Jewish Week
7 January 2005
On Language
by Sandee Brawarsky
Words on Fire: The Unfinished Story of Yiddish by Dovid Katz (Basic Books) is a rich and complex history, written in an engaging style. The author, a native speaker of Yiddish and scholar of historical linguistics, has created what he calls a "linguography of Yiddish." Drawing on thirty years of research, Katz shows the origins of the Yiddish language over a thousand years, from its origins in the 11th century through the development of a rich written literature, at first for women, and then as a language of sophisticated culture, including literature, theater and journalism. The author asserts that Yiddish will continue to thrive in this century. The book is illustrated with photographs and reproductions of paintings, newspapers, theater posters and book jackets.
Originally from Brooklyn, Katz - the son of the acclaimed Yiddish poet Menke
Katz - has taught at Oxford and Yale, and now teaches at Vilnius University
and is director of research at the Vilnius Yiddish Institute. The book opens
with Menke Katz's beautiful poem, "A Yiddish Poet."