Overview

This text provides a fresh look at ethnic culture in the contemporary United States through an ethnographic account of everyday life in the Jewish community of South Philadelphia. By embracing the language and traditions of their childhood, elderly Jewish residents, the children of immigrants, create a path for the transmission of immigrant culture. The work highlights the role of language in collective memory. The residents use of Yiddish and their warm attitude toward the language illuminate their changing and overlapping identifications with the neighborhood, their non-Jewish neighbors, Jewish traditions and religion, and their children and parents. The book serves as a corrective to the view of the second generation that concentrates solely on the framework of mobility and rejection of one s parents culture, neglecting the importance of life cycle changes. It depicts children of immigrants as crucial interpreters of the culture of the immigrants homeland as they forge a meaningful existence for themselves and their own children. In the course of the work, the author documents and analyzes for the first time the Yiddish speech of American Jews. He examines the cultural implications of the use of English in Yiddish speech, as well as the change in Yiddish sounds and verbal forms.

Full Product Details

Author:   Rakhmiel Peltz
Publisher:   Stanford University Press
Imprint:   Stanford University Press
Dimensions:   Width: 15.30cm , Height: 2.10cm , Length: 22.90cm
Weight:   0.425kg
ISBN:  

9780804731676

ISBN 10:   0804731675
Pages:   296
Publication Date:   01 December 1997
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Professional and scholarly ,  Undergraduate ,  Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   In Print  
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Table of Contents

Part I. Getting to Know the Residents: 1. Walking into the neighborhood; 2. 'It used to be like Jerusalem': history and institutions of the Jewish community of South Philadelphia; 3. Izzy's luncheonette: the neighborhood's center; 4. A gleyele tey (a glass of tea): a Yiddish conversation group; Part II. Identities: 5. A Jewish place; 6. Coming home to South Philadelphia; Part III. Language and Culture: 7. Cycles of using Yiddish; 8. Yiddish fluency; 9. Facets of speech; Part IV. Philadelphia and Beyond: The Evolution of Ethnic Culture: 10. Language and identity; 11. Aging and the life course: the memory of language; 12. American Yiddish, American Jewish: from immigrant to ethnic culture; Appendices; Notes; Bibliography; Index.

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