What is Yiddish?

Who Still Speaks Yiddish?

Why should we care?

2023
Jana Mazurkiewicz Meisarosh
Di historye fun yidishn loshn un yidishe dyalektn

The History of Yiddish and Its Dialects

Yiddish origins

altyidish (old-Yiddish)
with elements of Laaz, a
Jewish-French dialect
Old-Yiddish is based on Middle High German and uses a fully-
vocalized Hebrew alphabet with nikud (nikudes)

It is originally a
German dialect
with elements of:
Laaz,
Hebrew, and
Aramaic
 The Black Death: 1346-1353

Jews, accused of poisoning

the wells of Christians, leave
Germany and travel east

Yiddish acquires Slavic

elements
 The first record of a printed Yiddish sentence

1272: a blessing found in the Worms Mahzor (Vórmser mákhzer)

Gut tag im betage se ver dis machzer in

beshakneses trage.

Blessed shall be the one who respectfully carriers

a prayer book.
Tsene (U)Rene

it’s known as “the women’s

Bible”

Features weekly Torah portions

woven together with homiletic
and moralistic material

read in particular by women on

the Sabbath and holidays
Bovo (Baba?)Buch - Elia Levita Bachur
1507 – 1508: the first non-religious book (a
chivalric romance) printed in Yiddish
Throughout the centuries, Yiddish has been
called

• Mame loshn (mother tongue)

• Ivrit-taytsh
• Daytshmerish
• Bad German
• “barbaric” or “vulgar” jargon

In 1908, the first international conference of Yiddish (The

Czernowitz Conference) declared Yiddish to be
“the national language of the Jewish people.”
 Yidishe Dialektn (Yiddish Dialects)
Western Yiddish:

Died out almost completely in the late 18th century because of

Haskalah and the Germanization of Jews living in Western
Europe

Eastern Yiddish:
Northeastern (Litvish Yidish)
Mideastern (Poylish Yidish)
Southeastern (Voliner Yidish)
Dialektn
(Dialects)
 Yidishe Standardn
(Yiddish Standards)
BINE YIDDISH:

Standard Yiddish for stage (bine),

based on Voliner Yidish and used to
unify various dialects spoken by
actors from throughout Europe
YIVO YIDDISH: Standard Yiddish for
academia (literary Yiddish),
based on
Litvish Yidish

YIVO: Yiddish Scientific Institute

(Yidisher Visnshaftlekher Institut) was
established in Vilna, Lithuania in 1925
to study and document Jewish life, but
relocated to NYC in 1940.
 Why is Yiddish an
endangered language?
In Europe: the Holocaust

In the USA: Americanization of newcomers from the “old

country”

In pre-state Israel and modern Israel: Marginalization of

Yiddish in pre-state Israel and enforcement of modern
Hebrew as the language of Israel
 Yiddish Today

Yiddish in academia:

Learning how to read and

understand texts from different
epochs
 Yiddish
Today

Spoken Yiddish:

Religious
communities
 Yiddishism and
Yiddishists

Yiddish and Yiddishkeit as

a choice
 • Yehoshua Mordechai Lifshitz (1828–1878)
is considered the father of Yiddishists:
“the first conscious, goal-oriented
language reformer" in the field of Yiddish
Yiddishism –
Milestones of Yiddishism:
a cultural and
• 1863 – Lifshitz’s essay on “the mother
linguistic tongue of Jewish people”
movement • 1897 – creation of The General Jewish
that focuses Labor Bund in Lithuania, Poland and
Russia
on advocacy
• 1908 – the Czernowitz Conference that
for Yiddish declared Yiddish to be "a national
culture language of the Jewish people”
• 1925 – creation of the YIVO (Yiddish
Scientific Institute) in Vilnius
Yiddish-Speaking
Families
Mordkhe Schaechter
(1927 – 2007)

A Romanian-born
Yiddish linguist, a head
of a family of
Yiddishists, Schaechter-
Gottesman family,
author of the famous
“Love Cards”. He
coined the terms
“Yiddishism” and
“Yiddishist movement”
and defined Lifshitz as
“the first Yiddishist”
 • Columbia University,
NYC
• Harvard University,
Massachusetts
• University of Austin,
Texas
• University of
Pennsylvania,
Philadelphia
• University of Michigan,
Ann Arbor, Michigan
• University of California,
Yiddish Courses at Berkeley
Universities in the US • Stanford University,
Palo Alto
Yiddish Courses at non-
American Universities

• Heinrich Heine University, Düsseldorf,

Germany
• University of Trier, Germany
• University of Wrocław, Poland
• Jagiellonian University, Poland
• University of Warsaw, Poland
• Lund University, Sweden
• Monash University, Melbourne, Australia
• University of Toronto, Canada
 Summer Yiddish Language
Programs

• New York City

• Tel Aviv
• Ottava, Canada
• Warsaw
• Berlin
• Weimar
• London
• Brussels
• Paris
• Strasbourg
Yidish Vokh (Yiddish Week)
The Workmen's Circle's Trip to Yiddishland
 Founded in
December 2010
at a conference in
the Stanton
Street Synagogue
Yiddish Farm
in New York City.
Yiddish Book Center,
Amherst, MA
Learn Yiddish Online
 New
Yiddish
Dictionaries
 Yiddish Press
• Forverts (Forward)
• Afn Shvel (On the Threshold)
• In Geveb – (In Network) - in
English about Yiddish
• Pakn Treger (The Carrier) - in
English about Yiddish
• Birobidzhaner Shtern (The Star of
Birobidzhan)
• Religious Yiddish Press
Yiddish Radio
Hour: Boston
and
Paris
A Yiddish
Podcast
 Melanie
Weiss at
TED x Colby
College, 2013
TED Talk about
Yiddish
 Yidish
Lebt!

Yiddish is
Alive!
Can all Yiddish speakers be called “Yiddishists”?
A sheynem
dank!

!‫ַא שיינעם‬
‫דַאנק‬