Profiles of a Lost World: Memoirs of East European Jewish Life Before World War II (Raphael Patai Series in Jewish Folklore and Anthropology)

Language Notes
Text: English (translation)
Original Language: Yiddish


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First published in a Yiddish edition in 1958, Profiles of a Lost World is an incomparable source of information about Eastern Europe before World War II as well as an invaluable touchstone for understanding a rich and complex cultural environment. Hirsz Abramowicz (1881-1960), a prominent Jewish educator, writer, and cultural activist, knew that world and wrote about it, and his writings provide a rare eyewitness account of Jewish life during the first half of the twentieth century. Abramowicz was a witness to war, revolution, and major cultural transformations in the Jewish world. His essays, written and originally published in Yiddish between 1920 and 1955, document the local history of Lithuanian Jewry in rural and small-town settings and in the city of Vilna - the "Jerusalem of Lithuania" - which was a major center of East European Jewish intellectual and cultural life. They shed important light on the daily life of Jews and the flourishing of modern Yiddish culture in Eastern Europe during the early twentieth century and offer a personal perspective on the rise of Jewish radical politics.


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