Author Description

Collected Writings by Joseph J. Goodman A Book Found A Life Revealed A Legacy Preserved Enlightening and Touching Long Lost Book Takes Readers on an Amazing Emotional and Historical Journey In 2008 Leah Hammer found her grandfather's book, Collected Writings, at the Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, Massachusetts. Gezamelte Shriften, published entirely in Yiddish in 1919, has now been translated into English and presented in this bilingual edition. Collected Writings turned out to be a remarkable collection of poetry, essays and stories, not only about the author, Joseph J. Goodman, but also about the Canadian Jewish immigrant experience. The editor of Collected Writings, Harriet Goodman Hoffman, also a granddaughter of Joseph Goodman, is a professional genealogist. Realizing a treasure had been discovered that would give his descendants an incredible opportunity to know their ancestor, she has researched and written an extensive chronology about Goodman's life, a biography of his Russian years, information about people and places mentioned in the text, the growth of the Canadian Jewish community, and the Yiddish language. Hoffman's work is a model of how to prepare and publish literary works discovered during genealogical research. Bilingual edition translated for the first time into English from the original Yiddish. For more than a thousand years, Yiddish was the language of Ashkenazi Jews. Unlike most languages spoken in particular areas, Yiddish at the height of its usage, was spoken by millions of Jews of different nationalities. This side-by-side Yiddish English format of Collected Writings maintains the author's intention to preserve the Yiddish language. This presentation allows the author's work to be shown as it appeared in the original 1919 publication Harriet Goodman Hoffman, Joseph Goodman's granddaughter, is a professional genealogist. She has appended an extensive chronology