Itzik Gottesman's Defining the Yiddish Nation will be indispensable to anyone interested in the collection of Jewish ethnographic materials. Focusing on the early twentieth century in Poland, Gottesman discusses the underlying ideology, the methodology, and the practice of folklore study.

In the preface to The Hope Fulfilled, a history of the Zionist movement from the 1880s to 1948, Leslie Stein writes that, unlike other voluminous publications that have dealt with the history of modern Israel, he has attempted to provide a concise description of the events that led to the founding of the State of Israel. Focusing primarily on the political, military, and diplomatic aspects of Zionist history, this 275-page (sans glossary and index) volume is indeed a succinct yet thorough description that gives the student of Zionist history a sound introduction to the origins and history of the movement.

The books under review deal with two towns in Galicia, territory that was part of the Habsburg Empire from 1772 until 1918. The first town, Brzezany, is located today in the Ukraine; the second, Jaśliska, a small town, is now in Poland. Despite different starting points, both books attempt to solve the riddle of the past and present relations between Jews and their neighbors, relations that are noted for their ambivalence and complexity.

Think of the intensity and notoriety of Sylvia Plath in the English-speaking world, and multiply it several times: that is Yona Wallach for the Hebrew-speaking world today. The most passionate and flamboyant figure in postwar literary Israel, Wallach was born on a small farming village in 1944, lived there most of her life until her death of breast cancer in 1985, and after her death has become a cultural legend. In life Wallach experimented with sex, drugs, and madness (she checked herself into a mental hospital in 1964 and remained for three months, deliberately exploring what the subconscious yielded), was a compelling live performer of her poems, and was typically surrounded by worshipful younger writers. In her art she was yet more experimental. Her poetry combines mysticism, sexuality, an ecstatic love of nature and a correspondingly powerful mistrust of society and its conventions, a fascination with language and the breakdown of language, an insistence on the validity of freedom and will. Steeped in biblical allusions, mythology, fairy tales, and kabbalistic imagery, she often twists and turns her sources with playful or violent irony. Her lexicon swerves through extremes of exaltation and crudeness. Her verse sometimes is traditionally rhymed, more often unpredictably and jazzily ragged, her imagery is often surreal, her narratives elliptic, her syntax fractured—yet thrillingly readable.

Abstract available in the PDF.