Memories of Two Generations
Regular price
€59.99
Regular price
€67.58
Sale
Sale price
€59.99
14 days return policy
Shipping & Delivery
A01=Alexander Z. Gurwitz
Age Group_Uncategorized
Age Group_Uncategorized
antisemitism
ashkenazic
Ashkenazim
Author_Alexander Z. Gurwitz
automatic-update
B01=Bryan Edward Stone
Category1=Non-Fiction
Category=BGHA
Category=DNBH1
Category=JBSR
Category=JFSR1
Chasid
chasidim
COP=United States
cultural inheritance
Delivery_Delivery within 10-20 working days
eastern Europe
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
family history and testimony
family memoir
Format=BB
Format_Hardback
Hebrew
historical witness
immigrant experience
intergenerational memory
Israel
Israeli
Jew
Jewish history
jewry
Judaism
Language_English
lived experience
magen David
memory and identity
PA=To order
Palestine
personal narrative
Price_€50 to €100
PS=Active
Sephardic
Sephardim
softlaunch
survival and resilience
torah
twentieth-century life
Yiddish
Product details
- ISBN 9780817319038
- Format: Hardback
- Weight: 831g
- Dimensions: 154 x 231mm
- Publication Date: 30 May 2016
- Publisher: The University of Alabama Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
- Language: English
Secure
checkout
Fast Shipping
Easy returns
In 1910, at the age of fifty-one, Alexander Ziskind Gurwitz made the bold decision to emigrate with his wife and four children from southeastern Ukraine in Tsarist Russia to begin a new life in Texas. In 1935, in his seventies, Gurwitz composed a retrospective autobiography, Memories of Two Generations, that recounts his personal story both of the rich history of the lost Jewish world of Eastern Europe and of the rambunctious development of frontier Jewish communities in the United States.
In both Europe and America, Gurwitz inhabited an almost exclusively Jewish world. As a boy, he studied in traditional yeshivas and earned a living as a Hebrew language teacher and kosher butcher. Widely travelled, Gurwitz recalls with wit and insight daily life in European shtetls, providing perceptive and informative comments about Jewish religion, history, politics, and social customs. Among the book’s most notable features is his first-hand, insider’s account of the yearly Jewish holiday cycle as it was observed in the nineteenth century, described as he experienced it as a child.
Gurwitz’s account of his arrival in Texas forms a cornerstone record of the Galveston Immigration Movement; this memoir represents the only complete narrative of that migration from an immigrant’s point of view. Gurwitz’s descriptions about the development of a thriving Orthodox community in San Antonio provide an important and unique primary source about a facet of American Jewish life that is not widely known.
Gurwitz wrote his memoir in his preferred Yiddish, and this translation into English by Rabbi Amram Prero captures the lyrical style of the original. Scholar and author Bryan Edward Stone’s special introduction and illuminating footnotes round out a superb edition that offers much to experts and general readers alike.
In both Europe and America, Gurwitz inhabited an almost exclusively Jewish world. As a boy, he studied in traditional yeshivas and earned a living as a Hebrew language teacher and kosher butcher. Widely travelled, Gurwitz recalls with wit and insight daily life in European shtetls, providing perceptive and informative comments about Jewish religion, history, politics, and social customs. Among the book’s most notable features is his first-hand, insider’s account of the yearly Jewish holiday cycle as it was observed in the nineteenth century, described as he experienced it as a child.
Gurwitz’s account of his arrival in Texas forms a cornerstone record of the Galveston Immigration Movement; this memoir represents the only complete narrative of that migration from an immigrant’s point of view. Gurwitz’s descriptions about the development of a thriving Orthodox community in San Antonio provide an important and unique primary source about a facet of American Jewish life that is not widely known.
Gurwitz wrote his memoir in his preferred Yiddish, and this translation into English by Rabbi Amram Prero captures the lyrical style of the original. Scholar and author Bryan Edward Stone’s special introduction and illuminating footnotes round out a superb edition that offers much to experts and general readers alike.
Bryan Edward Stone is a professor of history at Del Mar College in Corpus Christi, Texas, USA, and has taught as a visiting professor at the Schusterman Center for Jewish Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. His book The Chosen Folks: Jews on the Frontiers of Texas won the Southern Jewish Historical Society Book Prize in 2011. He is the managing editor of the annual journal Southern Jewish History.
Rabbi Amram Prero was born in Jerusalem, studied at the University of Chicago, USA, and was ordained by the Hebrew Theological College in Chicago. He served as a rabbi in Lexington, Kentucky, and Rochester, Minnesota; directed the Hillel Society at the University of Florida in Gainesville; and served as national director of the B’nai B’rith Youth Commission and the American Zionist Youth Commission. He served as rabbi of Congregation Agudas Achim in San Antonio from 1958 until 1981.
Rabbi Amram Prero was born in Jerusalem, studied at the University of Chicago, USA, and was ordained by the Hebrew Theological College in Chicago. He served as a rabbi in Lexington, Kentucky, and Rochester, Minnesota; directed the Hillel Society at the University of Florida in Gainesville; and served as national director of the B’nai B’rith Youth Commission and the American Zionist Youth Commission. He served as rabbi of Congregation Agudas Achim in San Antonio from 1958 until 1981.
