A Wandering Feast: A Journey Through the Jewish Culture of Eastern Europe

By Elizabeth Schwartz and Yale Strom

Book Overview

An original and uplifting view of a world lost, reborn, and rediscovered This is a delightful book that welcomes the reader to a wonderful journey through the Jewish culture of Eastern Europe: the still-vibrant villages and homes, the Yiddish folkways, the toe-tapping Klezmer music, and heart-warming traditional food. Yale Strom documented his journey--organized around fourteen specific visits to authentic villages in Eastern Europe--with a fascinating travelogue that includes inspiring stories, photographs, music that has never been printed, and recipes. He reveals that a culture long feared to be gone forever is still very much alive.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 078797188X
• ISBN13: 9780787971885
• Release Date: October 2004
• Publisher: Jossey-Bass
• Length: 241 Pages
• Weight: 1.20 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 7.0" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

A "Lost" World --Found

This remarkable and moving book takes the reader through the heart of central Europe to places few tourists will ever visit. The author, Yale Strom, is seeking old Jewish music. He wants to find and record klezmer tunes and Chasidic Ngunnim. His quest takes him to tiny forgotten villages, ancient schuls, kosher kitchens and kehilum. On his journey, he finds the buildings and streets that bear the imprint of old Jewish communities and he finds unfogettable people. They shelter him, feed him, show him the places that mark the Jewish past. They tell him their proud, heartbreaking stories, full of courage and tragedy and faithfully recorded by the author. Most of all, they play and sing the music he came to hear. He meets Rom people as well and notes with some surprise, the similarities between their music and Jewish music. His gift to us, his readers, is that he brings it all back in this wonderful book. It includes the music itself, recipes for the food he ate, biographies and photographs of the people he met and accounts of his wonderful adventures among these fierce and loving people. There is even a Yiddish glossary and thumbnail histories of Jewish life in various places. The richness of even the remnant of Jewish culture will amaze you. I hope that you will buy this book and share it with friends and family. It provides a glimpse of a wonderful world that is almost gone, but as the author demonstrates, not quite.