I highly recommend the Sami Rohr Library of Recorded Yiddish books to any library that has readers that either know Yiddish (whether or not they can read it), are studying it, or are even remotely interested in the language and its literature. The recordings were made at the Jewish Public Library in Montreal starting in the mid-1980s (where I was working at the time). The impetus came from a European-born library member, Shmulik Rosenfeld, whose wife was losing her eyesight and was losing her ability to read the Yiddish literature that she loved. He pulled together a group of expert Yiddish readers - there was a sizable community of them in Montreal at that time - and thus was born the JPL's Yiddish Talking Books program, which was modeled on similar programs for English-language books offered by the National Library of Canada, the Library of Congress, and other libraries.
The books included in the Sami Rohr Library - which are transfers of JPL's tapes onto CDs - offer a fine selection of Yiddish prose writing, read by native speakers who knew these works well. When we acquired the set a few months ago at Stanford, at the very reasonable price of $240, I listened to a few of the CDs. It was thrilling to hear the familiar voices of the readers - most of whom are, sadly, no longer with us - and more importantly, to listen to some of the best works of Yiddish literature read out loud in the accents (plural) and cadences of Eastern European Yiddish. At the now even more reasonable price of $160, if you are mulling over this prospective purchase I say, Go for it! Thanks are due to the National Yiddish Book Center and the Jewish Book Council, for making this collection available to a wide public. Zachary -- * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Zachary M. Baker Reinhard Family Curator of Judaica and Hebraica Collections Head, Humanities and Area Studies Resource Group Stanford University Libraries Green Library 321 Stanford, CA 94305-6004 Telephone 1-650-725-1054 Fax 1-650-725-1068 e-mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www-sul.stanford.edu/depts/hasrg/jewish/jewish.html Messages and opinions expressed on Hasafran are those of the individual author and are not necessarily endorsed by the Association of Jewish Libraries (AJL) =========================================================== Submissions for Ha-Safran, send to: Hasafran @ lists.acs.ohio-state.edu SUBscribing, SIGNOFF commands send to: Listproc @ lists.acs.ohio-state.edu Questions, problems, complaints, compliments;-) send to: galron.1 @ osu.edu Ha-Safran Archives: Current: http://www.mail-archive.com/hasafran%40lists.acs.ohio-state.edu/maillist.html History: http://www.mail-archive.com/hasafran%40lists.acs.ohio-state.edu/history.html AJL HomePage http://www.JewishLibraries.org
