Fascinating

While "Amazing Adventures" seems to overstate the case, this was a fascinating work about how one man, with some help, pretty much saved Yiddish books from extinction.

I love books, and I'm a voracious reader. Just a look at my blog or goodreads pages will tell you that. I love old books. It's really hard for me to pass up a pre-copyright volume at a good price. The thought of people discarding books of their heritage because their children are not able to read the language is heartbreaking.

Yet, that is precisely what was happening to books written in Yiddish.

Yiddish is the product of the Jewish people having no homeland and incorporating Hebrew with the languages of the lands in which they lived. A hybrid language. Some would say an illegitimate language. While the younger generation just didn't know the language in America (their parents and grandparents saw that lack of knowledge as a way for integration to occur), there was a segment of the older population that abhorred Yiddish because it wasn't scholarly. These people actively refused to save Yiddish books, afraid they might corrupt young people.

Aaron Lansky, the author of Outwitting History, grew up hearing Yiddish, but never learning it. In college he wanted a degree in Jewish studies and decided Yiddish was an important part of that education. It was during this time he realized that Yiddish books were scarce, and growing more rare by the day.

Some of this was because of the Holocaust. Entirely groups of people had to abandon everything to flee or be sent to concentration camps. Their books, and indeed everything left behind that wasn't deemed valuable by their captors, was destroyed. When Aaron decided he needed to save Yiddish books from the destruction that was happening because young people weren't learning Yiddish anymore, scholars estimated that only 70,000 Yiddish books existed worldwide.

He recovered that many books in six months.

Over twenty years after starting this journey, Aaron and the non-profit he founded has saved over 1.5 million Yiddish books, sheet music, and pamphlets including some volumes which were believed to be entirely eradicated.

Outwitting History is a fascinating look into what went into recovering a significant part of history that was almost lost forever. Aaron's story is truly one of being in the right place at the right time - and taking the appropriate action.

While a basic knowledge of Hebrew or Yiddish is helpful for reading this book, it is not required. Translations are given whenever Yiddish is used, or context gives an explanation.

If you like history, books, memoirs, Jewish culture, or David vs Goliath stories, this book is for you.

A highly enjoyable read. Definitely recommend.

This is a fascinating story that deserves to be told. It is a great comfort to know that someone has taken the trouble to preserve the artifacts of the great Yiddish culture that would otherwise have been literally consigned to the garbage heap of history. I found Lansky a little pedestrian as a writer, but still charming and definitely worth reading.

Stranger than fiction -- the true story of how one obsessed man single-handedly (with the eventual help of lots of friends) saved the long-forgotten world of Yiddish literature. It evokes a time and place (and people) that are now just memories, but remain a powerful presence for millions of Jewish Americans.

In the words of the old Levy's Rye Bread commercials, you don't have to be Jewish to enjoy this unique tale -- but it helps. (And if you don't have a powerful urge to visit the Yiddish Book Center in Massachusetts after reading this, it would be shonda on your bubbe and zayde. It's an incredible place.)

This was a delightful read - at times a romp, at times very sobering.
I picked it out of the stacks mainly because it was about books - the cover image grabbed me. But I know almost nothing about Jewish history or Yiddish. What a delightful surprise. I knew nothing of this organization or its story, and I feel like a whole new window has been opened. I found myself affecting a Yiddish accent at times. I have new phrases now. But not like The Joy of Yiddish - but with the backstory to go with it.
I found out much more than I could have anticipated about the Jewish experience, outside of the Holocaust. The experience in Russia stands out: "Every week Moscow would send the librarians a list of the latest banned books they were supposed to destroy. Every library had a special fireplace in the courtyard just for this purpose, and every week my mother had to join her colleagues all across the country in burning another batch of Yiddish books." p245
Can you imagine? It goes against everything books stand for. Everything a library represents. It's like Fahrenheit 451 come to life. I don't know how people suffer things like this - and much worse. It makes me very happy to have my local branch libraries and our great, beautiful central libraries (of which I have access to two, being in the Twin Cities - how lucky am I?).
This book was as much about hope as about books - hope of a future generation, hope of a world in which people can live in peace, no matter what their differences.
This was the best serendipity that I've come across in the stacks in a long time, and one of the main reasons why I don't only rely on my online requests. If I wanted to, I could go no further than the pick-up shelves. But I'm often glad when I venture on.

This book is a gem. As a Southern Protestant, it exposed me to a world I had never imagined -- the Yiddish community in New York City. The idea that people would throw away books appalled me (clearly, they just need a bigger library!) and I loved Lansky's story of retrieving his past by rescuing books.

This is the true story of a young guy who almost inadvertently starts trying to save old Yiddish books and ends up wholly engrossed in the project. I believe the center the author set up still exists. His anecdotes about who he met, how he was treated, where the books were from, and why people wanted to hand them over to him made for an interesting literary mosaic.

If this hadn't been a selection of my book club, I would never have heard of this book. The subtitle explains the plot, but the story is so well done, with so many interesting anecdotes, that it's a story which stays with you. One man's crusade can be inspiring.

This was a surprisingly cool book. I didn't really expect to enjoy it as much as I did. Admittedly, I am still not inspired to go out and learn more than the extremely minimal amount of Yiddish I already know, but that's part of what the book is about. Very well written and interesting anecdotes.

Absolutely fascinating story of the creation of the Yiddish Book Center, and the lives and stories that emerged in the process. Well written and inspiring, it has particular meaning for me, as my mother was a Polish Jew whose first language was Yiddish. http://www.yiddishbookcenter.org/

So far it's a great story of the people, emotions, and physical labor the author experienced, when in his twenties, he undertook the brave courageous and bold task (whose enormity he could never have imagined) of saving Yiddish books from the (literal) dustbins and garbage cans of history. Whoa! (and wasn't that a good one sentence review?)

** 4 stars **

Lansky's book explains how the author came to learn Yiddish and become interested in collecting discarded and unused Yiddish books. Once he has assembled a team, he travels the U.S. in search of books and amasses a staggering collection. There are many colorful stories in this section about the people he meets in his travels, all of whom want to feed him to bursting in the tradition of Jewish mothers. He eventually establishes the National Yiddish Book Center and begins traveling all over the world to spread the word about Yiddish literature and to collect even more books. More adventures ensue. Finally, he is able to digitize the collection, ensuring that these Yiddish volumes will live even beyond the physical copies of the books.

I enjoyed this book overall and found it fast-paced and easy to read. Some of the stories about Lansky and his team collecting the books do run together after a while, but otherwise, it was both informative and entertaining. I would recommend this book if you have an interest in Yiddish, Jewish culture, or literature and its preservation more broadly.

Lansky makes a compelling case that the loss of Yiddish and more particularly Yiddish literature would rob the world of an understanding of 19th century Jewish history and culture. The book primarily chronicles Lansky's commendable decades long mission to rescue Yiddish literature from it's apparent demise. It is filled with great stories, and wonderful history. I would have given it 4 stars, but felt that some of the stories began to feel repetitive. Glad I read it though.