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My Yiddish teacher recommended Dovid Katz's Words On Fire: The Unfinished Story of Yiddish so often this past year that I called for it at the library as soon as the class ended. Linguistic history makes for slow but fascinating reading; I knew the vague outlines of a lot of what was in the book, but not all of it and certainly not all the details.
The thing about Yiddish that's -- probably not unique? but certainly unusual -- is that it's a language developed and used by a diasporic people, which is to say a minority language, never a national one; and on top of that, it's a daily spoken language among a people who are almost universally literate, but are supposed to be reading and writing in Hebrew and Aramaic, not Yiddish at all. The linguistic politics are a MESS. A fascinating mess! The wars about whether it's even appropriate to write books in Yiddish at all span centuries; at first it's considered shady and potentially impious to write anything meaningful in Yiddish rather than Hebrew, and then once everyone's gotten used to the idea of secular literature there's the Jewish Enlightenment and a whole new generation of Jewish intellectuals who think everyone should be writing in proper enlightened languages like German and French rather than giving weight to lowly Jewish 'zhargon,' and then the Zionist movement happens and it's the fight between Yiddish and Hebrew all over again. (I knew Israel was not particularly pro-Yiddish but I had not realized there were actual ANGRY GANGS of intense Hebraists beating up people who tried to promote the Yiddish language in the early state of Israel? A COMMON THING, APPARENTLY. )
And of course it will be no surprise to any of you my heart is very much on the romantic side of Yiddish in that battle; I mean, it's no surprise to me, but it's something again to read Dovid Katz talking kindly and a bit pityingly about all the ideals Yiddish was over-simplistically associated with at the turn of the twentieth century -- ideals of Diasporic Judiasm, often a secular socialist Judaism -- and find myself nodding along with every one. "Where a [Hebraist] nationalist might say 'Our sacred duty is to care first for our own and concentrate our people in its own secure, powerful nation-state and develop our historic language as its official state language,' a [Yiddishist] humanist might say, 'our sacred duty is to stay where we are to help build a multicultural democratic state where we can develop the language of our people, just as others will do alongside us, in friendship, harmony, and mutual respect.'" Yeah, OK. And then, quoted from Y.L. Peretz's editorial in the front of one of the first Yiddish anthologies: "We have a lot to thank the Diaspora for. Many good ones, but many painful ones too. In the millenial struggle for existence, in ancient times, when all nations built up power and used it for murder, burning and forcing one's will on others, we built up strength and used it for being patient, enduring, tolerating, to live through the bad times. [...] For the time that we have been living in the Diaspora, we don't have on our conscience, on the conscience of our Judaism, a single drop of foreign blood." That one hurts quite a bit because, of course, in the hindsight of history, we can say Y.L. Peretz was right to associate that particular quality with the specifically Diasporic element of Judaism. It's certainly not true anymore.
Of course, also in the hindsight of history, the Hebraists were also right. That particular variant on Yiddish culture was mostly wiped out. I think about something Joann Sfar said about writing his comic Klezmer, about twentieth-century Diasporic Jews who made the choice to stay in Europe as the clouds gathered, rather than fleeing to Israel: "Jews who had the courage to remain in Europe made a noble and worthy choice. I write to justify the Jews of Europe. They were right. And many died for it."
This isn't the turn of the twentieth century. That moment passed long ago, and romanticizing the past isn't ever a particularly good look, but I can't help agreeing to a certain extent with Sfar. History came down like a hammer on the Yiddishist Jews of Europe; that doesn't mean they were wrong. I don't think they were wrong.
The thing about Yiddish that's -- probably not unique? but certainly unusual -- is that it's a language developed and used by a diasporic people, which is to say a minority language, never a national one; and on top of that, it's a daily spoken language among a people who are almost universally literate, but are supposed to be reading and writing in Hebrew and Aramaic, not Yiddish at all. The linguistic politics are a MESS. A fascinating mess! The wars about whether it's even appropriate to write books in Yiddish at all span centuries; at first it's considered shady and potentially impious to write anything meaningful in Yiddish rather than Hebrew, and then once everyone's gotten used to the idea of secular literature there's the Jewish Enlightenment and a whole new generation of Jewish intellectuals who think everyone should be writing in proper enlightened languages like German and French rather than giving weight to lowly Jewish 'zhargon,' and then the Zionist movement happens and it's the fight between Yiddish and Hebrew all over again. (I knew Israel was not particularly pro-Yiddish but I had not realized there were actual ANGRY GANGS of intense Hebraists beating up people who tried to promote the Yiddish language in the early state of Israel? A COMMON THING, APPARENTLY. )
And of course it will be no surprise to any of you my heart is very much on the romantic side of Yiddish in that battle; I mean, it's no surprise to me, but it's something again to read Dovid Katz talking kindly and a bit pityingly about all the ideals Yiddish was over-simplistically associated with at the turn of the twentieth century -- ideals of Diasporic Judiasm, often a secular socialist Judaism -- and find myself nodding along with every one. "Where a [Hebraist] nationalist might say 'Our sacred duty is to care first for our own and concentrate our people in its own secure, powerful nation-state and develop our historic language as its official state language,' a [Yiddishist] humanist might say, 'our sacred duty is to stay where we are to help build a multicultural democratic state where we can develop the language of our people, just as others will do alongside us, in friendship, harmony, and mutual respect.'" Yeah, OK. And then, quoted from Y.L. Peretz's editorial in the front of one of the first Yiddish anthologies: "We have a lot to thank the Diaspora for. Many good ones, but many painful ones too. In the millenial struggle for existence, in ancient times, when all nations built up power and used it for murder, burning and forcing one's will on others, we built up strength and used it for being patient, enduring, tolerating, to live through the bad times. [...] For the time that we have been living in the Diaspora, we don't have on our conscience, on the conscience of our Judaism, a single drop of foreign blood." That one hurts quite a bit because, of course, in the hindsight of history, we can say Y.L. Peretz was right to associate that particular quality with the specifically Diasporic element of Judaism. It's certainly not true anymore.
Of course, also in the hindsight of history, the Hebraists were also right. That particular variant on Yiddish culture was mostly wiped out. I think about something Joann Sfar said about writing his comic Klezmer, about twentieth-century Diasporic Jews who made the choice to stay in Europe as the clouds gathered, rather than fleeing to Israel: "Jews who had the courage to remain in Europe made a noble and worthy choice. I write to justify the Jews of Europe. They were right. And many died for it."
This isn't the turn of the twentieth century. That moment passed long ago, and romanticizing the past isn't ever a particularly good look, but I can't help agreeing to a certain extent with Sfar. History came down like a hammer on the Yiddishist Jews of Europe; that doesn't mean they were wrong. I don't think they were wrong.
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And, bah. I bounce like a ping pong ball between three poles:
tl;dr I overthink everything.
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(And then there's the Hannah letters, and she is trying SO HARD to learn Hebrew while casually peppering cute jokesy Yiddish in, and I have some feelings about that too.)
tl;dr likewise anyway if you do ever feel like leaning Yiddish my classes roundabout here have been fun and inexpensive.