A Harsh, a Guttural, and an Any but Euphonious Jangle of Sounds

Is there anything I love more than vintage polemics against that other language of love, Yiddish? I was reminded of my passion for that bashin' by a post on the ever erudite, and ever fascinating, blog, On The Main Line.

The post is about 'The Jargon', an article in an 1892 issue of the American Hebrew. In 'The Jargon,' Lewis Dembitz presents his own peculiar theories on the historical development of Yiddish and various etymologies. And he pulls no punches as to his assessment of the language itself:

For all the purposes of modern culture, for art or science, for the higher walks of trade and commerce, the Jargon is utterly useless.

Haters gonna hate.

Dembitz's thoroughly unprejudiced and scholarly rant reminded me of some archival curiosities I've been sitting on for a while. 

In 1916, a Milwaukee folkshul (non-religiously affiliated school for Jewish children) applied for permission to use a public school building on Sunday mornings. The school, or Yiddishe Folkschule, was associated with the Yiddish Labor Zionism (Po'ale Tsiyon) movement and had more students than it could fit in its current space, in the Abraham Lincoln house.

Though the school board was in favor of allowing the Yiddishe Folkschule to use the building, the Folkschule had opposition from the Jewish community, specifically from within Milwaukee's German Jewish elite. This opposition prompted one of the teachers at the school, Robert Hess, to write a passionate defense both of his school and of the project of transmitting Yiddish culture to Jewish kids in the United States.

Here's what Hess wrote in the Bulletin of the National Conference of Jewish Charities in January, 1916, 'Teaching Yiddish in a Public School':

He concludes his defense of their school with a lovely passage I've already quoted on this blog, but it's worth repeating:

"... we say, and we say it boldly but sincerely, that you cannot build either healthy Jews or Jewesses unless you permeate the youth with a healthy self-respect, and that you cannot hope to make men or women respect themselves unless you tell them who and what they are and from whom and from what they originate, who their people were, what their language is and tell them something of the history of their past. Ludicrous though it may seem, it is none the less the fact that our youths or at least many of them are under the impression that all Jews are either the proverbial peddler or rag-picker, and you cannot hope to have them think otherwise unless you teach them otherwise."

Members of the Milwaukee German-Jewish elite, however, would not let Hess have the last, uplifting word and in April, 1916, Rabbi Samuel Hirshberg published a defense of his offense against the Yiddishe Folkschule, one that sits quite comfortably with the kind of sentiments we saw from Lewis Dembitz. His piece was called 'Judaism and Hyphenism' (the title signaling a discourse around questions of Americanization and anxiety about a lack of assimilation):






Hirschberg proposes that promoting the teaching of any foreign language (even one as noble as German!) is against the best interests of American Jews. Not that Yiddish is anywhere near German in matters of nobility:

"It is indeed to be conceded that Yiddish is an unlovely and unbeautiful tongue, a harsh, a guttural and an any but euphonious jangle of sounds which no cultivated person, I imagine, would care to speak; but I doubt very much, at that, whether we can justifiably deny it the name of the language."

No, we cannot discriminate against Jewish Jargon solely on account of its Jargon-ness, Hirschberg sadly concedes.

But his real argument is even more disturbing, in hindsight, than mere anti-Jargonism. Yes, he says, American Jews have a 'right' to teach their kids who they are and where they come from. But, should they? Wouldn't it demonstrate real class to just, I don't know, forget about all that?

"... there are higher considerations than 'rights' of this character. It is the test of a higher and a nobler right many a time to forgo-- magnanimously to waive-- what we are pleased to call and which may even be conceded to be 'rights.' And I would call upon these co-religionists of ours just now to manifest such magnanimity and come under the rule of the 'higher rights.' "

America, Hirshberg argues, is being split apart at its most vulnerable moment, by the plague of hyphenism. It behooves all new Americans, he writes, to strengthen the American spirit by erasing themselves and their history as quickly as possible.

But it wasn't America which was painfully vulnerable in 1916, but the new immigrants arriving every day.

1916 was smack in the middle of a time of unprecedented immigration. With those hundreds of thousands of Jewish immigrants came a corresponding reaction of nativism, anti-Semitism and xenophobia. In the 1920s Milwaukee experienced "a wave of anti-Semitism...Urgent community efforts were made to demonstrate Jewish patriotism and Americanism."   You can see foreshadowing of this in the terms of the debate around whether Jews should be teaching Yiddish (or foreign languages at all.)

A number of developments hostile to immigrants (and especially Jews) were brewing in 1916, all of which culminated in 1924, when the doors to Southern and Eastern European immigrants were effectively closed.

Rather than stand in solidarity, too often, the already established German-Jewish elite sought to distance itself from Eastern European Jews, or 'throw them under the bus'. Hence the over the top rhetoric around the 'language' of those embarrassing Ostjuden and pleas for a level of self-sacrifice which would have no effect whatsoever on anti-Semitism, xenophobia or racism. Despite the American Jewish community's ultimate willingness to shed its language, culture and distinctiveness, millions of Jews were prevented from emigrating from Eastern Europe, and possibly, saving themselves from the coming war.

Interestingly enough, there is one very famous example which comes out of this story and would seem to have proven Rabbi Hirschberg's fears of Jewish foreignness (and unassimilability) to be correct, at least in one instance.

Hirshberg feared that teaching a foreign language to young Jews would create the perception of (or the reality of!) dual loyalty and Un-American values. At the same time that Robert Hess was teaching at the Yiddishe Folkschule another young teacher, Golda Meir, future Prime Minister of Israel, was also immersing herself in Labor Zionism. She was an immigrant who went on to do the unthinkable- reject America as her home and become the leader of a foreign state: Rabbi Hirshberg's worst nightmare, for sure.

Of course, for better or worse, Golda Meir is and was an exception within American Judaism, within which political Zionism (and permanent aliyah) has always been a minor phenomenon. The fearful suppression of Jewish culture and identity, and internalized self-hatred, however, still lives on today.

(Many thanks to the Berman Jewish Policy Archive where I found the pdfs of the Bulletin of the National Conference of Jewish Charities)

A Mighty Resurgence Just Keeps on Surging

So, here's an article about the 15th annual conference of the International Association of Yiddish Clubs, tsu lange yorn. But the conference itself isn't news enough; no there's only one hook for Yiddish.

For a lexicon that's supposedly dead, Yiddish language and culture are undergoing a remarkable revival.

Klezmer music, with its signature laughing/weeping clarinet and violin, is enjoying a worldwide resurgence, even in Warsaw, Poland, where almost no Jews are left. The Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, Mass., is translating and digitizing a million rescued volumes and organizing Yidstock, an annual festival of new Yiddish music. Researchers are learning the language in order to understand historical records. Israeli universities have established Yiddish language and literature centers, often attended by non-Jewish students from Germany and other Holocaust-linked countries.

I dunno. According to my musician friends, the klezmer 'revival,' which began in the mid-70s, has been over for over a decade. And it's no khidesh that klezmer is popular in Poland; Jewish music has always had more popular and critical attention in Western and Eastern Europe than it has among American Jews. All respect to Yidstock, but it's small potatoes compared to the annual Jewish Culture Festival in Cracow, Poland. And so on and etc. 

The real story is that Yiddish is taken seriously, and supported as a serious world language, pretty much everywhere but the United States. Why else would every American article written about Yiddish take its terminal condition (and miraculous recovery) as a given? The revival narrative keeps any discussion of Yiddish, and its relevance to American Jewish life, at a superficial level, hence the erasure of the past 35 years of scholarship, art and institution building each time another 'revival' is invoked. In fact, everything between 1945 and 2013 gets pushed to the margins:

But if reports of the death of Yiddish were exaggerated, it's understandable.

A German dialect that probably dates to the 10th century, includes Hebrew words and is written in the Hebrew alphabet, it was a thriving vernacular spoken almost exclusively by Ashkenazi Jews of central and eastern Europe. They developed a rich, centuries-old culture with Yiddish as its base, producing such renowned artists as painter Marc Chagall and writers Isaac Bashevis Singer and Sholom Aleichem -- until the Nazis and their collaborators virtually wiped it out. Many view its improbable rise from the ashes 70 years later as a fitting, if posthumous kick to Hitler's gut.

Improbable rise from the ashes 70 years later? Oysh. Can't we just talk about Yiddish like normal people, for once? Without the sentimental frosting and ahistorical distortions?

And, no, Yiddish is not a German dialect , unless you also consider English a German dialect. But don't take my word for it: 

The basic grammar and vocabulary of Yiddish, which is written in the Hebrew alphabet, is Germanic. Yiddish, however, is not a dialect of German but a complete language—one of a family of Western Germanic languages, that includes English, Dutch, and Afrikaans. Yiddish words often have meanings that are different from similar words in German.  Sigh.

The Zelmenyaners: A Family Saga

There are plenty of English translations of Yiddish literature. But excellent, eminently readable translations? With fantastic notes and explanatory introduction? Pretty rare, I'd say. So I'm happy to tell everyone about a new translations of Moyshe Kulbak's classic comic novel The Zelmenyaners.

I've reviewed it here. Go to Amazon and buy a copy for yourself. You'll thank me later.

You know how it is? When someone else gets a book deal to write about your ex-boyfriend?

Yeah, I didn't know either, until this morning. That's when I stumbled on this...

Jujitsu Rabbi and the Godless Blonde: A True Story

It looks like an Eat Pray Love for the 20s Manhattan media professional. Instead of going around the world, the author slummed it in Crown Heights for NINE WHOLE MONTHS, while she shared an apartment with the titular 'Jujitsu Rabbi.' Barf.

Let's hope Marginal Hasid isn't the new Magical Negro.

Heebits and Hobbits

The Hobbit was recently translated from English into Yiddish and Heeb is here to tell us about it:

Hey, some people collect stamps; Some people build model railroads; And some people translate epic fantasy series into a language that hasn’t been widely spoken for nearly a century

Herp derp.

As usual, Heeb is about as edgy as a third grade bully.

On the eve of WW II (1939) there were approximately 13 million Yiddish speakers. After the war, that number was drastically reduced, but still numbered in the millions. And today, estimates have the number of Yiddish speakers at a million. It's true, the majority of those Yiddish speakers are some flavor of Haredi (and not the target audience for der Hobbit), nonetheless, they live and breathe and probably own the loft you want to rent in East Williamsburg.

Anyway, there's an interesting story in the transmigration of Hobbit to האביט, but as usual, the clever kids at Heeb can't figure out how to take a story beyond pointing and laughing.  To them, Yiddish is a punchline. I get it. Like bullies everywhere, they hate what's different and threatening to their sense of themselves.

So, you know, fuck them. Let's give the mic to Prof. Jeff Shandler. In his book Adventures in Yiddishland, Shandler notes that moving back and forth between languages (code switching) "constitutes a definitional Jewish activity."

"Since the beginnings of modern Yiddish belles lettres in the mid-nineteenth century, translation practices involving Yiddish-- both as a target language (i.e., translating into Yiddish) and as a source language...-- generate innovating meanings out of code-switching, as they engage new kinds of texts and create new kinds of readers. In particular, translation practices can be seen as exemplary Jewish engagements with modernity-- both expanding the frontiers of Yiddish literacy and presenting it with unprecedented potential for its dissolution."

Maybe you think translating The Hobbit into Yiddish is a waste of time. Heeb seems to think so. But Shandler opens his chapter on translation with a pertinent quote by the great Yiddish literary critic, Shmuel Charney. "One language has never been enough for the Jewish people."  Maybe one Hobbit wasn't enough for us, either. Who am I to judge?

The year in Yiddish revivals, with a prologue by Molly Picon

Wow. It's been a year (pretty much to the day) since I revived this blog. I've covered everything from OTD Hasidim to masturbation mussar to the erasure of Jewish Communists from American documentary film. But my focus has always returned to my favorite topic: how we do and don't talk about Yiddish. The very first post I wrote for the blog was about an AP wire story on the 'revival' of Yiddish among college students. It's the story that keeps on giving, and give it did in 2012. Here is a surely incomplete survey of 'revival' stories from 2012.

• Tablet discovers Mendy Cahan doing what he's been doing for decades 

• Later that year Haaretz cracks the same story 

• Cuz 'It’s Yiddish revival time'  in Israel 

• And did you know?? "Programs for Yiddish-lovers are proliferating both inside and outside the academic world in Israel, despite many having written off the language." 

• But can Yiddish be revived among Arab Israelis if they never spoke it in the first place? 

• Don't forget about Canada 

• And this is not quite a revival story, but still working off the revival trope

I could list twenty articles like these to make my point: there is no revival. There is only a Jewish populace deeply confused about its identity and conflicted about the sacrifices it's made in the name of assimilation, Americanization, Zionism and the myth of a unified Jewish monoculture. The revival meme is a way of neutralizing those who would question the value of all those things; it frames their connection to Yiddish as cute, unthreatening, and incapable of maturing. To talk about Yiddish in terms other than its 'revival' is to tread on politically dangerous ground.

If my round-up of articles doesn't make my point, perhaps you'll be more impressed by the beloved pixie diva of Yiddish theater, Molly Picon.

In 1980 Molly Picon appeared on Israeli TV. There's a lot to unpack about her appearance (in which the show's host interviews her in English and she answers in Yiddish) but right now I'll just skip to the part where Molly herself proclaims a Yiddish revival. In 1980.

Around 3 minutes in Molly says that her Israeli hosts, including the Yiddish actor Shmulik Atzmon, are excited about the current Yiddish revival. All over the world, she says, there is a growing interest in Yiddish, especially among young people. They want to know 'Who are we?' and 'What have we lost?'

At Queens College, she says, six hundred students (!) study Yiddish and now in Europe and Israel, too, students want to learn Yiddish.

To which I have to ask, politely, what the hell? What in bloody hell happened between 1980 and today?

Well, for one, there has been an incredibly burst of creativity around traditional Eastern European music. Some call that the 'klezmer revival.'

And what about Yiddish language? The National Yiddish Book Center, established in the early 1980s, has obviously changed the face of Yiddish between then and now, systematically preserving Yiddish materials for future readers. But what about the classes where those readers will be educated? What about the learning? What about providing professional pedagogical resources for the next generations of Yiddish speakers? What about training the next generation of Yiddish teachers?

While there are some (too few) high quality resources for learning (and teaching) Yiddish today, it's nowhere near what you might think it would be for a language whose 'revival' was heralded over 30 years ago on Israeli TV.

More and more, real Yiddish literacy in the United States is in the hands of either academics (and quasi-academics) or the Hasidim who use it as a vernacular. These are the people who either have the resources to learn and use it or have a politico-theological reason for them to retain it as the language of everyday life.

As much as I love Molly Picon, even 600 students do not make a revival, or a revolution. A revival takes political will and institutional power. The day I see a Federation leader get up at the General Assembly and declare the importance of language transmission, the day I see a session devoted to planning for Yiddish language pedagogy at an educational conference, that's the day I will doff my Yiddish revival cap and herald a new age of Akvarious. Without these things-  communal prioritization, resources, a gigantic shift in our cultural conversation around Yiddish-  the much bally-hooed Yiddish revival is nokh vayt (still far off.)





Gawd, I depress myself sometimes.

My last post about Gangnam Style אויף יידיש

First off, I want to say 'mazl tov' to Suri and Eli Leno on their recent marriage. It's not everyday your khasene goes viral. (Or maybe this is what the future will look like. On second thought, let's not go there.)

"But Rokhl," as no one's been asking me, "where's the English translation?"

So, for my own pleasure, if not yours, here's a link to the full studio version of Yiddish Gangnam Style with English translation for the Yiddish lyrics.

Also, these kids (Avrumy Kalisch and Tuli Brull) are adorable and they know how to get a party going. If you're getting married soon and were wondering about how you'd get your own personalized Yiddish wedding pop song, I think you've found your answer.

Lyrics composed and sung by

Avrumy Kalisch & Tuli Brull





פאר א געלאסענע חתונה
(For a beautiful wedding)
יעדער נעמט זיך צוזאםען
(Everyone come together)
סיז גיט חבורים עריבום
(Friends and witnesses)
צוזאמען איינס נאך אנאם
(Everyone, one after another)
פון אלע עקען פון שטאט
(From every corner of the city)
זענען מענטשען יעצט דא
(We're all here now)

So let's welcome khoson kale now

אזא הערליכע נאכט
(Such a magnificent night)
גארנישט קומט נישט דא צו
(Nothing compares to it)
ווען בכל כח טאנצט מען הויעך
(Dance with all you've got)
מיט שרי אין אלי
(With Suri and Eli (khosn kale)
סאיז א זיכערע זאך
(It's a sure thing)
אז מען ברענגט אראפ די דאך
(We're going to bring down the roof)

So everybody on the floor now

שמחה טוט גלאנצען
(Such a beautiful simkhe)
אינז גיי מיר טאנצען
(We're gonna dance)
לאמיר גיין
(Let's go)
מען גייט אנפאנגען
(We're gonna start)
טאנצען גאנגעם
(Dancing Gangnam!)

So let's go
Put your hands up in the air and gimme more

Woopaa Lenno Style
Hey, Suri Eli ....

Put your hands up
If you're sure that you want more
No, it's not enough
Pour some wine, another cup
Let it all out
Let's hear everyone shout
When we're dancing on the dance floor

Tonight no expectations
There's no rules, no regulations
Everybody just keep patient cause there's a party in the nation

We'll stop thinking we'll stop blinking w'ell be drinking
Ya we'll all be screaming 'gimme more'

יעצט אביסעל ערענסט
(Now, let's get a little serious)
פאר א סקאנדע לאמיר ווערען
(Just for a moment)
טי מיך נאר אויס הערען
(Listen to what I have to say)
ווען איך גיי א ברכה שערען
(I'm gonna share a brukhe)
אייביק אין א יעדע צייט
(Always, in every moment)
זאלסטי נאר וויסען פון פרייד
(You should only know from joy)
יעצט שרייטס אלע ער גייט נאר גייט
(And now, there he goes!)

(Note about English lyrics: Please don't complain about inexact translations. Pop songs rely more on the logic of rhyme than meaning. What rhymes in one language doesn't always make sense in another.)

(English translation by ani ha-koten with help from Gedalya Gottdenger)

Memes of the British Atlantis

The BBC News Magazine has an article this week called New York, a graveyard for languages. No, please Doctor, don't sugar coat it!

Dr. Mark Turin looks at the linguistic economy of New York City. As a global capitol of immigration, it's home to a staggering variety of languages; some 800, according to researchers. You can see just the tip of that diversity, as Turin notes, in the many languages offered on subway signs, metrocard dispensers and night school advertisements. Lest you think New York City is a multi-lingual paradise:

...as I have discovered, New York is not just a city where many languages live, it is also a place where languages go to die, the final destination for the last speakers of some of the planet's most critically endangered speech forms.

Oy.

The unparalleled number of languages spoken here, as well as their uncertain future, makes New York a natural site of study for linguists and those interested in language preservation. Turin mentions the work of new-ish, NYC based non-profit, The Endangered Language Alliance . ELA's mission is to "further the documentation, description, maintenance, and revitalization of threatened and endangered languages, and to educate the public about the causes and consequences of language extinction."

Some languages have gone quiet in their place of birth but are still spoken here in New York City by immigrants who have brought their language with them. For example, the ELA has been working with two different languages, one a European ethnic minority language and one an Arawak (Native American) language from Central America:

'There are these communities that are completely gone in their homeland. One of them, the Gottscheers, is a community of Germanic people who were living in Slovenia, and they were isolated from the rest of the Germanic populations.' 

'They were surrounded by Slavic speakers for several hundreds of years so they really have their own variety [of language] which is now unintelligible to other German speakers.' 

The last speakers of this language have ended up in Queens, he says, and this has happened to many other communities. 

Garifuna is an Arawakan language from Honduras and Belize, but also spoken by a diaspora in the United States. 

Staff at the Endangered Language Alliance have been working with two Garifuna speakers, Loreida Guity and Alex Colon, to document not only their language but also aspects of their culture through traditional song, before these are lost without record.

This is all interesting, insofar as we've learned a bit about the hidden linguistic richness of New York City and the admirable work of the ELA. But as for analysis, the BBC is asleep at the wheel.

"But why do languages die?" Dr. Turin asks. Good question. After all, it's not just New York City which is increasing in spoken languages:

A recent Census Bureau report notes that in the United States, the number of people speaking a language other than English at home increased by 140% over the last 30 years, with at least 303 languages recorded in this category.

And as to why languages die, Dr. Turin offers this:

Communities can be wiped out through wars, disease or natural disasters, and take their languages with them when they go.

More commonly, though, people transition out of one mother tongue into another, either by choice or under duress, a process that linguists refer to as language shift.

OK. As a friend said to me the other night, heroyf bulltsushitn. [Stop bullshitting]

How can you write an article about multilingualism, linguistic preservation, and national identity in the United States and not mention the extreme currents of nativism at play? The places where languages other than English (and I suspect this largely means Spanish) are increasing are the places where you find, angry, armed movements looking to make English the official language and outlaw the use of any language other than English. I wish I was kidding about this.

This is about American-style capitalism, son. All those immigrants aren't coming here because America gives a shit about their language and folkways. They're here for 'economic opportunities' and because they're cheap labor which, if here illegally, can be exploited even more cheaply and with less regard for any kind of human dignity. Speak English, become a citizen, then maybe we'll pay lip service to celebrating your 'ethnic heritage.'

You cannot extricate questions of language survival from those of nationalism and politics. I mean, wigga please. It's no accident that Americans lead the world in monolingualism. Americans are PROUD of it. Monolingualism is an American value and has been for a very long time.

Ugh. And we haven't even gotten to the dumb Yiddish parts.

Somehow, an article about the endangered languages in New York City has to do with Yiddish, like, half the article goes into a long rehearsal of the 'facts' about the rise and fall of Yiddish in New York. Again, with no awareness or recognition of the violence of Americanization as a factor in the loss of Yiddish within one or two generations of immigration (which was actually a better record than most other immigrant languages.) Nope, Jews chose to flee to the suburbs and forgot to pack their Yiddish books. Oops!

Also, Yiddish is being revived thanks to the National Yiddish Book Center.

Also, the decades long existence of thriving Hasidish Yiddish newspapers may not be mentioned because it interferes with our 'death/revival' narrative.

Sigh.

Move Over Dschinghis Khan, Gangnam Style Has Arrived in Boro Park

It's not true that the Haredi community rejects secular culture. They just absorb it, turn it Yiddish and pretend like nothing ever happened.

The most famous example of this is probably the transmigration (or gilgul) of the 1979 Eurovision winning

Dschinghis Khan

Into Mordechai Ben David's  "hit" Yidn:


And now? Was there any doubt it would happen?

The Macarena of 2012, the video your great-grandmother has already probably forwarded to you, Psy's Gangnam Style


Has been turned into this, a Yiddish/English khasene song, first spotted at a Boro Park khasene in early December:


A khanike miracle.

Many thanks to my W'burg/BP informant for providing the video.

Gevalt! Yiddish Is (kind of) Alive in Canada

It's Khanike (Chanuka/Hanukkah) time and you know what that means? Obligatory article about the survival/struggle/revival/renaissance/zombie stagger of Yiddish in North America.

Last year that article was from the AP and called 'Gevalt! U.S. college students lead surprise Yiddish revival.'  The story was picked up all over the place, in newspapers and TV station websites. Khanike and Yiddish 'revival' stories go together like latkes and sour cream, I suppose.

This year we're shaking it up a bit. 'Yiddish Finding a Way to Survive in Canada' appeared this week in the Canadian Globe & Mail newspaper.

I don't have a lot to say about this genre that I haven't said before. Though at least they didn't call it a 'surprise' this year, so that's progress.

Nonetheless, I'm happy to see Kalman Weiser getting props in a national newspaper. He's a wonderful young scholar and, from what I hear, a great teacher. So, right on Kalman! 

And as a yomtov bonus, here's a terrific little clip of him speaking in Yiddish about speaking in Yiddish: