Collected Writings

Collected Writings by Joseph J. Goodman





A Book Found A Life Revealed A Legacy Preserved




Enlightening and TouchingLong Lost Book Takes




Readers on an Amazing Emotional and Historical Journey





In 2008 Leah Hammer found her grandfathers 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 Goodmans 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.
Hoffmans 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 YiddishEnglish
format of Collected Writings maintains
the authors intention to preserve the
Yiddish language. This presentation
allows the authors work to be shown
as it appeared in the original 1919
publication





Harriet Goodman Hoffman, Joseph
Goodmans granddaughter, is a
professional genealogist. She has
appended an extensive chronology of
Josephs life, biographical information
about his Russian and young adult years,
sections about some of the people and
places mentioned in the book, and a brief
discussion about the Yiddish language.





Hannah Berliner Fischthal, PhD, is an
adjunct Professor of English at St. Johns
University, New York. In addition to
having published widely about Yiddish
and Jewish literature, she serves as a
Yiddish translator for Jewishgen.org,
and is co-Book Review Editor of Studies
in American Jewish Literature (SAJL).
Dr. H.B. Fischthal has provided a
comprehensive Translators Introduction
for the text.





Collected Writings by J. J.
Goodman is a remarkable text. The
author probably valued his poetry
the mostYet I believe that it is
as a Jewish settler in Canada, as an
intellectual and a writer, as a reporter
of the provinces in the early twentieth
century, that he reaches his greatest
heights





Hannah Berliner Fischthal


From Translators Introduction