From the Kingdom of David to the Oslo Accords, Ruth Wisse offers a radical new way to think about the Jewish relationship to power. Traditional Jews believed that upholding the covenant with God constituted a treaty with the most powerful force in the universe; this later transformed itself into a belief that, unburdened by a military, Jews could pursue their religious mission on a purely moral plain. Wisse, an eminent professor of comparative literature at Harvard, demonstrates how Jewish political weakness both increased Jewish vulnerability to scapegoating and violence, and unwittingly goaded power-seeking nations to cast Jews as perpetual targets. Although she sees hope in the State of Israel, Wisse questions the way the strategies of the Diaspora continue to drive the Jewish state, echoing Abba Eban's observation that Israel was the only nation to win a war and then sue for peace. And then she draws a persuasive parallel to the United States today, as it struggles to figure out how a liberal democracy can face off against enemies who view Western morality as weakness. This deeply provocative book is sure to stir debate both inside and outside the Jewish world. Wisse's narrative offers a compelling argument that is rich with history and bristling with contemporary urgency.

In the early decades of this century, the wave of immigration that brought nearly two million Jews from the Pale of Settlement to the United States included an extraordinary group of gifted Yiddish poets and writers, who came to be called Di Yunge (The Young). A Little Love in Big Manhattan tells the story of two of the Young’s most prominent figures―Mani Leib, a lyric poet intent on refining the hard facts of his life into works of enduring beauty, and Moishe Leib Halpern, for whom poetry had to be the expression of coarse and shattering reality. Through a dual biography of these opposing personalities, Ruth Wisse describes the rich and vital cultural movement that embraced them both. She tells of the burst of creative energy exhibited by the young poets and intellectuals who, after a long day of manual labor, would congregate in the cafes of the Lower East Side for badinage, debate, and literary talk. They started literary journals and compiled anthologies of their writings, which found their way overseas and had a rejuvenating influence on Yiddish poetry abroad. Ironically, their achievement coincided with the decline of the language in which they wrote, so that Yiddish poetry came into its own in America at a time when the next generation could scarcely read it; there were no literary heirs. Ruth Wisse presents modern Jews with a part of their lost inheritance, and also claims for the Yiddish poets a place in the American canon. The first book to present these poets as part of the history of immigrant Jews in America, A Little Love in Big Manhattan (the title is from a poem of Halpern’s) will appeal to readers of poetry and to people interested in facets of the intellectual and artistic atmosphere of the interwar period.

The five short novellas which comprise this anthology were written between 1890 and World War I. All share a common setting-the Eastern European Jewish town or shtetl, and all deal in different ways with a single topic-the Jewish confrontation with modernity. The authors of these novellas are among the greatest masters of Yiddish prose. In their work, today's reader will discover a literary tradition of considerable scope, energy, and variety and will come face to face with an exceptionally memorable cast of characters and with a human community now irrevocably lost.In her general introduction, Professor Wisse traces the development of modern Yiddish literature in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and describes the many shifts that took place between the Yiddish writers and the world about which they wrote. She also furnishes a brief introduction for each novella, giving the historical and biographical background and offering a critical interpretation of the work.