Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 08.088 November 19, 1998 1) viability of Yiddish (Rukhl Eissenstat) 2) Death and Yiddish (Robert Waife) 4) Academic and Hassidic Yiddish (Hardy Mayer) 5) Loshn-hore (Sholem Berger) 6) death of yiddish (Marvin Meyer Engel) 7) dead language? (Harry Krane) 8) Yiddish in the Jewish Day School of Washington (Mendy Fliegler) 9) The Groves of Yiddish Academe (Louis Fridhandler) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 17 Nov 1998 04:28:53 -0500 (EST) From: Eissenstat@aol.com Subject: viability of Yiddish One more opinion regarding the viability of Yiddish. Prost un poshet, for Yiddish to continue to survive as a language outside the hasidic communities, there must be sufficient numbers of such less religious Yiddish speakers. That means Jews must marry Jews (&/or Yiddish liebhobers?), have more than 1 or 2 kids (in spite of politically correct qualms about overpopulation and feminist strivings for careers at the expense of becoming mothers), consistently use Yiddish as the home language, and give their kids a compelling reason to continue doing so in their adulthood. This is what our religious are doing. Dear Mendelianers who love Yiddish, how many of you have contributed thusly to the survival of Yiddish and Yiddish culture with your life choices, your daily actions and your childrearing? Personally, I think it is impossible to separate Yiddish from Yiddishkayt. I have 5 children and our home language is Mameloshen although certainly not up to the lofty standards of a Harvard profesorke. I am managing to give my children songs, stories and hopefully literacy in Yiddish in the Yiddishly desert of Milwaukee. But I do not think they will want to cleave to Yiddish as adults unless they also have strong Jewish beliefs and knowledge, that is, are raised frum, truly & deeply feeling that this is what Hashem wants us to do. Sincerely, Rukhl Eissenstat P.S.Lest anyone out there complain that I am advocating removing our women from the equality of the workplace to the self-sacrifice of stay-at-home motherhood, I am also a full-time physician. Feminists have sold too many women the false concept that they are sacrificing their "self actualization", careers, etc. if they become mothers, let alone of a larger family. 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 17 Nov 1998 10:28:25 -0500 (EST) From: Robert Waife Subject: Death and Yiddish It used to be Death and Taxes that were inextricably linked. Now it is Death and Yiddish. However, when I was studying the art of painting in the late '70's with Norman Raeben (Numa), Sholom Aleichem's son, it was said that "painting is dead." More recently in Buenos Aires, on a Tango dance journey, I met with Abraham Lichtenbaum of IWO and he stated the common bond between Tango aficionados and Yiddishists - their struggle for survival. (There is a mentality in the Tango community that proclaims that Tango is dead.) When did Yiddish, Painting and Tango die? Certainly all the adherents to the "death" point of view can back up what they say with strong arguments that would be hard to refute. Yet there are Yiddishist's, painters and Tango dancers who go about their business, living a life that includes the spirit of the activity and feel that they are more alive because of what is in the language of Yiddish, the material of paint and the music of Tango. Some of us are called to all three. Robert Waife 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 17 Nov 1998 11:50:12 -0500 (EST) From: hlmurav@ucdavis.edu (Harriet Murav) Subject: Language wars As someone who is only a student of Yiddish for scholarly purposes and out of a sense of duty to the past, I can make no sociological observations about the "death" of Yiddish, but would like to describe a phenomenon taking place in my household and university that has no statistical significance. My husband, a classicist and Jewish Studies scholar thinks it is pointless to learn to speak Yiddish, and argues that learning to read it is enough. He wants us to speak Hebrew, not Yiddish. (I don't agree). So we have household conversations in a mixture of both. I am currently teaching a tiny group of students Yiddish, using Sheva Zucker's textbook. The university does not fund this course. Two out of the three students are not Jewish. A course on Yiddish literature in translation attracts more than 20 students, a third of whom are not Jewish. Upon my request, the university library acquired its first holdings in Yiddish. There are still a great many gaps in the collection, but it is a beginning. By the way, the short paragraphs in Yiddish followed by translation are a great help. Harriet Murav Davis, CA 4)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 17 Nov 1998 12:31:07 -0500 (EST) From: "Meinhard E. Mayer (Hardy)" Subject: Academic and Hassidic Yiddish I have been following with some sadness the pro and con arguments about whether Yiddish is dead or alive, and was inspired by Hershl Goodman's and Iosif Vaisman's postings (08.085) to add an observation to the thread. I recently took a walk with my granddaughter in the Brooklyn Botanical garden, where live Yiddish can be frequently heard, and overheard the instructions in Yiddish given by some young kindergarten-teachers to their Hassidic pupils. I was heartened to hear the kids speaking Yiddish, but was appalled by the terrible grammar and syntax (and anglicisms) used by the teachers, which no doubt will propagate to the next generations. Maybe those of us who have connections to the Hassidic communities should attempt to propagate some "Laytish Mameloshn" to these teachers. Instead of engaging in useless polemics, it might be worthwhile to bridge the gap between those who want to preserve "Yiddish culture" and those who are actually preserving the language as a living and developing organism! Hardy Mayer 5)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 17 Nov 1998 12:31:40 -0500 (EST) From: "Sholem Berger" Subject: Loshn-hore In reference to the current mind-blowingly repetitious and loshn-horedik discussion (8.085, 8.084, and leoylem vead nauseum): I think it's obvious that one can (a) recognize that there exists a Yiddish-speaking community among the charedim; (b) admit that Yiddish as a natural (i.e. unselfconsciously transmitted) spoken language among secular Jews has no future given current trends; (c) show all due respect to Ruth Wisse as a scholar with an admirable intellect and far-reaching influence; and yet (d) take issue with her sociolinguistic assessment and believe that practical arrangements on the ground -- arranged communities of secular Yiddish speakers -- can go some way towards counteracting point (b), at least in very limited ways. This is my opinion. However, any and all of these points can be supported or countered without making snide little comments at the expense of others. Loshn-hore's a nasty habit, especially on a list with a couple of thousand subscribers -- even if it's a long-accepted custom of academia. Sholem Berger 6)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 17 Nov 1998 16:41:58 -0500 (EST) From: marvin engel Subject: death of yiddish I have been trying to stay out of this discussion which already has so many eager and clairvoyant volunteers. But I am finally provoked by Joshua Kleinman's remarks in Mendele 08.085. He concludes: "The conditions allowing Yiddish to flourish were not admirable and I pray that they may never occur again." This, in an argument that Yiddish should and/or will go quietly and deservedly into oblivion and that those who try to learn the language today are "ludicrous". Admirable conditions? How about Spanish (Inquisition, conquistadors), Japanese (rape of Nanking), English (native Americans, all the sins of the British empire), German (fill in your own blank)- Latin, Russian, French, etc. Dare I mention the corkscrew history of Hebrew? What should we say of those misbegotten miscreants with the chutzpah to decipher Egyptian hieroglyphics and Mayan texts? We will be bereft of all language by such phantasmic yardsticks as "admirable conditions." Whether Yiddish lives or dies will not, in the end, be determined by the subscribers to Mendele or any other participants in this debate. The death of Yiddish or of any language, in my view, would be a net loss to humanity. The zest of some of the volunteer corps of grave diggers is to be deplored and, for anyone who doesn't burn books for fun and profit, to be resisted mightily. (I anticipate protests that I misstate the case. N.B.: the subject of the last sentence preceding this parenthetical remark is the word "zest.") Marvin Meyer Engel 7)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 17 Nov 1998 16:45:50 -0500 (EST) From: HARRY KRANE Subject: dead language? I am not a scholar of Yiddish. I am, however, a very proud Jew. The Yiddish language of my parents and grandparents is alive and well. It is taught to senior citizens who wish to re-aquaint themselves with their heritage. Hebrew was the language of the Torah Scholars. It became the language of Israel in 1948. Yiddish was the language used for several hundreds of years before that date. Those who have declared the Yiddish language dead are robbing the generations yet to come of a vast heritage of writings, literature, poetry fo the Jewish people. To destroy Yiddish, by declaring it a dead language, seems to me to be aiding and abetting the antisemites of the world. Jews do not speak Hebrew in the rest of the diaspora. They speak the language of the land in which they live. Yet at home or amongst their friends and relatives, what do they speak, Hebrew? I think not. I was in an elevator with my wife in the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, goin down to dinner. Several couples were in it with us speaking in various languages, Spanish, German, etc. At one floor a little old lady entered. She asked, "Vifil iz der zaiger?" Everyone looked at his/her watch and said, "Halb noch acht!" Dead? The hell it is! Harry Krane 8)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 17 Nov 1998 18:03:31 -0500 (EST) From: emms2@juno.com (mendy fliegler) Subject: Yiddish in the Jewish Day School of Washington It may be of some interest to our Mendlyaners, that our Charles E. Smith Jewish Day School of Washington, DC, largest one in the country, has, with a grant from Yiddish of Greater Washington, instituted a _Yiddish_ course for its upper grades, and feels that that there may be an oversubscription of this course next year!! The course consists of two parts: elementary Yiddish, and Music & Culture... This came about when the school found out that when they took their kids on a tour of Eastern European cities, and found Jews there, ... hobn zey geredt epes a modne shprakh!!! and they couldn't understand why they could not speak English ... Nu, efsher Yiddish?? Avade ... Yasher Koyakh to the administration of C.E. Smith Jewish Day School. The kids walk through the halls speaking to each other as follows: "Vu voynst du? Ikh voyn in Rockville..." Ruth Wisse notwithstanding... Mendy Fliegler 9)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 17 Nov 1998 21:52:42 -0500 (EST) From: Lfridhan@aol.com Subject: The Groves of Yiddish Academe Despite clear evidence to the contrary some prestigious academics in the study of Yiddish insist on declaring Yiddish dead . I suspect it is simply the academic fashion these days, probably temporarily. Now retired, I come from many years in the academic world. Generalizations are usually not reliable, and fashions may have changed, therefore, the inferences I draw (below) may derive from out-of-date experience. But I suspect 'tis now as 'twas. Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose. En Anglais: "the more things change, the more they are the same." Why should that sheepish academic pursuit of fashion become the rule? After all, research requires a strong individualistic approach, otherwise creativity dies. But the sheep follow the fashion (sometimes like lemmings off a cliff). The motive for the obedient sheep is always money, the means of survival. In scientific laboratory research, it is essential to obtain grant money from private and public granting agencies. Committees (generally consisting of mutual back-scratchers) determine allocations. One MUST pay attention to what is fashionable. In the humanities, departmental and sub-departmental funding are decided or decisively influence by all-powerful head professor(s). Stepping out of line is risky. As a result, the academic cultural milieu degenerates, more often than not, into a something rather brutal. The pretext for the brutality is always something like: "Must get rid of the deadwood. Resources are limited." In fact, sometimes that is justified, but often it is not. Often it is a matter of punishing a colleague for not toeing a line drawn by a self-aggrandizing person in a position of shaky power. Yiddish research is mostly a step-child in the academic world. Yiddish research rarely (maybe never) knows a stable home in academe. Faculty must always look over their shoulder to see who is chasing. My heart aches for those who must toe an anti-creative line under unstable conditions. I am not kidding. Those who manage to come up with good work are heroes. Still, other important projects remain neglected until fashions change. If not now, when? Louis Fridhandler ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol. 08.088 Address for the postings to Mendele: mendele@lists.yale.edu Address for the list commands: listproc@lists.yale.edu Mendele on the Web: http://www2.trincoll.edu/~mendele http://metalab.unc.edu/yiddish/mendele.html