Paul Kriwaczek begins this illuminating and immenselypleasurable chronicle of Yiddish civilization during the Romanempire, when Jewish culture first spread to Europe. We see theburgeoning exile population disperse, as its notable diplomats,artists and thinkers make their mark in far-flung cities and founda self-governing Yiddish world. By its late-medieval heyday, thiseconomically successful, intellectually adventurous, and self-awaresociety stretched from the Baltic to the Black Sea. Kriwaczektraces, too, the slow decline of Yiddish culture in Europe andRussia, and highlights fresh offshoots in the New World.Combiningfamily anecdote, travelogue, original research, and a keenunderstanding of Yiddish art and literature, Kriwaczek gives us anexceptional portrait of a culture which, though nearlyextinguished, has an influential radiance still.
Paul Kriwaczek was born in Vienna in 1937 and, with his parents,narrowly escaped the Nazis in 1939, fleeing first to Switzerlandand then to England. He grew up in London and graduated from LondonHospital Medical College. After several years spent working andtraveling in the Middle East, Central Asia, and Africa, he joinedthe BBC, where he spent the next quarter of a century as a programproducer and filmmaker. Since leaving television in the 1990s, hehas devoted himself to writing full-time, catching up on theunfinished business of a life spent exploring places, times, andideas. He is married and lives in London.
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