I’ve always been bothered by the Zionists movement’s traditional disdain for Yiddish—not least because Yiddish was pivotal in helping form Jewish national identity.
In a recent lecture on the impact of modernity on rise of Zionism, historian and Holocaust educator Shalmi Barmore had had this to say:
“By the end of the 19th century, there were 23 Jewish daily newspapers in Poland alone. The so-called Jewish nation, its boundaries are set by Jewish journalism. The development of Yiddish-language newspapers and literature provided the final ingredient needed for the propagation of Zionism. Once they’re presented with literature in a language that they can read it becomes immensely popular, and from literature you have theatre and pretty soon you have a whole culture…. When this situation was combined with anti-semitism, it very soon became Jewish nationalism.”
There is no “Zionist” distain for Yiddish.
http://cifwatch.com/2010/03/06/der-farschtinker-tony-lerman/
There are Israelis who would beg to differ:
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1134459.html
I agree with Steven. There were Zionists who thought that Yiddish (a bastardized German) should not be the language of Israel. I am sure you can find people today who don’t like Yiddish, but it is certainly not any kind of consensus opinion among Zionists. I know a lot of Zionists, and I do not know a single one that has a disdain for Yiddish.
Although I do not speak it myself, it was my father’s first language and my mother was fluent. I heard it all through my childhood. I love listening to the language. The intonations and expressiveness is absolutely beautiful. I went to a Yiddish lecture in Tel Aviv a few years ago, and I was transfixed by the speaker, even though I understood little of what he said.
Stan
Steven just preempted me with that link.
As for disdain: it’s not, strictly speaking, the right word for the local attitude to Yiddish. It is rather a desire to get away from the “galut” (Diaspora) ghetto. On the other hand, Yiddish is still being taught and somewhat supported – and I don’t mean the Haredi community.
Yes, and what Stan says: I love Yiddish most of the time, but the German sounds tend to creep up on you when you are unaware…
BTW, speaking about the beautiful sound: Ladino is also not bad at all.
Outwitting history is a marvellous read, any book lover will be enthralled.
Aaron Lansky recalls how he and others managed to save over a million Yiddish books. Once you pick it up you won’t put it down.
Ok children, I was there at the beginning. During the 1940′s I lived with my grandfather and he took me everywhere since baby sitters where unknown. Socialist meetings, union meetings and especially Zionist meetings. I was very young but I remember the yelling and the the discussions, almost talmudic
in breadth .
One of the arguments had to do with Yiddish.
The Zionists strongly believed a new and modern Israel should not be dragged down with a ghetto language. Within one generation they wanted it gone.
After partition Many of the young men and women in our communities went to Israel to help anyway they could. Most stayed, but those that came back to Brooklyn, talked about the importance of the country wiping out all traces of the ghetto. Guess what the number one target .was, yiddish
There was no distain for Yiddish. but there was a strong campaign to make Hebrew the unifying language