Description:
Menachem Kipnis brings together for the first time folktales and photographs by one of the early 20th century's most popular Yiddish folklorists. Placing these striking images and memorable tales in dialogue, it suggests new ways of understanding how East European Jewish culture was depicted between the two World Wars.
Review Quotes:
"Standing on the blurry but oh-so-firmly-felt border between folk tale and photographic reality, Menachem Kipnis helped to shape Yiddishland in the pre-Holocaust popular imagination more than almost anyone else. This highly welcome volume, with its sensitive translations and its wonderful reproductions, helps rescue this vital figure from undeserved obscurity."
--Jeremy Dauber "author of The Worlds of Sholem Aleichem: The Remarkable Life and Afterlife of the Man Who Created Te"