Scenes of Jewish Life in Alsace

Scenes of Jewish Life in Alsace was first published in Paris in 1860, and now appears in an English translation by Rose Choron. author of Family Stories: Travels Beyond the Shtetel. It is illustrated by Alphonse Levy, a nineteenth-century Alsatian artist, known for his charming pictorial descriptions of Jewish life around him. The translator says: "The thought of presenting Scenes of Jewish Life in Alsace" in English occurred to me, after I read this delightful account of the Alsatian countryside, describing the life of Jewish people, their strange mixture of ancient rituals, ceremonies, superstitions, and festivals; their colorful customs, individualistic personalities: and their patois, the roots of which, going back to the thirteenth century, and earlier. are believed to have been the original source of what later became the Yiddish language."