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Yiddish Yoga: Ruthie's Adventures in Love, Loss, and the Lotus Position
The poignant and funny tale of a recently widowed New York City Jewish grandmother, who accepts her granddaughter's gift of a year of yoga lessons with surprising results.
A Bubby like Ruthie doesn't necessarily come to yoga with the most open of minds. At first, she is skeptical of yoga and its promise of renewal, healing, and transformation. Ruthie can't resist poking fun at some of the new words and rituals she encounters, translating the exotic language of yoga into the more familiar idiom of her native Yiddish culture.
As Ruthie's journey progresses from week to week, she forges new paths, new postures, and unexpected friendships, slowly overcoming her grief. Yiddish Yoga is a poignant, witty, and human story of love in its many expressions-between grandmother and granddaughter, between an older woman and her younger yoga teacher, between a widow and her husband of fifty years. As Ruthie learns to let go of the past without forgetting, she shows us how to embrace the present with new vigor, strength, and courage, all the while making us laugh.
This small-format gift hardcover features original illustrations, and glossaries of Yiddish and yoga terms.
A Bubby like Ruthie doesn't necessarily come to yoga with the most open of minds. At first, she is skeptical of yoga and its promise of renewal, healing, and transformation. Ruthie can't resist poking fun at some of the new words and rituals she encounters, translating the exotic language of yoga into the more familiar idiom of her native Yiddish culture.
As Ruthie's journey progresses from week to week, she forges new paths, new postures, and unexpected friendships, slowly overcoming her grief. Yiddish Yoga is a poignant, witty, and human story of love in its many expressions-between grandmother and granddaughter, between an older woman and her younger yoga teacher, between a widow and her husband of fifty years. As Ruthie learns to let go of the past without forgetting, she shows us how to embrace the present with new vigor, strength, and courage, all the while making us laugh.
This small-format gift hardcover features original illustrations, and glossaries of Yiddish and yoga terms.
112 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2009
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Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews
March 17, 2010
Friends,
This is an unabashedly biased review, based on my personal relationship with the author. But for those of you who know me you will also know that my enthusiasm is not overstated. These are my true views, posted on Amazon, in the hopes of helping Lisa get her book out there (I would have said a bit more about the many interesting etymological links (this is what was equally fascinating to me), but I wrote it for a general Amazon audience:
This petite gift book is priceless! – charming, witty, fun while at the same time being stimulating on an intellectual and spiritual level. I highly recommend it for anyone who knows anyone with an east coast Jewish sensibility. You will find yourself chuckling all the way along, and sometimes laughing out loud.
It will be a treat for the mature crowd who has joined into the yoga circle in such large numbers these days. The progression of the story’s protagonist, bubby Ruthie, from grieving widow to a person at a place of peace and renewal through her year of yoga practice will speak to many. Yet the book is not at all saccharine or overly sentimental in this regard. After all, it is told in first person vignettes from the hero of the story – a pragmatic, down-to-earth, NY Jew with a wry and ironical sense of humor, so it remains light, though touching throughout.
The book should also appeal to the younger generation of yoga enthusiasts who wish to connect with their Jewish roots (and find a treat, perhaps, for an older relative). This connection is made extremely easy, through the brief glossary of Yiddish terms at the back of the book. A goy, myself, who spent quite a bit of time in my earlier days in Long Island among a secular Jewish family, had very little need for the glossary at all. Which is to say that the book is highly accessible. On the other end of terminology, just as convenient, is the guide to yoga terms.
What make the vignettes so charming are Ruthie’s internal monologues in which she links her Jewish culture with the (at first) alien language and practice of yoga. We find this happening very often through Ruthie’s linkages of the concepts and language of Judaism with those of the Sanskrit roots and meshing of philosophical values. Her description of Tapas (burning zeal) is a good example of Ruthie’s stream of thought, making the concept intelligible to her and humorous to the reader: She goes from learning the Sanskrit ‘tapas,’ to a hearing mistake, ‘topless,’ and points out we are not speaking of Spanish noshes – ‘tapas.’ P. 46: “In yoga tapas means to have a burning zeal in practice, to be enthusiastic for health. And by the way, the word ‘enthusiasm,’ it turns out, originally meant receiving the breath of God.”
After all, at the core, one might say that so much of Jewish humor is rooted in the history of the Jewish people facing a world of hostility and rejection, with the response of dignity and resistance to that oppression through an acceptance of the suffering of life by turning the situation on its head in practical, anecdotal humor about the situation. It is not hard for Ruthie to find an analogy in the Eastern philosophical concepts of acceptance and being in the present she finds in her yoga classes: According to her teacher –
“ ‘Yoga is not about self-improvement; it’s about self-acceptance.’ He teaches that violence and awareness cannot co-exist. When we are forcing, we are not feeling. Conversely, when we are feeling we cannot be forcing.”
For example, by juxtaposing Ruthie’s acceptance of her indulgence in food in her light way, she turns the stereotypical asceticism of yoga on it’s head: “toxic, schmoxic – God wants me to be a temple for chocolate.” The book celebrates life through the acceptance of ordinary pleasures, meshing Ruthie’s pragmatic sensibility with the yogic ideals of acceptance and being in the present.
Delightful, whimsical illustrations capture the energy, liveliness and dry wit of Ruthie as she tangles with what at first seem to her as completely meshugana – foolish and crazy – yoga poses. She later finds these as an access route to emotional states of vulnerability and healing: pp. 54-55 “My old body feels like a new blessing. Life is full of unexpected twists and turns – a sad, joyous braid” (like a challah loaf - relying once again on her food-connection).
In sum, it’s a book not to be missed. The author’s background in yoga, religion and performative writing make for a uniquely erudite and down-to-earth page-turner that will have you laughing all the way and gaining unexpected facts about languages and cultures. The book is one of human compassion and growth, dealing with the healing of the body and spirit, the overcoming of grief, and mending of family relations. In the words of Ruthie, p. 95, “we are all each other’s gurus, aren’t we?”
This is an unabashedly biased review, based on my personal relationship with the author. But for those of you who know me you will also know that my enthusiasm is not overstated. These are my true views, posted on Amazon, in the hopes of helping Lisa get her book out there (I would have said a bit more about the many interesting etymological links (this is what was equally fascinating to me), but I wrote it for a general Amazon audience:
This petite gift book is priceless! – charming, witty, fun while at the same time being stimulating on an intellectual and spiritual level. I highly recommend it for anyone who knows anyone with an east coast Jewish sensibility. You will find yourself chuckling all the way along, and sometimes laughing out loud.
It will be a treat for the mature crowd who has joined into the yoga circle in such large numbers these days. The progression of the story’s protagonist, bubby Ruthie, from grieving widow to a person at a place of peace and renewal through her year of yoga practice will speak to many. Yet the book is not at all saccharine or overly sentimental in this regard. After all, it is told in first person vignettes from the hero of the story – a pragmatic, down-to-earth, NY Jew with a wry and ironical sense of humor, so it remains light, though touching throughout.
The book should also appeal to the younger generation of yoga enthusiasts who wish to connect with their Jewish roots (and find a treat, perhaps, for an older relative). This connection is made extremely easy, through the brief glossary of Yiddish terms at the back of the book. A goy, myself, who spent quite a bit of time in my earlier days in Long Island among a secular Jewish family, had very little need for the glossary at all. Which is to say that the book is highly accessible. On the other end of terminology, just as convenient, is the guide to yoga terms.
What make the vignettes so charming are Ruthie’s internal monologues in which she links her Jewish culture with the (at first) alien language and practice of yoga. We find this happening very often through Ruthie’s linkages of the concepts and language of Judaism with those of the Sanskrit roots and meshing of philosophical values. Her description of Tapas (burning zeal) is a good example of Ruthie’s stream of thought, making the concept intelligible to her and humorous to the reader: She goes from learning the Sanskrit ‘tapas,’ to a hearing mistake, ‘topless,’ and points out we are not speaking of Spanish noshes – ‘tapas.’ P. 46: “In yoga tapas means to have a burning zeal in practice, to be enthusiastic for health. And by the way, the word ‘enthusiasm,’ it turns out, originally meant receiving the breath of God.”
After all, at the core, one might say that so much of Jewish humor is rooted in the history of the Jewish people facing a world of hostility and rejection, with the response of dignity and resistance to that oppression through an acceptance of the suffering of life by turning the situation on its head in practical, anecdotal humor about the situation. It is not hard for Ruthie to find an analogy in the Eastern philosophical concepts of acceptance and being in the present she finds in her yoga classes: According to her teacher –
“ ‘Yoga is not about self-improvement; it’s about self-acceptance.’ He teaches that violence and awareness cannot co-exist. When we are forcing, we are not feeling. Conversely, when we are feeling we cannot be forcing.”
For example, by juxtaposing Ruthie’s acceptance of her indulgence in food in her light way, she turns the stereotypical asceticism of yoga on it’s head: “toxic, schmoxic – God wants me to be a temple for chocolate.” The book celebrates life through the acceptance of ordinary pleasures, meshing Ruthie’s pragmatic sensibility with the yogic ideals of acceptance and being in the present.
Delightful, whimsical illustrations capture the energy, liveliness and dry wit of Ruthie as she tangles with what at first seem to her as completely meshugana – foolish and crazy – yoga poses. She later finds these as an access route to emotional states of vulnerability and healing: pp. 54-55 “My old body feels like a new blessing. Life is full of unexpected twists and turns – a sad, joyous braid” (like a challah loaf - relying once again on her food-connection).
In sum, it’s a book not to be missed. The author’s background in yoga, religion and performative writing make for a uniquely erudite and down-to-earth page-turner that will have you laughing all the way and gaining unexpected facts about languages and cultures. The book is one of human compassion and growth, dealing with the healing of the body and spirit, the overcoming of grief, and mending of family relations. In the words of Ruthie, p. 95, “we are all each other’s gurus, aren’t we?”
October 20, 2009
Newmarket Press is calling this debut a "hardcover gift book" since it's a slim volume full of original drawings by Art Glazer to go along with the often hilarious text. Ruthie is a recently widowed 72 year old Jewish woman living in New York City whose granddaughter has given her a year of yoga lessons "To help you grieve, Bubby. It will be healing for you." Ruthie's adventure into the new language and rituals of yoga will be healing for every reader of this book, since we all know that laughter is the best medicine! The reader will learn some things too--there is a Yiddish AND a yoga glossary included. But most importantly, they will learn that loss and advanced years do NOT have to slow anyone down or keep anyone from changing. This book is a gift all right--a gift of warm joy and slightly teary eyes to everyone who reads it.
March 19, 2018
Sweet, not much to review
A one sitting 20 minute read
Ommmmmm
A one sitting 20 minute read
Ommmmmm
June 15, 2017
This book made me smile. My yoga instructor bought it for me a few months ago, and I put it aside in my tbr pile. I'm sorry I waited. This little treasure of a book is about a recently widowed grandmother devastated by the loss of her husband Harry. Her granddaughter buys her a year of yoga instruction, and so Ruth's journey begins. Gingerly she makes her way through her classes, learning and comparing yoga with her Jewish background. Linking the two, finding the commonalities, Ruth begins to open like a flower, shedding her depression like an old suit of clothes. With each pose, she learns to look forward, and while she can remember the past with loving detail, she must learn to embrace the present and live again. Barely one hundred pages, it packs a powerful message about letting go, forgiving old feuds and finding new ways to appreciate life. Ruthie's my hero. Lisa Grunberger did a wonderful job creating a character so alive, I'd love to meet her for a watermelon martini and a rugula.
November 19, 2012
I am kvelling from this short, heartfelt read that my friend Frannie got for me all the way from San Francisco.
At first I thought it would be Hallmark card-y; like all of those "yoga for dogs/cats/canaries" paperbacks that people always give me when they find out I'm a yoga teacher (and writer).
But this book isn't "Tuesday's with Morrie" with a sticky mat. Lisa Grunberger writes from a good place by inhabiting the keppe of bubbie Ruthie whose year of yoga courtesy of her granddaughter changes her life. Yes, there's kvetching along the way, but that's all part and parcel of Ruthie's journey. In short-short chapter we follow Ruthie through her grief (the yoga of letting go) and come out on the other side.
I was especially delighted that Lisa Grunberger didn't shy away from Sanskrit (and Yiddish) terms. This tiny book, written in near-haiku prose, got me a tad closer to samadhi (look it up in the book's appendix).
Om Ruthie.
At first I thought it would be Hallmark card-y; like all of those "yoga for dogs/cats/canaries" paperbacks that people always give me when they find out I'm a yoga teacher (and writer).
But this book isn't "Tuesday's with Morrie" with a sticky mat. Lisa Grunberger writes from a good place by inhabiting the keppe of bubbie Ruthie whose year of yoga courtesy of her granddaughter changes her life. Yes, there's kvetching along the way, but that's all part and parcel of Ruthie's journey. In short-short chapter we follow Ruthie through her grief (the yoga of letting go) and come out on the other side.
I was especially delighted that Lisa Grunberger didn't shy away from Sanskrit (and Yiddish) terms. This tiny book, written in near-haiku prose, got me a tad closer to samadhi (look it up in the book's appendix).
Om Ruthie.
June 13, 2017
I got an advance copy of this book at ALA in July and read it on the plane back to North Carolina. I thought it was funny and cute. A woman gets her grandmother one year of yoga classes, and the book is written in short (one page) anecdotes about class or people from class. There's also two handy glossaries: yoga and Yiddish terms.
December 5, 2009
My friend Lisa wrote this lovely little gift book and it should give plenty of readers, new to yoga or well into their "practice," Jew or gentile, plenty of naches. It's a sweet, gentle, touching, humorous stroll (and glossary of Yiddish and Sanskrit yoga terminology)through a grieving grandmother's year-long yoga class, a gift from her granddaughter. Mazel tov, Lisa!
June 8, 2017
Honestly thought this was going to be a ridiculous read, but I thought it was very sweet. A great reminder to try new things in life and not to take ourselves too seriously while doing so. As a yoga teacher and student, I loved the perspective.
Read
July 22, 2021This books is an easy read. It would be easy to rush through it and I would suggest you don't. Some parts are humorous and others are poignant. There are some great life lessons and you will want to re-read the sections that resonate with your grief journey.
May 14, 2017
I highly recommend this little nugget to anyone who enjoys yoga and or needs a bit of humor in their life.
See my full review on my blog.
See my full review on my blog.
June 13, 2017
Charming!!
February 20, 2019
This is a silly little thing of a read. A few decent laughs, but really nothing of any notable content.
September 17, 2019
Loved it... so true, down to earth and humorous
December 16, 2019
Fun, super fast read. Has an epistolary feel to it.
December 28, 2019
Cute read!
A short read that will make you laugh and gives more insight into yoga practices.
I'll approach my practice with a smile.
A short read that will make you laugh and gives more insight into yoga practices.
I'll approach my practice with a smile.
January 6, 2020
It was sweet and fun.
Read
October 27, 2009Jackie says:
Newmarket Press is calling this debut a "hardcover gift book" since it's a slim volume full of original drawings by Art Glazer to go along with the often hilarious text. Ruthie is a recently widowed 72 year old Jewish woman living in New York City whose granddaughter has given her a year of yoga lessons "To help you grieve, Bubby. It will be healing for you." Ruthie's adventure into the new language and rituals of yoga will be healing for every reader of this book, since we all know that laughter is the best medicine! The reader will learn some things too--there is a Yiddish AND a yoga glossary included. But most importantly, they will learn that loss and advanced years do NOT have to slow anyone down or keep anyone from changing. This book is a gift all right--a gift of warm joy and slightly teary eyes to everyone who reads it.
Newmarket Press is calling this debut a "hardcover gift book" since it's a slim volume full of original drawings by Art Glazer to go along with the often hilarious text. Ruthie is a recently widowed 72 year old Jewish woman living in New York City whose granddaughter has given her a year of yoga lessons "To help you grieve, Bubby. It will be healing for you." Ruthie's adventure into the new language and rituals of yoga will be healing for every reader of this book, since we all know that laughter is the best medicine! The reader will learn some things too--there is a Yiddish AND a yoga glossary included. But most importantly, they will learn that loss and advanced years do NOT have to slow anyone down or keep anyone from changing. This book is a gift all right--a gift of warm joy and slightly teary eyes to everyone who reads it.
Read
April 15, 2014Lisa Grunberger, AM’90, PhD’97
Author
From our pages (Jan–Feb/10): "When her granddaughter gives her a year’s worth of yoga classes, the newly widowed Ruthie decides to try 'this meshuga class.' Grunberger’s tale of a New York City bubby coming to terms with her husband’s death also explores the connections between Jewish faith and yoga practice."
Author
From our pages (Jan–Feb/10): "When her granddaughter gives her a year’s worth of yoga classes, the newly widowed Ruthie decides to try 'this meshuga class.' Grunberger’s tale of a New York City bubby coming to terms with her husband’s death also explores the connections between Jewish faith and yoga practice."
November 27, 2013
A niche book.
February 13, 2011
Cute and quick. Good to have Yiddish and Yoga glossaries in the book.
Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews