The Strange Stories of Yiddishland: What the Yiddish Press Reveals about the Jews

An underground history of downwardly mobile Jews, Eddy Portnoy’s book, Bad Rabbi and Other Strange but True Stories from the Yiddish Press, mines century-old Yiddish newspapers to expose the seamy underbelly of pre-WWII New York and Warsaw, the two major centers of Yiddish culture in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. With true stories of Jewish drunks, murderers, wrestlers, psychics, and beauty queens -- all plucked from the pages of Yiddish dailies -- Eddy Portnoy reveals unusual and unexpected aspects of Jewish urban life. One part Isaac Bashevis Singer, one part Jerry Springer, this irreverent, unvarnished, and frequently hilarious compendium of stories provides a window into an unknown Yiddish world that was.