Alef: The NEXT Conversation

Yiddish Summer

Unsurprisingly, people frequently asked me: “Why learn Yiddish? What kind of 20-something wants to speak like a bubbe?” For me, learning Yiddish was part of an interest in Jewish life in America before mass-assimilation. The post-World War II generation of Ashkenazi Jews that followed the Holocaust learned almost nothing of their parents’, or grandparents’, native tongue, abandoning Yiddish for English or Hebrew. What little Yiddish my mother heard from her grandparents manifests now as only a handful of words—shabbes (“Sabbath”), shmate (“Rag”), goyim (“Non-Jews”). Still, those bits and pieces of another world always intrigued me.

Of course, it is only in retrospect that I see how Yiddish has always played a role in my life. My trajectory into the program at the National Yiddish Book Center really began the summer before, while I was working as a summer research fellow at the University of Miami. One day, as I conducted research in the library, I stumbled across the writings of Emma Goldman, the notorious early-20th Century anarchist. The more I read about her, the more I discovered the major Yiddish anarchist movement with which she was associated.

Wait, what? Yiddish… Jewish… anarchists? I had certainly never heard about radical activists in religious school. My Hebrew school, catering mostly to reform, observant-twice-a-year types of Jews, was more of a bar/bat mitzvah mill that taught us to read Hebrew and not much else. On top of it, we learned the Sephardic pronunciation of Hebrew despite the fact that the vast majority of us were from Ashkenazic backgrounds. The Jewish cultural life that flourished before the Holocaust—an impressive body of literature, music, and theater—was completely absent from the curriculum. As my grandparents passed away long before I was born, there was very little of that world left in my family. I had to discover it on my own.

When I started reading about the Jews coming to America at the turn of the century, something clicked for me. I already knew a great deal about the Holocaust, but for the first time, I read extensively about the pogroms in Russia and about the struggle faced by Jews upon arrival in the United States. Along with the Italians, the Irish, and many other immigrant groups, most Jews were poor and were treated like scum. I wanted to know what life was like for my great-grandparents who came to this country from Eastern Europe, had to learn a new language, and had to make their way from scratch in this antagonistic environment.

Jews largely abandoned Yiddish culture and many of the ethical values and political ideals that came along with it. I think this picture, a poster advertising free English classes for immigrants in the 1930s, captures this decline. In the process of becoming successful “Americans,” Jews sacrificed anything that would mark them as “Old World.” This poster promised to teach immigrants the language of their children, the same children who became the next generation of Jews, and who had to juggle a new American identity with the Jewish traditions of their fore-bearers.

Now the trend seems to be swinging the other way. Comfortably integrated into American society, young Jews of my generation are reclaiming the traditions of their grandparents and great-grandparents, making those traditions their own. The resurgence of interest in Yiddish culture is evidence that people like me seek a better sense of cultural continuity. After all, you can’t know who you are until you know from where you come from.

Poster image from Wikimedia Commons. Book images from Thenestor and Brownpau, licensed under Creative Commons.

Tags: Hebrew, Tongue Tied, Yiddish

Posted by Rafi, Thursday, December 10th, 2009, 10:34 am, Tongue Tied.