Across the Great Divide

"The publication of translated essays by Dr. Abraham Coralnik is an important step in enlarging our understanding of the cultural milieu of the early twentieth century in which Jewish immigrants from eastern Europe become Americanized."--Professor Eli Katz, University of California, Berkeley

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.

In Volume Two of Across the Great Divide, Coralnik illuminates the strange, sad life of the Yiddish language; the inner conflicts of writers from Montaigne to Thomas Mann; the way secular revolutionaries like Karl Marx channeled prophetic ideals; and the moral ideas animating American presidents like Abraham Lincoln and Woodrow Wilson.

About the Translator: Beatrice Coralnik Papo, the eldest daughter of Abraham Coralnik, was born in Berlin in 1913. Educated in Germany, Russia and France, she came to the U.S. in her early 20s. A social worker by profession, Mrs. Papo is a lifelong student of literature, and has spent the last two decades translating her father's essays. She lives in San Jose, California.