Between WanderingsSep 2, 2023

Journalists seem to love writing about the revival of the Yiddish language among younger people.

They've been writing articles about this sudden and new Yiddish Revival since around 1968... which seems a long time to treat something as surprising and new (and, for that matter, as a revival). Also, does the word "revival" really apply if the language never fell out of daily use in some communities?

I'm glad to see #Yiddish getting media coverage, but there's often something a bit "off" about the reporting.

Show threadSerge from BabkaSep 3, 2023

@bwjewishhistory

There's a lot wrong with the coverage. As someone who feels Yiddish is his lost mother tongue, I find the coverage disturbing as well.

When it's non-Jews covering it, it's often Ashkenormative, they don't even want to address Hebrew as the language of Jews for thousands of years.

When it's Jews, the anti-Israel sentiment that becomes anti-Hebrew is palpable. It's this idea that Yiddish was crushed by Zionists, but the fact is that Yiddish theatre has always been a thing in Israel for the elite. Maybe Yiddish was not elevated by Israel, but it's the other languages of Jews that are dead, not Yiddish.

And I've seen enough anti-Sephardi language around Yiddish revival to put me on edge when it's discussed, which is doubly ironic when you realize that most of the power in Israel is held by us Ashkenazi, not the Mizrahi who have been the biggest victims of cultural erasure.

Show threadBetween Wanderings

@serge Didn't Israel used to heavily tax non-Hebrew performing arts in an attempt to promote Hebrew and eliminate "diasporic jargons"? If so, we might as well say so.

I also don't see anything wrong with acknowledging that for most of the last thousand years, #Yiddish was a primary language for the vast majority of the world's Jews, at a time when hardly anyone used Hebrew conversationally.

I understand concerns about always equating Jewish with #Ashkenazic -- my own cultural points of reference are largely Turkish and Greek Sephardic -- but Ashkenazim were something like 80% of the world's Jews for centuries. To minimize that is to paint a false picture.

Sep 3, 2023 at 5:21amWeb
Show threadN.A. HintermannSep 3, 2023
@bwjewishhistory @serge
In order to celebrate the diversity of Jewish languages: The Oxford school for Rare Jewish Languages's new classes are open for registration until Tuesday! Free of charge, held online and open to everyone:
https://www.ochjs.ac.uk/language-classes/oxford-school-of-rare-jewish-languages/
Oxford School of Rare Jewish Languages - Oxford Centre for Hebrew & Jewish Studies

Applications for language classes starting in Trinity Term 2025 are now open! The deadline to apply is 4 April 2025. (You can check time-zone comparisons on sites such as this one; Oxford dates of term are available on the University website) Begun in October 2021, the Oxford School of Rare Jewish Languages (OSRJL) of the Read more

Oxford Centre for Hebrew & Jewish Studies
Show threadטליה (לשון את) Sep 3, 2023
@nahint @bwjewishhistory @serge
incredible! but sadly it seems I will never find a good source to learn the language of my grandparents, judeo-Malayalam. I really hope this one isn't already doomed to extinction.
Show threadMarc TriusSep 18, 2023
@yuvalne
I knew an expert on it on Facebook but that was a long time and several accounts ago 😞
@nahint @bwjewishhistory @[email protected]
Show threadAriel StoneSep 3, 2023
@bwjewishhistory @serge I'm curious, where are you getting that demographic? 80% seems high if you are counting Habesha, India, Karaite, and many other under researched Jewish communities?
Show threadBetween WanderingsSep 4, 2023
@rabbiariel @serge Ah, I had the timeline wrong. Ashkenazim because the great majority of world Jewry by the 19th century and not earlier.
Show threadEffySep 4, 2023

@serge @bwjewishhistory “for the vast majority of the world’s Jews”?!?… what the actual fuck?…..

And once more for the people in the back, it was Ashkenazi Jews whose first language *was* Yiddish that advocated against Yiddish being spoken in Israel. And yet -
They spoke it at home.
They spoke it in social events.
They used it in their political speeches.
They used it in their political party meetings.
They circumvented their own regulations (requiring Yiddish not be spoken for the majority of an act, unless the performer’s center of performance life was abroad, which, the majority of them easily proved), and even that tiny little bit of pushback, was for a very short time in Israel’s history.

I, a Sephardi Jew, understand more Yiddish than I do my own parents’ mother tongues.

And I, a born Israeli, understand more Yiddish than my Ashkenazi husband.