Ruth Gay, Author of Books About Jewish Life, Dies at 83
She had been suffering from leukemia, and died at Calvary Hospital, her family said.
Ms. Gay's books include "Safe Among the Germans: Liberated Jews After World War II" (Yale University, 2002), which dealt with a little-studied subject: the more than 250,000 Jews who returned to Allied-occupied Germany in the immediate aftermath of World War II.
She also wrote "The Jews of Germany: A Historical Portrait" (Yale University, 1992), which chronicled Jewish life in Germany from the fall of Jerusalem in A.D. 70 to the rise of Hitler in 1933.
Reviewing the book in The New York Times Book Review, Peter Filkins called it "moving and lively."
"What emerges is the portrait of a culture very much alive and aware of its own rich heritage," he wrote.
In 1997, Ms. Gay received the National Jewish Book Award for nonfiction for "Unfinished People: Eastern European Jews Encounter America" (W. W. Norton, 1996). In that book, she examined the immigrant experience through the lens of her own girlhood in the Bronx.
Ruth Slotkin was born in the Bronx on Oct. 19, 1922; her father was a milkman who later opened a delicatessen. She earned a bachelor's degree from Queens College in 1943 and a master's in library science from Columbia in 1969.
Her first marriage, to the sociologist Nathan Glazer, ended in divorce. She is survived by her second husband, the historian Peter Gay; three daughters, Sarah Glazer Khedouri of Larchmont, N.Y.; Sophie Glazer of Fort Wayne, Ind.; and Elizabeth Glazer of Manhattan; two sisters, Shirley Gorenstein of Manhattan and Caroll Boltin of Croton-on-Hudson, N.Y.; and seven grandchildren.
Ms. Gay's book "The Jewish King Lear Comes to America," written with her daughter Sophie, is to be published next year by Yale.
Ruth Gay
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Ruth Gay (née Slotkin; October 19, 1922 – May 9, 2006) was a Jewish writer who wrote about Jewish life and won the 1997 National Jewish Book Award for non-fiction for Unfinished People: Eastern European Jews Encounter America (1996).[1]
Ruth Gay attended Queens College in 1943 and received a master's in library science from Columbia University in 1969. From 1948 to 1950 she was the editor of the JDC Review of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee.[2]
She died in 2006.[1]
Publications[edit]
- Safe among the Germans liberated Jews after World War II (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002)
- Unfinished People: Eastern European Jews Encounter America (New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company, 1997)
- The Jews of Germany: A Historical Portrait (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1992)
External links[edit]
- “Biographical Note.” Guide to the Ruth Gay Collection 1980s–1993, 2002. Processed by Yakov Illich Sklar.
References[edit]
- ^ a b Fox, Margalit (11 May 2006). "Ruth Gay, Author of Books About Jewish Life, Dies at 83". nytimes.com. Retrieved 16 January 2015.
- ^“Biographical Note.” Guide to the Ruth Gay Collection 1980s-1993, 2002.Processed by Yakov Illich Sklar.