Eddy Portnoy

So fun! Portnoy is an engaging and hilarious writer. I laughed so much reading it. Just a delight. The long translated segments were welcome but may have worked better in an appendix, but I understand these were original published as stand alone articles. I highly recommend!

I loved this book. The introduction was an interesting history about the Yiddish press. The actual book were real life stories that appeared in the Yiddish press. They showed the "common" Jew that you never learn about in class. I must say the first chapter about the murder mystery was not my favorite so I might skip that chapter. But the rest of the book was fascinating. I felt like it was reality TV for 1930 Jews.

Fascinating look at the aspects of Jewish culture and history rarely examined in popular media.

Meh.
Cool idea, but in the end the book is very repetitive. It's trying to fill a nice niche, telling everyday stories about the Common Man and Woman in the Shtetl in the years before the Holocaust ended that world. But it feels like every story ends with "and then a fistfight broke out and the police arrested everyone". OK, I get it- Jews could be violent.