Doba-Mera Medvedeva belongs to a vanishing group of memoirists who are neither elite nor highly literate, but whose observations from the ground cast a vivid light on a lost world. A born story-teller whose first language was Yiddish, Medvedeva kept Russian-language notebooks to preserve her past for her Russian-speaking grandchildren. We see in the book the quarrelsome underside of shtetl life-family divisions in a time of scarce resources-and also her attempts to break free, through work, revolution, and, eventually, marriage. She lived through pogroms and two world wars, but she endured, remembered, and wrote.

At the turn of the 20th century, Jewish families scattered by migration could stay in touch only through letters. Jews in the Russian Empire and America wrote business letters, romantic letters, and emotionally intense family letters. But for many Jews who were unaccustomed to communicating their public and private thoughts in writing, correspondence was a challenge. How could they make sure their spelling was correct and they were organizing their thoughts properly? A popular solution was to consult brivnshtelers, Yiddish-language books of model letters. Dear Mendl, Dear Reyzl translates selections from these model-letter books and includes essays and annotations that illuminate their role as guides to a past culture.

Doba-Mera Medvedeva belongs to a vanishing group of memoirists who are neither elite nor highly literate, but whose observations from the ground cast a vivid light on a lost world. A born story-teller whose first language was Yiddish, Medvedeva kept Russian-language notebooks to preserve her past for her Russian-speaking grandchildren. We see in the book the quarrelsome underside of shtetl life-family divisions in a time of scarce resources-and also her attempts to break free, through work, revolution, and, eventually, marriage. She lived through pogroms and two world wars, but she endured, remembered, and wrote.

At the turn of the 20th century, Jewish families scattered by migration could stay in touch only through letters. Jews in the Russian Empire and America wrote business letters, romantic letters, and emotionally intense family letters. But for many Jews who were unaccustomed to communicating their public and private thoughts in writing, correspondence was a challenge. How could they make sure their spelling was correct and they were organizing their thoughts properly? A popular solution was to consult brivnshtelers, Yiddish-language books of model letters. Dear Mendl, Dear Reyzl translates selections from these model-letter books and includes essays and annotations that illuminate their role as guides to a past culture.