Mother of fourteen (twelve of whom lived to adulthood) savvy businesswoman, story-teller, bereaved widow—in 1691, Glikl bas Judah Leib put paper to pen to pour out her grieving heart and to set down for her children “what kind of people you come from.” Her early Yiddish memoirs, among the first full-length autobiographical works by a Jew, have recently been rendered into an engaging, clear, accurate new translation based on a pathbreaking modern Hebrew edition. We’ll meet in three sessions, giving participants a chance to read at a relaxed pace, to hear from this astounding woman about the household and business she managed, the wealthy Jews she encountered, her sometimes hair-raising travels and modes of understanding the Jewish tradition that formed the very fabric of her life. Join us for this intellectual book club!
Scholarships available! Please contact lynne@vilnashul.org to request financial assistance. These are trying times, and we are committed to making sure that finances do not exclude anyone from participating.
To obtain the book:
University of Chicago Press
Ebook $18
Paperback Copy $19.95
Click the “Buy This Book” in the upper left corner of the page.
Amazon
Kindle: $18
Paperback: $20
This program is a partnership between the Vilna Shul, Boston's Center for Jewish Culture, Hadassah Brandeis Institute, The Tauber Institute for the Study of European Jewry at Brandeis University, and Brandeis University Press. Special thanks to the Yiddish Book Center for promoting this program.
Rachel Greenblatt has taught at Dartmouth College, Harvard and Wesleyan Universities. Rachel holds a Ph.D. in Jewish History from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and B.A. in History from Cornell. She has also studied biblical and rabbinic text at the Pardes Institute and at Matan - the Sadie Rennert Women’s Institute for Torah Study, both in Jerusalem. Rachel’s scholarship focuses on the cultural and social history of Jews in central and eastern Europe.