function. It is appropriate for students of Jewish life generally and Yiddishists of any age.Such factors as a relatively high incidence of literacy and a widely scattered geographical distribution made Yiddish speakers prone to writing letters and, generally, committing to paper aspects of their experience. This book is a magic window into daily lives of people residing in various corners of the globe but sharing a common language and culture, epistolary culture in particular....These manuals provide us with a lens to better understand Jewish life at the time, as they mirror many of the challenges and concerns that Russian and American Jews were experiencing, and as they resonate with the emotional registers found in Yiddish literature and letters more generally.

Alice Nakhimovsky is Professor of Russian and Jewish Studies at Colgate University, where she directs the program in Russian and Eurasian Studies. She has wrilã%