The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden Yiddish Learning the darkly comic author of

the darkly comic author of Foreskin’s Lament and Beware of God

“Magisterial…Covers this dark history with insight and skill…A major intervention into our understanding of 20th-century Europe and the lessons we ought to take away from its history

charts Mel Brooks’s meteoric rise from a Depression-era kid in Brooklyn to the recipient of the National Medal of Arts

Yet few critics or scholars have considered how he emerged from a unique and vibrant cultural milieu: the New York Jewish intelligentsia

writing about class stratification

The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden Yiddish Learning the darkly comic author ofNational Jewish Book Awards Winner Shortlisted for the Booker Prize Longlisted for the 2025 Aspen Words Literary Prize A Best Book of 2024: The New York Times, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Time, The Economist, The Globe and Mail (Toronto), Kirkus Reviews, The Independent, BookPage, The Sunday Times (London) RemarkableCompellingFine and tautIndelible. The New York Times Moving, unnerving, and deeply sexy. Tracy Chevalier, author of Girl with