At eydes.de, the vast archive of The Language and Culture Atlas of Ashkenazic Jewry, with its 5000 hours of recorded testimony in Yiddish about Ashkenazic society in Europe, can now be accessed and researched via the Internet. In 18 contributions scholars comment on the collectiona (TM)s research potentials, discuss data and methodology and throw new light on the interactions between Yiddish and coterritorial cultures.

This first book in the AAncillary Study SeriesA accompanying the ongoing ALanguage and Culture Atlas of Ashkenazic JewryA provides a comprehensive and highly concrete introduction to the full range of linguistic, cultural, religious and historical topics inherent in the study of Yiddish-language documents. It takes its bearings from traditions of linguistic and cultural studies personified by such scholars as U. Weinreich, Labov and Herzog, seeks to break down unnecessary barriers between disciplines and offers an abundance of material of interest to students of German, history, cultural history and religion. AIt would be hard to imagine a sub-discipline of linguistics that would not profit immeasurably from the stimuli that this book has to offer and equally difficult to picture a student of Yiddish who would not be encouraged by it to attain to a more balanced appreciation of the relation between the ideal and reality both in theoretical and practical terms.A (Erika Timm, Preface)