A Bintel Brief: Sixty Years of Letters from the Lower East Side to the Jewish Daily Forward Paperback - 1990

First line

Esteemed Editor, I hope that you will advise me in my present difficulty.

From the rear cover

For more than eighty years the Jewish Daily Forward's legendary advice column, 'A Bintel Brief' dispensed shrewd, practical, and fair-minded advice to its readers. Isaac Metzker's beloved selection of these letters and responses has become for today's readers a remarkable oral record not only of the varied problems of Jewish immigrant life in America but also of the catastrophic events of the first half of our century.

From the jacket flap

For more than eighty years the Jewish Daily Forward's legendary advice column, "A Bintel Brief" ("a bundle of letters") dispensed shrewd, practical, and fair-minded advice to its readers. Created in 1906 to help bewildered Eastern European immigrants learn about their new country, the column also gave them a forum for seeking advice and support in the face of problems ranging from wrenching spiritual dilemmas to petty family squabbles to the sometimes hilarious predicaments that result when Old World meets New Isaac Metzker's beloved selection of these letters and responses has become for today's readers a remarkable oral record not only of the varied problems of Jewish immigrant life in America but also of the catastrophic events of the first half of our century.

Media reviews

"A Bintel Brief was a part of my life at a time when anything that is a part of your life is of crucial importance . . . Isaac Metzker has reminded me of a debt I can never repay. Maybe you will help me. By reading this wonderful, wonderful book. Anti telling other people to read it. You will be doing them and every other American a service."
—Jerome Weidman, The New York Times Book Review

"The letters reveal a rather wide range of opinion, but one constant throughout the years seems to have been ethical perplexities, and it is impressive that no many readers wrote in not to be told that they were right, but to find out what, in the opinion of the editors and the other readers, was right."
—The New Yorker