Snow in August

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This is a work of fiction, a mixture of memory and invention. But the writing was immensely helped by the contributions of others.

Above all, I’d like to thank my friend Menachem Rosensaft for checking and correcting my idiosyncratic version of Yiddish and for advice about Orthodox traditions. Obviously, he is not responsible for any imperfections that might remain.

In addition, I’m indebted to Leo Rosten’s two American classics, The Joys of Yiddish and Hooray for Yiddish! They are a marvelous mixture of scholarship and humor and should be taught in our public schools. While writing this book, I also read, learned from, and drew upon Yiddish Proverbs, edited by Hanan J. Ayalti; Anglish/Yinglish: Yiddish in American Life and Literature, by Gene Bluestein; The Meaning of Yiddish, by Benjamin Harshaw; and Words Like Arrows: A Treasury of Yiddish Folk Sayings, compiled by Shirley Kumove. They have all contributed to the task of keeping alive this amazingly vital and supple language, and they fed the inspiration for this novel.

My readings in Jewish mysticism included Kabbalah for the Layman (volumes I, II, and III), by Rabbi Philip S. Berg; The Essential Kabbalah, by Daniel C. Matt; and From the World of the Cabbalah, by Ben Zion Bokser. I heard many tales of the Golem during a visit to Prague, but also read The Golem, by Chaim Bloch (translated from German by Harry Schneiderman); the detailed and scholarly Golem: Jewish Magical and Mystical Traditions on the Artificial Anthropoid, by Moshe Idel; and various essays by Gershom Scholem. I urge these works upon interested readers, along with a marvelous book called Magic Prague, by Angelo Maria Ripellino, translated by David Newton Marinelli.