A few years ago we read Outwitting History by Aaron Lansky about the MacArthur Award winner’s lifelong commitment to rescue from loss and destruction books written in Yiddish. In the 80s, Lansky, then a college student, tried to solve a a simple problem, finding books to read in his Yiddish class. This project grew to a full scale rescue of millions of volumes. He tells the stories he learned from elderly Jews who feared that books collected over a lifetime would be thrown out by children and grandchildren who did not care and could not read them. The center is a repository as well as a center for the study of Yiddish.


The books, both religious and secular, were the literature of Jews in the shtetls, ghettos, of Europe and brought to American by Jewish immigrants through the 1950s. The language contributed such words to American English as shlep, chutzpah and tush. With assimilation came a waning in the ability of third and later generations to speak and read the “mother tongue.” In Israel, it was displaced by Hebrew. The Book Center is reversing the decline and saving the literary piece of a rich culture.


A woman at the center recommended Atkins (not the doctor) Farm, a Whole Foods, local market, gourmet store, bakery, farmer’s market all under one roof. We are glad we do not live closer as we would be unable to resist the wonders in the aisles as proven by the bags we rolled out in our cart.