Author: Ezra Mendelsohn

Rakhmiel Peltz is Professor of Sociolinguistics and Director of Judaic Studies at Drexel University. His specialization is the social history of Yiddish language and culture. He holds two doctorates, one in Biological Sciences from the University of Pennsylvania and the second in Yiddish Studies and Linguistics from Columbia University, and has published extensively in both fields. His book, From Immigrant to Ethic Culture: American Yiddish in South Philadelphia (Stanford University Press, 1998), is the first book on spoken Yiddish in America and provides a fresh look at ethnic culture in the contemporary USA. He is now studying the private culture of the pre-World War II Jewish family in Eastern Europe.