Yiddish language

“ The paramount tasks of Yiddish philology can be formulated as the nationalization and humanization of the language. Nationalizing Yiddish entails purifying the language thoroughly and enriching it extensively, to the point where it can express all aspects of Jewish creativity. Humanizing Yiddish entails turning it into a means for incorporating into the Jewish nation all the cultural values of modern panhuman development. Our great writers saw the need to enrich and to cultivate the common folk language without even having recourse to the methods of scientific philology. ”

“ No scientifically trained person will boast that he knows the entirety of a language. Yiddish has a straightforward structure, and yet the task of Yiddish philology is infinitely broad and endlessly deep because Yiddish, too, is a unique living organism, unbound in its creative freedom.
The Yiddish philologist encounters great difficulty in consequence of Yiddish belonging to the category of mixed languages. A truly pure language does not exist. Hebrew has many Aramaic, Greek, and Persian elements and Russian includes numerous Turkish and Finnish words. ”

“ Incongruously blended with the Yiddish were elementary American expressions—the first the immigrants would pick up. 'All right,' 'Sure!' 'Yes, sir,' 'Say, how's the boss?' 'Good-bye.' 'Not a cent.' 'Take the elevated.' 'Yup.' 'Nup.' 'That's one on you!' 'Rubber-neck!' A continuous fusillade of such phrases stimulated and flattered the audience, pleased to find themselves on such easy terms with the new language. But to Pinchas the idea of peppering his pure Yiddish with such locutions was odious. ”

“ We do not know for sure the age of the Yiddish language, but Yiddish is no exception; it is impossible to determine with assuredness when any language is born. In any event, Yiddish is probably no younger than 600 or 700 years. ”

“ They are remote from life and do not strive toward practical educational goals. The field of cultural education is handled for us by the daily press, which ponders over the question of whether Yiddish is a folk language, a national language, an ugly jargon or a cultural medium worthy or our use. The majority of the authors who deal with Yiddish are assimilationists, alien to the Jewish nation. In their scientific writings they continually seek to demonstrate that Yiddish is a bona fide German dialect and that the Jews are the bearers of German culture in the Slavic lands. ”

“ Both show by the language which they use that it was mere accident that threw them into the ranks of Judeo-German writers, for while usually the diction of the older poets abounds in words of Hebrew origin, theirs is almost entirely free from them, so that one can read their productions with no other knowledge than that of the literary German language. ”

“ Whilst His Excellency is unable to offer a solution, he is keenly alive to the necessity of imparting instruction in our schools through the vernaculars. The Jews of Middle and Eastern Europe, who are scattered in all parts of the world, finding it necessary to have a common tongue for mutual intercourse, have raised Yiddish to the status of a language, and have succeeded in translating into Yiddish the best books to be found in the world's literature. ”

“ Let science too have a part in its heritage. Mendele discovered the language, so let us explore it. Peretz brought it new nations, so let us create an order among them. Philology must excavate the homeless layers of folk creativity by searching out the treasures of our national creativeness scattered across the libraries of Western Europe. Old Yiddish literature had its classical works such as the Shmuel-bukh, the Mayse-buke, and the Seyfer Mides, which served as models for long generations and were even translated into other languages. ”

“ The same feeling which prompted the Russian poet Frug to take up his despised Judeo-German, drove many a man into the Judeo-German literary field, who not only had never before written in that language, but who had hardly ever spoken it. In England and America such men could only hope to be understood by a Jewish public, and those who felt themselves called to write poetry wrote it in Judeo-German. ”

“ The German language could not become{7} the medium of instruction for the masses, whose homely dialects had so far departed from their mother-tongue as to make the latter unintelligible to them. In Russia it was a long time before the native literature could make itself felt, or before Russian education came to take the place of the German culture; so in the meanwhile the Judeo-German language was left to its own evolution, and a new literature had its rise. ”

“ The Art of Thinking can be learned, and practised, with very homely and even unbeautiful material to think about. It is said that the finest poetry in the Yiddish language was written by a man who toiled seventeen hours a day in a factory and lived in a hideous tenement of New York. ”

“ While men received their religious literature directly through the Hebrew, women could get their ethical instruction only by means of Judeo-German books. No house was without them, and through them a certain contact was kept up with the literary German towards which the authors have never ceased to lean. In the meanwhile the language could not remain uniform over the wide extent of the Slavic countries, and many distinct groups have developed there. ”

“ They knew no other language than the homely dialect of their surroundings, and they were still thirsting for entertainment such as the folk-singers have offered to them. The older men, the champions of the Haskala, were dead, or too old to write; the younger men had other interests at heart, and thus it was left to a mediocre class of writers to supply them with poetry. This part naturally fell to the badchens. Another quarter of a century, and Judeo-German literature would have run its course; even the badchen would have been silenced. ”

“ All the Romance elements in English have not stifled its Germanic basis, and Hindustani is neither Persian nor Arabic, in spite of the overwhelming foreign element in it, but an Indian language. Similarly Judeo-German has remained essentially a German dialect group.
Had the Judeo-German had for its basis some dialect which widely differs from the literary norm, such as Low German or Swiss, it would have long ago been claimed as a precious survival by German philologists. ”

“ These words are used constantly; many of them have quite crowded out the corresponding Yiddish words. For example, ingel, meaning boy (it is a Slavic loan-word in Yiddish) , has been obliterated by the English word. A Jewish immigrant almost invariably refers to his son as his boy, though strangely enough he calls his daughter his meidel. "Die boys mit die meidlach haben a good time" is excellent American Yiddish. ”

“ Even such men as had begun in the forties and fifties as folk-poets, were abandoning their homely dialect for the literary language of the country. Jehuda Loeb Gordon, the{90} Hebrew scholar and poet, had given promise of becoming the greatest of popular singers. Yet, in the seventies, he wrote only in Hebrew and Russian, and it was only in the eighties, when the riots and expatriations of the Jews had destroyed all hopes that had been placed in assimilation, that he returned to compose songs for the consolation of his humble and unfortunate brothers. ”

“ They are essentially a non-European people. The language they speak, Jüdisch, or Yiddish, is a corrupt German of the Franconian dialect mixed with Slavic and Hebrew elements, which fact strengthens the tradition of a large migration of German Jews into Poland in the Middle Ages. It may be that the strain of these German Jews has died out, leaving only their language behind, but in any event the Polish Jews are now distinctly Alpine—a mixture of Slavs and of Asiatic invaders of Russia. ”

“ The language of enlightenment was at first naturally enough a modernized form of the Hebrew, for the literary German was not easily accessible to the Jews of Galicia in the period immediately following the division of Poland. Besides, although books had been printed in Judeo-German for the use of women and 'less knowing' men, the people with higher culture, to whom alone the Mendelssohnian Reform could appeal, looked with disdain on the profane dialect of daily intercourse. ”

“ This older stage of the language is even now familiar to the Russian Jewish women through the{20} 'Zeena Ureena,' the prayer book, and the special prayers which they recite in Judeo-German, and Jewish writers have recourse to it whenever they wish to express a prayer, as, for example, in Abramowitsch's 'Hymns' and 'Saturday Prayers.' This older stage is known under the name of Iwre-teutsch, Korben-ssider-teutsch, Tchines-teutsch, thus indicating its proper sphere in lithurgical works. ”

“ Outside of his many original stories and sketches, his poetry, and sociological articles, he has translated a number of works, among others the Russian Korolenko and Victor Hugo's 'Les Misérables.' His translations are the very best in the Judeo-German language. Few have equalled him in the art of translation. The distinguishing characteristics of all his productions are dignity and refinement. Although he frequently depicts Jewish life, the Jew is but an accident of his themes, for he has ever in mind the social questions at large, as they affect the whole world. ”

“ Thousands of enlightened men and women then suddenly made the discovery, as it were, that the speech of their childhood was not a jargon, but a real language,—that instead of being a wretched conglomeration of uncouth words and phrases, it was rich in neglected beauty and possessed a homely vigor full of artistic possibilities. A stimulus was given to writing Yiddish "as the Gentiles do their mother tongues." Abramovitch was hailed as "the father of Yiddish literature" and his example was followed by a number of new writers, several of whom proved to be men of extraordinary gifts. ”

“ The Russian schools were crowded with Jewish young men and women, and there was not a science or an art to which the Jews had not given a large contingent, and this vanguard of the new culture, even if it had not broken with the traditions of the past, could be reached only by means of the Russian language. ”

“ As the main intention of the present Chrestomathy is to give a conception of the literary value of Judeo-German literature, and not of its linguistic development, the texts have all been normalized to the Lithuanian variety of speech. The translations make no pretence to literary form: they are as literal as is consistent with the spirit of the English language ”

“ More speak Yiddish, called in Europe “Judeo-German,” than any other language, since the largest modern population of Jews borders on eastern Germany and has been longest under German influence.
Physically the Hebrew is a mixed race. In every country, however, they are found to approach in type the people among whom they have long resided. The two chief divisions of the Jewish people are the northern type, and the Spanish or southern type. The latter are now found mainly in the countries southeast of Austria. ”

“ The methods of philology will enrich the language by enabling the nation to become acquainted with its literary past and to learn to benefit from its latent wealth. But his is a task that individuals cannot take upon themselves. Individuals can work on single branches, since it is they who have the initiative. But only a societal institution can organize the work of philology in its entire breadth. Only when we have united our people’s strength, when there is an authoritative national organization for philological purposes, will Yiddish philology be able to befittingly fulfill its aims. ”

“ Thus the intelligent reader will have remarked how the somewhat anti-Semitic Irish servant of the first act talks Yiddish herself in the fourth. Even as to the ultimate language of the United States, it is unreasonable to suppose that American, though fortunately protected by English literature, will not bear traces of the fifty languages now being spoken side by side with it, and of which this play alone presents scraps in German, French, Russian, Yiddish, Irish, Hebrew, and Italian. ”

“ For some time past there has been an active movement among the New York Jews for the purification of Yiddish. This movement is an offshoot of Zionism, and has resulted in the establishment of a number of Yiddish schools. Its adherents do not propose, of course, that English be abandoned, but simply that the two languages be kept separate, and that Jewish children be taught Yiddish as well as English. The Yiddishists insist that it is more dignified to say a gooten tog than good-bye, and billet instead of ticket. But the movement makes very poor progress. ”

“ His mastery of the dialect is remarkable; for although one can here and there detect his intimate acquaintance with German literature, there is not a single case where he has been led under obligations to the German language in thought or a word: German is as foreign to him as French or Latin. Of his dramas it will be sufficient to discuss one to show their general structure. The most dramatic of these is the one entitled 'The First Recruit' and tells of the terrible time in 1827 when the Ukase drafting Jewish young men into the army had for the first time been promulgated. ”