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Bad Rabbi: And Other Strange but True Stories from the Yiddish Press
Stories abound of immigrant Jews on the outside looking in, clambering up the ladder of social mobility, successfully assimilating and integrating into their new worlds. But this book is not about the success stories. It's a paean to the bunglers, the blockheads, and the just plain weird--Jews who were flung from small, impoverished eastern European towns into the urban shtetls of New York and Warsaw, where, as they say in Yiddish, their bread landed butter side down in the dirt. These marginal Jews may have found their way into the history books far less frequently than their more socially upstanding neighbors, but there's one place you can find them in force: in the Yiddish newspapers that had their heyday from the 1880s to the 1930s. Disaster, misery, and misfortune: you will find no better chronicle of the daily ignominies of urban Jewish life than in the pages of the Yiddish press.
An underground history of downwardly mobile Jews, Bad Rabbi exposes the seamy underbelly of pre-WWII New York and Warsaw, the two major centers of Yiddish culture in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. With true stories plucked from the pages of the Yiddish papers, Eddy Portnoy introduces us to the drunks, thieves, murderers, wrestlers, poets, and beauty queens whose misadventures were immortalized in print. There's the Polish rabbi blackmailed by an American widow, mass brawls at weddings and funerals, a psychic who specialized in locating missing husbands, and violent gangs of Jewish mothers on the prowl--in short, not quite the Jews you'd expect. One part Isaac Bashevis Singer, one part Jerry Springer, this irreverent, unvarnished, and frequently hilarious compendium of stories provides a window into an unknown Yiddish world that was.
An underground history of downwardly mobile Jews, Bad Rabbi exposes the seamy underbelly of pre-WWII New York and Warsaw, the two major centers of Yiddish culture in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. With true stories plucked from the pages of the Yiddish papers, Eddy Portnoy introduces us to the drunks, thieves, murderers, wrestlers, poets, and beauty queens whose misadventures were immortalized in print. There's the Polish rabbi blackmailed by an American widow, mass brawls at weddings and funerals, a psychic who specialized in locating missing husbands, and violent gangs of Jewish mothers on the prowl--in short, not quite the Jews you'd expect. One part Isaac Bashevis Singer, one part Jerry Springer, this irreverent, unvarnished, and frequently hilarious compendium of stories provides a window into an unknown Yiddish world that was.
280 pages, Paperback
First published October 24, 2018
43 people are currently reading
688 people want to read
About the author
Eddy Portnoy
4 books6 followersEddy Portnoy received his Ph.D. from the Jewish Theological Seminary. A specialist in Jewish popular culture, he has published in numerous academic journals and also in The Forward and in Tablet Magazine. He currently serves as Academic Advisor for the Max Weinreich Center and Exhibition Curator at the YIVO. He is the author of Bad Rabbi and Other Strange but True Stories from the Yiddish Press (Stanford University Press, 2017).
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 54 reviews
October 19, 2018
As a collection of expanded articles from Tablet magazine, the book can't help being uneven and disjointed, but Portnoy succeeds brilliantly nonetheless in shining a light into fin de siecle and interwar Eastern European Jewry. This is a vital slice of the *real* hoi-polloi Jewry, including its criminals, malcontents, fanatics, dropouts, freaks, and assorted losers, as well as (in the shadowy form of the readers of the Yiddish press) its more solid and responsible citizens keeping their bearings in an era of change. Though Portnoy rails against Holocaust "death porn" and provides stories that are an exuberant if back-handed celebration of life, I still found myself mourning the loss of this gigantic civilization, larger than many other nations of Europe, which produced every permutation of human character, the good, the bad, and the ugly. The tragedy of the Holocaust is well known; less appreciated is the fact that the various Jewries of the West and Israel decided that Yiddish was an unworthy jargon and gave it up when they could have (should have?) treasured and preserved it.
December 23, 2024
De kronieken van Yiddishland.
Goed en mooi. Soms tragisch, vaak hilarisch. Bovenal een waardevol inkijkje in een vergane wereld. Beste verhalen (naar mijns inziens): Suicide Jews, Battle at the Bris, The Jewish Mahatma, Ever Fallen in Love with Someone (You Shouldn’t Have Fallen in Love With), You Think You’ve Got Troubles?.
Goed en mooi. Soms tragisch, vaak hilarisch. Bovenal een waardevol inkijkje in een vergane wereld. Beste verhalen (naar mijns inziens): Suicide Jews, Battle at the Bris, The Jewish Mahatma, Ever Fallen in Love with Someone (You Shouldn’t Have Fallen in Love With), You Think You’ve Got Troubles?.
December 30, 2017
A strange and often funny collection of stories from the Yiddish press that Portnoy has contextualized with historical and cultural support. From hundreds of husbands walking out on their families and appearing in post-office-criminal style blotters in the news to women wandering the streets with blood running down from their mouth after taking a particularly brutal bite from an unrequited lover's zipper, Portnoy's complaint collection (pun intended) is an entertaining read that is both well researched and expertly presented with graphics and historical background. I heard about this book both on The Schmooze (the Yiddish Book Center's podcast) and The Virtual Memories Show, and I am quite happy that I decided to get my hands on a copy and read about the controversies of yesteryear... I just wish there were more stories in the book. Here's hoping for a sequel of even more wild stories from the Yiddish press.
January 4, 2022
Amkho, scher un eisen!
What surprised me the most in here was how violent the orthodox and hasidim can get. Portnoy even believes that they murdered some people who wouldn't close their businesses for shabbos. But nearly all the chapters in here involve hasidim holding some one down and beating them, which is apparently called "taking out a mortgage" in yiddish.
I had never really thought about the Jews in Warsaw also being newcomers from the countryside the way that New York Jews were in the same time period. These Strange But True Stories do not disappoint, but if you are expecting something scholarly just because it's Stanford University Press, don't. Just relax and let Portnoy be Portnoy, comparing the beys-din with Jerry Springer or quoting Wu Tang Clan. We all have our traumas, but Portnoy spent a few years reading microfilm right to left so give him some slack.
What surprised me the most in here was how violent the orthodox and hasidim can get. Portnoy even believes that they murdered some people who wouldn't close their businesses for shabbos. But nearly all the chapters in here involve hasidim holding some one down and beating them, which is apparently called "taking out a mortgage" in yiddish.
I had never really thought about the Jews in Warsaw also being newcomers from the countryside the way that New York Jews were in the same time period. These Strange But True Stories do not disappoint, but if you are expecting something scholarly just because it's Stanford University Press, don't. Just relax and let Portnoy be Portnoy, comparing the beys-din with Jerry Springer or quoting Wu Tang Clan. We all have our traumas, but Portnoy spent a few years reading microfilm right to left so give him some slack.
May 3, 2018
Not a scholarly treatment, despite a university press publisher, and incredibly disrespectful of its subject. Most of this material was previously published on line. The only thing I found of value was the reproductions from the original newspapers. But not enough to overcome the tone and earn a second star.
January 8, 2019
I loved it! This is all that I want in a book and more. These are the stories that you dont hear about in jewish culture. I felt like I was transported into early 20th century Poland. Such an enjoyable read.
November 28, 2021
I don't know if this convinced me that the Jewish people are truly one of a kind...or just as fucked up and weird as everyone else...or maybe both. Regardless, this was extremely entertaining, hilarious, enlightening, and even shocking.
April 18, 2025
This book sets out to rewrite old stories from the Yiddish Press for a modern, Gentile-friendly audience — it achieves this with effortless wit and surprising cohesion. If you are interested in reading about weird people and domestic disputes (all Jewish) from the 1800s - 1940s, this book is for you. You aren’t going to find these stories anywhere else.
December 13, 2017
This is a collection of stories about “two-bit nobodies”, as the dedication has it, from Yiddish newspapers in New York and Warsaw from 1871 through 1939, which Portnoy summarizes, translates, and contextualizes for the modern reader.
The book starts off on a somber note with two cases involving the murders of young women in 19th century New York, stories which might have provided subject matter for a Yiddish Theodore Dreiser. But the rest of the book is dedicated to oddities and (mostly) non-lethal altercations among the Jewish lower classes in the US and Poland. We have Jewish psychics, a 625 pound Jewish wrestler, Shabbos enforcers, and a large number of disputes involving marriage and divorce arrangements which, the author notes more than once, would not be out of place on the Jerry Springer show, with their sometimes surprising revelations and frequent throwing of chairs and punches.
As the Jerry Springer reference indicates, the allusions Portnoy makes, though there are not many of them, tend to be drawn from popular culture. But for someone like me who has been semi-immersed in the Greek classics this year, the story from 1929 Poland that begins with a beauty pageant to choose “Miss Judea” and concludes with a massive brawl at the funeral of a prominent rabbi seems like a kind of 3 złoty Iliad.
The individual chapters of the book, though arranged more-or-less chronologically, have little connection with each other and can be read separately; many are expanded versions of articles written for Tablet Magazine. The book is best read a few chapters at a time, perhaps over eight evenings, and not consumed all at once like a plate of latkes.
The book starts off on a somber note with two cases involving the murders of young women in 19th century New York, stories which might have provided subject matter for a Yiddish Theodore Dreiser. But the rest of the book is dedicated to oddities and (mostly) non-lethal altercations among the Jewish lower classes in the US and Poland. We have Jewish psychics, a 625 pound Jewish wrestler, Shabbos enforcers, and a large number of disputes involving marriage and divorce arrangements which, the author notes more than once, would not be out of place on the Jerry Springer show, with their sometimes surprising revelations and frequent throwing of chairs and punches.
As the Jerry Springer reference indicates, the allusions Portnoy makes, though there are not many of them, tend to be drawn from popular culture. But for someone like me who has been semi-immersed in the Greek classics this year, the story from 1929 Poland that begins with a beauty pageant to choose “Miss Judea” and concludes with a massive brawl at the funeral of a prominent rabbi seems like a kind of 3 złoty Iliad.
The individual chapters of the book, though arranged more-or-less chronologically, have little connection with each other and can be read separately; many are expanded versions of articles written for Tablet Magazine. The book is best read a few chapters at a time, perhaps over eight evenings, and not consumed all at once like a plate of latkes.
April 7, 2021
As a compilation of untold (or perhaps unremembered) stories of Yiddish culture, “Bad Rabbi” is immensely valuable. From Warsaw to Brooklyn, 1870s to 1930s, this book contains tales of the Yiddish underworld — murder, deception, betrayal, street brawls, scandals — and the rabbis and rabble who inhabit it. The stories are invaluable, as much for their rich flavor as for their complication of the romanticized shtetl narrative. The tone is personal, often humorous, and not overly academic — although the research required must've been substantial.
"Bad Rabbi" is an entertaining and insightful response to many of our false assumptions about Yiddishland, filling in some of the many holes left in Ashkenazi memory by genocide and assimilation. It serves as a corrective to the shallow nostalgia and flattened Fiddler-on-the-Roof caricature (no disrespect to Reb Rabinovich) that often plagues mainstream Jewish notions of our not so distant past.
We are reminded that our Yiddish ancestors, from city to shtetl, were sacred & profane, complex & mundane, poor and wretched, clever and beautiful... far from being "chosen," the truth is they were very much like everyone else — and very much like us.
"Bad Rabbi" is an entertaining and insightful response to many of our false assumptions about Yiddishland, filling in some of the many holes left in Ashkenazi memory by genocide and assimilation. It serves as a corrective to the shallow nostalgia and flattened Fiddler-on-the-Roof caricature (no disrespect to Reb Rabinovich) that often plagues mainstream Jewish notions of our not so distant past.
We are reminded that our Yiddish ancestors, from city to shtetl, were sacred & profane, complex & mundane, poor and wretched, clever and beautiful... far from being "chosen," the truth is they were very much like everyone else — and very much like us.
August 20, 2021
Sensationalist tabloid-press stories from a vanished world. Chosen and curated by a knowledgable writer with a keen sense of the absurd, the stories are alternately fascinating, funny, sad, and just plain weird. I found the book both entertaining and informative.
October 9, 2018
I stumbled upon this book after reading a review in the TLS that appraised Eddy Portnoy for depicting a part of Jewish/Yiddish life in the late 19th/early 20th century virtually unknown to academic scholarship and wider audiences. This is a wonderful collection, richly documented, of stories of the Yiddish Press that expose many fascinating, sometimes dark and twisted, characters now completely forgotten. It shows New York and Warsaw as cities of myriad languages and cultural intermingling - and the occasional tension arising from this melting pot. Despite the light-hearted tone, this is erudite scholarship written by someone who deeply treasures Yiddish history (a topic that is a genuine trove unexplored by many modern historians).
July 14, 2020
I liked the stories, and loved getting a chance to learn more about the Yiddish press. The author is right, too, that this is a unique opportunity to learn more about everyday Jewish life in early 20th century New York and Warsaw. But I'm not sure if I love his writing in particular. I found the book to be tonally off at times. And I think the whole thing could benefit from a more carefully woven narrative line, so it doesn't feel like a bunch of discrete articles jammed into one book.
May 26, 2020
I read the Forward (the English-language edition of the Forverts, the oldest Yiddish-language daily newspaper in the world) somewhat regularly, and we in the house have the coffee-table book commemorative of the newspaper (A Living Lens: Photographs of Jewish Life from the Pages of the Forward), and for that matter my grandparents and great-grandparents on my mother's side were ardent Jewish socialists, so I already had some familiarity with the Jewish press during its heyday. But Eddy Portnoy's wonderful book Bad Rabbi: And Other Strange but True Stories from the Yiddish Press provided a truly excellent retrospective of the everyday stories of the literally millions of largely immigrant Jewish people who populated New York City and Warsaw during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, everyday Jewish people who have largely been forgotten on an individual level as their children and grandchildren either assimilated (in the United States) or were murdered by the Third Reich (in Warsaw). Portnoy repeatedly notes that New York City and Warsaw were anywhere from one-quarter to one-third Jewish in population during this time period, and he likewise notes that the sheer number of Jewish people in both cities, usually impoverished and often disenfranchised, often meant that they were "downwardly mobile", in Portnoy's words; Bad Rabbi is the story of the career criminals, the liminal personalities, and the cheap entertainers of the turn-of-the-20th-century Jewish world.
Portnoy notes as well that most historiography of the period dwells on the greater figures of the Jewish community, but in doing so Portnoy likewise points out that that is a critical omission, considering the literate nature of Jewish culture, if decidedly and frequently not intellectual, insofar as the sheer volume of material written in Yiddish for its speakers—and only for them, as since most Poles or New Yorkers overwhelmingly couldn't read or understand the language, there was often less worry about antisemitic repercussions due to the misdeeds reported by the Jewish press—inevitably contained the selfsame stuff that so many contemporary more niche newspapers contain: Gossip, lurid crime reports, and humor. Among the stories Portnoy reports are more humorous ones, such as the copious self-promotion of a Jewish occultist in New York, brawls between different Hasidic sects in close quarters, and the tale of Martin "The Blimp" Levy, a 600-plus-pound professional wrestler between the World Wars who was one of the most popular of his era, and one of an apparent significant number of Jewish professional wrestlers during that era. (Particularly noteworthy along these lines is the very frequent use of Yiddishisms such as "Mainly" to open a sentence, made famous by MAD Magazine, itself the product of Jewish immigrants and sons-of-immigrants.) But Portnoy also reports on ostensibly more serious matters, such as the very real "suicide beat" during the Depression in Poland, when there were often multiple suicides a day among desperate Jews, or the story of a riot by thousands of Jewish mothers in the Lower East Side who worried that the New York Public Schools were killing their children under the guise of removing their tonsils, to a great extent due to the language barrier between the English-speaking public school officials and the English language-illiterate immigrant public school parents.
Portnoy notes as well that because journalism was a way to pay the bills while pursuing more intellectual pursuits, such noteworthy Yiddish-language literati as Isaac Bashevis Singer, his brother Israel Joshua Singer, and author of "Hatikvah" Naftali Hertz Imber started out as journalists in the Yiddish press (or the subjects thereof), in the case of the Singer brothers pursuing the lurid crime beat; Portnoy notes as well that Imber was a product of his origins as much as was Weegee, who was even one of his blood relatives. And in this regard comes Portnoy's academic rigor: All of Portnoy's sources, both primary and secondary, are noted in the bibliography, and as a senior researcher at the leading institute for Yiddish studies, Portnoy is well-equipped to provide valuable and necessary context; the introduction alone is worth the price of Bad Rabbi's admission.
In general, Bad Rabbi is a truly excellent, and arguably unique book, a most worthwhile addition to any library of Judaica, and a fascinating study of what amounts to the ancestors of most American Jews as well; I'm a firm believer that in order to know where we are, we need to know whence we came, and Bad Rabbi does an invaluable job in that regard.
Portnoy notes as well that most historiography of the period dwells on the greater figures of the Jewish community, but in doing so Portnoy likewise points out that that is a critical omission, considering the literate nature of Jewish culture, if decidedly and frequently not intellectual, insofar as the sheer volume of material written in Yiddish for its speakers—and only for them, as since most Poles or New Yorkers overwhelmingly couldn't read or understand the language, there was often less worry about antisemitic repercussions due to the misdeeds reported by the Jewish press—inevitably contained the selfsame stuff that so many contemporary more niche newspapers contain: Gossip, lurid crime reports, and humor. Among the stories Portnoy reports are more humorous ones, such as the copious self-promotion of a Jewish occultist in New York, brawls between different Hasidic sects in close quarters, and the tale of Martin "The Blimp" Levy, a 600-plus-pound professional wrestler between the World Wars who was one of the most popular of his era, and one of an apparent significant number of Jewish professional wrestlers during that era. (Particularly noteworthy along these lines is the very frequent use of Yiddishisms such as "Mainly" to open a sentence, made famous by MAD Magazine, itself the product of Jewish immigrants and sons-of-immigrants.) But Portnoy also reports on ostensibly more serious matters, such as the very real "suicide beat" during the Depression in Poland, when there were often multiple suicides a day among desperate Jews, or the story of a riot by thousands of Jewish mothers in the Lower East Side who worried that the New York Public Schools were killing their children under the guise of removing their tonsils, to a great extent due to the language barrier between the English-speaking public school officials and the English language-illiterate immigrant public school parents.
Portnoy notes as well that because journalism was a way to pay the bills while pursuing more intellectual pursuits, such noteworthy Yiddish-language literati as Isaac Bashevis Singer, his brother Israel Joshua Singer, and author of "Hatikvah" Naftali Hertz Imber started out as journalists in the Yiddish press (or the subjects thereof), in the case of the Singer brothers pursuing the lurid crime beat; Portnoy notes as well that Imber was a product of his origins as much as was Weegee, who was even one of his blood relatives. And in this regard comes Portnoy's academic rigor: All of Portnoy's sources, both primary and secondary, are noted in the bibliography, and as a senior researcher at the leading institute for Yiddish studies, Portnoy is well-equipped to provide valuable and necessary context; the introduction alone is worth the price of Bad Rabbi's admission.
In general, Bad Rabbi is a truly excellent, and arguably unique book, a most worthwhile addition to any library of Judaica, and a fascinating study of what amounts to the ancestors of most American Jews as well; I'm a firm believer that in order to know where we are, we need to know whence we came, and Bad Rabbi does an invaluable job in that regard.
October 20, 2018
this book is a flat out hilarious, but that is the least of it: it's also a brilliant work of (jewish, new york) history by a scholar of tremendous wit who writes with the flair of your favorite columnist. just great. if you like works by luc sante, you will love eddie portnoy.
February 17, 2019
Disappointing. I never buy books and I bought this, thinking it was going to be good.
Interesting in premise, old articles from Yiddish newspapers - but the authors commentary left a lot to be desired.
hmph
Interesting in premise, old articles from Yiddish newspapers - but the authors commentary left a lot to be desired.
hmph
February 16, 2018
Fun! There’s a couple of movies knocking around in here.
August 19, 2018
A fascinating study of the weird and wacky stories published in Warsaw and New York’s Yiddish newspapers.
July 21, 2019
I admit that I picked this up because of the sensationalist cover. "Bad Rabbi"? Was this the Jewish version of "Bad Santa"? I had to know. (The answer: kinda sorta not really.)
If you don't bother to read the introduction or the few pages on origins and sources at the end of the book, this work could seem just as vacuous and shallow as the Jerry Springer episodes referenced on the back cover. This would be a mistake on your part. That introduction and the bit on origins and sources provide a raison d'etre for the rest of the book. They offer a lens through which to see the stories - a reason to shine a light on the seamy Tenderloin of pre-WWII Jewish life. It is a counter to the sanitized versions of family histories that our grandparents related to us. So much of our upward mobility was built on a foundation that expunged the unsavory, and there is a lot of merit in letting people get out from under a sordid past. If you are weirded out by discovering that you have your grandmother's eyebrows and your Uncle Nate's laugh, imagine how much more perturbed you would be if you knew that your grandmother fenced stolen goods or that Uncle Nate was arrested for bigamy. Children born in the land of opportunity who don't know the unsavory past will not have their self-image determined by it.
But even if the omissions served a useful purpose, this editing of our history as a people comes at a cost. We have lost some of our honesty and integrity by propagating a false history that all Jews were well educated, intelligent, law-abiding citizens who eschewed violence and never over-indulged in wine women and song. And now is a perfect time to lift up that rock that we've used as the foundation of our identity, and see what squirms out from underneath. Most of us reading this book are 3rd to 4th generation new world citizens. If we discovered that our great-great grandfather was a pimp or that distant cousin a few generations back was bumped off by the mob 80 years ago, it's not going to make us question whether we've inherited a criminal element to our own selves.
And yes, some of the stories border upon the ridiculous, even the hilarious. However, for me, the humor was blunted quite a bit by my knowledge of the future. When reading about the stories set in Warsaw and other parts of pre-WWII Poland, it is difficult if not impossible to ignore the presence of the ghostly character of the Holocaust-to-come that haunted many of the pages. The author sidesteps this on most occasions, and when he does bump up directly against the rise of Nazism and the fate of Polish Jews, he does not always handle it with grace. I am somewhat sympathetic - he is relating dozens of stories of stupid, drunken, ridiculous earthiness for which comedy is the greatest inheritor, and yet many of these sordid tales find their ultimate punctuation mark in the ovens of Auschwitz. It's tricky territory. How can you relate the inane truth of the first half and reconcile it with the unspeakable atrocity of the second? I don't know, and evidently, neither did the author. He clearly wrestles with this himself, referring to much of Holocaust literature as "the death porn of World War II", a statement that does more to illuminate his own discomfort than it does to reshape the definition of an entire genre.
So that is my one quibble, hypocritical as I may be about it (since I can't supply any helpful suggestions). In my opinion, the nature of these stories and role they play in the unmasking the true nature of our historical narrative is vitally important (and an amusing ride, to boot). Yes, there is a flaw in the way this work interfaces with the Holocaust. But to focus on that is to miss the lion's share of what this book has to offer. And what it has to offer is worthwhile.
If you don't bother to read the introduction or the few pages on origins and sources at the end of the book, this work could seem just as vacuous and shallow as the Jerry Springer episodes referenced on the back cover. This would be a mistake on your part. That introduction and the bit on origins and sources provide a raison d'etre for the rest of the book. They offer a lens through which to see the stories - a reason to shine a light on the seamy Tenderloin of pre-WWII Jewish life. It is a counter to the sanitized versions of family histories that our grandparents related to us. So much of our upward mobility was built on a foundation that expunged the unsavory, and there is a lot of merit in letting people get out from under a sordid past. If you are weirded out by discovering that you have your grandmother's eyebrows and your Uncle Nate's laugh, imagine how much more perturbed you would be if you knew that your grandmother fenced stolen goods or that Uncle Nate was arrested for bigamy. Children born in the land of opportunity who don't know the unsavory past will not have their self-image determined by it.
But even if the omissions served a useful purpose, this editing of our history as a people comes at a cost. We have lost some of our honesty and integrity by propagating a false history that all Jews were well educated, intelligent, law-abiding citizens who eschewed violence and never over-indulged in wine women and song. And now is a perfect time to lift up that rock that we've used as the foundation of our identity, and see what squirms out from underneath. Most of us reading this book are 3rd to 4th generation new world citizens. If we discovered that our great-great grandfather was a pimp or that distant cousin a few generations back was bumped off by the mob 80 years ago, it's not going to make us question whether we've inherited a criminal element to our own selves.
And yes, some of the stories border upon the ridiculous, even the hilarious. However, for me, the humor was blunted quite a bit by my knowledge of the future. When reading about the stories set in Warsaw and other parts of pre-WWII Poland, it is difficult if not impossible to ignore the presence of the ghostly character of the Holocaust-to-come that haunted many of the pages. The author sidesteps this on most occasions, and when he does bump up directly against the rise of Nazism and the fate of Polish Jews, he does not always handle it with grace. I am somewhat sympathetic - he is relating dozens of stories of stupid, drunken, ridiculous earthiness for which comedy is the greatest inheritor, and yet many of these sordid tales find their ultimate punctuation mark in the ovens of Auschwitz. It's tricky territory. How can you relate the inane truth of the first half and reconcile it with the unspeakable atrocity of the second? I don't know, and evidently, neither did the author. He clearly wrestles with this himself, referring to much of Holocaust literature as "the death porn of World War II", a statement that does more to illuminate his own discomfort than it does to reshape the definition of an entire genre.
So that is my one quibble, hypocritical as I may be about it (since I can't supply any helpful suggestions). In my opinion, the nature of these stories and role they play in the unmasking the true nature of our historical narrative is vitally important (and an amusing ride, to boot). Yes, there is a flaw in the way this work interfaces with the Holocaust. But to focus on that is to miss the lion's share of what this book has to offer. And what it has to offer is worthwhile.
June 4, 2020
Sad but funny look at the misfits, losers, and deviants who comprised the Jewish underclass in Warsaw (and to a lesser degree New York) and whose scandals occupied the tabloid pages during the golden age of Yiddish newspapers. These Jews (my own family, no doubt) were not the scion of Hassidic Rebbes, Talmudic scholars, or communal leaders. Complete trash, they were, in the author's words, a cross "between Isaac Bashevis Singer and Jerry Springer."
These stories seem to have originally appeared in TABLET magazine, whence they have been expanded here, with great wit and far greater salaciousness. We are introduced to scoundrels -- bigamists, blackmailers, pimps, and thieves -- and "neb cases" -- beggars, prostitutes and others who inhabited Warsaw's slums. Some were congenitally or cognitively defective, others the victims of bad luck. The author implies that the class stratification of winners and losers was common to all societies; hence, that Jews were basically no different.
Actually, it is here where I disagree. True, the author is approaching this society from a secular mindset; however, he does overlook, or seem unaware, that these lowlifes, in spite of their flaws or crimes, seemed to possess an awareness of G-d. Even the "Hebrew girl murderer" is shown praying in jail, tefillin and all. Not that I excuse any "bad rabbi" behavior. But I wonder how many of these people might have ended up so low by straying from Torah ways. Nevertheless I can't totally blame Western culture either, as some people are just "born to lose." It's the whole nature-vs.-nurture thing.
Probably the real source of pathology lay in the erosion of community. Apparently the Warsaw rabbinate was little more than a joke, the courts showcases for squabbling couples or businesspeople. The Warsaw Jewish kehilla serviced a formerly rural demographic displaced by economics and hostile policies. Since the late nineteenth century many had flocked to the Polish cities, much like the African-Americans to northern American cities during the Great Migration, in search of opportunity. What they found, and ended up inhabiting, was a neighborhood far from heaven on earth. Many lacked the tools or networks to advance. Frustration, envy, disease, poverty -- all eroded the national character.
In spite of my assertion of Jewish "difference," this book does alter my perspective on the underclass, who deserved more sympathy. I write this during the George Floyd riots, which have cities under lockdown. So I now understand some of the pent-up fury, viciousness and hate among those who took to looting and rioting -- although I cannot condone it. Not everything wrong in society can be blamed on racism. None of the problems of the people in this book were based on anti-Semitism, although plenty of brutality toward Jews existed. The content here is "Jew-on-Jew" infighting, of which there were plenty of victims.
This book might also alter the perspective of anyone mentally preserving an idealized image of pre-Holocaust Poland, particularly Warsaw. The city was actually cosmopolitan, quite like New York, with Jews of every stripe, from assimilated to Hassidic. Holocaust memoirs seem to have been authored predominantly by survivors, both observant and non-observant, from upper- or middle-class homes, leading the public to believe that every Polish Jew led a wholesome, idyllic life before the war.
Now I realize, after reading this, that the survivors, as a whole, do not represent all the Jews in that place or time. A large segment went unseen and unheard, although many were rude, lewd, and crude. This book gives them their due, albeit in freak show fashion. Bad Rabbi is fascinating, but in the end depressing -- not just because we know that this subculture would end up in Treblinka. Rather, because its members had been existentially destroyed long before the Holocaust.
These stories seem to have originally appeared in TABLET magazine, whence they have been expanded here, with great wit and far greater salaciousness. We are introduced to scoundrels -- bigamists, blackmailers, pimps, and thieves -- and "neb cases" -- beggars, prostitutes and others who inhabited Warsaw's slums. Some were congenitally or cognitively defective, others the victims of bad luck. The author implies that the class stratification of winners and losers was common to all societies; hence, that Jews were basically no different.
Actually, it is here where I disagree. True, the author is approaching this society from a secular mindset; however, he does overlook, or seem unaware, that these lowlifes, in spite of their flaws or crimes, seemed to possess an awareness of G-d. Even the "Hebrew girl murderer" is shown praying in jail, tefillin and all. Not that I excuse any "bad rabbi" behavior. But I wonder how many of these people might have ended up so low by straying from Torah ways. Nevertheless I can't totally blame Western culture either, as some people are just "born to lose." It's the whole nature-vs.-nurture thing.
Probably the real source of pathology lay in the erosion of community. Apparently the Warsaw rabbinate was little more than a joke, the courts showcases for squabbling couples or businesspeople. The Warsaw Jewish kehilla serviced a formerly rural demographic displaced by economics and hostile policies. Since the late nineteenth century many had flocked to the Polish cities, much like the African-Americans to northern American cities during the Great Migration, in search of opportunity. What they found, and ended up inhabiting, was a neighborhood far from heaven on earth. Many lacked the tools or networks to advance. Frustration, envy, disease, poverty -- all eroded the national character.
In spite of my assertion of Jewish "difference," this book does alter my perspective on the underclass, who deserved more sympathy. I write this during the George Floyd riots, which have cities under lockdown. So I now understand some of the pent-up fury, viciousness and hate among those who took to looting and rioting -- although I cannot condone it. Not everything wrong in society can be blamed on racism. None of the problems of the people in this book were based on anti-Semitism, although plenty of brutality toward Jews existed. The content here is "Jew-on-Jew" infighting, of which there were plenty of victims.
This book might also alter the perspective of anyone mentally preserving an idealized image of pre-Holocaust Poland, particularly Warsaw. The city was actually cosmopolitan, quite like New York, with Jews of every stripe, from assimilated to Hassidic. Holocaust memoirs seem to have been authored predominantly by survivors, both observant and non-observant, from upper- or middle-class homes, leading the public to believe that every Polish Jew led a wholesome, idyllic life before the war.
Now I realize, after reading this, that the survivors, as a whole, do not represent all the Jews in that place or time. A large segment went unseen and unheard, although many were rude, lewd, and crude. This book gives them their due, albeit in freak show fashion. Bad Rabbi is fascinating, but in the end depressing -- not just because we know that this subculture would end up in Treblinka. Rather, because its members had been existentially destroyed long before the Holocaust.
July 18, 2024
I wanted to like this book more than I did. I almost did like this book more than I did. There's a lot of really good stuff here, and it's worth reading despite my issues with it. But nevertheless, they persist. Near the end of the book, there's a good number of essentially straight-from-the-source translated newspaper articles roughly grouped according to theme. These sections were the strongest for me, the ones I found myself wishing there was more of, and it's just not a great sign when the author's contributions feel like they're taking away from the content instead of adding to it. I see why, for complicated stories with many sources and information that is best understood cut up and mixed together, the same approach wasn't taken, and Portnoy created his own narrative from the pieces. But something felt different for me about the sometimes-glib tone taken by the author compared to the translated pieces. Perhaps there was an increased distance from the subject, or even, it's just much more tolerable to read stories with potentially questionable commentary when it serves to paint an honest picture of a cultural moment instead of a contemporary academic's retroactive commentary with, well, on the back of the book it is compared to Jerry Springer in an apparently positive context, so, I guess it's not uncharitable to say a Jerry Springer-like flavor. Which just isn't really to my taste. It's not that I don't like a rough-around-the-edges, honest, maybe even gossipy Jewish voice. That's my voice! But some of this material is rather sensitive, and the coverage veers on the sensationalistic in a way that, for me, detracted from the overall value. For example, the man shown on the cover has his waistline at his death described in detail in the concluding paragraphs of his biographical chapter. Frankly, who cares? I didn't, and I didn't need to be invited to visualize it. He's really fat. Shocking.
But look, there's not enough places you can go to see a real, honest image of Jewish life on many levels throughout recent history, and there was a lot of damn good hard work put into this book to give us that, and I can't let that go unrecognized. To put a spotlight on the people who lived in the shadows is a mission I wholeheartedly endorse and want to support. So, still read the book. But go in knowing what you're going to get.
But look, there's not enough places you can go to see a real, honest image of Jewish life on many levels throughout recent history, and there was a lot of damn good hard work put into this book to give us that, and I can't let that go unrecognized. To put a spotlight on the people who lived in the shadows is a mission I wholeheartedly endorse and want to support. So, still read the book. But go in knowing what you're going to get.
July 20, 2019
THE ANATOMICAL INSTITUTE RETURNS THE BODY OF A JEWISH SUICIDE BECAUSE THE BONES ARE WORTHLESS
Moment, April 1927
As readers remember from December of last year, a young Jewish girl committed suicide by jumping from the fourth floor (on Targova St.) because she was not able to recover from tuberculosis.
That victim, Rokhl Weinstein, left a will saying that her body should be donated to the Anatomical Institute so "it can be helpful in finding a cure for this dreadful disease" of which she was a victim. That exact expression was taken directly from her will, which she had scrawled in ink on her body. Not wanting to deny her wish, the dead girl's family did not try to oppose her decision and the body was sent to the Anatomical Institute, where it has been for the last four months.
On Saturday, the Burial Society received a notice from the Anatomical Institute, saying that the body of Rokhl Weinstein is of no value for scientific inquiry, because the most important bones were damaged by the tuberculosis. Therefore, they do not need the body and request that they take it.
Yesterday, the Burial Society picked up the body and the burial takes place today.
And so ends the tragic life story of 17-year-old Rokhl Weinstein. Even her bones are worthless. Even the humanitarian efforts she attempted in her last moments could not be fulfilled.
Moment, April 1927
As readers remember from December of last year, a young Jewish girl committed suicide by jumping from the fourth floor (on Targova St.) because she was not able to recover from tuberculosis.
That victim, Rokhl Weinstein, left a will saying that her body should be donated to the Anatomical Institute so "it can be helpful in finding a cure for this dreadful disease" of which she was a victim. That exact expression was taken directly from her will, which she had scrawled in ink on her body. Not wanting to deny her wish, the dead girl's family did not try to oppose her decision and the body was sent to the Anatomical Institute, where it has been for the last four months.
On Saturday, the Burial Society received a notice from the Anatomical Institute, saying that the body of Rokhl Weinstein is of no value for scientific inquiry, because the most important bones were damaged by the tuberculosis. Therefore, they do not need the body and request that they take it.
Yesterday, the Burial Society picked up the body and the burial takes place today.
And so ends the tragic life story of 17-year-old Rokhl Weinstein. Even her bones are worthless. Even the humanitarian efforts she attempted in her last moments could not be fulfilled.
September 21, 2025
The author chronicles the stories of both New York and (mostly) Warsaw's yiddishkeit life, but he focuses on the inane, the bizarre, the foolishness of Chelm. He makes a people look ridiculous, actually. He wasn't attempting balance or reporting; he was into ridicule and disrespect.
Nevertheless, I appreciated learning that "Isaac Bashevis Singer's older brother, Israel Joshua Singer, who was much more famous in his time," was a Yiddish journalist. That Naftali Herz Imber, a clairvoyant and poet, wrote a poem called "Tikvateinu," which ultimately became "Hatikvah" (The Hope). It was interesting to consider what would happen when Hasidic sects (defined by their own geographic shtetls) migrated into cities and found themselves next to other sects.
The 1906 riots because of involuntary tonsillectomies in the schools came "on the heels of a particularly brutal pogrom in Bialystok that had just been reported in the Yiddish press." That small clause gave me new information about the year my grandmother emigrated from Bialystok.
So four interesting things in a book I found distasteful.
Nevertheless, I appreciated learning that "Isaac Bashevis Singer's older brother, Israel Joshua Singer, who was much more famous in his time," was a Yiddish journalist. That Naftali Herz Imber, a clairvoyant and poet, wrote a poem called "Tikvateinu," which ultimately became "Hatikvah" (The Hope). It was interesting to consider what would happen when Hasidic sects (defined by their own geographic shtetls) migrated into cities and found themselves next to other sects.
The 1906 riots because of involuntary tonsillectomies in the schools came "on the heels of a particularly brutal pogrom in Bialystok that had just been reported in the Yiddish press." That small clause gave me new information about the year my grandmother emigrated from Bialystok.
So four interesting things in a book I found distasteful.
January 28, 2018
This book is a compilation of sensationalist stories from a variety of Yiddish press articles that appeared at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century: divorces, scams, murders, thefts, all told with a sardonic tone by the author, Eddy Portnoy, who seems to be the bad boy of Yiddish studies. He knows a lot about the Yiddish press, both in Poland and in NY. What I found particularly interesting is that one of the stories features a man named Hochman, who passed himself off as a psychic in NYC in the early part of the 20th century. The name sounded familiar -- it turns out he was a character in a novel by Alice Hoffman -- The Museum of Extraordinary Creatures -- which also has at its core a murder myster very much like the one the real Hochman helped to investigate. Hoffman must have done lots of her own research into the Yiddish press and came up with several extraordinary creatures, herself.
October 29, 2022
This book is fantastic. It's a wonderful insight into the daily lives of everyday people. It's funny while also providing historical and cultural context. Sometimes it felt a bit sensationalized, but then again, that's an accurate representation of how the reporters themselves told the stories.
I will say, I started feeling this intense dread as I neared the end of the book when we were getting into the 1920s and 30s in Poland. Especially with many notes that such and such a newspaper or institution lasted until the second world war. It's extremely clear exactly what happened to so many of the people and communities mentioned in these stories.
There is such a huge sense of loss to me as a reader of these stories from the 20s and 30s. Knowing what the unwritten end is, not just to the individuals but to their communities.
But that's just my personal feelings from reading the book, not based on the actual text.
I will say, I started feeling this intense dread as I neared the end of the book when we were getting into the 1920s and 30s in Poland. Especially with many notes that such and such a newspaper or institution lasted until the second world war. It's extremely clear exactly what happened to so many of the people and communities mentioned in these stories.
There is such a huge sense of loss to me as a reader of these stories from the 20s and 30s. Knowing what the unwritten end is, not just to the individuals but to their communities.
But that's just my personal feelings from reading the book, not based on the actual text.
February 9, 2021
This book wasn't exactly what I expected, but I really appreciate how much it looked at stories that people would never know about. I liked how it talked about the vast variety of Jewish people who existed in New York and Poland and how it didn't attempt to cover anything up. The people were represented in their entirety and in their many different forms because no one group of people is exactly the same/a monolith.
What I didn't expect was how much it analyzed the media that existed back then. I liked getting to see how different newspapers reacted to different situations and how the methods of communication evolved because of what the people wanted. I don't necessarily think this book is a required read, but if it fits your taste, go for it!
What I didn't expect was how much it analyzed the media that existed back then. I liked getting to see how different newspapers reacted to different situations and how the methods of communication evolved because of what the people wanted. I don't necessarily think this book is a required read, but if it fits your taste, go for it!
February 27, 2018
If you're a Tablet Magazine reader, many of these stories will be familiar to you. I enjoyed this book immensely, though I would have preferred a bit more direct attribution. Also, it seemed at times that the author was trying to mimic the tone and language of the Yiddish paper articles that made up the core of the book, but these instances never quite landed.
I do think that this is a very important book that provides a glimpse into the secret lives of people who would have otherwise been lost to history. I wish there were more scholarly books available on this subject.
I do think that this is a very important book that provides a glimpse into the secret lives of people who would have otherwise been lost to history. I wish there were more scholarly books available on this subject.
October 31, 2018
A hilarious and truly unique look at interwar Jewry on both sides of the Atlantic and a Yiddish world that (in this form) is almost entirely gone. Wonderful primary source excerpts and political and social cartoons. These are the Jews who passed into history without a footnote, in part because they didn’t fit prevailing and persistent stereotypes of Jews but also, and crucially, because they were poor. This book captures their struggles while remaining light and imminently readable. Highly recommended.
October 29, 2025
Entertaining and heartbreaking news stories of Jews of NY and Warsaw in the 20’s. It’s painful to know that all the dramas between Warsaw Jews will come to end in the 30’s and few will be left to tell these stories. The author is to be commended for scouring Yiddish newspapers for them. Two that stood out were the title story, Bad Rabbi, and one about prisoners attempting to put a Passover Seder together. The shorter stories caused me to glaze over a bit but were worth the listen for ghosts of the Holocaust, not all saints but definitely human.
January 12, 2018
The Yiddish world is gone, due mostly to the Holocaust and to assimilation. But it was a world filled with regular people dealing with the normal challenges of live. This book is a collection of articles from Yiddish newspapers and magazines from the 1860s through the early 1900s, from both New York and cities in Poland. A glimpse into a lost world.
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