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[Review Of] Rakhmiel Peltz. From Immigrant To Ethnic Culture: American Yiddish In South Philadelphia, Ayala Fader

Ethnic Studies Review

Rakhmiel Peltz, in From Immigrants to Ethnic Culture: American Yiddish in South Philadelphia, presents one of the few ethnographies available on spoken American Yiddish in his investigation of the elderly children of immigrant Jews in a Philadelphia neighborhood. Drawing on audiotaped ethnographic data which includes life histories, personal narratives, interviews, and naturally-occurring interactions in local contexts, Peltz examines how Jewish residents attempt to maintain their yiddishkayt (`Jewishness') as they become a shrinking minority in what was once a thriving Jewish community.