In 2008 Leah Hammer found her grandfather's book, Collected Writings, at the Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, Massachusetts. Gezamelte Shriften, published entirely in Yiddish in 1919, has now been translated into English and presented in this bilingual edition. Collected Writings turned out to be a remarkable collection of poetry, essays and stories, not only about the author, Joseph J. Goodman, but also about the Canadian Jewish immigrant experience. The editor of Collected Writings, Harriet Goodman Hoffman, also a granddaughter of Joseph Goodman, is a professional genealogist. Realizing a treasure had been discovered that would give his descendants an incredible opportunity to know their ancestor, she has researched and written an extensive chronology about Goodman's life, a biography of his Russian years, information about people and places mentioned in the text, the growth of the Canadian Jewish community, and the Yiddish language. Hoffman's work is a model of how to prepare and publish literary works discovered during genealogical research.
Bilingual edition translated for the first time into English from the original Yiddish.
For more than a thousand years, Yiddish was the language of Ashkenazi Jews. Unlike most languages spoken in particular areas, Yiddish at the height of its usage, was spoken by millions of Jews of different nationalities.
This side-by-side Yiddish English format of Collected Writings maintains the author's intention to preserve the Yiddish language. This presentation allows the author's work to be shown as it appeared in the original 1919 publication
Harriet Goodman Hoffman, Joseph Goodman's granddaughter, is a professional genealogist. She has appended an extensive chronology of Joseph's life, biographical information about his Russian and young adult years, sections about some of the people and places mentioned in the book, and a brief discussion about the Yiddish language.
Hannah Berliner Fischthal, PhD, is an adjunct Professor of English at St. John's University, New York. In addition to having published widely about Yiddish and Jewish literature, she serves as a Yiddish translator for Jewishgen.org, and is co-Book Review Editor of Studies in American Jewish Literature (SAJL). Dr. H.B. Fischthal has provided a comprehensive Translator's Introduction for the text.
Collected Writings by J. J. Goodman is a remarkable text. The author probably valued his poetry the most Yet I believe that it is as a Jewish settler in Canada, as an intellectual and a writer, as a reporter of the provinces in the early twentieth century, that he reaches his greatest heights.
