In the 1880s, Warsaw was a hub for Jewish writers and cultural agents from across the Russian Empire and outside it. In just two generations, it became the most dynamic and prolific center for Hebrew and Yiddish literature and journalism. Writers active in Warsaw not only enriched Jewish culture but also played an active role in Jewish life in Poland, facing a variety of everyday challenges. The main manifestation of literary life was the Union of Jewish Writers and Journalists, a socially and culturally significant institution. It reflected the ever-changing facets of the Jewish literary environment in Warsaw. This book reveals a variety of sources pertaining to this vibrant life in the years 1918-1939, as well as the years of ghetto and destruction, 1939-1942. Different historical and social aspects of this period in Jewish history are examined vis-à-vis these and other sources.

The dictionary has several aims; 1. To help advanced Yiddish students to better understand all kinds of texts and to use the idioms in their Yiddish conversation; 2. To serve as a lexicographic source for linguistics researching Yiddish and spoken Hebrew, and specialists in comparative phraseology; 3. To give the lovers of Yiddish a handbook that will help them find and recall the meaning of Yiddish idioms.

Mark Warshavsky was born in Odessa in 1848 and was a poet-composer of many famous Yiddish folksongs. It was Sholom Aleichem who first "discovered" Warshavsky with whom he often appeared in cultural evenings in Kiev. Like some of the early songs of Gebirtig - Warshavsky's songs too became folksongs, the lyrics and melodies spread like wildfire among the Jewish masses. The appearance of Warshavsky's Der Alef Beys, or as it quicky became known from its first words Oyfn Pripetchek, caused a real revolution in the minds of orthodox as well as progressive Jews in Eastern Europe."

The town of Motele, located close to Pinsk, was made famous by her other son, Haim Veizman, the first president of Israel (and the authors relative). It is described here through family members and friends, Jews and non-Jews, officials and professionals and more. The reader gets a very live and colorful portrait of a town that was like many but one of a kind. Chemerinsky (known in Yiddish as – R. Mardachileh) who had written all his works in Yiddish up to this book, surprised many with his fresh and rich language, a language filled with humor and wordplay. His writings in Hebrew radiate warmth, love and longing for his naïve childhood experiences which have passed but have not been forgotten. Chemerinsky does not write about his town with nostalgia or sentimentality but with a realistic and amused view. A view of someone who knows it is time to say goodbye to his past, a past that is worthy of becoming public.

The correspondence between writers may be considered a separate literary genre, especially that of Aaron Zeitlin. Zeitlin's letters deal with literary matters and an array of cultural issues. This book is an attempt to bring together two disciplines in order to better understand the one author: the study of the cultural history of Yiddish and its literature and the methodology involved in the editing of literary correspondence. These two disciplines are brought together while dealing in detail with Aaron's public activities (one as one of the presidents of the Yiddish PEN club in Warsaw, as a journalist, a literary editor and a public figure) and examining his ideas and beliefs as expressed in his letters to fellow authors and critics close to him in thought and action: Yosef Opatoshu, H.Leyvik, Avraham Liesin, Shmuel Niger and others.