Reflections on Jewish Civilization (Across the Great Divide Series: The Selected Essays of Abraham Coralnik, Vol. 1) »

In 1937, when the essayist Abraham Coralnik died of a heart attack, Yiddish speakers in the United States lost one of their most articulate guides. As a columnist for the New York newspaper Der Tog (The Day) during the 1920s and 1930s, Coralnik moved effortlessly from discussions of Zionist politics to analyses of Marx and Plato to travelogues through the American heartland. As Europe exploded in anti-Semitism, and American Jewish life continued its spectacular transformation into the land of promise and confusion, Coralnik provided both insight and context for an immigrant community desperate to understand the changes taking place around it.

Today, Coralnik's essays can be enjoyed not just for their perspective on two crucial decades of Jewish history, but for their timeless wisdom about culture, spirituality, philosophy and history.