Welcome to Between Wanderings, a new blog celebrating Jewish life and culture in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century—a time of great migration and change—told in the words of people who lived then.
The Between Wanderings Project has two parts:
The blog brings you excerpts of memoirs, diaries, letters, articles, fiction and other texts written by Jews in many countries (and occasionally by Gentiles who took an interest in the Jewish world), and links to historical resources. Many of the entries will be translations from other languages. Here are the sorts of posts you can expect:
- An immigrant family caught between tradition and assimilation in 1890s Boston
- A profile of Jewish schools in the Middle East in the early 1900s, with lots of photos
- Links to vintage Yiddish music recordings from the 1900s to 1920s
- Moving accounts of holiday celebrations among Jewish soldiers in World War I
- Classic, lovely short stories by authors such as Sholem Aleichem
- Descriptions of “proto-bat mitzvahs” in 19th-century Italy
- A collection of evocative, colorful Sephardic proverbs
- A look at New York’s Lower East Side at the turn of the last century
- …and many other treats!
The Between Wanderings book series consists of classic Jewish-themed books of the 1850s–1920s, newly translated into English, available as e-books and/or paperbacks. Currently available for purchase:
- Sephardic Jews and the Spanish Language by Ángel Pulido, originally published in 1904 in a mixture of Modern Spanish and Ladino (Judeo-Spanish). English edition: September 2016.
- Jewish Immigrants in Early 1900s America: A Visitor’s Account – a booklet by Anatole Leroy-Beaulieu, originally published in 1905 in French. Photo-illustrated English edition: September 2016.
Two more book translations are already underway.