Yiddish: Turning to Life

YIDDISH: TURNING TO LIFE

YIDDISH: TURNING TO LIFE by

JOSHUA A. FISHMAN Distinguished University Research Professor, Emeritus Yeshiva University New York, N.Y.

JOHN BENJAMINS PUBLISHING COMPANY AMSTERDAM/PHILADELPHIA 1991

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Fishman, Joshua A. Yiddish : turning to life / by Joshua A. Fishman. p. cm. English and Yiddish. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Yiddish language -- Social aspects. 2. Jews - Languages. I. Title. PJ5113.F58 1991 437'.947-dc20 ISBN 90 272 2075 1 (Eur.)/l-55619-lll-l (US) (alk. paper)

91-7243 CIP

© Copyright 1991 - John Benjamins B.V. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any other means, without written permission from the publisher.

Contents

Foreword by Mordkhe Schaechter

ix

Preface

1

Part I. YIDDISH AND HEBREW: CONFLICT AND SYMBIOSIS Introduction Post-exilic Jewish languages and pidgins/creoles: Two mutually clarifying perspectives Nothing new under the sun: A case study of alternatives in language and ethnocultural identity Shprakhikeyt in hayntikn yisroyel Part II. YIDDISH IN AMERICA Introduction Birth of a voting bloc: Candidates pay court to Hasidic and Orthodox Jews Yiddish in America Nathan Birnbaum's view of American Jewry Yidish, modernizatsye un reetnifikatsye: an ernster un faktndiker tsugang tsu der itstiker problematik

Part III. CORPUS PLANNING: THE ABILITY TO CHANGE AND GROW Introduction The phenomenological and linguistic pilgrimage of Yiddish: Some examples of functional and structural pidginization and depidginization

11 13 19 37 68 73 75 75 81 161 172

181 183 189

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Why did Yiddish change? Modeling rationales in corpus planning: Modernity and tradition in images of the good corpus Part IV. STATUS PLANNING: THE TSHERNOVITS CONFERENCE OF 1908 Introduction Nathan Birnbaum's 'second phase': The champion of Yiddish and Jewish cultural autonomy Nosn birnboyms dray tshernovitser konferentsn Attracting a following to high culture functions for a language of everyday life: The role of the Tshernovits Conference in the rise of Yiddish Der hebreyisher opruf af der tshernovitser konferents

Part V. STOCK-TAKING: WHERE ARE WE NOW? Introduction Starting with the future The sociology of Yiddish after the holocaust: Status, needs and possibilities. How does Yiddish differ? The lively life of a 'dead' language Vos ken zayn di funktsye fun yidish in yisroyel?

203 217 231 233 239 248

255 284

291 293 301 313 325 342

References APPENDIX: Statistical Tables: Yiddish (20th Century) Introduction List of Tables The Czarist Empire, USSR and Poland Israel USA Other countries/World wide

377 385 406 440 492

Foreword M o r d k h e Schaechter Columbia University and League for Yiddish New York, NY. I met Joshua Fishman before he met me. It was in the winter of 1945-46 in Bucharest, Rumania. We, a group of former students of the Chernovtsy Yiddish schools, refugees from the Soviet-annexed Northern Bukovina, had organised a Yiddish youth group named "Yugntkrayz frayndfun yidishn vort". At one of our meetings, a member brought along a copy of the American Yiddish youth magazine Yugntruf, which he had gotten hold of somehow. We read it there, at the meeting, from the title-page all the way through to the last word on the last page, with youthful fervor and admiration. And in that issue of Yugntruf we encountered the name Shikl Fishman several times, Shikl being a Yiddish nick-name for Joshua. Shikl Fishman was one of the editors of the publication, a regular contributor to the publication and, indeed, one of its founders. Years passed, I emigrated to the United States, and I encountered this name in other Yiddish publications, both as the author of stimulating articles for the layman and as a young scholar that people were beginning to talk about. More years passed, my own academic career began, and Joshua A. Fishman had become a household word, a central and trailblazing figure in the world of general and international sociolinguistics. But it seemed quite natural to me that the Joshua Fishman, whose first scholarly paper was a prize-winning monograph (written for the Yivo and only published in part, both in English and in Yiddish) on "Bilingualism in a Yiddish School", should also continue to find time for, and to contribute magnificently to, sociolinguistic research on Yiddish. However, it is only "natural" with the wisdom of hindsight. Hundreds if not thousands of other American-born scholars easily abandoned the languages of their immigrant parents and grand­ parents, both intellectually and emotionally. Fishman stands out from among them, not only by his academic stature but by his re-

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YIDDISH: TURNING TO LIFE

jection of such abandonment and his intellectualization of the problems of abandonment, on the one hand, and cultivation, on the other, whether for Yiddish or for minority languages more generally. Through his perspective on Yiddish, Joshua Fishman has also helped develop an entire discipline and fashioned a Weltanschauung which is meaningful to him and to many others as well. Fishman's ability to intellectualize phenomena that derive from the world of Yiddish struck me with full force when I read his nowclassic paper on the famous "First Yiddish Language Conference" which took place in Austro-Hungarian Tshernovits in 1908. I myself was born and grew up in a Yiddishist family and social circle in Tshernovits (then Rumania, now Soviet Moldavia). The Conference was a topic that was broached innumerable times during my formative years. I grew up with an ambivalence towards the Conference, an ambivalence that was widespread in my Yiddishist environment: I was proud that the Conference had occurred and I admired its goals and many of its organizers (particularly Nathan Birnbaum), but I was thoroughly negative with respect to its lack of organizational follow-up and its dearth of palpable achievements. Fishman's research on the Conference (not to mention his exhaustive psycho-social biography of Birnbaum and his penetrating historical analysis of the entire turn-of-the-century scene in AustroHungary and in the Czarist Empire) was a real eye-opener for me. Contrary to the very common tendency to disparage the Conference, Fishman pointed out that its impact was ultimately "much stronger than its resolutions would lead one to suspect. The fact of dignifying Yiddish with an international conference was (at that time) of symbolic value in itself'. Fishman's paper, full of understanding for the conditions under which the Tshernovits Conference was organized and took place, his pointing out the proverbial halffullness of the glass, touched me profoundly. I can't remember ever having read a scholarly paper that so completely changed my outlook as did Fishman's on the Tshernovits Conference. The fact that this paper also addressed general sociolinguistic concerns further intensified my high regard for it. But even in his studies that are not primarily devoted to the sociology of Yiddish, that is, even in the bulk of his work - including such truly fundamentally ground-breaking studies as Language Loyalty in the United States, Language and Nationalism and The Rise and Fall of the Ethnic Revival - Joshua Fishman's interest in his native tongue comes clearly to the fore. In an incredible and incomparable way he

FOREWORD

xi

has successfully brought Yiddish examples to the sociolinguistic specialist, just as he has brought general sociolinguistic sophistication to the Yiddish specialist. As a result of this very unique symbiosis which really is the essence ofJoshua Fishman himself, both fields are tremendously richer than they would otherwise have been. Fishman's early specialization in history (through to the completion of his master's degree) is quite evident from the fact that many of his very best works in the field of Yiddish, e.g., his publications on Yiddish in America and in Israel and his masterful interpretation of the early 19th century case of Mendl Lefin, all have a very strong historical component. This is precisely the component that is called for to lend depth to sociology's usual focus on the contemporary scene. In addition, Fishman's treatment of Mendl Lefin once again demonstrates that problems of interest to the sociology of Yiddish can have theoretical and methodological implications for the sociology of language as a whole. I have already mentioned Fishman's warmth when writing about Yiddish. But there is also a definite humor and humanity permeating much of his work. C'est le ton qui fait la musique. Above all, the courage of his convictions shines through and these convictions point toward a world that is not only safe and appreciative vis-à-vis Yiddish but a world and a sociolinguistics that is solicitous and appreciative of minority languages everywhere, a world in which young scholars will not feel impelled to leave behind their mother tongues but will become their intellectual champions and the intellectualizers of what these languages have to teach us all, linguistics and activists on behalf of cultural pluralism alike. I want to conclude my observations in the same vein in which I began them, i.e., with a personal recollection. In 1952, hardly 10 months after arriving in the USA, I was drafted into the Army - it was during the Korean War - and a farewell party for me took place in the very hospitable home of Gele and Shikl Fishman, in the Bronx. The parting words of Max Weinreich at that party still resound in my ears, because they also apply so admirably to Joshua Fishman. Said Max Weinreich (to me) that evening: "When I see you, I see myself as a young man". Joshua Fishman and I are approximately the same age, but when I see his involvement in Yiddish affairs, in Yiddish scholarship and in general sociolinguistic scholarship, I identify with him; he is a cultural and an intellectual hero for me: the prototype of the socioculturally committed scholar. I am grateful that he has put this book together because it will help

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more of his colleagues and students, as well as more of my colleagues and students, to more fully appreciate his multifaceted productivity and to adopt for themselves his pluralistic views and commitments, at the same time as they are stimulated by his empirical findings and theoretical constructs.

Preface

I believe that it is fair to say that most of my sociolinguistic endeav­ ors, covering more than a quarter century, have been intellectually stimulated and emotionally motivated by my interest in Yiddish. Whether I was studying language maintenance and language shift, language and ethnicity/nationalism, language planning, bilingual education or the Whorfian assumptions with respect to language and cognition, my initial sensitivities, hypotheses and ideas were derived, if only indirectly, from the world of concern for Yiddish in which I have been immersed since childhood. As a social-scientist, I have done all that was in my power to generalize the relevance of my findings and theories, doing so by the very interdisciplinary nature of my training (my degree is in social psychology but I have worked and taught primarily in sociology and linguistics), by seriously studying several additional languages (in addition to Yiddish and English, both of which I learned so early that I cannot remember learning either of them, I have studied Spanish, Hebrew, Hausa and N e t h e r l a n d i s h ) , by living in and sociolinguistically focusing on various parts of the world (in addition to my studies of Jews, Francophones, Germans, Hispanics and Navajos in the USA, I have also lived and worked in Israel, India and Indonesia and have visited Canada, Spain, Egypt, Belgium, The Netherlands, Hungary, Australia and Latin America for briefer periods of field work). Nevertheless, I can honestly say that everything I have done anywhere began with a problem, sensitivity or curiosity nurtured by my involvement with Yiddish and, often enough, wound up with a "lesson", at least in the back of my mind, relevant to the sociology of Yiddish and to Yiddish speaking society. My sociolinguistic colleagues are normally unaware of my abiding interest in Yiddish, either because my Yiddish-related sociolinguistic publications, some fifty in number, constitute less

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YIDDISH: TURNING TO LIFE

than 10% of my total publications, or because it is only since the early '70s, when I had already attained some prominence in the worldwide sociolinguistic enterprise, that I began to publish rather frequently on Yiddish. However, since most of these publications appeared in a variety of sociolinguistic journals, yearbooks and Festschriften throughout the world, specialists in Jewish and Yiddish studies generally remained unaware of them or only stumbled upon them "accidentally", so to speak, when they rubbed shoulders with colleagues from other disciplines or made forays into unusual sources for the purposes of broader background reading. One of the main goals of this collection, therefore, is to overcome both of the foregoing limitations, these having been pointed out to me separately by the sociolinguists and Yiddish specialists most familiar with my work. It is high time that sociolinguists everywhere realized my lifelong indebtedness to and my continued involvement in Yiddish, just as it is desirable that my sociolinguistic efforts that pertain directly to Yiddish become more easily available to students and faculty in Jewish studies in general and in Yiddish studies in particular. A "late bloomer" The discrepancy between the date of my embarking on sociolinguistic inquiry more generally (I place that in 1960, when my "Systematization of the Whorfian Hypothesis" appeared) and the date of my concerted scholarly involvement in Yiddish (roughly a decade later) is attributable primarily to Max Weinreich's influence. Weinreich (1894-1969), the doyen of Yiddish scholarship at least from the forties through to his death, had a tremendous influence on my selection of an area of graduate specialization. My personal inclination was to select either Jewish history or (Jewish) linguistics, although that was still before the time of widespread Jewish studies in American colleges and my employability outside of the Yivo was really quite questionable. But from the day that I first met him, in 1947, Weinreich seemed to have a different "future" in mind for me. "We already have enough historians and linguists", he opined, the "we" referring to the Yivo (then "Yiddish Scientific Institute" and later "Yivo Institute for Jewish Research"), in particular, and to the world of Jewish scholarship, more generally. Weinreich probably dreamed of bringing the Yivo in America (only recently fully re-

PREFACE

3

established in New York,.1940) not only back to the stature but also back to the structure that it had had in the Lithuanian Vilna of its birth (1925). In his mind's eye, he could see his elder son, Uriel, as the future director of its "Philological Section", Arcadius Cahan as the director of its "Economics and Statistics Section", Zosa Szajkowski as director of its "Historical Section" and I, in his master plan, given my undergraduate major and my teaching experience, would be perfect as the director of its "Psychological-Pedagogical Section". "The best laid plans of mice and men . . . " The "sectional" structure of the American Yivo did not develop much vitality and was soon nothing more than a thinly disguised fiction. Although all four of his prospective "section-directors" did play more or less active roles in the Yivo, none of them did so in quite the way that Weinreich had imagined. But my doctoral training, once begun, was never reversed. I continued along the path that Weinreich had selected and, although I did manage to take several courses with Salo Baron, I got my graduate degree in social psychology (Columbia University, 1953). However, my almost tropistic attraction to language studies could not be gainsaid. En route to my Ph.D. I won one of the Yivo's annual prizes (for research on Jewish themes by graduate students) with a study entitled "Bilingualism in a Yiddish School: Some Correlates and non-Correlates" (published, in part, in 1951). Furthermore, as soon as I began to teach social psychology at the City College of New York (now City College of the City University of New York), I unhesitatingly used as my text Joseph Bram's Language and Society (1955). I was obviously the only one in the department to do so and it was clearly a case of the fated return of a river to the sea. From that point on, my march towards sociolinguistic involvement was slow but sure. I gave my first course in the area in 1959, at the University of Pennsylvania, and obtained my first major grant for sociolinguistic research in 1960. Although the latter was concerned broadly with fathoming the "Non-English Language Resources of the United States", I, nevertheless, made sure that one of the languages of primary focus was Yiddish. My "Yiddish in America" (1965; reprinted in this volume) was a byproduct of that project, the major fruit of which was my Language Loyalty in the United States (1966). However, another decade would have to pass before I began to focus on Yiddish in a major and direct way and, once again, Max Weinreich, who had been "responsible" for my original detour, was now "responsible" for my finding a broad-gauged way back to this area of original interest.

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YIDDISH: TURNING TO LIFE

Weinreich's history of the Yiddish language Max Weinreich died in the early spring of 1969, just as he completed his four volume masterpiece, Di geshikhte fun der yidisher shprakh (published posthumously in 1973). That same year I was invited to assist Shlomo Noble in translating this work into English, an effort which occupied approximately a day per week of my time for the ensuing five years. Weinreich's work was more than merely an eyeopener for me; it excited my scientific imagination, stimulated me to formulate topics and hypotheses and, all in all, caused me to finally make room in an always crowded and successful research, writing, editing and teaching agenda, for the sociology of Yiddish proper. Weinreich's comparative approach, i.e., his always viewing the history of Yiddish relative to the history of other Jewish languages, beginning with the genesis and spread of Aramic and the demise of spoken Hebrew, was an absolutely perfect match to my own comparative sociolinguistic interests. Just as I had sought worldwide perspective for sociolinguistic hunches, curiosity and intuition derived overwhelmingly from my Yiddish interests and commitments, so he had sought worldwide Jewish interlinguistic perspective for his ideas, findings and interpretations pertaining to Yiddish in the context ofJewish society and culture. Our translation {The History of the Yiddish Language 1980) of the first two volumes of Weinreich's four (the latter two, consisting entirely of notes and bibliography, remain available only in the original Yiddish edition, although our unpublished English translation of those very volumes rests in the Yivo archives) yielded an award for Shlomo Noble and myself, and, in my case, left an indelible impression on my subsequent career. Indeed, I have Max Weinreich to thank not only for my somewhat unusual disciplinary and methodological socialpsychological perspective vis-à-vis sociolinguistics proper, but for my ultimate "return" to the sociology of language and the sociology of Yiddish with a much richer perspective than would have been the case had he not detoured my original interests a quarter century before, when my doctoral training had to be decided upon.

Teaching and editing efforts After the early seventies, I not only continued to fit Yiddish into my overall comparative studies, as heretofore (see, e.g., the chapters on

PREFACE

5

Yiddish in my Rise and Fall of the Ethnic Revival 1985e), but I proceeded to avidly read and, as much as possible, also to regularly teach, edit, research and write directly in the field of the sociology of Yiddish. My prior contacts and commitments, rather than proving to be competitive or oppositional to my newfound priorities, actually helped me accomplish somewhat more along these lines than might otherwise have been the case. Since the papers included in this volume provide an adequate sample of my research and writing efforts, I would like to say a word or two about my teaching and editing efforts which a volume such as this cannot reflect. On several occasions during the 80s, Yeshiva University's Bernard Revel Graduate School enabled me to teach a course on the Sociology of Jewish Languages and, on one occasion, to teach a course on the Sociology of Yiddish per se. On most occasions these courses were also co-sponsored by the Yivo's Max Weinreich Center for Jewish Studies, an arrangement which was first implemented between the Center and Yeshiva's Ferkauf Graduate School in connection with my joint course in the "Sociology of Language: Sociology of Yiddish", as far back as 1969, when the Center first began to function. These courses not only enabled me to deepen by own command of the Jewish and Yiddish dimensions of the sociology of Yiddish, but they also served as a constant reminder to me of Weinreich's contribution to that field and as an intensifier of my own involvement in it. Now, more than two decades after his demise, it is clear that he was not and could not be the last word in this field. Fortunately, a new generation of scholars has arisen (and on three continents to boot) both to critique his work as well as to carry it further. Nevertheless, it is easier to see far when one stands on the shoulders of giants and Weinreich was indisputably a giant in the sociology of Yiddish. As for my editing efforts, I view these both as pedagogic efforts that were, hopefully, of service to the younger generation in the field, as well as to field-building efforts per se. A young and small area of concentration, such as the sociology of Yiddish, desperately needs to cultivate a stronger community of interest among its members and a greater opportunity for visibility and interchange among them. My Readings in the Sociology of Jewish Languages (1985b) and the several issues of the InternationalJournal of the Sociology of Jewish Languages that I have devoted to the sociology ofJewish languages in general, and to individual Jewish languages in particular (1974, no. 1; 1980, no. 24; 1981, no. 30 and 1987, no. 67), have all been attempts to serve these

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YIDDISH: TURNING TO LIFE

dual purposes. In a very real sense, this volume too is a further effort along those very lines. Topical foci The topical subdivisions of this volume represent an ex post facto attempt to present some of my major interests within a more or less organized framework. They are not intended either to demarcate or to subdivide the sociology of Yiddish as a whole. I start out with an overall historical perspective, intended particularly for the general sociolinguistic audience, treating many matters of general orientational import and focusing on the joint and interrelated contributions of Yiddish scholarship and of Yiddish literature as major sources for a better understanding of the role of Yiddish in the medieval and modern Jewish experience. My major aspiration for this somewhat extended introduction is that the position of Yiddish in our own day and age not be taken as merely the foregone and inescapable conclusion of essentially well known and predictable modernization, immigration, assimilation and annihilation processes. It is the unusual (or more unusual) aspect of the Yiddish story that needs to be known and appreciated as well, both in its traditional diglossic as well as in its multifaceted secularmodernistic settings. The subsequent sections represent a sampling of both some of the more unusual as well as some of the more generally patterned aspects of the sociology of Yiddish. Certainly the internal relationship with Hebrew, simultaneously symbiotic and conflicted, nurturing and debilitating, eternal and passing, unconscious and ideological, requires examination. The coming into being of the state of Israel, and the development there of the most vibrant UltraOrthodox and modern secular Yiddish circles in existence today, in the very midst of the society which experienced and fostered the revernacularization of Hebrew, is certainly an unusual juncture well worthy of monitoring by interested scholars and laymen alike. The American context of Yiddish may have had its counterparts in earlier fortunate periods ofJewish history (e.g., the "Golden Age" in Spain or the havens generally represented by The Netherlands and the Scandinavian countries), but for Yiddish it is the first major experience with both the assets and the debits of an "open society" and its modern as well as post-modern opportunities and dangers for

PREFACE

7

even the numerically most numerous and the demographically most concentrated minority languages and cultures. The predictions as to what would become of Yiddish and yidishkayt in America have differed widely, from the very outset, and differ even now (including an unpredictable return to Ultra-Orthodox language use and language defense manifestations that were first common in early modern times in Central and East-Central Europe). Certainly, the secular apogee and nadir and the Ultra-Orthodox societal continuity that Yiddish has experienced in America are phenomena that every sociology of Yiddish must recognize. The field of language planning is an excellent example of how the sociology of Yiddish both contributes to and benefits from the general sociolinguistic enterprise, although even the two more particularistic topic-areas mentioned in the paragraphs immediately above are also by no means lacking in such examples. Generally, language planning is not recognized for minority languages as a whole and, even less so, for those that are in a weakened state. Yiddish provides very ample evidence that such planning goes on almost continually, even for languages without politically recognized authorities, and not only in corpus planning but also in the incomparably more conflicted areas of status planning, an area whose success is also a sine qua non for the success of corpus planning to any broader degree, i.e., success above and beyond the inner core of the corpus planners and their most devoted loyalists. It is no accident, therefore, that in conjunction with Yiddish status planning I have concentrated on the Tshernovits Conference of 1908. Only then and in the Soviet Union, from the mid-twenties to the midthirties, did fully diversified efforts for Yiddish status planning come into play. Given the paucity of status planning for Yiddish (to be sure, I speak only of positive status planning and set aside for the moment the negative planning that has gone on under zionist, assimilationist-modernist, neo-Orthodox and communist auspices), it is no surprise that its corpus planning has about it the definite stamp of incompleteness. That is not nearly as noteworthy, however, as the fact that as much has been accomplished, and under the most unfacilitating circumstances, as the past seventy years reveal. Perhaps it is the Jewish experience of recurringly skirting disaster and, nevertheless, coming out of that encounter with surprising recuperative capacity, that constantly brings discussions of Yiddish, regardless of their immediate foci, to the omnipresent question of "the bottom line". Thus, it is inevitable that we wind up

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YIDDISH: TURNING TO LIFE

our selections with a section on "where do we go from here", both geographically (in America and Israel) and intellectually (in Yiddishistica and in Jewish interlinguistics). The sociology of language, like all of social science, is inevitably perspictival and a good bit of any observer's values and beliefs therefore rub off on his or her observations. That may well partially explain why the title and the contents of this work are alert to life, continuity and prospects in connection with Yiddish rather than the gloom, despair and demise that have become pseudo-intellectually de rigueur for nearly a century. This is not to say that I believe that things will once again be as they were. " (vos geven is geven, vet mer nit zayn) a Yiddish theatre-song proclaims, but social change makes this prediction true of all life everywhere. Yiddish will probably never again be the vernacular of almost all of Ashkenazic Jewry, just as its major claim to fame will probably never again be its dominant association with a pulsating intellectual, political and ideological secularism that was simultaneously intensely Jewish and intensely secular-modernistic. Nevertheless, it is sociologically clear to me that a future for Yiddish is assured, for the 21st century and thereafter as well, as far as can be foreseen. It may be more intimately and preponderantly associated with UltraOrthodox thought, observance and daily behaviour in the future than it has been since the mid-19th century, but there will always be a select few who will utilize it as an instrument of modern Jewish secular creativity and an even larger periphery who will enjoy it in that connection, either in the original or in translation. Thus, it is to a consideration of the life of Yiddish that we must turn, rather than to a mistaken, masochistic fixation on its purported death, the latter being no more than a reflection of the increasing distance between the life of Yiddish and the bulk of its secular or neo-Orthodox observers. I conclude with the feeling that the last word is very far from having been said, both because the last word is never said in scientific inquiry and because I myself am incapable of the Schadenfreude needed for pronouncing it in connection with the life of any still weakened (though recuperating) society and culture. In connection with Yiddish it is always wise to remember that we are dealing with a veritable phoenix, or the phoenix offspring of a phoenix parent. Death and extinction have been predicted and disconfirmed for it (and for its parent, the Ashkenazi diaspora) so

PREFACE

9

often that I feel quite comfortable in predicting for it (actually, for "them" both) quite the contrary, indeed, not only merely "life" but dignity, appreciation and even situated recuperation as well. The words of the Psalmist (Ps. 95) seem particularly appropriate (in Yiddish I would say in connection with them both: ("They shall yield fruit even in old age; vigorous and fresh shall they be"). *

A brief digression, in order to clarify the differences and similarities between this work and my Never Say Die! A Thousand Years of Yiddish in Jewish Life and Letters (1981a), may be a propos at this point. Whereas the former was a collective volume, the present one consists only of my own writings. Whereas the former volume was intended primarily for a lay readership (and, therefore, its highly decorative composition), with only a few contributions that had the scholar and specialist in mind, the present book follows the reverse principle, emphasizing empirical and theoretical scholarship and providing far fewer items that were explicitly written for the interested lay reader. In both volumes, however, I have included articles written in Yiddish as part and parcel of what are essentially English books. I know that by doing so I have penalized those who read no Yiddish. Nevertheless, those who do read Yiddish deserve an additional reward, just as those who do not, deserve at least to see what the language looks like in print and to realize that even today, when so much of the Yiddish trove has been translated into English, there is something (particularly something for the scholar and the intelligent layman ) to be gained from learning it.

I Yiddish and Hebrew: Conflict and Symbiosis

Introduction

The story of Yiddish cannot be told without reference to Hebrew and the story of Modern Hebrew (and even of late p r e m o d e r n Hebrew) cannot be told without reference to Yiddish. They are an "odd couple", bound together by the partnership which is inherent in the usual diglossia relationship, but by much more too: by love and hate, by rivalry and cooperation, and, above all, by the peculiar sense of eternity that marks all things that are quintessentially Jewish. Almost throughout the entire thousand year history of Yiddish the co-presence of the Hebrew-Aramic amalgam referred to as Loshnkoydesh and the latter's intra-cultural dominance has been an inescapable 'Tact of life". Only during roughly half a century of unreconstructed Communist hegemony in the Soviet Union was there an apparent reversal, but that reversal was totally dependent on extra-cultural terror. Indeed, the co-presence (or omnipresence) of the Loshn-koydesh "big brother" needs to be recognized, linguistically, socioculturally and psychologically, and on all three of these dimensions it needs to be recognized from the very beginnings of Yiddish to the present day. Psychologically the co-presence of Loshn-koydesh and its honorific status, on the one hand and the arrival of the Enlightenment (and of voting rights and compulsory secular education in official national languages), on the other hand, led to widespread inferiority feelings (not to mention death wishes, death predictions and death plans) with respect to Yiddish. Such inferiority feelings, expressed via negative language attitudes pertaining to functional, esthetic and even strictly linguistic characteristics of Yiddish, are not at all surprising, given that Yiddish had neither exalted sacred nor exalted secular utility. Indeed, these attitudes are not essentially different from those that were once exhibited vis-à-vis English itself or, more recently, vis-à-vis Ukranian or White Russian and a host of other

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YIDDISH: TURNING TO LIFE

"inelegant" Johnny-come-lately vernaculars. The negative views concerning Yiddish and the exaggerated sensitivity of many of its speakers to its varied componential structure (each non-Germanic component being viewed as a "foreign marking" and each Germanic feature being viewed as either "simply German" or as "even worse than German") are, therefore, by no means as unique accompaniments of Yiddish as either its defenders or its detractors have often assumed. What is more unique is that these negative attitudes were primarily contrastively nourished vis-à-vis Loshnkoydesh, at least insofar as intra cultural functions and identity were concerned. Also substantially unique is the fact that the departures of Yiddish from outside norms, Germanic and non-Germanic, themselves came to be regarded as markers of sanctity, i.e., of a Godgiven design to separate Jews from gentiles in speech as well as in beliefs and practices and, thereby, as safeguards of Jewish distinctiveness. In a sense, Yiddish was made a junior partner of Loshn-koydesh via such an interpretation. This type of psychological reversal was also later evinced by modern Yiddish linguists who seized upon these very departures (even departures within the Loshnkoydesh component itself) as the hallmarks of Yiddish independence from the other languages with which it was constantly being compared by its own speakers, erstwhile speakers and outsiders as well. Although late in coming and rather circumscribed even at its apogee, positive attitudes towards Yiddish ultimately developed to a more extreme and doctrinaire degree than was the case in connection with any other post-exilic Jewish language and, at their most extreme, embodied strong anti-Loshn-koydesh Modern Hebrew sentiments as well. Many of the initial "linguistic" differences between Yiddish and its Germanic determinant are also attributable to the co-presence of Loshn-koydesh . This is even more certainly the case in connection with the extant written evidence of earliest Yiddish, since those who were capable of reading and writing were generally even more steeped in Loshn-koydesh than was the community as a whole. In this respect Yiddish Loshn-koydesh diglossia differs from that of Swiss German/High German, Haitian Creole/French or Vernacular Arabic/Koranic Arabic. In the latter cases the High variety is either superposed from outside of the vernacular speech community, or it must be assumed that the written (H) variety is itself a later, formalized version of one or other prior spoken variety, or both.

INTRODUCTION

15

Only in the case of Yiddish and Loshn-koydesh do we have two genetically distinct languages in a longterm diglossic relationship, in which both are equally intra-communal (i.e., neither is superposed by foreign powers), with the H clearly the older of the two and, therefore, available from the very outset as an influence on the new intra-communal vernacular "upstart". However, the prior existence of Loshn-koydesh does not, in and of itself, explain the great linguistic impact of Loshn-koydesh on Yiddish. The prior existence of this "big brother" and of a rabbinic elite trained in its literate use and literary styles also obtain for the other post-exilic Jewish languages and none of them (not Judezmo, not Mugrabi, not Farsic, to mention only the largest - after Yiddish - but still extant) reveals anywhere near the extent of Loshn-koydesh impact, particularly in the formal speech and writing of the rabbinic elite and other similarly trained scholars, as does Yiddish. Clearly, therefore, when a modern secular-nationalist espousal of Yiddish developed, it inevitably led to a re-examination of the linguistic ties of Yiddish to Loshn-koydesh, in terms of spelling conventions and lexicon and even in terms of the Hebrew writing system as a whole. No similar re-examination (in terms of being "liberated" from "big brother's" hegemony) is recorded for the other post-exilic Jewish languages, not even for those that were also caught up in the Soviet revolution, although it is also true that none of the others ever attained as varied and as serious secular functions as did Yiddish. Both those who argued for the de hebraization of Yiddish (on the grounds that the hebraic component was obscurantist, clerical and even fascistic) and those who argued valiantly and successfully against any such development and, indeed, championed the increased use of traditional scholarly Loshn-koydesh terms and expressions, were utterly convinced that they were spokesmen for the true nature ofJews and the language. As always, linguistics and ideology were closely intertwined, but in this case, with the two languages being so historically intertwined themselves during a millennium of time, the arguments were all the more impassioned and unreconcilable. However, it is in the sociocultural sphere that the co-presence of Loshn-koydesh (and now of Ivrit, i.e., of Modern Israeli Hebrew) has stimulated most discussion. Yiddish has had to cope with several "language problems" since the rise of the Enlightenment, the problem vis-à-vis Loshn-koydesh and Hebrew being only one of them. There were Central and Eastern-European Jewish advocates of

16

YIDDISH: TURNING TO LIFE

German (instead of Yiddish), of Polish (instead of Yiddish), of Russian (instead of Yiddish) and even of Hungarian (instead of Yiddish). However, the struggle between Yiddish and Loshn-koydesh was the most basic of all, because it was viewed as a struggle for control of the internal modernization, and therefore, of the future identity, of the Jewish people, at a time when East-Central European Ashkenaz, the major home of both languages, was world-Jewry's largest, most powerful and most actively modernizing branch, the branch that would apparently lead in the modernization and deter­ mine the future of this people-religion for the forseeable future. The holocaust declared both Loshn-koydesh and Hebrew to be the winners in this struggle. Hebrew, in terms of both the extermination of five million Yiddish speakers (and the indigenous culture in which it was anchored and in which it thrived) and the establishment of the new state of Israel in which Hebrew was both the national language of Jews and the official language of the state. For the first time in nearly two thousand years a Jewish language (for many, the most Jewish of all Jewish languages) would have its own state apparatus to foster, protect and favor it. In addition, both the holocaust and, ultimately, the state too, dethroned Ashkenaz and ensconced AfroOriental Jewry (Sefardic, Magrebic, Yemenite, Iraqi, etc.), almost all of it speaking diaspora Jewish languages other than Yiddish, in a position of demographic, political and, ultimately, cultural ascendancy. Hebrew became not only the language of ideological zionists but the lingua franca of the "ingathering of exiles", Ashkenazi and non-Ashkenazi alike, whereas Yiddish rarely spread outside the circle of Ashkenazim. However, Loshn-koydesh too came out of the holocaust a victor. Modern Yiddish secular culture was no more than a quarter to a third of a century old, a still young and fragile flower, when the holocaust struck. It could not weather the destruction of its Eastern European heartland, or if it did so in small part it could not really compete as a way of life with the non-modern and anti-modern Orthodoxy shared by Ashkenazim and non-Ashkenazim alike, both in Israel and in the diaspora. Post-holocaust Jewish fundamentalism led some to ultra-Orthodox Yiddish (primarily oral Yiddish) but it led many, many more to Hebrew, to the co-territorial languages and to the study of Loshn-koydesh religious texts. Neo-Orthodoxy, consistent with its pre-War anti-Yiddish stance, also led in the same directions. However, neither Hebrew nor Loshn-koydesh could serve, as Yiddish had done before the holocaust, as the unifying vernacular of world-

INTRODUCTION

17

wide Jewish thought and Jewish action. As a result of the collapse of the intercontinental role of Yiddish, English has begun to serve this function. For the first time in Jewish history Jews the world over are "united" by a non-Jewish language. Yiddish was incinerated in the death camps of Europe, eclipsed by assimilative processes in the overseas centers of immigration, and replaced as the language of international Jewish comunications, but in none of these instances was it replaced by Hebrew. Just as Yiddish could not really outgrow its Ashkenazi limitations, Modern Hebrew as a mother tongue seems to be unable to outgrow its Israeli markers. Only Loshn-koydesh, a language of sanctified and scholarly texts continues with its functions beyond serious challenge. However the intertwined story of Hebrew and Yiddish is still not completed. The zionist-inspired discrimination against Yiddish in Palestine/Israel has become muted. Yiddish is taught in all Israeli universities and, as an elective, in some 60 high schools. A fondness for Yiddish songs (in the original or in translation, although not all translations are forthright enough to even "credit" the Yiddish originals from which they are derived) and for Yiddish literature and drama (almost always in translation) have become a palpable feature of the beleaguered and conflicted Israeli scene. Even the lexical, phraseological and pragmatic contributions of Yiddish to the vernacularization of Hebrew "as she is spoke" by the average Jewish Israeli today are increasingly recognized. The recent phenomenal growth of Yiddish-speaking Ultra-Orthodoxy in Jerusalem and its environs has once more associated the language with commercial and political clout. None of the foregoing developments either threaten the sway of Hebrew nor will they lead to the adoption of Yiddish as a major language of modern Israeli secular life. They do imply new attitudes, however, and a new modus vivendi with Yiddish, both in its secular and in its religious realizations. They also imply that the story goes on: the thousand year relationship is by no means over and done with. The predictions of its dissolution were mistaken and self-deluding. The "junior partner", once so certainly assigned to oblivion in comparison with the timeless and regal sway of Hebrew, has been found to have more life in him (the proverbial cat's nine lives) than had ever been expected by friend or foe alike. Living Language

For a supposedly dead language ... (there is) a lot of lively, spoken Yiddish (in Jerusalem, including) an astonishing 18,600 haredi children alone who

18

YIDDISH: T U R N I N G TO LIFE

learn daily in Yiddish in elementary to high schools . . . Counting other Ultra-Orthodox haredi centers in the country, such as Bnai B r a k , . . . Yiddish (in Israel) may be on the upswing . . . But the census bureau admits that they don't have an accurate picture of Yiddish in haredi populations (because) many haredim do not appear in the census because they are against participating in i t . . . . Over the past 20 years haredi neighborhoods have steadily expanded: Mea She'a rim, Geula, Bayit Vegan, Sanhedria, Kiryat Sanz, Ramot Polin, Har Nof, Mattersdorf and others. The choice of Yiddish plays a particular role in . . . maintaining their identity . . . although more and more people are speaking Hebrew at home as a result of mixed Sephardi-Ashkenazi marriages and an influx of the newly religious into the community . . . (But) Yiddish represents UltraOrthodox, right wing Judaism. Geula Cohen once said in horror, "The fate of this country is going to be decided by people who speak Yiddish!" Jerusalem Post. June 25,1989, p.3

Post-exilic Jewish languages and pidgins/creoles: two mutually clarifying perspectives* Introduction Post-exilic Jewish languages (hereafter PEJLs)1 have often been reacted to by their own speakers, and frequently by outsiders as well (Jewish and non-Jewish), in ways that are reminiscent of how pidgins/ creoles are reacted to by speakers and outsiders. The very names by which some PEJLs have been popularly called (as observed by S.A. Birnbaum 1872, Gold 1980 and 1983, Weinreich 1980) are indicative of avowedly pejorative (or previously pejorative) views with respect to them, due either to their fusion nature (for example, zhargón for Yiddish and zargón for Judezmo) or due to a fixation on their similari­ ties to and departures from non-Jewish coterritorial correlate languages (for instance, 'Jewish dialect","Judeo-Italian" [instead of Italkic], 'Judeo-French" [instead of Tsarfatic], etcetera). The char­ acteristics attributed to these languages, by many insiders as well as by outsiders, have often stressed their purported "esthetic" and "moral" shortcomings ("ugly", "rasping", "corrupted", "crippled", "bastardized"). A purported lack of autonomy and standardization is also commonly recognized ("mishmash", "grammarless", "undisciplined"), as is their purported poverty in attempting to cope with concepts and artifacts of modern Western (and, almost always, Christian) cultures (іk 1833 [1815], Birnbaum 1890, Jospe 1975, Sholem-Aleykhem 1981 [1881]).2 A careful examination of the "charges" against and the "defenses" on behalf of PEJLs may provide us with a new perspective for considering such "charges" and "defenses" with respect to pidgins/creoles, and vice versa. In addition, a review of the similarities and differences between PEJL and pidgin/ creole phenomena, may be useful to both fields of inquiry, not least of all to various scholars who have, of late, erroneously stressed the pidgin/creole nature of PEJLs (such as Wood 1970, and Hancock 1977).

20

YIDDISH: TURNING TO LIFE

The multicomponential nature of post-exilic Jewish languages One of the major characteristics of pidgins/creoles is the recognized and negatively evaluated diversity of their lexical versus their grammatical constituents. This is also an invariable characteristic of PEJLs, all of which reveal major influences and borrowings derived from previous Jewish vernaculars (prelanguages), from contemporary coterritorial non-Jewish vernaculars and, until most recently, from traditional Hebrew/Targumic (together: Loshn-koydesh),3,4 as well as more minor traces derived from whatever international lingua franca(s) might influence the life and thought of their speech communities (Cohen 1985, Chetrit 1985, Wexler 1985).5 At least the first three components mentioned above can have recognizable grammatical (rather than solely lexical) consequences, as well as impressing themselves strongly on metaphors and proverbs, due to the recurring and extensive use of the prelanguages and leshonhakodesh in biblical translation and in Talmudic study and disputation. All derivational components are productively employed and hybrids between them are formed without limitation. As a result, PEJLs differ from their coterritorial correlates not only in terms of patterning of elements but also in terms of semantic change vis-à-vis the correlates per se. The "mixed" nature of PEJLs has been all the more noticeable due to the seemingly greater componential homogeneity of leshonhakodesh, on the one hand, and of standardized coterritorial languages, on the other hand. Indeed, in modern times, the advocates of one or another PEJL tend to gravitate towards two defenses rather than deny the charge of "mixed" status. To the charge of linguistic shatnez (prohibited mixture of wool and linen, after Leviticus 19:19 and Deuteronomy 22:11), they reply "guilty with an explanation". The more traditional response claims that the mixed nature of any given Jewish language is the result of God's intention that Jews be identifiably different and separate from their neighbors (see, for example, the views of nineteenth-century Rabbi Khsam Soyfer and of his pupil, Rabbi Hillel Likhtnshteyn, cited in Weinreich 1980; also see two recent issues of the Ultra-Orthodox publication B'darkey hatoyre [April-May and June-July 1986] where this same defense is emphasized). This particular defense assumes that although the usage of Jews might initially have been identical with that of non Jews, God purposely distanced the language ofJews from that of their non-Jewish neighbors so that Jews could more clearly be

POST-EXILIC JEWISH LANGUAGES

21

a separate people, in accord with Biblical commandments. At the same time, the absence of vernacular functions for Loshn-koydesh is explained as deriving from Goďs desire that it remain pure and undefiled by the exigencies of daily life. Thus, even traditional advocatory circles reveal an awareness of multicomponentiality. This dimension is not entirely positively evaluated because no matter how desirable it may seem to be for PEJLs, it is not at all considered to be desirable for Loshn-koydesh. Cultural sensitivity with respect to purity and separateness more generally (separateness of Israel and other nations, of men and women, of different types of foods, of different materials and of different rituals) may well provide the traditional foundations upon which an unusual degree of popular awareness has developed in Jewish speech communities vis-à-vis the multicomponentiality of their own PEJLs. In more modern PEJL advocatory circles, the multi­ componentiality of any particular Jewish vernacular has usually been viewed in a more comparative-linguistic light. It is recognized that other (that is, non-Jewish) languages too are more "mixed" and less "pure" than is commonly realized. Interestingly enough, although Russian is the first such language to be mentioned (іk 1833 [1815]), after the middle of the nineteenth century the usual example of a "mixed" non-Jewish language is English (Lifshits 1863, Birnbaum 1890, Mizes 1907). Although extremely few Ashkenazic Jews were speakers or readers of English at that time, the multicomponential nature of English was apparently well known to westernizing/modernizing (maskilic) Jewish intellectuals. English becomes the example par excellence of the multicomponential language that has eminently succeeded. It has come to be respected, by insiders and by outsiders, notwithstanding its "mixed" origins and composition. It is widely and proudly spoken and read. It controls an empire in all parts of the globe: armies, navies, industry, higher education. No one thinks anymore of questioning its legitimacy. The components of English are so well fused that the whole is one seamless, harmonious web. By the beginning of the twentieth century, the harmony of the fusion between the four major components of Yiddish (Hebrew/Targumic, Romance, Germanic and Slavic) is highlighted by advocates of the language (Birnbaum 1902a, Mizes 1907). Far from being a mishmash, its components purportedly make it more effective, more colorful, more original and noteworthy than blander, triter, more hum-drum languages of apparently uniform provenience. Similar attitudinal escalation in the field of

22

YIDDISH: TURNING TO LIFE

pidgin/creole languages still remains to be fully studied, although the fact that the "mixed" nature of most languages is now well recognized by scholars and by many educated laymen might well lead in that very direction. The dialect nature of PEJLs Related to but distinct from the criticism leveled at PEJLs on the grounds of their multicomponentiality is the perjorative view that they are merely dialects of their respective non-Jewish correlates. Thus, it is not "impurity" but lack of autonomy, of internal authoritative arbiters of right and wrong relative to the non Jewish big brother, that this criticism decries. By this yardstick, PEJLs are unauthorized and illegitimate departures from proper norms and, as such, "grammarless", "corrupted", "bastardized" and associated with a variety of esthetic and moral shortcomings such as "ugly", "rasping", "crippled", "dwarfed", "hunchbacked" and "hoarse" (Mendelssohn 1718, Feder 1853 [1816], Birnbaum 1890). Note that Mendelssohn himself was hunchbacked but much admired by his followers, including Feder (who utilized this adjective relative to Yiddish). On ocasion, the advocates of one or other PEJL have reacted to this criticism with some of the same arguments as those used to counteract the "impurity" argument. The stance that "God meant our language to be different from the ones the Gentiles use" applies here as well. Accordingly, the differences between Jewish and nonJewish languages are sought out, collected and even cultivated. Within the correlate-derived component itself, differences, neologisms and archaisms are stressed. Regionalisms that are most discrepant from the non Jewish correlate norm are preferred and recommended, particularly by scholars. Avek fun daytsh! ([move the language] away from [New High] German!) is the slogan and program of various Yiddish language planners in the twentieth century, but has its conscious beginnings with Mendl Lefin Satinover at the very beginning of the nineteenth (see following Chapter). Thus, the criticism of norm discrepancy relative to the non Jewish correlate is converted into a value, a desideratum, a source of strength and pride. On the other hand, alternates that are closer to or identical with the norms of the correlate language are consciously preferred and advocated by those who favor language shift towards

POST-EXILIC JEWISH LANGUAGES

23

"big brother". 6 Only Hebrew has been spared invidious comparison with its original non-Jewish correlate (Canaanite), obviously because so little is known about the latter that comparison is rendered difficult (and, for the laymen, impossible). However, with respect to revernacularized modern Hebrew, purity and a "return to its true oriental nature" have become concerns shared by some intellectuals from Ben Yehuda onward (Fellman 1973), that is, the fear of multicomponentiality has surfaced, even though the fear of dialect status has not. A particular set of culturally specific traditional functions is substantially responsible for distancing PEJLs from their non-Jewish correlates (Weinreich 1980 [1973], Rabin 1981). These functions involve the widespread and age-old practice of studying the Pentateuch by translating it into an oral or written calque which follows ("shadows") the word order and grammatical conventions of the original. Even more time is devoted to the study of the Hebrew/Targumic Talmud (Kats 1982), with the resulting number of influences upon PEJLs being, if anything, even greater. Although this translation calque variety is never spoken conversationally (nor written for the purposes of interpersonal communication), its constant association with time-consuming and prestigious male functions cannot but pervasively influence the spoken and written language more generally, lexically, grammatically and even prosodically.7 The Hebrew/Targumic components of PEJLs are thus not outside influences or borrowings but derived from culturally indigenous diglossic partners and catalysts. The pidgin/creole picture is obviously different, although even in the latter case it is frequently not realized that these languages too may diversify in­ ternally in various ways, with their core cultural pursuits (far different from those of Western cultures) first fashioning function­ ally specific varieties. These then have differential initial influence on subsequent varieties, all of which are accordingly distanced, to a greater or lesser degree, from the Western linguistic standard. More so than either the typically spoken or the calque variety, the secular-written variety of PEJLs is likely to be massively influenced by the written non-Jewish norm (Wexler 1981). This constitutes a curious but informative inversion of the more usual (although not invariable) state of affairs wherein Ausbau languages differ more in their written than in their spoken varieties. Setting aside the major visual distinction between written Jewish and non-Jewish languages, namely their writing systems (a difference that results in various phonological

24

YIDDISH: TURNING TO LIFE

and orthographic consequences), 8 and setting aside the calque varieties of the Jewish languages with their constant culture-specific need to be as close to the word-order of the Loshn-koydesh original as possible, most other varieties of the written language are, of necessity, more exposed to influences from coterritorial writing conventions. Thus, males who read/write PEJLs for other than traditional-related functions are also most likely to be exposed to at least some reading/writing in the non-Jewish coterritorial correlate (and perhaps other languages as well), at least for commercial and legal purposes, and, therefore, to carry over features of that language into their secular reading/writing within the Jewish fold. Since PEJLs do not have traditional, non-calque-related written functions within the Jewish fold, any substantial additional written functions that are realized by them are initially likely to be nontraditional. 9 For such functions, the non Jewish variety usually serves as the initial model (in orthographic conventions and in lexical and grammatical preferences) and it is only substantially later that an indigenous Jewish writing style develops, patterned, in part, on intra-communal speech models (on which the calque variety ultimately also exerts its influence) rather than on external writing models. Since pidgin/creole reading/writing also initially represents culturally unprecedented functions for those languages, their reading/writing varieties too may stand closer to those of their coterritorial Western correlate than do their most typically spoken varieties. Only substantially indigenized writing functions can lead to writing conventions in accord with indigenous speech-proximate markers. Yiddish and Judezmo have been further helped in arriving at the latter conventions, and the greater distancing from correlate writing norms that they represent, by their ultimate geographic distancing (in Ashkenaz 2 and in Sefarad 2, respectively) from their original nonJewish correlates, although even in their case this required centuries.

Language genesis: two substantially different scenarios PEJLs appear to be similar to pidgins/creoles in the disparateness of their etymological components and in their frequent "non-standard" (that is, "dialectal") image, both to insiders and outsiders. Both of these features (lack of "purity", lack of autonomy) lead to similarly poor intragroup attitudes and negative mother-tongue associations on the part of PEJL communities and pidgin/creole communities.

POST-EXILIC JEWISH LANGUAGES

25

Indeed, one universal that has been advanced with respect to PEJLs is their generally low repute within their own speech communities, where they are "spoken by all, valued by none" (Fishman 1981c). However, at this point the similarities end, even when considered phenomenologically, and the differences become clearly predominant. One area of profound difference is that of language genesis. In the genesis of pidgins, intragroup communication is at least as primary a motivating factor as is intergroup communication. The dislocated members of a newly constituted aggregate hail from a variety of different locales and have no common language. They must communicate with one another on a make-shift basis as much as they are forced to do so with their masters. In the genesis of PEJLs, however, intergroup communication is, initially, clearly the primary motivating factor. The Jews themselves already have a vehicle of communication in their prior Jewish vernacular, or, alternatively in Loshn-koydesh (albeit spoken with great difficulty and with errors even by most males, including the most learned among them - due to its restricted traditional textual functions) if they are of diverse backgrounds. 10 Thus, the genesis of a PEJL is an instance of language spread from, initially, intergroup to, primarily, intragroup purposes and one in which no attempt need initally be made by the "teachers" to simplify or reduce for the benefit of the "learners" nor in order to deny them access to the language norms of their "teachers" in order to maintain proper status differentials. Prior Jewish residents are generally available, residents who frequently predate the establishment of a larger Jewish settlement by many years, to facilitate the "proper" learning of the new intergroup language by those who require it most: merchants and certain communal leaders. How well the new non-Jewish language is ever learned by the generality of first or later generations (in terms of acquiring fully native phonology, lexicon, grammar and prosody, without "foreign" and, particularly, without "Jewish" markings) is an interpersonal variable rather than an intracommunal constant. Ultimately, however, whether due to the worsening of intergroup relations or due to the increasing adoption of the new language for specifically Jewish intragroup interlocutors and traditional functions too, a Jewish variety arises and becomes socioculturally stabilized with sociofunctional norms of its own. What began, primarily, as language spread for intergroup purposes, then arrives at the stage of language shift for intragroup purposes, since these latter had pre-

26

YIDDISH: TURNING TO LIFE

viously been filled by an earlier Jewish language (or languages). As this stage progresses, the language is increasingly distanced from its intergroup norm and two norms coexist, one for intragroup and the other for intergroup purposes. If geographic distancing also occurs, then further distancing between these two norms is facilitated and the intergroup variety may actually disappear from the Jewish speech-community's shared repertoire. Different segments of the Jewish population may, initially, be at different stages in this chain of developments (for example, men and women, scholars/clergy and laymen with little immersion in traditional study). Indeed, these different speech networks may be differentially instrumental in con­ nection with bringing about the ultimate distancing between PEJLs and their co-territorial correlates. All in all, however, the above scenario is obviously different from the pidgin/creole genesis case. Instead of the nativization and expansion of a pidgin (a variety with­ out prior indigenous precedent) into a creole, we, initially, have a language spread to language shift sequence, a sequence which is not too different from that known in many immigrant contexts (Fishman 1985c), followed (and some would say ''paralleled"), from the very outset, in certain speech networks, by the development of indigen­ ous norms for certain intracommunal functions. Both scenarios are dislocative, but of the two, the genesis of a new PEJL is far less so, since an earlier Jewish vernacular is initially available, particularly to adults, as a vehicle of intracommunal functioning in general and for traditional functions in particular. In addition the high culture remains minimally impacted, since the sanctified Loshn-koydesh texts, prayers and responsa, as well as the elites most closely associated with them, usually remain, at least in part, to provide ethnocultural stability and continuity. Thus, though the displacement of one PEJL by another is inevitably dislocative for the transitional generations (and undoubtedly represents an initial cultural loss, perhaps even a cultural trauma [Glatshteyn 1972]), it does not begin to approximate the dislocation that marks the genesis of a pidgin, with its massive demographic heterogeneity, ethnocultural discontinuity and physi­ cal extirpation and abuse.

Intragroup literacy: two different scenarios Because Jews have experienced a high degree of cultural change, including vernacular language shift, during the past two millennia,

POST-EXILIC JEWISH LANGUAGES

27

it is instructive to ponder the significance of a well nigh complete lack of recorded laments in the latter connection. 11 The transition from Hebrew to Targumic and from Targumic to dozens (perhaps scores) of PEJLs cannot have been painless, not by any means, nor could it have failed to exact an intergenerational price to the detriment of traditional study of hallowed texts via the calque-translation method. Nevertheless, rabbinic literature, enormously extensive and attentive to every detail of daily life, and particularly attentive to the consequences of culture change in so far as observance of all Ortho­ dox requirements and customs is concerned, pays almost no atten­ tion to intergenerational language discontinuity as either an individual or communal problem. The most plausible explanation for this blind spot in rabbinic vision is that the continuity of the leshon-hakodesh literacy tradition - with its emphasis on sanctified texts, commentaries and responsa - is accorded such overwhelming priority (at least by the rabbis) as to seem to more than compensate for any discontinuity in the spoken or calque-translation languages. We have already observed that PEJLs are generally not held in high regard - certainly not by the rabbinic authorities themselves, and only a few exceptions during a 2000 year recorded history of rabbinic opinion - nor, until comparatively modern times, by ordinary rankand-file members of the community. 12 The continuing and wide­ spread availability of the rabbinic literacy and literary tradition is, of course, also a very definite departure from the pidgin/creole constel­ lation. What is more, however, is the fact that Jews approximated universal male literacy from the preexilic period of their history onward. This is not to say that the ideal was fully realized. Most men (and it was only in connection with males that even the ideal was pursued), in all times, could probably read little more than their daily prayers, and most women, not even that much (even setting aside the issue of understanding in both instances),13 but the ideal as such and an array of communal schools to pursue it remained landmarks of every Jewish community anywhere. These ubiquitous Jewish schools did not add much conscious luster to the PEJLs which invariably served them as media of instruction. Nevertheless, they did produce a sense of a tradition of uninterrupted literacy, a sense of collective ethnocultural continuity which penetrated the mass of the popula­ tion and which is the very antithesis of the pidgin/creole context. Perhaps it should be mentioned, at least in passing, that the continuity of the tradition of leshon-hakodesh literacy, study and prayer, both among the rabbinic elite and among the ordinary mem-

28

YIDDISH: TURNING TO LIFE

bers of the speech community, is not at all the same as the repeated outcropping of Portuguese elements that the monogenesis theory of pidgins has highlighted (Thompson 1961; also see Decamp 1971 : 23). The latter constancy is due to the recurring nature of outside influences (these having their own outside continuity and linkages) in a large number of otherwise unrelated pidgin contexts. Clearly, Portuguese was not part of the prior cultures of most newly formed pidgin communities. Its elements were generally not handed on from one pidgin to the next. Its spread from one such community to another, where that can be documented, depended on outsiders to the pidgin communities themselves. Hebrew/Targumic, on the other hand, is not only indigenous to Jewish communities but is sanctified and textified and is explicitly handed down from one generation to the other, thus manifesting both vertical continuity (from community to community) and horizontal continuity (from generation to generation). Pidgin/creole contexts represent, at best, an interruption in intragroup literacy, assuming that such had previously been attained by certain demographic constituents prior to the formation of any new pidgin community. If this interruption is repaired, such literacy is more than likely to be associated with the coterritorial correlate language rather than with the pidgin/creole itself. The Jewish case is more complex. Societal literacy in Hebrew/Targumic remains uninterrupted. Societal literacy in a new PEJL begins with the translation-calque, usually via glosses/concordances and/or translations that accompany the sanctified texts themselves. With respect to nontraditional genres, these may initially utilize the nonJewish correlate written in Hebrew letters and will only slowly approximate the spoken vernacular norm. Indeed, the latter norm will be adopted for traditional caique-variety texts only very slowly (if at all), possibly leading to the prolonged use of two written styles: one for traditional study/translation reading/writing and another for more secular reading/writing, both ostensibly for women and for males only semi-literate in Hebrew/Targumic, rather than for the more idealized male prototype (Weinreich 1980 [1973]), although in actuality, many men literate in leshon-hakodesh must have read them too (or even primarily), given their subject matter. 14 However, although many PEJLs do attain written functions, both in connection with traditional and in modern secular pursuits, as we have just noted, this functional elevation does not tend to elevate them attitudinally in their respective communities. If they are encountered

POST-EXILIC JEWISH LANGUAGES

29

as written calque-translations, they are interpreted as distinctly junior partners ("servant girls") in sanctity-related matters (Heilman 1981). Their distinctly junior or accompanying status leaves them with an aura of dependency and inferiority here. If they are encountered in nontraditional secular garb and functions, these are hardly calculated to add to their status in the eyes of the Orthodox. As a result, their total literacy image - old though the association with literacy may be for Yavanic, Judezmo, Yahudic, and Yiddish - remains under a cloud and is sometimes even denounced or denied. Only Yiddish, with a continuous literacy tradition of roughly 1000 years, has partially overcome the built-in traditional biases that faced it. Nevertheless, even it required the development of a modern, secularnationalist community before that came to pass on a large scale, a development still widely unrecognized and unvalued in most traditional and in many Zionist/Hebraist circles. All in all, the achievement of traditional coliteracy, on the one hand, and of independent, all purpose modern literacy, on the other hand, by several PEJLs distinguishes the latter from pidgins/creoles, even though it generally affords them little distinction within their own speech communities. This state of affairs provides an important potential lesson for all who seek to elevate pidgin/creole languages to serious literacy functions. Such functions may be attained and yet the speech community's attitudes may remain generally negative or condescending, as heretofore. Just as in the PEJLs' case, where "real literacy" is assumed to be attained only in Hebrew/Targumic, so in the pidgin/creole case, the hovering presence and prestige of the coterritorial "big brother" correlate may be too much to overcome. Even migration to other parts of the globe has, for the most part, not enabled PEJLs to emerge from the penumbras that envelope them in the literacy area.15 How much more difficult must it be to attain this goal for pidgins/creoles, given their far less peripatetic histories.

Comparison on Stewartian attributes The provocatively subjective bases of evaluative reactions to languages are well revealed by Stewart's attributes (Stewart 1968). These attributes also nicely reveal the similarity with which PEJLs, on the one hand, and pidgins/creoles, on the other hand, are often regarded by the rank-and-file of their respective speech communities. Both are widely assumed to lack historicity (although this may be

30

YIDDISH: TURNING TO LIFE

manifestly untrue in both cases and even though, in conjunction with PEJLs, some of them may be as old as or older than the coterritoriai correlate languages with which they are generally invidiously compared), to lack autonomy, and to lack standardization. A drastic change with respect to their sociocultural and econotechnical fortunes (such as would derive from their speech community coming into control of major political power or control over scarce recources as happened in the case of Afrikaans) might lead to a reevaluation of these dimensions, but such reversals, based upon realistic factors, can be expected to be extremely few and far between. Given that both PEJLs and pidgins/creoles are also widely found to be wanting with respect to "purity" (the latter being a non-Stewartian dimension that is often of considerable importance to ordinary members and to elites alike), it should come as no surprise that vitality alone, when present, cannot overcome their total negative aura. In the case of most PEJLs today, even vitality is often questionable. As a result, their evaluative profile becomes indistinguishable from that which Stewart reserves for pidgins: minus vitality, minus historicity, minus autonomy and minus standardization, with minus purity thrown in for good measure. Reinterpretation can and does occur on all five of the above dimensions. However, reinterpretation comes slowly, if at all, where power constellations remain unchanged. Against those who granted Yiddish nothing but vitality, Nathan Birnbaum argued at the turn of the century (1906d), that such a view left Ashkenazi Jewry (whether Western or Eastern) in the anomalous position of having a "living language (Yiddish) and a dead real language (Hebrew)". Against those who wished to proclaim Yiddish as "a national Jewish language", Y.L. Perets argued that a national language is one that is both widely spoken and widely read by its constituency. In his view, Yiddish was a folk vernacular, because it was not widely read/written by its constituency. On the other hand, Hebrew too was not a national language of the Jewish people, according to Perets, but, rather a classical language, because it was not generally spoken. Indeed, Perets believed, at around the time of the 1908 Tshernovits Yiddish Language Conference, that Jews were in the anomalous position of being an ethnonational group without a truly national language. While the latter plaint has also been expressed by various pidgin/ creole circles, PEJLs are distinctive in this connection since they alone have a built-in classical rival within their own speech community, a rival who is fully accepted by all, whether spoken or not.

POST-EXILIC JEWISH LANGUAGES

31

Conclusions The presence of a co-territorial correlate and source language (determinant) is the common linguistic situation of pidgins/creoles and PEJLs. They both reveal a constellation of powerlessness, naming quandries, negative self images and limited written functions, all of these circumstances being antecedents and consequences of perceived lacks of "purity" and autonomy. But there are also important differences between PEJLs and pidgins/creoles. PEJLs and pidgins/creoles differ in their genesis scenarios. They differ in their functional origins and in their functional mainstays. They differ in their co-literacy opportunities. They differ in that only PEJLs have a historically recurring and predictable intracultural relationship with a sanctified classical language and, therefore, manifest the recurring development of calque varieties with traditional read/written and spoken functions, functions which ultimately influence the linguistic nature of all PEJLs even in other, modern secular functions. As threatened species, PEJLs and most pidgins/creoles must either protectively withdraw from the modern world or learn to master functional corners of that world in which they can find and defend their own functional advantages. Some of their most constant users are also their worst enemies and that, indeed, is a difficult burden to live with. Notes *

Preparation of this paper was facilitated by the Netherlands Institute for Advances Study (NIAS), Wassenaar, The Netherlands, and by the Institute for Advanced Studies, Hebrew University, Jerusalem, at both of which I spent parts of a recent sabbatical year. I am grateful to Joseph Chetrit, Michael Clyne, David Gold, Manfred Klarberg, Rakhmiel Peltz, Leonard Prager, and David Roskies for their critical comments on earlier drafts.

1.

Throughout this paper I use the expression "post-exilic Jewish languages" (abbreviated PEJLs) to signify Jewish languages originating in the diaspora after the destruciton of the Second Temple (68 C.E.). Although the assets and debits of this term have yet to be fully examined, it does stress a focus (place of emergence) and time frame that may prove useful for the present discussion and for others as well.

2.

Most of my examples and references pertain to Yiddish and Judezmo,

32

Y I D D I S H : T U R N I N G TO L I F E primarily because they have thus far received the bulk of sociolinguistic attention in the PEJLs field. Where I extrapolate or allude to other PEJLs than Yiddish or Judezmo, I do so on the basis of conversations either with native speaker informants and/or with a number of scholars who have gained first­ hand experience with these languages. Nevertheless, many of my extrapolations might best be regarded as hypotheses derived from Yiddish and Judezmo and in need of further testing insofar as other PEJLs are concerned.

3.

There is recent evidence, not yet systematically presented, that Jewish English is now influencing Jewish languages everywhere, even where it has not been the co-territorial or prior Jewish language. The influence of Jewish English often appears to be at the expense of Yiddish and/or Hebrew/Targumic.

4.

I will follow Weinreich (1980) and others and use the designation "Targumic" for the Jewish language also referred to as Aramaic, Judeo-Aramaic or Aramic.

5.

A less frequent constituent of Jewish languages consists of influences from other co-territorial Jewish languages, for example, Judezmo influences on Yiddish in "Old Yishuv" Palestine (that is, prior to the period of modern, Zionist settlement) or the mutual influences between Judezmo and Yahudic (Mugrabi) in Morocco (Chetrit 1985).

6.

In connection with both Yiddish and Judezmo there are also advocates and cultivators who are not concerned with the issue of Abstand and are more oriented towards accepting majority local usage. In the field of Judezmo studies, David Baracas should be mentioned among those favoring fidelity to Spanish. Bunis (1982), on the other hand, enumerates and describes several segments of a Judezmo speaking (and even writing) society that preferred varieties that were locally and Hebraically colored, rather than pursue the goal of "as Spanish as possible".

7.

While it is true that there are entire (free-standing) translations of the Bible into Ivre-taytsh, Ladino and the corresponding calque varieties of Yahudic and Yavanic, these versions began as aids to study or understanding of the leshon-hakodesh original and remind every user of the normative goal and expectation that the original be known and consulted. The calque transla­ tions often remain linguistically rather fixed, sometimes for centuries, even after this lack of modification tends to counteract their initial roles as study aides. In social psychology it is well known that "mechanisms become drives" (means become ends). In the PEJLs field, study calques often achieve semihallowed lives of their own, although they always pre-suppose and underscore the primary role of the original on the part of true cultural role-models.

8.

All writing systems naturally foster their own typical orthographic conventions. One such that should not be overlooked in the Jewish languages field is that of the silent alef at the beginning of words that start with vocalic  or і sounds. This is a very old and powerful visual convention, stemming from leshon-hakodesh, that is reintroduced into all written PEJLs that I have encountered. As for phonological change fostered by Jewish writing

POST-EXILIC JEWISH LANGUAGES

33

conventions, I have in mind spelling pronunciations, that is, the tendency to pronounce new, strange, or foreign words the way the spelling implies, for example, pronouncing the second l in Lincoln, both in Yiddish and in Israeli Hebrew. 9.

I trust that it has been clear throughout that pursuits that I have termed "traditional" are those tied most directly to the study of hallowed texts, commentaries and guides. Accordingly, "non-traditional" pertains to various other topics and genres of reading and writing, e.g. chapbooks, Jewish histories, literary efforts (including journalism, poetry and prose), where the link to hallowed texts is either nonexistent or marginalized.

10.

The copresence of Laazic, Zarphatic and Italkic speakers in Loter and/or in other areas of very early Yiddish speech may well have added inter-Jewish group dynamics to the early distancing of Yiddish from co-territorial nonJewish Germanic varieties. The later and recurring copresence of Ashkenazic and Sefardic Jews in Amsterdam and in London (or, still later in the Balkans and in pre-Zionist Palestine) may also have contributed to the further distancing of Yiddish from German and ofJudezmo from Spanish. Each such instance highlights the social processes by means of which outside languages may, u n d e r certain social circumstances, be fashioned into distinctively/contrastively Jewish (or more distinctively Jewish) ones, not only due to Jewish/non Jewish but also due to Jewish group A/Jewish group  interactions.

11.

Werner Weinberg, Hebrew Union College, Cincinnati, is working on comments in the rabbinic literature concerning the loss of spoken leshonhakodesh and on the steps advocated by the rabbis in order to reestablish it as a vernacular so as to reap the benefits of greater piety and more advanced scholarship within Jewish society. David E. Fishman, Brandeis University, is working on medieval and early-modern rabbinic comments on the permissible halachic use of PEJLs.

12.

To those who would prefer to say that PEJLs are part of minhog (rabbinically unregulated custom) and not of din (rabbinically governed law) I would like to point out that David E. Fishman's data show that there were frequent dinim m 'ďrabonim (formal rabbinic pronouncements) about the use of PEJLs. The lack of Jewish high regard for their own post-exilic vernaculars does not necessarily imply colossal linguistic insecurity or self-depreciation. General consciousness of, let alone high regard for, vernaculars is a rather modern phenomenon (see Fishman 1972). Neither vernacular consciousness nor high regard are noticeable even today within Yiddish-maintaining Ultra-Orthodox speech communities, the members of which are noticeably quite distant from self-depreciation.

13.

As implied above in connection with women, the role of those Jews who least mastered Hebrew/Targumic needs to be given special (or at least greater than usual) consideration in the genesis of PEJLs, for they were least able to utilize and adapt the calque variety and, thereby, may have contributed less to the distancing of any new PEJL from its co-territorial correlate. On the other hand, their likelihood of being at the forefront of new, outside vernacular usage would depend on the nature ofJewish/non-Jewish contacts, that is, on

34

YIDDISH: TURNING TO LIFE whether these contacts were primarily at the level of daily life of the masses (in work, buying/selling, residential propinquity) or at the more restricted level of spokesman-intermediaries-entrepreneurs. My understanding of premodern Jewish history leads me to assume far more of the latter than of the former and, therefore, to assume a trickling down process in which the language shift of the masses was generally slower than that of the speech networks of "change agents". The impact of the latter would have been greater on less literate men or on illiterate men and women (as far as Hebrew/Targumic is concerned) than on the rabbinic and more scholarly speech networks. Although the last must be assumed to be most change resistant, it is their accommodative change which is required for a new calque variety to come into being, the latter being the earliest "official legitimization" that PEJLs receive in premodern contexts. Thus, a continuum of usage, exposure and traditionalism within the Jewish community needs to be posited: (a) the pious and scholarly elite, most insulated and most fully associated with Hebrew/Targumic, the older Jewish vernacular and its calque variety, (b) the moderately Hebrew/Targumic-literate rank and file, who are most oriented to the usage of the foregoing but whose speech is also exposed to and influenced by the new vernacular, (c) the less (or non-) Hebrew/Targumic rank and file, whose speech is most exposed to and influenced by the new vernacular, and (d) the active change agents (often: a rival elite vis-à-vis the traditional scholarship/piety elite) who learn the new vernacular first, adopt it most and introduce it to the Jewish speech community at large. This triple gradation of traditional encapsulation, repertoire of usage and degree of contact with the winds of change must be examined if we are to better understand differential intracommunal contributions to the language shift process that is involved in the genesis of a new PEJL.

14.

This pattern of diversification of vernacular literacy is amply illustrated in Ashkenaz and also has its definite parallels in the rise of Western folk literacy. I advance it here as a hypothesis that may yet become documentable in PEJLs more generally, once their printed materials are subjected to more frequent and more focused sociolinguistic inquiry.

15.

The less than optimal views ofJews themselves towards PEJLs has apparently not denied several of these languages the designations 'Jewish" or "Judaism". However, there is no contradiction here, but, rather, a question of limits. It was commonly possible, at least for many members of the speech community, to speak more Jewishly and less Jewishly, involving more distancing or less distancing from the co-territorial non-Jewish correlate, as a type of repertoire variation, depending on the purpose pursued in interaction with particular interlocutors, topics, speech events, etcetera. When the more-Jewish ways of speaking also became widespread intracommunal vernaculars they also, simultaneously, became even more Jewish and more recognized as such on an intercommunal basis. The accompanying-caique functions are also possible clues to the "Judaism" appellation of a number of PEJLs. Nevertheless, notwithstanding these positive designations, which often competed with the negative designations with which we began our discussion, the question of limits and priorities arises. In the traditional view it is clear that leshon-

POST-EXILIC JEWISH LANGUAGES

35

hakodesh receives unquestioned preference for all serious and independent traditional functions. These are the functions that count when one is viewed as intracommunally literate. As for the designation "Jewish", as a/the name for a PEJL, I see no reason why this must depend on contrastive relocation elsewhere. Note, in this connection, that the case of Italkic (Judio)is just such a self-designation, even where the PEJL remains co-territorial with its correlate and does not migrate elsewhere as did Yiddish and Judezmo.

"Nothing new under the sun": a case study of alternatives in language and ethnocultural identity Today, in almost all of the Western world (and in the ethnopolitically consolidated and econotechnically modernized world more generally), nothing seems more "natural" than the current linkage between a particular ethnocultural identity and its associated language. For Frenchmen, that language is French and for Spaniards it is Spanish. What could be more "natural"? However, by their very nature, cultures are primarily conventional rather than truly natural ar­ rangements and, therefore, even these links, apparently natural though they seem, need to be examined more carefully, perhaps even more naively, and such fundamental questions as "Was it always so?" and "Why, when or how did it become so ?" need to be raised. Such questions commonly reveal that what is considered "natural" today was not always considerd to be so, not only because of lack of awareness (even today there may be Frenchmen who are not conscious of French as a reflection of, a symbol of and a contributor to their identity), but because even those few who were originally aware of the functions of language in the above ways were themselves of different minds and purposes. That such alternative programs (and, therefore, alternative language-and-ethnicity linkages) exist is frequently recognized among specialists who have studied pre-modern ethnocultural configura­ tions. "Who are the Lue?" Mooreman asks (1965) and provides a host of different views both by outsiders (neighbors of those whom some call Lue) and by insiders (those who sometimes call themselves Lue), in which the ethnocultural designation, the language designation and the link between the two all show variation. Similar cases are more dif­ ficult to find in contemporary Europe, but they are not completely un­ known even there, particularly among some of its eastern and south­ ern Slavic groups (see, e.g., Magocsi 1978 on the Subcarpathian Rus). In less-developed and/or less-consolidated settings (and the U.S.A.

Reprinted with permission from The Rise and Fall of the Ethnic Revival. Berlin: Mouton, 1985:77-103.

38

YIDDISH: TURNING TO LIFE

may well be one of the latter), instances such as these are much more common. All such cases, wherever they occur, lead us to be more sensitive to the possibility of earlier, less consolidated periods (or regions) in the development of ethnolinguistic identity even among those populations for whom current linkages have lasted for centuries, and, even more decidedly, to sensitize us to changes in ethnicity and in language and ethnicity linkages that are ongoing today (see, e.g., LePage and Tabouret-Keller 1982). Still rarer, however, is a case such as the one to be examined here, in which ethnocultural identity per se is well established, both by internal and by external definitions, but its "natural" vernacular language counterpart is still symbolically unfinalized and, therefore, subject to widely differing programmatic formulations. The case itself pertains to early 19th-century Eastern European Jewish society, but its problems are generalizable to the late modernization of other societies with intact sacro-classical traditions. In such societies (other major examples of which are the Greek case in Europe, the Islamic Arabic case in the Near East and North Africa, the Tamil case in South Asia and the Mandarin Chinese case in East Asia), diglossia between what are consensually viewed as "separate languages" has persisted long after its disappearance in Western Europe. In Western Europe, the typical diglossic pattern H/L began to be resolved in favor of the vernaculars even before the Reformation ended in the full triumph of the latter as symbols of national identity. This process began first in the Atlantic seacoast countries with massification of participation in commerce, industry and armed service. In Central and Eastern Europe, however, the domination of former or current sacroclassical languages for serious writing continued much longer so that German, Russian and finally Italian achieved full general recognition as vernaculars symbolic of national identity and worthy of governmental, literary and educated usage only by the 18th century. Thereafter in Europe, the pattern LH/LL (instead of former H/L) in which varieties of the former L are used for both formal/written and informal/spoken functions was denied only to minorities that lacked state apparatuses under their own control, a denial which implicitly recognized the dynamic as well as the symbolic nature of the language and ethnicity link (Fishman 1972a). For Jews and Greeks, however, no such resolution was possible for yet other reasons. Sacroclassical languages continued to reign supreme for them, both functionally and symbolically, and their vernaculars remained in the shadows on both accounts.

A CASE STUDY OF ALTERNATIVES

39

The traditional Jewish vernacular roles H/L is not an adequate formulaic representation of the role ofJewish vernaculars in traditional Jewish society. Jewish vernaculars (Yavanic in Greece, Judezmo in Spain and then in the Balkans, Chuadit in Provense, Tsarfatic in France, Italkic in Italy, Yiddish in Germany and then in Eastern Europe, Yahudic in most Moslem lands) always had more than spoken vernacular functions. Indeed, they were regularly used for such sanctity-proximate functions as the oral, written (later printed) translation of prayers, oral (later printed) translation of Bible and of Talmud 2 and as the discourse language for the study of Talmud (Fishman 1981c). Note, however, that although these vernaculars were admitted into the pale of sanctity, they never functioned independently or exclusively in that pale. They were always merely co-present in the realm of sanctity as assisting, attending, serving vehicles rather than as primary or exclusive ones. Thus, even though the true societal allocation of languages to social functions in traditional Jewish communities was a complex one, 3 the vernacular alone was never in full sway in any H function. At the point at which our case begins, towards the end of the 18th century, several earlier attempts at promoting Yiddish, the then 900-year-old Central and Eastern European Jewish vernacular, to serious H functions had already failed.4 However, the spread of modern ideas and processes into Eastern Europe guaranteed that additional attempts would be made, resisted and defended. Not since the times of Aramaic had a Jewish vernacular been a major bone of interrabbinic Jewish contention. 5 With the coming of modernization in Eastern Europe, a century and a half of "vernacular debate" was launched in which the modernizers themselves were far from united as to the solutions that they advocated. Not only were various vernaculars advocated (Jewish as well as non-Jewish) but even Loshnkoydesh was advocated for modern purposes, oral as well as written.

The Haskole comes to Eastern Europe Like modernization more generally, vernacular awareness came to Jewish Eastern Europe from Germany in particular and from "Western Europe" more generally. Modernization as a diffuse whole was the goal of a movement known as haskole ("enlightenment"). Since it was an intellectual current more than a political one, it was

40

YIDDISH: TURNING TO LIFE

variously interpreted and had no real organizational apparatus. Its ideological/philosophical counterparts had already strongly impacted German Jewry by the time it began to influence Jewish intellectuals in the eastern Austro-Hungarian Empire (particularly in Galicia)6 and in the western Czarist Empire. Its spokesman and fountainhead in Germany had been Moses Mendelssohn (1729-1786), and many of its earliest protoganists in Eastern Europe had been his students during their younger years. However much they may have differed amongst themselves, they all tended to share three views: (a) modern knowledge and modern behaviour was bringing about major changes in the co-territorial societies that surrounded Jewish Eastern Europe, (b) as a result, it was urgent for Jewish society also to change in many ways, both internally as well as vis-à-vis the co-territorial societies, and (c) it was the responsibility of Jewish intellectuals to formulate, interpret and guide this change process for the maximum benefit of the Jewish people as a whole. These three views were so broad and nebulous that they did not differentiate between the parent haskole in Germany and its child, the haskole in Eastern Europe. In reality, however, both with respect to their programs and their consequences, the two haskoles differed markedly. Whereas the former aimed at sociocultural and political integration ofJews (redefined only as a religious group: "Germans of Moses' persuasion") into "society at large" and, therefore, rejected the notion of separate Jewish kehilas (community councils) or a separate Jewish vernacular (given that a separate Catholic vernacular or a Protestant vernacular would have seemed equally superfluous), the latter generally viewed Jews as a separate ethnocultural entity in need of political rights, on the one hand, and of economic, educational and cultural modernization on the other hand. However, the latter goals were not unambiguous vis-à-vis the need for separate governing community councils or for a separate vernacular (or, even if there were to be such, maintenance of their unique functions) and, accordingly, these and other related issues remained "on the agenda" and the Eastern haskole debated them bitterly and at seemingly interminable length. Insofar as the "language issue" was concerned, three major views arose: (i) that Yiddish could serve as the medium of early modernization but that it might very well be replaced later by Polish or another co-territorial vernacular, (ii) that Hebrew itself should optimally serve as the vehicle of modernization but that German might initially need to be used since it was the only "enlightened" language to which Jews had

A CASE STUDY OF ALTERNATIVES

41

ready access and (iii) that Yiddish alone was capable of integrating modernity and tradition in such a way that the new would fit harmoniously with the old. These three views received their earliest extensive formulation in Galicia in the first quarter of the 19th century by three bearers of enlightment ( = maskilim), M. Mendl Lefin-Satanover, Tuvye Feder and Yankev Shmuel іk. The clash between these three left echoes which reverberated clearly in the vernacular/cultural programs of Zionism, Bundism and Folkism, more-focused social, cultural and political movements that came into being before the century ended or soon thereafter. Menakhem Mendl Lefin-Satanover (1749-1826)8 Lefin-Satanover was rightly called "the father of the Galician fiaskole" since he encouraged many other Jewish intellectuals ("proto-elites", I have called them elsewhere, 1972d) to cultivate and to spread enlightenment among Eastern European Jews. Although he was an ordained rabbi and an acknowledged Talmudic master, he also studied mathematics and natural sciences, both in German and in French, and visited Berlin often so that he could converse with Mendelssohn (who considered Lefin-Satanover his most important "Polish" pupil) and with maskilim from the east as well as from the west. He was among the very first Galician Jewish intellectuals to express the view that it was not only permissible but incumbent upon Jews to study modern subjects if they were not only to become citizens of their respective countries but defenders and adapters of Jewish society in modern contexts. Indeed, Lefin-Satanover formulated a rather complete program for the intellectual and cultural improvement of Jewry. He submitted this plan - written in impeccable French - to the Polish Sejm. A further indication of Lefin-Satanover's own substantial interaction with non-Jewish society is certainly the fact that it was his friend and patron, Count Adam Czprtoryski (whose wife and children he tutored in various subjects and who had granted him a life-long stipend so that he could devote himself to scholarship and enlightenment) - a member of the Polish royal family - who had asked him to prepare such a plan for the Sejm's Committee on the Jewish Question. Lefin-Satanover's plan (1791/1792) called for the establishment of Polish public schools for Jewish youngsters. After their traditional "coming of age" (as 13 yearolds), Jewish boys were to be required to attend these schools so that

42

YIDDISH: TURNING TO LIFE

they could take courses in mathematics, natural sciences, modern agricultural methods, Polish history and customs as well as "rational Jewish subjects" (Maimonides, e.g.), all to be taught in Polish. The avowed purpose of these schools was to prepare graduates who would become modern communal leaders and leaders in the struggle against khasidism.9 Although Lefin-Satanover's plan did not elicit any great support in the Sejm - Poland itself underwent its second par­ tition in 1793 and its third in 1795 and the Polish nobility that served in the Sejm was presumably preoccupied with more pressing matters - his plan is adequately indicative of his goal: to combat mysticism, to foster rationalism and to bring Jews into touch with the modern world in general and with its Jewish counterparts in particular. Lefin-Satanover was not overly disturbed by the failure of his sweeping plan to elicit support. He embarked on less ambitious and more piecemeal "educational efforts". He translated into exception­ ally clear and simple Hebrew the French volume by S.A. Tisson, Avis au peuple sur sa santé (1761), calling it Refues ho-om (Cures of the People).10 He did the same for parts of Benjamin Franklin's Poor Richard's Almanac (Kheshbn banefesh, 1809). In both cases, he attracted a larger than usual readership for secular writings in Hebrew, not only because of interest in the material per se, but because he insisted on simple Hebrew, without flourishes, without biblical metaphors, end­ less asides, literary allusions, puns or any of the other stilted conven­ tions that had long dominated Hebrew writing, whether secular or religious. He obviously wanted his books to be read by ordinary folk.11 Nevertheless, no matter how hard Lefin-Satanover tried to write in a "simple, understandable and interesting" way - in order to meet his self-imposed obligation (as a maskil) to spread modern learn­ ing among the people, he finally realized that there was no way in which this goal could be attained as long as Hebrew was his vehicle of communication. Only through Yiddish, his mother tongue and that of all his readers, could he really reach everyone (men and women, old and young, rich and poor). Finally, he decided to do exactly that - to publish a serious book in Yiddish - regardless of the break with convention that such a step represented.

Lefin-Satanover's Bible: translations into Yiddish The idea to render selected parts of the Old Testament in Yiddish had come to Lefin-Satanover much earlier, during his visits to the famous

A CASE STUDY OF ALTERNATIVES

43

German-Jewish philosopher and modernizes Moses Mendelssohn, in Berlin, in the late 1770s and early 1780s. Mendelssohn himself had translated the Pentateuch and provided his own commentaries thereto (in 1783), both in High German, "in order that everyone might be able to understand it easily and quickly." Up until then, only Yiddish translations were available. These were entirely unacceptable to Mendelssohn for three reasons: (i) they were in Yiddish, (ii) they were in archaic Yiddish and (iii) they were inaccurate. For Mendelssohn, Yiddish was not only a hideous corruption of German (a view that he adopted from gentile contemporaries such as Goethe [Low 1979] and that he helped spread among Jews and gentiles alike), but an utterly objectionable barrier between German Jews and "other Germans", generally (Mendelssohn 1782). The fact that some of the contemporary Yiddish translations were poorly done (certainly so by Mendelssohn's sophisticated and critical standards) and that they were in an archaic calque variety that was almost as distant from the everyday Yiddish that German Jews spoke as it was from the standard German that Mendelssohn wished them to speak, only made his translation (published in Hebrew characters since the majority of Jews who could understand German could not read the adapted Latin characters [these being termed galkhes, i.e. "tontured script"!), all the more acceptable to those who did not share his reformist philosophy. However, if it was possible to translate the Bible into German so that German Jews could understand it easily and quickly, that was distinctly not a viable solution for the Galician and other Eastern European Jews whom Lefin-Satanover sought to reach. Over the centuries of residence in Slavic environments, their Yiddish had lost many of its earlier German features until it was, by Lefin-Satanover's time, far less mutually intercomprehensible with standard German than was the far more German Yiddish of Mendelssohn's public. Clearly, it was only via Yiddish that Lefin-Satanover could reach his widest public, whether for the purpose of making the Bible understandable to everyone or for the purposes of spreading knowledge, rationality and enlightenment more generally. LefinSatanover was always the rationalist in his approach to Yiddish. He referred to it as a vital instrument if he were to "bring culture and enlightenment to the Jewish population of Poland" (in a letter to his subsequently famous student Yoysef Perl, 1808). As it happened, Lefin-Satanover's translations were clear breaks with long established tradition not so much quantitatively (there had been many and much more extensive translations before his) as quali-

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tatively and visually. He concentrated on five books of philosophy (Proverbs, Psalms, Job, Ecclesiastes and Lamentations), since he believed them to be particularly likely to move readers to think for themselves, to reflect and to ponder on their own. However, only one of these five saw the light of day during his lifetime (Proverbs, 1813, published in Tarnapol), and it created such a storm that he abandoned his plans to publish any of the others. What exactly was it that was so revolutionary about them? The revolutionary nature of Lefin-Satanover's translations Lefin's translations departed from the norm of Yiddish-in-print12 in three dramatically striking ways, all of which have to be considered programmatic rather than merely idiosyncratic or accidental. To begin with, his translation was printed in square Hebrew letters (oysiyes mereboes) i.e., in a typeface that had until then almost always been reserved for printing sanctified texts such as a prayer book, the Old Testament or Talmud. Although there had already been some minor precedent for setting aside the centuries-old distinctive type­ face for Yiddish (vaybertaytsh, it was called, i.e., the typeface used in Yiddish translations or popularizations ostensibly for women 13), the typeface thatLefinchose was definitely a break with a deeply ingrain­ ed and culturally consensual visual norm. To set aside that norm was to call attention to an implicit new status for Yiddish, an implicit in­ dependence of Yiddish from subservience to Loshn-koydesh; it was a re­ jection of the cultural assumption that only Loshn-koydesh could utilize oysiyes mereboes. It was a visual declaration of equality or even of accen­ tuation. Such a declaration had been made a century or more earlier by another rebel and had ended rather sadly in full capitulation (Stein 1970).14 After Lefin, however, the ice was broken and Yiddishin-print never again returned to its previous "segregated" typeface. However, Lefin's translation of Proverbs caused a storm at the textual level which greatly surpassed (and outlasted) any hackles that it raised at the visual level. Basically, this was due to the fact that Lefin also rejected the centuries-old linguistic-stylistic-substantive tradition with respect to Yiddish translations of hallowed texts. In accord with that tradition, Yiddish-in-print followed conventions established in Germany literally centuries earlier. As a result, it was twice removed from the spoken vernacular of Eastern Europe. All written (printed) language follows a convention of its own and is by no means a faithful

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reflection of the language as popularly spoken. However, in the Yiddish case, perhaps because its serious written/printed functions were always rather tenuous and restricted, this distance was further magnified by the preservation of an archaic written norm. Further­ more, in accordance with that norm, the Yiddish employed was not only heavily impacted by German, both lexically and grammatically, but Hebraisms that were completely assimilated into Yiddish were never employed in translation of words of Loshn-koydesh origin. This convention, of course, further accentuated (artificially so) the Germanic nature of the translation and further distanced it from spoken Yiddish. Finally, at a more purely stylistic level, Yiddish trans­ lations of holy or sanctified writ were more than translations; they were also abbreviated commentaries. Since it was assumed that those who needed the translations were incapable of following the many learned rabbinic commentaries that had been written in Loshnkoydesh about every nuance of the original texts, the Yiddish translations constantly departed from the texts themselves in order to provide snatches of those commentaries. As a result, those Yiddish readers who really could not follow the Loshn-koydesh original at all could, at times, be quite unsure as to what in the translation was text and what was commentary, since the latter was often unidentified as such while being interwoven with the former. In one fell (but very deft, very sophisticated, very delicately orchestrated) literary swoop, Lefin abandoned all three of the above conventions. 15 His translation of Proverbs approximated popularly spoken Yiddish to such an extent that even today, 170 years later, it strikes the reader as somewhat overly "familiar", "informal" or "folksy", much more so, e.g., than does the superb modern Yiddish translation of the complete Old Testament by Yehoyesh (completed some 120 years after Lefin's work). However, not only did Lefin utilize slavisms and contractions galore (indeed, he may have purposely over-used them), all of them implying popular speech and all of them reinforcing the distance that modern Eastern European Yiddish had travelled over centuries from its Germanic origins, but he did not hesitate to translate Loshn-koydesh terms in the originals with their corresponding Loshn-koydesh equivalents in Yiddish as long as the latter were fully indiginized and widely employed. This, too, of course, accentuated the autonomy of Yiddish from its German (and non-Jewish) origins and stressed its distinctly Jewish nature. 16 Finally, Lefin's translation was precisely that and no more. There were no commentaries, no asides to help the reader, no paraphrasing

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of diverse rabbinic insights over the centuries. There was only the translated text, beautifully, movingly, sensitively rendered. Whoever wanted more than that would have to study further, just as did those who had access to the original. Like any really competent translation, therefore, Lefin's work led the really serious reader back to the original rather than replacing it; it encouraged further independent study rather than implying that the reader could go no further. Although Lefin's motives are still subject to interpretation (some Yiddish scholars still refuse to attribute to him a truly positive attitude towards Yiddish),17 his conscientious approach to the task he had undertaken is beyond doubt. In one of his letters, he put it this way: ".. . to exert myself to approximate it [the Yiddish of his translation] to our language and to distance it from German . . . exactly as it is spoken nowadays among us . .. the language of our eastern Podolye." 18 It seems to me that such conscientiousness, such awareness of Ausbau,19 such sensitivity to the flavor of slavisms and hebraisms, im­ plies not only stylistic artistry but the furthering of a program of action in which Yiddish would exercise new symbolic functions. In his translations, Lefin was carrying forward his original plan submitted to the tottering Polish Sejm in 1791-92: a plan to fashion Jews into a more modern people, a people fully in touch with its own tradition but yet capable of adapting it, adding to it selectively by controlled contact with surrounding cultures, evaluating it (thinking it through) by means of more massive participation in these processes rather than merely by means of blind reliance on rabbinic authorities, on the one hand, or on foreign models - even highly regarded German models - on the other hand. Indeed, not only would we miss the sig­ nificance of Lefin were we to interpret his translation as a mere stylis­ tic achievement today, but we would be unable to explain the contro­ versy that immediately arose in connection with it then, when it appeared. It was viewed programmatically both by those who reviled it as well as by those who defended it. To do any less today would be tantamount to seeing things less clearly today, with the passage of time, than they were seen by the maskilim of that very day and age.

Tuvye Feder and the attack upon Lefin's translation Not only was Lefin's translation brutally criticized qua translation but its clearly-sensed promotion of Yiddish was rejected precisely on

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those grounds. The self-proclaimed "leader of the opposition" faction of maskilim was Tuvye Gutman Feder (1760-1817), a wellknown grammarian, Old Testament scholar and, like most maskilim of that time, a dedicated follower of Mendelssohn. Although similar in background to Lefin, in many ways (Feder, too, was a Galitsianer, i.e., born and educated in Galitsiye, and was widely read in Western languages, particularly German), Feder was far less fortunate with respect to earning the wherewithal to feed, clothe and house his family and himself. Disinclined, as were also most maskilim, to earn his livelihood by means of serving as a rabbi of a particular community, and unable to receive support, as did Lefin, from any major benefactor so that he might be able to spend his life in quiet and productive scholarship, Feder and his family were constantly on the move in search of funds. Not only did he frequently have to stoop to such time-consuming but traditionally low-paying pursuits as scribe, reader (of the weekly lection), cantor and preacher, but he was forced, on occasion, to write flattering doggerel about wealthy Jewish as well as non-Jewish "personages" in the hope of some monetary reward. Accordingly, he acclaimed Czar Alexander I for his victory over Napoleon in a lengthy poem, Hatslokhes aleksander (The Triumph of Alexander), and was constantly on the look out for an opportunity to come to greater attention in some potentially rewarding connection. Although Lefin's translation of Proverbs provided him with a seemingly perfect chance to do just that, it also enabled him to express views that both he and other maskilim believed deeply and had subscribed to previously, albeit in lessfocused fashion. Indeed, Lefin's translation seems to have struck Feder as virtually a personal affront. Not only was he irked by its apparent advocacy of "common/vulgar Yiddish", but he was exasperated that a fellow maskil could so falsely interpret and so foully mishandle the mission of the haskole and the goals of its great leader, Moses Mendelssohn. In order to publicize his defense of the true haskole, as he interpreted it, Feder authored a lengthy and bitter attack on Lefin and on his work. Since he lacked the funds necessary to publish his work, he circulated it in manuscript form among other maskilim, in order both to publicize it as well as to raise the funds that would enable him to have it printed. The literary form of his attack, entitled Kol mekhatsetsim: sikhe beoylem haneshomes {Voice of the Archers: A Discussion in the World of the Spirits), was that of a heavenly trial in which maskilim of various earlier periods gathered to indict Lefin.

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T h e y charged - in Feder's characteristically i n t e m p e r a t e prose that Lefin's translation was full of filth a n d that it literally stank to high heaven. Whoever sees it runs away. It should be hacked to pieces. It should be burned in fire. Its name should never be recalled. The foul scroll, which the prematurely senile Lefin has penned . . . seeks only to find grace in the eyes of concubines and maidens/old maids and even they flee from it saying: "Are there not enough madmen without him?" T h e maskil Isaac Eichel, who h a d translated Proverbs into H i g h G e r m a n only some few decades before, charged Lefin with c o m m i t t i n g treason against Mendelssohn. " H e spits in the face of refined speakers; only the language of the coarse find grace in his eyes." This "vulgar language" is variously referred to as a mixture of all tongues, a gibberish, a monstrosity. N o w o n d e r t h e n that the heavenly court finally rules that Lefin's work must b e b u r n e d a n d its ashes discarded in a cesspool! Feder's hyperbole both confuses a n d lays bare quite a variety of p u r p o r t e d shortcomings insofar as Lefin's translation is concerned. O n e of the themes that almost all of Lefin's heavenly p r o s e c u t o r s stress is the p u r p o r t e d l y unaesthetic n a t u r e of Yiddish relative to either Loshn-koydesh, o n the o n e h a n d , or H i g h G e r m a n , o n the other. This view went considerably b e y o n d Mendelssohn's own dictum as to the so-called dwarfed a n d disfigured nature of Yiddish (interestingly enough, Mendelssohn himself was a hunchback) a n d referred to Lefin's well-known rejection of the florid phraseology a n d the high flown r h e t o r i c that typified the H e b r e w style of most other maskilim. Lefin h a d ridiculed that very style (known as melitse) as "impenetrable without prior oral explanation by the author." H e h a d consistently sought to avoid the melitse style from his very earliest writings in H e b r e w a n d h a d only e m b a r k e d o n his Yiddish translations when he was clearly convinced that even a simple a n d direct Hebrew was a barrier to comprehension that most Jews could n o t cross. T h u s , Lefin was a twofold enemy, since he was an o p p o n e n t to elegant, sophisticated usage even when he wrote Loshnkoydesh. Feder's stress o n elegance (in Loshn-koydesh if possible, b u t in High G e r m a n at the very least) was n o t merely an aesthetic whim. It reflected the conviction that only those who controlled a n d practiced the florid a n d p l a t i t u d i n o u s melitse style were worthy of intellectual leadership a m o n g Jews. It was n o t only Loshn-koydesh, therefore, that h a d to r e m a i n the symbolic language of Jewish

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modernization (yes, Feder, too, was a champion of modernization; all of his grammatical and biblical analyses clearly identifying him as breaking with rabbinic scholarship and its traditional legalistic focus), but it had to be that variety of Loshn-koydesh that was furthest from what the ordinary Jew could possibly fathom. Lefin, on the other hand, had not only opted for as much transparency and nonelitism as possible in his Loshn-koydesh but had taken the next step, to ultimate transparency and non-elitism in print, namely, to contemporary spoken Yiddish per se. From Feder's point of view, Lefin and he stood polls apart even were they both to write in Loshnkoydesh; given, however, that Lefin had chosen to bring enlighten­ ment in Yiddish, "a language of darkness", he was clearly a renegade beyond the pale. In Feder's view, modernization would transform Jewish life without reaching the stage that Lefin has striven for from the outset: the stage in which each Jew had access to basic Jewish and modern sources and was capable of thinking these through himself without recourse to khasidic or other mystic obfuscation. Accordingly, Feder firmly believed that traditional Jewish diglossia required hardly any adjustments at all for the purposes of modernization. Loshn-koydesh would remain in its H position but would be used for both traditional and modern purposes. If its symbolic status as representing, embodying and fostering the highest Jewish intellectual order required any supplementation at all, then obviously this should come only from High German, the unchallenged language of modernization par excellence in all of Eastern and Central Europe. For Feder, Yiddish played no role at all in the symbolic order of Jewry. For Lefin Yiddish at least had an effective mission to perform, a utilitarian service to discharge. If Lefin came to Yiddish without any illusions as to its beauty, its dignity, or its traditional validity as a Jewish medium, nevertheless, as a pragmatist he wanted it to be used effectively, movingly, tellingly, as the major carrier (at least initially) of Jewish modernization.

Yankev Shmuelіk(1772-1831) and the defense of Yiddish Both Lefin and Feder had their followers and the dispute between them quickly engulfed the still rather small world of Eastern European maskilim, even though Feder's manuscript was no more

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than just that and literally had to be passed around from hand to hand. However, it was quite clear that Lefin was by far the more highly regarded and better connected of the two, if only because of his longer and more distinguished record of intellectual contributions to haskole, the many students whom he had added to the ranks of the maskilim and his many wealthy patrons, Jewish as well as Polish (the latter making him a figure to be respected if not admired). As a result, many arose to defend him more out of rejection of Feder's untempered and irresponsible diatribe than out of any basic agreement with Lefin's program or the implicit role of Yiddish therein. However, his main defender, Yankev Shmuel і,  former student and long-time admirer of Lefin's, not only agreed with what Lefin had done but outdid him, particularly in his advocacy of Yiddish as a symbol of the very best in the Eastern European tradition. іk, too, like most other maskilim of the time and, most particularly, like Lefin, translated a considerable number of works from German, French and even English into Loshn-koydesh. Like Lefin, he was also greatly preoccupied with the need for "productivization" of the small town Jewish poor. Being independently wealthy (even more so than Lefin), he devoted a good bit of his time and money to encouraging Jews to enter agriculture and the artisan trades. He also supported many scholars and writers (as well as "would be" scholars and writers) - including Lefin himself during certain years - thereby enabling them to devote themselves uninterruptedly to their studies and writings and enabling him to become more fully aware of the gaps and contradictions in their thinking. This thorough familiarity ultimately contributed to his unique view among maskilim that haskole lacked involvement, lacked follow-through, indeed that it was "cerebral" to such a degree that it lacked warmth, feeling and "love for Jews as concrete people" as contrasted with "concern for Jews as an abstract problem". This stress on concrete and all-embracing love for Jews led іk ultimately to demand greater toleration and even admiration for khasidism. It was to khasidism that he bade the haskole look if it were ever to learn to do more than educate, criticize or scold Jews. A khasidic rabbi cared for his flock, helped them in time of need, comforted them in time of sorrow. іk saw no need to surrender these admirable traditional virtues in the process of modernization; least of all did he want to displace Jewish Gemeinschaft by a maskilic Gesellschaft (Tonnies 1957 [1887]). In 1815, some two years after Feder's manuscript had initially

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b e c o m e known, Bik's reply, in the form of a lengthy letter, m a d e the same rounds, from h a n d to hand, a m o n g Eastern E u r o p e a n maskilim. Bik's defense of Yiddish constitutes the very h e a r t a n d core of his letter, clearly indicating o n c e again that much, m u c h m o r e t h a n p e r s o n a l animosities a n d stylistic preferences lay at the very f o u n d a t i o n of the d i s a g r e e m e n t between Lefin a n d Feder. I n d e e d , Bik's defense of Yiddish became the classic defense of that language, repeated by all its ideological champions (as distinct from its various pragmatic implementers) ever since. Bik's letter m a d e the following t h r e e major points: 1. Yiddish has been the language of Jewish traditional life for centuries. іk lists the names of the greatest a n d most revered sages of Central a n d Eastern European Jewry during the past many centuries and reminds F e d e r (and all o p p o n e n t s of Yiddish) that they all spoke Yiddish, taught their students in Yiddish a n d discussed a n d d e f e n d e d their Talmudic interpretations with other scholars in Yiddish. This being the case, іk argues, it is i n c u m b e n t u p o n F e d e r (and others) to respect this vernacular a n d even to h o n o r it. 20 F u r t h e r m o r e , іk adds, o t h e r O l d T e s t a m e n t translations in Yiddish have existed in appreciable n u m b e r s before, going back to the Mirkeves hamishne of 1534 a n d the ever p o p u l a r , revised a n d r e p r i n t e d P e n t a t e u c h for women, Tsene-urene (1628). These were all rightly admired and highly valued for s p r e a d i n g familiarity with the O l d T e s t a m e n t a m o n g ordinary, less e d u c a t e d m e n a n d w o m e n . T h e r e is n o reason, іk concludes, for Lefin's translation to be viewed any differently. Here, of course, іk sidesteps the issue of modernization a n d the possible role of Yiddish as symbolic of Jewish mastery of m o d e r n subjects, m o d e r n roles a n d m o d e r n responsibilities. M o d e r n challenges a n d m o d e r n solutions are questionable verities. іk, therefore, related Yiddish to the u n q u e s t i o n e d great n a m e s a n d books of the past. In this way, he assures its positive historicity against Feder's charges of c o r r u p t i o n a n d bastardization. 2. Other modernizing nationalities do not hesitate to utilize their vernaculars to improve the lot of the everyday man. By a r g u i n g via analogy with the peoples of Central a n d W e s t e r n E u r o p e - a n d thereby avoiding c o m p a r i s o n s with m a n y Eastern E u r o p e a n nationalities whose vernaculars were still generally u n r e c o g n i z e d for serious purposes, symbolic or pragmatic - іk turns the tables on Feder. T o deny Jews the use of Yiddish in the course of their m o d e r n i z a t i o n is to deny them a major avenue to knowledge which all m o d e r n nationalities of E u r o p e were clearly delighted to have. Via their vernaculars even

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peasants have become literate and able to read and understand by themselves. Is this not something that Jews too should be encouraged to do, іk asks rhetorically. Therefore, іk concludes, instead of being exposed to criticism and ridicule, Lefin should really be congratulated and encouraged because works such as his (and more are needed!) spread knowledge and ethnic pride among the people at large. By discussing Lefin in a comparative framework vis-à-vis the great vernacular educators of the gentiles, іk utilizes a favourite debating tactic and intellectual stance of the haskole ("Oh, if we could only learn a lesson from the successful experience of the already modernized nationalities") against Feder and for Lefin and Yiddish. 3. Yiddish is no more linguistically inadequate than other vernaculars were at a comparable stage of modernization involvement Here іk specifically refers to other "mixed languages" (primarily to English) and other languages previously used primarily by "uneducated classes" (primarily German) and indicates that both of these languages succeeded fully in becoming "cultivated languages". Cultivated languages need not be made in heaven, іk says. Such languages are the by-products of generations of assiduous effort on the part of sages and writers who use them in order to communicate with each other and with the masses about new and important topics. As a result of such use by intellectuals, these languages, no matter how rough they may initially have been, become elegant, sensitive and refined instruments. The same can certainly occur to Yiddish. It is clear from the immediately above that іk envisioned what we now call language planning, both in its corpus planning and in its status planning aspects (Rubin and jernudd 1971, Fishman 1974a, Rubin et al. 1977). He recognized that all languages are initally rather ill-suited for societal functions that they have not hitherto discharged. He also recognizes that intellectuals change and adapt languages by putting them to new functions. With respect to Yiddish, he points to an area of responsibility that maskilim should assume rather than shirk. Bik's three point agenda vis-à-vis Yiddish - traditional cosanctity, modern utility, intellectual responsibility - clearly indicates that he surpassed his teacher Lefin in this respect. Lefin, unsurpassed stylist that he was and linguistic innovator that he was, rarely goes beyond pragmatic claims and practical plans in his view of Yiddish. іk raises Yiddish to the level of a symbolic verity: it is symbolic of the Jewish traditional past and present and, given responsible intellectual devotion, it can become symbolic of the modern Jewish future as well.

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Dénouement: Personal and linguistic None of our heroes (or antiheroes) came to a particularly "happy ending". Feder, always in dire need of funds, permitted himself to be "bought off' by the money that іk and other friends of Lefin offered. Ostensibly this money was to make up for the deposit that Feder had already given to the printer in Berditshev for publishing Kol makhatsetsim. However, it seems doubtful that Feder had ever paid any printer anything, and the fact that he also never published his letter replying to іk (see Verses 1983 for the text of this letter, hitherto lost and recently discovered) and further attacking Lefin would seem to substantiate the interpretation that his personal need for money had a higher priority than his need to publicize his views. He died in 1820, barely five years later, a bitter and defeated man. Thirty-three years later, when Feder, Lefin andіkhad all long since gone on to their eternal rewards, Kol mekhatsetsim was finally published, more as a curiosity than for any intrinsic interest in it. Lefin fared somewhat better, but he never recovered from the anguish and embarrassment that he experienced due to Feder's attack. He never published any of his other Old Testament translations, although in 1873, almost 50 years after Lefin's death in 1825, his translation of Ecclesiastes was published. 21 Fragments of his translations of Psalms and Job, as well as the complete translation of his Lamentations, can be found in an archive in Jerusalem. It was not until the beginning of the 20th century that Yiddish achieved either the full practical recognition that Lefin advocated or the full symbolic recognition that іk had recommended. 22 By then, modern secular Yiddish literature had begun to flower. On the other hand, Hebraism and Zionism had become well established as, in part, profound anti-Yiddish movements. While it cannot be said with any certainty that they were directly influenced by Fedeťs thinking, their rejection of Yiddish and enthronement of Hebrew often utilized many of his arguments. Indeed, echoes of the great debate of 1813-1815 linger on to this very day. Ultimately, external forces (Nazism, Communism and democratic assimilation) became the greatest enemies of Yiddish. However, internally, within the Jewish fold, the symbolic value of Yiddish often continues to be argued pro and con. It has remained an internally conflicted language and those who value it most are once again (since post-holocaust days) engaged primarily in an internal argument with others with whom they share a common ethnocultural identity. The parties to this argument share

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a common ethno-religious identity and yet differ as to the language(s) which symbolize(s) that identity for them. Conclusions a. Substantive The dissolution of a diglossia situation that has endured for centuries under the impact of modern massification processes has most usually involved the elevation of L. The variety hitherto employed primarily for everyday verbal rounds, informality and intimacy is functionally elevated and symbolically promoted to more dignified and status-related pursuits and identities. So it was with the demotion of Latin and the promotion of the vernaculars in the long process of Western European modernization. In this process, vernaculars triumphed as a result of changed power relationships, not only on a social class basis ("the masses and bourgeosie" vs. the "traditional elites" involving church, throne and gentry) but also on a regional/ethnocultural basis. Had Cataluna, Friesland, Wales and Provence been the integrative centers for consolidating and modernizing Spain, The Netherlands, Great Britain and France, Catalan, Frisian, Welsh and Occitan might have become the vernaculars symbolic ("naturally so") of those new econotechnical and ethnocultural national (as distinct from regional or subnational) constellations. However, the fact that vernaculars have so generally triumphed - both functionally and symbolically - upon the dissolution of diglossia, does not mean that it was or is inevitably so. Indeed, generally speaking, provernacular ideologies were rather late in establishing themselves. The process of doing so was doubly, perhaps even excruciatingly, difficult where the H and its sanctified traditions were fully indigenized and where econotechnical consolidation and modernization were long delayed. In Greece, in Ashkenazi Jewry, in Italy, in Russia - and later in the Islamic sphere - serious efforts were undertaken to combine modernization with vernacularization of the H. Only in Russia were these efforts discontinued in a decisive way at a sufficiently early point so that modernization and the state apparatus became substantially identified with the vernacular in early modern times. In the other

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locales, vernaculars have either triumphed in much delayed or vacillating fashion (Greece, Italy), or they have never fully triumphed at all (Ashkenazi Jewry and the Arabo-Islamic sphere). Indeed, by the time controlled and attenuated modernization was attained in most of the latter instances, the adherents of the traditionally symbolic Hs were frequently able to adapt them sufficiently for new functions so that it was the sanctified Hs rather than the plebeian Ls that became symbolic of both modern identity and continuity with the past. The case under discussion reveals the typically labile nature of the language and ethnicity identity link in early modern circumstances. Each of our three "heroes" possessed the same mother tongue and yet had markedly different views as to its symbolic significance for the purposes of modernization and its attendant social identity formation. Similarly, each of our three "heroes" was fully and identically "identified" ethnoculturally. Furthermore, each was a modernizer, in his own eyes, in the eyes of colleagues, in the eyes of their everyday coethnics and in the eyes of co-territorial non-Jews. Indeed, in many ways, they were highly similar and, nevertheless, their views of their shared traditional H, of their shared folk vernacular, of their shared co-territorial vernacular and of their shared language of wider communication differed widely. Thus, although it may well be inevitable for language in general to become symbolic of modern ethnocultural identity — after all, what better symbol system than language do we possess to convey and foster such identity? - it is far from inevitable that any particular language (or variety) will become symbolic for any particular ethnocultural identity. Ethnocultural identities are composites of continuity and fortuitous historical fortune. Germanic populations have been romanized, Celtic populations have been de-Celticized, Amerindian populations have been hispanicized and the resulting ethnocultural identities have, in time, "felt good", natural and authentic. Similarly, any one of the three options represented by our heroes could have triumphed and have fostered its own authentic identity. They each represented a fine-tuning of ethnocultural identity (a modernization thereof) in a context in which basic ethnocultural identity has long been established and was by no means in doubt. However, even finetunings can be difficult and disputatious and can lead in different language and identity directions. The fact that one or another triumphs only means that the others are less fortunate. The winner was not necessarily more authentic ab initio. The loser was not necess-

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arily less so. Any stable language and ethnocultural identity link ultimately comes to seem natural, "worked out". Another, quite unlike it, would also have ultimately felt just as natural and just as authentic, had it emerged victorious. The cases of extremely delayed (or nonexistent) vernacular symbolic promotion - delayed in all instances well beyond entry into significant modern identity and often beyond politically independent econotechnical control may well have certain features in common. One of these would seem to be unsubordinated indigenous classicals (and their accompanying elites) with overriding religious significance. Where religion has not only NOT been separated from the rest of culture, but, indeed, still serves to integrate the whole, to provide it with its elites/caretakers and to provide one and all with the major status rewards that society proffers, external H languages often come to be initial channels of secular modernization. In the ensuing struggles between the indigenous classicals and the external Hs (each with their respective elites) the vernaculars become "poor thirds", particularly when the classicals themselves undergo modernization for econotechnical purposes. Under such circumstances (e.g., in the Arabic world, in Greece, in China, in Somalia), the vernaculars cannot even claim sole pride of indigenousness, which they could do if the external Hs were to appear to emerge victorious. In each of these cases ethnic identity may not be at all in doubt (or in dispute) but its accompanying written vernacular may be long (or permanently) submerged. While the case of Yiddish vs Hebrew (Loshn-koydesh, later: Ivrit) vs German/Polish (later: other co-territorial vernaculars) also definitely has its own particularistic characteristics, it would seem to share (and to suggest) many general sociolinguistic circumstances of far broader interest, particularly the difficulty of displacing an entrenched indigenous elite that ultimately adapts its classical for moderniz­ ation purposes. Another substantive point that this study raises pertains to modernization per se as both a problem for and an aspect of contemporary ethnocultural identity. Such identity comes about not only as a clarification or consolidation vis-à-vis external alternatives but, importantly, also as a clarification and consolidation vis-à-vis various internal alternatives (alternatives within the same ethnocultural constellation) as well. Both types of alternatives are frequently differentiated in terms of the degree or content of their modernization, i.e., of their combination of authenticity (unmarked

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"own" aspects) and modernization (initially "foreign" aspects), a combination which is quintessential for all nationalist movements. For some insiders and during some periods of time such a combination is viewed as impossible, as incommensurable, as tantamount to being both Protestant and Catholic simultaneously. However, not only is even the latter possible (as some recent research on language and ethnic identity among adolescents in Northern Ireland reveals), but syncretism is a far greater principle of nonideological daily life than either intellectuals or elites care to recognize. Ultimately, the issue becomes not whether but what or how much of the outside to admit into the inside, how much of the new (and once-foreign) to indigenize, to synthesize, to incorporate into the preexisting and phenomenologically "authentic" tradition. Modern ethnic identity includes many hitherto foreign/modern ingredients that may once have appeared disjointed and contentious but that have now been digested and authenticized nevertheless. The "purification" movements that arise before this process is completed should remind us that the outcome is neither easy nor preordained with respect to any particular modern import. The foregoing point would seem to flow into the next (and last): "objectively small differences" may yet have subjectively huge consequences and, indeed, be experienced by insiders as objectively huge. Fully shared highest order preferences do not foreclose significantly different lower order preferences. Indeed, once highest order preferences are shared (as they were among the three protagonists on whom this paper is focused) there would seem to be no other outlet for human creativity (or is it combativity) than in connection with lower order preferences and, accordingly, the latter too easily become rallying cries for ethnocultural/philosophical value-differences pertaining to "the future of the people", the ideal society and, therefore, the ideal identity as well. No matter how in­ consequentially small the differences may seem to be to "objective outsiders", there is always (in language or in culture more generally) further differentiation between social networks (not to mention individual differences), both between and within higher order groups, and, therefore, further opportunity to ideologize, to mobilize and to exacerbate on the basis of such differentiation. "Objective similarity" is obviously of more minor significance than the subjective interpretation of social differentiation and of the power possibilities or rivalries with which such differentiation is readily associated. Once differentations become ideologized, and

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have their own elites to interpret, defend and cultivate them, they can continue virtually interminably (or until one party or another emerges as the definite victor in very physical and material terms). At the earliest stages, when few "members" are as yet conscious of the differences and of the interpretations later given to them, a large number of final solutions may be possible and are certainly available. However, such flexibility is counteracted by the very elites that exploit the differences that always exist, lower order differences though they may (seem to) be. After the internal struggle is over and it may last for generations if not for centuries - the authenticity for which men, women and children live and die is at hand (at least temporarily). "Authenticity" is the winning alternative; what was once one among many alternative differentiation-constellations is finally popularly understood (and elitistically defined) as "the only way" (i.e., as no alternative at all), as God given, as authentic, as really and truly the only possible ethnocultural identity for the group in question. b. Methodological I do not really mean to separate substance from method but do so here so that the latter can more easily be given the attention that is its due. The study of language and culture relationships is, in large part, a struggle against parochialism and ethnocentrism masquerading as universalism. However, as a topic area long productively dominated by anthropologists, there is some danger that fieldwork and ethnography by Westerners working in non-Western settings may, consciously or unconsciously, take on the aura of a universal supermethod. Perhaps one of the contributions of this paper may be that it calls into question such methodological parochialism and ethnocentrisms. If so, it attempts to do so in several respects. It stresses the study of historical cases, utilizing standard historical primary data (manuscripts, letters, diaries of a bygone age), neither accessible to ethnographic study nor to survey research nor experimentation. While it is no longer generally necessary to do, it may bear repeating in an area where little research has heretofore used this method, that "actors" or "members" who can no longer be observed can still be cautiously studied - and hypotheses concerning them advanced and tested - on the basis of extant historical materials. Like every other method of social research, this one

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has its very definite limitations (the individual researcher's interpretation of fortuitously preserved - and therefore incomplete - records), but again like every other method, it has produced a small number of clearly first-rate works. We would certainly all be poorer without the historical studies of Weber, Freud and Erikson, among many others. Methodological imperialism is not only ethnocentric (and, therefore unbecoming for the study of language and culture) but it would make us all poorer in the process. This paper also raises (or at least heightens) the issue of whether the researcher (the observer) must always be of a different ethnoreligious identity than that which pertains to the subject population (the observed). Much social research following a variety of methodological preferences (rather than historical research alone) calls this shibboleth into question and even the study of language and culture, in its most recent urban and applied ramifications, has also begun to do so. There are, of course, great risks when observer and observed share ethnoreligious or any other important aspects of identity: lack of detachment, lack of perspective, lack of broadly contrastive framework. We are certainly well aware of the fact that ethnic movements (as well as social class movements, religious movements, political movements and intellectual movements) can lead (and have led) to seriously biased and purposively invidious research. While such caricatures and miscarriages of social research must clearly be unmasked, disowned and discredited, the risks that they pose must not blind us to the assets of much research that is conducted by observers who share many central aspects of social identity with their subjects. Such shared identity may carry with it huge amounts of detailed knowledge that can never be equalled or acquired by outsiders. If such knowledge can be objectified and if the research utilizing it is accompanied by high levels of motivation as well, then the resulting combination may be extremely worthwhile in highly generalizable respects. While it may be true that only Freud was able to psychoanalyze himself, countless extremely worthwhile historical, sociological, literary and psychological studies have been done by researchers who have grown up and been trained in the very contexts that they have then undertaken to study. Finally, although this methodological point shows the indivisibility between "methodology" and "substance" even more than do the others, this paper seeks to remind us that elites (spokesmen, leaders, intellectuals) and proto elites are worthy of study. It seems to me that this is particularly so in connection with

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research on modern ethnic identity. Modern society is characterized by the massification of participation in industrial, educational, political and military operations. This massification is orchestrated and rationalized by elites who not only act as conduits of innovation but as the planners, managers and polarizers of sociocultural identity for the masses. In modern society, even more than in earlier periods of social development, elites are the major actors in the ongoing drama of sociocultural change and of identity consolidation and change. Elites speak to/write to the masses and reach them via modern identity-forming media, often on a fairly continual basis. Thus, rather than study only the nameless, most impersonal actors and most pervasive institutions that are involved in the identity formation and reformation process, we must also study elites per se if we are to understand why and how modern sociocultural identity takes a certain turn or polarizes on a certain issue. It is idle, I think, to pursue the question of which is more important, the mass or the leaders, the nameless or the named, the widespread ways and values or the goals, purposes, consciousness and conflictedness of elites. The two are in constant interaction, all the more so in modern society, and both must be studied if a complete picture of modern sociocultural identity, including ethnic identity, is to appear. To fail to do so because the study of elites lies outside the purview of a certain disciplinary or methodological camp is to become a captive rather than a master of disciplines and methods alike, thereby delaying rather than advancing the shedding of light on ethnic identity processes in the modern world.

Notes 1.

Provense (three syllables) is an area similar to but not identical with Provence. Provense, like all Jewish culture areas, is defined by the boundaries of its distinctive regional adaptation of Jewish rites and traditions. Similar references to Jewish languages of Greece, Spain, France, Italy, Germany, etc., are merely convenient shorthand expressions for Jewish culture areas that predate any of the foregoing political designations. In each case, a Jewish vernacular was coterminous with a particular rite and set of customs, as validated by its local/regional rabbinic authorities. Although the latter also strove to function within the fold of supra-regional Jewish conventions, local/regional rites and customs were, nevertheless, always considered ultimately binding whenever the two (the local/regional and the supraregional) were in disagreement. For a review of all circum-Mediterranean

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Jewish vernaculars (since the decline of vernacular Hebrew) in the framework of their own rites and customs, see Weinreich 1980 [1973]. 2.

Talmud - A vast compilation of what was originally the unwritten Oral Law, the Talmud is the accepted final arbiter and legal code for Orthodox Jews. Its two divisions are the Mishne or text of the Oral Law (in Hebrew) and the Gemore (in Aramic), which supplements and comments upon it. Separate compilations were produced in Palestine (5th century C.E.) and in Babylonia (6th century C.E.), with the latter coming to be authoritative in view of its greater length and completeness.

3.

RR:LK/jvc + RW:LK + RS:jvh SR:jv, + SW:LK/jv9, + DS:jv3 (RR = religious reading (study) and prayer LK = Loshn-koydesh (Biblical/Talmudic/Medieval Hebrew/Aramaic) jvc = Jewish vernacular caique for word-by-word translation of RR in such a fashion as to remain as close as possible to the grammar of the LK original RW = religious writing (e.g., rabbinic responsa) RS = religious spoken interaction (e.g., Talmudic discourse pertaining to LK texts) jvh = Jewish vernacular "high", i.e., as spoken in learned discourse SR = secular reading (entertainment or practical reading) JV1 = written Jewish vernacular in secular literature SW = secular writing jv2 = written Jewish vernacular in letters, diaries DS = daily speech jv 3 = the variety of minimally sanctified verbal interaction) Note the meagre presence ofJewish vernaculars in Η-related functions and the meager presence of Loshn-koydesh in L-related functions.

4.

The most noteworthy earlier failure along these lines was that of Arn b'r Shmuel of Hergershausen, approximately a century earlier than the point at which our first "hero's" temerity became widely known in "enlightened circles". Arn b'r Shmuel composed and had a unique prayerbook (Liblekhe tfile 1709) printed, which consisted both of his Yiddish translations of parts of the traditional prayerbook and certain chapters of Psalms, as well as of Yiddish prayers of supplications that he himself had composed for specific recurring occasions (e.g., "a beautiful prayer to ask that man and wife live together affectionately"). Although his intentions were to enable simple folk to understand more fully and feel their prayers (rather than to only semiunderstand and semifeel them as was - he believed - necessarily the case when they were in Loshn-koydesh), his "heretical prayerbook" was banned by local rabbinic authorities. "Several generations later, in 1830, in the attic in the house of study of Arn b'r Shmuel's native town, hundreds of copies of this confiscated book were found" (Tsinberg 1943 [1975], v.6, 256-259 [v. 7, 225-227]). See footnote 12 below. Note: the Ashkenazi (Yiddish) pronunciation of Loshn-koydesh terms and titles is the basis of the transliteration employed in this paper.

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5.

Aramic (technically Judeo-Aramaic, since various varieties of Aramaic were employed throughout the Near East and, subsequently, further east up to and including Tibet) was not always accepted as on a par with Hebrew, notwithstanding the fact that major portions of the books of Daniel and Ezra are written in this language. It is clear that the majority of all Jews spoke Aramic from the earliest days of the Second Temple and that countless sanctified traditional writings and prayers were composed in this language or in a mixture of Aramaic and Hebrew. Nevertheless, the Talmud Yerushalmi reveals (Sotah 49) that many sages were opposed to Aramaic and demanded that Hebrew be spoken, whereas others defended its use (Sotah 7). However, ultimately the genetic similarity between the two languages, the fact that Aramie persisted as a Jewish vernacular for some 1400 years (from the 5th century B.C.E. to the 9th century C.E.), and the final fact that so much of rabbinic authority continued to be recorded in that language (even down to modern times) won out and the two together (Hebrew and Judeo-Aramaic) were dubbed Loshn-koydesh, the holy tongue, and became fused in popular thought, even as they were in function and in structure.

6.

Today a region in southeastern Poland and in the northwestern Ukraine, Galicia was part of Poland during the latter Middle Ages. During the first partition of Poland (1772), most of it was transferred to Hapsburg rule and on subsequent partitions the area under Hapsburg (Austro-Hungarian) rule was extended. (Between the two World Wars, it was again primarily under Polish rule but since the end of the Second World War, it is once more divided between Poland and the Ukrainian S.S.R.). Because of its exposure to more Western, modern and liberal Austro-Hungarian policies, Galicia became a gateway for the diffusion of modern studies and ideologies into Jewish Eastern Europe. Thus, "the Galician enlightenment" is considered the dawn of modern Western ideologies among Eastern European Jews and, more generally, galitsianer came to be viewed as a culture type (sophisticated, wily, capable of flattering and hoodwinking more traditional folk in order to get their way) by Eastern European Jews from other regions. For abundant further details see Magocsi 1983.

7.

In accord with traditional usage, the name should properly be transliterated Levin. However, Lefin himself wrote it with the equivalent of an/in Hebrew letters, probably because he associated the Hebrew/Yiddish grapheme for v with its German equivalent. Since the German ν was pronounced as an/, he therefore wrote his name with a fey in Hebrew and Yiddish. In more recent articles, the tendency to refer to him as Levin seems to be gaining the upper hand. 1 have retained Lefin's own usage here in order to indicate how farreaching was the influence of German-sponsored modernization.

8.

My account of Lefin, Feder and іk depends heavily on the major Yiddish, English and Hebrew sources, e.g., Tsinberg 1943 [1975], Levine 1974, and Shmeruk 1963, 1971. I have also used Vaynlez 1931, Cooper 1978, Versus 1938, Haberman 1932 and various other sources secondarily, e.g., the English materials in the 10-volume Encyclopedia Judaica (1970).

9.

Khasidism (also transliterated Hasidism or Hasidism): movement founded in Poland in the 18th century in reaction to the academic formalism of rabbinic

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Judaism. By stressing the mercy of God, encouraging joyous religious expression through song and dance and deemphasizing the centrality of traditional study, it spread rapidly among the poor and uneducated. Although pronounced a heresy in 1781, it became and remains a notable force in Orthodoxy. 10.

Lefin's translation (Refues ho'om 1794) was actually the second translation of Tissoťs volume for Jewish readers. It had already been translated/paraphrased into Yiddish by Moyshe Markuze, a contemporary of Lefin, in 1790. Although Markuze's rendition (Oyzer yisroel) may be considered the first book to approximate spoken Eastern Yiddish, it was, nevertheless, heavily colored by stylistic remnants and influences derived from German and from Western Yiddish, on the one hand, and by anti-khasidic asides and implications, on the other hand. In many respects, Lefin's translation was an improvement over Markuze's: it was cetainly closer to the original and contained no interpolations or editorializing by the translator. On the other hand, it was in Loshn-koydesh, rather than in Yiddish, so that popular as it became, it could not penetrate deeply into the lay public. Later, Lefin combined the advantages of both translations when he too switched to Yiddish but remained true to the originals that he translated without inserting into them opinions of his own.

11.

Women generally received no formal Hebrew education and could not be expected to understand even a simple Hebrew text on their own. Boys were taught (in schools under communal auspices) to recite prayers and ritual benedictions in Hebrew and, if their parents could afford to keep them in school beyond that point (ages 5-6), also to read the (Hebrew) Pentateuch and translate it into Yiddish and, ultimately, to study the Judeo-Aramaic Talmud and its classical commentaries and to argue their fine points in Yiddish. None of these texts, however, prepared them to read secular material on relatively modern matters, and, in addition, the latter type of reading matter was often prohibited or at least discouraged by rabbinic authorities.

12.

So widespread is the popular assumption that Yiddish was traditionally utilized only for oral functions (oral translation or text, oral argumentation of text and face-to-face intimacy or daily routine) that a minor aside here concerning the ancient lineage of Yiddish-in-print may be in order. Yiddishin-print traces back to early 16th century northern Italy, that is, to very close to the invention of movable type (circa 1437) and possibly, therefore, to before the convention of Loshn-koydesh-in-print. Prior to the appearance of Yiddish-in-print, utilization of Yiddish-in-manuscript was well established with extant manuscripts now being traceable back to the 13th century (Weinreich 1980). By and large, Yiddish-in-print consisted either of secular writings (poems, stories, novels) of an entertainment nature, on the one hand, or of translations (often word by word) of prayerbook and Old Testament text on the other hand, through to the 19th century, at which point a much more diversified repertoire of secular Yiddish-in-print comes into being, including an extensive practical, educational and ideological literature. By the late 19th century, scientific scholarship publication in Yiddish also becomes common.

13.

I write "obstensibly for women" in order to indicate that many of the Yiddish

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YIDDISH: TURNING TO LIFE publications in vaybertaytsh were not only also read by men but that some of them were primarily intended for men. The fly-leaf rationale "written in simple Yiddish so as to be understandable to women and girls" was often no more than camouflage in order to avoid the wrath of rabbinic authorities who zealously protected (and directly benefited from) the diglossic tradition in accord with which Yiddish was not used in other than an auxiliary (translating, popularizing) function insofar as serious publications, particularly those related to the sanctified topics or pursuits for which rabbinic ordination was considered necessary, were concerned.

14.

Arn b'r Shmuel of Hergershausen's Liblekhe tfile (1709) had also been set in oysiyes mereboes, a fact which might well have contributed to its being banned and confiscated by the rabbinic authorities of the time. See note 4, above.

15.

For a close comparison of Lefin's translation with those published before him and with those then in vogue, as well as with the modern translation by Yehoyesh (1941), see Shmeruk 1964 (Yiddish) and 1981 (Hebrew).

16.

For a thorough-going review of the various literary "dialects" of 19th-century Yiddish, from those most distant from the spoken language of Eastern Europe to those most faithful to spoken speech, see Roskies 1974. For a modern restatement and implementation of the view that Yiddish should be consciously de-Germanized and moved "away from German", see Weinreich 1938 [1975].

17.

Shmeruk, in particular, is dubious as to Lefin's motives and tends to attribute the latter's style to literary virtuosity rather than to ideological or programmatic goals. Others (e.g., Mark 1956) interpret Lefin in more consciously pro-Yiddish terms. Shmeruk is undoubtedly correct in reminding us of several anti-Yiddish comments in Lefin's earlier writings. Lefin may well have gone through several phases in his attitude towards Yiddish, but it seems clear to me that while working on his translations, his views were overwhelmingly positive, particularly for a maskil of his day and age. Other maskilim, too, had to swallow their initial pride and to use Yiddish to get their ideas across to the average Jew, but Lefin was one of the first to do so and to display unusual satisfaction and warmth (rather than just virtuosity) in the process. For continued maskilic reluctance in this connection down to the end of the century, see Miron 1973.

18.

Lefin's reference to "our eastern Podolye" is interesting both linguistically and geographically. His choice of words here, "mizrekh podolye shelonu", is made up of two hebraisms and one slavism. Although the first hebraism (mizrekh = east) and the slavism (podolye = Podolia, a somewhat more easterly Galician region largely under Czarist rule after 1793) are unsubstitutable in Yiddish today, the last hebraism (shelonu = our) is not normally employed. Its use, instead of the more normal undzer (of Germanic stock) gives the entire phrase a very striking and decidedly non-Germanic flavor. The region referred to in this fashion can be interpreted either as the area in which Lefin himself resided, at the eastern-most point of the AustroHungarian/Polish border, where both states met with the lands occupied in 1793 by Czarist Russia, or as referring to the region farther east in Czarist

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Russia per se, where the impact of German on Yiddish was even less than in Galicia. 19.

Ausbau, literally "building out" or "building away", applies to the process of consciously distancing a weaker language from another that is functionally stronger, competitive with the weaker and genetically close to it. Via Ausbau, the weaker is rendered progressively more dissimilar from the stronger so that it cannot readily be viewed as a dialect of the latter but will appear fully independent of it. Ausbau is contrasted with Abstand, wherein two languages are naturally so dissimilar that neither can be taken as a dialect of the other (Kloss 1967). While the interdialectal diversity of Yiddish (no greater than that of Dutch or Swedish, e.g.) added some urgency to the codification of its modern written standard (as was also the case for Dutch, Swedish, etc.) its genetic similarity to German remained an "issue" - both among adherents and opponents - even after this standardization had been achieved.

20. іk is the first in what subsequently became quite a long list of very prestigious Orthodox spokesmen to praise Yiddish and to point out its merits as a vehicle and shield, or defender, of tradition. For such statements by the Khsam Soyfer of Pressburg (17621839), see Weinreich 1980, p. 283. For such statements by Nosn Birnboym in the 30s of this century and by Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik in very recent days, see Fishman 1981a, vii-viii and 160. 21.

Lefin spent the rest of his life working on a new translation/edition of the Guide for the Perplexed, originally written in Judeo-Arabic by Maimonides (1135-1204), the greatest Jewish philosopher of all times, and never again entered the arena of public debate or of pro-Yiddish activism. The fact that he spent his last decade entirely engrossed in a volume seeking to synthesize religion and rational philosophy certainly implies some loss of certainty that enlightenment programs of action alone could solve "the Jewish problem". Lefin's champion, іk, died at the age of 59 in a cholera epidemic in Brod, having become infected while tending to the needs of the sick and hungry. He, at least, remained an involved activist to the end, giving his life in daily exertion for his fellows rather than in labor over one manuscript or another. In 1833, two years after Bik's demise (he was the last of the three to die, although he was also the youngest at the time of his death), his letter to Feder, and Feder's hitherto-unpublished reply were finally published in the maskilic journal Keren hemed. The only importance that can be ascribed to this otherwise esoteric posthumous publication is that it made Bik's strong and clear views available to pro-Yiddish maskilim of the latter part of the century. The major figure among them, Y.M. Lifshits, quoted it in its entirety in 1863 in connection with his effort to convince maskilim in the Czarist Empire that Yiddish was the only language via which they could reach, educate and dignify the mass of Russian-Polish Jewry.

22.

Modern symbolic and practical dignification came with the adoption of a proYiddish (and pro-Jewish secular cultural) resolution by the Jewish Workers Bund of Russia, Poland and Lithuania and with the First World Conference for the Yiddish Language in Tshernovits, both in the first decade of the 20th century. The former is analyzed in Hertz 1969 and the latter in a paper of mine (1980b). Assigning any symbolic priority to Yiddish, but particularly the

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YIDDISH: TURNING TO LIFE extreme view that Yiddish alone was of modern ethnocultural significance, came to be termed Yiddishism. While Yiddishism never became a mass movement in and of itself, it heavily influenced all left-wing Jewish ideologies (including left-wing Labor Zionism, not to mention Jewish anarchism, socialism and communism). These sought a complete change of authority systems within the Jewish fold. Yiddishism influenced modern Jewish secularism as a whole, reconceptualizing Jews as a modern "nationality" rather than a "religion" (Gutman 1976). For a Yiddish-secular rejection of the purely linguistic stress of extreme Yiddishism, see Lerer 1940. For a review of the architects of Yiddishism (not all of whom were Yiddishists in the extreme sense of the word), see Goldsmith 1976.

Language interests in Israel today Shprakhikeyt in hayntikn Yisroyel Hebrew in Israel faces no substantial functional competition from Yiddish but is exposed to daily pressure from English, both in terms of linguistic interference and in terms of higher status and power relationships. English also has a considerable number of governmental and academic functions and has become the primary means of communication with diaspora Jewry. The constant and growing use of Yiddish in Ultra-Orthodox circles is generally being overlooked by secular Yiddishists, preoccupied as the latter are with ephemeral conferences, publications and literary events. Judezmo and Mugrabi are the next two most spoken Jewish vernaculars and both have improved their functional and organizational base as a result of the recent "Sefardi revolt".

LANGUAGE INTERESTS IN ISRAEL TODAY

Reprinted with permission from Afn Shvel 252,1983. 5-8.

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II

Yiddish in America

Introduction Birth of a voting bloc: Candidates pay court to Hasidic and Orthodox Jews A citywide screening committee of more than 70 Jewish organizations, mostly Hasidic and Orthodox, has been formed to judge the mayoral candidates at a breakfast meeting on May 21 and give one a formal endorsement . . . New York's Hasidic groups also influenced Israeli elections last November. Without even leaving Brooklyn, Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson, the leader of the Lubavitcher Hasidim, lent his support to one of Israel's Orthodox parties, Agudat Israel. "We are going to be playing an important role", said Assemblyman Dov Hikind, a conservative Democrat from Borough Park, who is one of the main organizers of the group, known as the United Jewish Coalition. "A coalition of this kind, with the kind of race we're going to have, could make the difference of who is mayor. We're not just going to endorse; we're going to spend a lot of money to spread the word, a lot of it in the Yiddish press." . . . Nearly all of the Hasidim shun television as an immoral force, thus negating (its) political advertising. The major media influence is the Yiddish-language daily (sic!) newspaper "Algemeiner Journal". The New York Times, May 2,1989, pp. Bl, B4 T h e above news-item is doubly or triply ironic. W h o , a m o n g specialists in American Studies, would have expected a major voting block still to be functioning in Yiddish in the U.S.A. in 1989? W h o , a m o n g Yiddishists at the o u t b r e a k of W o r l d W a r II, would have expected the constituency of such a voting block, were o n e to exist, to b e Ultra-Orthodox? W h o , a m o n g O r t h o d o x leaders, would have expected America to b e c o m e the major h o m e of Ultra-Orthodoxy and, therefore, of Yiddish (outside of Israel), America, whose very existence was still d o u b t e d by the O r t h o d o x just some two centuries ago, because its existence w e n t totally u n m e n t i o n e d in holy writ? Even N a t h a n Birnbaum, in the midst of his Yiddishist stage a n d less t h a n a decade away from his own " r e t u r n " to O r t h o d o x y , who was so unusual precisely because he was so capable of foreseeing so

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much of the positive future of American Jewry, could not foresee what has come to pass in this connection. American Jewry has not only become the financial and the political muscle and backbone of world Jewry (much more so than Israel), but it has also become a major cultural force on the world Jewish scene as well (although in the latter respect Israeli primacy must still be acknowledged). Since the major cultural growth of American Jewry has occurred after World War II, it necessarily occurred after the major flourishing of secular Yiddishism was over. The numerous supplementary Yiddish secular schools, the large and variegated periodical press and the endless stream of books, the numerous local and traveling Yiddish theatres and choruses, the summer camps for children and adults, these were already largely matters of the past by the time a seemingly endless array of major publications (many of them translations from Yiddish and Hebrew) began to appear in English and to become a constant feature of the American Jewish scene. The relatively minor stream of secular pro-Hebrew efforts dried up even more rapidly and with much less notoriety. No one said: "Look, Hebrew is dying!", because, first of all, Hebrew has never really lived as a language of everyday life in America and, second, Hebrew had obviously just acquired a natural home for itself in Israel. Yiddish, on the other hand, had recently lost its natural home in Eastern Europe and its fading in America too, as far as modern, secular life was concerned, was interpreted as implying far more than did the fading of almost all other immigrant languages that were its contemporaries. The latter, like Hebrew, has homelands to fall back upon and to be replenished from whenever circumstances would lead to new immigration to the Golden Land. Yiddish no longer has a reservoir to draw upon and its fading in the USA denoted a language in dire straits, or so it seemed to those to whom the Ultra-Orthodox world was a closed book. Except for Ultra-Orthodoxy, American Jewry is now obviously, overwhelmingly and almost exclusively English speaking. This fact is not only of utmost importance in its own right, i.e., for understanding the dynamics of American Jewry per se, but it also provides the rationale and the driving force behind the anglification of world Jewry, at least in terms of English as a Jewish lingua franca and, increasingly, as a Jewish second language. This fact also robs both Yiddish and Modern Hebrew of most of their possible functions, prospects and vitality in the American context. Although a huge proportion of American Jews have "nothing but respect for Yiddish", that is far from sufficient for the language to remain even

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in its former vernacular functions. Many young American Jews mayadmire the creative Yiddishistic secularism of the past, but they do so as one admires a family heirloom, i.e. only on special occasions, and without the intention of converting it into an aspect of one's own daily life. What Yiddish in America lacks, outside of Ultra-Orthodox circles, is not so much a raison d'être as a bounded life-style of its own at the home-neighborhood-community level. Ideologies are generally of reliable and total interest only to small circles of intellectuals. Bounded life-styles encompass the mass of ordinary men, women and children in all aspects of their everyday lives. Even more: bounded life-styles relate their languages to the very heart of the intergenerational transmission system. Theatres, movies, radio-t.v. programs and poetry readings in a language are certainly not to be disregarded, but they do not form mother tongues nearly as much as they reflect them. They do not automatically feed back to the socialization of the next generation, particularly not on the life of a minority whose language is already utilized only by a minority of that minority. Exposure to secular Yiddish - in college courses, in theater presentations, in song recitals, in readings of translations and at commemorative lectures - is both too little and too late to revernacularize it, regardless of the intellectual and entertainment merits of such exposure. Exposure to Ultra-Orthodox Yiddish comes early and intensively and, regardless of its association with what the modern, secular mind can only regard as a "closed system" that is impervious to new ideas, it remains part and parcel of those very family-neighborhood-community pursuits that are synonymous with intergenerational transmissibility. No wonder then, that Yiddish in the former context, for all of its esthetic and intellectual variety, ingenuity and refinement, is now fated to remain the language of a small and intergenerationally non-continuous coterie of devotees, each generation of which will scramble to find its own intellectual heirs, whereas the continuity of Yiddish in the latter context is limited only by the birthrate of its members, since each member's own children are his or her heirs. In addition to its natural growth, via intergenerational demographic processes, American Ultra-Orthodoxy has also grown via attracting new followers from among English-speaking American Jews. These baley-tshuve (penitent returnees) have often formed small English-speaking enclaves within Ultra-Orthodox society, but they have even more generally learned enough Yiddish to be able to

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converse with their neighbors, with their rabbis, with their children's teachers, and, above all, to understand the sermons and lessons of their rabbis and to engage in the obligatory group-study of appropriate texts, engaged in separately by men and by women, which characterizes Ultra-Orthodox life. Thus, many Ultra-Orthodox groups (not all, of course) reveal many non-native but quite fluent speakers of Yiddish, a phenomenon which was generally unknown in the U.S.A. before World War II. America is also clearly an indication that the question of intergenerational continuity need not be the only question that preoccupies us in connection with Yiddish. Few non-Jewish cultures and life styles have been as impacted by Yiddish as have those of urban America, this impact fanning out across the country from the hub-city of New York. New York without Yiddish would obviously not be itself, not even now when the Black, Hispanic and the Oriental impacts on its commercial and gastronomic life are so intense. A nationwide spread of hispanicisms and Koreanisms, via the entertainment and communication media (the stage, television, the movies) and via the garment industry and the labor unions, or via their functional substitutes, would need to take place before a comparable development occurred in connection with them to what occurred in connection with the impact of Yiddish on American English. It is no wonder then, that linguists speak of "Yiddish movement" in connection with topicalizations such as "money I've got, friends I've got, but happy I'm not!", constructions which most native speakers of English throughout America take to be entirely correct, or as completely acceptable "New Yorkisms", at worst. The impact of American English on Yiddish has been, if anything, even more noticeable, lexically, phonologically and grammatically. This is true among both sexes and in all age groups even in Ultra-Orthodox circles. Fifty years of unschooled Yiddish in America easily reveals as many or more Anglicisms and English influences than did hundreds of years of Eastern European residence vis-à-vis Russianism, Polonisms, etc., in the Yiddish of the corresponding regions. Clearly the contact between Yiddish speakers and non-Jewish English-speakers, on the one hand, and between Yiddish speakers and Jewish English-speakers, on the other hand, has been an intensive and even an intimate one, whether in school, work, play or commerce, and obviously most of the UltraOrthodox have not been exceptions to this rule, particularly insofar as work and commerce are concerned, but also in conjunction with

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governmental affairs and a variety of entertainment and consumergoods options and interactions. The same social processes that have brought about these influences have also, obviously, led to strains in conjunction with the continued vernacular use of Yiddish in some Ultra-Orthodox circles. We will have more to say about these strains in the introductory remarks to Part III of this book. Nevertheless, the future course of Yiddish in America is not yet settled, neither linguistically nor sociolinguistically. The unparalleled freedom, social mobility and participatory involvement of Yiddish speakers in all aspects of American life would require a very self-disciplined and self-regulatory community if its vernacular were to be successfully retained on an intergenerational basis. Only segments of Ultra-Orthodoxy seem to be able to maintain the social boundaries that are required on the part of minorities for retaining a vernacular language of their own in open society. But this does not mean that Yiddish will necessarily disappear among all other Jews, indeed, the vast majority of Jews in the U.S.A. Positive attitudes toward Yiddish now seem to be very widespread among American Jews, particularly those who are younger, who never spoke it themselves and whose only direct experiences with it are associated with grandparents or the elderly in general. However, positive though passive attitudes are an important sociolinguistic fact of endangered-language life. If properly activated such attitudes can be translated into financial support for the efforts of language activists, into a modicum of language learning at tertiary level courses (there are such at over 50 colleges and universities in the U.S.A.) and at post-college courses for adults, and into occasional attendance at programs in which Yiddish songs, readings and dramatic performances are suitably accompanied by English translations. This huge reservoir of goodwill also funnels a small number of individuals into the ranks of culturally creative and linguistically puristic secular "Yiddishists" who manage to learn the language to perfection and whose dedication to it leads them to write, to sing, to produce theatrical pieces and to publish in Yiddish. The small groups of this nature that exist today (not only in the U.S.A., but also in France, England, Canada, Australia, Belgium and in Israel) certainly seem sufficiently firm to last for a generation. Thereafter, since interest groups are not intergenerationally continuous or transmissible in the same direct way that families-neighborhoods-communities are, the general Zeitgeist of attitudes and opinions vis-à-vis Yiddish will once again

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need to be depended upon if replacement elites of similar mastery, dedication and creativity are forthcoming from secular and other non-Ultra-Orthodox circles in the 21st century. This - and the transmissibility in a good part (a demographically growing part) of the Ultra-Orthodox sector - certainly does not seem to be too much to hope for in America.

Yiddish in America

I. Early socio-cultural roles As is the case with many other cultural-linguistic minorities in America, some familiarity with the pre-American historical and cultural contexts in which the Yiddish language developed is pre­ requisite for an understanding of the fortunes and prospects of Yiddish in American-Jewish life today. Although there are many distinctive trends and countertrends in the socio-cultural histories of various Yiddish-speaking communities, there has also been sufficient similarity in the within-group and between-group experiences of Yiddish speakers during the past thousand years for a small number of constant factors to repeatedly influence the position and the vitality of Yiddish - whether we are dealing with America today or with Eastern Europe yesterday. The earliest beginnings of Yiddish date back to roughly the 11th century from the point of view of time, and to the middle Rhine basin, from the point of view of geography. As is the case with all languages for which sufficient early data exists, Yiddish began as a fusion language (Weinreich, M., 1959b, 103, 563-570). In the case of Yiddish the major early constituents consisted of Middle High German, Romance and Hebrew elements, since it began as the language of Jews who were in large part recently derived from French of other Romance language territories. That Yiddish arose at all is testimony to three facts: a. Jews lived in sufficient social and psychological proximity to their non-Jewish neighbors - notwithstanding all the differences and circumstances that separated them - to attain familiarity with the language current in their environment. b. However, Jews settling in the Rhine region brought with them certain pre-Germanic speech habits (phonetic, lexic, and syntactic)

Reprinted with permission. Bloomington, Indiana University Research Center in Anthropology, Folklore and Linguistics. 1965.

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that immediately rendered their German somewhat different from that of their non-Jewish neighbors.  Finally, Jews also brought with them certain religious cultural habits that were either not encodable in the language of the nonJewish environment, or were not as unambiguously or felicitously encodable in that language. In addition, some German equivalents had Christological overtones and were, therefore, unacceptable to Jewish speakers. As a result, many pre-Germanic terms were retained in the German variant utilized by Jewish speakers, 1 particularly for the purposes of within-group communications. These terms were largely of Hebrew origin, although a number of "traditionalized" words of Romance origin were also retained (Weinreich, M., 1953, 1954). This combination of factors - intensive interaction with the non-Jewish environment against a background of major religious and cultural differences - has quite consistently remained part of all contexts in which Yiddish has grown and changed in the thousand years of its existence. The above socio-cultural factors were also accompanied by two very basic psychological ones that must constantly be kept in mind when considering the position and viability of Yiddish at any given time. Yiddish speakers represented a socio-cultural grouping not in control of an independent national-territorial unit. Although Yiddish speakers have frequently constituted the vast majority of Jews within given geographical boundaries, they themselves have rarely, if ever, possessed full control of the official politicaleducational-legal machinery whereby languages can become maximally entrenched and safeguarded. Yiddish has been the officially powerless diaspora language of an officially powerless diaspora people. Although ultimately spoken over a huge expanse, there was never a territory where its speakers were not exposed to daily linguistic and cultural pressures from speakers of strategically more powerful languages. Awareness of this "weakness" with respect to external relations and influences has always been a factor coloring the attitude of many Yiddish speakers toward their language. On the other hand, Yiddish has also rarely held full sway in connection with Jewish internal affairs. The very religious and cultural differences which required the presence of a Hebraic component from the very beginning of Yiddish also implied that Yiddish could not fully substitute for Hebrew as the language of hallowed texts, traditions, and intellectual creativity. Having

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achieved an elaborate code of values and behaviors in one language (Hebrew), and having given that language a special place of honor in that set of values and behaviors, no other language could attain a similarly exhalted position as long as the original code was maintained. Awareness of this "weakness" with respect to internal relations has further influenced the attitudes of many Yiddish speakers towards their language. From its beginnings as a product of the peculiar cultural proximity and cultural distance which marked Ashkenazic Jewry in Western Europe, Yiddish has accompanied the proud and tragic procession of the Ashkenazim, first, through what is now South­ western and Central Germany, Bavaria, Austria, Czechoslovakia and Hungary, then from the thirteenth century on, through Poland, Lithuania, White Russia, the Ukraine and Rumania; and, finally, since the nineteenth century, to North and South America, Israel, Australia and immigration centres throughout the world. As a result, Yiddish became inextricably intertwined in every historical, cultural and social experience of Ashkenazic Jewry during a millenium of literate existence. Because even the very earliest Yiddish speaking males were literate (certainly in Hebrew and at times, also in local Jewish variants of Romance and German), written records are available of Earliest Yiddish (-1250) and of Old Yiddish (1250-1500). From sources such as these, from much more plentiful sources during the periods of Middle Yiddish (1500-1750) and Modern Yiddish (1750 - ),2 as well as from Hebrew and non-Jewish references to Yiddish throughout its existence, it seems clear that up to the latter part of the nineteenth century, Yiddish functioned primarily in the following contexts: a. As the vernacular - in one period or another - of all Ashkenazic social groupings. This claim must be understood in the light of both linguistic and socio-linguistic change. Dialectal differences appeared and became territorially established, distinguishing the Yiddish of Prague (Western) from that of Warsaw (Middle), of Vilna (Northeastern) or of Berdichev (Southeastern). Simultaneously with the dialectal differentiation and the eastward relocation of the majority of Ashkenazim, the original western territories largely drifted away from Yiddish, so that by the middle of the nineteenth century only remnants of Western Yiddish survived in isolated corners of Holland, Alsace, Switzerland, Western Hungary and Slovakia. Nevertheless, during the periods of its ascendancy, Yiddish, as the vernacular, was spoken by both men and women, by both rich

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and poor, by both scholars and illiterates, by merchants and artisans. However, its speakers varied both in the degree of their proficiency in other languages and in their intimacy with other societies and, therefore, in their attitudes towards Yiddish, as well as in their interference from other languages while speaking Yiddish. b. As the vehicle of entertainment literature. The oldest extant masterpieces of Yiddish Literature - Shmuel Bukh, Bovo Bukh, and Maase Bukh - indicate an early designation of the language as appropriate for "publications" or other widespread communications in a lighter vein than the classical hallowed texts, commentaries, and learned religious guides for which Hebrew alone was regarded as appropriate. This is the forerunner of the association between Yiddish and "secular" publications or occasions that was posited by a later age. This type of association for the vernacular was not unlike that prevalent in other European populations among whom the vernacular was assigned to more mundane and profane uses than the "classical" languages associated with Church, Throne and "Culture". However, in the other populations some variant of the vernacular was ultimately elevated to a point where it was differentiated from other regional or class variants which had no similar status associations nor national functions. In the case of Yiddish (as contrasted with Hebrew) this worldwide process of substitution and elevation was never fully accomplished. . As the vehicle of popular religious education or indoctrination among those segments of the population that had never mastered sufficient Hebrew to peruse the standard texts or curricula. 3 Jewish communities carried with them the ideal of universal public education, dedication to the mastery of basic Hebrew texts (usually via oral instruction, commentary and translation into Yiddish) but this ideal was often incompletely realized. Women in general and the poorer classes in particular, commonly learned only enough Hebrew to laboriously but uncomprehendingly follow the Hebrew prayer book. Many depended on memory entirely to participate in religious services or rituals. For this audience of women and simple folk, a homiletic, didactic and narrative religious literature in Yiddish was developed (Freehof 1923). Many of its staples went through countless editions and remained popular for generations if not centuries. Thus, the Tsene Urene, a popular version of Biblical tales, first appeared at the beginning of the 17th century and was still being reprinted in the 20th. Prayer books also appeared with Yiddish marginal translations (and in a few rare cases, in full Yiddish versions)

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and commentaries. All in all, this was a distinctly plebeian religious literature intended only for those who were too uneducated to follow more involved and more elevated discourses that were available in Hebrew. Talmudic students and scholars carried on their face-to-face inquiries into the most demanding Hebraic-Aramaic texts in scholarly Yiddish. However, theirs was largely (although not entirely) an oral tradition, since in their eyes Hebrew alone was a fit vehicle for their written comments. As the earliest period - from the point of view of sociolinguistic analysis - drew to a close in the mid-nineteenth century, Yiddish had already gained a few devoted protagonists who con­ sciously viewed it in an ideological context, whether in conjunction with mass-enlightenment ("Europeanization"), nationalism, religious pietism, or other sophisticated symbolic systems.4 A few attempts at serious artistic writing in Yiddish had been made, as had a few efforts to translate sections of the Bible, to publish weeklies and other periodicals, and to initiate Yiddish repertory theatre groups. Never­ theless, all of these efforts remained rudimentary and unrelated to each other until fairly close to the end of the nineteenth century. At that point, many of these efforts came together and Yiddish began to function in a number of hitherto unparalleled social roles. This metamorphosis coincided with the period of ever-increasing Eastern European Jewish immigration to the United States. II. New social roles for Yiddish:1861-1914 Toward the end of the nineteenth century increasing numbers of Eastern European Jews came into greater contact with general European as well as with more specifically regional ideological and cultural developments. This should not be interpreted as implying that Eastern European Jews had previously lived in intellectual isolation from their neighbors and from European thought. Careful studies of the interactions between Jews and non-Jews reveal this to be as untrue in the intellectual realm as it was in the worlds of commerce and finance. Nevertheless, the period here under review was one in which an obvious quickening of intellectual and cultural fertilization occurred. The underlying reasons for this quickening must be sought in both the Jewish and the non-Jewish communities. In this period increasing numbers of Eastern European Jews were caught up in accelerated industrialization and urbanization of

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what had, in earlier days, been almost exclusively backward, peasant societies. 1861 marks the liberation of Russia's serfs. It also marks the beginning of a revitalization ofJewish life in Eastern Europe. More and more Jews moved from isolated villages and small towns to larger towns and cities. This dislocation and relocation not only weakened their ties with traditional Jewish practices and ideologies but also exposed them to new and stronger ideological and cultural pressures from their non-Jewish surroundings. Urban life frequently brought with it increased contact with the languages of the coterritorial populations even though it often also brought more rigid physical separation between Jews and non-Jews than had been the case in the little villages. The large towns meant exposure to political ideologies, to anti-religious or non-religious ideologies, to nationalistic ideologies, to reformistlc ideologies in the realms of public education, health, and hygiene, etc. In each of these connections some Jews joined or helped form organizations and groupings which crossed religious or national lines. Others joined or helped form exclusively Jewish organizations which espoused definite goals in each of the above-mentioned areas of endeavor. Yiddish had a role to play in each of these contexts and in some of them Yiddish itself was a topic of programmatic concern. It was in this period that the first major periodicals in Yiddish began regular publication. Modern Yiddish authors and playwrights appeared in large numbers and laid the foundations of a literature of unusual scope. The Russian census of 1897 unmistakably reported a greater proportion of Yiddish speakers than had ever before been officially recorded at the national level in the history of Yiddish. During this period a definite cleavage came into being between religious and secular ideologies and organizations. Although the secular sector was itself internally diversified with respect to many general and Jewish ideological issues, its common characteristic was a Jewish self-definition along "national" (ethnic) 5 - linguisticcultural lines rather than along lines of traditional religious belief and practice. In a sense, secular ideologies represented a departure from traditional Jewish self-concepts but yet not a peripheralization ofJewish self-concepts to the individuals involved. Jews who came to identify themselves as "secular" thought of themselves in terms of other national-ethnic groupings (Ukranians, Poles, Lithuanians, Latvians - Jews) rather than in terms of other religious groupings (Russian Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Uniate - Jews). In addition, many Jewish secularist ideologies contained territorial components,

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whether these were in terms of a return to ancestral Palestine (Zionists), some other territorial reconcentrations (Territorialists), or cultural-political autonomy in current diaspora centers (Bundists, Sejmists, Folkists, etc.). Both the general paradigm of secular selfidentification (Ukranians, Poles - Jews) as well as the territorial variants within the general paradigm highlighted the role of a "national" language (Mark 1962, Pinson 1958). Some secularist groups came to consider Yiddish as the "national" Jewish language; others merely considered it as a "national" Jewish language 6 (along with Hebrew and, possibly, Judesmo ), while still others bitterly opposed any honorific "national" recognition of Yiddish, since this might imply a displacement of Hebrew. All in all, the new secular ideologies heightened the language-and-group consciousness of millions and enabled them more easily and constructively to make the potentially disruptive transition from traditional small-town and rural to urban existence, from a "little" to a "great" tradition. However, in the long run, the impact of the latter processes was stronger and more lasting than that of the secular nationalism per se. In the period before the First World War, absolutistic and reactionary governmental control in Eastern Europe prohibited or rendered difficult the maximal utilization of Yiddish on behalf of "nationaľ'-secular ideologies. Not only were the spokesmen for these ideologies - almost without exception - "guilty" of democratic selfgoverning sympathies (if not of socialist, anarchist or other radical sympathies) but the Habsburgs and the Tsars were generally oriented toward the forced assimilation of "foreign elements". Thus, no Jewish secular schools could come into existence and the number as well as the contents of periodicals and books were strictly controlled. Nevertheless, a substantial press and literature did develop (both clandestinely and openly); a large number of writers, journalists, poets and other intellectuals came to employ Yiddish as a vehicle of conscious "national" importance; modern educational, theatrical, and even scholarly work in Yiddish did get underway; and the language problem or language conflict (between Yiddish and Hebrew or between Yiddish and Russian or Polish) became a definite item on the agenda ofJewish intellectuals. Since this was also the period of greatest Jewish immigration to America, it is obvious that many Jews coming to this country - whether intellectuals or not - brought with them some exposure to secular-"nationalist" thinking, and as such, either an active advocacy of Yiddish, a philosophy ofJewish existence in which Yiddish had a well defined

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role to play, or, at the very least, some awareness of the "language issue" surrounding Yiddish. During this same period, the role of Yiddish in Eastern European religious and traditional circles changed much less dramatically. Yiddish continued to be the language of daily life and of Biblical and Talmudic instruction and scholarly disputation. A number of orthodox newspapers and periodicals began to be published in Yiddish and a number of popular didactic books on Jewish religious themes appeared, as did a small but more serious moralistic literature. All in all, the ideological-philosophical foment in Jewish secular circles evoked only defensive-protective reactions in religious circles. As a result, no religiously centered ideologies were formulated in which Yiddish was assigned a particular role. Yiddish remained the constant and unconscious vehicle of religious life at all levels other than the written scholarly and the liturgical. It is more proper to consider it as having been the vernacular of the religiously oriented Eastern European masses rather than the language of their formal religious acts or expressions. The religious counterparts of secular political groups were much less interested in the language issue as such, since Yiddish was "obviously" the language of daily life and of formal instruction in classical texts. As such, it was an important vehicle of orthodox indoctrination and enculturation, but hardly a matter of supreme value in and of itself, as it had already come to be in certain secular "nationalist" circles. It is easy to overlook the huge and seemingly motionless orthodox sea and to fix one's views largely on the more dramatic and impetuous secular-"nationalist" ideological islands during this period. Certainly, the major stimuli for the refinement, cultivation, and elevation of Yiddish did not come directly from orthodox circles. Nevertheless, for our purposes, it is of great importance to realize that most Eastern European Jews coming to America during this period, were either untouched or only superficially touched by modern Jewish "nationaľ'-secular thinking. Subsequently, when secular-"nationalist" ideologies found little basic environmental encouragement in America, it was all the more natural for most American Jews to gravitate toward less conscious and less prestigeful roles for Yiddish and toward less retentivist behaviour in connection with it. Before turning to a detailed presentation of the formal ideological, organizational and associational consequences of "national"-secularist Yiddishism, it may prove useful to pause for a

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brief theoretical summation of what this revolution in Jewish life and language attitudes involved. Modern European history reveals the elevation of one vernacular after another from a position of exclusive integration with "little" ethnic traditions to a position of integration with "high" cultures and "great" national traditions. This process was accompanied by greatly heightened creativity in the vernaculars, particularly in those variants that came to be accepted as "standard", as well as by the protection of these "standards" by governmental institutions and by intellectual and social elites. The undisputed sway of the vernaculars usually involved the displacement of one elite by another, of one set of values by another and of one "high" culture by another. However, the dignification of the vernacular not only required years, if not generations, of struggle between contending elites for political, social and cultural hegemony, but also required generations of national indoctrination of the peasantry and of the urban lower classes that had carried the vernacular for countless generations without consciously dignifying it. The initially de-ethnifying impact of urbanization and of nationalism was finally overcome by the transmuted ethnicity of the new "high" culture and of its consciously transmitted traditions. One of these transmuted traditions was the exaltation of the national standard language. However, in the case of Yiddish among Eastern European Jews this familiar process was only partly and incompletely replicated. The usual distinctions between ethnicity and religion, between "little" tradition and "great" tradition, between vernacular and superposed language and between communal tradition (ethnicity) and transmuted tradition (nationalism) do not hold up nearly as well in the Jewish case as in the case of the other Eastern European peoples who increasingly fell under the sway of nationalistic ideals in the latter part of the 19th century. Nevertheless, it is still instructive to note that before the advent of "national" secularistic Yiddishism Yiddish was generally considered inferior to the superposed Hebrew and was protected more by Jewish ethnicity than by Jewish religion, by "little" tradition than by "great" tradition, and by communal tradition than by transmuted (ideological) tradition. Secularistic Yiddishism rejected religion and sought to place Yiddish in the center of urban "great" tradition and of ideologically transmuted ethnicity (nationalism). However, Jewish "national" secularism and Yiddishism lacked the coercive power gained by other rising nationalisms and their vernaculars. In ad-

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dition, mass immigration and mass annihilation deprived it of its major population base. Finally, it had to oppose a much longer tradition of ethno-religious "high" culture as well as a competing Hebrew-oriented secular nationalism (Zionism). As a result, it is easy to see why its impact could merely be brief and superficial although it constituted a major cultural revolution in modern Jewish history. Had it been granted another generation or two it might have consolidated its gains. As it was, its undeniable creativity at the level of national "high" culture was forced to rest upon a population which was both too small, too dislocated, too unseasoned ideologically and culturally, and too exposed to counter-influences from highly industrialized, prestigious and de-ethnicized coterritorial populations. III. Yiddish in America: 1880-1914 During the period under discussion, the fortunes and roles of Yiddish in America closely paralleled those just sketched with respect to Eastern Europe. In religious or religiously oriented, in Hebraist, and even in "unaffiliated" circles of fairly recent Eastern European origin, Yiddish was very widely employed, but without any particular value being ascribed to it. However, in Yiddish secular"nationalist" circles language consciousness was rapidly becoming much greater and language-development as well as languageretention efforts, much more intensive and organized. Of course, Yiddish in America did face problems somewhat different from those of its speakers in Eastern Europe, namely, the problems of immigrant status (Rischin 1962), more complete dislocation from long established locales and folk-patterns including basic family and inter-generational patterns - and, finally, the absence of fully parallel communal institutions. Nevertheless, notwithstanding these many limiting factors, the intensity of Jewish cultural interests and the social-material needs ofJewish immigrants were such that a number of imposing organized efforts were launched - via Yiddish and on behalf of Yiddish - many of which continue to function to this very day. Nationwide Jewish organizations were formed, with branches in all cities of larger concentration, with Yiddish as the "official" or as the "natural" vehicle of all activities even when no ideological

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grounds were advanced for its use. In many instances, these organizations were both the ideological and the operational extensions of political-cultural organizations in Eastern Europe. However, as organizations of destitute and insecure immigrants they also served "fraternal", "benevolent" and "mutual aid" functions unrelated to their original (Eastern European) ideological-philo­ sophical commitments. The membership of such organizations rose constantly during these years. These same organizations served their various ideological commitments by sponsoring periodical publications, lecture series and adult education programs, camps and supplementary schools for children and adolescents and even theatrical and choral groups. In their cultural programs a more conscious valuation of Yiddish (either in opposition to Hebrew or in concert with it) was visible. "Yiddishism" as a secular-"nationalist" philosophy of Jewish existence was transplanted from Eastern Europe and found steadfast adherents - as well as opponents - on American soil. Small groups of intellectuals, journalists, and literati developed a variegated and increasingly sophisticated Yiddish literature and press, with poetry, literary criticism, novels and dramas, history, social commentary, and most other modern themes and genres represented. The constant influx of new immigrants kept the Yiddish theatre, lecture and concert halls filled, and provided eager readers for the continually growing number of Yiddish dailies, journals and books. The elaboration of European-derived and European-centered philosophies and ideologies received considerable attention in secular "national" circles and a huge Yiddish didactic literature concerned with such topics, as well as with general subject matter in the natural and social sciences, was produced and eagerly consumed. 8 A large number of translations of "modern classics" of world literature (primarily Russian, German, French, English) also appeared at this time and were eagerly purchased by immigrants with a hunger for culture. Paradoxically, these same organizations, intellectuals and media contributed to the Americanization and anglification of the immigrants whose interest in American citizenship and in English language mastery they also sought to satisfy, In addition to organized efforts on behalf of or via Yiddish conducted by Jewish organizations and agencies, it is also important to point out that non-Jewish agencies and organizations also had frequent recourse to Yiddish in this period. Thus, labor organizations

92

YIDDISH: TURNING TO LIFE

and political parties that were certainly not specifically Jewish in purpose (although their leadership and membership may have been largely or noticeably Jewish) also addressed their appeals to actual or prospective Jewish members or supporters via Yiddish lectures and publications even when they basically viewed Yiddish as a stumbling block on the road to the formation of a supra-national proletariat or more tractable electorate. All in all, therefore, this was a period of great activity and creativity in Yiddish - the first such period in the history of American Jewry. Nevertheless, very little of this activity was directly oriented toward establishing a permanent and self-perpetuating Yiddish-speaking base for American Jewish cultural expression or group-functioning. For most, Yiddish provided a temporary pathway to English, to Americanization, to adjustment to American life and problems. At most, Yiddish provided a link with the "old country", with family and friends still there, with countrymen now here, and with the ideological and philosophical differences that existed in Eastern European Jewish life. Even where Yiddish was expressly valued and cultivated as a major instrument ofJewish survival, this was most often thought of in Eastern European "nationaľ'-minority terms rather than in terms of the American environment and it particularities. On the other hand, Jewish religious circles continued to depend on Yiddish and to utilize it without specifically providing for it in ideology or underscoring it in practice. Finally, the bulk of "unaffiliated Jews" (a product of rapid urbanization, Westernization, and own-group estrangement as well as immigrant alienation) were touched neither by secular-"nationalist" creativity in Yiddish nor by religious continuity through Yiddish. For them, Yiddish implied only a poor English accent, a limitation on advancement, a corrupt tongue of the unlettered and ill-mannered. Thus, for the language activist, this period had overtones of great promise as well as undertones of great disappointment.

IV. Yiddish in Eastern Europe since 1914 The period here under review witnessed the highest attainments of Yiddish in terms of social-legal position and in terms of cultural role. It also witnessed the annihilation of European Yiddish and its speakers at the hands of totalitarian regimes. The post-war ascent to new heights begins with the Russian

YIDDISH IN AMERICA

93

Revolution and with the Versailles and Trianon Treaties. In all three instances new states came into being in which Yiddish was established as the legally recognized language of the Jewish ethnic"national" group. As the official language of this group in all of its public institutions, Yiddish was qualified to receive public support and public recognition. As a result of such provisions, Yiddish rose above its earlier position as the vernacular of a minority that had no governmental-"national" machinery under its control to become the language of governmentally supported higher education, of scientific institutes, of government (subsidized) publishing houses, of court proceedings, and of official governmental documents even including paper currency. Under the short-lived Kerensky government, Jews were enabled to obtain the fullest recognition for Yiddish as the official language of Russian Jewry. Although the Leninist-Stalinist line on the question of national languages was always somewhat contradictory and involved, the early Bolshevik attitudes toward Yiddish - in a secular if not a "national" context were also largely favorable. During the 20s, Yiddish secular culture blossomed in the Soviet Union. The central and local governments supported an extensive Yiddish press and many publishing houses, as well as Yiddish schools (from the elementary level through to Yiddish chairs and departments at the college-university level). Yiddish theatres, Yiddish research institutes specializing in philosophical-literary-historical studies, organizations of Yiddish writers, etc.9 As the Soviet regime consolidated its power, the general attitude toward minority languages changed and the late 20s and 30s witnessed not only the official enthronement of the Stalinist slogan "national in form, socialist in content," but also purges of non-conformist intellectual leaders. Yiddish schools were increasingly closed, almost all publications were discontinued, and interest in Yiddish was openly stifled during the 30s. By the time World War II began, all Yiddish schools had been closed and the number of publications drastically reduced. Soviet involvement in the Second World War brought a brief official reprieve for certain Yiddish activities of a rallying and propagandistic nature. However, these too were discontinued by 1948, i.e., as soon as a semblance of normalcy had been restored. In 1952, almost all leading Yiddish writers, poets and intellectuals were brutally liquidated. Since then, Yiddish cultural expression in the Soviet Union has been very meagre and the little that exists (one journal, one newspaper and intermittent books and public performances) is carefully doled out

94

YIDDISH: TURNING TO LIFE

for the appeasement of foreign critics and local consciences, although as many as half a million Jews still dared to claim Yiddish as their mother tongue in the census of 1959. Thus, in a matter of a quarter century, Yiddish rose to its highest heights - as a carrier of "high" culture in all of its social and political ramifications - only to be genocidally curtailed. Yiddish experienced a comparable development and denouement in non-Soviet Eastern Europe during this same period. The Versailles and Trianon Treaties and, even more importantly, the spirit of Wilson's "Fourteen Points", held out the bright promise of cultural and political rights for ethnic minorities. The newly established Polish, Baltic and Rumanian governments extended many of these rights to their Jewish citizens as well as to other minorities. However, during the twenties these rights were abrogated (partially on anti-minority and partially on anti-socialist grounds) just as quickly as the new governments felt able to do so. Nevertheless - the Jewish communities in these several countries enthusiastically supported an intensive and variegated Jewish cultural life with their own means, even in the face of governmental obstructionism. Once again we find the full array of schools (Kazhdan 1955), publications, theatres, libraries, scholarly and research organizations, youth groups, political organizations, etc. Most of these were under secular"nationalist" auspices - most frequently with a socialist orientation - although Zionist, territorialist, autonomist and non-political culturist orientations were also represented in varying degrees. Although a Jewish intelligentsia utilizing the state languages (i.e. Polish, Rumanian, etc.) also existed, such groups were relatively small and only superficially related to the Jewish communities surrounding them. Similarly, pro-Hebrew activities (forbidden in the Soviet Union from the very outset) also found their adherents, particularly in Zionist circles. Nevertheless, although a number of schools, theatre groups, publications and organizations functioned in Hebrew, none but the schools ever attained the mass following enjoyed by their Yiddish counterparts. In the Baltic States and in eastern Poland Yiddish gained acceptance in Jewish social circles where previously Polish, Russian or German had been spoken. This unusual phenomenon came about as a result of the confluence of two trends: on one hand, ideological anti-assimilationism and heightening of "national" feeling amongJews,and on the other hand, the anti-Russian and pro-self-sufficiency sentiments of the newly created states. Even orthodox circles became more conscious of

YIDDISH IN AMERICA

95

Yiddish in their schools, their publications, and - particularly - in their communal efforts, although Yiddish never attained the symbolic status, never received the explicit devotion, and never became the rallying ground in religious circles that it did in the secular "nationalist" world. If religious Jews in Poland felt a kinship to Eastern European Jews in America and in other centers of emigration, it was, primarily, on religious-observational grounds. For secular-"nationalist" Jews, this kinship was behaviorally evident through the use of the Yiddish language. The Nazi massacre annihilated six million Jews, most of whom were Yiddish speaking. The post-war Jewish communities in Poland (the Baltic States being under direct Soviet rule) currently receive governmental support for a number of schools, publications, theatre groups and other institutions of cultural self-maintenance. This is also true, but to a much lesser degree, in Rumania. However, the total Jewish population in these countries is far too small (and decreasing with continued emigration to Israel), and their cultural productivity too sparse to have any marked impact on the cultural status of Yiddish in other parts of the world where large numbers of former Eastern European Jews or their offspring now live. After a thousand years of growth and development, Yiddish now finds itself without the European heartland that gave birth to it and nurtured it. Yiddish "colonies" in the United States, Israel, Canada, South America, and throughout the world must now seek ways and means of linguistic-cultural survival without transfusions from "the old country" and in drastically different sociopsychological circumstances than they have ever faced before. V. Yiddish in America since 1914 Three circumstances have been of major importance in guiding the fortunes of Yiddish in America during this period. The first of these was the practical cessation of further immigration from Eastern Europe. The second of these was the progressive integration of former immigrants and their children into general American life (Glazer 1954,1956; Lestchinsky 1955; Rosen 1958; Rosenthal 1958). The third was the annihilation of Eastern European Jewry. As a result of these phenomena, the position of Yiddish became much weaker than that of most other immigrant languages in America (Fishman 1964b), although Yiddish devotees attained many import-

96

YIDDISH: TURNING TO LIFE

ant objectives during this period. That the inexorable march of time has increasingly eroded these accomplishments is less to be marveled at than either the original magnitude or the intensity of devotion that inspired them. They provide food for thought in connection with the general problem as to what mobilized cultural minorities might accomplish given more favorable circumstances.

A. The secular sector 1. Educational efforts a. Although the first Yiddish secular schools in the United States were organized before the First World War, it was in the 20s and 30s that their major numerical growth occurred (Mark 1946, Niger 1940, Yefrokin 1955). A number of splinter groups organized and supported schools for varying brief periods of time. Ultimately, however, three ideological-organizational variants became well established and these continue to function to this very day. The largest network of Yiddish secular schools is that maintained by the Workmen's Circle (Arbeter Ring). These schools were founded with a very dedicated socialist orientation which has become somewhat attenuated (in a New Dealish-Liberal Party direction) over the years. At the same time, these schools have moved some distance from their original anti-clericalist position toward a more tradition-tolerating view (Młotek 1954, Niger 1940) which stresses the ethnic-historical component of many traditional Jewish observances. The schools of the Jewish National Workers Alliance (Farband) are now more accurately referred to as Hebrew-Yiddish schools. Originally socialist-zionist in orientation, the first component has been largely de-emphasized over the years and the second one increasing emphasized. As a result, Hebrew - included in the curriculum from the very outset - has gained increased emphasis, whereas Yiddish has been steadily de-emphasized in most schools of this group. These schools have steadily had a traditional orientation, albeit in secular terms. The third school network is maintained by the Sholem Aleichem Folk Institute - now largely limited to New York City and environs. 10 This grouping has never manifested any partisan Jewish or general political coloration, athough it expresses sympathies both

YIDDISH IN AMERICA

97

to Israel and to social justice. It has pursued an increasingly traditional bent, although Yiddish is certainly dominant over Hebrew in its curriculum. 11 In all of the above instances, the schools maintained are largely and increasingly in the New York area, a few others are in other Middle Atlantic states, while only a very few remain in larger cities in other parts of the country (Yefrokin 1955). (See Table 1). Almost all of the schools are supplementary (i.e. weekday afternoon) in nature and at the elementary education level. A few kindergarten-nurseries and a very few high schools also exist as does one Hebrew-Yiddish all-day school and a teachers seminary supported jointly by all three secular school organizations. Recent years have witnessed the establishment of Yiddish secular "One Day (Sunday) Schools" in a few very suburban communities with "transportation problems", as contrasted with the schools meeting three or five afternoons per week which are still typical in large city Jewish neighborhoods. In all of these schools Yiddish still has proletarian (or at least liberal-laborite) and ethnic-secular overtones from the past. Nevertheless, as American Jewry has developed away from its proletarian origins, and as "nationals-secular ideology has either failed to capture the fancy of American Jewry or to correspond to its view of American realities, Yiddish schools have been moved to seek other emphases. The destruction of Eastern European Jewry has in part - served to underscore Yiddish as a link with the past and, Table 1. Yiddish secular schools in the United States. (Number of schools and their enrollment) 1945 1946 1949 1950 1952 1955 1956 1958 1960 Number of Schools* Enrollment: Total** New York** New York City and suburbs*** Girls of Total (%)

146

130 133 99 6123 6680 5825 3827 3144 4494

3343 54

94

123 113 4430 4631 3491 3198

3391 54

98

2983 55

* From registration-advertising lists (mostly weekday afternoon, some Sunday schools). ** From data collected by the American Association for Jewish Education. *** From data collected by the Jewish Education Committee of New York.

98

YIDDISH: TURNING TO LIFE

therefore, as a link with Jewish traditions. However, the traditionalization of Yiddish secular education has also been derived from the greater emphasis on a religiously legitimized Jewry in America, and on a growing conviction that an unreconstructed secular Jewishness (in the absence of an ethnic "apartness" which none espouse) cannot maintain itself. The Yiddish secular educational scene has become the major vantage point from which secularism as a philosophy of Jewish creative existence in the diaspora is reviewed (Goodman 1952; Lehrer 1927, 1936, 1961; Novak 1935; Pomerantz 1948). For many teachers, schools board members and parents, secularism still has much the same appeal as of old. Its "national-" cultural emphases are considered more enlightened, more progressive and more honest than the "pseudo-religious revival" that has purportedly gripped America since the second World War. As a result, there are many who still demand a curriculum which pays primary attention to Yiddish language, Yiddish literature, and a modern, secular"nationalist" interpretation of holidays, history, and world events. However, there are others who are disenchanted with an unreconstructed secular-"national" Weltanschauung and who claim that such an approach does not correspond to the realities of American Jewish life (Mark 1946). They indicate that on the one hand, non-Jews in America define Jews only as a religious grouping (Herbert 1955). On the other hand, American Jews seem most frequently and most comfortably to define themselves in these same terms - regardless of the intensity of their own religious convictions or the regularity of their own observances. At the same time there seems to be little interest in or understanding of the creative "national" ideologies of Eastern Europe out of which Jewish secular"national" thought originally developed. Certainly there is no interest in the aggressive (sometimes spiteful) "anti-clericalism" which characterized Yiddish-socialist secularism in its earliest period of breaking with the "dark forces" of Jewish ("religious") traditionalism. Secularism has "toned down", but in doing so it has merely become less radical or distinctive rather than more popular or creative. Other linguistic minorities are thought to rarely seek a "national" future in America whereas they frequently do seem to pursue their linguistic-cultural self-maintenance aspirations within a religious framework legitimized by America's dedication to religious diversity and religious freedom (Sherman 1955). Finally, the within-the-fold critics ofJewish secularism are concerned that the

YIDDISH IN AMERICA

99

Yiddishist-secularist approach does not really prepare the young for participation in an ongoing Jewish milieu in view of the many changes that have taken place in American Jewish life since the days of mass immigration. As a result of these several criticisms, many erstwhile Yiddish secularists favor greater traditional emphases (Bible, Hebrew, prayers and traditional holidays and family celebrations, etc.) in the curricula of Yiddish secular schools. This is exactly the direction in which all of these schools have developed to a greater or lesser degree - particularly in the past 10-15 years. As Yiddish secular education has drawn somewhat closer to other types of American Jewish education, and as the pupils of Yiddish schools have increasingly come from English speaking homes and enter an Anglo Jewish environment after graduation, it has become increasingly difficult to functionally relate Yiddish secular schooling to either ideological or behavioral uniqueness. The language as such continues to constitute the hallmark of these schools in the world of American Jewish education. However, the language is actually related more to a web of sentiments and memories of the teachers and school board members than it is to any viable culture into which children are or can be socialized. As long as the older generation of teachers and schoolmen continue to labor on their behalf, the schools will continue to account for some 3% of American Jewish children receiving a Jewish education (Dushkin 1959). American Jewish parents are largely uninterested in the ideological subtleties distinguishing one Jewish school curriculum from the other. As long as Yiddish schools are near at hand (and this pre-supposes their ability to follow the population shift from city to suburb) some children will be sent to them. Their parents will be delighted with the Yiddish phrases, poems and songs the children recite, with the Yiddish stories they learn to read, and with the Yiddish compositions they struggle to write (although many of these parents would be equally delighted if their children came home with Hebrew phrases and with prayers instead). If Yiddish will hardly become a living language of the third generation family as a result of attendance at such schools, these schools do help keep alive a nodding acquaintance with the language and a sentimental attachment to it. In addition, of course, children learn much more than Yiddish in a Yiddish school since instruction in history, customs and holidays, Bible, Hebrew, and current events are also important constituents of most curricula. Thus, although Yiddish secular schools become fewer - particularly outside of New York - it is not

100

YIDDISH: TURNING TO LIFE

because they are rejected, but rather because secular-culturist Jewish life has neither a strong organizational basis nor an ideologicalpsychological spark that registers with American born Jewry.12 Yiddish is now rarely considered to be the despicable jargon that first and second generation opponents were wont to decry. Although attitudes toward it (in general American as well as in Jewish circles) are now much more widely sympathetic - it is rarely considered something vital, something worth living and dying for, nor something worth even being excited about - except among a steadily diminishing breed of old-timers who once dreamt the dream of Jewish secular-"national" existence in Eastern Europe and for whom Yiddish is not only of ideological significance but is part and parcel of their own life style. b. At the same time that Yiddish secular schools are slowly diminishing in number and influence, Yiddish has blossomed forth in a number of institutions of higher general education. During the past fifteen to twenty years the dedicated protagonists of Yiddish have succeeded in introducing academic courses in Yiddish language, literature and folklore at the City College of the City University of New York, Brooklyn College (Adult Education Division), the New School for Social Research, Columbia University and Brandeis University. At the foregoing institutions Yiddish programs of study seem to be on a more or less stable footing. In addition, intermittent courses in Yiddish have also been taught at Boston University, Wayne State University, Roosevelt University, the University of California at Los Angeles, and the Ecole Libre des Hautes Etudes in New York.13 The most recent capstone to these efforts has been the movement to offer Yiddish instruction in those senior and junior high schools of New York City in which sufficient numbers of students express interest in the language. The funds and the leadership on which all of these efforts depend are, once more, the result of secular-culturist-"nationalist" dedication, for the very same individuals who support the Yiddish secular schools, the cultural organizations, the specialized Yiddish periodicals and bookpublishing ventures, are also the ones who organize the courses, endow the academic chairs and help recruit the students for Yiddish studies in American institutions of general education. 14 It is hard to overemphasize the contribution to Yiddishsecularist morale that has resulted from their recent "successes'' in Academe. Although the total number of students involved can

YIDDISH IN AMERICA

101

hardly be more than a few hundred per year, the status gain is felt to be quite considerable. The language of the poor and the powerless, the language of the homeless and the despised, the language that was itself so frequently abused and unappreciated - that language is now being taught at a number of America's best colleges and universities. The importance of this accomplishment is heightened not only by the traditional respect for higher learning, but by the fact that this accomplishment is likened unto a child conceived and born in old-age. At the very time when Yiddish continues to recede from its former position as the major language of American and worldJewry, after inconceivable losses at the hands of brown and red totalitarianism, at that very time it is welcomed into the halls of learning to be studied and appreciated by scholars and their students. If this triumph can be attained when the ranks of the faithful have been so thinned and weakened, then certainly there is a mystic fire to Yiddish, then obviously Yiddish is allied with eternity, then there is no telling what future success may be ahead for those whose devotion knows no bounds. 15 2. Press and literature a. The American Yiddish press never consisted of as many separate daily periodic publications as did the American-German press or the presses of various other large ethnic groups (Glatshteyn et al. 1945). This was, in part, a result of the great geographic concentration of American Jewry in the New York area and in a very few other large cities. As with other groups, a number of small provincial publications did arise. However, these were few in number and relatively poor in content in comparison to their New York counterpart. "Province" Jews constantly looked to New York as the Jewish spiritual-cultural capital - "the Jerusalem of America". Most of them had passed through New York on arrival in America. Many had lived there for a short while; most had friends and relatives there; many hoped to return there, if only "for the children's sake". As a result, it is not surprising that Yiddish-speaking Jewry in the "provinces" quickly showed a preference for New York Yiddish dailies and periodicals over those published locally. New York dailies were quick to set up regional offices. Regional editions were (and still are) published that provide some coverage of local Jewish and general news in addition to the content of the New York edition. Certainly, New York has always been the center of Yiddish cultural

102

YIDDISH: TURNING TO LIFE

existence in America. It not only had the millions of readers to support a large-scale Yiddish press, but also the advertisers eager for Jewish customers and the writers (journalists, essayists, poets, novelists, dramatists - for all of these have always been part and parcel of the Yiddish press) that provide it with content and with orientation. Unlike the Yiddish secular schools, the Yiddish press particularly the daily press - has largely been neither secular nor Yiddishist (Fishman and Fishman 1959). The daily press addressed itself to the masses of Jewish immigrants and not only to the intellectuals and sophisticates for whom "national"-secularism and Yiddishism were recognizable ideologies. The "masses" were religiously oriented (even if non-observant) rather than secularist. The "masses" looked upon Yiddish as a comfortable vehicle rather than a priceless treasure. Although the daily press was largely conducted by secularists 16 with a refined mastery of Yiddish, neither secularism nor respect for Yiddish were judged to have the mass appeal that the Yiddish press required for its sustenance and profit. Thus, much of the daily press came to employ - if not to champion - "potato-Yiddish", a mixture of Yiddish and English not unlike the speech of the unlettered immigrants, 17 rather than the more careful and cultured variants of Yiddish that some of its contributors employed in their journal articles and books for a much more select circle of readers. The American Yiddish press also adhered to an antiquated Germanized orthography of the nineteenth century much after this orthography had been modified or completely revised in practically all other Yiddish publications throughout the world. However, one must be careful not to paint too backward a picture. The daily press also regularly published good poetry and fine novels; it published much material on American history and problems (Sokes 1923); it published popular scientific writings; it published serious analyses ofJewish affairs; it regularly devoted space to literary reviews and criticisms. Thus the daily press was quite varied in content, combining newspaper and journal features on a regular basis (Glatshteyn 1945; Soltes 1923). The Yiddish press served in lieu of formal schooling; it was often the only education medium and the major Americanizing vehicle available to the Eastern European Jewish immigrant. The Yiddish press served many causes. Nevertheless it is probably correct to say that with the exception of a few militants, the Yiddish press, as such, long refused to champion one cause - namely, the cause of Yiddish linguistic

YIDDISH IN AMERICA

103

loyalty and linguistic consciousness in America. Whereas socialism, Zionism, communism, religiosity, Americanization and even anticlericalism have been officially championed at various times, Yiddishism has received support only from individual writers on select occasions and never became the offical policy of any daily. Today, the American Yiddish daily press has been reduced to three publications (Fishman 1960). The oldest and largest of these, the Jewish Daily Forward, carries a name that seems much more German today (Forverts) than was the case three score years ago and which harkens back to its militant socialist, anti-clerical, anti-Zionist, folk-educationist origins. Today the Forverts is a much more moderate publication: New Dealish, pro-Zionist, and almost traditionalistic in its outlook. Although somewhat ponderous in tone and content, it still commands a mass following. The only real competitor that the Forverts has is the Jewish DayMorning Journal (Tog, Morgn-Zhurnal). The Tog has always been Zionist-"nationalist" in orientation as opposed to the originally socialist-cosmopolitanist bent of the Forverts. Since acquiring the Morgn-Zhurnal, the Tog has also acquired very definite religioustraditionalist content as well. In addition to maintaining its original circle of readers, it is now the only daily that a segment of Yiddishspeaking Orthodox Jewry feels close to. Unlike the Forverts, the Tog, Morgn-Zhurnal is privately owned and often seems more venturesome and alert to reader interest. Finally, there is the communist Morgn-Frayhayt. It has patiently followed all of the fortunes of the meandering party line and neither the Stalin-Hitler pact nor the more recent annihilation of Yiddish literature in Soviet Russia has caused it to question its basic allegiance. Nevertheless, such blatant repudiations of Jewish sensitivities and loyalties - not to mention the current anti-Israel and anti-Jewish policies of the Soviet Union - could not but result in a precipitous falling off of readers and contributors. Today, the Morgn-Freiheit is a narrow sectarian tabloid with very little appeal outside of immediate party circles. (See Table 2.) The daily Yiddish press depends almost entirely upon the immigrant generation for its readers and subscribers - not to mention its journalists and other writers. Graduates of Yiddish secular schools have not, by and large, become readers of the Yiddish press - no more than have the graduates of intensive Orthodox schools in which Yiddish has frequently remained the language of Talmudic instruction. Thus, the long range existence of the daily

2

2

4 140,900

4 140,900 2

2 21,300

21,300 6

6

60,700 8 13,700 74,400 8

3

3

16,800

16,800

48,900

4

2

2

1

1 1

1

40,000

40,000

14 1 15

20 3 23

4 1 5

4 1 5

48,900

1960 In Middle Atlantic States Rest of US Total

5 217,300 6 1 21,200 2 6 238,500 8

3

4

5 1 6

1950 In Middle Atlantic States Rest of US Total

86,000

2

3

11 5 16

86,000

2

6 4 10

1940 In Middle Atlantic States Rest of US Total

6 334,600 2 3 89,800 1 9 424,400 3

13 7 20

a. Yiddish periodical press in America* (entirely in Yiddish) 1930 In Middle Atlantic States 6 6 419,900 5 3 132,200 2 1 37,800 Rest of US 5 4 138,900 2 2 46,300 Total 11 10 558,800 7 5 178,500 2 1 37,800

Dailies

9 179,000

9 179,000

14 366,900 2 34,900 16 401,800

8 420,600 3 89,800 11 510,400

10 589,900 6 185,200 16 755,100

Total Weekly, SemiMonthly, Semi- Bi-Mo, Quarterly Ann. or Irreg. or Tri-Wkly. Mo. or Tri-Wkly. or Semi-Ann. To­ with Circula­ To­ with Circula­ To­ with Circula­ To- with Circula- To- with Circula­ To- with Circulatal info. tion tal info. tion tal info. tion tal info. tion tal info. tion tal info. tion

Table 2. The American Yiddish and Anglo Jewish Press

104 YIDDISH: TURNING TO LIFE

1960 LRP In Middle Atlantic States 4 4 166,000 3 Rest of US 1 Total 5 4 166,000 3 b. Yiddish press in America (mixed 1930 In Middle Atlantic States 1 1 2,400 6 Rest of US 3 Total 1 1 2,400 9 1940 In Middle Atlantic States 5 Rest of US 2 Total 7 1950 In Middle Atlantic States 1 Rest of US 2 Total 3 1960 In Middle Atlantic States 1 Rest of US Total 1 25,900

12,100 12,000 24,100

17,700 12,300 30,000

1,500 5,200 6,700

4 1 5

3 1 4

1 1 2

30,000 33,000

1

1

30,000

4

1

1

2

1

4

33,000

6 4 10

9 4 13

2

2

1 1 2

3 3 6

6 2 8

63,000

63,000

1,500 5,200 6,700

17,700 15,400 33,100

21,500 13,000 34,500

4,000 21 18 239,200 1 4,000 22 18 239,200

1

1

1

2

3,100 3,100

7,000 1,000 8,000

1

1

2 4 6

2 2

1 1 2

9,300

9,300

1 2 3

1 2 1

2 1 3

4

6

3 34,000 7 6 25,900 6 [English-Yiddish] publications).

7

4

34,000

6

3

YIDDISH IN AMERICA

105

Weekly, Semior Tri-Wkly. Monthly, Semi- Bi-Mo, Quarterly Mo. or Tri-Wkly or Semi-Ann.

Ann. or Irreg.

Total

tal info.

tion

tal info.

tion

1

1

1

1

1 1

1930 In Middle Atlantic States Rest of US Total

1940 In Middle Atlantic States Rest of US Total

20 36 56

6,800 12 35 6,800 47 99,900 79,600 179,500

10 248,600 26 354,800 36 603,400

7 13 20

6 8 14

4 6 10

1 1 2

5 5 10

2 3 5

1 1 2

tal info.

73,200 114,500 187,700

7,300 70,400 77,700

33,000 4,200 37,200

tion

4

4

1

1

4

4

3 1 4

4

4

tal info.

3,800

3,800

38,200

38,200

tion

tal info.

tion

10 16 26

6

5

30 16 45 31 75 47

20 42 62

6

5

tal info.

325,600 469,300 794,900

114,000 150,000 264,000

71,200 4,200 75,400

tion

To with Circula­ To with Circula­ To with Circula­ To- with Circula­ To- with Circula­ To- with Circula­

Dailies

 Anglo-Jewish press in America (English publications)

1960 LRP In Middle Atlantic States Rest of US Total

Table 2

106 YIDDISH: TURNING TO LIFE

1

1

1

1

15 36 51

13 36 49

51,000 20 40 51,000 60

13 14 27

14 250,500 21 30 426,900 19 44 677,400 40

11 243,200 27 401,700 38 644,900

15 265,100 13 21 146,500 13 36 411,600 26

603,500 304,400 907,900

518,400 260,900 779,300

20 344,000 4 11,700 24 335,700

5 258,200

8

43,000 37,000 80,000

5 258,200

2 1 3

8

4 1 5

18 672,200 22 16 514,600 5 34 1,186,800 27

9 9 18

7 7 14

4 4

4

1

1

4

1

1

26 1,119,900 36 706,100 62 1,826,000

25 877,500 29 444,400 54 1,321,900

8,200 62 56 1,274,900 60 50 953,200 8,200 122 106 2,228,100

15,000 35 50 15,000 85

38 54 92

* Data from Foreign Language Press Lists, American Council for Nationalities Service, New York and from Ayer's Dictionary, supplemented and corrected by L.R.P. data. For the Hebrew press, see footnote 28.

■ Total

1960 LRP In Middle Atlantic States Rest of US

1960 In Middle Atlantic States Rest of US ι Total

1950 In Middle Atlantic States Rest of US Total

YIDDISH IN AMERICA

107

108

YIDDISH: TURNING TO LIFE

Yiddish press seems somewhat dubious. Nevertheless, as long as it continues, the Yiddish daily press is a vital symbol of the mass basis of Yiddish - in fact it is the last remaining symbol of this kind. It has never been Yiddishist, but recently it has performed the important function of constantly informing its readers of the recognition that Yiddish has obtained via translations into other languages and via recognition by colleges and universities. This news is rarely available in the general press and by highlighting it, the Yiddish press has served to strengthen its own foundations by reassuring its readers that their language has prestige value and is recognized by "others". b. Outside of the daily Yiddish press, there has existed a not inconsiderable world of Yiddish journals and books. Except for the period of mass-immigration Yiddish journals and books never had a mass-readership like that achieved by the daily press - although it should be noted that journals and newspapers alike were (and are) read by more readers than their circulation figures alone would indicate. The Yiddish journal and book have usually depended upon the more sophisticated reader, whether self-educated or formally educated. Yiddish books and journals have been more puristic and conscientious in linguistic matters, and less concerned with financial success in relation to ideological matters. Thus, both Yiddishism and secular-"nationalism" have had and still have their proponents in the world of American Yiddish journals and books. Although constantly withdrawing in a painful battle of attrition, this world continues at a high level of literacy and intellectual merit to fashion and interpret "high" culture for the few who can appreciate it (Shtarkman 1957). Yiddish journals present their readers with essays on current Jewish and general affairs in America and throughout the world, poetry, literary criticism, ideological-philosophical analyses ofJewish political and social-cultural movements, historical and memoristic accounts of Jewish life in Eastern Europe, social-scientific papers, children's literature, etc. Yiddish books are topically just as diversified as are the journals, although the American reader would probably comment on the relatively large number of books of poetry and memoirs and the paucity of books on technical-scientific matters. Whereas, most journals are organizational publications, most Yiddish books are private publications of their authors assisted by a group of friends and associates formed into a committee. Even those books ostensibly published by one or another of the half dozen or so

YIDDISH IN AMERICA

109

publishing houses now functioning are often privately financed by the authors and their patrons. Most books are published in one or two thousand copies and are distributed by the authors themselves (or their "committees") and by the publishing houses. The daily and periodic press carry frequent notices and advertisements concerning the appearance of new books. The Yiddish book-market is affected by many of the difficulties which have beset book-reading and book-buying in the general American hard-book market in recent years. In addition, the Yiddish book-market has always existed on a limited numerical base and that base has constantly become even more restricted. Although the paucity of children's books has implications which are quite clear, the overall number of Yiddish books published by American Yiddish authors has fallen off only slightly in the past fifteen years (see Table 4). This may be due to the fact that books written by AmericanYiddish authors also enjoy sales in Israel, Latin America, Canada, Australia, South Africa and Western Europe. As a result, Yiddish books of real merit will certainly continue to be published in America for many years to come. In addition, many American Yiddish authors publish their books in other countries (particularly in Argentina and Israel) where printing costs are much lower. These books, too, must be included as part of the creative world of American Yiddish literature. The proportion of such books has increased in recent years and is likely to increase further with the passage of time.  American Yiddish literature - particularly Yiddish poetry - is American in many ways (Mark 1950, Minkoff 1955, Ravitch 1945). Most of the journalists, essayists, novelists and poets that constitute the American Yiddish literary world arrived in this country as young men and women (Reyzin 1926-1930). Their major literary and intellectual development occurred after their arrival on American shores and under the strong influence of general American education and general American literary developments. Yiddish poetry has had particularly intimate relations with the schools, trends, and points of view in American poetry (Weinreich, U. 1957). American Yiddish literati not only have their own writers guild (Y.L. Peretz shrayber fareyn) but they also have their own section in the international PEN (Poets, Essayists, Novelists) organization and maintain relations with men of letters of all countries in this manner. The productivity of American Yiddish writers is encouraged by

20

1899

61

Totals, by literary fields (%)

Median year of birth

Median age as of 1960

63

1897

23

100

59

1901

9

100

63

1897

33

100

2

7

17

74

61

1899

4

100

62

1898

8

100

19

-

-

25

56

44

56

8

-

65

1895

2

100

63

1897

100

100**

2

26

-

-

63

100%

* Data derived from volumes 1-4 of Biographical Dictionary of Modern Yiddish Literature, New York, Congress for Jewish Culture, 1956,1958,1960 (Niger et al. 1956-1962). ** rounded to nearest integer.

100**

-

-

2

1920-

Percentage(%)

16

13

7

1910-1919

42

22

39

42

History, Journalism Literary Criticism, Translations Totals, by Education, Decade Memoirs Linguistics Children's Literature

1900-1909

65

Poetry, Drama

51

Fiction

-1899

Decade of Birth

Table 3. Age distribution of 209 living American-Yiddish authors* (by primary literary fields)

110 YIDDISH: TURNING TO LIFE

76 (13 Abroad) 17

77 (7 Abroad) 9

86(0 Abroad)

0

Total

% published abroad

35

75 (26 Abroad)***

5 (2 Israel, 1 France)

4

9 (1 Argentina)

* Data for 1945, 1950 and 1955 obtained from listings in TheJewish Book Annual (Joffe 1936). Data for 1960 obtained from records kept by the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research. ** Items in parentheses are included in thefigurespreceding them. *** The Central Yiddish Cultural Organization (CYCO) reported that 126 Yiddish books were published throughout the world in 1960. The total reported for 1959 was 125. The total reported for 1961 was 148, of which 47 were published in the U.S.A., 34 in Israel, 32 in Argentina, 10 in Poland, 9 in France, and the remaining 16 in eight other countries. See Forverts, January 13, 1963.

9

18

16

Political, organizational and current events

2

9 (1 Argentina)

8

Education and pedagogy

2 (1 Mexico)

4

3

9

Children's literature

25 (5 Argentina, 4 Israel, 1 Mexico)

15 (4 Argentina, 1 Israel)

18(3 Argentina)

15

History, biography and memoirs

12(3 Argentina, 1 Mexico)

6 (1 Canada)

8

Literary history and criticism

19 (1 Argentina, 5 Israel)

18(1 Argentina)

14 (1 Argentina)

19

Poetry, drama, art

11 (3 Argentina, 2 Israel)

1960

16(3 Argentina)

1955

9 (1 Argentina**)

1950

11

1945

Year ofPublication

Fiction

Type of literature

Table 4. Number of Yiddish booh published by American-Yiddish authors* (five-year intervals: 1945-1960).

YIDDISH IN AMERICA 111

112

YIDDISH: TURNING TO LIFE

a number of annual prizes sponsored by various endowed funds and cultural organizations. In addition, more and more Yiddish works are finding their way into English translation and, as a result, into anthologies and journals that reach large numbers of Jewish and non-Jewish readers who would otherwise never have heard of them. The resulting recognition and publicity are usually far greater than that experienced by these writers as a result of their original Yiddish publications. Although there is probably no one among them today (not even Bashevis Singer) who has achieved as much recognition in the "outside world" as did Sholem Asch in former years, there are nevertheless, quite a number of real stature. In translation, their works will certainly be recognized as major contributions to American literary life and thought. Unlike Sholem Asch, few, if any, of these writers write with the thought of ultimate translation. Their devotion to Yiddish is complete and their artistry is the more perfect for it. Nevertheless, it must be recognized that most of them are in their 60s now, (see Table 3)18 and their most creative years may well be behind them. 3. Yiddish theatre For several reasons there was greater delay in the development of theatre in Jewish cultures than in most other European cultures. Abraham Goldfaden - the "father of Yiddish theatre" - must, therefore, be recognized as a revolutionary figure rather than merely as an innovator. Thanks to his efforts Yiddish theatre became widely popular toward the end of the nineteenth century, notwithstanding the difficulties placed in its path by hostile regimes. However, prior to the First World War Yiddish theatre in Eastern Europe consisted mainly of wandering troupes that put on operettas and other light entertainment from make-shift stages in towns and villages throughout the Czarist Pale of Settlement, in the Jewish districts of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and in the Rumanian Kingdom. By contrast, a much more professionalized Yiddish theatre had already begun to develop in American immigration centers. In New York, Philadelphia and other cities, several companies played throughout the year to packed houses while others "traveled the circuit" to Boston, Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago, etc. with similar success. In New York, an entire district of the East Side became associated in "the popular mind" with Yiddish theatre; this was Second Avenue. Second Avenue was "the Yiddish Broadway" - but

YIDDISH IN AMERICA

113

it was much more than that. Not only were several Yiddish theatres in operation there, but on or near Second Avenue there were also many Jewish restaurants and "literary cafes", many Yiddish-Hebrew book­ stores, a shopping district specializing in Jewish foods and in other items of special interest to Jewish customers, publication offices, or­ ganizational offices, meeting rooms, and - the backbone behind all of this - for blocks in all directions, the tenements that housed the Jewish masses and their schools, their synagogues, their shops. Thus, Second Avenue was not merely "the Yiddish Broadway" but the Broad­ way of the Yiddish East Side, the "great white way" of the most massive immigrant district that American-Jewish history ever witnessed. In theatrical circles "Second Avenue" not only stood for Yiddish theatre linguistically, but it also stood for Yiddish theatre stylistically and temperamentally (Lipsky 1962). Second Avenue theatre meant a theatre for the masses; a theatre with hearty laughter and deep pathos; a theatre with overtones of social criticism; a theatre with bold, heavy strokes; a theatre that made up for whatever it lacked in subtlety and artistry by deepness of feeling and gamut of emotions. It should not be forgotten, however, that Second Avenue was also the home of several theatres dedicated to the presentation of a very select repertoire in accord with the most impeccable artistic standards (Bernari 1961-62). Nevertheless, such theatres were more on Second Avenue than of Second Avenue. 19 However, regardless of which type of Second Avenue theatre we may have in mind, Second Avenue is no more (Wakefield 1959). The geographical dispersion of the Jewish population (to the point that the East Side has become largely Negro and Puerto Rican), the natural decline in the number of Yiddish speakers and the increased age and limited physical mobility of those that remain, not to mention the advanced age of the actors themselves as well as the rising costs of theatrical productions - all of these in concert - conspired to bring the legitimate Yiddish stage in New York to the brink of extinction in the 1950s (Table 5). The few Yiddish theatres that had previously existed in the "provinces" had, by then, long since ceased to function. Formerly, New York troupes had carried Yiddish theatre from coast to coast for more than two score years - and "wandering stars" had once more become commonplace in provincial Yiddish theatre circles. However, with the practical discontinuation of legitimate Yiddish theatre in New York, there is now practically no Yiddish theatre anywhere outside of New York either. Nevertheless, even at this late date, the flame of American-

2 15

5 22

59

1901

8 35 42 16 100

250

53

1902

12 32 40 15 100

1960

300

48

1902

12 33 39 15 100

1955

* Data derived from Lexicon of the Yiddish Theatre, Z. Zylberzveig (1960,1959) and newspaper listings. ** Data supplied by Hebrew Actors Union (Yiddish Theatrical Alliance), New York.

Estimated membership of Hebrew Actors Union Number of Yiddish Theatres in New York Length of N.Y. Theatre season (in weeks)

44

1901

14 35 37 14 100

Appeared in Yiddish performances during: 1945 1950

Other information on the Yiddish theatre**

Median Age (as of year in column heading)

Median Year of Birth

-1890 1891 - 1900 1901-1910 1911Total(%)

Year of birth

Table 5 Age distribution ofprofessional American-Yiddish actors*

114 YIDDISH: TURNING TO LIFE

YIDDISH IN

AMERICA

115

Yiddish theatre is far from extinguished. A number of small semiprofessional and professional troupes are still functioning, giving performances on weekends and holidays. These troupes have less concern for vehicles that will attract the masses. They attract a small following of relatively sophisticated devotees. Their plays are drawn either from classical Yiddish literature or are expressly prepared for them on the basis of more recent Yiddish novels and dramas. Such groups function in New York, Chicago and a few other cities. Although they are few in number and their total influence is small, their work is frequently of a high quality and experimental in form. Quantitatively, they represent a precipitous drop from the Second Avenue theatre of yesteryear. Qualitatively, they often represent quite an advance beyond much that was sought after on Second Avenue. Both the remaining actors and their remaining public are gratified that through their combined efforts, the Yiddish theatre was recently able to celebrate its one hundredth anniversary. 4. Yiddish radio. Yiddish radio programs seem to have enjoyed their greatest follow­ ing from the mid-thirties through to the conclusion of the Second World War. This was also the period of greatest impact of radio on the general American public. Yiddish programs were generally broadcast over low-power stations which specialized in non-English language broadcasts for an immediate metropolitan audience. Yiddish broadcasting has always been marked by a great variety of programs: news and news analyses, music (vocal and instrumental, modern and liturgical), drama (in the soap-opera tradition), humor, sermons and sermonettes on family problems and daily experiences, holiday celebrations, interpretations of traditional practices, etc. During the war years, the American Yiddish radio frequently succeeded in providing programs of interest for three generations of listeners. Since that time its audience has narrowed radically to the generation of grandparents. In that generation it still has a large and loyal following for whom it provides entertainment and topics of discussion in a manner unequalled by other media of mass communication. During the past few years the Yiddish radio has held its own quite successfully. (See Table 6) 5. Yiddish cultural organizations. Culture is an elusive and nebulous affair and there are very few

116

YIDDISH: TURNING TO LIFE

Table 6. The Yiddish radio in America.* Number of Stations Number of stations in New York City Number outside of New York City Total Number

1956

1958

1960

5 41 46

2 29 31

2 31 33

(2)27.5 (29) 1.8 (31) 4.5

(2)27.0 (29) 1.2 (31) 4.2

Average number of hours of broadcasting per week Average in New York City (5)22.2** Average outside of New York City (23) 2.4 Total average (28) 6.0

* Data from Radio Broadcasting Lists, American Council for Nationalities Service, New York, from Broadcasting Yearbook, and from Language Resources Project. ** Numbers in parentheses indicate the number of stations for which data on hours of broadcasting per week are available.

formally constituted structures established on its behalf. In Yiddish secular circles "culture" refers to anything expressed through Yiddish, whether this be literature, song, theatre, education, or research (Niger 1955). The dance and the visual arts are less commonly included in the general rubric of culture because they are linguistically neutral forms of expression. a. The Yiddish cultural organization with the broadest programmatic base is the World Congress for Jewish Culture. This organization was founded after the end of the Second World War. Its rallying cry was that imaginative and well organized efforts of world-wide proportions were necessary to salvage Yiddish and Yiddish culture from the severe losses suffered at the hands of the Nazis. The Congress was planned as a non-political "united front" in which individuals from diverse parties and organizations might work harmoniously on behalf of the one supreme loyalty that united them all: Yiddish. However from the very first, communist organizations and their sympathizers were excluded. 20 It also soon became evident that most Zionists affiliated with the Congress (organizationally or individually) did not fully relate to Yiddish as to a clearly superordinate goal. Finally, the mass of non-Yiddish Jewish organizations and individuals did not become affiliated with the Congress at all. As a result, the major financial and programmatic burden of the Congress has been borne by the non-ZionistYiddishist-Culturist-Liberalist groups and individuals who were most outspoken on behalf of Yiddish culture even before the formation of the Congress.

YIDDISH IN AMERICA

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The Congress adopted maximalist goals in all of the various cultural areas, linguistic as well as non-linguistic. However, financial limitations have restricted it to the publication of books and journals, awarding literary prizes, sponsoring a weekly radio program, sponsoring lectures on cultural topics (including the arts), and issuing statements to the Jewish and general press on Yiddish cultural affairs (such as the Soviet restrictions on Yiddish or the initial Israeli disregard for Yiddish in press coverage of the Eichman trial). The Congress cannot materially assist other organizations in the pursuit of Yiddish cultural endeavors since it is itself dependent on others for its own operation. Nevertheless, the Congress exists as a valuable symbol of the supra-party claims of Yiddish and of its organized international stature. 21 b. Another such symbol, at a different level of functioning, is the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research. Founded in Vilna (then Poland) in 1925 as the "Yiddish Scientific Institute - YIVO", it soon came to symbolize the highest intellectual aspirations of Yiddish-speaking communities in Eastern Europe and throughout the world. It quickly established divisions in Berlin and in New York, as well as small groups of "friends" in most major cities of immigration. Through its sections on philology, history and economics, and psychology and education, it sponsored studies, published journals, convened conferences and trained scientists-to-be. YIVO was definitely a central cog in the post-war development of Yiddish cultural and intellectual activity since it epitomized a combination of the very highest linguistic, scholarly, and national aspirations. During and after the Second World War, the YIVO managed to transplant some of its personnel and much of its library and archives to New York. Here, however, the entire secular-"national" and cultural front was much less interested in Jewish scholarship, and Yiddish itself was largely relegated to a secondary positon in Jewish values. As a result, the YIVO has regressed to conducting library and archival activities, with intermittent scientific publications, conferences and exhibitions to the extent that its meager budget permits. The process whereby its once central training and research functions for the Jewish community have been abandoned has been a most painful one for the YIVO - precisely because of the prominence of its former intellectual and symbolic functions. Even after Jewish communities in Eastern Europe were resigned to the fact that their 'peace-treaty privileges" and immunities were to be denied them,

118

YIDDISH: TURNING TO LIFE

they never resigned from the will to maintain a separate intellectualcultural existence. Autonomy of mind and spirit were even more important than legal autonomy and for such autonomy historians, linguists, social scientists, and literary scholars were obviously needed. Who was to train the intellectual elite of an autonomistic Jewish community - an elite that would view itself as the guardian and champion of the cultural treasures which the masses possessed but could not themselves protect and develop? Certainly the State universities could not be trusted to develop such a Jewish elite neither with respect to the requisite knowledge nor with respect to the requisite attitudes. The YIVO alone was the agency that could be entrusted with this subtle and central role. The masses lavished upon the YIVO that which they had in abundance: love, respect, encouragement. The semi-skilled workman in a provincial town felt ennobled when he acted as a zamier (a "collector") for the YIVO sending it lists of local Yiddish terminology for various trades; he felt himself a participant in a "national" drama, a participant in the rational development of modern Jewish autonomism on a high intellectual-scholarly level. Yiddish was the major protagonist in this folk-drama even if it was also only one of an extensive ensemble of characters. By the time the YIVO established itself in America, the basic ingredients for such a drama were lacking. Instead of being the recognized symbol of cultural autonomism guided by disciplined intelligence, the YIVO became one more Jewish organization scrambling for a share of the annual philanthropic contributions of Jewish individuals, organizations, and community welfare funds. With participationism rather than autonomism the pervading ideal of American-Jewish life, and with religion rather than ethnicity the pervading self-view, the need for an institution to prepare a linguistically and attitudinally differentiable Jewish intelligentsia became ever harder to explain. Although English translations of its scientific publications attained considerable acclaim in American academic circles, the Jewish community was by and large not impressed by erudite publications on topics concerning which it lacked both intellectual and attitudinal preparation. Thus, the YIVO found itself respected everywhere but in its own backyard, its financial position becoming ever more precarious and its program of activities - ever more restricted. In 1955, it officially changed its English name from "Yiddish Scientific Institute - YIVO" to YIVO Institute for Jewish Research", thus eliminating the tell-tale linguistic

YIDDISH IN AMERICA

119

reference. There is no sign that this move has eased its financial position, but it is definitely indicative that those publicly expousing maximalist views with respect to Yiddish can receive scant comfort from the YIVO. It is hard to say whether the YIVO currently defines its role in terms of any specific responsibilities for the maintenance of Yiddish in America, although its past accomplishments on behalf of "standard Yiddish" (including the continued publication of Yidishe shprakh, a journal devoted to the problems of standard Yiddish, now in its 25th year) are truly monumental. Certainly, it does not advocate any particular brand of linguistic-cultural autonomism for American Jewry. Furthermore, there do not seem to be any groups within American Jewry that view the YIVO (or another scientific society) as a necessary instrument for accomplishing their specific ideological goals. c. Two Jewish fraternal organizations have been particularly active in support of a variety of Yiddish cultural efforts for half a century or more: the Workmen's Circle (Arbeter Ring) and the Jewish National Workers Alliance (Farband). As mentioned earlier, each of these organizations supports a network of supplementary schools in which Yiddish is taught. Each also supports summer camps for children and adults in which some Yiddish instruction and some Yiddish entertainment are part of the general program of activities. Each is engaged in adult educational work encompassing publications, lectures, choruses, etc. In this work - particularly that part of it which is addressed to the older generation - Yiddish figures quite prominently. Currently, Yiddish activities lead a less complicated existence in the Workmen's Circle than in the Farband, since no counterpressures in favor of modern Hebrew are involved. As the Workmen's Circle has come to play down its earlier socialist-cosmopolitan views, Jewish concerns have come into greater prominence in its programs. Furthermore, the "nationaľ'-secular orientation of the 30s has been at least somewhat softened with traditionalism (even though it has not been officially abandoned by any means). Yiddish is no longer referred to in advertisements for new members as the Jewish "national" language, nor are Jews referred to in "national" ethnic terms, nor is religion and tradition debunked. Nevertheless, Yiddish is still viewed as the tie to Jews throughout the world and the key to the immediate past of most American Jews. On the other hand, the demands of organizational life require a constant functional

120

YIDDISH: TURNING TO LIFE

emphasis on English - even if this is not "ideologically" justified. Older Yiddish speaking members die off and the continuation of the organization requires the energetic formation of new English speaking branches, the publication of English periodicals, the sponsorship of English programs, etc. Thus, for the Workmen's Circle, the transition from Yiddish to English is now on the order of a normal generational process. There is no articulated ideological opposition to Yiddish in the Workmen's Circle. The children of older members have themselves frequently become members. They understand Yiddish even if they do not use it in their own households, and even if they are not ideologically committed to Yiddish. Yiddish will continue to be taught in the Workmen's Circle schools as long as there are teachers who can teach it and the Workmen's Circle will maintain its schools as long as a spark of secular Jewishness is present in its leadership. d. The position of Yiddish in the Farband is much more complicated. The same generational developments obtain as in the case of the Workmen's Circle. In addition, however, deproletarianization has resulted in a proportionally greater emphasis on the Zionist component of Labor-Zionism. Since the appearance of the State of Israel, the pressures for Hebrew in the Farband have mounted continually - both among older and younger members. The fact that the major Israeli political party - the Mapai - is ideologically and organizationally related to the Forband also represents a source of pressure in favor of Hebrew and in opposition to Yiddish. As a result of all these pressures, there are now a few Forband schools in which Yiddish instruction has disappeared entirely. There are others in which it is still grudgingly taught to a minimal degree. Finally, it is frequently accorded secondary status even in those schools still giving appreciable time to it. There are a number of Hebrew speaking branches in the Forband and the weekly Yiddish journal of the organization is seeking to establish a Hebrew section. Yiddish in the Farband functions in the context of an ideological and organizational expectation that Hebrew is and will be the major language ofJewish intellectual and "national" independence. e. Throughout the USA there are also a number of local Jewish organizations involved in continuous exertions on behalf of Yiddish. Each of these, in its own area, commands the loyalties of a number of activists, attracts the sympathies of a number of more peripheral members, and exerts some influence on a larger or smaller circle of

YIDDISH IN AMERICA

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spectators from afar. In New York, there is the Sholem Aleichem Folk Institute and its schools, summer camp, children's journal, and publishing house. In Philadelphia, there is the Yiddish Culture Organization with its lectures, children's theatre-studio, prizes for students showing proficiency in Yiddish studies, and support for Yiddish courses in the local Y's, college Hillel's, and Jewish teachertraining institute. In Los Angeles, there is the Yiddish Culture Club with its fine library, its annual journal, its lecture and holiday celebration series, and its support for local authors and their publication ventures. There are similar local groups - often of a supra-political nature - in Chicago, in Detroit, and in other larger cities, not to mention the local branch and schools of national organizations. Yiddish devotees aren't "getting any younger" but they are an amazingly energetic and hardy lot and, as with "true believers" elsewhere, their world is an orderly and meaningful one even though so many of their prophecies have failed. 6. TheJewish labor movement. The period of mass Jewish immigration into the United States coincided with the period of major American industrialization and, therefore, with the period of major growth in the American labor movement (Tcherikover 1961). Because Jews were concentrated only in a very few cities and in a very few industries and trades within these cities certain unions and other labor organizations were predominantly Jewish. As a result, the internal organizational activities of these unions - as well as their efforts to gain the sympathy and support of the general Jewish population - were long conducted predominantly in Yiddish (Menes 1955a). In many cases, the use of Yiddish by the Jewish unions was a completely functional and ideologically uncomplicated phenomenon. It did not connote any particular valuation of Yiddish nor any particular identification with Jewish movements, parties or in-group goals of any kind. On the other hand, many Jewish unionists - both among the leadership as well as among the rank and file - had been initiated into the world of labor concerns in the "Old Country" where Jewish unions were identified with Jewish-socialist parties and with Yiddish "national"secularist Weltanschauungen (Menes 1955b). Although the "Old World" Jewish "nationalist" goals never achieved official acceptance in American Jewish labor circles, they, nevertheless, flitted about as recognizable though unspoken elements of the atmosphere of these

122

YIDDISH: TURNING TO LIFE

circles. As a result, the Yiddish of labor mass-meetings, of labor publications, and of labor evening-schools and lecture series was often evocative of younger days and fonder dreams than those which hard and cold American realities could long sustain. Certainly, Jewish unionism in America never became a bastion of Yiddish and Yiddishism as it had in Europe (Reich 1955, Sherman 1955). On the contrary, Jewish unionism educated and Americanized hundreds of thousands of Jewish bread-winners - to the extent that the Rooseveltian Revolution may be viewed both as the climax of Jewish unionism as well as the beginning of its end (Herberg 1952). Little by little, Italians, then Negroes, then Puerto Ricans replaced the vanishing Jewish proletarian in the erstwhile Jewish unions - until only the Union leadership remained in Jewish hands. Yiddish slowly but surely ceased to have functional value in the "Jewish unions" and at the present time is no more than a curious vestigial reminder of former days. 7. Generational patterns. Various individual and family patterns in Yiddish secular circles demonstrate the marked language concerns that continue to typify the group even after the frequency and range of language usage has been much curtailed. Among first generation secularists, Yiddish remains an object of adoration and a "cause" associated with fond memories (Bez 1962). An elderly 22 first generation husband and wife, who arrived in the USA before the First World War, may now frequently speak English to each other, may follow the popular American press, radio, television and motion-picture worlds, may speak English to their children - now young adults - and to their grand-children, and may largely speak English to their age-peers of similar organizational and orientational background. Nevertheless, the same couple will remain active members of the board of a Yiddish secular school; they will attend Yiddish concerts and lectures; they will contribute to Yiddish cultural organizations; they will purchase a Yiddish daily, and perhaps, subscribe to a Yiddish periodical; they will purchase a few Yiddish books each year, and they will be extremely gratified by any public indication of recognition for Yiddish. They do not expect their own children to speak Yiddish to each other or to them - except in special circumstances calling for secrecy or display of endearment. Nevertheless, they do expect their children to send the grand-

YIDDISH IN AMERICA

123

children to a Yiddish secular school, if this can be at all conveniently arranged, so that the grandchildren may learn the rudiments of Yiddish reading, writing and recognition. Having left Eastern Europe before Yiddish won full public recognition as a vehicle of culture and education, and having devoted their early years in America to the struggle for economic survival, their own Yiddish was never fully perfected (they view "literary" standard Yiddish with a mixture of awe and suspicion rather than as a standard for their own personal use) and their own education never formally constituted. The growth of Yiddish culture and of cultural Yiddish in their own lifetime is a matter of awe as well as of pride to them. Yiddish represents their closest approximation to personal continuity and to intellectual exposure. Although secularism never fully developed, either as a philosophy or as a pattern of American Jewish living, the synagogue and Jewish religious-traditional usages have never fully regained primacy or effortless acceptance in their lives. Yiddish remains as a tie to a small world of friends and of organizational activity and purposefulness, where every additional hand is valued even if it be old and infirm (Goodman 1952). The second generation's involvement with Yiddish is largely dependent on the nature of the marriage partner. If the mate is not also a product of a Yiddish secular home-school-camp environment, then the post-marital contact with Yiddish is likely to be extremely superficial. Proletarian-secularism is likely to fare somewhat better - at least to the point of resisting synagogue-conformism and other forms of middle-classism. Yiddish school attendance for one's children is likely to remain an important goal - unless the mate has a strong contrary ideological predisposition. Other than in these few respects, their involvement in the general American Jewish world of personal-intellectual-political-community affairs is overtly indistinguishable. When the marriage partner is also of Yiddish-secular extraction, identification with the Yiddish-cultural world is likely to be stronger, if only attitudinally. On the other hand, even within this group, families in which Yiddish is still the language of substantial parental or parent-child interaction are so rare as to be museum pieces attracting special attention. Nevertheless, Yiddish facility gained in childhood - though usually dormant - is still substantial; interest in Yiddish schooling is likely to be stonger; association with other former graduates of Yiddish secular schools is likely to be more frequent, and attendance at Yiddish cultural events - although

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YIDDISH: TURNING TO LIFE

rare - is not unheard of. Yiddish journals and Yiddish books are rarely known to this sub-group - but Yiddish camps and Yiddish records are much more familiar items. Intellectually, this group is aware of the role that Yiddish played in the lives of their parents and in the life of recent Eastern European Jewry. The group is aware of literary Yiddish, and that masters of poetry and prose have created outstanding works in Yiddish. It is also aware that their own elderly parents are carrying the difficult burden of financial and organizational support for the entire Yiddish cultural edifice in America. Nevertheless, the group rarely lends a wholehearted hand in this connection - except as their own children's Yiddish schools and camps may be involved. It is difficult to say that this group is uninterested and unconcerned with the welfare of Yiddish. It would be wrong to say that Yiddish has played no role in their total intellectual and Jewish development. It would be false to imply that they have no warm feeling or no loyalty toward the language. Nevertheless, unlike their parents, they did not grow up in a predominantly Jewish world, and Yiddish Jewish concerns constitute but a fraction of their total concerns with themselves and with society. Yiddish is good and fine "in its place", but its place is rather limited functionally to in-group ceremonies, reminiscences, humor, intimate endearances, and organizational nods. Nevertheless, they have a problem - both with Yiddish and with secularism. They are "too rational" or "too skeptical" to accept the "supernaturalism" of Jewish religious traditions. They are baffled by their desire to express "ethnic" Jewishness in a "modern" way. They cling to Yiddish attitudinally more than behaviorally since it represents the Jewishness they know best even if it does not provide a full-blown philosophy or guide for their Jewish existence. A third generation is now attaining maturity within the world of Yiddish secular schools and related organizations. For these youngsters - many of whom are now completing high school and entering college - the vibrant period of Eastern European secular Yiddishism is something twice removed. That world itself no longer exists except as text-books can give it pale embodiment. In addition, the grandparents who represent a physical-emotional link to this vanished world are themselves passing away. Thus, their parents and teachers constitute their only exposure to Yiddish in an ideological setting and even this exposure is limited by the current philosophical impoverishment that Yiddish secularism faces. Their parents may have been raised in Yiddish-speaking immigrant neighborhoods,

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125

where little children babbled in Yiddish and where even the Irish cop on the beat had to pick up a few essential words of the language. However, the third generation never experienced a natural Yiddish environment - not even of the relatively fleeting immigrant neighborhood variety. Its active facility in Yiddish is quite limited although its comprehension level is still substantial. This generation vaguely recognizes that its own Jewish context is atypical when compared with that of most other American Jewish youngsters, but it is at a loss to either explain or justify this atypicalness. Neither the proletarianism, nor the secularism, nor the Yiddishistic "national­ ism" of their grandparents have remained as viable folk-patterns in America (Gordon 1959). Nevertheless, sectarian echoes of these patterns do remain and it is with these echoes - muted and not fully intelligible - that the third secularist generation lives. B. The non-secular sectors 1. Yiddish in the "middle range" sector. Between the extremes of Yiddish speaking secularism on one side and Yiddish speaking Orthodoxy on the other, there is the middle range of American Jewry accounting for over 90 percent of the total American Jewish population. The "middle range" includes those nominally Conservative (Lehman 1953), those nominally Reformed (Anon 1953), as well as that great mass euphemistically referred to as "unaffiliated" and "nominally Orthodox". Neither Conservatism nor Reformism represents an ideology at the common membership level in the same sense that Secularism did or that Orthodoxy does. Neither represents a coherent Weltanschauung, nor a detailed and integrated system of daily commandments embracing all of life, both at the personal and the inter-personal levels. The most noteworthy difference between them and non-affiliation is the isolated act of maintenance of synagogue membership. This act in itself is commonly void of religious or ideological significance, coming as it does largely as a result of conformity pressures, "joining" tendencies, social needs and aspirations, and convenience factors. The "middle range" synagogue represents a partial answer to the dilemma of remaining Jewish faced by millions of American Jews who lack any direction except a vague desire to "be Jewish". In this sense, the "middle range" sector also encompasses a large segment of American

126

YIDDISH: TURNING TO LIFE

Orthodoxy which is constituted along quite similar lines. The "middle range" sector of American Jewry is uncomplicatedly Jewish and, simultaneously, unabashedly marginal in its Jewish commitments. Being a Jew implies socializing mostly with Jews, living in Jewish middle class neighborhoods, savoring Jewish delicacies, contributing on occasion to Jewish causes, viewing anti-semitism and reaction with alarm, and attending a synagogue with the minimal frequency consistent with respectability. This amalgam of middle class comfortability, college education for one's children, political and social liberalism, organizational hyper-activity, and Babbittry with respect to all things Jewish is thoroughly Americanized in language, in self-definition, and in aspiration (Duker 1954, Dushkin and Engelman 1959, Fishman 1960, Goldberg 1955, 1957, Kramerand and Leventman 1961). To the extent that intellectualism has permeated this sector's way of life, it has brought with it a smug disassociation from Jewish ritual, Jewish folk-ways, and Jewish folkcontent - either on the grounds of anti-parochialism or of rational analysis. The "middle range" has passed through a number of recognizably different attitudes toward Yiddish. To the first American-bred "middle range" generation, Yiddish was a badge of shame. It was the indelible indicator of lowly immigrant status or of immigrant parentage. Yiddish was the "jargon" of the ignorant. It was the "non-grammatical" vehicle of those too blighted even to be aware of grammar - much less to be concerned with it. It was the bastard tongue that had grown by accretion in the various lands through which its unwelcome speakers had wandered. It was the despoiler of American accents. It was an unseemly blemish to be covered over with quickly acquired garments of greater prestige. And yet it continued to be spoken by one's parents and aunts and uncles and grandparents, by storekeepers behind the counter and by customers in front of it, by politicians before election day, by labor organisers, by radio announcers, by old men and women on park benches, by actors and comedians. It lived in spite of all reason and necessity, and it even crept into one's own speech, one's own endearing phrases. When driven out through the door it crept back in through the window; it was horrible and lovely, lowly and invaluable, foreign and harsh - yet as close and comforting as mother. Yiddish was all these things, even when spoken incorrectly with maximal interference from English (Joffe 1936,1943, Mencken 1960). It belonged to no one and yet it was everywhere (Cahmann 1952, Glazer 1956).

YIDDISH IN AMERICA

127

The following generation was sufficiently secure to look upon Yiddish with greater humor and good nature. As sons and daughters of immigrants attained better schooling, better jobs and better housing than their parents had enjoyed, as their accents remained unblemished and their heads uncluttered with "immigrant nonsense", the ways of the old folks could not help but seem to be a little funny (Glazer 1954, 1955). Yiddish stood for all the faux pas of the immigrant generation in its helpless fumblings and gropings for adjustment. It stood for outlandish customs. It stood for strong language and cutting sarcasm and earthy humor and pithy wisdom. It stood for reminiscences and memories of a time sufficiently distant that its cutting edges could be overlooked and embellished with impunity. Yiddish represented not only the hapless immigrant but the helpless petit bourgeoise on his way up. Yiddish was a reminder of one's own superiority, one's own progress, one's own refinement in comparison with the previous generation. Yiddish was bagel and lox and ribald ditties for those who more regularly savored steak and Gershwin tunes. Yiddish was to be enjoyed in the manner of a spectator sport. Corrupted though they were, Yiddish and its hand-maiden, Yinglish, were a very fine vaudeville team. The second generation learned to laugh at Yiddish rather than merely to shudder at the mere sound of it. The third generation with even greater detachment - learned that it deserved respect (Hansen 1952). Yiddish was no longer spoken in the parks, nor in the stores, nor at union meetings. The third generation has not always soaked up enough Yiddish to even follow Yiddish jokes or YiddishYinglish songs (Gans 1953). No longer were Yiddish grandparents in generous supply. Nor were the immigrant years well remembered their insecurity, their embarrassment, their sweat shops had all taken on story book overtones. Even the transition period was safely behind. One's grandparents could now be looked upon as hard­ working and enterprising pursuers of democracy. In addition, there had been a Second World War and a monster named Hitler had wiped out six million "co-religionists" and destroyed their language and culture. Translations from the Yiddish began to appear in the little magazines of the literary avant garde. Anglo-Jewish periodicals also printed such translations, together with biographies of Yiddish litterateurs. A Conservative assembly passed a resolution on the great cultutal significance of Yiddish and - ten years later temporarily introduced two Yiddish courses into the curriculum of its central adult educational courses in New York. At the graduation

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YIDDISH: TURNING TO LIFE

exercises of the major Reform rabbinical seminary, a major Yiddish poet and dramatist was awarded an honorary doctorate, and, several years later, the Conservative seminary evened the score. It was generally conceded to be "too bad" that one had learned little or no Yiddish from one's parents, "too bad" that the language was dying out, "too bad" that one had so little time to learn "another language" upon reaching adulthood, "too bad" that junior's Hebrew School didn't teach any Yiddish, and "too bad" that his saxophone lessons didn't leave him any time for private Yiddish lessons. Yiddish was rumored to be very picturesque and expressive - but "of course, Hebrew is the official language of the State of Israel". Comfortable middle-class, suburban life just did not seem to be a proper environment - or was it a "too proper" environment - for Yiddish (Gordon 1959). Never before did Yiddish have so much popular "theoretical" prestige, and so little of a popular functional role. Of course, the more respectful climate of the age strengthens the convictions of Yiddishists that they have always been right. The fact that a major Jewish organization with a nationwide membership and with predominantly "defense" and civil rights interests recently released a long-playing language album (and an accompanying text) for adult home-study was interpreted as "a straw in the wind". Some laid plans for new ventures - new continents could still be conquered. However, the "true believers" are generally too few and too weak for major undertakings and the surrounding atmosphere is merely one of respect in the presence of the critically ill rather than of enthusiasm at the prospect of massive blood transfusions to keep the patient alive and well. Thus, there is little to say about Yiddish among those social groupings that constitute 90 percent of American Jewry. Two generations ago their grandparents lived in small, impoverished, medieval Eastern European towns and villages, surrounded by a hostile and illiterate peasant sea and persecuted by reactionary and authoritarian regimes. Yiddish then was normally an unnoticed ingredient in a Jewish world that stressed piety, learning, family solidarity and sobriety, values which were simultaneously cohesive internally and protective externally. Within the brief span of fifty years that world has literally disappeared and its former residents have been catapulted from the sixteenth to the twentieth century (Duker 1954, Teller 1957, Weinryb 1957). Their occupational distribution is among the most advantageous in the country. Seventy percent of their college-age children are in college in a country

YIDDISH IN AMERICA

129

where the nationwide average is still only 40 p e r c e n t after a decade of r a p i d growth (Shosteck 1957). T h e i r cultural values have served t h e m a n d their a d o p t e d country well (Duker 1950, Gans 1956, Hurvitz 1958, Sklare 1958). As for Yiddish - it a n d traditional piety have b o t h b e e n a b a n d o n e d together with most o t h e r substantive vestiges of "old country" life. Given the pervasive changes in social structure, in family patterns, a n d in the s u r r o u n d i n g cultural milieu experienced by this group, it is hardly surprising that something as ideologically and culturally unaccentuated as Yiddish should largely have disappeared (Lehrer 1959, see also Table 7). It is p e r h a p s m o r e surprising to note that it has left the d e e p emotional traces that are still discernible (Fishman 1958/1959, 1960d). Its p r i m a r y secular"nationalist" base - in any activist sense - r e m a i n s its greatest strength a n d its greatest weakness (Davidowicz 1962). As Yiddish b e c o m e s ever weaker a n d m o r e marginal in American Jewish life, there are r e c u r r i n g pleas to strengthen it a n d to save it. T h e r e are also those who seek to a p p o r t i o n the blame for its d i s a p p e a r a n c e between the masses a n d the intellectuals. In a recent c o l u m n in a Yiddish daily, the p o e t Y. Glatshteyn wrote as follows: One might say that the blame can be attributed both to writers and to readers. The reader provided the Yiddish writer neither with terra firma for his language nor with conviction in its permanence. In addition, the reader immediately deprived the writer of any contact with the American born generation. The children were withdrawn from the writer's purview with such finality, with such obviousness, that the writer never even dared hope that he might speak to them. The writer never even dreamed or had the ambition that the younger generation might savor his words. In spite of this atmosphere, writers elevated Yiddish to the highest heights, as if to protect themselves from mediocrity, as if to escape thereby from the constant funereal echoes of disintegration. In reality, it is one of the greatest puzzles. From the very outset tens of thousands of readers read a language with the thought that they must be weaned from it. Frequently, the sure sign of a "better" neighborhood was a gradual but constant estrangement from Yiddish. Certain neighborhoods quickly raised the flag announcing that they were "Yiddishreyn" (cleansed of Yiddish). In "new" neighborhoods mothers, fathers and children escaped from Yiddish together. In the "old" neighborhoods, that seemed to be so full ofJewish life, parents still deigned to accept Yiddish for their own few remaining years. However, they protected their children against contamination from themselves (the parents) and from the words on their own lips.

3,300,0001

-

4,228,0002

-

—

-

1,222,658

1930

35

5,011,0003

1,751,100 100

52,980 3

773,680 44

924,400 53

1940

17

5,559,0004

964,605 100

39,000* 4

422,000* 44

503,605 52

1960

* Language Resources Project estimates. See J.A. Fishman and J. Hofman "Non-English mother tongues in the United States of America". 1. American Jewish Yearbook estimates for 1918. 2. American Jewish Yearbook estimates for 1927. 3. Based upon American Jewish Yearbook estimates for 1937 of 4,831,186. 4. Based upon American Jewish Yearbook estimates for 1959 of 5,531,500.

Yiddish mother tongue as percentage of estimated Jewish population - %

Estimated size of American Jewish population -

Total claiming Yiddish mother tongue %

American born of American born parents %

951,793

1,091,820

Foreign born %

American born of Foreign born parents %

1920

Population

Table 7. Census data on Yiddish mother tongue among American Jews (1920-1960).

130 YIDDISH: TURNING TO LIFE

YIDDISH IN AMERICA

131

No other people has ever squandered it national treasures in the way that Jews have done by resigning from Yiddish. Yiddish always possessed this rare gift. Whenever one abandoned Yiddish one abandoned much more than a language. 23 Glatshteyn is u n d o u b t e d l y right in sensing the antipathies of the i m m i g r a n t generation. However, Jewish imigrants were n o t at all atypical in the implicit and explicit rejection of their m o t h e r tongue after arriving in the U n i t e d States. At most, they may have reacted m o r e precipitously t h a n did o t h e r immigrants, with a greater eagerness to free themselves a n d their children from what they considered to be the b u r d e n of social rejection, persecution, poverty a n d eternal estrangement. Most of t h e m b r o u g h t with t h e m n o particular awareness of Yiddish as an essential Jewish treasure. They were n o t reluctant to sacrifice Yiddish as well as m u c h else of Jewish significance if in d o i n g so they perceived themselves as attaining security, comfort, a n d acceptance. 2. Ultra-Orthodoxy and Yiddish. Since the majority of O r t h o d o x Jews are behaviorally a n d attitudinally indistinguishable from o t h e r "middle r a n g e " varieties of A m e r i c a n Jewry, a n u m b e r of writers have taken to designating those Jews who take their orthodoxy seriously as "Ultra-Orthodox", even t h o u g h those to w h o m this label is a p p l i e d never refer to themselves in this m a n n e r . However, even Ultra-Orthodoxy is n o t the undifferentiated front that outsiders frequently assume it to be. W h e n viewed from the p o i n t of view of Yiddish language attitudes a n d behaviors, the U l t r a - O r t h o d o x s p e c t r u m breaks into two separate clusters: (a) U l t r a - O r t h o d o x Jews who value Yiddish primarily as a means of gaining access to advanced traditional Jewish studies a n d (b) U l t r a - O r t h o d o x Jews who also value Yiddish as a means of separation from the non-Jewish a n d non-religious aspects of general A m e r i c a n as well as A m e r i c a n - J e w i s h life. Most UltraO r t h o d o x Jews in America today either subscribe to or stand substantially closer to position (a), above, t h a n to position (b), the Hasidic position. a. Although non-Hasidic American Ultra-Orthodox youth is still ap­ preciative of a Yiddish s e r m o n or of a Yiddish expression (Kranzler 1961), its major avenue of active recourse to Yiddish is in the realm of T a l m u d i c study. T h r e e facts are of i m p o r t a n c e in this connection: (i) Intensive study of the T a l m u d is a sine qua n o n of Ultra-Orthodox

132

YIDDISH: TURNING TO LIFE

education. Without mastery of the Talmud, one must be considered as having received an elementary education at best, since it is only via the Talmud that one is introduced to the complexities of orthodox Jewish law and its regulation of every aspect of individual and group life; (ii) Until recently, the centers of Talmudic study were in Eastern Europe where it has become traditional over a span of centuries to teach Talmud in Yiddish and to dispute and interpret its fine points in that language; (iii) A majority of the current masters of the Talmud capable of instructing advanced students in this intricate field are, therefore, themselves from Eastern Europe and, as a result, accustomed to teach and to study the Talmud in Yiddish. Those of their students who do not initially know Yiddish often study it in anticipation of their Talmudic inquiries and become quite expert in at least this facet of Yiddish during their years of Talmudic study. Rarely and decreasingly is Yiddish studied "for its own sake" - or even for the sake of letter writing and newspaper reading - in the afternoon or all-day schools supported by this sector. It may seem ironical that the very sector that consistently refused to make a fetish of a language which is regarded as an unnoteworthy aspect of the work-a-day Jewish world, should wind up clinging to that language so tenaciously as a key to involved HebrewAramic legal tracts and the commentaries upon them. Such, however, are the ironies of language-maintenance. When American Ultra-Orthodoxy was moved to establish schools and day care centers for impoverished post-war North African Jewry, the study of Talmud in Yiddish was an integral part of the program it sponsored there. Similarly, when American Ultra-Orthodoxy rallies to establish all-day schools ("Jewish parochial schools") in every American city of any size, the Talmud in Yiddish is frequently (although not always) a part of the academic program - whether this be in the Deep South or in the Pacific North West. As Tables 8 and 9 reveal, all-day schools offering instruction in both Yiddish and Hebrew have been growing at a rapid rate during the past decade - although they are still more likely to be in Hasidic Brooklyn than anywhere else. The graduates of these schools reveal an unusual kind of Yiddish language proficiency. Those coming from homes in which Yiddish is still spoken achieve near native fluency by the time of their graduation of the Mesifta (high school), with particular refinement of vocabulary in those areas related to Talmudic discourse. However, a majority come from homes in which Yiddish

YIDDISH IN AMERICA

133

is already dormant (and even from families where it has not been spoken for over a generation). These graduate with appreciable Yiddish facility in the intricate Talmudic area but with extremely limited facility in simple every-day discourse. Those from such backgrounds who leave this environment before entering even more intensively into Talmudic study, frequently develop purely mechanical translating ability which they then utilize with great precision but entirely without comprehension. Even those who study longer and, therefore, arrive at a comprehending grasp of the language, particularly in the areas of Talmudic relevance, have no out-of-school peer culture in which Yiddish is still a normal vehicle of communication. In view of their immersion in Jewish studies from early morning to late at night, it is not unusual to hear them speak a highly intermixed combination of English and Yiddish as they converse with each other. There is little concern for the purity or beauty of Yiddish, such as exists among secular Yiddishists, since the language is merely viewed as a key to a treasure rather than the treasure itself. Nevertheless, the key is used so extensively that young American born Talmudic students have frequently been described as "speaking English as if it were Yiddish" - an indication of not only lexical and grammatical but also of complete intonational and accentual interpenetration. Even this key "function" may well be a passing one in the Talmudically oriented Ultra-Orthodox world. With the passage of time an increasing number of American born Talmudic scholars has been trained. They are capable of teaching the Talmud to their pupils in English and, increasingly, they are doing just that. The full transition from Yiddish to English as the language of Talmudic instruction and discourse may require an additional decade or two. However, in certain prestige centers, such as Yeshiva University's rabbinical program, this transition is already well underway while in yet others, it has already been accomplished. b. In the Hasidic world described so strikingly by Poll (1962) and by Krantzier (1961), Yiddish is also viewed as a key - but not merely as a key to learning (since learning itself is not emphasized as much as it is in Talmudically oriented Ultra-Orthodox circles). Yiddish is also viewed as an aspect of the "differentness" with which pious Jews must surround themselves in order to more completely separate themselves from the temptations of the secular world. Most Hasidim are post Second World War immigrants from Hungary, Carpatho-

27 (22.7%)

42 (168.0%)

67

25

Yiddish and Hebrew**

YIDDISH: TURNING TOLIFE

** Yiddish and Hebrew generally refers to the use of Yiddish as a vehicle of instruction for the study of Hebrew (or Aramiac) texts. Formal instruction in Yiddish per se is quite rare.

* Data derived from Directory of Yeshiva All Day Schools· 5713:1952-3 and Directory of Day Schools in the United States and Canada 5721:1961, New York, Torah Umesorah, 1952-61; mimeographed, as prepared for the Language Resources Project by Poll (1965).

69 (47.9%)

213

1960-61 school term

Increase between 1952-53 and 1960-61 school terms

119

144

1952-53 school term 146

Hebrew Only

Total

Table 8. Increase in Orthodox all-day schools offering instruction in (a) Hebrew only and (b) Hebrew and Yiddish between 1952-53 and 1960-61 school terms.*

134

4 (2.7%) 24 (16.4%) 11 (7.5%) 1 (.7%) 23 (15.7%)

40 (27.4%)

Hebrew <1

83 (56.8%)

63 (43.2%)

146 (100%)

5 (7.5%) 35 (52.2%) 7 (10.4%) 0

7 (10.5%)

47 (70.1%)

13 (19.4%)

54 (80.6%)

67 (100%)

Yiddish and Hebrew

9 (4.2%) 59 (27.7%) 18 (8.5%) 1 (.5%)

Total

30 (14.1%)

87 (40.8%)

96 (45.1%)

117 (54.9%)

213 (100%)

* Data derived from Directory of Day Schools in the United States and Canada 5721:1961, New York, Torah Umesorah, 1961; mimeographed, as prepared for the Language Resources Project by Poll (1965).

Other States

Other Cities in New York State

Staten Island

Manhattan

Brooklyn

Bronx

New York City

New York State

Total USA

Table 9. Orthodox all-dayschoolswith instruction in (a) Hebrew only and (b) Hebrew and Yiddish as of the 196061 school term: the United States, New York State, and New York City.*

YIDDISH IN AMERICA 135

136

YIDDISH: TURNING TO LIFE

Ukraine, and Poland. They have mastered English to the extent required for business and other mundane pursuits. However, they have carefully preserved their former family and group structures, their old world costumes, and have even intensified the religious strictures regulating their every-day lives. Among them Yiddish has frequently remained the language of old and young. It is quite possible that Hasidic children represent the last "natural" community of Yiddish-speaking youngsters in America today. On the other hand, Yiddish also presents certain problems to the Hasidim (Poll 1965). It exposes them to non-Hasidic speakers of the language - many of whom are non-religious and some of whom are even anti-religious! In order to avoid and counteract such exposure Hasidim have established Yiddish publications of their own and have sternly forbidden their followers to read "the Sabbath desecrating" Yiddish publications not under Hasidic control. The Hasidic Yiddish weekly, Der Yid, and the Agude's Yiddish monthly, Dos Yidishe Vort, are full of invective and scorn against non-Hasidism, whether they be Yiddishists, Hebraists, Zionists or other deviationists from the straight and narrow Ultra-Orthodox path. These publica­ tions claim to have expanded their readership in recent years24 in contrast with the constantly downward circulation trend for the general Yiddish press in the United States. The Hasidic community consists primarily of some 12,000 souls in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn. Since the neighborhood has been marked for extensive urban redevelopment more recent Hasidic "colonies" have been established in Bergen County, New Jersey, and in Rockland County and Westchester County in New York. Lakewood, New Jersey, is also a recent Hasidic center. In many of these smaller communities the Hasidim have barkened back to the village and small town semi-rural life which they knew in pre-War Europe. It is too early to say how long their Williamsburg fortress will last or how successful they will be in relocating in smaller outlying communities as a culturally intact group. Certainly, much smaller communities away from the heterogenous metropolitan areas may facilitate the separateness and self-maintenance of culturally autonomous groups. In view of the experienced as well as of the expected success of the Hasidim in preserving their complete way of life, and in view of the weakening of Yiddish among most other American Jewish groups, it has occurred to some observers that the future of Yiddish in America may well depend upon Ultra-Orthodoxy in general and

YIDDISH IN AMERICA

137

upon Hasidism in particular. Hasidim have typically referred to Yiddish as the protective cover (mentele) for the law (Torah). "Due to the holiness of the Torah, the mentele, too, absorbs some holiness within itself." From its earliest 18th century days as a form of folkpiety in protest against, or at least in contrast to, dour and scholarly Talmudism, Hasidism and Yiddish have been emotionally and functionally interrelated. Hasidim have been the only Orthodox group to go even ever so slightly beyond the usual orthodox view of Yiddish as a "key", since Yiddish Hasidic tales and Yiddish Hasidic songs are among the fundamental treasures of Hasidism. Nevertheless, it must also be realized that Hasidim lack a fully conscientious or idealogical approach to the language; nor do they value the development of literature, poetry and other areas of modern language usage. For them Yiddish is a part of a separate, Hasidic life. This may be a simple, primitive approach. On the other hand, it guarantees a vernacular existence for Yiddish that it may well lack in more accomplished circles.

VI. Theoretical recapitulation In viewing the saga of Yiddish language maintenance and language shift in the most general theoretical perspective, three broad classes of considerations come to the fore:

1. Habitual language use In the past forty years recognizable changes have occurred in the habitual language use of the bulk of Yiddish-speaking immigrants who arrived in the United States prior to or soon after the First World War. In most secularist, middle range, and Ultra-Orthodox circles alike there has been: a. A decrease in proficiency. Yiddish is spoken more haltingly and with greater lexical, grammatical and phonetic interference than in the 20s (Weinreich 1953). However, while frequency of use and domains of use (see below) have contracted markedly during the past twenty years, proficiency seems to have stabilized during this period. Interested observers frequently comment that the greatest decrement occurred during the 20s and 30s when many Yiddish

Prod.

Prod.***

Comp.

Formal Informal Intimate X E,E E,E

X E,E E,E

X X X X X X

X Y,E Y,E X E,E Y,E X E,E Y,E

X X X

X X X X X X

X Y,E Y,E E,E E,E X E,E E,E E,E

Acquaints.

X X X

X X X Y,E Y,E E,E

X E,E E,E E,E E,E X X X X

Mass Med.

Y,E Y,E X

X Y,E Y,E Y,E Y,E X Y,E Y,E X Y,E Y,E X Y,E Y,E X

Jew. Orgs.

X X X

X E,E E,E E,E E,E X E,E E,E X X X X X X X

Occup.

* For "speaking - inner" combinations the domains imply topics as well as contexts. In all other instances they imply contexts alone. ** Comp. = Comprehension; Prod. = Production. *** For "reading - production" combinations the distinction between "family" and "mass media" domains is also a distinction between reading to others and reading to oneself.

Writing

Reading

Prod.**

Comp.**

X Y,E Y,E X E,E Y,E X E,E Y,E Y,E Y,E E,E Y,E Y,E E,E

Formal Informal Intimate Formal Informal Intimate Formal Informal Intimate Formal Informal Intimate Formal Informal Intimate

Speaking

Inner*

Domains of language behaviour Neighborhood Situational Family friends

Sources of Variance Media Role

Table 10. Yiddish-English maintenance and shift in the USA (19401960). Comparisons for immigrant generation "secularists" arriving prior to World War I. First language shown is most frequently used; second language shown is increasing in use. X indicates no data for this particular population or not applicable; Y = Yiddish; E = English.)

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139

speakers came into hitherto unparalleled contact with American society and technology. They were linguistically and ideologically unprepared to cope puristically with this vast array of new experiences. In more recent years the use of Yiddish has been characterized by far greater topical and orientational selectivity. This restriction in use and in users has slowed down or halted further major deterioration in proficiency. b. A decrease in use. There is currently no Jewish-American subpopulation in which the use of Yiddish is increasing (Fishman 1964b). Other than among first-generation secularists and UltraOrthodox, there are very few sub-populations in which it has been retained at a relatively stable level during the past decade. Even in these two sub-populations the contrast with forty years ago reveals a massive language shift. Retention seems to have been greater in those circumstances which are (i) most private and subject to personal control (e.g., inner speech, reading) and (ii) most symbolically structured and generationally restricted (e.g., formal usage in Jewish organizational-ritual contexts). Thus, the media, roles, situations and domains that cover the lion's share of every-day life (Fishman 1964c) have shifted to English in almost all groups (Table 10). Once again, the severe restriction in use and in users even within the most consciously retentive sub-groups has slowed down or halted further deterioration in the bilingual dominance configuration. Most recent immigrants depart from the above characteriza­ tions in predictable directions and degrees. Nevertheless, the pattern of Anglification and the developmental transformations of YiddishEnglish bilingualism remain essentially as indicated above (Figure 1). 2. Psychological, social and cultural processes related to habitual language use.

Although considerably more is known about American Jews than about most other ethnic-religious components of the American population very little of this information has been explicitly related to language maintenance or language shift. To avoid undue speculation in this seductive area only three broad socio-cultural considerations will be briefly and tentatively presented. a. Pre-contact factors. Yiddish had never been explicitly protected in traditional Orthodox life, although it was implicitly associated with

1. Initial Stage: The immigrant learns English via his mother tongue. English is used only in those few domains (work sphere, governmental sphere) in which mother tongue cannot be used. Minimal interference. Only a few immigrants know a little English. 4. Fourth Stage: English has displaced the mother tongue from all but the most private or restricted domains. Interference declines. In most cases both languages function independently; in others the mother tongue is mediated by English (reverse direction of Stage 1, but same type).

3. Third Stage: The languages function independently of each other. The number of bilinguals is at its maximum. Domain overlap is at its maximum; The second generation during childhood. Stabilized interference.

Coordinate ("Independent")

Non-Overlapping Domains

2. Second Stage: More immigrants know more English and therefore can speak to each other either in mother tongue or in English (still mediated by the mother tongue) in several domains of behavior. Increased interference.

Overlapping Domains

Domain Overlap Type

Compound ("Interdependent or fused)

Bilingual functioning type

Figure 1. Type of Yiddish-English bilingual functioning and domain overlap during successive stages of immigrant acculturation.

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all of the sacred and scholarly components ofJewishness. Most preFirst-World-War Eastern European Jewish immigrants to the United States were in the grips of far-reaching de-traditionalizing experiences (urbanization, secularization) before emigration. As a result, the traditional association between Yiddish and Jewishness was weakened among most de-traditionalized "middle range" Jews prior to emigration. It was strengthened and ideologized only among certain (predominantly non-Zionist) secular-"nationalists" who rejected religion well nigh completely. However, their radical approach reached its zenith during the 20s and 30s, i.e., too late to lastingly affect more than a small segment of immigrants to the United States. The vast majority of the immigrants arrived without either a symbolically elaborated Great Tradition overtly protective of Yiddish or an unshaken Little Tradition that might have unconsciously provided Yiddish with security within an inviolable pattern of daily rounds. b. Host-society factors. The industrial-commercial American metropolis in which virtually all Eastern European Jewish immigrants settled further weakened the traditional social relationships and preestablished role structures in which Yiddish was involved. In addition, American nationalism was primarily non-ethnic or supraethnic in comparison with the elaborated ethnicity of Eastern European nationalisms. Commitment to the ideals of American democracy (rationality in human affairs, political and social equality, unlimited individual and collective progress) did not obviously clash with the religious values or ethnic patterns of "middle range" Jewish immigrants. On the contrary, their pre-immigrational experiences with urban, commercial and literate functioning permitted more rapid social mobility and more intensive interaction with deethnicized non-Jewish population strata in the United States. In the absence of significant ideological, occupations, religious-ethnic or interactional separatism among either hosts or immigrants, language shift proceeded rapidly.  Product factors. Language maintenance is strongest among those Eastern European Jewish immigrants who have maintained greatest psychological, social and cultural distance from American core society. Ideological protection of Yiddish without concomitant withdrawal from interaction with American society, i.e. the pattern adopted by secular "nationalists" in the United States, has been a far less effective bulwark of language maintenance. Where neither

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ethnic-religious nor ideological protection obtained, language shift was proportionate to mobility within the larger sphere of American society as reflected by education, occupation or income. Under these circumstances overall language maintenance came to depend more on immigrational recency and settlement concentrationpermanence than on within-group-post-immigrational maintenance efforts. The above three observations help us to reconcile two seemingly contradictory conclusions concerning Yiddish in America. On the one hand, there is evidence, albeit of the impressionistic consensual sort, that immigrant Yiddish writers, poets and intellectuals in the United States created more that is of qualitative cultural significance than did their counterparts in other co-immigrational groups. On the other hand, there is evidence of a somewhat more objective and rigorous sort that the shift away from Yiddish was certainly as precipitous, and probably more so, than paralleled shifts in other coimmigrational groups. 25 The first of these phenomena seems to be explainable on the ground that Eastern European Jewish immigration to the United States was truly mass immigration. Like German immigration during the greater part of the 19th century Jewish immigration was less limited to rural and disadvantaged sub-populations than was the case with other Southern and Eastern European groups who arrived at the same time. However, not only were the proportions of producers and consumers of intellectual fare greater among Yiddish immigrants but proportionately more of them arrived in the grips of modernizing passions with universalistic as well as particularistic overtones. The resulting cross fertilization of modern Jewish and American cultural growth has left its mark not only in the field of Yiddish per se but in American literature, education, art, cultural media and scholarship more widely. The second phenomenon mentioned above is also partially answered in the same terms. The de-traditionalizing, de-ethnicizing, modernizing urban tendencies brought with them by Jewish immigrants were rewarded and intensified by extremely rapid interaction and mobility within American host society. At the same time the modernizing and universalistic rationales of Jewish intellectual and cultural leaders provided such multiple and fashionable justifications for acculturation that Americanizing efforts from without the Jewish fold became superfluous if not objectionable.

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3. Behavior toward language in the contact setting What little information there is in connection with this topical sub­ division must be viewed in the perspective of the transitions that Yiddish has experienced in the United States (as well as in the perspective of its physical and cultural annihilation in Eastern Europe). From its earlier position as the vernacular of an entire religio-ethnic community it is now the vernacular only of atypical sub-groups who have not participated in the de-ethnization and acculturation of the general Jewish community. From its earlier position of use in all of the domains of life related to the socio­ cultural patterns of its speakers it is now predominantly employed in far fewer and in particularly restricted domains. a. Attitudinal-affective behaviors. Concomitant with the accelerated deethnization and social mobility of its erstwhile speakers and their offspring, and concomitant with its relegation to fewer domains, Yiddish has experienced an increase in general esteem. It is viewed more positively and nostalgically by "old" first and "middle aged" second generation individuals who characterized it as an ugly, "grammarless", corrupted German in pre-Second-World War days. The third generation views it (usually with the help of translations) with less emotion but with even greater respect. Thus, instead of a "third generation return" there has been an "attitudinal haloization" within large segments of all generations, albeit unaccompanied by increased use. This development (a negative relationship between use rates and dominant attitudes over time) was not foreseen by most earlier studies of language maintenance or language shift. In the United States it is an aspect of the continued affective functioning of increasingly marginal ethnicity. As a result, hardly any rebellion is encountered among the "new" second generation in comparison to its frequent manifestation in the "old" during pre-Second World War days. On the other hand, many erstwhile language loyalists have become so alarmed by the increased marginalization of ethnicity among their co-ethnics that they have become more willing to forego language maintenance if doing so will salvage group maintenance (Fishman et al. 1964). b. Overt behavioral implementation. Most language reinforcement efforts - though much weakened numerically and ideologically continue along traditional lines (religio-ethnic schools, publications, language learning materials, information programs, etc.). However,

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even in conjunction with language reinforcement efforts the transition to more marginal ethnicity and to more restricted language maintenance is evident. Thus, taking the field of Jewish periodic publications as an example, we note continued concomitant shifts from more frequent to less frequent publications within each language employed as well as shifts from all Yiddish, to mixed Yiddish and English, to all English publications. However, the process of de-ethnization has also brought with it a few novel avenues of reinforcement. Thus, as Yiddish has ceased to be primarily associated with immigrant disadvantages or with full­ blown religio-ethnic distinctiveness, it has been introduced as a language of study at the university, college, and public high school levels. In addition, support for reinforcement efforts is now available from Jewish organizations with a long history of disinterest or disdain for Yiddish. Thus, as its devotees have become somewhat more de-ethnicized themselves and as their periphery has become appreciably more de-ethnicized, reinforcement efforts have developed in correspondingly de-ethnicized directions. On the other hand, language planning efforts have practically ceased. One of the primary arguments against further orthographic reform has been that most readers are well along in years and that reforms would confuse and discourage them. Seemingly, massive displacement has greater inhibitory impact on planning than on reinforcement efforts.  Cognitive aspects of language response. In comparison with the early post-immigrational years the fusion nature of Yiddish is now more frequently recognized as being not dissimilar from that of most modern languages. While awareness of Yiddish literature has increased, knowledge of its modern masterpieces (substantially the creation of American Yiddish writers) and perceptions of a linguistic sine qua non to Jewish groupness, always rare in the United States, have become even rarer. In general, the cognitive reaction to Yiddish is richer than it was formerly but it is richer in an "academic" sense since in most Jewish sub-populations the language is no longer related to either behavioral Jewishness or to ideological Judaism. Indeed, the very fact that Yiddish is increasingly identified with atypical segments of the community fosters the dissociation between language use and group solidarity. This is probably a generally prevalent phenomenon in cases of advanced language shift: the language comes to be maintained and protected by increasingly

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atypical (not merely by fewer) members of the population (Fishman 1964a). VII. Concluding sentiments It would be wrong to consider the future of Yiddish in the United States as necessarily decisive for the future of Yiddish throughout the world. We have said little or nothing here about the contemporary Yiddish scenes in Israel, in Argentina, Brazil and Uraguay, in Canada, in Mexico, in France, in Australia, in South Africa and in even smaller settlements. Nevertheless, the USA is the quantitative and qualitative capital of "the Yiddish Empire" and what happens to Yiddish here goes a long way toward establishing a world-wide mood and climate for Yiddish. Certainly, monolingual Yiddish-speaking milieus are practically non-existent anywhere in the world. Nevertheless, there is a tremendous urge to live, a veritable elanvital in the world of Yiddish. This urge is a striking one to behold, for it is as though a complete symbiotic relationship existed between the language and its devotees. They derive their driving force from their commitment to the language and the language continues to produce works of great beauty and to occupy positions of prestige and re­ cognition as a result of the efforts that its tireless adherents constant­ ly make on its behalf. If Yiddish were the language of a group less skilled in the arts of self-preservation, if it were a language of a group less conscious of language as an aspect of cultural survival, if it were the language of a group less blessed with intellectual powers, if it were the language of a group that could not reinforce ethnicity with religion and religion with ethnicity, then - if all these "ifs" were to come to pass - Yiddish might be in a sad, sad state indeed. Its immin­ ent demise has been predicted repeatedly for well over a century by advocates of "enlightenment" who considered it a deterrent to Westernization; by Hebraists and Zionists who considered it a deter­ rent to Hebrew and to the "ingathering of exiles"; by cosmopolitan socialists who considered it a deterrent to the unity of the proletariat; for scholars and sinners alike - Yiddish was always fair game. And yet it survives - although it is hard to say how and why. Certainly, Yiddish no longer is what it once was. It was once the language of vociferous masses. Today, the masses are merely passive guardians of this language, whereas professors, poets and pietists are now its major strength. The masses, for whom Yiddish intellectuals

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YIDDISH: TURNING TO LIFE

were always so solicitous, never fully recognized the love that was lavished upon them in the name of Yiddish. The professors and poets are unexpected companions for Yiddish. How does a "handmaiden" come to have professors and poets among her suitors? And yet it is so - another anomaly to add to a collection of anomalies. From a crude folk vernacular to a language of scholarship and poetic finesse within a single generation! Most modern European languages have made the same steep ascent - but with armies, with tax supported schools, and with official governmental recognition and intervention. However, in the case of most other languages, advances on any one front were related to advances all along the line so that finally the vernaculars attained complete and unlimited victories. For Yiddish this has not been the case. In old age its select admirers have replaced the multitudes that failed to treasure its virtuosity. These devotees believe that it may yet come to pass that the linguistic, literary, and historical-cultural research on Yiddish now conducted by professors at Columbia, Brandeis and elsewhere will capture the imagination, interest and devotion of an important segment of the growing Jewish-American college population. If such a "miracle" were to come to pass it would not surprise the older generation of lovers of Yiddish in the very least. Yiddish has been much advertised in former days as in international bridge: "one can travel throughout the world with Yiddish". This was true and still is true. But its truth is largely beside the point when the point is defined clearly enough. The point is to what extent does a common language unite Jewishly-conscious populations in various parts of the world? In this sense, the role of Yiddish is less crucial than has frequently been claimed, for modern mass communications can create bonds of interest and of feeling between continents that lack a common language as intermediary. Jews of America are concerned about Jews in Israel, Argentina and Morocco without a common language linking them together. In fact, it is doubtful whether Jews in America and in Argentina - most of whom are of similar Eastern European ancestry - are in any sense more aware of each other than they are of Jews in Morocco with whom they have no ancestral link. Interestingly enough, however, a common language remains of considerable importance at the international intelligentsia-leadership level. World Jewish congresses of various kinds still depend extensively upon Yiddish - as a lingua franca or as an official language - for their proceedings. In the smooth conduct of face-to-face business a common language becomes

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becomes a necessity. Its presence also facilitates common on-the-spot emotions, common identifications. Yiddish functions in this manner and still does so better than either English or French, two languages well known to most Jewish leaders throughout the world. For many of these leaders, Yiddish is the mother tongue, for others - it is a language learned early in life against a background of formative personal experiences. A Yiddish speech will elicit more attention, will call forth more admiration, will warm more hearts, will stir more emotions than a speech in English or in any other language. Thus, Yiddish plays a special role at such meetings - and at large Jewish gatherings throughout the world - even though those who use or respond to Yiddish on such occasions may no longer employ it in their every day functioning. A Yiddish appeal for charity funds at a mass meeting in Madison Square Garden is "worth" much more than an English appeal - particularly as the audience at such meetings has largely been attracted by columns and ads in the Yiddish press. Thus, there is a public-function level of language behaviour that Yiddish has by no means lost - particularly among older generations - even though at the level of small group function it has been much weakened. As Yiddish has ceased to be an active link between younger Jews in America and those in other countries, and as it has ceased to be an active ingredient in the daily lives of American Jews, it has come to be championed - increasingly - as a link with the past, both at the cultural-historical and at the individual levels. No people is wise or healthy if it cuts itself off from its collective roots. For Eastern Euro­ pean Jewry, these roots are in Yiddish soil. No individual can have a mature identity if he is not selectively affirmative with respect to the values and patterns handed down to him by his forefathers. For East­ ern European Jewry, these values and patterns are clothed in Yiddish garb. Valid as these claims may be, it is not at all likely, however, that a mental hygiene approach to language loyalty can secure the functional life of any language. There is very little language pathos in American life and even less in American Jewish life. There is very little active interest in cultural separatism or even in cultural parallel­ ism or pluralism in America - whether among Jews or among most other ethnic or religious minorities. Yiddishists proclaim that linguis­ tic separateness is a sine qua non of separate cultural identity and cultural creativity. This may be true; nevertheless, separate cultural identity and separate cultural creativity are, themselves, recognizable goals for only a small proportion of American Jews.

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Most inquiries concerning Yiddish conclude with some comment as to whether or how long Yiddish will continue to survive. Certainly, this question is put much too crudely for there are various levels of language survival. It survives today at least as the "passive vernacular" for that portion of American Jewry for whom it was an "active vernacular" during childhood days in Eastern Europe and during younger, "greener" immigrant days in the United States. It survives today as a language in which at least a sixth of American Jewry can make itself understood when it needs to and wants to. It survives today as a language which probably a quarter of American Jewry can understand when it needs to and wants to (Sklare and Vosk 1957). However, these are not necessarily the only levels of language survival that may legitimately be taken into consideration. At another level, languages survive as long as the ideals, aspirations, and creations expressed through them continue to elicit interest. At this level, Yiddish will never die, for Yiddish literature and Yiddish writings on Zionism, Jewish socialism and labor movement, Hasidism and other religious, moralistic and folkistic expressions of Eastern European Jewry, will constantly elicit interest among cognoscenti and scholars (Landis 1962). In this sense, very little of what Jews have ever created has ever died, for the Jewish cultural experience has always been that of a constantly growing heritage rather than of a permanently fixed one. Jewish generations vary as to their interest in their own heritage, but in every generation there are a few conscientious keepers of the flame and, among these, Yiddish will always have its share of true scholars and true believers.

Appendix: The Hebrew language in the United States In view of the many references to it throughout the body of this essay, a few words concerning the status of Hebrew in the United States would seem to be in order. The complexity and the uniqueness of Jewish historical experience among the peoples and the religions of the world necessarily finds its counterpart in Jewish language-maintenance efforts in the United States. Were this essay not part of a study of the efforts of minority groups to preserve their vernaculars in this country, the position of the Hebrew language and the considerable efforts expended on its behalf by American Jewry would certainly merit separate and extended consideration. It is precisely because

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Hebrew is not a mother tongue for any but a very minor portion of American Jewry and, therefore, cannot be considered in the same sense as Spanish, French, German, Yiddish, Polish and other vernaculars brought to the United States by immigrant groups, that we are forced to give Hebrew much briefer attention than it would otherwise deserve.26 Throughout recorded Jewish history the Hebrew language has been accorded a special position of reverence. Jewish tradition views Hebrew not only as the language of the Law and of the Bible but as the language of God, indeed, as the language that existed even before the world was created. As a result of this uninterrupted tradition of explicit recognition and valuation of Hebrew, Jewish culture has been more "language conscious" than is the case with most other religions and national traditions. Even in those periods when Hebrew ceased to be a mass-vernacular for particular Jewish communities (as, e.g., during the Babylonian Exile, during the Second Commonwealth in Palestine itself, and during the entire period of European hegemony in Jewish life) it continued to occupy an exalted position not only for the scholar and the rabbi but even for most humble laymen who frequently could not understand the Hebrew of their daily worship. During the five millenia of recorded Jewish history, other Jewish languages have developed and have served as vernaculars (e.g., Judeo-Aramaic, Judeo-Arabic, Judesmo, Yiddish, Tat, etc.). Some of these languages have even served as media for serious religious inquiry (e.g., Judeo-Aramaic, JudeoArabic, Yiddish) and have left their traces in Jewish rituals and prescriptive texts. However, for the masses of Jews none of these later vernaculars has carried the same stamp of sanctity nor been associated with the aura of Jewish "destiny" and universality that have normally been reserved for Hebrew and for Hebrew alone. Like the covenant with the Lord and the Bible itself, Hebrew has usually been viewed as an essential aspect of Jewish eternity and Jewish immortality. As a result, Hebrew has been intensively studied and emotionally-ideologically protected in almost all of the Jewish communities whose vernacular it had (or has) ceased to be. All of the above considerations are pertinent to the fortunes of the Hebrew language in the United States. Hebrew was not the vernacular of the earliest 17th and 18th century Sephardic (SpanishPortuguese) Jewish immigrants to the United States. Nor was it the vernacular of the subsequent 18th and 19th century German-Jewish immigrants. Nor was it the vernacular of the still later 19th and 20th

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century mass Eastern European Jewish immigration to the United States. Nevertheless, Hebrew figured prominently in the Jewish heritage of each of these immigrations - whether as a language of prayer, or of religious learning, or even as a language of secular study. Each of these separate waves of immigrants, therefore, took steps to maintain the Hebrew language at one or more levels of functioning. All that we will attempt to do at this point is to briefly delineate the current levels of Hebrew interest and knowledge to be encountered in American Jewry. The most complete mastery of Hebrew is encountered in two very different sub-groups of the American Jewish population: UltraOrthodoxy and secular Zionism. 27 The Ultra-Orthodox are frequently masters of Biblical and, especially, of Talmudic and Medieval Hebrew. For them mastery of Hebrew and its use in prayer, in ritual, and in study, is an explicit aspect of their daily life and of their most intensely held values. Nevertheless, the most hasidic groups still consider Hebrew to be too holy to be used as a vernacular in the mundane spheres of everyday functioning. They are, therefore, not versed in Modern (Israeli) Hebrew although there is no doubt that they could attain high competence in this respect with relative ease were they inclined to do so. The less separatist but, nevertheless, intensively Orthodox, Talmudically oriented circles have demonstrated the interest and ability to do just that - at the same time maintaining equally high competence in classical and medieval Hebrew. In the latter groups Modern Hebrew has actually become a vernacular in a small number of rabbinic, scholarly, and intellectual families. As interesting as the above patterns doubtlessly are, it must be recognized that they pertain only to a numerically minor portion of American Orthodoxy. Outside of these circles the degree of Hebrew mastery is meager. Orthodox synagogue schools invariably teach the Hebrew of the prayerbook, and, at times also that of the Bible as well as the Hebrew-Aramaic of the Talmud, but with much less telling effect. Furthermore, Orthodox synagogues invariably conduct all or most of their formal services in Hebrew. However, the average American Jew affiliated with an Orthodox congregation is totally unable to use Hebrew as a vehicle of interpersonal communication and, among the younger generation, quite frequently unable to use it fluently or correctly either in worship or in ritual. Actually, the mass of American Orthodoxy shades away into various degrees of non-observance and becomes a catchall designation of no more

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behavioral or ideological meaningfulness than are the labels "Democrat" or "Republican" in everyday American life. There is no immediate likelihood that the bulk of American Orthodoxy will become proficient in Hebrew, not that it could do so without very considerable effort. In the secular-Zionist camp we once more encounter a small group of exceptional and dedicated American Jews for whom modern Hebrew has become a vernacular on firm ideological bases. These are likely to be families of writers, intellectuals, educators and organizational functionaries. Frequent socialization and collaboration with Israelis visiting America, intermittent trips to Israel, and ultimate plans for settlement in Israel all contribute to strengthening their fluency in the language. These circles maintain Hebrew speaking camps, they support intensive courses in the language and they publish journals and books for both adults and children. They have officially adopted the goal of "Hebraizing the Diaspora". Through their varous activities - many of which are reinforced from Israel - they reach a sizeable number of American Jews. However, their influence is greater along general ideological lines (leading to greater interest in Israel and greater recognition of Hebrew) than along the lines of mass linguistic competence. Generations of such efforts may ultimately culminate in greater attainment but at the moment even this seems doubtful. Although fluency in modern Hebrew is not an unusual attainment among Conservative or even among Reform religious, educational and organizational leaders, Reform and Conservative Judaism in America require very little mastery of Hebrew for either worship or ritual purposes at the rank and file levels of involvement. Thus, while both of these movements support a few linguistically intensive schools and other language-maintenance institutions, the average degree of Hebrew knowledge among their parishioners is usually extremely low. Almost all Conservative and Reform synagogue schools devote time to instruction in modern Hebrew and in the Hebrew prayers of their respective prayer books. The time involved may vary from less than an hour per week to four or more hours per week with the median falling much closer to the lower limit than to the upper one. (See Table 11.) It must be realized, however, that Hebrew language mastery is frequently reinforced by other subject matter taught by most Jewish schools, e.g., Bible, prayer and worship, customs and ceremonies, life in Israel, etc. Nevertheless, notwithstanding instruction in Hebrew

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YIDDISH: T U R N I N G TO LIFE

Table 11. Hebrew instruction in Jewish schools throughout the United States. *

Required Subject {%)

Weekday afternoon schools

Sunday schools

All-day schools

100

49

100

Optional Subject (%)

31

Average number of years of instruction

3.8 yrs.**

5 yrs.

6 yrs.

Average time per week

1.5 hrs.**

.5 hrs.

5 hrs.

47.1

45.1

7.8

Percent of children in Jewish schools (%)

* From Dushkin and Engelman (1959) and supplementary data. ** The average figures for New York and other larger cities are somewhat higher.

itself as well as in various subjects that may be considered auxiliary to H e b r e w language learning, the results o b t a i n e d are n o t e n c o u r a g i n g . T h e most r e c e n t nationwide study of this p r o b l e m came to the following conclusion: . . . excluding the Day schools, but including all other schools (Weekday and Oneday), probably no more than 25% of our children learn enough Hebrew to be able to begin the study of the Hebrew Bible, even in simplified texts; and probably less than half of these, 10-15%, can read the simplest Hebrew Bible text without considerable assistance! (Dushkin and Engelman 1959) If the criterion of language mastery were to be functional use of M o d e r n H e b r e w (rather t h a n access to the H e b r e w Bible) the n u m b e r s m e e t i n g this criterion would doubtlessly be even smaller. Nevertheless, the position of Hebrew is so firmly ensconced that lack of a t t a i n m e n t merely leads to a search for new m e t h o d s , new curricula a n d new o p p o r t u n i t i e s . O n e of the noteworthy new opportunities for strengthening the position of m o d e r n H e b r e w in the U n i t e d States has b e e n its i n t r o d u c t i o n to general A m e r i c a n colleges a n d high schools. At the college level Hebrew is currently taught in 245 institutions - usually as a classical language (i.e. as the language of the Bible for majors in theology, philosophy, etc.) b u t quite frequently as a m o d e r n language as well. In this connection it should be pointed out that the oldest a n d most i m p o r t a n t A m e r i c a n colleges b e g a n as theological

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schools and missionary institutes and, as a result of this fact, Hebrew is one of the very oldest subject matter fields in American higher education. On the other hand, the movement for college instruction in Hebrew as a modern language is quite recent and receives much of its support from the general Jewish community and from its HebraistZionist activists. Their efforts have very recently been strengthened by the U.S. government's inclusion of Hebrew on its list of "critical languages" (thus entitling graduate students majoring in Hebrew to fellowships under the National Defense Education Act), by the U.S. Office of Education's sponsorship of intensive college level "language institutes" in Hebrew, and by the College Entrance Examination Board's willingness to introduce a modern Hebrew language examination into its achievement testing series. All in all some 14,000 students are currently estimated to be studying Hebrew at the college level, approximately half of whom are studying modern Hebrew. Although the number is small relative to the numbers studying major European languages, it is probably larger than the number studying any of the more "exotic" foreign languages. It should also be pointed out that this number represents a 100 percent increase over the total of 7000 reported for 1950. (See table 12). Even more recent than the introduction of modern Hebrew into the American college curriculum, is its introduction into the high school curriculum. Beginning in two Brooklyn high schools in 1932, it is now regularly taught to about 7000 students in 85 public high schools in 16 American cities (among them New York City, Buffalo, Albany, Lawrence, Long Beach and Elmont in New York State; Roxbury and Springfield in Massachusetts; as well as Chicago, Cleveland, Los Angeles, Newark, New Haven, Providence, St. Louis, and Philadelphia). In New York City it has been in the curriculum for more than 25 years and is taught in some 70 junior and senior Table 12. Institutions of higher learning teaching Hebrew in the United States. (From Katsh 1960). Total teaching Hebrew

Teaching Modern Hebrew

Year College Univ. Seminary T.C. Total College Univ. Seminary T.C. Total 1917 1940 1950 1958

—* 43 53 61

— 34 63 72

*No data available.

__ 47 90 112

_ 0 0 0

56 124 206 245

— 3 24 24

— 6 9 14

— 1 4 6

— 0 1 4

— 10 38 48

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high schools to approximately 5500 children. Students studying Modern Hebrew at the high school level encounter no difficulty in obtaining college entrance credits for their studies when they apply for admission since nearly all American colleges now accept Hebrew as meeting foreign language entrance requirements. Certainly the devotees of Modern Hebrew have blazed a path into American colleges and high schools which might well serve as an example to the language-maintenance leaders of other groups. Although relatively few students are attracted to these courses (when one considers the total size of the Jewish student population in American high schools and colleges) they, nevertheless, have great symbolic importance. They strengthen the group's conviction in the importance of Hebrew, since any recognition given to Hebrew by general educational and governmental authorities is much more noteworthy and much more effective than recognition derived from ''inside circles" alone. Another strong source of support for the strengthening of Hebrew in the United States is the rebirth of the State of Israel. As a result of the establishment of this State, Hebrew language learning took on a new meaningfulness for both adults and youngsters. In addition, various agencies of the Israeli government, as well as several quasi-official Israeli organizations, devote much time and effort to strengthening the position of the Hebrew language among American Jews. Courses are organized, teaching materials are prepared and teachers are provided from Israeli sources. Numerous low cost tours are conducted to Israel, both for adults and for young folks, and language learning is frequently encouraged or required in connection with such tours. All in all, few foreign governments have been as interested in fostering language maintenance and language learning among their kinsmen in the United States as has been true in the case of the Israeli government and Israeli-based agencies. The goal of "Hebraizing the Diaspora" may never be reached. Certainly, American Jewry is very far from this goal today and the majority of American Jews do not acknowledge any such goal. Nevertheless, the multifaceted efforts on behalf of Hebrew do reach ever-increasing numbers, and at the very least, maintain an attitude of recognition for the importance of Hebrew among the masses of American Jews who know little, if any, of the language. Thus, in summary, the position of Hebrew is an anomalous one if it is compared with the position of Yiddish or with the positions of any other vernaculars brought into the United States by various

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cultural-religious groups. Extremely few American Jews possess even rudimentary functional command, not to mention mastery, of the language. Relatively few even possess reading familiarity with the language. All in all, then, Hebrew language fluency is an exceedingly rare phenomenon among American Jews. To the extent that it exists it is limited to a few small circles of clearly atypical religious, scholarly and ideological attainments. As a result, there is no daily Hebrew press, 28 no legitimate or professional theatre, no "Hebrew speaking neighborhoods", nor any other of the usual hallmarks of a vernacular of large numbers of speakers. Nevertheless, the prestige of the language has never been higher and tacit interest in it is strong. With the passing of the older immigrant generations that studied classical Hebrew intensively during childhood and adolescence, the number possessing appreciable facility in the language may actually decrease in the years ahead. Nevertheless, the Hebrew language remains assured of large numbers of admirers and of adherents - even among those (and they will constitute the vast majority of American Jews) who will remain Hebraically illiterate. Notes 1.

Although Yiddish began as "a German variant utilized by Jewish speakers" it must also be remembered that there was no generally accepted ''standard" variant of German until, roughly, the 16th century. As a result, Yiddish may also be viewed as the first supra-dialectal German variant, reflecting as it did the many regional German variants to which Jews were exposed (as a result of expulsions, trade, weddings, etc.) to a much greater degree than were nonJews in Germany. This was another factor which further distinguished Yiddish from any one or another co-territorial German variant.

2.

All divisions into historical-linguistic periods are somewhat arbitrary and arti­ ficial. A more historically oriented division in the case of Yiddish has been suggested as follows: Old Yiddish: to 1348 (The Black Death pogroms which markedly increased the separation beween Jews and non-Jews in Central Europe); Middle Yiddish: 1348-1648 (The Chmielnitski pogroms in the Ukraine by which time Slavic elements had entered the language); Modern Yiddish: 1648- (including periods of east to west migration and the dialectal differentiation of East-European Yiddish. See Mark 1960).

3.

As will be noted below, there is also ample evidence that Yiddish became the accepted language of scholarly Talmudic discussion and legal disputation among Ashkenazim quite early in the Middle Yiddish period (Weinreich, M. 1959a). There were also beginnings of serious Kabbalistic, moralistic (musar) and responsa literatures in Yiddish during the latter parts of the period here under discussion ( - 1861).

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4.

Hasidism in particular raised the prestige of Yiddish, through its Yiddish songs and Yiddish tales, both of which were considered to be within the pale of sanctity. Later on, Yiddishism and modern Yiddish literature in Eastern Europe derived much of their earliest support from those regions in which hasidism was strongest.

5.

One of the most difficult concepts to adequately render in English for readers who function within the usual context of American educational-intellectual interests is that referred to by the term "national" in Eastern Europe in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In American English the term "national" most frequently refers to nationwide-countrywide (thus national headquarters of an organization). Whenever it is clear that such is not its intended meaning, intelligent American audiences frequently react to it as related to the nationalistic-chauvinistic-jingoistic world of associations. Yet this latter interpretation does not recognize the libertarian, self-determining, and culturally creative context that surrounded the term "national" in Eastern Europe. Of course, "national" frequently implied aspirations relating to a nation-state and, therefore, relating to governmental powers and governmental offices. Even more basically, however, the term "national" related to "peoplehood", i.e. to separate cultural unity, identity and creativity. Thus, "national" movements encouraged and often created literature, art, music, theatre, schools, journalism and standard literary language forms because these were all symbols of "peoplehood". This realm of concern may be closer to what many Americans recognize under the label "ethnic". However, "ethnic" does not really do as a substitute for "national" since "ethnic" also has misleading overtones in popular American usage. "Ethnic" often implies minority-immigrant-disadvantage and this constellation tends to rule out the last shred of self-determination or sovereignty that was one element in the original "national" constellation. Thus, there is no handy designation with which we can really be happy in common American usage. Whenever we will use the terms "national" or "ethnic" in this essay we hope that our readers will hark back to the original context of ideas, emotions, and behaviors out of which these terms have come to us rather than be reminded of the many overtones and undertones that have subsequently accrued to these unhappy terms. The use of quotation marks (i.e. "national") is intended to call special attention to the particular late 19th century Eastern European interpretation desired for these terms.

6.

The extremely important conference of Yiddish writers and intellectuals meeting in Tshernowits (in Bukovina, then a province of the AustroHungarian Empire, 1908), proclaimed Yiddish as "a national Jewish language". However, the impact of the conference on the Jewish masses as well as on intellectuals was much stronger than its resolutions would lead one to suspect. The act of dignifying Yiddish with an international conference was of symbolic value in itself.

7.

Although Yiddish was spoken in America even as far back as colonial days, and although some Yiddish publications appeared in America before 1880, the earlier period (before mass-immigration from Eastern Europe) is of secondary importance in understanding the current social and cultural position of Yiddish in American Jewish life.

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8.

Note, however, that scientific literature in Yiddish was largely of a popular science variety whether translated or originally composed in Yiddish. To this very day very little original scientific work, particularly in the natural sciences, has been written in Yiddish. This is an important distinction relevant to language maintenance among groups that interact with modern Western thought and technology.

9.

Central governmental support for Yiddish was differently motivated, to be sure, than local governmental support. Local governmental units in the Ukraine and in White Russia were interested in strengthening all cultural forces that were non-Russian. The Central Government, on the other hand, supported Yiddish in these areas as a counter-force against the local (Ukrainian and Byelorussian) republics. As soon as the Central Government's power was predominant, support for Yiddish from both sources was, first, curtailed and, ultimately, discontinued. While some of the basic information concerning these transformations is available in widely cited sources (e.g. Solomon M. Schwarz's The Jews in the Soviet Union, Syracuse, Syracuse University Press, 1951) a variety of specialized sources must also be consulted (e.g. Alfred A. Greenbaum'sJewishScholarship in Soviet Russia, 1918-1941, Ph.D. Dissertation Brandeis University, 1958, and the extensive bibliography cited there) and much archival material must be systematized before the details of Soviet policies and circumstances, briefly summarized here, can be fully reconstructed.

10.

A few Sholem Aleichem schools also function in Detroit and Chicago. However, these are no longer organizationally affiliated with the Institute in New York or with each other.

11.

A fourth network of schools teaching Yiddish consists of the remaining schools of the former Jewish Peoples Order of the IWO. Theoretically these schools are no longer affiliated with any central network, although in actuality much central guidance continues. In these schools Yiddish has increasingly become a proletarian-secular symbol rather than a Jewish cultural vehicle in its own right. The enrolment in these schools is not included in Table 1 since the schools as such are not properly classifiable as under Jewish auspices.

12.

It is important to note that the relationship between parents, schools and milieu is no more organic in the case of religious Jewish education sponsored by thousands ofJewish congregational and communal schools throughout the United States. Although such schools have strong organizational bases in the synagogues and community centers that sponsor them, they can hardly be said to derive from or lead to strong religious commitments on the part of the parents or pupils associated with them. Their existence is primarily based on affiliational rather than truly communal, ideological or observational patterns. Nevertheless, the assumption of these schools that American Jewry is to be publicly defined in religious rather than in linguistic or "national" terms is widely accepted even though most religious observances that these schools seek to inculcate among the pupil and parent populations affiliated with them are marked by patterned deviation (Rosen 1958).

13.

During the same period, Yiddish courses were also introduced at a few uni-

158

YIDDISH: TURNING TO LIFE versities outside the United States, among them the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and the University of Manitoba. Courses on Yiddish literature in English translation have been offered at Queens College, City College, Brandeis University, Roosevelt University, Columbia University, The New School for Social Research and UCLA since the end of the Second World War.

14.

15.

16. 17.

18.

Yiddish as a language of instruction and as a subject of study is also encountered at Yeshiva University where it is entirely outside of secular"nationalist" influence. Obviously valued though they are, Yiddish chairs in major universities are in partial conflict with deep emotional attachments to the language both as a mother tongue and as an ingredient of a total way of life. Both of these views lead Yiddishists to suspect that "Yiddish must be loved and lived" rather than "unnaturally formalized and dignified" if its true qualities are to be recognized and preserved. The small but influential orthodox Yiddish press will be commented upon separately. Abe Cahan, long time editor of the Forverts (see below) was one of the major avowed champions of "potato-Yiddish" in the daily press. He supplied H.L. Mencken with the materials on Yiddish published in The American Language (1960). The average age of Yiddish authors in Israel and in other countries of the American continent was 57 years in 1960. The average age of those publishing in Soviestish Heymland was 53 years in 1960. The relative youthfulness of most remaining Yiddish authors in the Soviet Union is due to the liquidation of most leading Yiddish writers by the Stalinist regime.

19.

Of course, the proportion of serious theatre to musical comedy and farce on Broadway has also been rather low. It might be well to note that the growth of a quality American theatre really begins with O'Neill and that the Theatre Guild post-dates the Yiddish Art Theatre.

20.

These sought to establish a parallel organization of their own which shortly ceased to function. The World Congress for Jewish Culture maintains headquarters in New York and branches in Paris and in Buenos Aires. In 1940 the average age of foreign-born claimants of Yiddish mother tongue was 48. In 1960 the average age of foreign-born speakers of Yiddish was certainly in the mid-sixties. Tog, Morgn Zhurnal, July 19, 1963, p. 4. This claim is not supported by Ayer's Directory of Newspapers and Periodicals. Ayer gives no circulation figures for Dos Yidishe Vort and circulation estimates dropped from 11,000 in 1960 to 8,000 in 1961 for Der Yid.

21. 22.

23. 24.

25.

Other studies completed by the Language Resources Project have shown that second generation claimants of Yiddish mother tongue began to decline a decade before the decline became apparent in connection with coimmigrational Eastern European languages (Fishman et al. 1964, Ch. 2); that

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the Yiddish press and radio have declined more rapidly than circulation and broadcasting in most co-immigrational Eastern European languages (1964, Chs. 3 and 4); that the children of first generation Yiddish culturalorganizational leaders are linguistically more anglified than the children of second generation Polish and German organizational leaders (1964, Ch. 8), etc. 26.

Detailed information on Hebrew in the United States is presented in several of the sources cited in the bibliography, e.g. Dushkin and Engelman 1959; Katsh 1950, 1960; Lapson 1953, 1958.

27.

There is, of course, the combination of religiously Orthodox-Zionism where Hebrew mastery is actively nourished from two sources.

28.

The highest circulation among Hebrew language periodicals in the United States is achieved by the monthly Bitzaron with a claimed circulation of 1660, and the weekly Hadoar, with a claimed circulation of 9615.

Nathan Birnbaum's view of American Jewry

Nathan Birnbaum (1864-1937), one of the giants of modern Jewish thought and the founder of not one but of fully three modern Jewish movements (Zionism, Yiddishism, and the Return-to-Orthodoxy), has been far too little remembered and even less understood by committed Jews of today, all of whom are in one way or another, the direct beneficiaries of Birnbaum's manifold and herculean efforts. His struggle against assimilationist tendencies among "Jewish moderns", the term he used in referring to Jews who were fully in touch with Western European culture and values, was unending and literally all-consuming. Now, on the occasion of his 50th yortsayt (the last day of Passover, 1987), we not only owe him, but we owe ourselves, the distinct pleasure of reacquainting ourselves with his endlessly original and scintillating views, views that span all of the concerns that still engulf us today as we continue to struggle with modernity, either in order to domesticate it along Jewish lines or in order to escape from its clutches. "Original" is actually too tame a designation for Nathan Birnbaum; perhaps "revolutionary" is more appropriate, if we can set aside its usual left-wing implications. Even before his Zionism was fully articulated, indeed, at the tender age of nineteen, he shocked the world of Germanized Jewish university students in his home­ town, Vienna, with public lectures and self-published brochures addressed to "so-called Germans, Slavs, Hungarians, etc., of the Mosaic Confession, by a student ofJewish nationality". He attacked their "drive towards assimilation" (Assimilationssucht) as unworthy, self-impoverishing and doomed to failure because it fostered rather than calmed the worst fears of anti-Semites. Immediately thereafter, in 1883, i.e., nearly a dozen years before the Dreyfus affair in France which belatedly wakened the Jewish sensitivities of Theodore Herzl,

Reprinted with permission fromJudaica Book News 18(1), 10-12; 68-70.1987.

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Birnbaum literally coined the word "Zionism", both in German and in Hebrew, organized the first university-linked Zionist student or­ ganization, Kadimah, and single-handedly founded, edited and pub­ lished its journal Selbst-Emancipation!. Although he was later forced to accept Herzľs organizational leadership in order to remain within the Zionist organization, he became the first Western Zionist to call for a positive reassessment of the role of Yiddish in modern Jewish life and in the cultural authenticity of millions of Jews, an authenticity that Western Zionists must not only safeguard but one that they must increasingly incorporate into their own lives. Later, as "the first among equals" in Yiddishist ranks, and as the originator and organi­ zer of the greatest Yiddishist "event" to date, the First World Conference for the Yiddish Languages (Tshernovitz 1908, see below), he opposed any down-grading of Hebrew and of traditional Judaism in Jewish life, thereby eliciting the ire of left-wing Yiddishists. Finally, as the first really eminent, Western rediscoverer of unreconstructed Orthodoxy, he issued a call and started a movement for less routinization and more beauty, more deeply felt Jewish experiences and a more intense personal commitment to ushering in the Messiah. In this, his last phase, he was the first in Orthodox ranks to call for an exodus from Holocaust-bound Europe, beginning in the early twen­ ties, and for resettlement in small, preplanned all Jewish settlements "elsewhere", so that Jews could live in accord with their own culture and be free of the urban disarray and mecantilism that had plagued them for so many centuries. As I have tried to demonstrate in Ideology, Society and Language, the Odyssey of Nathan Birnbaum (1987), the many phases which he so meteorically traversed are integrated in Birnbaum's constantly restless searching for a definition of his own Jewishness, his unhappiness with the Jewish situation and his continual planning for ways and means to remedy it. His entire adult life constitutes an integrated whole; although many of his specific views changed from one phase to the next, certain themes never disappear from his agenda. One of these integrating themes is "America", a topic he touches upon in each one of his phases. As a result, his views about America are much more original and much more fully developed than those of his contemporaries. Neither Herzl, nor Akhad Ha'am, nor Zhitlovski (even though the latter lived for more than a score of years in North America, see below) nor the Gerer Rebe ever really articulated a fine-grained picture as to "How is America different from all the other lands of dispersion?" Only Birnbaum managed to

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do so and this should make him doubly intriguing for American Jewry. How did Birnbaum come to be so familiar with America, in general, and with Jews in America, in particular? His familiarity began with a 1907-1908 five month long lecture tour here (during the very zenith of his Autonomist/Yiddishist stage), a tour in which his three phases came together, his past, his present and even his future, more so than they had done in Central Europe itself. Birnbaum ostensibly came to America in order to lecture about Zionism (predictably, he stressed the need for "Zionism as a culturebuilding movement," a view that represented his uniqueness vis-à-vis the Zionist movement in general and the more politically oriented Herzl in particular). 1 These lectures enabled him to visit a substantial part of the country, reaching far into the West and into the South, indeed, they enabled him to visit parts of the country that most resident Jewish leaders and Yiddish writers knew very little about. These lectures also enabled him not only to cover his expenses, but even to "put a little aside", this being a rare occurrence for Birnbaum whose life usually hovered just below the line of genteel poverty. But his visit to America also permitted Birnbaum to meet face to face with David Pinski, already a major figure both in Zionist and in Yiddish literary circles, and to explore with him one of Birnbaum's pet projects: convening the "First World Conference for the Yiddish Language". Their meetings on this matter took place in Pinski's apartment on Beck Street in the South Bronx, where they were immediately joined by Khayem Zhitlovski, whose contributions to Yiddishist and Diaspora Autonomist thought were also already well known. The only obvious puzzle about these meetings in the Bronx, a puzzle thus far overlooked by scholarship on Yiddishism, is why Birnbaum waited until this 1907 visit to America - a locale so far away from his usual haunts - in order to issue the first call to what became the famous Tshernovits Conference of 1908. America was then still far from being at the center of the world of Yiddish and Birnbaum, as we have implied above, had actually come up with the idea of such a conference on behalf of Yiddish as far back as in 1905, i.e., more than two years before his visit to America took place, at a talk that he gave in Tshernovitz itself. At that earlier time he adumbrated almost the entire agenda of the conference, the very agenda that he, Pinski and Zhitlovski itemized in their late 1907-early 1908 meetings on this very matter, as well as in the call to the

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conference that they then issued: sessions on a standardized modern orthography, on assistance to writers and actors, on literature and theatre, on the preparation and publication of practical grammars, dictionaries and text books, and finally, sessions on fostering the societal recognition of the language per se, particularly among the young. 2 Given that he already had such a fully itemized and well established view of what the conference agenda should be, there were dozens of Eastern European stars in the firmament of Yiddish (e.g., Y.L. Peretz, A. Reyzn, Sh. Ash, H.D. Nomberg), all of whom Birnbaum knew well and most of whom he had partially translated into German, and introduced at literary "evenings" that he had organized and chaired in Vienna and throughout Galicia, whom he could have approached. Why did Birnbaum wait for more than two years, and until he was in far away America, in order to bring his ideas to the attention of a number of American Yiddishists and in order to get their particular support? It may be, of course, that Birnbaum had especially warm feelings for Pinski and Zhitlovski and that they, too, were particular admirers of Birnbaum. He knew Pinski well from his own, prior, Zionist stage. Among Zionists, Pinski was the major, active Yiddish writer, just among Yiddish writers, Pinski was the most outspoken and uncompromising Zionist. Pinski knew very well who this German-speaking, German-writing Viennese was, what his erstwhile contributions to Zionism had been and how justified his criticism was of a Zionism that focused on shtadlones and shnoreray (intercessions with non-Jewish political authorities and fund-raising). With Zhitlovski, Birnbaum shared a diasporaautonomistic Weltanschauung. However, in both cases, Birnbaum could easily have found first-rate Eastern European counterparts (and found them substantially earlier to boot) for the purposes of attracting and mobilizing the world of Yiddish on behalf of his conference plans. We are forced to conclude, it seems to me, that Birnbaum preferred to wait until he could approach Pinski and Zhitlovski for their support in far away America precisely because they were in America. Their residence in America meant they could not "take away" from him neither the Yiddishist movement nor the conference on behalf of Yiddish as (in Birnbaum's view) Herzl had done a decade before in connection with Zionism and as the Eastern European "stars" could possibly still do in connection with Yiddishism. Once burned, twice shy. After releasing the first call to the conference, from New York,

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Birnbaum concluded his lecture tour and returned to Europe. On the high seas he experienced an unforgettable realization of the presence of God, in the air round about him, in the waves that surrounded him, in anticipation of his coming phase, when, in his own words, he was transformed from being a doubter (apikóyres) to being a believer (máymen). All in all, all three of his phases had met and intersected in connection with his American visit. But for us today, the most important and most curious accomplishment of Birnbaum's first visit to America 3 is not his reiteration of his long-standing differences with Herzľs Zionism, nor his attracting Pinski and Zhitlovski to the notion and to the sponsorship of the Tshernovits Conference, nor even his experience of the presence of God. What is most noteworthy and most unusual is that this trip enabled him to closely observe America. Americanism and American Jewry and to think deeply about these new and interconnected phenomena. As a result of this trip, Birnbaum expressed a number of original views concerning the pluses and minuses that he observed in this new nexus and their implications for Jews and yídishkayt in the new world. While still in America, Birnbaum published (in the Viennese Jüdische Zeitung)4 four letters from America. These letters are chiefly concerned with immigrant life on the East Side, with Yiddish theatre (of which Birnbaum had long been an avid admirer and vigorous champion), with the palpable tensions between Germanized Jews (from whom Birnbaum himself, stemmed) and East Eastern European Jews (with whom he so identified) in America - a topic whose E u r o p e a n and, particularly, A u s t r o - H u n g a r i a n , manifestations Birnbaum never tired of analyzing - and even with tourism pure and simple (e.g., the Congressman from the Lower East Side, Goldfogel, introduced Birnbaum to Theodore Roosevelt, then still president of the United States, who struck Birnbaum as being similar, in many respects, to Kaiser Wilhelm). However, the immediate upshot of all these letters, in Birnbaum's view, was that the future of American Jewry, whether politically, economically or culturally, was far from certain. A year later (1909), having had additional time to reflect on his American observations and experiences, Birnbaum authored his more considered analysis of the entire configuration of Jews in America, doing so under the title "Americanism and the Jews". 5 By then Abraham Cahan's Yekl: A Tale of the New York Ghetto (1889) had already appeared, but Cahan was still far from being the authoritative figure that he later became

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and no fictionalized metaphors about the immigrant generation in New York (which designation also applied to Hutchins Hapgood's the Spirit of the Ghetto [1902]) could be the equal to Birnbaum's diagnosis and prognosis, which were both exceptionally innovative as well as prophetic. 6 In his 1909 article, at a time when the melting pot was still a very popular notion, Birnbaum attacked this "ideal" as a grave danger, both for Jews and for America. At that time, the New York Yiddish press was full of praise for Israel Zangwilľs The Melting Pot, partially on the strength of Roosevelt's publicized, positive evaluation of the play. Birnbaum's view, however, was that the Yiddish papers were merely senselessly reflecting general American rhetoric, without realizing that the "melting pot" was not the same thing as "freedom". The true and simple consequences of the "melting pot" for Jews was the destruction of yídishkayt. Birnbaum fully appreciated the fact that the persecution of Jews in Europe had awakened among Jewish immigrants a ravenous hunger for freedom and equality, but he urged his readers to realize that Jews in America were living under far different circumstances than those that governed their lives in Europe and that they could understand neither themselves nor America in European terms. Superficially, it might appear that America was socio-culturally quite similar to the Russian and the Austro-Hungarian monarchies. (Of the latter, Birnbaum had long been a great champion.) True, they all incorporated numerous minorities and stressed the overarching and integrating role of a single language and culture in the comprehensive orchestration of all social processes, whether those between the various minorities, or those between the minorities and the central authorities. However, Birnbaum warned that this apparent similarity disappears on closer analysis and that neither the Jewish problems nor the solutions to these problems were the same in Europe and in the United States. Birnbaum sees the main difference between Europe and the United States, insofar as ethnolinguistic minorities are concerned, neither in the lack of legal recognition of the minorities in the USA, nor in their huge numbers here, nor in the recency of their arrival, nor even in their lack of deeply historical roots, or territorial concentration. The main difference, in Birnbaum's eyes, lies in the fact that in America the "center" itself is not yet consolidated and lacks depth. All residents are encouraged to learn English, of course, but not in order to become Englishmen. Englishmen, per se, cease to

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be Englishmen in America, even though they already know English when they arrive. 7 Indeed, in America everyone does learn English, sooner or later, but no deeper ethnocultural tradition is directly forthcoming as a result. Americanism, as a historical, intergenerational culture, as a culture with its own philosophy of life, still does not really exist. That fact constitutes the major difference facing minorities in the United States, when compared with minorities confronting German (or Hungarian) in Austro-Hungary or vis-à-vis Russian (or Polish) in Czarist Russia. Jews who pursue the languages of government in Europe arrive in the heartland of a foreign culture (actually, Birnbaum believes, they only "half-arrive", because to really "arrive" one must also be Christian, because at the very heart of Germanness or Russianness there is an inescapable Christian component which even the majority of Jewish assimilationists are not willing to accept). On the other hand, Jews who pursue the language of government in America can arrive only at something unformed, something unfinished. Who really knows what American culture is and who has the proper ordination to issue edicts and to render authoritative opinions in connections with it? Birnbaum anticipates Horace Kallen when he argues in 1909 (fully fifteen years prior to the appearance of Kallen's Culture and Democracy in the United States, 1924), that a fully implemented American culture ("Americanism") implies, on the one hand, loyalty to democratic laws and institutions. On the other hand, it requires a renewed flowering of the major customs, values and wisdom of the cultures that were so often persecuted in the "Old Country" and that had only competitive associations with each other there. Birnbaum concludes that it is precisely because the "melting pot" destroys the prior ethnocultural patterns of the immigrant, that it is actually not only the antithesis of, but the enemy of Americanism, given that it impoverishes, cancels out and tears down, without even having replacements at hand for that which it destroys. Jews, as a collectivity, do not appear to understand this and bow down to the golden calf of the melting pot, but every immigrant father, as an individual, understands this thoroughly and spontaneously, when his own child laughs at him and scorns his ways and his values. Birnbaum discussed at length the alienation of American Jewish youth from the language and the customs of their immigrant parents. Of course, others, before and after Birnbaum, have dealt with this topic, but in this connection, as in many others, Birnbaum's observa-

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tions are entirely original and precise. He suggests that the insecurity of the immigrants themselves is the major cause of, both, their lack of resistance to, and the more so that of their inability to effectively oppose the false and empty Americanism of the "melting pot", on the one hand, and the negative attitudes with which their own children, the members of the second generation, view them, on the other. If the parents were not immigrants, were not uprooted from the familiar rounds and contexts of their daily life, they could be exemplars of a proud Judaism and return their children to its proper authentic ways. However, in their immigrant dislocation, it is not uncommon for parents to look approvingly at the younger generation so much more at home in America than they, but to feel greatly hurt when the same youngsters, escaping from their influence, deride it and them. Instead of the parents raising the children, the children are often in control and, thereby, further intensify the insecurity of the parents. What can be done to ameliorate this sorry situation? How can yidishkayt escape unhurt from the vicious and destructive circle that surrounds it? In all of his phases, Birnbaum was a believer in deeds: an advocate, originator and implementer of plans, organizations, publications. This trust in mítsves áse (affirmative commandments) came to his assistance even in the early 1920s, when he raised the alarm that a great calamity was on its way - the greatest of all the calamities of Jewish history - to annihilate yidishkayt. Again in the 1930s, when he chastized Dutch Jewry, in whose midst he lived (as a refugee from Nazi-Germany), that they were as sheep and oxen who calmly move on, slowly chewing their cuds, en route to the slaughterer, even then he firmly held that proper steps could still be taken to avoid the desolation that he foresaw. But Birnbaum was also always a firm believer in the mystic, instinctive forces of the Jewish soul and in the collective memory and good common sense of the Jewish people. He applied these two very different (but also very complementary) approaches to solving the problems of American Jewry and American Judaism. He suggested massive attempts to rouse American Jews so that they would be more conscious of their ancient as well as of their more modern cultural treasures. And, had he remained there, he probably would have turned to concrete details, as well as to long-range plans. 8 Most probably he would have organized yet another youth organization (as he had initially done during his Zionist and Yiddishist stages and as he did, once more, in

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his O r t h o d o x stage), 9 c o n v e n e d conferences, established publica­ tions and initiated far-flung informational efforts in order to awaken a n d activize A m e r i c a n Jews on behalf of preserving a n d fostering their own identity in America. However, since he realized that he was n o t destined to roll u p his sleeves here, h e relied primarily o n his firm adherence to the second path: the path that was derived from a d e e p conviction in Jewish eternity. H e trusted in Jewish fate n o t to permit false Americanism to triumph. A new generation would arise, he predicted, one thoroughly at h o m e with, and secure in the ways of America. T h a t generation would have new American-born leaders, new a n d original ideas, new m e t h o d s , and, above all, a new will to build Jewish life, a new readiness to be different from the mainstream of American life and, in addition, a new readiness to be different than their frightened fathers dared, a readiness to return to the healthy certainties of their g r a n d p a r e n t s a n d to built the future o n those foundations. These ideas, that were developed by Marcus H a n s o n only in 1946, in his The Immigrant in American History (1946), B i r n b a u m already formulated in 1909. Even before he himself b e c a m e a bal-tshúve (a p e n i t e n t r e t u r n e e to Orthodoxy), he p r o p h e s i e d that a r e t u r n to m o r e classical origins would b e c o m e a mass-movement a m o n g an e n t i r e g e n e r a t i o n of A m e r i c a n Jews. Interestingly enough, B i r n b a u m did n o t p r e a c h cultural au­ t o n o m y to, or for A m e r i c a n Jews of his day a n d age. H e held that they were n o t ready for that, j u s t as he h a d held in an earlier stage, that until westernized, G e r m a n i z e d Jews of all kinds re-established their ties with Jewish culture and yídishkayt, they would be unfit a n d u n r e a d y for aliyáh to Erets Yisrael. Whereas S h i m e n D u b n o v still scolded Salo B a r o n d u r i n g the 30s for n o t foreseeing an age of cultural a u t o n o m y a m o n g American Jews, B i r n b a u m , as far back as 1909, already u n d e r s t o o d that American Jews required extensive reJudaization before cultural autonomy or any other specific long-term solution to their d i l e m m a could be given useful consideration. Like H e r d e r (from w h o m m u c h of B i r n b a u m ' s p r e - O r t h o d o x imagery is derived), Birnbaum constantly believed that every people, individually, a n d all of humanity, collectively, is better off, m o r e creative in its own problem solving a n d m o r e contributory to world culture, when the authentic and deeply unique culture of its heritage is fostered and further developed. In connection with his rejections of "false Americanism", at the b e g i n n i n g of this century, B i r n b a u m was far ahead of most others in believing that an intergenerationally intact a n d a u t h e n t i c yídishkayt in America would r e n d e r b o t h Jews

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and America more cultured and more rooted. He most definitely believed that those who are of the opinion that Jews are no longer capable of finding the way back to themselves and of developing their culture further "underestimate the deep forces that live on within the Jewish people". Nathan Birnbaum was among the first and, perhaps, even the very first, to be philosophical "Americanist" among Central and Eastern European Jewish leaders. In his autonomist stage he recognized that America was a new phenomenon in Jewish history and that the Jews in this new nation (in Lipset's terms: "the first new nation", 1963) would witness and demonstrate not fewer but even more miracles than did their ancestors of old. Notes 1.

Birnbaum's address at the First Zionist World Congress, Der Zionismus als Kulturbewegung. Referat Gehalten auf dem Zionisten-Kongress in Basel am 29 August, 1897, was subsequently published in his Zwei Vorträge über Zionismus; Berlin, 1898.

2.

"Ostjüdische Aufgaben". Separatdruck: Bukowiner Post, Czernovits, July 1905.

3.

Birnbaum's second (and final) visit to America occurred in 1921, when he came as a member of an Agudas Israel delegation in which he, a bal-tshuve among Orthodox giants, was definitely, a junior senator. Birnbaum never wrote about this second visit, true to the 'junior senator" model of reticence. Upon the return of the Agudah delegation, Birnbaum resigned from his recently appointed position as Executive Secretary, although he remained a member of the organization until his death.

4.

"Briefe aus Amerika", Jüdische Zeitung, Wein, v.II, 20 January, 7 February, 20 March, 10 April 1908.

5.

"Der Americanismus und die Juden." Die Welt. v.XIII, 1 January, 8 January, 1909.

6.

This article is translated into English for the very first time in my Ideology, Society and Language: The Odyssey of Nathan Birnbaum. Ann Arbor, Karoma, 1987.

7.

From his very first to his very last stage Birnbaum continued to make comparisons between English and Yiddish, ultimately stressing that Yiddish had no more need to be embarrassed about its multi-componentiality than did English. In his article "Der Americanismus ..." Birnbaum comments that American English is definitely not British English and has few caretakers and arbiters, insofar as correctness or standardization are concerned.

8.

When Birnbaum wrote this article he was still the avid champion of Yiddish and of autonomous, governmentally supported Yiddish schools; Accordingly he cannot keep from criticizing the fractured Yiddish of American Jews, even

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though he himself still needed to speak to them in German during his visit to the USA, and was often laughed at by his listeners exactly when he wanted to be taken most seriously. During this visit he also decried the negative impact of the American public school on the Jewishness of American Jewish homes, much as he had decried similar influences of German, Russian, Polish and Hungarian schools in Central and Eastern Europe. 9.

A few years after resigning his position with the Agudah, Birnbaum founded his own organization, Óylim (ascenders), to foster intensified, cultivated and less routinized Orthodox piety. For a statement of his goals see his "Aufruf. ('Orden der Aufsteigenden [Aulimľ)" Israelit, 22 December, 1927.

Yiddish, modernization and re-ethnification: a serious and empirical approach to current problems Yidish, modernizatsye un reetnifikatsye: an ernster un faktndiker tsugang tsu der itstiker problematik Yiddish will still remain one of the "big five" non-English languages in the USA (a position it has held since 1900) through to the beginning of the 21st century. For the first time in many years, the number of pre-school and school-aged Yiddish speakers has begun to climb again, entirely as a result of Ultra-Orthodox demographic processes. The gains in Yiddish mother-tongue claiming attributable to the ethnic revival of the mid-1970s were largely lost by the end of the following decade and the conscientious secularist contribution to the Yiddish organizational and institutional life is continuing to decline. The processes of social mobility and modernization have erased the daily cultural boundaries between most Jews and others and without voluntary boundaries, Yiddish cannot be retained as a vehicle of daily life and becomes an object of study and entertainment.

Reprinted with permission from Afn Shvel 248, 1982. 1-7

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III Corpus Planning: The Ability to Change and Grow

Introduction

Yiddish corpus planning had its hey-day between the two World Wars, in Eastern Europe. Several factors contributed to its success. Its propelling force was the vibrant secular nationalism which was often "language conscious" in the extreme. The thousands of schools at all levels, periodicals, books and lectures sponsored year-in and year-out by the various political parties that constituted this new and modern outpouring of Jewish nationalist conviction absolutely required, both ideologically and purely functionally, Yiddish terms for all the concepts and artifacts of modern secular life, a standardized Yiddish orthography, a standardized Yiddish orthoepy and all the other outer signs of autonomous, national languages. Several of the surrounding late-modernizing languages were also going through a similar period of language-nationalism and language planning, particularly in the first decade after World War I. Ukranian and Byelorussian, the three Baltic languages, and even Russian, Polish and Rumanian, all engaged in corpus planning and, in that climate, Yiddish advocates and devotees could do no less and accept no less for their language, even though, except for far-off Birobidjan, it lacked a government of its own, such as the others had. Thus, there was both an objective and a subjective need for Yiddish corpus planning, and as a result, of both, there was also no lack of agencies (or "Language Academies", as they were called in earlier days and as they are referred to again in the modern sociolinguistic literature) to conduct such planning. In the Soviet Union, indeed, there were, in certain years, two such agencies, one in Minsk and one, the more important of the two, in Kiev ("The Philological Section of the Institute for Jewish Culture at the Ukranian Academy of Sciences"). Their decisions with respect to orthography and lexicon were often followed, at least in part, by pro-Communist Jewish secular schools and publications outside of the Soviet Union

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as well. However, outside of the Soviet orbit, the primary agency of corpus planning was the Philological Section of the Yivo (an acronym derived from its full Yiddish name : "Yidisher visnshaftlekher institut"), headquartered in Vilne (then Lithuania) and with a branch in New York. Within the Soviet Union, compliance with the decisions of the authorized Yiddish academies was compulsory, at least in so far as items approved for publication was concerned. In the West, no such compulsion was available and a great deal of variation obtained, both in orthography and in lexical use and innovation. Nevertheless, there was a sizeable hard-core of secular nationalist parties, schools, book-publishers, newspapers and other periodicals who carefully followed the Yivo's recommendations in these matters. There was an even larger grouping of all of the above types of efforts focusing on language in print whose departures from the Yivo "norm" were quite minor (although even minor departures can and did become constant bones of contention), more major departures being common only in the huge Orthodox world which probably equalled or even surpassed the modern secular nationalist efforts, both in size and in sheer activity, however much these two worlds pretended to mutually ignore each other. It was impossible for either side to compromise with the other, since, as frequently happens in such matters, each side considered its usage to be symbolic of its views and, indeed, its identity. Such polycentricity with respect to corpus planning also reflected to some extent, north/south dialectal differences with respect to pronunciation and lexicon, the Yivo being rather more "northernist" and Orthodoxy, rather more "southernist" (or "centralist") in general orientation. When corpus planning efforts were recommended after the Second World War they were primarily situated in the USA. The Soviet centers had been closed by the regime, with the active consent of the Yevsektsiye, the Party's "Department for Jewish Affairs", during a period marked by a mixture of genuine Stalinist antisemitism and feigned anti-bourgeois nationalism. These were never reopened and even the current winds of glasnost and perestroika may not suffice for their re-establishment. The Yivo's erstwhile American branch became its new headquarters and its leading spirit, Max Weinreich, was a major direct link to the Philological Section of the interwar years in Vilne. Surprisingly, a few major scholarly works of Yiddish corpus planning have seen the light of day on American shores (some published by the Yivo and some by the recently founded

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League for Yiddish which, in one guise or another, has, of late, become the last and only really active corpus planning agency for Yiddish in the world). The more meager corpus planning work that is being done today is a reflection of the various vastly changed circumstances which contrast the pre-War and the post-War social context of Yiddish. The loss of five million speakers in the Holocaust has been an irremediable blow to the disciplined spirit of the remaining speech community. Yiddish speaking American Jewry lacks the sizable elitecorps of graduates of Yiddish secondary and tertiary secular nationalist schools and political parties which constituted the chief advocates and consumers of Yiddish corpus planning in pre-War Eastern Europe. Furthermore, precious little corpus planning is being done by any of the myriad other minority ethnolinguistic groups in the USA, most of them being quite content to leave such efforts to scholars and language authorities in their respective mother countries. Finally, the USA itself has never engaged in centralized corpus planning, either leaving such efforts to individual influence and initiative or distributing responsibility for it piecemeal across scores of minor governmental boards and bureaus, to the point that the public at large neither cares nor knows that it is going on. Little wonder then that Yiddish corpus planning in the USA is on a relatively minor scale. Nevertheless, since the end of World War II a number of important achievements have been attained, particularly in the USA. Although an unabridged monolingual dictionary effort (aimed at over a quarter-million words) has had to be abandoned, after the completion of four volumes covering only the first letter of the alphabet (this abandonment coming primarily because of incompetent resource management and prolonged scholarly nonproductivity on the part of those who inherited it from its initiators), a modern English/Yiddish, Yiddish/English dictionary was completed and subsequently served as the model for bilingual dictionaries prepared abroad and involving French and Yiddish, on the one hand, and Spanish and Yiddish on the other hand. A mid-twenties trilingual dictionary (Yiddish - Hebrew - English) has been reissued in the USA, while pre-perestroika pangs of conscience have resulted in the long-delayed publication of a Yiddish-Russian dictionary, all of whose original compilers had long since departed for, or been dispatched to, the world beyond our own. Minor word-lists have appeared in the realms of academia, youth-culture and pregnancy

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and birthing. Two college level textbooks have appeared, one at the elementary level (which has spawned an Israeli edition in Hebrew) and one at the intermediate level. Finally, there are two periodicals that recommend neologisms, one that is a quarterly and another that appears irregularly. The orthographic unity which escaped the secular nationalists during the inter-war years, continues to escape their less nationalistic and less secular heirs of today. The Yivo's "Unified Yiddish Spelling" remains the major (and the only codified) norm but there are still two or three stubborn (and quite personally motivated) patterned deviations from it. Nor has a single Orthodox norm be attained, that community varying tremendously between conventions that date back to the Western Yiddish norm of the 18th century to usage which is only slightly different from that encountered in various secular publications. Nevertheless, it remains true that eighty to ninety percent of everything published in Yiddish today utilizes orthographies that are really quite close to each other, even if they will probably never consolidate into a single system. Given the lack of sanctions, whether positive or negative, that has usually been the hallmark of Yiddish corpus planning (except briefly during the Soviet mid-20s and mid-30s), the degree of worldwide orthographic similarity that has been attained is little short of miraculous. So is the degree of overall autonomy that has been attained vis-à-vis German and Hebrew spelling conventions (even though words of Loshnkoydesh origin are spelled essentially as they are spelled in Hebrew or Aramic). This is no mean accomplishment for a language that has been internally so weakened for nearly half a century, and even so bereft of an intellectual center. Lexical corpus planning is in a substantially less enviable condition. The century-old struggle against the wholesale importation of redundant New High Germanisms (which entered the language thanks to the writings and speeches of "Enlightenment" scholars and social revolutionaries) has substantially succeeded only in the most fastidious circles. Russianisms, Frenchisms, Spanishisms and, above all, Englishisms and Ivritisms abound in daily speech and, in their appropriate co-territorial realms, also find their ways into periodicals and popular books. Nevertheless, there remains a widespread recognition of and appreciation for "pure and scholarly" Yiddish, in both secular and Orthodox circles. Whereas "classified ads", both in secular and in religious publications, are likely to be particularly full of loans, translation loans, phrasal

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calques and other barbarisms, none of this is in evidence at public lectures of the Congress ofJewish Culture, on the one hand, or of the Lubavitcher Rebe, on the other. The repertoire of a goodly number of Yiddish speakers is still a broad one, varying from a highly interfered with informal variety to a very cultivated variety revealing their exposure to and the influence upon them of literary and oral virtuosos. All in all, given the fact that the vast majority of Yiddish speakers received no formal education whatsoever in that language, it is quite remarkable that the numerous spoken departures from the norm have had so little impact on the printed language, which generally still remains of good quality. Remarkable too is the fact that written Literary Yiddish is not some semi-foreign, superficially understood variety to those speakers who rarely read it, but, rather, a fully savored and highly admired variety, even though one that ordinary speakers are only infrequently in contact with. But corpus planning of late-modernizing smaller languages aims at more than orthographic norms and lexical/stylistic standards. It commonly also aims at elaboration for the purposes of intertranslatability with more widespread languages that have benefited from earlier modernization. Here too Yiddish has made progress since the end of World War II and may be said to have attained the level of essential intertranslatability with English in the realms of science and technology as required by ordinary folk pursuing the rounds of everyday modern life. Probably most of the languages of the world are at this stage of lexical elaboration for modernization. For them, as for Yiddish, there may be extremely subtle and developed lexicons for traditional, ethnoculturally encumbered interests, pursuits and relia. However, when it comes to the world of modern science and technology, the entire econotechnical side of modern life, these languages probably aim at no more than intertranslatability with the New York Times or some other general publication for reasonably well-educated laymen. Yiddish probably attained this degree of mod­ ernization and elaboration in the mid-thirties and, thanks to the League for Yiddish and a few other dedicated innovators, continues to struggle to maintain this level even today, when its ranks are quite depleted and most of its most active users are Ultra-Orthodox for whom Yiddish does not really matter insofar as modern econo­ technical reality is concerned. The fact that the future of the language depends disproportion­ ately on Ultra-Orthodox users probably means that there will be less Yiddish corpus planning in the future (less need, less elaboration

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and less compliance) than there has been in the past. This will not be an indication of weakness, but rather an indication of functional patterns that are closer to the traditional pre-modern uses of Yiddish, uses for which its past elaboration is supremely well suited.

The phenomenological and linguistic pilgrimage of Yiddish: some examples of functional and structural pidginization and depidginization* Introduction This paper is the second (see also Fishman and Luders-Salmon 1972) in what I hope will ultimately be a series of case studies of the normative (i.e. preferred and institutionalized) educational use of nonstatus varieties or languages in speech communities with language repertoires in which more statusful varieties are also definitely present. The purpose of this series is to provide examples of educational-linguistic contexts that many teachers know to exist, but which so rarely seem to get written up that when they are they appear to be reversals or departures from the purportedly invariant allocation of the status language/variety and it alone to formal educational functions. Thus, it is my hope to combat a myth which claims that good schools are necessarily monolingual and acrolectal institutions. This myth is erroneous and injurious. It harms educational planning not only in those parts of the world in which education has long been bilingual or bidialectal but also in those areas where bilingual/bidialectal education could greatly facilitate the educational process and foster its influence among segments of society that otherwise (and quite rightfully) consider modern, formal education to be foreign, artificial, or devisive, if not all three at once. The myth that I would like to counteract is not merely countereducational in the "developing" and "disadvantaged" nations and regions of the world, but it is also injurious to the relatively "wealthy" and "advantaged" of the world, among whom it fosters both insensitivity and intolerance toward the genuine repertoire of language varieties and societal functions that all complex communities reveal. Both language and society are ever so much more multifaceted than many schools seem to admit, and, as a * From Kansas Journal of Sociology 9:2, 127-136, 1973. Also in Advances in the Creation and Revision of Writing Systems, J.A. Fishman (ed.). The Hague: Mouton, 1977. Reprinted with permission.

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result, the mutual and deleterious estrangement of schools from the parents and students whom they serve is furthered. Like most myths the one that I would like to counteract through papers such as this stems from a confusion between what is selfserving and what is true. Thus, it is claimed that with the onset of modern mass education in nineteenth century Western and WestCentral Europe only a single Η-like variety of the official national language is admissible as target-and-process language of national school systems. This myth further claims (and, to an extent, legitimizes itself accordingly) that the monolingual/acrolectal situation sketched above was merely a continuation of an earlier classical or traditional educational pattern. In that prior period, too, this myth maintains, only an H variety, often a classical language not the mother tongue of either students or teachers, was normatively admissible as target-and-process language. Thus, modern bourgeoise/mass education and earlier aristocratic/elite education are purportedly alike in their linguistic policies which proscribed their respective L-like varieties for such functions as writing, reading, and serious advanced study. While the myth grants that a variety of the L of one period often became the preferred H of the next, as a result of major social change and upheaval, the monolingual/ acrolectal exclusivity of the school purportedly remained unchanged in principal. Upon closer examination, this view appears to be more a superposed normative wish than an accurate statement of the normative facts in either period of history. Indeed, the documentable incidence of normative educational acceptability for other-than-H-like varieties (i.e. of varieties/languages not at all moststatusful, not at all most closely related to the central integrative symbols/processes, and not at all most closely related to the most powerful roles of society) is not at all negligible. My concern here is not only that valid recognition be given to the informal language of students to each other, or to the language of teachers to elementary students, although such concerns too must not be depreciated. My concern is also that we recognize the large number of cases in which an H variety remained (and remains) the target language without thereby ever becoming the normal language of instruction or school discourse. It would be salutory, indeed, for all teachers of speakers of Black English, teachers of speakers of White English, and teachers of speakers of various kinds of Creole and Pidgin English, to know that the world-wide number of schools

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in which Η-written texts are constantly read and discussed in an Lvariety much more familiar to students and teachers, is truly legion. Indeed, education in much of Norway, England, Spain, Greece, much of the Arab world, and the United States to boot would be impossible were not the monolingual/acrolectal myth more honored in the breach than in the observance. Certainly, the myth as such was fully rejected in the Eastern European Ashkenazic case to which I will now turn. Here we find that a "phenomenological pidgin" (see below) was normatively established in the company of a sanctified classical language, and so firmly was this the case that not even the coming of the Messiah was expected to alter its functional coallocation to the domain of education. 1 The case of Yiddish If we hold Hymes' three-factor theory of pidginization (reduction, admixture, and intergroup use [Hymes 1971]), it is not at all evident that Yiddish ever fully merited the designation of a pidgin. It is primarily the absence of any evidence of a crystalized (i.e. of a set or stabilized) reduction stage which leads me to question the appropriateness of this designation for Yiddish, but the fact that its intergroup function was also marginal deepens the doubts concerning its status as a pidgin. Thus the primary characterization remaining is that of admixture and this, indeed, is a characterization of which the Yiddish speech community itself has always been aware, to such an extent that segments of it themselves viewed the language as a pidgin. Indeed, from the end of the eighteenth century to the beginning of this century, it was not uncommon among Eastern European Jews to refer to Yiddish as zhargon and this designation is still encountered (though much more rarely) to this very day (Fishman l975d). Although this was not always a perjorative designation (e.g. Sholem Aleichem often referred to Yiddish by this name, as did religious and other writers who were well-disposed toward its written use for important purposes), it did show widespread cognizance of the fusion nature of the language. Not uncommonly this fusion nature, related as it was not only to the recorded and remembered history of dispersions and expulsions suffered by the speech community, but also to awareness of the etymological components from Hebrew-Aramic, co-territorial and contiguous languages, led to

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a more or less negatively tinged view of the language on the part of many of its speakers. This negative view in reference to admixtures is relatable to Stewart's dimensions of historicity (Stewart 1968) in the sense that where historicity is viewed as crucial, admixtures because of their greater recency - are likely to be more sensitively and negatively discriminated. Thus whether or not Yiddish was a pidgin, it has always been widely evaluated as such, both within the speech community and without. In the history of Yiddish this phenomenological pidginization has been more important by far than whatever the linguistic facts of the case may be. Contrast languages If it is the phenomenology of the speech community - rather than the typological expertise of linguists - which is crucial in determining the functional allocation of varieties, and this phenomenology in turn is frequently contrastively influenced by comparisons with the other varieties within the community's repertoire, at least two such contrast languages have always influenced the phenomenological (attitudinal, affective) and the functional position of Yiddish. 1. Hebrew. This classical and sanctified tongue has usually been viewed as a source language for all eternal Jewish pursuits. Thus, even when it was viewed as classical in Stewart's sense (i.e. when it was regarded as possessing historicity, standardization and autonomy, but lacking vitality), it was considered no less crucial as an object of study. Up until the latter part of the nineteenth century, Hebrew (and its sister-variety Aramic) was virtually the only target language for study of the Bible, the Talmud (Mishnah and Gemorah), the Commentaries, and the Prayer Book, i.e. of those texts which simultaneously defined the purpose and curriculum of the Jewish community's far-flung elementary, secondary, and tertiary schools. It was only the emergence of varieties of Jewish education, that devised curricula other than the traditional ones, that permitted Yiddish to be viewed in a school context other than contrastively visà-vis Hebrew. In this contrast Yiddish was not merely viewed as a dialect (or, at best, as vernacular) relative to a classical, but it was, as will be seen, often considered to be a pidgin relative to a classical.

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Nevertheless, every shred of evidence we have about the earliest stages of Yiddish (Weinreich dates Earliest Yiddish as roughly from circa 1000 to 1250; Mark does not use that designation and dates Old Yiddish from circa 1000 to 1348) indicates that it was quickly admitted to the function of language of instruction, i.e. of the language to be used in order to make the holy texts understandable to students whose mother tongue it was. Interestingly enough, this instructional use for Yiddish provided it with a name or label in the community that may even predate the name "Yiddish" itself. Among the earliest extant references of Yiddish are those utilizing the designation loshn-ashkenaz ("the language of Ashkenaz", i.e. of the land across the Rhine, or of the Jews dwelling therein) and taytsh. The latter is derived from some form of tiutsch (later deutsch), i.e. the local name for the local language in those parts. Among gentiles this noun was related to a verb which meant to render meaningful by translating into the vernacular. In Yiddish it came to mean "meaning" or "translation into Yiddish". The Yiddish translation of traditional texts is referred to as ivre-taytsh (even today, in traditionally oriented Yiddish publications), although by now this designation generally stands for an archaic variety of Yiddish. The version of the Bible for women is known to this very day as the taytsh-khurnesh, since women usually knew no Hebrew and, therefore, could not read the khumesh (Pentateuch) in the original. The designation yidish did not come to be the most common designation, at least not in print, until quite late (eighteenth century). 2 Certainly the role of Yiddish as the language of traditional instruction, of oral and written translation of sanctified texts, of scholarly disputation and, at times, of responsa and commentaries, had become firmly established centuries before. The purpose of the above sketch is to conteract the view that where a firm diglossia relationship exists the L variety cannot be willingly and normatively admitted for formal and advanced educational purposes. Indeed, it can, provided the H variety is also given the deference which it is felt to deserve in the domains appropriate to it. In the nineteenth century Yiddish was often viewed and referred to as the "handmaiden" or "servant" of Hebrew among carriers of "enlightenment" seeking to reach the masses. Traditional circles used other but similarly L-implying designations, not so different from those formerly applied to Aramic or other post-exilic Jewish languages (Weinreich 1973) reviews the evidence with respect

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to several such in detail). T h u s the deference distinction m a d e it possible to accomplish two desirable goals simultaneously: a. to preserve the H status of H e b r e w ( a status which ultimately preserved it for twentieth century revival as a spoken language) and, yet, b. to enable m e m b e r s of the c o m m u n i t y to p u r s u e studies in their m o t h e r t o n g u e (this b e i n g n o small m a t t e r in a c o m m u n i t y that prized universal male education). Thus, o n e spoke Yiddish even for the most statusful functions, while o n e r e a d a n d wrote Hebrew, even for obviously secular p u r p o s e s . Traditionally, writers of Yiddish were almost as few a n d far between as speakers of Hebrew, although many males knew more t h a n e n o u g h to do b o t h in b o t h languages. 2. The Co-territorial Vernacular(s). T h e very fact that Yiddish came into b e i n g is itself testimony that there was an initial p e r i o d of close contact with the non-Jewish co-territorial population. Although that contact was sufficient to lead to the well nigh complete displacement of Loez (Laaz), the Jewish language spoken immediately before leaving b e h i n d the general area of L o r r a i n e (Loter), it was n o t sufficient to make the inter-group communicative n o r m s that loshnashkenaz originally followed (or shadowed) p r e d o m i n a n t also for intra-group p u r p o s e s . S t r o n g intra-group n o r m s (particularly in conjunction with the infinite array of traditional practices requiring an extensive n o m e n c l a t u r e not available in co-territorial languages) r e n d e r e d any non-Jewish variety contrastively u n d e s i r a b l e a n d nonfunctional for such p u r p o s e s . This view long m a d e non-Jewish varieties unacceptable for any educational purposes since education was long completely Jewish by definition. T h e process was n o t necessarily a conscious o n e at all, a n d the distinction between " G e r m a n " a n d "Yiddish" (designations that b e c a m e c o m m o n only centuries later) n e e d n o t have b e e n in the m i n d s of many (if any) speakers. Nevertheless, the structural a n d functional differences between inter-group a n d intra-group varieties of loshn-ashkenaz must have come into b e i n g quite early. After the d e v e l o p m e n t of Yiddish from German-stock-upon-asubstratum-of-Hebrew-Aramic-and-Loez (Laaz), no further post-exilic language developed a m o n g Ashkenazic Jews. Why that is n e e d n o t c o n c e r n us here, although it r e p r e s e n t s a fascinating p r o b l e m for between-group as well as within-group sociolinguistic analysis. What might well c o n c e r n us here, however, is the fact that G e r m a n , too,

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became a conscious model for part of the Yiddish speaking com­ munity. Even among German Jews, German was not admissible into the synagogue as the language of worship or into the schools as the language of instruction until far into the nineteenth century, by which time the majority of Ashkenazim had left Germany behind them for more than four centuries and had no more need of German than we do. Yet, unwelcome as it was "forJewish purposes", German remained a model which intruded upon Yiddish in the written language speci­ fically and in the view that Yiddish was a pidgin more generally. For us to understand this development we must realize that German, in most of central and in much of eastern Europe, from the mid-sixteenth cen­ tury and into the twentieth century, was the world language, the practical language of wider communication, the language of science, technology, and modernity; in short it was not only in contrast with Hebrew but also in contrast with German that Yiddish was viewed as being merely pidgin. Whereas German could not compete with Yid­ dish in so far as being the handmaiden of Hebrew, Yiddish could not compete with German in so far as nonsanctified respectability was concerned. Thus, two contradictory contrastive processes entered into the relationship between Yiddish and the languages with which its users most frequently compared it. On the one hand Yiddish was energetically de-Germanized (lexically) for contact-with-sanctity purposes. On the other hand it often seemed that in writing, par­ ticularly for more secular purposes ("secular literature"), it was just as energetically Germanized. At the same time Yiddish was both propel­ led toward and away from Hebrew with which it also had a "double approach-avoidance" relationship. All of these processes can be most easily illustrated via orthographic examples, although lexical and phraseological examples abound and are more than amply cited by Weinreich (1953,1973).

Toward Hebrew developments Yiddish, like all other post-exilic Jewish languages, seems to have been written in Hebrew characters from the outset.3 As a result, perhaps, it generally adopted several Hebrew orthographic conventions: use of final letters, use of silent aleph before words beginning with vocalic vov/u/ or yud/i/, the almost complete retention of traditional Hebrew spelling for words or forms of Hebrew origin, etc. Indeed, even words of non-Hebrew origin were long spelled in ways as to stress similarity

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with various Hebrew orthographic conventions, e.g. minimally re­ presenting vowels, the practice of writing Yiddish with Hebrew vowel points (even though this was, generally speaking, superfluous, once Yiddish orthography developed its own vowel indicators via letters and letter combinations), and, finally, writing the indefinite article as part of the noun to which it pertained, a visual pattern prompted by the absence of separate indefinite articles in Hebrew. In general, writing Yiddish developed in a community with a definite body of spelling conventions derived from another language (Hebrew) and these were only slowly and partially adapted to the genetically unrelated and less prestigious language. Away-from-Hebrew developments Wherever Germanic-origin grammatical morphs were added to Hebrew origin roots, there was long the convention of separating the two by parentheses, different typeface or apostrophes - a separation between the holy and the profane. In addition, since the Yiddish reader (particularly if female) could not always be expected to know Hebrew well, the practice of "full spelling" became rather widespread for Hebrew words in Yiddish, since such spelling helped the reader pronounce words correctly that he might otherwise have mispro­ nounced if the more traditional "defective spelling" of Hebrew were utilized. The entire practice of established letter indications for vowels in Yiddish is a development away from Hebrew. When carried to its extreme, as it was by Soviet Yiddish publications, this led to a "naturalized spelling" of words of Hebrew origin so that these were spelled like any other Yiddish words, i.e. with complete vowel re­ presentation much beyond what was called for by the "full spelling" in Hebrew. The Soviets also discontinued use of final letters, thus making a major visual break with the tradition of Hebrew writing. The Yivo's reintroduction of a largely abandoned and originally Hebrew visual differentiation between /p/-/f/ (as well as between /s/-/t/ and /b/-/v/ and /kh/-/k/ in Hebrew-origin words), in a fashion no longer followed by modern Hebrew, may also be seen as an away-from-Hebrew attempt. 4 Toward-German developments For the longest time - indeed to this very day in some circles -

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Yiddish was (has been) spelled with attention paid to German orthographic conventions. As a result, the Yiddish syllabic /n/ and /1/, both of which are grammatical indicators, were long (and often still are) spelled according to German conventions that call for a vowel before either. Under nineteenth century "enlightenment" pressure, Yiddish spelling became replete with silent A's and unneeded e's in order to mirror German usage. Yiddish /v/ has been written ƒ /i/ has been written ie, and various other similar practices might be noted, not always necessarily because of original modeling on German, but such modeling certainly helped retain these conventions when the original dialectal reasons no longer obtained. Basically, the entire phonological principle in Yiddish spelling (as opposed to the etymo­ logical principle which dominated Hebrew spelling) may be viewed as a de-Semitization or Westernization, if not only a Germanization, of older Jewish writing conventions. A more definitely German influence has been that which led Yiddish writing to recognize word boundaries in print on a German model, particularly as conjunc­ tions and the definite article are concerned. To this list may be added a few lexical items that, though derived from Hebrew, have generally been "naturalized" by most Yiddish writers, e.g. balebos, shmuesn, klezmer, shekhtn. Away-from-German developments Modern (twentieth-century) pro-Yiddish movements and their linguistic guardians adopted the slogan "further from German". The past half-century of Yiddish linguistic effort is marked by a strong ausbau effort (to use Kloss' [1967] concept) vis-à-vis German. This is particularly true in lexical matters, but, of necessity, has had its orthographic counterparts as well. Thus the dropping of the several German spelling conventions just enumerated, above, has been a prime goal of almost all modern Yiddish orthographic schools (Schaechter l972). Bipolar, double approach-avoidance Lest it seem that "further from German" necessarily meant "toward Hebrew" or vice versa, in the sociocultural development of Yiddish orthography, it should be stressed that this was not the case. All four

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Hebrew Toward Away from 1. 3. "Traditional" Yiddish spelling, "Enlightenment" publications well into the middle of the (of the middle and latter nineteenth century. Found nineteenth century) seeking to today in reprints of old simplify Hebrew constructions favorites. (e.g. via "full spelling") and to stress secularity via similarity to German.

German

Away from

2. Modern "religious" literature, e.g. texts of the Bnoys Yerusholayim schools in Israel and the revised spelling of the religious schools in pre-World War II Poland.

4. A less extreme form that of the Yivo's "standardized Yiddish spelling". A more extreme form is that of the Soviets, par­ ticularly 1920s to 1940s. Even more extreme recommenda­ tions have received scanter attention.

Figure 1. Four systems of Yiddish orthography.

possible positions came into being, as indicated by Figure 1, although the modern period tends to be one of "away" movement on both dimensions, just as the earliest period was one of "toward" modeling on both. Away-from-pidgin mentality Yiddish has classically had a double inferiority complex. Vis-à-vis Hebrew it was but a companion, accessory, or handmaiden; vis-à-vis German it was a fusion language without historicity, autonomy, or standardization. Its centrality to the entire Jewish educational experi­ ence for nearly a thousand years of Ashkenazic history did not save it from being viewed as a pidgin. Only certain modern Jewish cultural movements, arising during the first quarter of the twentieth century, have dared view it as worthy of its own right. As such, it was declared to be "aJewish national language" at a language conference in 1908 attended by most major Yiddish writers and language activists. As such, it became not only the medium of instruction but also the object of instruction in modern Jewish schools (usually with a socialist or

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nonpartisan ideology, but sometimes with a Zionist or Communist ideology). As a result, the traditional Hebrew-Yiddish diglossia was disturbed by such schools as well as by other modern Jewish movements. Jewish education in the twentieth century has been increasingly monolingual: either in Hebrew, in Yiddish, or in the co-territorial vernacular. In many "Yiddishist" schools, Hebrew sources were initially not studied at all, later studied only in Yiddish translation and abbreviation, and, more recently, have been reintroduced in abbreviated and simplified Hebrew versions. These are the very schools in which the orthographic and the more general linguistic independence of Yiddish has been most stressed. Thus functional changes in Yiddish (vis-à-vis education) and structural changes in Yiddish (vis-à-vis models and antimodels) have tended to go hand in hand (Fishman 1981a).

Summary and conclusions re Yiddish The case of Yiddish reveals that a phenomenological pidgin may be treated similarly to a pidgin/creole defined in accord with linguistic criteria. Like the latter, it may be held in lower repute by its own users, relative to other varieties in the community's repertoire that seem to be more homogeneous because their historicity is unknown or sanctified. Like many phenomenological and/or linguistically defined pidgins/creoles, Yiddish came into more diversified educational and symbolic high cultural use only as a result of far-going social-culturalpolitical changes in its speech community. This change invariably required both disruption of the classical diglossia pattern (Hebrew = H; Yiddish = L) which previously existed, as well as the structural modification of the language to render it more fit for the new functions assigned to it. In this respect Yiddish illustrated that phenomenological pidgins must experience processes similar to those experienced by all modern vernaculars before and when they are assigned wider functions. Nevertheless, unlike most phenomenologically and/or linguisti­ cally defined pidgins/creoles, Yiddish was admitted into important educational functions of a traditional sort from the very outset. However, this did not keep it from being viewed as of lesser worth than either of the contrast languages with which the community

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commonly compared it vis-à-vis the domain-appropriate functions of those languages. Only with movements striving for education-formodernization did some portion of the Yiddish speech community abandon the phenomenological pidginization that had hitherto generally marked user's views of this language and which had restricted the functions for which it was presumably fitted. General summary and conclusions Before bringing this presentation to a close, I would like to ten­ tatively raise the question not only of when a co-occurrence like the one presented above is likely to obtain (since the co-occurrence of L and H in school is really so frequent as to be the disguised rule rather than the exception that it is often made out to be), but also of when it is likely to be the preferred, avowed, and institutionalized practice. It seems to me that a more vernacular-like process language and a more vernacular-distant target language are likely to normatively cooccur when two other desiderata are met: (1) When the admission of the L-like variety as the process language of the school does not threaten the functions of the //-like variety as target language and as language of even more statusful role relations than those controlled by the school per se. Thus, the H-like variety continues to be normatively much needed and wanted, both in school and out of the school, and the L-like variety is viewed not as a threat, but rather, as an avenue for attaining the target, even, as sometimes happens, when the L variety, too, is elevated to writing. (2) When "mastery of H by all students" (idyllic though that would be) and "good education for all students" (idyllic though that would be) are not considered to be identical goals, even if they do tend to be viewed as increasingly overlapping as higher education is approached and reached. Indeed, when put to the acid test, such communities opt for "good education for as many as possible" rather than for elitist education for the few, i.e. for H as a subtarget in hierarchy of targets rather than for H as the prime and only target. Finally, let me admit that a relatively delicate balance of forces is involved. As long as teachers and students are from the same speech community, share the same behavioral (including language behavior) norms and values, role access is high, role compartmentalization is low, and disturbing outside influences are kept to a minimum, the balance can maintain itself without great difficulty. If

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it is upset and the well-known cycle of L-displacing-H-so-as-tobecome-H-itself is established, then the former L will inevitably also change rapidly in structure, rather than merely in function. Such change, in accord with whatever models and anti-models are in socio­ cultural (and therefore in linguistic) vogue, will repeatedly reveal the extent to which particular networks of users have or have not rejected the earlier allocation of societal roles and language functions that formerly obtained in the speech community as a whole, when L was not yet widely written and not yet widely viewed as a target in the educational system. Notes 1.

Not only was it believed that Jews would continue speaking Yiddish on weekdays (but the Holy Tongue on Sabbaths) when the Messiah came, but that one of the means by which the good Lord had compensated Moses for not permitting him to enter the Promised Land was to let him see into the future and thereby to witness little boys studying the Pentateuch in the original accompanied by an oral Yiddish translation. Thus, Yiddish and Hebrew were viewed as symbiotic not only in the present, but in the past and future as well. Accordingly, some orthodox Jews spoke (and some still speak) Hebrew on Sabbaths and Jewish holidays, both in order to intensify the holiness of such days as well as to maintain oneself in readiness for the Messianic Age.

2.

The earliest extant printed reference to yidish is in kine af gzeyres-ukrayene (Lament on the Evil Events in the Ukraine) (Amsterdam,  1649).

3.

Italkic ("Judeo-Italian") written in Latin letters dates only from the nineteenth century, and so, it seems, does Dzhudezmo when written in Latin characters.

4.

Yivo orthography calls for, respectively: [b] - [v] and [p] - [f]. The distinctions between [k] - [kh] and [t] - [s] have, inexplicably, not been maintained by the Yivo.

5.

The following four spelling of Kibed av ve-eym (honoring one's father and mother) illustrate the four major present-day orthographic approaches in Yiddish with respect to Hebraisms: Traditional: Simplified ("full"): Soviet (naturalized): Yivo (standardized):

Why did Yiddish change?*

There is a great deal of evidence that Yiddish-in-print has changed dramatically during the past century and a half. The student of Yiddish at colleges and universities throughout the world 1 is often surprised to note the number and the magnitude of those changes that have occurred, these being far greater than those that occurred during the same period either in Hebrew or in the Western languages (English, French, German, Russian, Spanish) with which he or she is normally familiar in print. Why did such changes occur? The usual explanatory assumption with respect to changes in Yiddish - as with respect to change in other politically unprotected fusion languages - is an exocentric one. It is assumed that external factors (including external languages), i.e., forces from without the Jewish fold, impacted on the speech community and brought about changes in its language. Although all languages are known to be influenced by "outside circumstances" to some degree, politically unprotected fusion languages are commonly assumed to be particularly exposed to such change influences. Their very fusion nature is considered testimony to that effect. Yiddish, having "wandered" from western Germanic to eastern Slavic territories and, from there, to the New World, the Near East and Australia, was presumably even more exposed to manifold outside influences, all the more so since its speech community viewed it as "a mere vernacular", i.e., as an L in contrast to Loshn-koydesh (Hebrew-Aramic), the community's written and sanctified H. 2 However, the assumption that the primary social locus of change-forces impinging upon Yiddish was necessarily exocentric is a questionable one. It may well reveal a bias with regard to Yiddish or with regard to politically unprotected fusion languages more generally, just as does the common assumption that change in "respectable languages" is normally endocentric, deus ex machina as

*For William G. Moulton, Princeton University. Reprinted with permission from Diachronica II (1), 1985, 67-82.

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it were, unsullied by the hard realities of social intercourse. The fallaciousness of this common assumption with respect to Yiddish becomes clearer if we first examine what the major changes have been from the beginning of the last century. What change? There is no final and authoritative list of changes in Yiddish from the first part of the 19th century to date. The following list, therefore, is my own. However, I suspect that most specialists would agree with all or most of the items it contains (see, for example, Yofe 1940, Roskes 1974). 1. Change in type face. From the very beginning of Yiddish-in-print, a different type face (known variously as vayberksav, vayber-taytsh, kleyntaytsh, ivre-taytsh) was used for Yiddish than that used for either Hebrew bibles and prayer books (oysyes-meruboes) or for rabbinic commentaries (rashi-ksav). We have only a very few examples, perhaps no more than an handful, of Yiddish in oysyes-meruboes (square letters) before the 19th century, whereas since that time virtually 100 percent of all Yiddish-in-print is in the latter type face. This was a major break with the visual tradition that any writing system represents (Fishman 1977a, xi-xxviii). 2. Yiddish-in-print came significantly closer to spoken Yiddish. As a result of this second change numerous archaic grammatical features and lexical items that had remained in print since a much earlier period, a Western Yiddish written style (of Ashkenaz I in M. Weinreich, 1973), came to be increasingly abandoned in Eastern European Yiddish-inprint. At the same time, the spoken idiom, only fleetingly reflected in Yiddish-in-print in prior centuries, came increasingly to the fore, although a distinction between written and spoken Yiddish was retained, much as it is retained in all modern literary traditions. 3. Although the above mentioned change-process initially removed from Yiddish-in-print many items of early Germanic derivation, the subsequently augmented forces of modernizationfloodedthe language with New High German influences, in lexicon, grammar, spelling and pronunciation. This latter process, referred to as di farfleytsung fun daytshmerish (the deluge of Germanisms), 3 was counteracted and finally controlled, although not eliminated, by the same formal and informal forces that also repulsed the subsequent and simultaneous invasions of Polonisms, Russicisms, Anglicisms, Hispanisms, inter-

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nationalisms a n d Hebraisms d u r i n g the same p e r i o d of Yiddish-inprint. 4. A standard or literary Yiddish developed which was to some extent superdialectal a n d which came to be spoken on formal occasions as the m o d e r n spoken standard. T h u s , in a d d i t i o n to the m o d e r n written language being closer to Yiddish speech, a variety of spoken Yiddish a p p e a r e d which revealed spelling p r o n u n c i a t i o n s and, in general, was a n d is influenced by the written language.

Why did the type face change? Several reasons have b e e n advanced for the u n i f o r m a t i o n of type face. As a result of this uniformation it was n o longer possible to tell at a glance w h e t h e r a text was in Yiddish or in H e b r e w (or, if the latter, whether it was biblical/prayer-book or rabbinic in content). T o some extent this change may have b e e n dictated by practical considerations of cost, three type faces r e q u i r i n g a far greater expenditure for publishing houses than did one type face alone. T h e 19th century witnessed a striking increase in the n u m b e r of Jewish publishing establishments (Bernshteyn 1975, L i b e r m a n 1950, Ringlblum 1932), the c o m p e t i t i o n between t h e m b e c a m e ever fiercer, a n d the savings effected by shifting from three type faces to o n e (or at most two, since rashi-ksav c o n t i n u e d to be set, particularly for traditional r a b b i n i c texts a n d commentaries) 4 could have b e e n substantial, particularly for the newly established houses further to the East (given the fact that the Yiddish-reading public in the West was constantly shrinking) that were most likely to be involved in Yiddish publishing, rather than in Hebrew-Aramic publishing alone. O t h e r s posit that the u n i f o r m a t i o n of type face was an expression of the growing p r o m i n e n c e "of the c o m m o n man, who struggles to earn a livelihood, his needs and even his demands" (Yofe 1940). Perhaps the above claim might be operationalized by pointing out that all Jewish males (and many females as well) received formal instruction involving biblical/prayer-book texts. T h u s , familiarity with the oysiyes-mereboes was p a r t of the c o m m o n literacy experience and, therefore, could be easily transferred to Yiddish. A l t h o u g h vayber-ksav was n o t a markedly different type face (and in many ways it was quite similar to H e b r e w - a n d Yiddish - written script), it still probably was simpler for marginally literate folk ("The c o m m o n m a n who struggles to earn a livelihood" being a frequent euphemism

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for those who were forced by poverty to discontinue their religious studies at so early an age that they might have acquired no more than the rudiments of literacy in Loshn-koydesh) to transfer their familiarity with oysiyes-mereboes to the process of reading Yiddish than to become fully comfortable with vaybertaytsh for the latter purpose. Thus the use of the oysiyes-mereboes for Yiddish may be viewed as a step in the democratization (or, at least, facilitation) of Yiddish literacy. Such democratization, although superficially an ideological-philosophical factor, is thus not unrelated to the pragmatic factor of printing costs and printing markets mentioned earlier. Only the most inexpensive printed texts (newspapers, journals, brochures and booklets) could be widely afforded by the "common man who struggles to earn a livelihood". Certainly, in addition, the tradition of widespread Yiddish literacy was still weak enough in the early part of the 19th century that even less impoverished readers were unlikely to spend more than the minimal sum for Yiddish publications. Thus only a truly mass circulation at a very modest price could render Yiddish publications viable for publishers. The oysiyes-mereboes, being both somewhat "easier to read" and cheaper to print (since they could be used in standard Hebrew texts as well) may, therefore, have been preferred by readers and printers alike. Yet others may posit even more ideological explanations, namely, an attempt to upgrade Yiddish, to dignify it by providing it with the same type face as Hebrew. Although there is little explicit historical documentation to bolster this latter view, since the change from vayber-ksav to oysiyes-mereboes largely takes place far in advance of any widespread ideological dignification of Yiddish5 - indeed, it takes place in the absence of overt ideological postures of any kind - it bears at least one striking similarity to the other two reasons mentioned above: it is an internally dictated change. All in all, there is no reason to assume any outside influences at all in connection with the rapid shift in type face to oysiyes-mereboes. Oysiyes-mereboes printing is not more similar to western writing systems than is vayberksav. The shift was not prompted or required to please non-Jewish tastes or dictates. Indeed, although shifts in type face have occurred in other writing traditions in modern times - not to mention changes in writing systems as a whole - the change in the type face associated with Yiddish is probably far less exocentric in nature than that related to the abandonment of Fraktur in printed German or to the abandonment of (neo-)Gaelic type in printed modern Irish (O'Murchu 1977), etc.

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Why did Yiddish-in-print move closer to spoken Yiddish? Given the absence of p h o n e t i c transcriptions a n d recordings, a n d given the fact that literary conventions a n d functions always create a distance between the spoken a n d the written language, how can we tell that Yiddish-in-print beginning with the early nineteenth century is closer to spoken Yiddish t h a n was Yiddish-in-print in the 18th century a n d earlier? O u r best evidence comes from testimony before r a b b i n i c courts. Such testimony, according to legal tradition, was r e c o r d e d verbatim 6 a n d preserved in m a n u s c r i p t s as well as in p r i n t e d collections of precedent-making shayles-utshuves (Questions a n d Answers) dealing with litigation before r a b b i n i c courts. F r o m this source it is clear that u p to a n d including the 18th century, the Yiddish of litigating Eastern a n d Central E u r o p e a n parties differs substantially from "non-testimonial" Yiddish-in-print, whereas in the early 19th century these differences b e c o m e m o r e minimal, particularly in crucial grammatical a n d lexical respects. At the same time, starting in the 19th century, we have n o t only the folk tales of R ' N a k h m e n Bratslaver (1772-1810) a n d o t h e r Hasidic masters, also presumably published verbatim because of the sanctity of every word u t t e r e d from their lips, b u t i n n u m e r a b l e i n t r o d u c t i o n s to Yiddish books a n d booklets overtly specifying that they were in " p l a i n " or " s i m p l e " Yiddish. Previously - and even subsequently - it was not u n c o m m o n to justify the use of Yiddish-in-print on the grounds that via publication in this t o n g u e simple folk too would have access to the work in question: Mir hobn meatik geven fun loshn hakoydesh af taytsh-loshn kedey es zoln farshteyn der proste(r) oylem venoshim. Hashem yisborekh zol undz shikn dem goyel tsedek bimheyre beyomeynu, omeyn ("We have copied this from Loshn koydeshto Yiddish so that simple folk and women might understand. May the Blessed Name send us The Righteous Redeemer, speedily and in our days, amen" [Sheyvet yehude 1810; Ostroh translation]"). 7 However, the further we get into the 19th century the m o r e c o m m o n it becomes not merely to justify the use of Yiddish-in-print but, m o r e particularly, to p o i n t out that the Yiddish employed was itself plain or pure. Thus, in 1790, a would-be-writer of plain Yiddish complains: Reyn taytsh-loshn hob ikh fil mol gevolt shraybn, volt mikh der oylem nit der lamdn un nit der prostak farshtanen. Ikh hob zo lang gemuzt vartn biz ikh hob mir kalye gemakht mayn loshn: un hob gelernt shlekht taytsh tsu reydn

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("I have often wanted to write pure Yiddish, so that the generality rather than the scholar or the ignoramus would understand me. I have had to wait so long that I have spoiled my language and have learned to speak Yiddish poorly" [Markuse Seyfer refues 1790; cited slightly differently in Herzog 1965 and in Yofe l940]). I n the early 19th century it is n o l o n g e r necessary for writers to d o violence to their natural Yiddish; they are free to write m o r e as they speak, as their contemporaries speak, making d u e allowance for the level of the r e a d e r a n d for the situational/contextual r e q u i r e m e n t s that c o m m o n l y apply to language-in-print. T h e coming of the 19th century is similar to the crossing of the continental divide. O n o n e side we find Yiddish-in-print with the simple past (preterite) that h a d vanished from spoken G e r m a n itself, a n d from Yiddish too, toward the e n d of the 15th century. T h i s written usage follows the written conventions established well before that time in Western Yiddish. While the rabbinic shayles-utshuves (e.g., M h r " i of B r u n o , a n d M h r " m of Mainz, b o t h of the 15th century, R m " a [Iserles] a n d Rsh"l, b o t h of the 16th century) record witnesses that use the hob, hot, host ge- past tense forms a n d the bin, bist, iz geforms, most of their own comments a n d those of most non-rabbinic writers before the 19th century utilize kam (rather than gekumen), ging (rather t h a n gegangen), shtund (rather t h a n geshtanen), etc. Such a n d o t h e r archaic Western Yiddish features, b o t h lexical a n d m o r p h o syntactic (see Roskes 1974 for ample additional detail), are generally m a i n t a i n e d in Yiddish-in-print into the early 19th century, even t h o u g h by t h e n we are dealing with well over half a m i l l e n n i u m of Ashkenaz II, i.e., with Eastern Yiddish a m o n g coterritorial Slavic populations. W h e n the continental divide is crossed, these archaisms are sharply reduced, a n d spoken lexical as well as morpho-syntactic systems that h a d developed over the past centuries quickly c o m e increasingly to the fore in Yiddish-in-print. Why did this change occur? T h e times a b o u t which we are speaking d o n o t provide any written interpretation of what was obviously a rapid a n d widespread switch. I n d e e d , I am n o t aware of any c o n t e m p o r a r y c o m m e n t a r y , any m o r e t h a n I am aware of c o n t e m p o r a r y i n t e r p r e t a t i o n s of the well-nigh universal switch to oysiyes-mereboes. T h e interpretations that are suggested at the distance of a century or m o r e , however, are all e n d o c e n t r i c . It is assumed that publishers, who wanted to gain the widest possible circulation a n d sale for their materials a m o n g wellnigh completely Eastern E u r o p e a n readers, a n d writers who also

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wanted to reach as many readers as possible, finally broke with the conventions of Western Yiddish, particularly as the more Western European markets for Yiddish steadily waned and vanished. Indeed, if there were any exocentric influences, they operated in the opposite direction. The efforts to convince Czarist authorities in the 60s and 1870s that Yiddish periodicals should be permitted, because they contributed to the Europeanization of the traditional masses, led many editors to opt for and to reintroduce several of the previously abandoned archaisms at the same time that they also opened the flood-gates to New High Germanisms. But this pertains to our next point. At this point we can safely conclude that both the continuation of the written conventions of Ashkenaz I into the beginning of the 19th century on the territory of Ashkenaz II, as well as the rapid discontinuation of those traditions thereafter are entirely due to endocentric change processes. They do not reveal the slightest impact of exocentric influences. Vernacular publishing was still quite minimal among coterritorial Eastern Europeans at any rate and particularly so in any of the coterritorial minority languages. Common simple folk among coterritorial non-Jews were likely to be illiterate and little was being published for them in their mother tongues until substantially past the middle of the century. At the beginning of the 19th century popular literacy was far more advanced among Jews than among non-Jews at any rate, and the changes to which such literacy was exposed followed a dynamic substantially from within this fold.

Why was the impact of New High Germanisms and of subsequent foreignisms curtailed? Widespread urbanization, industrialization, politization and migration of Eastern European Yiddish speakers soon after the middle of the 19th century led to massive importations of foreignisms into the spoken language. These importations, however, were more likely to be Polonisms and Russicisms (and later yet, Anglicisms and Hispanisms) than Germanisms, due to the fact that the modern world itself was one of shared experiences of an immediate exocentric origin. In Yiddish-in-print, however, the foreignisms that flooded in were primarily of New High German origin. Their impact on Yiddish was distinctly mediated by Jewish "middle men", the maskilim (enlighteners, who sought thereby to

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return Yiddish to the fold from which it had presumably (and corruptly) strayed, the fold of pure German. German represented more than merely linguistic purity and modernity; it also represented technological perfection, European dress and manners, scientific rationality and social (as well as biblical) criticism; in one word: modernity, and that at the highest cultural level. Thus Germanizing Yiddish was a mission related to Europeanizing and "humanizing" the Jewish masses themselves, a mission to which a substantial Jewish elite devoted itself. The above quasi-messianic goal may well have had only a moderate impact on the bulk of everyday Yiddish speech, maskilic philosophy being essentially too removed from the daily struggle for existence for that. Its impact on Yiddish-in-print, however, grew to substantial proportions. The maskilim were prolific writers themselves, and they set the linguistic tone for others as well. However, the counter-reaction was not long in coming. Not only was the "plot" to return Yiddish to the fold of German (Rubshteyn 1922, Sirkin 1923) rejected as ridiculous, but daytshmerish itself, as a variety of Yiddish-in-print, was ridiculed and pushed out of respectable print into successively more esoteric and limited corners (Sholem Aleykhem 1888, Lifshits 1876). In a matter of 25-50 years the tables were turned so fully that instead of Yiddish being viewed as a corrupt German by those who wrote it, it was daytshmerish that came to be called derisively berditshever daytsh, slobodker daytsh, kongres daytsh, etc. 8 However, the total cognitive/affective relationship between Yiddish and German became even more complicated than it had been as a result of this maskilic attack. It represented a third burden for Ausbau efforts that seek/sought to distance Yiddish from German, the first being the Ashkenaz I period itself, and the second being the rejection of archaic aspects of that new heritage in the early 19th century. The struggle with New High Germanisms also signals the new marshaling of indigenous standards, authorities, stylistic sensitivities, and popular linguistic consciousness. The rejection of daytshmerish-in-print is, therefore, a signal victory. It sets the stage for rejecting other excessive exocentric linguistic influences, even those from Hebrew (whether Loshn-koydesh or Ivrit). And it is essentially an endocentric development. Other co-territorial languages also engaged in similar struggles at approximately the same time that Yiddish-in-print began to struggle against daytshmerish. Ukranian and Byelorussian struggled

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for Ausbau from Russian (Wexler 1974), but Ukranian and Byelo­ russian were surrounded by Russian and Russians. The Yiddish struggle against daytshmerish comes at a time then Yiddish speakers were overwhelmingly living in the midst of Slavs rather than Germans. The Germanizers were Jews, just as were the deGermanizers. There is also no evidence that the Ukrainian and Byelorussian Ausbau struggles influenced the Yiddish attack on daytshmerish to the slightest degree. For all intents and purposes it was a fully endocentric development. It had at its core men of letters, scholarship and political action. They rejected not only its linguistic implications but the now open - now hidden philosophical/ideo­ logical positions that accompanied these implications. The rejection οf daytshmerish implied the rejection of Jewish inferiority to Europe, of Jewish grovelling before Westernization, of Jewish readiness to abandon ancient indigenous values and behaviors, of Jewish selfconcepts that were apologetic and sycophantic. Thus, the rejection of daytshmerish is related to the growth of modern Jewish nationalist (cultural autonomist) movements. Such movements also rejected excessive linguistic and ideological-behavioral influences from other directions as well.9 Such movements ultimately sought to change (or return) spoken Yiddish in a more "authentic" direction as well. Why did a new standard "literary" spoken Yiddish develop? One of the major changes in Yiddish during the past century is the relatively recent development of a spoken standard that is highly influenced by the written standard (Schaechter 1977). This spoken standard or literary variety was the special concern of the major Yiddish school systems of interwar Poland. Nevertheless, the pronunciation that it favored, although generally Northern rather than either Central or Southern Eastern European Yiddish, was not identical with any of the distinct regional varieties of the time. It was a formal spoken standard and, as such, its implication was that of a socio-functional Η rather than of a natural, conversational regional L. It has since become the spoken variety taught at American, Israeli and other colleges and universities. Both in Europe (outside of the Soviet zone) during the interwar years and in the USA and Israel today, it is associated with the Yivo (formerly Yiddish Scientific Institute; now Yivo Institute for Jewish Research). Yivo scholars have helped define it and normify it. The Yivo itself stood for cultivated

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Yiddish in its scientific publications and from its lecture lecterns. As a result of its written associations, standard literary spoken Yiddish often involves some spelling pronunciations, a larger than usual load of neologisms, a more careful avoidance of daytshmerish in speech, a similar avoidance of foreignisms of any kind, including Ivritisms (Modern Hebrew borrowings that may be current in Israel), and a tendency to borrow somewhat more freely from Loshn koydesh, the latter being viewed as a scholarly dimension within Yiddish. There was no Jove from whose brow modern spoken literary standard Yiddish could spring full blown. It was and is a compromise between various forces and views, some favoring particular regional dialects, others going further or less far with respect to Ausbau, and still others rejecting heavy-handed normification, modernization or even language planning of any kind (Schaechter 1977). Why did such a standard arise? The modern literary spoken standard is a creature of the secular (i.e., non- or even anti-religious) sector in Jewish life. It is this sector that also pursued political organization on behalf ofJewish cultural autonomy. It sought guarantees from the Versailles and Trianon states that the newly formed political entities would recognize and support Yiddish schools, theatres, publishing houses and other forms of modern cultural expression and creativity. The Yivo was this sector's University and Ministry of Culture. Jews were viewed as a modern, secular nationality, and standard literary Yiddish, whether spoken or written, was the official acrolect of this nationality. Its cultivation implied that Yiddish could serve all the needs of its speakers, rather than just their Jewishness and literary-esthetic needs. Yiddish could be the language of science and technology. Yiddish could be the language of government and of the courts. Yiddish could be the language of opera and of opera goers, of concert singers and concert audiences, of movie stars and of movie viewers, of mathematics and literature and social science teachers, and of their students. Modern literary standard Yiddish, written or spoken, represented the vision of a culturally independent, co-territorial Jewish nationality with every right to its own future and its own selfgoverning decision-making cultural authorities. Thus, a spoken literary standard arose as a reflection of endocentric aspirations and convictions. While it is true that other minority peoples sought and created similar instruments for similar reasons at roughly the same time in roughly the same part of the world (the first three decades of twentieth century Eastern Europe), there is no evidence that they

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directly influenced the Yiddish scene in this connection. The exocentric circumstances may have been favorable in some vague or general sense, but it was distinctly the endocentric forces that were both substantive and decisive. What does the Yiddish case teach us about the societal dynamics of language change? There are several generalizable lessons to be learned from the changes and change-processes that have transpired in connection with Yiddish during the past century and a half. The well known difference between change in the spoken language and change in the written language is further exemplified, the latter being far more conservative than the former. Not only does the spoken language ultimately serve as a magnet for the written language in modernpopulist days, but, in addition, the catch-up change never fully occurs (i.e., a difference between the spoken and the written language still remains, if only because the latter never attains the full functional diversity of the former but, instead, remains overly concentrated around the pole of formality), and, finally, in a society marked by widespread literacy, the written/printed word also serves as a magnet for the spoken. The brunt of this paper, however, pertains to a somewhat more novel issue, namely, to apportioning the variances in language change between exocentric and endocentric sources. Since the typical linguistic focus is on the rate and directions of code change as a result of structural characteristics inherent in the code per se, a tendency exists to minimize extra-code social factors in this connection. This bias is frequently replaced, however, by its opposite when fusion languages, particularly politically unprotected ones, are at the center of inquiry. In this latter connection it is common to view change as being at the mercy of surrounding social circumstances, changes coming readily in one direction or another in response to external pressures. Presumably, such languages do not possess the internal stability to monitor and control many of the changes that they reveal. In connection with the Yiddish case during the past century and a half, this paper has tried to show that at least in so far as print is concerned the changes that occurred were primarily under endo­ centric control. Publishers, writers, teachers and political spokesmen from within the Yiddish speech community fostered certain changes

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and opposed others in accord with a combination of their own self interest and their interpretations of the community's best interests. Thus, while exocentric forces undoubtedly impacted the spoken Yiddish of the masses, these influences could be screened, excluded, altered; or intensified via the print medium and via its control in relatively few endocentric hands. This is particularly noteworthy in the Yiddish case because Yiddish was usually regarded as the less prestigious print language of a highly literate speech community with an extensive classical print tradition. This tradition may have weakened the relative introcommunal status of Yiddish-in-print, but it also paved the way to more rapid Yiddish literacy and to an inprint functional possibility for Yiddish from the very invention of the printing press itself.10 As a result, the in-print context was an incomparably stronger force in the change constellation influencing Yiddish than it was in any of the other contemporary Eastern European minority languages. Not only was this an endocentric force with respect to filtering changes in the languages, but also the guided changes that it fostered were finally influential enough (via association with such print-related societal institutions as schools, the press, scholarly agencies and political parties) to exercise their own change influences upon at least one variety of the spoken language - the spoken literary standard. All in all, the in-print function is related to its own establishment and, as such, it can become a powerful force in moderating change influences that stream in upon politically unprotected languages from the outside. In modern days it can exercise this control function as successfully as did religion and the family with respect to the spoken language in former times. It is a vehicle through which the elites of at least some unprotected languages can regain partial mastery over their own destinies, and, not unlike their more protected counterparts in other language communties, change "their language" more in accord with how they would like to, when they would like to, and why they would like to. Notes 1.

One of the major post-Holocaust developments in the field of Yiddish is the growth of college and university courses in this language once assumed to be unworthy of intellectual attention. Yiddish courses are currently offered to some 2000 students annually in some 60 American tertiary institutions. An equal number of students are enrolled in Yiddish courses in colleges and

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universities in Israel, Canada, Argentina, England, France, Holland, Denmark, West Germany, etc. The American Association of College Teachers of Yiddish (affiliated with the MLA) boasts over 100 members (Prager 1974, Smolyar 1977). 2.

The societal allocation of functions between Loshn-koydesh and Yiddish was (and is) much more complicated than that between written sanctify and spoken mundaneness (see Weinreich 1973, Fishman 1976b). Nevertheless, the above division often served (and serves) as a first order approximation to the more precise and complex reality adumbrated in "Nothing new under the sun" (this volume).

3.

Daytshmerish is used here to refer specifically to the influx of unneeded and, ultimately, unwanted New High German items and features. Although the term has been so used for a century, its linguistic form is unusual in that it represents a notable exception to the major pattern for terms indicating foreign influences: polonizmen, rus(its)izmen, anglitsizmen, shpanishizmen, etc. Yofe (1940) derives the suffix merish from mem (Yiddish for Moravia), and the original meaning of daytsh-merish from sarcastic 16th century references among Jews in Cracow (Kroke) to the kind of odd Yiddish spoken by Jews who had migrated there from Moravia. This derivation is not widely held, since the form merish exists in other connections (e.g., frantsoizmerish) with a slightly perjorative connotation. For the confusion and alternation between daytsh/taytsh = German, and daytsh/taytsh = Yiddish, see note 8, below.

4.

For a history of Hebrew type faces, see Birnbaum (1954-57), Frank (1938) or Weinreich (1939). Rashi-ksav continues to be used to this very day primarily for setting the famous biblical commentary of Rashi (Rabbi Shlomo Yitshaki 1040-1105). It is also often used for printingJudesmo/Ladino (Bunis 1975).

5.

The initially slow and painful process of dignifying Yiddish-in-print, for serious and substantially co-sanctified purposes, predates the switch to oysyes meruboes by several centuries and continues in Orthodox circles to this very day. The major efforts in this connection, and along more secular lines as well, come fairly late in the 19th century and continue to the Second World War (Weinreich 1973; Fishman 1981: 1-97; 1985d; N. Birnbaum 1931; Sh. Birnbaum 1931).

6.

The traditional requirement to record/quote witnesses verbatim must not be taken as literally guaranteeing verbatim texts. The citations still reveal "scribal errors" easily revealing the scribes'/rabbis' own origins as well as their irrepressible assumptions that certain features were either obligatory or unacceptable in print. Thus, the rabbinic records merely carry us substantially closer to what witnesses actually said, rather than all the way to that goal. For the "rights of Yiddish" in Eastern and Central European rabbinic trials as of 1519, see Rivkind (1928).

7.

The entire tradition of justifying Yiddish-in-print as due to the needs of women and uneducated men is, in part, a patterned evasion of the traditional rights of Loshn-koydesh. Many of the publications justified in this fashion were far too recondite to be of particular interest to the types of readers on whose

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8.

In all of these perjorative terms daytsh probably stands for a kind of Yiddish, a heavily Germanized kind it is true, but still viewed as Yiddish rather than necessarily a kind of German. The very term daytsh/taytsh is frequently employed to designate Yiddish rather than German, although it is also used to designate German per se, rather than Yiddish. This confusing usage also applied to the Hebrew equivalent (loshn) ashkenaz. As a result, each citation of any of the above terms needs to be examined carefully both with respect to what the author intended, as well as with respect to the linguistic characteristics of his text per se. All possible combinations of texts and attitudes obtain. Nevertheless, when- we are dealing with the haskole in the latter part of the 19th century in Eastern Europe, it is clear that many of its spokesmen initially sought to convert Yiddish (yidish-daytsh) into German (daytsh) proper, being attracted to Yiddish to begin with only because it was spoken by millions upon millions, rather than because it was related to any positive Jewish values, behaviors or social patterns. It is to designate this maskilic misuse of Yiddish, both linguistically as well as ideologically, that the term daytshmerish finally comes to be used. In modern days the use of daytsh to represent anything other than German is exceedingly rare in print (but note, e.g., ongeton daytsh = dressed in secular, European garb).

9.

Among the "other" directions whose linguistic biases most Yiddishists rejected, i.e., directions other than the maskilic, were those of communism (which frequently espoused greater tolerance for Russianisms and Slavisms more generally), vulgar labor socialism (which frequently espoused daytshmerish and Anglicisms, particularly in its early populist stage) and Zionism (which frequently espoused greater receptivity to Hebraisms/Ivritisms). The small band of religious Yiddishists also rejected secularisms, i.e., the abandonment of traditional Loshn-koydesh terminology and phraseology (N. Birnbaum 1931).

10.

The earliest Jewish publication houses, in 16th century Germany and Italy, began publishing in Yiddish, even earlier than in Loshn-koydesh (cf. Rabin 1976).

Modeling rationales in corpus planning: modernity and tradition in images of the good corpus The worm turns Within the course of a decade a fundamental change has transpired within the ranks of students of linguistics vis-à-vis the very idea of corpus planning. In the late 1960s, when I and a small number of colleagues were enabled to spend a year at the East-West Center planning the International Study of Language Planning Processes (Rubin et al. 1978), the most common reaction to our efforts on the part of linguistics and linguists-in-training was "It can't be done!" Corpus planning was viewed as akin to lashing the seas or chaining the winds at best, and to unsavory meddling in "natural processes" at worst. The Hallian dictum "leave your language alone" (Hall 1950) still held sway and it reinforced as well as expressed the predominantly descriptive bias of Western linguistics in general and of American linguistics in particular. Even those who were alarmed as to the continued decay of the English language - a constant matter of concern for the past century or more of English teachers and stylists - were far from believing that mere man either could or should intercede on an organized, centralized basis, to tamper with its fate or its form (see e.g. Newman 1974, Graves and Hodge 1979). That view, and all of the metaphors and alarms that it involves, is still with us, of course, and perhaps more so in the USA than in many other countries. I encounter it during visits to Israel among teachers who are fed up with the Academy's attempts to foster its brand of excessively proper, stilted, artificial Hebrew (Ivrit skel shabat [sabbath Hebrew], the opponents call it disapprovingly), even now when the language has been fully nativized and when its "natural juices" appear to be fully activated and self-directive. I encounter it among anglophone linguists in Canada, convinced that the Office de la Langue Française is not only riding the wicked crest of Quebecois

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nationalism towards "francization" but that it is arrogantly trying to change, improve, and modernize the French language even above and beyond Parisian splendor. I encounter it in the world of Yiddishists as well, whenever untraumatized youngsters (e.g. in the student journal Yungtruj) and unbowed oldsters (e.g. in the languageplanning journal of the Yivo Institute for Jewish Research, Yidishe shprakh), employ neoligisms that were clearly unknown to the critics' proverbial "grandmother in [pre-World War II] Riga". Nevertheless, the above opposition to corpus planning is clearly passé. It is fixated on local excesses (about which I will have more to say later), but these are the excesses of success. The continuing opposition to corpus planning, such as it is, can no longer successfully pretend that corpus planning cannot be done nor that it is impossible to do it well. It is, instead, ever more drawn into discussion of who should do it, of when it should be done, and of how it should be done, rather than of whether it can or should be done at all. Indeed, if a formerly biased notion (that corpus planning was inherently impossible or undesirable) is clearly waning particularly among young linguists - the current danger seems to be from an equally biased but opposite view that considers it to be merely a rather simple, technical, linguistic exercise. One of my students at a recent linguistic institute put it in terms that seem to express the current (younger generation's?) relaxed view of the matter quite succinctly: "It's nothing more than an exercise in lexical innovation or lexical substitution". How the worm has turned in one decade! Unfortunately, however erroneous the predominant late-1960s view was, the waxing late-1970s view incorporates a triple error of its own.

A triple error The tendency to view "corpus planning" as nothing special, as just one more technical skill that a linguist should be able to pull out of his bag of tricks, is triply mistaken. It reveals a misunderstanding of lexicons per se, of corpus planning as a whole, and of the societal nexus of language planning more generally. Let me say a few words about each of these misunderstandings. The snickering view that corpus planning is "nothing more than lexical innovation or lexical substitution" reveals a profound down­ grading of lexicons. This view, one which young linguists have pro-

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bably taken over from their elders, implies that lexicons represent a somehow dispensable, trivial, and entirely uninteresting and expendable facet of the total language process. But lexicons are not that at all. They are not endless laundry lists, without rhyme or reason, without systematic links to each other and to all other facets of language. Lexicons are not interchangeable, dry, and dreary "nuts and bolts". Indeed, not only are they functionally indispensable and conceptually integrated aspects of the language process, but their successful planning involves tremendously complicated sociocultural-political sensitivities that most linguists neither possess nor imagine. Actually, the current, more relaxed view (that corpus planning involves "nothing more than lexical innovation") reveals ignorance not only of language planning and language behaviour, but of linguistics itself. However, for our immediate purposes here, suffice it to say that its downgrading of lexicons masks a downgrading of language/corpus planning by many of its purported friends and willing practitioners. The latter (corpus planning) is considered to be trivial because the former (lexicon) is considered to be trivia. Success with trivia is not considered to be success, but, rather, to be trivia (as my Yiddish-speaking grandmother -- not from Riga but from Soroke on the Dniester - used to say, "May God protect me from such friends". Her great-grandchildren today, when speaking English, topicalize this sentiment and render it, "Friends like that we don't need!"). However, a more serious error than the foregoing downgrading of lexicons is the failure to recognize that corpus planning deals with far more than lexicons alone. Corpus planning has been extended to the development of entire stylistic varieties (e.g. nontechnical Somali prose), to number systems (e.g. converting a "nine-and-thirty" system to a "thirty-nine" system in Norwegian), to pronoun systems (e.g. the selections of nonhonorific second-person singulars in Japanese and Javanese), the simplification of verbal and phonological patterns (e.g. dropping feminine plural imperatives and complicated pointing/ unpointing alternatives in modern Hebrew), etc. Thus, while the lion's share of corpus planning is certainly terminological (and all of my future examples here are unabashedly of this sort), there is, in principle, no reason why corpus-planning efforts should be denied (nor have they been) the "tighter" linguistic systems that linguists and anthropologists are so proud of (for examples galore on other-thanlexical corpus planning, note several of the papers in Cobarrubias and Fishman 1983 [e.g., Ferguson, Milán], as well as in Fodor and Hagège 1983-1989, four vols.).

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Most serious of all, however, is the lack of recognition revealed by the "merely lexicon" view of (1) the delicate and complex social context that commonly surrounds corpus planning, and of (2) the need for professional expertise with respect to that context if corpus planning is to succeed. It is a devastating mistake to assume that corpus planning merely requires the interplay and coordination of linguistic expertise and technological expertise, devastating certainly if one's goal is not merely to do corpus planning (i.e. not merely to create a nomenclature in chemistry, for example, or in some other modern technological area) but to have it accepted (i.e. to have it liked, learned and used). If the latter is our goal (and anything less strikes me as a travesty), then cultural expertise in all of its ramifications is called for as well. Corpus planning, even when it is concerned with the elaboration and codification of nomenclatures, requires political/ ideological/phlosophical/religious sensitivity and expertise, particularly if the acceptance and implementation of corpus planning are not to be heavy-handed ex post facto impositions upon corpus planning but part and parcel of its ongoing activity from the very outset.

Modernization is not pursued in a vacuum Every corpus-planning venture is conducted in a particular socio­ cultural context and that context is denied or ignored at the peril of the corpus planners, for it is that context that defines the parameters of acceptance, implementation, and diffusion. In this sense, modern­ ization is both more than and less than modernization alone, for it constantly requires an amalgam of the old and the new in which the proportions of each and the interpretations of each must be frequently readjusted. Modernization, if it is to be broadly effective, rather than merely elitist and restricted or continually imposed from above, ultimately comes face to face with massive needs for sociocultural phenomenological continuity, stability, and legitimacy, regardless of how much econo-technical change occurs. The many examples of twentieth-century corpus planning in "developing countries" reveal most clearly the dialectic between the modern and the traditional, the imported and the indigenous, but even corpus planning in the modernized Western world is by no means free of this dialectic (Berger 1979, Connell 1978). Basically, modernization alone is just not enough to satisfy the

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cultural and philosophical needs of human populations (and, indeed, at times it is abhorent to them). As a result, the language technician, the econotechnical technician, and the "executive arm of power" in concert are also not enough to guarantee the success of corpus plan­ ning, particularly where at least a pretense of political and cultural independence and authenticity is maintained. Everyone wants a chemistry terminology of his own nowadays, at least for lower-and middle-level chemistry pursuits, but they generally want it to be both "adequate for chemistry" and "acceptable as their own". Accordingly, many Israelis want "theirs" to be faithful to the "genuine oriental nature" of the Hebrew language. Many Hindi advocates want "theirs" to reflect the perfection of classical Sanscrit. Filipino planners want "their" chemistry terminology to be transparent, i.e. to utilize morphs that the young and the common man will understand. Nynorsk ad­ vocates want "theirs" to derive from the uncontaminated Norse well. Katarevusa planners owe(d) allegiance to the pure Greek genius from which the entire world's democratic ethos has purportedly been derived. Many Arabic planners and teachers want to recognize Koran­ ic exquisiteness in their chemistry terminology. Yiddish adherents want(ed) to avoid Germanisms, Anglicisms, Russianisms, or any other massive dependency on outside languages (Fishman 1981a). Of late, French authorities are, if anything, more alarmed along these lines. "Chemistry, is chemistry; chemistry is universal", but chemistry terminologies are pulled in particularistic directions - by elites who seek to form, to lead, and to follow their masses, and by masses who are ever prone to return to deeply implanted local preferences when their revolutionary figures and flirtations subside. Everywhere the planner encounters particularistic directions into which and through which "universal modernization" must be chaneled. The amount of pull will vary. The pullers and the pulled will vary. The interpretation of what is "ours" and that is "theirs" will vary. The general point, however, remains valid: modernization drives, goals, needs, and processes alone are not enough for corpus planning to succeed. Modernization repeatedly needs to be particularistically digested, legitimated, and domesticated or disguised (Nash et al. 1976).

But the tradition is not enough either If modernization has its limits (not to speak of its limitations), so, obviously does the local tradition. The tradition can rarely satisfy the

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linguistic needs of corpus planning, if for no other reason than the fact that it cannot satisfy the compelling econo-technical needs of modernization. The tradition is inadequate both socioculturally and intellectually-conceptually. It lacks the paradigms, the theoretical parsimony, the conceptual systems that are both the resultants of and the contributors to modern expertise. Thus, the tradition can often provide no more than a vague outer limit, a rhetoric, an indigenous guiding principle, and, above all, a stabilizing identity to the process of modernization and to its corpus-planning counterpart. Like modernization, the tradition is both a comforter and a taskmaster. Like modernization it waxes and wanes in its power to constrain and to guide. Like modernization, it is constantly subject to varying inter­ pretations (from interpreter 1 to interpreter 2 and from time 1 to time 2 ). Like modernization it tends to bite off more than it can chew, to claim more than it can deliver, to stake out more than it can control. The corpus planner needs help in order to gauge it accurately, to appreciate its hold and its significance, and to realize that its instability implies that his task is never done. The tradition also changes and develops, as does modernity, and the two interpenetrate and are at times interpreted as hostile, and at times as indifferent, and at times as harmonious with respect to each other. Of course, all of the foregoing applies to the sociopolitical auspices of modernization as a whole, as well as to the status-planning context in which corpus planning is conducted. Even nationalistic moderniza­ tion is far from being a genuine revitalization effort (Fishman 1972a). It is at least bimodal in outlook. Indigenous depth and historical legitimization are constantly used for unprecedented purposes and in unprecedented ways by nationalist movements. The old and the new may appear to the outsider to be odd bedfellows but they cohabit constant­ ly. In each and every modernization experience we love them both and we despair of them both. We want to be in control of them both and wind up being controlled by them both. Corpus planning cannot long escape from their bipolarity. It must struggle to recognize and to integrate them both, and, like every other social pursuit, it is only indifferently successful in doing so for any length of time. For these very same reasons successful corpus planning is no simple thing.

Rationale and rationalizations Corpus planning is faced by a dilemma - but yet it proceeds: chem-

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istry terminologies continue to be prepared. They are launched under a variety of rationales and rationalizations. These are indispensable. The corpus planner needs to set out guiding principles for himself so that he will know what is "good" and what is "bad", what to seek and what to avoid. Even more crucial: the public or target audience also needs to be told why what is being offered to it is desirable, admirable, and exemplary. Critics too need to rationalize their opposition, qualms, or reluctance. For all of these reasons, therefore, models of the good and of the bad are formulated and expounded upon. In addition to extreme or polar solutions or positions, a number of compromise positions are also commonly advanced. They all seek to grapple with the old and the new, to combine them, and to differentiate between them, to find the one in the other or to minimize or otherwise manipulate the gap between them. Unabashed and undiluted rationalism à la Tauli (1968, 1974) (the "good" is "short", "regular", "simple", "euphonious"), the un­ abashed and limitless importation of unabashed foreignisms, and the pursuit of neologisms on a completely de novo basis (i.e. via morphs without pedigrees) are also all resorted to on occasion and for special purposes, but these are rarely if ever rationalized as such or as national policy. Complete rationality is, after all, no more than a game played by intellectuals (and even then, only by intellectuals completely innocent of political aspirations or opportunities). To some extent the need to compromise with rationality is due to the limitations inherent in these solutions as solutions; to some extent it is due to their limitations as approaches to solutions. Thus, two equally rational principles often conflict (short terms are not necessarily euphonious, euphonious terms are not necessarily simple, simple terms are not necessarily short, etc.). Ultimately, even rationality is not an open-and-shut, completely objective matter and is subject to fairly substantial social and societal interpretation. As a result, even when rationality is appealed to it is commonly buttressed by or imbedded in other stated arguments or unstated assumptions. The following examples (as are the others below) are from the journal Yidishe shprakh, published by the Yivo Institute for Jewish Research in New York (currently the only authoritative corpusplanning agency in the world of Yiddish). This journal (now in its 37th year; a somewhat similar journal entitles Yidish far ale was published by the Yivo for several years prior to World War II in Vilne [Wilno, Vilnius]), not only publishes lengthy terminologies,

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but also publishes replies to inquiries from readers (almost all of them American) who lack a word or expression for some aspect of modernity. Example 1: "handout" (as at a scholarly conference or meeting). The anonlymous YS spokesmen recommends tseteyl-bletl and supports his recommendation as follows: "Although it is a neologism, its composite structure, verb plus noun, is so productive and common that it sounds like a well-established term" (1973, 32 [1-31: 32). Note that the rationality of regularity (the structure is much employed and, therefore, has innumerable precedents) is clinched (rendered popularly irresistible) by assuring us that such a term sounds traditional rather than new. A neologism seems to require some sort of passport or apology. If it is new, it should at least sound old. It is clear that the recommender would rather have an old term to begin with wherever possible. Example 2: "pot roast". The spokesman recommends top-gebrotns and explains why. "This is not a made-up word. We find this word as far back as the writings of Mendele Moikher Sforem [1836-1917]" (1949, 9:61). The recommender clearly recognizes the weaknesses of "made-up" words. The fact that a word was used by a "classicist of modern Yiddish literature" clearly establishes its legitimacy in his eyes, above and beyond that of the most rational neologism. Compromises, compromises, compromises Untempered rationality and undiluted traditionalism are extreme positions insofar as modeling rationales are concerned. More commonly, mixed rationales are employed. One such is to cite supporting usage among ordinary folk, speakers who cannot be suspected of partiality toward the corpus p l a n n e r ' s recommendation. At times, this approach derives from serious ethnographic research in which large numbers of folk terms are collected and rescued from oblivion by being resurrected in a closely or metaphoricaly related meaning. This is a rationale that is not without its difficulties, however. Not all ordinary speakers, nor all widespread usages, are equally acceptable as precedents by corpus

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planners. Many man-in-the-street usages, indeed, are clearly unacceptable as barbarisms, vulgarisms, slang, archaisms, unjustified borrowings, etc. In modern Yiddish corpus planning, (New High) German influences (post-eighteenth century) are taboo, even if they have been popularly accepted (Schaechter 1969). Thus, the appeal to popular currency normally involves an explicit or implicit set of assumptions as to which speech networks (often rural rather than urban, but often also from one region rather than from another), at which time in history, (precontact, preinvasion, preoccupation, prefloodtide-of-influence) are regarded favorably. A few examples may help: Example 3: "matching grant". The authority recommends akegngelt and buttresses his recommendation as follows. "We have noted akegnshteln for 'to match' from Dr. Y. Gottesman, a countryman of ours from Sered, Southern Bukovina [Rumania during the Inter-War period; now in USSR]; from Lifshe Shekter-Vidman from Zvinyetchke, Northern Bukovina, we have 'the inlaws [actually: mekhutonem, i.e. the kinship of in-laws vis-à-vis each other] give akegngelť " (1972, 31 [2]: 56). Example 4: "poetry reading". The authority recommends poezyeovnt [ = poetry evening], even if the reading is during the day, since "Polish Jews greet each other with gutn-ovnt [good evening] from mid-day on" (1975, 34 [1-3]: 78). Note how approved individual speakers (perhaps because they come from the same region as the authority or are well known to him to be of unblemished speech) or even an approved region are cited. In both cases the usage referred to is pre-American and, in that sense, more authentic, uncontaminated. Thus the function is new but the word is old. The new is old; the old is new. Another compromise solution is to find (whether through translation loans or through internationalisms) that "theirs is ours". Obviously this line of reasoning must also involve substantial flexibility and eclecticism, and care must be exercised that it not be carried to an unacceptable extreme. Ataturk's "Great Sun Theory" is a well known example of this approach. After the expulsion of foreign Arabisms and Persianisms it rationalized the importation of numerous Frenchisms/internationalisms on the ground that since all European languages were (purportedly) derived from Turkish, all borrowed Europeanisms were merely long-lost Turkish words

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returning to the fold, to their original home. Some less extreme examples of the "theirs is ours" type are the following: Example 5: What definite article should be used with the word "loto"; der, di, or dos? The authority replies, "Certainly not di lotto. There is an unfortunate tendency here [in the USA] always to use di with a foreign word . . . due to the influence of English the which is closer to di than to der or dos. [However] if loto were to be phonetically assimilated and if it were to change to lóte then, in such a case, it would certainly be di lóte" (1950, 10 [2]: 63). Seemingly, even a foreign borrowing becomes somewhat naturalized if an article is used with it that does not again reveal foreign influence. However, a subsequent stage of indigenization is reached with phonetic assimilation. At that point the term is fully "ours" and therefore the usual grammatical paradigm then applies with respect to its article. Words ending in unaccented e are mostly feminine in Yiddish (some obvious exceptions: der tate, der zeyde) and, therefore, at that point the article would change from der/dos loto to di lote. Example 6: Are words such as stimulate, formulate, emulate, etc., acceptable internationalisms? The authority replies, "Just because an English word has a Latin root that doesn't necessarily make it an internationalism. That very word must occur in at least a few other major languages ("kulturshprakhn") for us to admit it into our language with a clear conscience. Each individual word needs to be considered separately. [stimulirn, formulirn are quite acceptable internationalisms but] Why do you need emulirn when you can simply say nokhmakhn?" (1963, 23 [2]: 63). Note that a purported internationalism is acceptable as such if credit­ able others have already acted and accepted it as such. At that point it belongs to everyone (or to no one in particular) and, therefore, also to us. Prior to that point, it is a foreignism. However, even if it is an internationalism there may still be a "simple" indigenous term that would obviously be preferable. Internationalisms are potential citizens but they are comparable to naturalized citizens. They are still not as authentic as the native-born variety. Overdoing it Corpus planners attempt to predict and to put into effect "models of

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goodness" that target populations will like, learn and use. However, the corpus planners are not themselves a randon sample, either of "the public" or of any of the more narrowly defined target populations at which corpus planners aim their corpus-planning products. They are commonly more ideologized than "the public" in the sense of being more likely to reify the model that they are trying to implement. They are certainly more language-conscious (perhaps "language-centered" is the term to use) relative to most target populations with which they have to deal. Other populations generally view language, at best, as only part of the pie, as only one aspect of the total social reality with which they are seeking to cope. Language planners as a whole, and corpus planners even more so, tend to overstress language as causal (Fishman 1980b), as crucial, as special, particularly so if their training is narrowly linguistic rather than broadly sociolinguistic. As a result, there is substantial risk that corpus planners will lose contact with the public and will not really have their fingers on the pulse of how the public is reacting to them, to their products, and to their once-valid model of the ever-changing and delicate balance between "old" and "new", between "theirs" and "ours", between neologistic and traditionalistic, that publics find acceptable. Because corpus planners are (or view themselves as) gatekeepers and custodians of the language, they tend to become overzealous defenders of their model of the good language. Their relative homogeneity in age, training, and background also contributes to the risk of being "out of touch" at any particular time with what any particular target population will accept. "Oncebelievers" of the same generation and "non-believers" of a subsequent generation often view corpus planners as thick-skinned pachyderms at best, or as outlandish and outmoded remnants of an earlier age at worst. When corpus planners continue to do what they have always done, "the public" (by then no longer the same in attitudes, interests, and needs as it formerly was) begins to consider them, the corpus planners, to be overdoing it. Narrow-gauged corpus planners often become the butts of humor, sarcasm, and ridicule, unappreciated at best and vilified at worst.

"Notorious" failures In such cases of credibility gap, of out-of-phaseness between corpus planners and their publics, anecdotes, jokes, and song often appear

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whose goal is to tease, taunt, and otherwise deride the "excesses" of corpus-planning products. The young native-born Israelis, tired of having old, diaspora-born "authorities" tell them what proper Hebrew is, laugh endlessly at radio, television, and records that poke fun at the Academy (Eych korim hatshuptshik al hakumkum?). Francophone Quebecers gnash their teeth (and Anglophones slap their sides in exaggerated mirth) over the stop vs. arret "scandale" in the government's "francization" program. Yiddish speakers who have been none too observant of the Yivo's spelling strictures ridicule the gallons of ink (or is it blood?) spilled over whether the Yivo's own spelling rules require fundestvegn [nevertheless] to be spelled as one word or as three. Corpus planning that continues along its own mirthless path, oblivious of public sentiment and changes in the public model of "the good language" (which must be internally differentiated for a variety of functions), is likely to find that its mirthlessness is increasingly the object of public mirth and merriment (not to speak of disdain and disregard). Many of the "scandals" that come to public attention due to out-of-phaseness between corpus planners and target populations become "fossilized" and continue to be cited for decades after the out-of-phaseness has been corrected. A corpus planner's life is not an easy one (chorus: easy one): conclusions Corpus planning is often conducted within a tension system of changing and conflicted loyalties, convictions, interests, values, and outlooks. On the one hand, authentification/indigenization of the new is admired and courted, but, on the other hand, it is often too limiting in reality and too rural/old-fashioned in image to serve or to be acceptable if uncompromisingly pursued. Successful corpus planning, then, is a delicate balancing act, exposed to tensions and ongoing change. All of this makes the corpus planner all the more dependent on disciplined social and societal sensitivity, theoretical and applied, in order to fully understand the drifts and pressures to which he must react. This is particularly true in newly modernizing contexts. It is also true in post-modern ones - whether they be democratic or totalitarian in nature. Totalitarian regimes may have more clout in the entire culture-planning area, but they too may run out of steam, particularly when it comes to influencing the spoken

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language, unless rapport is maintained with public sentiments and images of "the good language", so that these can be either followed or shaped via massive institutions. Thus, it behooves corpus planning to engage in constant research and in ongoing evaluation, and this can only be done if social-research skills are either acquired or hired. A corpus planner's life is not an easy one (chorus: easy one), but then whose is?

IV Status Planning: The Tshernovits Conference of 1908

Introduction

The "First World Conference" on behalf of Yiddish which took place in Tshernovits in 1908 is the major symbolic act of the modern secular nationalist sector in connection with language. Since the Conference crossed party lines it could not be written off as merely partisan. Since it adopted a moderate, compromise view (often misstated to this very day, since in matters pertaining to Yiddish, moderate compromises somehow do not ring true), it cannot be decried for its extremism. Since it attracted the attendance and the support of many of the major literary and intellectual figures of the day, it cannot be disregarded as the opinion of a mere rabble. Since its resolutions did not reject the past, present or future co-role of Hebrew it cannot be charged with overlooking the elephant at the zoo. Since it was concerned with corpus planning too, it cannot be said to have been oblivious to the dangers of excessive status planning without due attention to the readiness of the language per se to operate in the new functions being advocated for it. Since it established a secretariat to implement its recommendations, it cannot be said to have been impractical in its orientation. Since its order of business included concern for Yiddish writers, actors, young folks, theatres, schools and publications, it cannot be said to have been oriented only in ideological rather than in tangible, pragmatic directions. However, when all is said and done, the Tshernovits Conference - the main event in the history of Yiddish status planning - was a pathetic attempt by a doubly powerless speech community (powerless vis-à-vis the outside forces that determined its fate and powerless even vis-à-vis the internal traditional and hebraic forces that were much more powerful than most of the Conference partici­ pants realized) to influence its future. The Conference was a symbolic rallying call, but such calls are rarely if ever sufficient to enable min-

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orities to become ethnolinguistically self-regulatory. Disadvantaged languages through the world really engage in very little successful status planning. They mostly "roll with the punches", at best, and take off on flights of fancy, at worst. Even in 1908, Yiddish was already experiencing difficulty holding on to its detraditionalizing youth and to its best talents in competition with the rewards available to them in German, Russian, Polish and even in Hebrew. That being the case (as only Nathan Birnbaum, the archplanner of the Conference was willing to admit), then plans to bank on state-subsidized cultural autonomy for the wherewithal for all modern Yiddish cultural pursuits were probably misplaced to begin with. Languages that are still threatened in their basic intra-familial and inter-personal functions are ill advised to rely on schools, publications, lectures, theatres, films, radio and television to repair the basic processes and functions of everyday life. The intimate small-town life of the Jewish shtetl was already headed toward oblivion and the intensity of intercultural contact with non-Jews, requiring competence in non-Jewish languages in order to make one's way in the non-Jewish economies of major urban centers, was already being dramatically increased. To bank on schools and mass media to reverse the inevitable language shift that such processes lead to was unrealistic and not only because it meant banking on subsidies from regimes that were basically opposed to or not seriously committed to publically subsidized pluralism. It was unrealistic because it did not begin to face up to the problem of assuring the link with the intergenerational transmiss ability of minority languages, depending on family - neighborhood - community as that link inevitably does, when it is precisely the family - neighborhood - community that is being extirpated by the very processes of modern social change per se. Without family and neighborhood building in Yiddish, with all of the interface that these require in terms of providing housing so that Yiddish speaking families can live contiguously, providing job-finding services in Yiddish, child-care services in Yiddish, community medical care in Yiddish and a variety of legal and other professional services in Yiddish so that Jewish families can remain Yiddish speaking "urban villagers" in the very midst of other-speaking city life, the course of urban dislocation would have continually eaten away at the very roots of Yiddish intergenerational transmissability, regardless of the schools and newspapers that functioned in it. Of course, it is too much to expect the Tshernovits Conference to have realized such

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matters in 1908, when they still generally remain unrecognized even today, more than eighty years later by status planning movements on behalf of such indigenous European minorities as the Basques, the Frisians and the Irish-speaking Irish. Reducing Yiddish status planning to Tshernovits alone is also totally unjustified. Tshernovits is merely the brief climax of various steps that had taken place before it. Before Tshernovits there had transpired the essentially more Yiddishistic resolution of the Jewish Workers Bund (1905), a resolution which reverberated much more widely across party-lines and throughout the concentrated "Pale of Settlement" in which the bulk of world-Jewry lived, than did its 1907 pro-Hebrew counterpart among Labor Zionists pertaining to the language of their party newspaper in far off Palestine. Even before Tshernovits there were the myriad efforts to outwit the Czarist Russian government's prohibition against Yiddish dailies (or even periodicals of lesser frequency) and Yiddish theatres. Before that there was the, at times, ideological and at times practical Yiddishadvocacy of a small number of scattered maskilem, "Enlightened" modernistic intellectuals whose lowest common denominator was the realization that without both popular Yiddish publications on a variety of topics there was really no chance of arriving at a minimally dislocative symbiosis between modernization and Jewishness. All of these steps, and many more, need to be seen as contributions, halting and reversible though they were, to Yiddish status planning during the century before Tshernovits. There are even earlier contributions, to be sure. The early 18th century prayer-book written essentially in Yiddish (Liblekhe tfile) should be counted in this connection, regardless of whether it was placed under a rabbinic ban of excommunication (which now seems dubious). Similarly, in the twentieth century, there is a very substantial amount of Yiddish status planning after Tshernovits. The inclusion of Jews among the minorities whose language rights were to be protected by the post World War I Trianon and Versailles peace treaties with the Central Powers, certainly applied to Yiddish as did the roughly contemporary explicit recognition of "literacy in Yiddish" as meeting the literacy requirements of the US immigration laws. The establishment of entire networks of Yiddish day schools, secular as well as religious, in interwar Poland, the host of Yiddish schools that functioned in the Soviet Union during part of this same period, the founding of coordinating institutions for Yiddish cultural activities during the interwar years, in the above mentioned

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countries, in the Baltic states and in Rumania, the very establishment of the Yiddish Scientific Institute in 1925, the Yiddish secular sup­ plementary schools in the USA and the numerous day schools primarily teaching their Judaic subjects in Yiddish in Canada and Latin America, the introduction and proliferation of Yiddish courses in institutions of higher education, in the Soviet Union, in the 30s and in the West (including Israel) since the 50s, the American opposition to Brazil's closing of all Yiddish newspapers during World War II (ostensibly on the grounds that foreign newspapers might be col­ laborating with the enemy), the quite recent introduction of Yiddish into secular Israeli high schools (as an elective) and the beginning of interest vis-à-vis its introduction at the elementary level too, all these and many more (including the Yiddish children's camps, scouting groups, the mountain of folk and specialized book publications and periodicals, adult study groups (religious and secular), choruses, theatres and theatrical groups, mostly supported on a voluntary basis), need to be included in any full accounting of Yiddish status planning. Via them a language which had only yesterday been relega­ ted to purely home-bound and traditional secondary functions moved, however fleetingly in the light of the tragic proportions of recent Jewish history, both to the front row and into the world scene. Of course, negative actions vis-à-vis Yiddish also need to be included in any accurate portrayal of its status planning. They gen­ erally consisted of rabbinic opposition, the assimilatory opposition, the modern Hebraist opposition, the zionist opposition (not aways identical with the Hebraic opposition since many nominal zionists know little if any Hebrew), the Israeli opposition, the Sefardi opposition in various parts of the world (including Israel), the Soviet opposition since the mid 30s and the even earlier opposition of various socialist parties, all of these must be taken into account. Indeed, except for very brief and clearly unusual circumstances, there has usually been far more opposition than support with respect to Yiddish status planning. No other Jewish language has been so opposed, by such a variety of forces and in such a variety of places, and similarly, with the exception of Hebrew, no Jewish language has been so supported by its speakers and devotees. The latter is particularly worth keeping in mind, because it helps dis count the view that minority and otherwise disadvantaged and threatened languages do not engage in status planning at all. Such languages do not necessarily suffer their disadvantages passively. Nor are they eroded merely by the inexorable processes of social

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change and increased human interaction. Rather, they are the objects of studied insults and passionate embraces and their status planning is the rich and moving story of their struggle for existence and for dignity. Returning to Tshernovits, it should be clear that although we know relatively more about the Conference of 1908 than about most other aspects of Yiddish status planning, there are still many gaps in our knowledge even with respect to it. There still has been no exhaustive and integrative (i.e., interdisciplinary) book-length study of the Conference, this being hampered by the fact that the minutes of the Conference itself have been lost (a frequent occurrence in the annals of dislocated Jewry and of extirpated Jewish communities and cultures) and that the historian/sociolinguist who will ultimately write such an account will be dependent on primary sources (letters, diaries, memoirs, perhaps even some interviews, although the number of still-living attendees of the Conference is by now vanishingly small) and secondary sources (newspaper reports, journal articles) in quite a number and variety of languages (Yiddish, Hebrew, Russian, German, Polish and English). Birnbaum's postConference efforts, if any, as the continuing Secretary entrusted with following up the Conference via practical steps (among them, the convening of subsequent conferences) are entirely unknown. Similarly unknown are the follow-up efforts of others, e.g., such men of affairs and action as Perets and Zhitlovski. The link, if any, between the Tshernovits Conference and the First World Congress of the Hebrew Language (in Basel), the very next year, also merits attention, as does a really detailed and exhaustive analysis of the treatment afforded the Conference in the Hebrew press of that day and since. Certainly in that day, there were still many basically Hebrew writers who also wrote in Yiddish and many basically Yiddish writers who also wrote in Hebrew and several of each may have written about the Conference in both languages. The concordance between their views in each language has yet to be examined. Also still unexamined are the views of the German Jewish intellectuals with pro-Eastern European Jewish sympathies, The German-Jewish press of Tshernovits itself (and of Galicia more generally, including Bukovina) has also not yet been focused upon. Finally, still virtually nothing has been written about the views of Bundists (and, later, Communists) who opposed the Conference and criticized it afterwards for its "compromising, bourgeois" tendencies. In sum, more than 80 years after its occurrence, the

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Tshernovits Conference is still a topic meriting further factual research rather than merely celebratory and hortatory comments and evaluations. All in all, the field of status planning in connection with Yiddish is much more varied and intellectually rewarding than has generally been supposed and the ways to Tshernovits, in Tshernovits, and from Tshernovits still merit a great deal of attention for their proper understanding and for a better grasp of Yiddish status planning as a whole.

Nathan Birnbaum's "second phase": the champion of Yiddish and Jewish cultural autonomy 1 If there are unanswered questions and inexplicable (some might say miraculous) developments in Nathan Birnbaum's first stage, a stage in which he traveled from a very brief period of left-wing lack of interest in Jewish matters of any kind to a passionate interest in "Zionism as a cultural movement", his second chapter is, if anything, even more unusual and idiosyncratic. Even in his first stage he had come to criticize the emptyheadedness and outright ignorance vis-àvis Jewish matters of most of his Germanized Zionist contemporaries in Vienna, Berlin, Prague and other urban centers of Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Their Zionism neither derived from nor led to personal Jewish commitments, whether at the individual or at the societal level. At best, they sought a place of refuge for the persecuted "Ostjuden" of the Czarist Empire; at worst they sought to guarantee a place to which they themselves could escape if their own situation in the "civilized" West really deteriorated beyond control. Later, in his religious phase, he would call them "cafe Zionists". Since antisemites had once insulted them in their favorite cafe in Berlin or Vienna, they were interested in a Jewish homeland in Palestine so that there would be a place where they could drink their coffee quietly, without embarrassment. The fact that Herzl devoted almost all of his time to high level political activity, meeting with heads of states and other influential world leaders, deeply troubled Birnbaum, and the fact that almost all of those whom Birnbaum had so painstakingly attracted to Zionism now proceeded to flock to Herzľs corner, disappointed him greatly and alienated him from official Zionism all the more. Herzľs lack of Jewish knowledge, of personal Jewish observance of any kind, of any appreciation for the deeply Jewish life and robust national identity of Eastern European Jews and their most creative intellectuals, all these things provided Birnbaum with the rationale for a rupture with the movement that

Reprinted with permission from Spracherwerb und Mehrsprachigkeit: Festschrift für EL· Oksaar.,Tübingen: Gunter Narr, 1987,173-180.

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he had named, had served, and had led for nearly a score of years. He identified increasingly with Eastern European Jewry, with a Jewry which was not about to pull up stakes, with a Jewry that appeared as deep and as permanent as the sea itself, a sea in which he himself began to swim with increasing frequency and ease, a sea that led him eastward, but to Tshernovits rather than to Jerusalem. With his estrangement, Western European Zionism lost an important, original and a Jewishly authentic force whose absence many soon came to regret (Herman 1914). Birnbaum, for his part, maintained a life-long interest in planned Jewish concentration, but did so entirely outside of the Zionist establishment and in frequent opposition to Zionist thought (Birnbaum 1902b). During the ensuing 15-16 years, i.e. from after the Second Zionist World Congress in 1898 to the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, he concentrated primarily on two themes: Jewish cultural autonomy and the importance of the Yiddish language. By the end of this period he had already begun to move in the direction of his third and final phase: traditional Jewish orthodoxy. Cultural autonomy for Jews Birnbaum came to regard the ever more vociferous struggle of nationalities within the Austro-Hungarian Empire (i.e., the struggles of nationalities that inhabited the same provinces and competed for the control of the provinces in which they resided) as a natural opportunity to achieve one of his main goals: the organized concentration and subvention of Jewish cultural life. He viewed such a concentration and subvention as being doubly desirable. On the one hand, it would provide some defense against the strident racism which was becoming alarmingly fashionable (and, therefore, doubly dangerous) as a result of the pseudo-scientific writings of such figures as Stuart Houston Chamberlain (Birnbaum 1902c), who managed simultaneously to extol ancient Judaism and to defame its modern-day practitioners as the carriers of a biological and psychological infection throughout Christian Europe. Cultural autonomy would provide modern Jews with respectability in the eyes of their co-territorial neighbors. But in addition, and even more importantly, cultural autonomy would stem the specious assimilation of East European Jewish intellectuals in the direction of rapid, "copy cat" Germanization, Polonization or Russification.

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Finally, he believed that organized stability and concentration of Jewish cultural life could be realized only if the Austro-Hungarian government (but, later on, also the governments of the Czarist Empire and of the USA, the former hopefully becoming more democratic and the latter, more attentive to its growing Jewish immigrant population) would recognize Yiddish in its own bureaus and offices, in schools for Jewish children and via stipends for writers, poets, and journalists. In 1905 he first presented his thinking along these lines (in German, of course; he was not yet up to lecturing in Yiddish) to a sympathetic Jewish audience precisely in Tshernovits (1905b), a city that was to loom large in his later activities. Three years later he would return there, to convene the "First World Conference for the Yiddish Language", a conference which had not only language goals but which was a buildingblock in his broader program for Jewish cultural autonomy. He subsequently proceeded to spell out his ideas about cultural autonomy both in his own journal Neue Zeitung (Vienna 1906-1907) and in a variety of other periodicals, stressing the view that Jews were as entitled to cultural autonomy as were the other contending nationalities (Serbs and Croatians, "Czechoslavs", Italians, Poles, Ukrainians - then more commonly called Ruthenians, particularly in Austria - Rumanians and Slovenians) who sought it. In all of his arguments he pointed to Eastern European Jews as a sterling example to be emulated and assisted. Whereas assimilatory Jewish intellectuals were still seeking to escape from Jewishness, thereby losing any semblance of a national character of their own without fully acquiring any other, Eastern European Jewish thinkers - Zionists and Bundist-Socialists alike were being drawn increasingly into the proud struggle for cultural autonomy (1905b). At the "Conference of Nationalities" on June 7, 1905, in Vienna, where more than half of all the participants were Jews, only Nathan Birnbaum came as a (self-proclaimed) representative of the "Jewish nationality" (S.A. Birnbaum 1970). He stressed that Austro-Hungary existed to serve its peoples, and not vice versa, and that this goal could best be attained when these peoples regulated their own cultural affairs. Western Jews in AustroHungary were particularly in need of the possibilities that cultural autonomy would provide, because otherwise they were faced with total assimilatory extinction. Galician and Bukovinian Jewry, on the other hand, would not only further enrich their still vibrant traditions via cultural autonomy but would serve as examples for

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their more Westerly brothers, as well as for the Jews of the Czarist Empire, who could only dream of cultural autonomy in their current oppressed situation (1906b). As early as 1906 Birnbaum began to stress that Jews needed to declare Yiddish to be their "language of normal discourse" in the census that was being planned for 1910, if their cultural autonomy aspirations were to be taken seriously. Even if cultural autonomy were not to fully solve all the problems of Austro-Hungarian Jewry (he held, e.g., that even socialism would not be able to quickly end antisemitism because of the latter's deeply ingrained position in most Christian cultures), it would, nevertheless, help minimize intergroup friction (each group being in control of its own tax-derived funds and its own institutions) and provide Jews with both a sense of pride and a sense of security that would transfer to other areas as well (1906b). At this point he also decided to become a candidate for the Austrian parliament. Birnbaum's failure in the elections of 1907 Jews had traditionally voted for the ruling ethnic group in each of the two sections of the Empire in which they were concentrated. They voted primarily for German candidates in Bukovina and for Polish candidates in Galicia, thereby often damaging the aspirations of the Ukrainians/Ruthenians in both areas (Kann 1948). Even when they did vote for Jewish candidates - indeed, by then there were already a few Jewish members of parliament - these were generally Germanized or Polanized Jews without the slightest interest in Jewish concerns or aspirations. However, 1907 promised to be an election with a difference. There were several "genuinely Jewish" candidates, most of them running with the support of one or another of the various Galician Zionist groups who were willing to do Gegenwartsarbeit (work for here and now) rather than solely stress the homeland that was far off both in time and place. Although Birnbaum did not seek Zionist support, running on a ticket of his own, he was nevertheless supported not only by most Jews in his district (Bitshutsh, Galicia) but even by the Ruthenians whose cause he had long championed. Nevertheless, Birnbaum lost the elections because of irregularities and illegalities engineered by the ruling Polish local administration (see Kahan 1956; Tenenboym 1952, ch. 9; and Everett 1982). Troops were sent to seal off the bridges leading

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into town and to expell those suspected of anti-Polish sentiments from the polls so that, in one way or another, most Jews and Ruthenians were kept from casting their ballots. On the other hand, a few dozen hired hands "voted early and often", not only in their own names but in the names of hundreds of individuals who had died since the last elections but whose names were still on the election rolls. Some Jews joked that "koyhanem (members of the traditional Jewish priestly caste) were obliged to keep away from the ballot box because so many dead folk were obviously in its vicinity". Birnbaum foung the situation far from funny and sent off telegram after telegram protesting these irregularities to the Ministry of the Interior in Vienna, but to no avail. The district had been "promised" to the Poles and Birnbaum never set foot in Parliament. Years later, the great Hebrew Nobel Prize Laureate, Agnon, who witnessed these events as a young man growing up in Bitshutsh, wrote up the entire incident (Agnon 1961). It was neither the first nor the last rigged election in Galicia2. Characteristically, Birnbaum snapped back from his defeat and responded to it by intensifying his struggle for Jewish cultural autonomy. He threw himself into his earlier plan for a "World Conference for the Yiddish Language" and brought his plans to fruition in 1908, after returning from a brief visit to the USA, thanks to the help of his admirers in Tshernovits, many of whom had become students at the University of Vienna and were, therefore, constantly under his spell. He thundered away at those Eastern European Jewish intellectuals who parroted their benighted counterparts in the West, exchanging their vibrant birthright for pale imitations of non Jewish cultures (1908d). He preached the "emancipation of Eastern European Jewry from Western Jewish tutelage" (1910d), the liberation of "genuine Jews" from "false Germans". Although he himself had been born in Vienna, he referred to Eastern European Jews as "we" and "us" and to "Yahudem" (an Eastern European reference to Germanized Jews) as "they" and "them". He urged Eastern European Jews to establish a parliament for all of world Jewry, but one that they rather than the Yehudem would control, so that they could advance not only their own culture but save Jewry at large. Only Eastern European Jewry still possessed a great, creative independent Jewish way of life and only it, therefore, could nourish less fortunate Jewries elsewhere. Again and again he returned to the issue of cultural autonomy (particularly to the need for schools, at all levels, in which Yiddish would be the language of instruction), to the legitimization of nine

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nationalities in the Austrian part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, rather than just eight (1910b). He headed the non-partisan committee that brought together 10,000 Jews (a large number for those days) to demonstrate against the regulation that excluded Yiddish from the list of permissible vernaculars for the forthcoming census (1911). He refused to become discouraged at his meager progress on the cultural autonomy front, realizing full well that "every victory in the life of a people must be built upon many losses and sacrifices". Birnbaum and Yiddish: love without limits but without rejection of Hebrew In his own biographic sketch (1925), Birnbaum tells us that he "came naturally to the language of the diaspora, Yiddish, after having come to diaspora nationalism and, accordingly, began a long struggle to gain for it the dignity and honor it deserved". His earlier negativism toward Yiddish, during his Zionist phase, disappeared completely and even his ambivalence (regarding Yiddish as valuable only insofar as it permitted intellectuals to influence the masses in directions that would ultimately undercut Yiddish) vanished and was replaced by unadulterated adoration. Typically enough, Western aesthete that he was, his transformation began with the Yiddish stage (as did Kafka's too, somewhat later). The Yiddish theatre reflected an independent soul, an authentic culture, whereas German Jewish theatre, no matter how refined it might be as drama, was enslaved to a foreign model (Birnbaum 1901). However, both Yiddish and Hebrew had strong claims upon him and he ultimately arrived at a view that accom modated them both and that totally rejected the extremists at both ends who rejected each other's favourite language. He considered both languages to be vital and, therefore, viewed the extremists as doing great damage to the entire Jewish people. Basically, he believed that only the new creativity that was related to Yiddish could result in a modern Jewish life in which Hebrew too would remain vibrant in its non-vernacular functions (1902a). Through Yiddish millions ofJews gained entry into a modern Jewish culture. Through Yiddish they immediately joined the ranks of all those who struggle for cultural autonomy. He viewed Eastern European Yiddish as being comparably richer than its Western counterpart in the German speaking countries. Indeed, he compared Eastern Euro pean Yiddish to English, i.e. to another widespread fusion language

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which had arrived at an elevated, elevating and proud internal unity (1904). Initially he flirted with the idea of writing Yiddish with Latin letters (as did several others at the time) but this was just a passing thought. What was constant in his thinking was a concern to develop the language, attract more intellectuals to it, gain for it rights, recognition and protection via Jewish cultural autonomy (Kann 1948). Never a theoretical or platonic lover, he immediately set to work to serve his beloved. In 1905 he organized at the University of Vienna the very first academically affiliated student organization on behalf of Yiddish, "Yidishe kultur", 3 whose members, many of them hailing from Tshernovits, soon formed the administrative unit that convened and conducted the "First World Conference for the Yiddish Language" in Tshernovits. He also arranged "tours" for Yiddish writers that took them through various towns and townlets in Galicia, accompanying them and introducing them in German, wherever that was necessary, to gain for them a proper hearing. With respect to the competition between Hebrew and Yiddish, both of which went through intense cultural and political symbolic elaboration at the same time, leading to a heated and bitter competition between them, Birnbaum remained a peacemaker. He felt that Hebrew was no more dead than Yiddish was a jargon. He rejected the error that viewed "the only real Jewish language" (Hebrew) as not being alive and "the only live Jewish tongue" (Yiddish) as not being a language (1906d). Although he resorted frequently to the usual romantic imagery of the age he also managed to transcend it on occasion and to point out that Yiddish did not create the Jewish people but served it, organized it by providing it with a superb communication channel, and united it around common experiences and symbols (1906b). The fact that intellectuals ridiculed it saddened him tremendously because he regarded such behaviour as a sign of their opportunism and of their insecurity in the face of non Jewish prejudices (1906b). He defended Yiddish against the attacks of Eastern European Zionists and philosophers (1907,1910d). Before the Tshernovits conference convened he wrote articles in German explaining its importance and who its luminaries would be. He gave the opening address at the conference (in Yiddish, for the first time in his life) (1908d).4 He spoke again at its festive banquet (this time in his most flowery German). He refrained from polemics with both sets of extremists that attended the conference and firmly supported (some say: originated) the minimalistic resolu-

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tion (Yiddish is a national language of the Jewish people, not the national language of the Jewish people) so that no official statement issuing from the conference would besmirch the good name of Hebrew (1925). After the conference he defended this controversial resolution that made it famous (1908g) (the view that Yiddish was "a national language of the Jewish people") as tantamount to a veritable revolution in the previously established relationship between Hebrew and its "servant girl". He also defended Tshernovits as the logical place to have held a conference which was to be but the first step in the march toward cultural autonomy (1908c). He never tired of explaining that only among those who cultivated Yiddish as a bastion against assimilation would Hebrew also be retained as a bastion against assimilation (1909b).

The end of an era After the conference Birnbaum remained in Tshernovits for only three years, i.e. to 1911, even though he had been asked to establish a permanent secretariat there for its ongoing "cultural work". His book store there (established with the support of a "Young Ukrainian" organization, out of gratitude for his constant ideological support for their efforts) did not really provide him with a living.5 The locally dominant Jewish atmosphere, a mixture of "mechanical political Zionism" and "imitative Germanization", neither satisfied nor accepted him. He leaves Tshernovits in 1911 and goes on a lecture tour of Russian Poland to expound his diaspora nationalist ideas (1925). He continues to "defend the honor of Yiddish" among Eastern European Jews (1913) and to familiarize Western European Jews with its literature and folklore (1912a). However, as Tshernovits recedes and as the First World War draws near, it becomes ever clearer that his views are changing. While returning from America (in 1908) he had experienced "the presence of God", while looking out on the waters of the mid-Atlantic, but it was so momentary and fleeting an experience that he soon persua ded himself that it was but a dream. During his lecture tour of Russian Poland he rose to comment on a lecture of another speaker and found himself proclaiming God and the Torah as the only reliable defenses that the Jewish people had. He struggled to combine "Yiddish and the absolute Jewish idea" (1912b). The war erupts and he forsees the damage that it will do to the last stronghold

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of authentic Judaism. His three sons are drafted into the AustroHungarian army and two of them are sent into the thick of the battle and seriously wounded. He returns to Vienna and there, in the midst of a horrible war waged on several fronts, he searches more intently than ever before for "the absolute Jewish idea". Notes 1.

I have analyzed Nathan Birnbaum's "first phase", 1864-1898, in a paper, in honor of his 120th birthday (Fishman 1985a).

2.

Brur 1958. See also Everett 1982 and Tenenboym 1952, ch. 9. The latter claims that the Polish authorities kept the results of the Bitshutsh elections secret for several days until they had burned sufficient ballots to defeat Birnbaum.

3.

Naygreshl 1955. Also note the reference to his tours of Galician towns with Yiddish writers in D. Sh. and M. Kleinman 1937, May 7.

4.

For an exhaustive study of the Tshernovits Conference see Fishman 1981 369-394.

5.

Zahavi-Goldhamer 1950. The "Young Ukrainians" opposed the local "Old Ruthenians" who favored Russian rather than Ukranian as their national language. According to Tenenboym (1952) and Everett (1982), Ukrainians had not only supported Birnbaum's candidacy in Bitshutsh but the entire notion of nationalistically oriented Jewish candidates to the elections of 1907.

Nathan Birnbaum's three Tshernovits Conferences Nosn Birnboyms Dray Tshernovitser Konferentsn It is generally unknown that Nathan Birnbaum was not only the organizer of the famous conference on behalf of Yiddish that took place in Tshernovits in 1908, but that he participated in two other pro-Yiddish conferences in Tshernovits as well, the first in 1905 and the third in 1910. Speaking in German in 1905, Birnbaum issued a "diaspora manifesto" which reviewed Jewish life both in Europe (West and East) and in America and climaxed with a ringing defence of Yiddish and a detailed agenda for an international conference on its behalf. In 1910 he organized and led a protest march by 10,000 Jews who opposed the plans to exclude Yiddish from the Austro-Hungarian census of 1911. Two other conferences are also mentioned more briefly, one in which Birnbaum was the self-proclaimed Jewish representative (Vienna, 1905) among all the "unrecognized" minorities of the Monarchy, and the other which he planned as a sort ofJewish Diaspora Parliament to be presided over and dominated by Eastern European Yiddish speakers.

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Attracting a following to high culture functions for a language of everyday life: the role of the Tshernovits Conference in the rise of Yiddish The "spread of language" does not always entail gaining new speakers or users - whether as a first or as a second language. Frequently it entails gaining new functions or uses, particularly H functions (i.e., literacy-related functions in education, religion, "high culture" in general, and, in modern times, in econotechnology and government, too) for a language that is already widely known and used in L functions (i.e., everyday family, neighborhood, and other informal/intimate, intragroup interaction). Wherever a speech community already has a literacy-related elite, this type of language spread inevitably involves the displacement of an old elite (the one that is functionally associated with the erstwhile H) by a new elite that is seeking a variety of social changes which are to be functionally associated with the prior L and which are to be instituted and maintained under its own (the new elite's) leadership. 1 The last century has witnessed the rise and fall (but not the complete elimination) of such efforts on behalf of Yiddish. The traditional position of Yiddish in Ashkenaz (the traditional Hebrew-Aramaic and Yiddish designation for Central and Eastern Europe, Jews living in or deriving from this area being known, therefore, as Ashkenazim) was - and in many relatively unmodernized Orthodox circles still is - somewhat more complex than the H versus L distinction usually implies. At the extreme of sanctity there was Loshn-koydesh2 alone, realized in hallowed biblical and postbiblical texts. At the opposite extreme, that of workaday intragroup life, there was Yiddish alone: the vernacular of one and all, rich and poor, learned and ignorant, pious and less than pious, with some members of each pair engaging in a growing modicum of Yiddish "entertainment" reading as well. Although "sanctity" and "workaday" existed on a single continuum and were connected by a single overarching set of cultural values and assumptions, they were,

Original title "The role of the Tshernovits language conference in the rise of Yiddish". Reprinted with permission from Language Spread, Robert L. Cooper (ed.). Bloomington: Indiana University Press. 1982. 291-320.

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nevertheless, distinct, overt cognitive and emotional opposites. In between these two extremes were numerous situations in which (a) Loshn-koydesh and Yiddish co-occurred insofar as intragroup life was concerned, and less numerous ones in which (b) coterritorial ver­ naculars or written languages were employed insofar as intergroup activities involving the worksphere, government and infrequent "socializing" required. The traditional intragroup intermediate zone resulted in a Yiddish oral literature of high moral import and public recognition (sometimes published in Yiddish but, at least initially, as often as not, translated into Loshn-koydesh for the very purpose of "dignified" publication). It also included the exclusive use of Yiddish as the process language of oral study, from the most elementary to the most advanced and recondite levels. And it included the exclusive use of Yiddish as the language of countless sermons by rabbis and preachers and as the language of popular religious tracts (ostensibly for women and uneducated menfolk). Thus, Yiddish did enter per­ vasively into the pale of sanctity and even into the pale of sanctity-inprint. Hallowed bilingual texts - Loshn-koydesh originals with accompanying Yiddish translations - had existed ever since the appearance of print and, before that, as incunabula, but it never existed in that domain as a fully free agent, never as the sole medium of that domain in its most hallowed and most textified realizations, never as a fully independent target medium, but only as a process medium underlying which or superseding which a single Loshnkoydesh text or a whole sea of such texts was either known, assumed, or created (Fishman 1975b). As a result, when traditional Eastern European Jewry enters sig­ nificantly into the nineteenth century drama of modernization, Loshn-koydesh and Yiddish are generally conceptualized, both by most intellectuals and by rank-and-file members of Ashkenaz, in terms of their extreme and discontinuous textified versus vernacular roles, their shared zones having contributed neither to the substantial vernacularization of Loshn-koydesh nor to the phenomenological sancti­ fication of Yiddish. As the nineteenth century progressed there were increasing efforts to liberate Yiddish from its apparent subjugation to Loshn-koydesh (the latter being metaphorically referred to as the "noble daughter of heaven", Yiddish being no more than her "hand­ maiden"), particularly for more modern intragroup H pursuits. In addition, there were also increasing efforts to liberate Yiddish from its inferior position vis-à-vis co-territorial vernaculars in connection

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with modern learning and nontraditional life more generally. It is with the former type of language spread that this paper deals most directly (and with its implications for the role of Loshn-koydesk, which was also then being groomed for modern H roles at the intragroup and at the intergroup levels), although the spill-over from the former to the latter type of language spread was often both an objective and an achievement as well. Obviously, when one component of a traditional diglossia (here: triglossia) situation changes in its functions, the societal allocation of functions with respect to the other(s) is under stress to change as well. The Tshernovits Language Conference: success or failure? Three different positive views concerning Yiddish were clearly evident by the first decade of the twentieth century, and a fourth was then increasingly coming into being. 3 The earliest view was a traditional utilitarian one, and it continues to be evinced primarily by Ultra-Orthodox spokesmen to this very day. In accord with this view, Yiddish was (and is) to be utilized in print for various moralistic and halakhic4 educational purposes, because it has long been used in this way, particularly in publications for women, the uneducated and children. Any departure from such use - whether on behalf of modern Hebrew or a co-territorial vernacular - was and is decried as disruptive of tradition. Another view was a modern utilitarian one, namely, that Yiddish must be used in political and social education if the masses were ever to be moved toward more modern attitudes and behaviors, because it was the only language that they understood. This view was, and is, to some extent, still widely held by maskilic5 and Zionist/socialist spokesmen. A third view was also evident by the turn of the century, namely that Yiddish was a distinctly indigenous and representative vehicle and, therefore, it has a natural role to play both in expressing and in symbolizing Jewish cultural-national desiderata. Finally, we begin to find the view expressed that for modern Jewish needs, Yiddish is the only or major natural expressive and symbolic vehicle. In the nineteenth century the first two positive views (and the counter claims related to them) were encountered most frequently, but the latter two were beginning to be expressed as well (see, particularly Y.M. Lifshits's writings, e.g., 1863, 1867; note D.E. Fishman's discussion [1986] of Lifshits as transitional ideologist).

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In the twentieth century the latter two views (and their respective refutations) came into prominence and the former two receded and were ultimately almost abandoned. 6 The last public encounter of all four views was at the Tshernovits Language Conference. There the first two views were presented and strongly refuted whereas the last two remained in uneasy balance, neither of them appearing clearly victorious over the other. Planning the conference Nathan Birnbaum 7 had first broached the idea in a 1905 lecture in Tshernovits, 8 well before he ran for a seat in the Austro-Hungarian parliament in 1907. Upon his defeat he decided to relocate from Vienna to Tshernovits, where he had many followers and admirers (particularly among university students whom he had met and influenced in Vienna but who hailed from Tshernovits). However, although he founded both a Yiddish weekly (Dokter birnboyms vokhnblat) and a German monthly (Das Volk) there, Tshernovits could provide him neither with visibility nor with the income that he required. Accordingly, he decided to visit the United States in pursuit of both and on behalf of Yiddish "the world language of a world people". It was among Yiddish writers and intellectuals in New York, the capital of Eastern European immigrant life in the New World, that he secured the first noteworthy moral support for his plans to convene The First World Conference for the Yiddish Language. Since Tshernovits was the town where Birnbaum lived and where he could most conveniently supervise the practical arrangements for such a conference, that is the town in which it was agreed that it would take place. This decision, as we will see, had other practical justifications as well as definite consequences for the conference itself. Birnbaum's initial host in the United States was the socialistZionist Doved Pinski, already well known as a Yiddish novelist and dramatist, who had read Birnboym's articles in German and was eager to help him reach a wider pro-Yiddish audience. Immediately attrac­ ted to Birnbaum's cause was the socialist-territorialist9 theoretician and philosopher Khayem Zhitlovski (for extensive bibliographic details, see Fishman 1981a). The three of them formed a curious troika (a neo-traditionalist on his way back to full-fledged Orthodoxy, a labor-Zionist, and a philosophical secularist), but together they issued

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a resolution for a world conference concerning Yiddish, composed in Pinski's apartment on Beck Street in the South Bronx (also signed by the playwright Yankev Gorden and the publisher Aleks Yevalenko), and together they brought it to a massive audience at two "evenings" (Yiddish: ovntn, although not necessarily transpiring in the evening), the larger of which took place in Webster Hall, on the Lower East Side. Far more unforgettable than the arguments that they then marshalled for such a conference, and more impressive than the proposed order of business suggested in connection with it, was the fact that its chief architect, Birnbaum, spoke to the audiences in German (for he could not yet speak standard or formal Yiddish, although he had begun to write Yiddish articles in 1904). His addresses, although purposely peppered with Yiddishisms, struck most commentators as impressive but funny, funny but painful. The intelligentsia was learning its mother tongue so that the latter could fulfill new functions and thereby provide new statutes to masses and intelligentsia alike. But there was an intended "order of business" for Tshernovits, no matter how much it may have been overlooked at the ovntn or even at the Conference itself. Birnbaum, Zhitlovski, and Pinski agreed (primarily at the latter's insistence) to "avoid politics" and "resolutions on behalf of Yiddish" (Pinski 1948), particularly since the political and ideological context of Yiddish differed greatly in Czarist Russia, in Hapsburg Austro-Hungary and in the immigrant United States. Thus they agreed upon a "practical agenda" and a "working conference" devoted to the following ten points. 1. Yiddish spelling 2. Yiddish grammar 3. Foreign words and new words 4. A Yiddish dictionary 5. Jewish youth and the Yiddish language 6. The Yiddish press 7. The Yiddish theatre and Yiddish actors 8. The economic status of Yiddish writers 9. The economic status of Yiddish actors 10. Recognition for the Yiddish language. The agenda starts off with four items of corpus planning. 10 Yiddish was correctly seen as being in need of authoritative codification and elaboration in order to standardize its usage and systematize its future growth. Major corpus-planning efforts for Yiddish - though previously called for and attempted - were a sign

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of its new importance. Point five recognized the dangers that modernization represented for the ethnic identity of the younger generation, particularly if it pursued education and advancement in co-territorial vernaculars to the exclusion of Yiddish. Points six to nine stressed press and theatre - their quality and their economic viability - the massive means of bringing modern Yiddish creativity to the public. Finally, the last point recognized something that was certainly on Birnbaum's mind. Jews themselves - not to speak of Gentiles - were unaccustomed to granting recognition to Yiddish, and, therefore, such recognition was often begrudged it even by democratic or democratizing regimes that gave some consideration to cultural autonomy for minority nationalities or to officially recognized cultural pluralism (as did pre-World War I AustroHungary). As Pinski in particular feared, the entire agenda of the conference was "subverted" by the tenth point and, indeed, was dominated by what was in reality only half of that point: Jewish recognition for Yiddish. Why was the Conference held in Tshernovits? Tshernovits was only a modest-sized town (21,500 Jews out of a total population of 68,400) and of no particular importance vis-à-vis Jewish cultural, political, or economic development. It was clearly overshadowed by Varshe, Vilne, Odes (Warsaw, Vilna, Odessa) and several other urban centers in the Pale of Settlement within the Czarist Empire. Nevertheless, the recent history of Czarist repressions may have made it undesirable (if no longer clearly impossible) to convene the Conference in one of those centers. Even within the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, however, such Jewish centers as Kruke (Cracow), Lemberik/Lemberg (Lvov), and Brod (Brodie) were clearly of greater importance than Tshernovits. Tshernovits was, of course, easily accessible to Yiddish speakers in Austro-Hungary and Czarist Russia, but its symbolic significance far surpassed its national convenience and was twofold: (a) Not only was it in frants-yosefs medine (the Austro-Hungarian monarchy) but many segments of its hitherto significantly Germanized Jewish intelligentsia were already struggling to revise their attitudes towards Yiddish - a struggle that was particularly crucial for that period in Austro-Hungarian cultural politics vis-à-vis Germans, Poles, Ukranians/Ruthenians, and Jews in Bukovina and in Galicia

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as well - and (b) Birnbaum had already relocated there and had several young followers there (many of whom were students at the university in Vienna during the school year - and had been influenced by Birnbaum there). These young followers could provide (on a volunteer basis and during the summer vacation period in particular) the technical/organizational underpinnings of a world conference for Yiddish. Indeed, these followers constituted, with Birnbaum, the organizational committee that sent out the invitations to individuals, organizations and committees, secured a hall (not without difficulty), planned a banquet and literary evening, and disbursed the meager fees that the participants in the Conference paid in order to be either delegates (5 Kronen) or guests (1 Krone). Both of these factors (the convening of the Conference in Tshernovits, and Birnbaum's young and inexperienced followers there, in the grips of their own discovery of Η-possibilities for Yiddish), influenced the course of the Conference. The delicate balance of minority relations in Galicia and Bukovina resulted in more widespread attention being paid to the first Yiddish World Conference than its sponsors had bargained for. The census of 1911 was already being discussed, and it was apparent that the authorities again wanted Jews to claim either Polish (in Galicia) or German (in Bukovina) as mother tongue (as had been done in 1890) in order to defuse or c o u n t e r b a l a n c e the growing pressure from Ukranian/Ruthenians and Rumanians for additional language privileges and parliamentary representation. Previously, Jews had been counted upon to buttress the establishment out of fear that "unrest" would lead to anti-jewish developments of one kind or another. It was apparent that young Jews were disinclined to play this role any longer and that they were threatening to claim either Yiddish or Hebrew, even though neither was on the approved list of mother tongues and even though claiming a language not on the list was "a punishable offence". Indeed, so great was the tension con­ cerning the Conference that the President of the Jewish Community (kehile) in Tshernovits refused to permit the Conference to meet in community facilities for fear of incurring official displeasure or worse. Clearly, a new within-fold status for Yiddish would have intergroup repercussions as well: upsetting the former within-group diglossia system was also related to new intergroup aspirations and these were, of necessity, political and economic (or likely to be suspected of being such) rather than merely cultural (no matter what the official agenda of the Conference might be).

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Moreover, m e e t i n g in Tshernovits also d e t e r m i n e d the very n a t u r e of the guests a n d delegates (a distinction that was soon ignored) that could attend, discuss, p r o p o s e , vote u p o n , a n d ultimately i m p l e m e n t the Conference's deliberations a n d resolu­ tions. T h e regional tensions in conjunction with national/cultural rights resulted in a t t e n d a n c e by a m o r e substantial n u m b e r of students a n d ordinary folk, many in search of something spectacular or even explosive, than might otherwise have b e e n the case. Similar­ ly, because of the characteristics of Bukovian Jewry p e r se there were m o r e Zionists a n d fewer Bundists, 1 2 m o r e traditionally-religiously o r i e n t e d a n d fewer proletarian-politically o r i e n t e d delegates a n d guests t h a n would have b e e n the case elsewhere. B i r n b a u m ' s youth­ ful a d m i r e r s a n d assistants were quite incapable of rectifying this imbalance by such simple m e a n s as s e n d i n g m o r e invitations to m o r e " e t h n o n a t i o n a l l y conscious" circles. I n d e e d , for them, as for most Jewish intellectuals in Tshernovits, the idea of a Conference o n behalf of Yiddish a n d conducted in Yiddish was n o t quite believable even as it materialized. Most Jewish intellectuals were the mainstay of... daytshtum (Germanness), and of a sui generis daytshtum to boot, Bukovian daytshtum. None of the socially and politically active local (Jewish) intellectuals imagined anything like speaking to the people in its language. Indeed, when Berl Loker, who belonged to the exceptions, then a young student, was about to give a lecture in Yiddish, he invited my wife to attend as follows: "Come and you will hear how one speaks pure Yiddish at a meeting!" The best recommendation for a speaker was the accomplishment of being able to speak to a crowd in lovely and ornate German. (Vays 1937) Thus, the lingering disbelief that Yiddish was suitable for H pursuits ("Is Yiddish a language?") s u r r o u n d e d the Conference a n d even f o u n d its way into the Conference, a n d did so in Tshernovits m o r e t h a n it would have in m a n y other, m o r e industrialized a n d proletarianized centers of Jewish u r b a n c o n c e n t r a t i o n a n d m o d e r n ­ ization. Bukovian Jewry a n d its m o d e r n i z i n g elites were t h e n b o t h still relatively u n t o u c h e d by the m o r e sophisticated pro-and antiYiddish sentiments that were at a m u c h h i g h e r pitch in Warsaw, Vilna, Lodz, or Odessa.

Who attended the Conference? T h e invitations sent by B i r n b a u m ' s "secretariat" were addressed to those organizations a n d committees whose addresses they h a p p e n e d

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to have. Many unimportant societies and clubs were invited, whereas many even more important ones were not. Personal invitations were few and far between. The writer and essayist Y.L. Perets (Warsaw, 1852T915), perhaps the major influence upon the younger generation of Yiddish writers and a conscious ideologist of synthesis among all Jewish values and symbols, modern and traditional, was invited and came with his wife (with whom he spoke more Polish than Yiddish). The two other "classicists of modern Yiddish literature", Sholem Aleykhem (1859-1910) and Mendele Moykher Sforem (1836-1917), were also invited but did not come. Sholem Aleykhem at least claimed to be ill; but Mendele, in his seventies, offered no excuse at all, and, as a result, was sent no greetings by the Conference such as were sent to Sholem Aleykhem. Zhitlovski came, but Pinski was "busy writing a book" (Pinski 1948). A young linguist, Matesyohu Mizes (Mathias Mieses), was invited (as were two other linguistic-oriented students, Ayzenshtat and Sotek) to address the Conference on the linguistic issues that apparently constituted forty percent of its agenda. Other than the above individual invitations, a general invitation was issued and broadcast via the Yiddish press and by word of mouth "to all friends of Yiddish". All in all, some seventy showed up and these were characterized by one participant (and later major critic) as having only one thing in common: "They could afford the fare . . . Everyone was his own master, without any sense of responsibility to others." (Frumkin 1908). The geographic imbalance among the resulting participants is quite clear: From the Czarist Empire: 14. Among this delegation were found the most prestigious participants. Perets, Sholem Asch (still young but already a rising star), Avrom Reyzn (a well-known and much beloved poet), H.D. Nomberg (writer and journalist, later a deputy in the Polish Sejm and founder of a small political party, yidishe folkistishe partey, stressing Yiddish and diaspora cultural autonomy), N. Prilutski (linguist, folklorist, journalist; later a Sejm deputy), Ester (Bundist, later a Communist Kombund and Yevsektsiya leader). Zhitlovski (though coming from the United States) and Ayznshtat (though then studying in Bern) were also usually counted with the "Russians". From Rumania: 1.I. Sotek of Braila (an advocate of writing Yiddish with Latin characters and a student of Slavic elements in Yiddish). From Galicia and Bukovina: 55. Among these were eight minor literary figures and forty-seven students, merchants, bookkeepers, craftsmen,

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etc., including o n e "wedding e n t e r t a i n e r " (badkhn). This g r o u p was the least disciplined and, o n its h o m e territory, least impressed a n d convinced by attempts to k e e p to any agenda. At the most crucial votes no more than forty members participated . . . In the vote on the resolution that Yiddish be considered an ethnonational (Jewish) language no more than 36 individuals participated. People were always arriving late to sessions. Some did not know what they were voting about. People voted and contradicted their own previous votes. In addition, it was always noisy due to the booing and the applauding of "guests from Tshernovits". No one at all listened to Ayznshtaťs paper on Yiddish spelling. (Frumkin 1908). N o r were the b a n q u e t or the literary p r o g r a m any m o r e orderly or consensual. W h e n local Jewish workers arrived to attend the banquet it was discovered that they lacked black jackets and they were not admitted. They began to complain. Some of the more decently clad ones were selected and admitted without jackets. Some of the "indecently" clad workers took umbrage and protested so long that the policeman took pity on them and sent them away. As a result, the "decently" clad ones also decided to leave. After the opening remarks, I called everyone's attention to what had occurred. It immediately became noisy and I was told to stop speaking. I left the banquet and a few others accompanied me. (Frumkin 1908). Attracting an elite to m o d e r n H functions for an erstwhile traditional L r u n s into p r o b l e m s d u e to the fact that p r i o r a n d c o n c u r r e n t social issues have established allegiances a n d identities that are n o t c o n g r u e n t with those that further the interests of the new elite a n d the new functions. Reformulations of identities a n d r e g r o u p i n g of allegiances is called for a n d is difficult for all concerned.

The Conference per se T h e Conference began on Sunday, August 30, 1908, a n d lasted for a little u n d e r a week. A quarter after ten in the morning there walked onto the stage Nosn Birnboym in the company of Y.L. Perets, S. Ash, Dr. Kh. Zhitlovski and other distinguised guests . . . Dr. N. Birnboym opens the Conference reading his first speech in Yiddish fluently from his notes . .. He reads his speech in the Galician dialect. (Rasvet, September 1908: quoted from Afn shvel 1968.)

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Birnbaum stressed the fact that this was the first world-wide effort on behalf of Yiddish, sponsored by its greatest writers ("respected even by the o p p o n e n t s of Yiddish") a n d the b e g i n n i n g of a long chain of efforts yet to come. T h e s e o p e n i n g r e m a r k s caused a sensation a m o n g local Tshernovitsians. Everyone knew that he (Birnbaum) doesn't speak Yiddish and that the speech would be translated from German. However, all were eager to hear how the "coarse" words would sound coming from the mouth of Dr. Birnbaum who was known as an excellent German speaker . . . However at the festive banquet in honor of the esteemed guests . . . he spoke superbly in German, the way only he could. (Vays 1937) Indeed, a speaker's ability to speak Yiddish well and the very fact that Yiddish could be spoken as befitted a world conference, i.e., in a cultivated, learned, disciplined fashion in conjunction with m o d e r n concerns, never ceased to impress those who had never before heard it so spoken. Zhitlovski made the greatest impression on all the delegates and guests, both at the Conference and at the banquet (which was a great event for Yiddish culture that was still so unknown to most of those in attendance). "That kind of Yiddish is more beautiful than French!" was a comment heard from all quarters and particularly from circles that had hitherto rejected Yiddish from a "purely esthetic" point of view. (Vays 1937)13 Yiddish used adeptly in an H function was itself a t r i u m p h for Tshernovits, almost regardless of what was said. But of course a great deal was said substantively as well. The linguistic issues were "covered" by Ayznshtat, Sotek, a n d Mizes. Whereas the first two were roundly ignored, the third caused a storm of protest when, in the midst of a p a p e r o n fusion languages, a n d their hybrid-like strength, creativity, a n d vigor, he also attacked Loshn-koydesh for being dead, stultifying, a n d decaying. Only Perets's intervention saved Mizes' p a p e r for the record as "the first scientific p a p e r in Yiddish o n Yiddish" (Anon 1931). 14 Obviously, the t e n t h a g e n d a item stubbornly refused to wait its place in line a n d constantly came to the fore in the form of an increasingly growing a n t a g o n i s m between those (primarily Bundists) who wanted to declare Yiddish as the ethnonational Jewish language (Hebrew/Loshnkoydesh - b e i n g a classical t o n g u e r a t h e r t h a n a m o t h e r t o n g u e could not, in their view, qualify as such) and those (primarily Zionists a n d traditionalists) who, at best, would go n o further than to declare Yiddish as an e t h n o n a t i o n a l Jewish language, so that the role of

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Hebrew/Loshn-koydesh - past, p r e s e n t a n d future - would r e m a i n unsullied. 1 5 In the midst of this f u n d a m e n t a l argument, m o r e primitive views still surfaced as a result of the p r e s e n c e of so m a n y ideologically u n m o d e r n i z e d guests. O n e of the delegates r e c o u n t s the following tale: . . . (T)here suddenly appears on the stage a man with a long, red beard, wearing the traditional black kapote (kaftan) and yarmelke (skull-cap). He begins speaking by saying "I will tell you a story". The hall is full of quiet expectancy. We all listen carefully in order to hear a good, folksy anecdote. The man recounts in great detail a story about how two Jews once sued each other in court because of a shoyfer (ritual ram's horn) that had been stolen from the beys-medresh (house of study and prayer). With great difficulty they explained to the gentile judge what a shoyfer is. Finally the judge asked: "In one word - a trumpet?" At this point the litigants shuddered and one shouted to the other: "I ask you: is a shoyfer a trumpet?" The assembled participants in the hall were ready to smile at this "anecdote" which had long been well know, when the man suddenly began to shout at the top of his lungs: "You keep on talking about language, but is Yiddish (zhargon) a language?" (Kisman 1958) T h e c o m p r o m i s e formulation p e n n e d by N o m b e r g ("an ethnonational Jewish language") was finally adopted, thanks only to the insistence of Perets, B i r n b a u m , a n d Zhitlovski, a n d over the vociferous o p p o s i t i o n of b o t h left-wing a n d right-wing extremists who favored an exclusive role for Yiddish ("the ethnonational Jewish language") or who wanted n o resolutions at all on political topics. 16 V e r y l i t t l e t i m e was d e v o t e d to o r g a n i z a t i o n a l o r i m p l e m e n t a t i o n a l issues such as w h e t h e r the Conference itself should sponsor "cultural work", convene a second conference within a reasonable time, or even establish a p e r m a n e n t office (secretariat) a n d m e m b e r s h i p o r g a n i z a t i o n . A l t h o u g h the last two recommendations were adopted (the first was rejected due to unified left-wing a n d right-wing d i s e n c h a n t m e n t with the Conference's stance regarding the "the or an" e t h n o n a t i o n a l language issue), a n d although B i r n b a u m a n d two young assistants were elected to be the executive officers a n d to establish a central office, very little was actually d o n e along these lines. At any rate, the tasks entrusted to the secretariat were minimal a n d i n n o c u o u s ones indeed. I n addition, B i r n b a u m soon moved ever-closer to u n r e c o n s t r u c t e d O r t h o d o x y a n d to its stress o n matters "above a n d b e y o n d language". At any rate, he was n o t an administrator/executive b u t an ideologue. H e was, as always, penniless, a n d the funds that were r e q u i r e d for an

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office and for his salary never materialized. Zhitlovski returned to America and threw himself into efforts there to start Yiddish supplementary schools and to restrain Jewish socialists from sacrificing their own Jewishness and the Jewish people as a whole on the altar of Americanization disguised as proletarian brotherhood. Perets did undertake one fund-raising trip to St. Petersburg where Shimen Dubnov (1860-1941), the distinguished historian and ideologist of cultural autonomy in the diaspora and himself a recent convert to the value of Yiddish, had convened a small group of wealthy but Russified potential donors. The latter greeted Perets with such cold cynicism that he "told them off' ("our salvation will come from the poor but warm-hearted Jews of the Pale rather than from the rich but cold-hearted Jews of St. Petersburg") and "slammed the door". Thus, for various reasons, no office was ever really established in Tshernovits and even the minutes of the Conference remained unpublished. Although S.A. Birnbaum helped prepare them for publication by editing out as many Germanisms as possible, they were subsequently misplaced or lost and had to be reconstructed more than two decades later from press clippings and memoirs (Anon. 1931). Intellectuals (and even an intelligentsia) alone can rarely establish a movement. Intellectuals can reify language and react to it as a powerful symbol, as the bearer and actualizer of cultural values, behaviors, traditions, goals. However, for an L to spread to H functions, more concrete considerations (jobs, funds, influence, status, control, power) are involved. Only the Yiddishist left-wing had in mind an economic, political, and cultural revolution that would have placed Yiddish on top. But that left did not even control the Tshernovits Conference, to say nothing of the hard, cruel world that surrounded it. American reactions to the Tshernovits Conference The increasingly democratic, culturally pluralistic, and culturally autonomistic prewar Austro-Hungarian monarchy was the model toward which mankind was moving insofar as the leading figures at Tshernovits were concerned. One of the areas of Jewish concentration in which this model did not prevail - and where the very concept of a symbolically unified, modernized, world-wide Jewish nationality with a stable, all-purpose vernacular of its own was

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least u n d e r s t o o d , accepted, a n d actualized - was the United States. N o w o n d e r t h e n that the Tshernovits Conference was generally accorded a cool r e c e p t i o n h e r e a n d even a derisive one. 1 7 T h e idea of teaching people how to spell or write or speak Yiddish "correctly" was viewed by o n e journalist as being n o less ridiculous than the idea of teaching people to laugh correctly, grammatically (Sambatyen, "A falsher gelekhter, gor o n gramatik", Yidishes Tageblat,18 Sept. 1, 1908). T h e Tageblat was an O r t h o d o x - o r i e n t e d paper, a n d in its editorials before a n d after the C o n f e r e n c e it stressed that Loshnkoydesh alone was of value for Jewishness while English (or o t h e r coterritorial vernaculars elsewhere) m e t all of the general a n d citizenship needs that Jews might have. T o elevate Yiddish to H functions was n o t only ridiculous b u t b l a s p h e m o u s . If the resolutions of the Conference declare . . . that all ofJewishness will be found in Ash's drama "God of Vengeance" and in Perets "Shtrayml" . . . will anyone care? Our people decided long ago that we are a nationality and that our ethnonational language is none other than that in which the spirit of the Jewish people developed . . . the language in which the Bible is written, the Book that has made us immortal. (Sept. 29, 1908) If the Orthodox-bourgeois Tageblat was unfriendly towards the Conference, to say the least, the secular-socialist Forverts (still publishing to this day) was almost every bit as m u c h so. Its correspondent Moris Roznfeld (a famous Yiddish laborite-poet in his own right) wrote from Galicia just a few days before the Conference opened, I know that with just a few exceptions there is not much interest in America in this Tshernovits Conference and for many reasons, First of all, most believe that nothing practical will come of it. Secondly, the American Yiddish writer, as well as the Yiddish reader, is not terribly interested in rules of grammar. What difference does it make whether one writes , or (all pronounced geyn/gayn, depending on the speaker's regional dialect), , or e v e n ( t h e first three pronounced id/yid and the last - utilized only ironically/contrastively in Yiddish Yahudi, and, therefore not really an orthographic variant in a continuum with the first three), as long as it can be read and understood? . . . Among the majority of even our good writers, Yiddish is regarded merely as a ferry that leads to the other side, to the language of the land, which each of us must learn in the land in which he finds himself. But these views, objectively and impartially stated, apply only to America. Here, in Galicia, they are more than merely grammatical issues. Here it is a political issue, an issue of life itself. . .

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. . . If it were to be officially decided that Loshn-koydesh is the Jewish language, then the Jewish masses would lose their power and their vernacular would be ignored. Only the Jewish snobs, the aristocratic, "letthem-eat-cake" idealists, would gain thereby. Therefore, the eyes of the real friends of the people and of the friends of the workers in Galicia and even in Russia are turned towards Tshernovits. Therefore the Conference there has major, historical importance. I don't know from what point of view the Conference will treat the language issue . . . The Conference might even be of an academic, theoretical nature . . . Nevertheless, the Conference will have strong reverberations on Jewish politics in Galicia. Note Roznfeld's total disinterest in either the linguistic p o r t i o n or in any p o r t i o n of the Tshernovits a g e n d a as b e i n g valid for Americans. I n 1908 few A m e r i c a n Yiddish writers, few even of the secular laborites a m o n g them, aspired to H functions for Yiddish. In their eyes Jews, as workers, were destined to b e p a r t of the greater American protetariat; a n d English would, therefore, be its language for higher social purposes, and, ultimately, its brotherly interethnic vernacular as well. T h e Bund's 1905 Declaration, a n d its advocacy of Jewish cultural a u t o n o m y in Eastern E u r o p e , with Yiddish as the ethnonational language of the Jewish protetariat, was considered, at best, to be a poltically relevant platform for Eastern E u r o p e a n Jewry alone, b u t o n e that was irrelevant for those who h a d immigrated to " t h e G o l d e n L a n d " . T h u s , if n e i t h e r the linguistic n o r the political potentialities of the Conference applied here, t h e n the Conference as a whole was merely a distant echo, a n d either a somewhat funny o n e or a clearly sacrilegious o n e at that. If it was difficult to assign H functions to Yiddish in its very own massive heartland, where its stability was less threatened (so it seemed) a n d where all agreed as to its utility, how m u c h m o r e difficult was it to d o so in immigrantAmerica where its transitionality was assumed by secularists a n d traditionalists alike?

Eastern European reactions to the Conference If the b r u n t of A m e r i c a n c o m m e n t a r y o n the C o n f e r e n c e was negative, that in Eastern E u r o p e was initially equally or even m o r e so, a n d o n t h r e e g r o u n d s . As expected, the H e b r a i s t a n d extremeZionist reaction was unrelentingly hostile. In their eyes Yiddish was a language that d e m o t e d Jewry from its i n c o m p a r a b l e classical heights to the superficiality a n d vacuousness of such illiterate

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peasant tongues as Ukrainian, Lithuanian, Rumanian, etc. T o foster Yiddish struck J. Klausner, I. Epshteyn, a n d many other Hebraists as b e i n g laughable, if it were n o t so sad, an exercise in selfi m p o v e r i s h m e n t a n d self-debasement. A considerable n u m b e r of those who shared their view urged that a massive counter-conference be c o n v e n e d (and, indeed, the First W o r l d Conference for the Hebrew Language was convened in Berlin in 1909) a n d that an even m o r e massive propaganda compaign be launched to attack Tshernovits and its infamous resolution. However, the veteran Hebraist a n d p h i l o s o p h e r A h a d H a ' a m (1856-1927) a r g u e d vehemently against such efforts, o n the g r o u n d s that they would give Tshernovits m o r e visibility t h a n it could ever attain o n its own. A c c o r d i n g to A h a d Ha'am, the Jewish p e o p l e h a d already experienced two great philo­ sophical disasters in the diaspora: Christianity a n d Hasidism. 1 9 Both of these h a d m u s h r o o m e d precisely because Jews themselves h a d paid too m u c h attention to t h e m by dignifying t h e m with un­ necessary commentary. This sad lesson should n o t be a p p l i e d to Tshernovits a n d to Yiddishism as a whole. They were muktse makhmes miyes (mukza m a h a m a t miús), loathsomely ugly, a n d the less said a b o u t t h e m the better. If the right-wing o p p o s i t i o n generally elected to c o u n t e r Tshernovits with a wall of silence, the left-wing o p p o s i t i o n apparently decided to drown it in a sea of words. From their point of view Tshernovits h a d been a "sell out" on the part of those who were willing to water down, r e n d e r tepid, a n d weaken the position vis-à-vis Yiddish of "the b r o a d folk-masses" a n d "the Jewish proletariat", in o r d e r to curry favor a m o n g the bourgeoisie, by a d o p t i n g an unin­ spired a n d u n i n s p i r i n g "all Israel are b r o t h e r s " a p p r o a c h . T h e m o d e r n , secular, socialist sector of the Jewish p e o p l e , "the revolutionary a n d nationality-building sector", had, by then, already surpassed the meager goals a n d the lukewarm resolutions of Tshernovits. They, therefore, refused to b e c o m p r o m i s e d a n d whittled d o w n by a conference that was " a n episode instead of a h a p p e n i n g " (Kazhdan 1928), and whose resolution was no m o r e than "a harmful illusion" (Zilberfarb 1928) a n d "a mistake that must n o t be reiterated" ( K h m u r n e r 1928). The Tshernovits Conference was converted into the opposite of what its in­ itiators had projected. Its isolation from the Jewish labor movement took its revenge upon the Conference . . . The great masters of Yiddish literature did not possess the magic to convert the Jewish middle class and the bourgeois intellectuals into co-combatants and partners with the Jewish workers in the

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latter's great national role of limitless loyalty to the Yiddish language. Yiddish cultural life, therefore, far surpassed the Tshernovits Conference . . . Neither at the Teachers' Conference in Vilna, nor at the organizational Convention of the Central Yiddish School Organization (Tsisho), nor at the Tsisho-Convention of 1925 where the founding of the Yivo (Yiddish Scientific Institute; today: Yivo Institute for Jewish Research) was proclaimed, nor at any of the many other (Yiddish) teachers' conferences in Polish was there even a word spoken about the Tshernovits Conference .. . Today, 60 years after Tshernovits, we know: Tshernovits was not destined to have any heirs . . . There was really nothing to inherit. (Kazhdan 1969) Even now, over four decades after the H o l o c a u s t - w h e n most c o m m e n t a t o r s t e n d to wax lyrical a b o u t Jewish Eastern E u r o p e a n d to r e m e m b e r it in somewhat rosy terms - there r e m a i n B u n d i s t leaders who r e m e m b e r Tshernovits only as a flubbed o p p o r t u n i t y . Even those who were quite satisfied with Tshernovits in symbolic terms soon realized that it was a fiasco in any particular organizational terms. As soon as the First World W a r was over (and, indeed, in the very midst of the W a r in anticipation of its conclusion), various Yiddish writers a n d cultural spokesmen b e g a n to call for "a world conference for Yiddish culture as a result of purely practical rather than demonstrative and declarative goals. We have o u t g r o w n the p e r i o d of m e r e d e m o n s t r a t i o n s a n d theoretical debates. T h e r e is m u c h work to b e done!" (Sh. Niger, 1922). Zhitlovski himself called for "an organization to openly unfurl the flag o n which it will b e clearly written: Yiddish, o u r e t h n o n a t i o n a l language, our only unity a n d freedom . . . a 'Yiddishist' organization with the openly unfurled flag of o u r cultural liberation a n d ethno­ national unity" (1928). O t h e r s repeatedly reinforced a n d r e p e a t e d this view (e.g., L e h r e r 1928, Mark 1968, Zelitsh 1968). As a result, most subsequent major n o n p a r t i s a n or suprapartisan international efforts to organize Yiddish cultural efforts m o r e effectively have viewed themselves as the instrumental heirs of the Tshernovits Con­ ference (e.g., YIKUF-Yidisher kultur farband 1937; Yidisher kultur kongres 1948; Yerushelayemer velt konferents far yidish u n yidisher kultur 1976). Clearly, however, the realities facing Yiddish after World War I were far different from those that Tshernovits assumed. T h e multi-ethnic A u s t r o - H u n g a r i a n m o n a r c h y h a d b e e n split into several smaller states, each jealously protective of its particular e t h n o n a t i o n a l (state-building) language a n d quick to set aside the T r i a n o n and Versailles guarantees to Yiddish (Tenenboym 1957/58).

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T h e former Czarist "Pale of Settlement" was either in the same situa­ tion as the foregoing (insofar as P o l a n d a n d the Baltic states were concerned) or, ultimately, u n d e r even m o r e powerful russificatory control than before (in White Russia a n d in the Ukraine). Despite Bundist grievances, a good p a r t of the spirit of Tshernovits lived for two postwar decades in the Yiddish schools, youth clubs, theatres, and cultural organizations of Poland, Lithuania, a n d Rumania, and, despite C o m m u n i s t attacks, in their regulated c o u n t e r p a r t s in the USSR. However, just p r i o r to the Second World War, the former were economically starved a n d politically b a t t e r e d (Eisenstein 1949, Tartakover 1946), whereas the latter were being discontinued u n d e r duress of russification fears a n d pressures (Choseed 1968). After the Second W o r l d War, Jewish Eastern E u r o p e was n o m o r e . It b e c a m e incumbent on Yiddish devotees in the United States a n d in Israel, i.e., in two locales where Yiddish was originally n o t expected to benefit from the spirit of Tshernovits, to tiefend it, if possible.

Reevaluating the Tshernovits Conference: shadow or substance? Notwithstanding Kazhdan's lingering negative evaluation in 1968, distance has m a d e the h e a r t grow fonder insofar as the majority of c o m m e n t a t o r s is c o n c e r n e d . T h o s e few who initially held that the symbolism of Tshernovits had been substantial, i.e., that it h a d raised Yiddish to the status of an honorific co-symbol, regardless of what its practical shortcomings might have b e e n (for example: Mayzl 1928, Prilutski 1928, Pludermakher 1928), finally carried the day. T h e views that are e n c o u n t e r e d today in Yiddishist circles are very m u c h like those that began to be h e a r d when the first commemorative celebra­ tions in h o n o r of Tshernovits were organized in 1928. (In September 1918 the First World War h a d technically not e n d e d and celebrations were presumably n o t possible.) Yes, Yiddishism is a young movement, but it is not all that poor in traditions. One of the loveliest traditions of Yiddishism is the memory of the Tshernovits Conference. No memoirs, pedantry or arguments can darken the glow of that bright cultural dawn's early light that is known by the name: The Tshernovits Conference of 1908. Pludermakher 1928) Perhaps it was a n d p e r h a p s it wasn't necessary to compromise in con­ nection with the crucial resolution. In either case, n o one was fooled by the compromise. " T h e Tshernovits Conference was r e c o r d e d o n the m o r r o w immediately after the last session as the Yiddishist revolt -

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a n d that is the only way in which the o p p o n e n t s of the Yiddish language could r e g a r d it" (Prilutski 1928), for even to claim H cofunctions alongside of Hebrew/Loshn-koydesh was a devastating rejec­ tion of what these o p p o n e n t s were aiming at. As a result, Tshernovits deserved to b e viewed as "the first mobilization" (Mayzl 1928) o n behalf of Yiddish. M o r e t h a n seventy-five years after Tshernovits, Yiddishist o p i n i o n with respect to it is, if anything, even mellower. Living as they do with the constant if quiet anxiety p r o d u c e d by the continual attrition of Yiddish, Yiddishists have c o m e to view Tshernovits n o t merely as a milestone in the millennial struggle of Yiddish for symbolic recognition, b u t as symbolic of the best that Eastern E u r o p e a n Jewry as a whole achieved a n d can offer to its far-flung progeny today. Tshernovits is viewed increasingly as a b y p r o d u c t of the confluence of the three organized movements in m o d e r n Jewish life: Jewish socialism, Zionism, a n d neo-Orthodoxy. At Tshernovits, representatives of all three recognized the significance of Yiddish. Tshernovits was the b y p r o d u c t of a confluence (and, therefore, it d i s a p p o i n t e d those who w a n t e d it to b e all theirs). It was a m o m e n t a r y confluence of t h r e e disparate forces; it quickly passed, a n d from that day to this, n o one has been able to "put them together again", I n d e e d , distance does m a k e the h e a r t grow fonder. They were three, the convenors of the Tshernovits Conference: the champion of Jewish cultural renaissance and consistent Zionist, Doved Pinski. He came to the land (of Israel) in advanced old age and died here. Khayem Zhitlovski, one of the first Jewish socialists who, after countless reincarnations in search for a solution to the Jewish question, in his old age sought to attach himself to the 'Jewish" Autonomous Regions, Birobidjan. And Nathan Birnbaum, the ideologist of Zionism and nationalism, who, after various geographic and ideological wanderings, after various apostasies and conversions, finally reached the shores of Jewish eternity. He waited for the Messiah all his life and suffered terribly the pangs of His delayed coming . . . He sowed everywhere and other reaped. He gave up this world for the world to come. All three of them served the Jewish people, each in his own way, and, as such, they (and Tshernovits) will remain in our historical memory. (Rosnak 1969). Theoretical Recapituations T h e late n i n e t e e n t h a n d early twentieth century efforts to gain a n d activate intellectual a n d mass s u p p o r t for Yiddish, a n d the Tsherno-

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vits Conference of 1908 in particular, illustrate several of the problems encountered in a particular type of language spread: the spread of a former L into H functions in High Culture (education, literature, scholarship), government, technology, and modern literacy-dependent pursuits more generally. 1. Many of these most active on behalf of advocating, rationalizing and ideologizing this type of language spread will, themselves, have to learn how to use the erstwhile L in H functions, and, indeed, may have to learn the L per se. In this respect the spread of an L into H functions poses similar problems for those who are already literate (and who may, indeed, be the gatekeepers or guardians of literacy), as does the spread of any new vernacular into H functions. Nationalist language-spread movements that are not derived from an intragroup diglossia context (e.g., the promotion of Czech, Slovak, etc., in pre-World War I, or of Catalan, Occitan, Irish, Nynorsk, etc., more recently) also often begin with intelligentsia that do not know or master the vernaculars that they are championing. In the Yiddish case, many intellectuals of the late nineteenth century were not only oriented towards Hehrew/Loshn-koydesh as H for Jewish cultural affairs but toward either German, Russian, or Polish as H for modern purposes. Thus Ls existing within a traditional diglossia setting may face double opposition in seeking to attain H functions. 2. One set of factors hampering the spread of Ls into H functions is their own lack of codification (e.g., an orthography, grammar) and elaboration (in lexicon). However, there is a tension between such corpus planning, on the one hand, and status-planning needs, on the other hand. It is difficult to turn to serious corpus planning while status planning is still so unsettled (or opposed), and it is difficult to succeed at status planning (particularly insofar as attracting ambivalent or negative intellectuals and literacy gatekeepers is concerned) on behalf of an L that is clearly deficient in terms of corpus characteristics that might render it more suitable for H functions. 3. The vicious circle that exists between lack of corpus planning and lack of status planning is most decisively broken if a status shift can be forced (by legal reform, revolution, or disciplined social example). The Tshernovits Conference's gravitation toward the "political (status-planning) issue" was a spontaneous recognition of this fact, so often pedantically overlooked by language technicians and "experts" who are oriented toward the relatively easier corpus-planning task alone.

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4. The very same intragroup and intergroup status and power reward systems that previously led intellectuals to seek and acquire literacy and position through one or more Hs subsequently hinder the spread of Ls into these H functions. Any such language spread would imply a major dislocation or a change in intellectual and econo-political elites and prerogatives. If Yiddish had achieved H intragroup functions in the cultural-intellectual realm, this would have threatened rabbinic/traditional and modern Zionist/Hebraist hegemony in that sphere. In addition, the spread of Yiddish into H functions would not only have meant the displacement of one power/status elite by another but the popularizing/massification/ democratization of intragroup participation and a de-emphasis on elitism as a whole. This too is similar to the dynamics and consequen­ ces of many modern nationalist advocacies of vernaculars, except that the cultural-political opposition faced in the case of Yiddish may have been more variegated insofar as "preferred" language is con­ cerned, since not only Hebrew/Loshn-koydesh but Russian, German, and even Polish were its rivals for H functions throughout the Pale. 5. However, just as modern recognition of Ausbau languages (see note 20 below) derives more from their adoption for nonbelletristic than for belletristic functions, so it is the spread into econo-political functions that is particularly crucial in this century if status planning for erstwhile Ls is to succeed. In connection with Yiddish, only the Bundists seem to have glimpsed this truth before, at, or soon after Tshernovits (subsequently the Jewish communists - many of them ex-Bundists - do so as well, but with quite different purposes and results), and even they spoke of Yiddish more commonly in terms of cultural autonomy. Ultimately, however, their design foresaw a socialist revolution: the complete displacement of religio-bourgeois econo-political control and the recognition of separate but, inter­ related and orchestrated, culturally autonomous populations each with control over its own immediate econo-technical apparatus. Although the political representation of Yiddish-speaking Jews as such (i.e., as a nationality with its own ethnonational [mother] tongue) in the co-territorial parliaments was advocated also by some Labor Zionists, by minor Jewish parties such as the Folkists and the Sejmists, and even by (some) Ultra-Orthodox spokesmen (e.g., those of Agudes Yisroel), only the Bundists had a real economic realign­ ment in mind with education, political, and cultural institutions deriving from and protected by firm Yiddish-speaking proletarian economic control.

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6. The weak representation of Bundists at Tshernovits led to the complete neglect of a consideration of the economic basis of Yiddish as either a or the Jewish ethnonational language and to a complete preoccupation with cultural ideology, cultural symbolism, and cultural rhetoric. As a result there also arose the view that the Conference itself might be an ongoing moving force - either because it would have an executive office for "cultural work" or because it simply had convened and sent forth its resolutions into the world. However, languages are neither saved nor spread by language conferences. Ideology, symbolism, and rhetoric are of indeniable significance in language spread - they are consciously motivating, focusing, and activating - but without a tangible and considerable status-power counterpart they become, under condi­ tions of social change, competitively inoperative in the face of languages that do provide such. They may continue to be inspir­ ational but - particularly in modern times - they cease to be decisive, i.e., they ultimately fail to safeguard even the intimacy of hearth and home from the turmoil of the econo-political arena. The ultimate failure of Tshernovits is that it did not even seek to foster or align itself with an econo-political reality that would seek to protect Yiddish in new H functions. The ultimate tragedy of Yiddish is that, in the political reconsolidation of modern Eastern Europe, its speakers were either too powerless or too mobile. They were the classical expendables of twentieth century Europe and, obviously, no language conference or language movement per se could rectify their tragic dilemma. Unfortunately, few at Tshernovits were suf­ ficiently attuned to broader econo-political realities to recognize that instead of being en route to a new dawn for Yiddish, they stood more basically before the dusk of the Central and Eastern European order of things as it had existed till then. 7. However, it is the delicate interplay between econo-political and ethno-cultural factors that must be grasped in order to understand both success and failure in language spread. Any attempt to pin all on one or another factor alone is more likely to be doctrinaire than accurate. The Yiddish case, because it involves a diglossia situation and multiple possibilities for both L and H functions in the future, is particularly valuable because it makes the simultaneous presence of both sets of factors so crystal clear. Awareness of econo-political factors alone is insufficient for understanding the internal rivalry that arose from Hebrew/Loshn-koydesh or appreciating the fact that the latter was undergoing its own vernacularization and moderniz-

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ation at the very same time that Yiddish was being championed for H functions. On the other hand, no amount of internal ethnocultural insight can explain the allure that German and Russian (and, to a smaller degree, Polish) had for the Jewish bourgeoisie and intel­ ligentsia. Finally, as a capstone to what is already an insuperable burden of opposition to Yiddish, there comes the linguistic relationship between Yiddish and German - the extra burden of all weak Ausbau20 languages - and the cruel compound of moral, esthetic, and intellectual caricature and self-hatred to which that lent itself. After being exposed to such a killing array of internal and external forces for well over a century, is it any wonder that the 1978 Nobel Prize for literature awarded to the Yiddish writer I.B. Singer often elicits only a wry smile in what remains of the modern secularist world of Yiddish?21

Notes 1.

The traditional coexistence of nonvernacular language of high culture (H) and a vernacular of everyday life (L), the former being learned through formal study and the latter in the context of familiar intimacy, was dubbed diglossia by Charles A. Ferguson (Word, 1959, 15, 325-40). Such contexts and their similarity and dissimilarity vis-à-vis other multilingual and multidialectal contexts have been examined by several investigators, among them John H. Gumperz, "Linguistic and social interaction in two communities," American Anthropologist, 1964, 66, no. 6, part 2,137-53, and in my "Bilingualism with and without diglossia; diglossia with and without bilingualism," Journal of Social Issues, 1967, 23, no. 2, 29-38.

2.

Throughout this chapter, the distinction will be adhered to between the traditional amalgam of Hebrew and Aramaic, referred to by Yiddish speakers as Loshn-koydesh (Language of Holiness) and Modern Hebrew, as developed in Palestine/Israel during the past century as a language of all of the functions required by a modern econo-political establishment. Where the distinction between Hebrew and Loshn-koydesh is not clear or is not intended, they will be referred to jointly. For a full treatment of each of these four substantively distinct but also interacting views of Yiddish, see "The Sociology of Yiddish: A Foreword" in Fishman 1981a. Halakhic, an adjective derived from halakha (Yiddish. halokhe), refers to the entire body of Jewish law (Biblical, Talmudic, and post-Talmudic) and subsequent legal codes amending, modifying, or interpreting traditional precepts under rabbinic authority.

3.

4.

5.

Maskilic, an adjective derived from haskala (Yiddish: haskole), an eighteenthand nineteenth-century movement among Central and Eastern European

278

YIDDISH: TURNING TO LIFE Jews, associated in Germany with the leadership of Moses Mendelssohn (1729-1786), designed to make Jews and Judaism more modern and cos­ mopolitan in character by promoting knowledge of and contributions to the secular arts and sciences and by encouraging adoption of the dress, customs, economic practices, educational programs, political processes and languages of the dominant non-Jewish co-territorial populations. For observations as to differences between the haskole in Central and Eastern Europe, see D.E. Fishman 1985.

6.

Both Zionists and socialists increasingly shifted from the second to the third positive view at or around the turn of the century. In 1889 the Zionist leader Nokhem Sokolov defended Yiddish merely as a necessary vehicle of mass agitation and propaganda (Roznak 1969), and even Herzl, who knew no Yiddish, founded a weekly (Di velt) in 1900 in order to reach the Eastern European masses. Similarly, socialist spokesmen such as Arkadi Kremer merely advocated the use of Yiddish in order to attain their mass educational purposes in 1893 and organized zhargonishe komitetu (Yiddish-speaking committees) in order to foster literacy and to spread socialist publications among Jews in the Czarist empire. Soon, however, a new (the third) tune began to be heard. In 1902 the Zionist editor Lurye (co-editor with Ravnitski of the well-known periodical Der yid) wrote that Yiddish must not only be considered as a means of propaganda but as "an ethno-national-cultural possession which must be developed to play the role of our second ethnonational language (Roznak 1969)." In 1905 the Bund adopted its declaration on behalf of the Jewish ethno-national-cultural autonomy with Yiddish as the language of the Jewish proletariat and of the intellectuals that serve and lead that proletariat. Scholarly literary organizations in the field of Yiddish began to arise soon thereafter: in 1908, The Yiddish Literary Organization (St. Petersburg); in 1909, The Yiddish Historical-Ethnographic Organization (St. Petersburg); and also in 1908, The Musical-Dramatic Organization (Vilna).

7.

Birnbaum's advocacy of Yiddish deserves special mention and, indeed, further investigation in connection with the topic of re-ethnification of elites. Such re-ethnification and accompanying re-linguification is a common process in the early stages of very many modern ethnicity movements (see Fishman 1972a) and exemplifies both the proto-elitist return to (or selection of) roots (often after failure to transethnify "upwardly" in accord with earlier aspirations), as well as the masses' groping toward mobilization under exemplary leadership. However, modern ethnicity movements are essentially attempts to achieve modernization, utilizing "primordial" identificational metaphors and emotional attachments for this purpose. Thus, they are not really "return" movements (i.e. not really nativizational or past-oriented efforts). They exploit or mime the past rather than cleave to it. Partially transethnified elites can uniquely serve such movements because of their own double exposure. Birnbaum is therefore exceptional in that he ultimately rejects his secularized, Germanized, Europeanized milieu on behalf of a "genuine return" to relatively unmodernized Orthodoxy. By the second decade of this century he had rejected Jewish modernization (in the guise of socialism, Zionism, and diaspora nationalism, all of which he had once charted) as hedonistic and as endangering Jewish (and possibly world)

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survival. There is about the late Birnbaum a Spenglerian aura foretelling the "decline of the West" and cautioning Jews that their salvation (and the world's) would come only via complete immersion in traditional beliefs, values, and practices (Birnbaum 1918; 1946). He ultimately viewed Yiddish as a contribution toward that goal, rejecting its use for modern, hedonistic purposes such as those which he himself had earlier espoused both immediately before and after the Tshernovits Language Conference of 1908. This rare combination of complete Orthodoxy and uncompromising defense of Yiddish within an Orthodox framework has made Birnbaum into something of a curiosity for both religious and secular commentators. Such genuine returners to roots also exists in the context of other modernization movements (for example, in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Greek, Arabic, Slavophile, and Sanskrit contexts) and represents a vastly overlooked subclass within the study of ethnicity movements. Even in their case it would be mistaken to consider them as no more than "spikes in the wheels of progress", merely because they frequently represent an attempt to attain modernization without Westernization. A contrastive study of Birnbaum and other such "genuine returners" would be most valuable for understanding this subclass as well as the more major group of "metaphorical returners". Note, however, that Birnbaum remained a committed advocate of Yiddish (although not in any functions that would replace Loshn-koydesh) even when he embraced Ultra-Orthodoxy, whereas "true returners" in other cases embraced their respective indigenized classic tongues. To revive Hebrew was long considered anti-traditional and was not possible except in speech networks that were completely outside the traditional framework ideologically, behaviorally (in terms of daily routine), and even geographically. The dubious Jewish "assets" of complete dislocation and deracination were denied the unsuccessful advocates of Sanskrit and Classical Greek, Arabic or Irish. 8.

Between the two World Wars Tshernovits was in Rumania. At the time of the Language Conference, and ever since the Austrian occupation in 1774 (after defeating the Ottoman Turkish occupants), it was in a section of the AustroHungarian monarchy known as Bukovina (until 1918, administratively a part of Galicia, with which Bukovina remained closely connected as far as "Jewish geography" was concerned).

9.

Territorialism acknowledged the need for planned Jewish resettlement in an internationally recognized and protected Jewish territory, but did not consider Palestine to be the only or the most desirable location for such resettlement in view of the conflicting claims and geopolitical perils associated with it. Various territorial concentrations in Eastern Europe itself, in Africa (Angola, Cirnaica, Uganda), in South America (Surinam), in North America (Kansas-Nebraska), in Australia (Kimberly Region) and elsewhere have been advocated since the latter part of the nineteenth century. At one point, Herzl himself was not convinced that a homeland in Palestine and only in Palestine should be adamantly pursued and was willing to consider a "way-station" elsewhere. Most territorialists split with the Zionist movement and set up an organization of their own in 1905, when the Seventh Zionist Congress rejected an offer by the British government to create an autonomous Jewish settlement in Uganda.

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10.

Corpus planning is one of the two major branches of language planning: the authoritative allocation of resources (attention, funds, manpower, negative and positive sanctions) to language. Corpus planning entails modifying, enriching or standardizing the language per se, often through publishing and implementing orthographies, nomenclatures, spellers, grammars, style manuals, etc. Its counterpart is status planning, i.e., attempts to require use of a language for particular functions: education, law, government, mass media, etc. Corpus planning is frequently engaged in by language academies, commissions, or boards. Status planning requires governmental or other power-related decision-making and sanctions-disbursing bodies: political, religious, ethnocultural or economic. The two processes must be conducted in concert if they are to succeed and take hold across a broad spectrum of uses and users. Yiddish has constantly suffered due to deficiencies in the status-planning realm and, as a result, its corpus-planning successes are also limited, although several can be cited (Schaechter 1961). For a detailed empirical and theoretical review of language planning, see Rubin, et al. 1977).

11.

Vays reminisces as follows (1937, i.e., nearly thirty years after the Conference): As is well known, Yiddish was not recognized in Austria as a language, just as the Jewish people was not recognized as such. At the university, e.g., it was necessary to fill out a rubric "nationality" and no Jew was permitted to write in "Jew". The nationalistoriented Jewish students, not wanting to cripple the statistical distribution in favor of the ruling nationality to the detriment of the minority nationalities, sought various ways of forcing the authorities to recognize the Jewish nationality. Some wrote the name of a nationality that happened to occur to them. There was no lack of entries of "Hottentot" mother tongue and "Malay" nationality. This context for the Conference led the Yiddish Sotsyal demokrat of Cracow to greet the Conference as follows: "The significance of the Conference is augmented by the fact that it takes place in Austria where Yiddish is closest to official recognition" (Kisman 1958). Tshernovits itself also impressed the delegates and guests from abroad (primarily from the Czarist Empire) not only with its ethnic heterogeneity but with its "air of relative democracy, where at every step one could feel European culture" (Kisman 1958). For Eastern European Jewry the late nineteenth and early twentieth century Austro-Hungarian monarchy represented Western-style democracy plus ethno-national-cultural rights, both of which were still sadly lacking in the Czarist Empire and both of which were fundamental to the Conference's goals, although neither was explicitly referred to at the Conference itself.

12.

The Bund (full name: Jewish Workers Bund [Alliance] of Russia, Lithuania and Poland) was organized in Vilna in 1897, the same year as the first Zionist Congress was held in Basel. Always socialist, it adopted a Jewish culturalautonomist, Yiddish-oriented platform in 1905, as a result of which it clashed with Lenin, Trotsky, and other early Bolshevik leaders. The Bund became the mainstay of secular Yiddish educational, literary, and cultural efforts in interwar Poland. For further details and an entree to a huge bibliography, see Mendelsohn 1970 and Kligsberg 1974.

13.

The "esthetic point of view" is dealt with at length by Miron (1973). Although

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not unknown in connection with other supposedly inelegant vernaculars during the period of struggle to legitimize them for H functions, the vituperation heaped upon Yiddish in terms of its claimed esthetic shortcomings clearly seems to border on the hysterical. Loathsome, ugly, stunted, crippled, mangled, hunchbacked, gibberish were commonplace epithets. "Away with dirt, with spiderwebs, with zhargon and all other kinds of garbage! We call for a broom! and whom the broom of satire will not help, him will we honor with the stick of wrath! Quem medicamenta non sanant, ferrum et ingis sanant!" (Jutrzenka, 1862, no. 50, 428). Note however that the esthetic metaphor (e.g., the German Jewish historian Graetz refused to "dirty his pen" with Yiddish or to have his works translated into that "foul tongue"), interesting though it may be in and of itself, must not obscure from analysis more basic, social, cultural and political goals and loyalties of those that express them. The Yiddish proverb "nisht dos is lib vos iz sheyn, nor dos is sheyn vos iz lib" (We do not love that which is lovely, rather we consider lovely that which we love) applies fully here. By the time of Tshernovits the full force of invective had begun to pass (although it can be encountered in Israel and elsewhere to this very day; see, e.g., Fishman and Fishman 1978) and the countertide of positive hyperbole had begun to rise, assigning to Yiddish not only beauty but virtue, subtlety, honesty, compassion, intimacy and boundless depth. 14.

15.

16.

While it is certainly inaccurate to consider Mizes' comments as "the first scientific paper in Yiddish on Yiddish", it is not easy to say whose work does deserve to be so characterized, primarily because of changing standards as to what is and is not scientific. One of my favourites is Y.M. Lifshits' Yiddishrusisher verterbukh (Yiddish-Russian Dictionary), Zhitomir, Bakst, 1876, and his introduction thereto, both of which remain quite admirable pieces of scholarship to this very day. Other candidates for this honorific status abound, several of considerably earlier vintage. Somewhat positive Zionist stances toward exilic Jewish vernaculars had surfaced from time to time well before Tshernovits. Reference is made here not merely to utilizing such vernaculars for immediate education/indoctrinational purposes, such usage being acceptable to almost the entire Zionist spectrum, but to allocating intimacy-related and even literacy-related functions to them, both in the diaspora and (even) in Erets Yisroel on a relatively permanent basis. Herzl himself (in his diary, 1885), suggests a parallel with Switzerland, such that Hebrew, Yiddish, and Judesmo (Judeo-Spanish) would be recognized. Except in Labor Zionist circles such views were very much in the minority, remained little developed or concretized, but yet provided the basis for claims at Tshernovits that since many Zionists/Hebraists had been careful not to reject Yiddish, so Socialists/Yiddishists should do nothing to reject Hehrew/Loshn-koydesh . Interestingly enough, the Balfour Declaration, issued by the British government on November 2, 1917, favoring "the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jews, but without prejudice to the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities" also used the indefinite 'a' rather than the definite article 'the' as a compromise between opposite extreme views in the Foreign Ministry.

282 17. 18.

19.

20.

21.

YIDDISH: TURNING TO LIFE Several of the references and citations in this section are originally found in Rothstein 1977. Just as Yiddish books commonly carried Loshn-koydesh titles until rather late in the nineteenth century, so Yiddish periodicals commonly bore either Loshnkoydesh or German titles even into the present century. The diglossic implications are manifold even at an unconscious level. The people of "The Book" was (and in the more unreconstructed Orthodox circles still is) accustomed to encounter serious Η-level writing (and particularly such on intragroup concerns) in Loshn-koydesh. Thus, a Hebrew title for a Yiddish book is, in part, a visual habit, in part a cultural signal, and in part a disguise (vis-àvis rabbinic criticism and other possibly hostile authorities). Similarly, a relatively ephemeral periodical dealing with the wide world of modern secular events is titled in German for much the same reasons. Neither forverts nor yidishes nor tageblat were part of commonly spoken Eastern European Yiddish by well before the nineteenth century. Nevertheless these were perfectly acceptable components of a journalistic title of those times, particularly in the United States. Hasidism: a Jewish movement founded in Poland in the eighteenth century by Rabbi Yisroel bal-shem-tov and characterized by its emphasis on mysticism, spontaneous prayer, religious zeal and joy. The various hasidic leaders or masters (singular: rébe; plural: rebéyem, as distinguished from rov, rabo'nem among non-Hasidic rabbis) typically instructed their followers through tales. Yiddish was, therefore, their crucial medium and their tales became an early major component of popular Yiddish publishing (many also being published first, simultaneously or soon thereafter - in Loshn-koydesh). Although much opposed by most rabbinic authorities for almost two centuries (the latter and their followers being dubbed misnagdem, i.e., opponents of the hasidim), hasidism finally became generally accepted as an equally valid version of Jewish Orthodoxy and is a vibrant (and the more numerous) branch thereof, as well as a major (but largely unideologized) source of support for Yiddish, to this day. Ausbau languages are those that are so similar in grammar and lexicon to other, stronger, previously recognized languages that their own language authorities often attempt to maximize the differences between themselves and their "Big Brothers" by multiplying or magnifying them through adopting or creating distinctive paradigms for neologisms, word order and grammar, particularly in their written forms. Thus, Ausbau languages are "languages by effort", i.e., they are consciously built away ( = German ausbauen) from other, more powerful and basically similar languages, so as not to be considered "mere dialects" of the latter, but rather, to be viewed as obviously distinctive languages in their own right. The Ausbau process is responsible for much of the difference between Landsmal/Nynorsk and Bokmal, Hindi and Urdu, Macedonian and Bulgarian, Moldavian and Rumanian, Belorussian and Russian. For the particular difficulties faced in finding, creating and maintaining Ausbau differences, including examples from the Yiddish versus German arena, see Wexler 1974. The original formulator of the term Ausbau (and of its contrast: Abstand) is H. Kloss 1967). Some additional useful secondary sources concerning the Tshernovits

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Language Conference are Goldsmith (1977), Passow (1971), and Lerner (1957). A literally endless list of other journal articles (pre-1928 but primarily post-1928, this being the date of Yivo's twentieth anniversary volume [Anonymous 1931]) remains to be exhaustively catalogued. The only treatment of the Hebraist reaction to the Conference is my preliminary study Der hebreyisher opruf af der tshernovitser konferents. (See next chapter.)

The Hebrew response to the Tshernovits Conference Der hebreyisher opruf af der tshernovitser konferents There were both positive and negative responses to the pro-Yiddish Tshernovits Conference of 1908. Both types of responses disregarded Ahad Ha'am's recommendation that the best thing would be to ignore the conference, since any comment would give it further publicity. The positive responses recognized the huge contribution that Yiddish was making to the development of a modern, secular, nationalist Jewish culture. The negative responses considered Yiddish to be an unworthy and unsuitable carrier of the many-thousand-year-old Jewish cultural and philosophical tradition, one that would rob Jews of their classical status and demote them to the mere status of other small nationalities with vernaculars that were distinctly minor on the world scene. Perets came under particular attack for joining with the pro-Yiddish forces and a subsequent world congress on behalf of Hebrew was organized (Berlin 1909), in part in order to counteract the advantages that the Tshernovitser Conference had bestowed upon Yiddish.

Reprinted with permission from Afn Shvel 271,1988. 8-13.

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ν

Stock-Taking: Where are we now?

Starting with the future

No other language, I think, has been so plagued by doubts and con­ cerns for its future as has Yiddish. An exhaustive catalog of the past century's prognostications as to its immediate demise and of the con­ solations that such was by no means the case (or that a brilliant future was just around the corner and could be achieved by one or another simple route) would fill a book many times the size of this one. Such prognostications of doom, being most particularly and peculiarly a product of the reasoning and reasonable modernliberal-secular mind, have sought a reasonable explanation for the past and present life of an anomalous language and, accordingly, have attempted to foretell its future in more rational terms. If there is anything that the modern-liberal-secular mind abhors, it is "circumstances contrary to the laws of nature (as these are understood by those who are the self-appointed, self-anointed and quite obvious guardians of such laws)" and Yiddish has seemed to be exactly the kind of logical anomaly that should not have existed to begin with and that, therefore, could not possibly persist into the future. How could a product of ghettos, expulsions and persecution possibly become the language of democracy, equality and modernity within the Jewish fold? How could a language of obscurantism ever serve the purposes of enlightenment? How could a language of the weak and defenseless remain alive in the world of "dog eat dog"? How could a language without a state of its own possibly survive in a world in which the state is the major intersocietally recognized form of self-aggrandizement. Above all, in an era of the approaching (if not the already attained) "global village" and the integration of cultures and people, how could a lowly fusion language be so perverse as to be a spike in the spokes of progress, thereby keeping Jews from flowing into the mainstream of international world culture? The "yea sayers" vis-à-vis Yiddish have been every bit as intern-

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ally consistent (as closed-minded) as the "nay sayers". If, as the neotraditionalist Jewish philosopher Simon Rawidowicz had pointed out, Jews were an eternally living "ever dying" people, could Yiddish be anything other than its eternally living ever-dying language? Pious advocates of Yiddish were not slow to point out that the same mysterious Providence (or, as secular Yiddishists would have it, providential elan vital) that preserved the one, surely preserved the other as well; and as it had done in the past so would it continue to do in the future! Did not Jewish exceptionality require a vernacular of its own and was not such a vernacular a constant presence throughout Jewish history and, therefore, a sine qua non of the Jewish future, particularly for the future ofJews living "among the nations"? Would not such a vernacular need to be created, even invented, in order to safeguard the God-given cultural boundaries and distinctions between Jews and non-Jews, if Yiddish were to disappear? Was it not incumbent, therefore, to save Yiddish and defend it, just as one struggles to save and defend other "reflections of sanctity" during a fire on the Sabbath, even if they are not veritable "objects of sanctity" themselves? Secular Yiddishists were not slow to add to the above catalog of virtues and moral imperatives. Did not Jews deserve their own language and culture as much as any other people? Had they not demonstrated over and over again across the milennia that their culture contributed brilliantly to world culture, to the progress and fraternity of all mankind, to social justice within and between nations and hadn't Yiddish itself done so handsomely in modern times? Wasn't the fostering of Yiddish incumbent upon all those who fought for social justice and wouldn't turning one's back on it be tantamount to treason, to betrayal, vis-à-vis the vision of a modern, secular Jewry that defined itself culturally and continuously with the best of its past, without becoming lost in the thickets of rabbinic sophistry and separatism or statist militarism and separatism? Wasn't linguistic nationalism, extracting the quintessence of Jewish folk-wit and wisdom across the centuries, both the hallmark of modern peoplehood, on the one hand, and more permissive of the intercultural sharing of modern life-styles and thought-styles on the other? Wasn't the continuing, ongoing wealth of Yiddish literary creativity in all genres a sign of life, of hope, of promise, of as yet unplumbed depth and strength? Clearly, both history and the contemporary scene are projective devices and their reading is substantially perspectival, revealing

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more about the observer than about the observed. A glance at Yiddish today also reveals this same "mixed bag" of bright colours and dark ones, pluses and minuses, and, therefore, significant diversity of interpretation as to the "true state of affairs". Yiddish in Israel The pre- and post World War II secular and "Modern Orthodox" Israeli abandonment (and, even worse, throttling) of Yiddish seems to have run its course. Although "the way back" is just at its very beginning, a few noteworthy steps have already been taken: the introduction of Yiddish into several dozen (primarily secular) high schools and almost all universities, the proliferation of secular Yiddish culture clubs (including a club for young, native-born aficionados) throughout the country - many enjoying a modicum of local municipal funding, the new fondness in modern secular circles for Yiddish expressions, songs, literary translations, the wider interest in Yiddish theatre (leading Habimah to give performances in Yiddish on special occasions), etc. Noteworthy though they may be and totally unexpected though they were even a generation ago, none of them will result in the secular revernacularization of the language. Hebrew is unassailable in the role of national symbol, inter-tribal unifier and oral as well as written lingua franca. Nevertheless, the new fondness for Yiddish cannot be denied, whether this be the result of a better appreciation of Ashkenazi heroism under the Nazi genocidai yoke (an appreciation bolstered by a new realization of Israeli powerlessness to solve the Arab threat, notwithstanding the State and its military arm) or a result of a growing identification with the libertarian and creative spirit of preWar Jewish-secular Eastern Europe (which, for all its problems, was at least "European", rather than meanly and provincially religious, on the one hand, or "Levantine", on the other). It is hard to forsee much more coming out of the current "Yiddish revival" in Israel insofar as its secular world is concerned, the substantially Sefardi and other non-Ashkenazi presence in that world being only one of the limiting factors. Nevertheless, even this level of revification is an accomplishment and one that no other post-exilic Jewish language there can even begin to approximate. The religious scene in Israel holds out both more promise as well as more stigma for Yiddish, The severe tensions between the

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secular and the ultra-religious sectors (most Judaism in Israel is not only Orthodox but Ultra-Orthodox rather than Modern- or NeoOrthodox), tensions which are part of political, educational, recreational, occupational and all other aspects of everyday Israeli life, constantly reinforce the association of Yiddish with UltraOrthodoxy. As much as this is a serious limitation on the appeal of Yiddish for the secular sector, it is also a stereotype that has within it both a kernel of truth and a substantial exaggeration. The exaggeration pertains to the fact that almost the entire religious world has now become bilingual, having mastered Modern Israeli Hebrew (and often English as well). The kernel of truth is that the Ashkenazi portion of that world (and a significant segment of the non-Ashkenazi portion as well) is Yiddish speaking and uses the latter language for purposes of intra-communal study, business and family life. As Ultra-Orthodox families, typically large families with six or more children, burst out of the confines of the neighborhoods traditionally associated with their presence and spread throughout Greater Jerusalem they bring Yiddish into street life, shopping, synagogue life and educational institutions, that is, into public use, far beyond what Jewish Jerusalemites had expected. Yiddish has become a factor in the unofficial functioning of Jerusalem, in its infrastructure, in new, growing and still proliferating UltraOrthodox neighborhoods and "pockets" and, given the current demographic prospects, this process is likely to continue for the foreseeable future (even if official sources are loath to recognize or admit it). This spread of Yiddish does not reach out to or influence other Israelis, in fact it may even alienate others, but it is an undeniable "growing edge" and should be mentioned in any attempt to come to grips with current social reality of the language.

Yiddish in the Soviet Union after glasnost and perestroika The recent "opening up" of the Soviet Union to popular and democratic impulses has not yet brought with it many far-flung or fundamental changes on the Jewish scene there, but some changes and tendencies are really obvious. In connection with Yiddish, it is clear that it has escaped from the institutional straight-jacket of the formerly limited number of permissible journals, organizations and institutions and has entered and flowed into the domain of voluntary efforts. Yiddish culture clubs, courses, choruses, dramatic

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circles and publications have sprung up both within the pre-War borders of the USSR as well as (in even larger numbers) in the areas newly annexed after that War. There has been a previously unprecedented level of communication between these efforts and entities, both within the Soviet Union per se as well as with their counterparts outside, in the Western, democratic-capitalist world. Material and programmatic assistance has been requested from the latter and has begun to be organized and provided. This is, of course, a largely unexpected phenomenon, even one undreamed of just a few years ago, and it is not yet certain how stable or long-lasting it will be, precisely because, on the one hand, it is not yet clear how stable or long-lasting glasnost and perestroika themselves will be, and on the other hand, it is not clear whether the image of "Yiddish as contaminated by communist association and subservience" can be set aside, and, even if so, whether it can find an accommodation with the recent positive image of Hebrew as associated with Israeli independence and Refusenik resistance. Given the three generations of Jews that have been denied their Yiddish roots, it is difficult, at best, to foresee a large-scale revernacularization of the language in the USSR. Most probably, it will attain only a more vibrant organizational presence as a co-language of Jewish cultural expression, creativity and entertainment, spheres which fall short of the intergenerational transmission nexus (the family - neighborhood - community) of language in everyday life. The absence of a strong, Yiddish speaking Ultra-Orthodox sector in the Soviet Union implies that this avenue of traditional consolidation and demographic growth found in the USA and Israel is missing there. However, the fact that the secular sector cannot be expected to attain revernacularization there, except in clearly exceptional individual and limited social circles, does not mean that it will have no visibility and no contribution to make on the Soviet scene, if, of course, it is permitted to do so. Yiddish in the USA, secular and religious We have already devoted considerable attention to the USA, in Part II, above. All that needs to be added here is that the Ultra-Orthodox world that we have referred to so many times, precisely because it is so generally ignored by modern, secular, liberal observers who denigrate it, is not all of one cloth. It can be expected that its more

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modern sector (the left-wing of Agudes Yisroel, so to speak) will experience considerable difficulty in the future in connection with continuing the elementary-school practice that has grown up during the past generation of translating scriptural Loshn-koydesh texts into Yiddish (as is traditional) before finally retranslating them into English. There are murmurings about "teaching Yiddish as a language rather than as part of the khumesh (Pentateuch) or Talmud lesson". However, this is merely a temporary face-saving withdrawal. The same unfamiliarity with Yiddish which makes it so difficult to retain it as a language of translation also makes it relatively useless as a mere language. This issue has not yet touched the mainstream of Ultra-Orthodoxy and the future of Yiddish in that regard depends on the extent to which this issue will be extraneous there because of the continued sealed-off nature of that mainstream from AngloAmerican experiences in the home - neighborhood - community realm. On the rumored death of other people's verities (God, modernity, Yiddish) How easy it is to kill in one's self any awareness of or openness to other people's verities. Yiddish is truly dead in the lives of many Jews. On the other hand, that is not the same as the language itself being dead, just because others have become dead to it. Yiddish undeniably still has a lot to give, in terms of warmth, wisdom and vitality, to those that are open to it. As with all else in Judaism (and in culture more generally), the life of Yiddish will continue at many levels, in different intensities and with different forms of expression. Those who will remain open to it will find in it much that they cannot obtain elsewhere, and, as a result of this openness, they will find something that others do not have. It may not be vital to their lives, but it will be a very enriching "extra", a worthy companion to all the other general and Jewish cultural treasures to which they are simultaneously open. In that sense, Yiddish has reached the stage of "eternal life", a stage that characterizes many other Jewish verities as well. The anger of those who have been expecting, proclaiming and hastening the "final solution" of Yiddish is easily understood. Their prediction has been made so often and over such a considerable period of time, that they smugly assumed that they were destined to

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be right sooner or later. When they now note new monolingual speakers of Yiddish in Ultra-Orthodox circles increasing so rapidly in number as to cause the Office of Education to alert the New York City Board of Education of the "problem,", the "grave-diggers" are not merely disappointed but alarmed. Their alarm increases as they notice Yiddish theatre, which successfully transitioned from the Lower East Side to Off-Broadway a generation ago and which is now succeeding on Broadway proper, entirely presented by actors in their twenties and thirties. They are enraged. Their rage is furthered when Yiddish culture organizations receive funding from the Jewish philanthropic kitty and when translations from the Yiddish are among the best Jewish books of the year. They have nothing but scorn for these signs of life and nothing but crocodile tears for the "prolonged death agony" of Yiddish. Their alarm, rage and scorn are not unlike those of all others who are chagrined to find their pet theories, boastful self-concepts and inflated egos punctured and disconfirmed. If there is a differ­ ence between them and the generality of those caught in a hoax or in a vulgar act, it is that they have sinned against something defenseless and a byproduct of their own patrimony (and, therefore, all the more deserving of their special appreciation and sensitivity) to boot. But the young, indigenous (i.e., non-immigrant) speakers and defenders of Yiddish today (whether in the USA, Israel or the USSR) need not devote much time to the snickers of the few remaining "gravediggers ". The agenda of Yiddish has been changed. No matter what the difficulties ahead may be, it has turned to life.

The sociology of Yiddish after the holocaust: status, needs and possibilities

A rather substantial amount of sociological-sociolinguistic research has already been done with respect to Yiddish-using (speaking, writ­ ing, understanding or even mother-tongue claiming) populations. Indeed, that which has already been done is sufficient in quantity and in quality for the sociology of Yiddish to appear as a recogniz­ able field of study. However its greatest contribution and its soundest development will come when it can advance our under­ standing of topics of general theoretical interest. The underlying purposes of this chapter are therefore twofold: to assemble the bib­ liography with respect to what has been done to date in connection with the post-holocaust sociology of Yiddish, and to point to some of the most promising theoretical issues for future research. The Max Weinreich heritage For over a third of a century Max Weinreich pointed to various topics of general sociolinguistic interest that could more efficiently be studied through Yiddish materials than through data drawn from other language communities (see, e.g., Weinreich 1937, 1973), and sought to show that such research on Yiddish would be of more than routine interest to the language sciences as a whole. Weinreich also concentrated the combined sophistication of the language sciences on the field of Yiddish per se and, particularly in his magnum opus Di geshikhte fun der yidisher shprakh (1973), provided an unsurpassable example of how the particular field could be enriched by and in turn enrich the general: the contributor (Yiddish) could benefit from contributions from the language sciences generally, and, as a result, make even further noteworthy contributions to them. The present

Reprinted from The Field of Yiddish IV, Martin I. Herzog (ed.). Philadelphia: ISHI, 1980. 478-498.

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review is an attempt to expand upon this approach, to indicate how research on Yiddish can be guided by general theory and how it might answer certain standing questions. However, I would like to concentrate on sociological-sociolinguistic theory, rather than on the sociohistorical or the linguistic-sociolinguistic issues that interested Weinreich most. I will therefore discuss what the status quo and goals of Yiddish sociology are in such a way as to be most responsive to Max Weinreich's views mentioned above. Perspective on the sociology of Yiddish Most students come to the sociology of Yiddish with a very restricted view of the uses and users of the language. Their personal intellectual and emotional experiences with Yiddish, not to mention partisan bias (positive or negative) have given them a distorted view of what situations Yiddish is used in and who uses it; and in most cases they suffer from a simple lack of opportunity to note or to study the true variety of uses and users that exists. Stewarťs (1968) ordered dimensions of language evaluations (standardization, autonomy, historicity and vitality), when applied to varieties of Yiddish only (rather than to a variety of languages, as one would normally do), enable the student to realize that what some consider to be a standard language, others take as a mere vernacular or dialect. However, these dimensions are of greater use than just show­ ing students the synchronic as well as the diachronic variability of Yiddish (standardization and autonomy being later stages of all sociolinguistic development than either the sense of vitality or historicity); they can themselves be used as guides to research. How do different (Jewish and non-Jewish) samples rate Yiddish today on these dimensions? Do these dimensions reveal an orderly progres­ sion in Yiddish-speaking children's sociocognitive development (e.g., among Hasidic or other Ultra-Orthodox children today)? Can these dimensions be utilized (as is? with additions/deletions?) to differen­ tiate the various ideological positions in regard to Yiddish, e.g., those expressed at the 1908 Tshernovits Language Conference (Rothstein 1977)? Thus far Stewarťs dimensions have been much cited but they have not been tested, refined, revised or even extensively utilized in empirical research. The field of Yiddish could benefit from such research, and this in turn would contribute to general sociolinguistic theory. Since only published (or forthcoming) works will be cited in

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this review I can merely note that on two occasions I have convinced students to do empirical research using Stewart's dimensions within a Yiddish or Hebrew sociolinguistic context, and that interesting results were obtained both times, both for the particular languages and for the general field of sociolinguistics. Suffice it to say that in the real world Stewart's dimensions can arrange themselves in theoretically unexpected ways. Yiddish in small-group interaction: units and parameters The first problem that students must face in dealing with the sociology of Yiddish is that of establishing the units and parameters (dimensions) in terms of which language use is to be analyzed. It has always been my preference to find such basic units at the smallgroup, face-to-face level and to build upon them for higher levels of analysis (community, region, nation). The initial goal is to establish units and dimensions by means of which it can be made clear that the same interlocutors do not speak (write) to each other in the same way on all occasions. Several systematic and parsimonious accounts of "ways" and "occasions" have been developed within the sociology of language (for four such, namely those of Labov, Erwin-Tripp, Grimshaw and Fishman, see Fishman 1971) and the sociology of Yiddish could utilize and refine any one of them. Thus far empirical work in this connection has been reported only by Herman (1968), who indicates that Yiddish in Israel is utilized much more frequently in private than in public interactions and in emotional rather than in task-oriented situations (English too has been shown to be subject to the same constraints in Israel, although to a lesser degree; see Rosenbaum et al. 1977). All in all, far too little empirical research on the very basic notion of sociolinguistic repertoire has been done for Yiddish. This is highly regrettable because it is in this area, rather than in connection with most of those that follow, that the foundations of the entire sociolingistic enterprise are being and will be laid. Weinreich's work itself is replete with examples of the sociolinguistic repertoire among users of Yiddish (usually, Yiddish plus other languages), both in Eastern Europe and in the USA. However, examples and empirical demonstrations are not one and the same, certainly not insofar as the theoretical refinement of units and parameters is concerned.

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Whatever the basic model followed, the usual finding is that variability in "ways" across "occasions" is rather less than complete when interlocutors are kept constant (although their status-role relations with each other may nevertheless vary). For example, even when "occasions" are maximally dissimilar and when the "ways" involve maximally dissimilar languages, the transition from one to the other is, nevertheless, usually less than complete. To some extent this may be a reflection of a pervasive familiarity that serves to narrow the social distance between "occasions" for interlocutors who speak or write Yiddish to each other at least on some occasions. To some extent, however, this may also reflect a basic tendency for varieties within a common repertoire to share features (that is, to minimize the number of separate features, this being a reflection of a tendency within the language apparatus per se), which the pervasive familiarity syndrome within Ashkenaz (within all Jewry? within all self-perceived minorities?) merely intensifies. At any rate, and particularly if we are concerned with intra-Yiddish variation across a range of occasions from extremely informal to extremely formal, the result is tension between the need to make varieties vividly so that they can be recognizably different for different occasions, and the tendency to keep the differences between them minimal, particularly in view of the pervasive familiarity which is always present between Yiddish users. The resulting tension is not unknown in other speech communities (see e.g., Ma and Herasimchuck 1971), but it is one that certainly could be clarified with wide-reaching implications from within the field of Yiddish. My own observations among "educated" speakers of Yiddish whose intimacy-variety is broadly Southern (Bessarabian, Podolian), is that transitions to increased formality are marked by proportionally more realizations of a for  (tate/tote, mame/mome, kalt/ kolt), of  for i (puteripiter, muter/miter, shevues/shevies), of initial h for # (halb/#olb,hamer/#emer, heys/#eys) and of ay for a (zayn/zan, mayn/man, vayb/vab). On the other hand, no such transitions seem to occur (or if they do, at a far lower rate of realization) either for olu (zog/zug, foter/futer, montik/muntik) or for e/ey (lebmâeybm, teg/teyg, ze/zey). Regardless of the underlying explanatory approach to phenomena of this type, it would seem to be insufficient to posit that the first series consists of "markers" (stereotypes) whereas the second consists merely of "variables", precisely because the speakers in question (as well as their interlocutors) are often as aware of the latter as of the former in any focused discussion of the issue. Indeed, variation within

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the latter series is considered affectatious and unnatural, whereas variation within the former is capable of positive interpretation (cultured, courteous, etc.). Similar contributions remain to be made with respect to the repertoire of occasions, particularly since their ethnographic exploration (i.e., their explication as viewed from within) is still in its infancy in the general field and entirely absent in the particular area of Yiddish sociolinguistics. What kinds of occasions will bring about what kinds of degrees of transition in the two series suggested above? The answer to this question would be stimulating indeed. Yiddish usage across social strata and sectors As much as the preceding topic deals with the repertoire range realized by the same interlocutors (normally with those among whom intimacy relations are most clearly recognized, i.e., within closed networks), then this topic deals with the repertoire range that is realized across the full gamut οf different interlocutors with whom Yiddish is utilized (i.e., within open networks as well). As a result, this topic often requires that greater attention be paid to variation between Yiddish and other languages (rather than or in addition to the focus on intra-Yiddish variation emphasized above). Basically, however, the two topics are closely related, with the range between intimate occasions (non-status stressing, personal interactions, closed networks in home and neighborhood domains) and formal occasions (status stressing, transactional interactions, open networks in work and education domains) merely being more extended than before. Fortunately, there has been research relating to Yiddish in this area, although not nearly as much as one would care to have. Slobin (1963) demonstrated the formality - informality con­ tinuum via analysis of the pronoun of address system (du/ir). His study would benefit from empirical replication in a variety of Yiddish-using networks today, both where the co-territorial languages also make similar distinctions (e.g. Spanish, French) as well as where they do not (e.g. English, Hebrew). Indeed, given all the research that has gone into pronouns of address in the past fifteen years no one has yet studied them in such contrastive bilingual settings. In addition, such comparisons would be of great interest if made between native and non-native speakers of Yiddish. Finally, the most interesting study would be one that contrasted both variables,

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i.e. whether the co-territorial language had the du/ir distinction or not, and whether the speakers spoke Yiddish natively or not. An equally fruitful line of research is the one undertaken by Ronch (1969) who demonstrated that among elderly Yiddish-English bilinguals in New York, Yiddish appears to be more expected in family, friendship, and Jewish domains, and English in work, education and government domains, even when their interlocutors on all occasions are Yiddish - English bilinguals (albeit largely different ones in each domain). Seemingly, if a semantic differential study were done in the context of Yiddish - English (or of Yiddish - Xish) connotative images, on the order of Fertig and Fishman's study of Spanish and English among Puerto Ricans in New York City (1969a), Yiddish would probably score as softer and weaker. How it would score relative to the good-bad and activepassive dimensions is more doubtful; at any rate what we need is evidence rather than speculation.

Language reflections of sociocultural processes Weinreich himself was the master in this area (see, e.g. his 1953,1959 and 1967 papers), anticipating Ferguson's diglossia notion by well over six years, not only in terms of inveynikstetsveyshprakhikeyt (further developed in 1959, the same year in which Ferguson's more famous paper was published) but also in terms of the use of H as a stylistic variable within L. However, the topic does not end here. Weinreich's attempts to clarify the historically changing normative views as to when Yiddish was more appropriate and when Loshn-koydesh was more appropriate have been probabilistically elaborated (Fishman 1976b) and expanded to a consideration of systematic orthographic preferences as well (Fishman 1973). Still lacking, however, is a full review ofJewish ideological and social class factors in the evaluation of Yiddish, either in days long since gone by (e.g. late 19th and early 20th centuries) or today. Herman's demonstration (1972) that Yiddish is much more acceptable to Ashkenazi youngsters in Israel than to Sefardi ones, and to religious (dati) and traditional (mesorati) youngsters than to secular (hiloni) ones, merits replication and testing on a large scale. Indeed, the whole topic of Yiddish "awareness" (that is, what is known, believed or suspected of Yiddish), remains largely unexplored, whether among Yiddish speakers, those ignorant of Yiddish, or even non-Jews. Not so long

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ago Yiddish (even the very name "Yiddish") seems to have been considered "funny" in some Jewish circles. This itself is a reflection of sociocultural processes among its speakers, erstwhile speakers, and more distant acquaintances. The fact that such reactions are rarer today than they were, makes it all the more urgent that the former reactions (among whom? how explicated?) be documented and that the replacements be carefully monitored. If I could pick the populations to monitor more closely (from the point of view of variance in connection with ongoing sociocultural processes), I would select Ultra-Orthodoxy in the USA and in Israel. The proportion of native born and entirely fluent (if not native) speakers of the co-territorial languages among them is now great enough for cognitive and functional questions (and, there­ fore, for rationales and answers) to arise that were not necessary before. The appearance of a non-Yiddish speaking orthodoxy must have a very definite impact on the phenomenology of Yiddish among Yiddish speaking orthodoxy, both in the USA and Israel j u s t as the appearance of Yiddish speaking nonbelievers had initially, and continues to have to this very day (Poll 1965). The major problem in studying Orthodox populations, however, is that they are resistant to study even at the participant-observation/ethnographic level. Rich as this level is, it nevertheless benefits, as does all research at whatever level, from crossmethodological buttressing. The goal in this area remains that of finding a speech network that can be studied as a whole, so that variations in language beliefs, language feelings and language use can be studied in relation to variations in role repertoire, both within and without the usage (speech and writing) network. In both countries Ultra-Orthodoxy is beginning to accept and to enact national (citizenship) roles, to interact more with non-Orthodox Jews as well as with non-Jews, to be more exposed to standard printed Yiddish, to be more exposed to modern(ized) Hebrew for purposes of traditional Jewish scholarship and piety. All of these social processes, ongoing in different ways, have differential consequences for Yiddish. Their delineation for an intact speech network would represent quite an advance in the state of the sociolinguistic art today. Language constraints and language contributions to world view Within the language sciences the Whorfian hypothesis has occupied

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an increasingly marginal portion during the past two decades. Having contributed several times to the marginalization of this hypothesis (most recently Fishman and Spolsky 1978), I am aware, nevertheless, of the power that this position still commands among those who hold to it. Within the Yiddishist fold there is not only an endless reservoir of anecdotal observation concerning the absolute untranslatability and irreplacability of Yiddish, but an even firmer conviction that it has great significance for Jewish personality and authenticity, and for the very being of the speakers. These views need to be studied, both thematically and developmentally, i.e. they need to be studied as quasimystic experiences rather than tested for objective validity. One interesting population to study in this con­ nection (perhaps even more interesting than the activists studied by Hesbacher and Fishman 1965) are Yiddish literati. The latter have both a vested interest in claiming the absolute uniqueness or coidentity of Yiddish and their own personal creativity and identity, on the one hand, and on the other, a self-preserving conflicting interest in being translated into English, Hebrew, French, Spanish or other coterritorial and wider-communicational languages. The often unverbalized collision between these two positions would seem to be ripe for exploration and would represent a sociolinguistic contribu­ tion to dissonance theory as well. Multilingualism Almost every sociolinguistic consideration of Yiddish is bound to be in the context of multilingualism, which makes this subheading mildly redundant. Multilingualism appears to have been the natural state of Yiddish-using communities for the entire millenium in which the language has existed. My preference is to utilize this subheading for a consideration of the sociological phenomena associated with the genesis, spread and functional specification ofJewish languages in general and of Yiddish in particular. The most relevant general literature is that which deals with the social foundations of pidginization-creolization (Grimshaw 1971, Mintz 1971), and that concerned with elitist (specialist)-mass differences in interaction with other speech/writing communities (e.g. Tanner 1967, Pool 1972) and with sociocultural and symbolic continuity and change more generally (Turner 1974). This consideration leads us to the entire topic of differences between linguistically more homogeneous and

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less homogeneous Yiddish-using networks, on the one hand, as well as to the differences between more interacting and less interacting networks (non-Jews and non-Yiddish using Jews) on the other. The two sets of factors do not always go hand in hand. This is an issue of general theoretical importance which researchers working with Yiddish networks might help clarify. The historical acquisition of some Germanic varieties had to imply interactions that had not previously existed. The internal "Judaization" of these varieties had to result from the utilization for intragroup purposes of varieties that had previously served intergroup purposes alone. These "Judaized" varieties then became available also to individuals (women, children and many men as well) who lacked inter(ethnic) group contacts but for whom the acceptance of these varieties represented a (further) multilingualization of their repertoires, at least initially. Aspects of these processes are available for study today as Yiddish-speaking Jews adopt English and Hebrew, not only through interaction with "outside" networks but also through interaction with each other, within their own networks. The adoption and adaption of other vernaculars ("multilingualization") will require patient illumination. Who adopts from the outside, who adopts from the inside, who adapts, how does adaptation facilitate more widespread adoption, what are the restraints upon adaptation - these are all good general issues to which the sociology of Yiddish could make major postWeinreichian empirical contributions.

Language maintenance and language shift If various theoretical issues in multilingual research are still largely unstudied in conjunction with the sociology of Yiddish, the topic of language maintenance and language shift is among the most studied of all. Indeed, if Yiddish has almost always functioned within a context of multilingualism it has, particularly in modern times, lived in the shadow of death, and it has been presumed by its very own users and champions (Howe 1976) to live in such a shadow without hope of surviving "a blink of history". The very process of adoption mentioned above as part of the story of linguogenesis, has also been part of the story of linguistic death for Yiddish users and remains so today, even though some three and a half million Jews could justifiably claim Yiddish as their mother tongue. The demographic bases of shift away from Yiddish have been

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explored in the USA (Fishman 1965a, 1966, 1972b), in Israel (Hofman and Fisherman 1971, Fishman and Fishman 1978), in the Soviet Union (Checinski 1973), in Canada (Yam 1973) and even in Australia (Medding 1968, Klarberg 1970). In addition to mothertongue or usage claims, on which most of the above studies concentrate, there have also been more focused trend studies on de­ velopments in Yiddish book publishing (Fishman 1965c, 1972b), periodicals circulation (Fishman 1960a, 1965c, 1972b); also see Soltes 1924, Fishman and Fishman 1959), radio broadcasting (Fishman 1965c, 1972b), use of Yiddish as a medium of Jewish education (Fishman 1952, 1965c, 1972b, Klarberg 1970; also see Schulman 1971), theater performances (Fishman 1965c, 1972b; also see Litton 1965), age of Yiddish writers (Fishman 1965c, 1972b), etc. The obviously negative trend in all of these connections is so consistent that its differences in different areas tend to be overlooked. The only upward trend of recent vintage is the number of Yiddish courses taught at the tertiary level, and this is the only trend that has not yet been fully or repeatedly documented in print. Thus, even after 50 years of communism, the percentage of individuals claiming Yiddish as a mother tongue and as their "principal language" is higher in the Soviet Union (36%/27%) than it is either in the USA (27%/08%) or in Israel (25%/20%). (Cf. Checinski 1973, and Fishman and Fishman 1978.) The relative contributions of origin, age, educationaloccupational status and settlement concentration to retention of Yiddish have not yet been studied, much less the relative contribu­ tions of such "hard" demographic factors vs. "softer" ideologicalattitudinal ones. A study contrasting all of these factors in a few communities would have major value for the sociology of language maintenance and language shift more generally (Fishman 1969, 1972c, 1977b), in addition to importance for the sociology of Yiddish in particular. Somewhat more encompassing data have been collected in conjunction with Israeli student attitudes toward Yiddish (Cooper and Fishman 1977), Israeli police attitudes toward Yiddish (Fisherman and Fishman 1975), and Israeli radio listening preferences (Katz 1972, Nadel and Fishman 1977). These studies have consistently pointed to the improvement of attitudes (but not usage) as higher educational levels are attained. For whatever reason, the "end of Yiddish" seems further away than either its friends or enemies have assumed. Israel itself represents a rich mine for the sociological study of Yiddish, and one that must be fully exploited if only to prevent the

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sociology of Yiddish from being reduced to the sociology of Yiddish in America. The dissolution of traditional Jewish diglossia (Fishman 1967, 1975a, 1976b), on the one hand, and the influx of English language roles and influences, on the the other hand (Cooper and Fishman 1977, Allony-Fainberg 1977, Nadel and Fishman 1977, Ronen et al. 1977), have led not only to the weakening of Yiddish use in Israel but also to a rekindling of nostalgia for it among those who once spoke or heard it. Although the slang of the younger generation apparently loses its Yiddishisms more rapidly than any other non-Hebrew borrowings (Kornblueth and Aynor 1974), that of the older generation seems to be particularly retentive of Yiddishisms (Ben-Amotz and Ben-Yehuda 1972). By and large, the response to Yiddish is non-ideological, and reveals neither the ambivalence of Bialik (Biletsky 1970) nor the forebodings of Katzenelnson (1960). Nevertheless, increasing reverence of Yiddish seems to be setting in, with increasingly favorable attitudes, side by side with decreasing utilization of the language (Fishman 1974b). Because of the interesting contrast between the attitude toward the use of Yiddish in Israel (even more so than in the USA, as well as more so than toward other diaspora-derived Jewish languages in Israel), it would appear to be a very favorable setting for further language attitude research. This contrast is an important topic for sociolinguistic (and for social science) research more generally and a real contribution could be made in this connection by patient exploration of Yiddish attitude/use phenomena. In addition, the availability of several other diaspora-derived Jewish vernaculars, as well as several non-Jewish vernaculars brought by Jews as mother tongues, all of which are moving toward extinction, makes possible a number of intriguing contrasts not easily available elsewhere for the student interested in language attitude vs. language use differentials.

Language policy and language planning Little attention has been given to the question of official recognition of Yiddish anywhere in the world. All such action (whether in Ver­ sailles treaty "negotiations" pertaining to Poland and the Baltic states, during the Menshevik or early Bolshevik regimes, or in con­ junction with the expenditure of American bilingual education funds in Hasidic neighborhoods today) proceeds via political con-

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flict, bargaining, negotiating and compromise. The records of such action relative to Yiddish are in a particularly unsystematized and unanalyzed state and deserve to be rescued from oblivion. The situation with respect to corpus planning is, surprisingly, similarly primitive. Given all the concern evidenced by Yiddishist intellectuals during the past three quarters of a century for proper Yiddish orthography, for rejection of recent Germanisms and for Ausbau from German wherever possible, for purification from Slavisms and Americanisms (and, in Latin America, from Spanishisms, but very rarely in Israel from Ivritisms), there has been next to no sociological (and even very little linguistic-sociolinguistic) study of any of these phenomena. Only two studies come to mind: Yudel Mark's survey (Anon [Yudl Mark] 1959) of the reactions to "Yivo spelling" on the part of 172 Yiddish writers, journalists and teachers (the nature of his sample of respondents and the universe from which this sample was selected being both undefined), and David Gold's informal study of the personal spelling habits of most Yivoaffiliated Yiddish specialists (1977). (Note, however, Schaechter 1969 and 1975 for good examples of the prevalent mode of textual analyses in this connection.) The intriguing questions in this area are not so much the extent to which corpus planning has penetrated into widespread written/spoken usage (which by all general indica­ tions could be expected to be relatively negligible; see, e.g. Das Gupta et al. 1977), but the extent to which it is known, liked and used in even the most specialized circles. Studies of lexical and orthographic planning in Israel (e.g. Hofman 1974a/b, Alloni-Fainberg 1974, Seckback 1974) have not only indicated how little success there may be in much corpus planning, but have provided models for explor­ ing such topics in the field of Yiddish as well. However, Yiddish lends itself most particularly to the study of systematic evasion or rejection of corpus planning, i.e. of language activists and language elites who not only do not know, do not like and/or do not attempt to use the products of corpus planning but whose rejection of these products is often consciously rationalized as being in defense of the language (and, therefore, reflecting their stewardship of it) rather than as an abandonment of it. Such evasion or rejection of language planning by its purported custodians has been only fleetingly mentioned elsewhere (see, e.g. Rabin 1971 for Hebrew, Geerts et al. 1977 for Dutch, Gunderson 1977 for Norwegian, and O'Murchú 1977 for Irish) but has not so far received focused attention.

How does Yiddish differ?*

We are a people who have already acquired and lost many languages during its several millenia of recorded history and these losses and changes, sufficient to irremediably dislocate other cultures, have not destroyed the basic experiential continuity of Jewish culture or identity. Nevertheless, not since the days of Aramic ( = "JudeoAramaic", eclipsed as a Jewish vernacular, but not as a language of textual study and composition, roughly in the 10th century) has any other Jewish diaspora language 1 been or meant as much as Yiddish; and today, when the bulk of world Jewry is functionally united via English - a language which less than a century ago was virtually unknown among Jews outside of England, the British colonies and the USA - it becomes even more important than ever before, to appreciate the strategy of Yiddish, i.e., to understand how Yiddish differs from its siblings in the rather sizable family of Jewish diaspora languages. The communality across all Jewish diaspora languages The sociology ofJewish languages makes it crystal clear that Yiddish is similar to all other Jewish diaspora languages in many ways, both structurally and functionally, as well as insofar as the attitudes of many Jews toward the language. Even if we limit our comparisons to the other major Jewish diaspora languages of our own day and age, Judezmo ( = "Judeo-Spanish"), Yahudic ( = "Judeo-Arabic") and Parsic ( = "Judeo-Persian"), we can readily note that: a. each of them has adapted the raw material derived from its linguistic determinant in accord with the needs of its own Jewish cultural framework. Thus, while the Yiddish word (yo'rtsayt is derived from the Germanic determinant of Yiddish, the Yiddish Hitherto unpublished in English. In press in French.

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meaning of this word is not native to German and the meaning of the German lexical parallel (Jahreszeit) has an entirely different meaning ( = "season of the year") than that of the Yiddish word ( = ritually observed anniversary date of the demise of a relative or a famous Jewish personage). Obviously, Germanic culture could not provide the word with its Jewish cultural meaning. The number of such words with new (Jewish) cultural meanings is legion, in Yiddish and in all other Jewish diaspora languages. b. Each of these languages furthers its Jewish characterization via the considerable Hebrew and Aramic (together: Loshn-koydesh) elements that have been grammatically "indiginized" within each of them. The plural of (pronounced: yo'ntef) is (yontoy'vem), that is, a form not generally found in Loshn-koydesh proper. Further­ more, the word has acquired totally new adjectival and verbal forms yo'ntefdik = festive; :yo'ntefn= celebrate) that it lacks completely in Loshn-koydesh. If the adoption of Loshn-koydesh terms renders the diaspora languages more Jewish and, therefore more culturally continuous, the grammatical indigenization and expansion of these adoptions also connotes a high degree of independence from Loshn-koydesh on the part of the diaspora languages.  Each of the diaspora Jewish languages contains elements of one or more prior or concurrent diaspora Jewish languages, elements which are historical markers of the paths traversed by their earliest speakers. The very early presence of such Laazic ( = "JudeoRomance") words as (ley'enen) and (be'ntshn) and such Laazic names as (shney'er) and (ye'nte) in Yiddish is an indication that many of the earliest Yiddish speakers were initially Laazic speakers or that very early significant contacts occurred between Yiddish speaking and Laazic-speaking populations (Jewish or non-Jewish). Given the (a) determinantderived component, the (b) Loshn-koydesh -derived component and the (c) prior or concurrent Jewish diaspora language component, Jewish diaspora languages are necessarily multi-componential from the very outset and may well become even more so, depending on their later immigrational histories. Thus far we have alluded only to structural similarities between Jewish diaspora languages. There are also many shared functional similarities (e.g. calque-like translating in the course of biblical and talmudic study) and attitudinal similarities (e.g. the prevalence of rather negative views toward these languages on the part of most of

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the rabbinic and the modern intelligentsias of their respective communities). While it might be somewhat of an exaggeration to define a diaspora Jewish language as "the spoken language of an entire Jewish folk-culture, which is, nevertheless, read by few, written by fewer and held in high repute by even fewer, when comparisons are made with either Loshn-koydesh or the co-territorial official language", such a characterization contains much that is quite valid as well. If the above three points are well taken, and if there are, indeed, so many essential similarities between all Jewish diaspora languages, inclusive of Yiddish, then mightn't one rightfully conclude: "Yiddish is no more than yet another of the long array of Jewish "regional languages" and, as with all of them, when the restricted and ephemeral regional basis of its existence is destroyed, whether by non-Jews or by Jews themselves, it too will perish like all of the others". At this point, however, it becomes necessary to look at the other side of the coin, the side that is concerned with the manifold differences between Yiddish and the other Jewish diaspora languages. Some functional and psychological uniquenesses of Yiddish Let us begin with the so called "religious world", overlooking for the time being the fact that the terms "religious" and "secular" (or even "modern") do not denote a true dichotomy (because between these so-called polar extremes there are myriad combinations of degrees of each). We will begin there because this is the context in which Yiddish had to arise, since there was no other Jewish context a thousand years ago. It is only in connection with Yiddish that a sizable portion of the "religious world" has evinced any diaspora language consciousness since the days of Aramic, that is: a consciousness of its position as a genuine Jewish folk-vernacular and, therefore, as a worthy means whereby the pious can interactively differentiate, at the level of everyday life, between themselves and those who are either less pious or not pious at all. Vernacular language consciousness arrived late in the religious Jewish world, no doubt due to the Loshn-koydesh-centeredness of the rabbinic establishment, but in the early 19th century, in AustroHungarian Galicia, the great rabbinic authority, Khsám Soýfer (1762-1839: and his most illustrious pupils and followers,

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gathered around Yiddish in order to resist the flood of German (and Reform) that was inundating traditional Jewish life. In the course of the fearsome struggle that ensued they declared that "he who prays in a synagogue in which the rabbi preaches in German is likened to one who eats non-kosher meat". The differences between Yiddish and German were regarded with pride, rather than with the horror of the German Enlightenment ( ) which viewed them as hideous defilements of "pure German", regarding them as derived from the sure hand of God Himself, in the Almighty's efforts to make more conspicuous (rather than to erase) the differences between Jews and non-Jews and between the pious and the non-pious. 2 Such statements had never been uttered before, let alone been made the basis of concerted rabbinic action, on behalf of a Jewish diaspora vernacular anywhere. Similar formulations were heard again in interwar Poland. There, in the 1930s, Nathan Birnbaum, Solomon Birnbaum, Sore Shenirer and many other leading lights of the Agudes yisróyel ( ) and the Beys yánkef movements adopted highly ideological formulations in defense of Yiddish among the Orthodox. In the special "Yiddish Issue" of the Beys yankev journal (all issues were entirely in Yiddish, but the "Yiddish Issue" [1931, no. 8] was entirely devoted to a ringing affirmation of Yiddish), the slogan was formulated "If you do not = the scripturally forbidden mixture of permit shátnez ( wool and linen) on your body why should you permit a foreign garment on your tongue!?" 3 And once again, in 1986, an UltraOrthodox journal published in the USA devoted two successive issues to the demand that "Only Yiddish" be used among pious Jews _ ) rather than "a language of the gentiles" ( = ( language of the [gentile] nations or, specifically in the USA, English).4 These three examples, few and far between though they be, are unprecedented in the many thousand years of Orthodox interaction with Jewish diaspora languages. Only in connection with Yiddish has even a small segment of Orthodoxy become sufficiently language-conscious to defend its own traditional vernacular usage. But even the more scrupulously safeguarded written functions of the rabbinic-scholarly world have been breached by Yiddish. In this world, diaspora vernaculars were generally sneered at as mere "maid-servants" ( ) who served their Loshn-koydesh betters via translations of the siddur, makhzor, tanakh and other important holy writ, so that the uneducated could have access to them. Textual languages that only served those of lower social status were obviously

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themselves of lower worth as well. However, although the foregoing was clearly the dominant view, it is only in connection with Yiddish that there developed an intellectually elevated, substantially in­ dependent religious literature, the goal of which was not merely to translate and to clarify that which had already previously appeared in Loshn-koydesh, Yiddish brought to the religious reader (male and female) more than a story-book literature and more than a biographic literature dealing with the lives of famous rabbis and martyrs - genres that are also available in a few other Jewish diaspora literatures. Yiddish was the vehicle of important historical treatises (e.g., Shéyris yisróyel [ ], an 18th century history of the Jews, covering the period from the destruction of the Second Temple up to that very century, a volume that continued to be reprinted even in this century), of a significant political literature (primarily by the inter-war Agudes yisróyel and the Poyáley agúdes yisróyel), a tradeliterature (for the religious craftsman, farmer, merchant), and, lo and behold, even an important moralistic ( ) literature which one would ordinarily only expect to see published in Loshn-koydesh. Such ) Sam-hakháyem monumental moralistic works as Lév-toyv ( ( ) or Brántshpigl ( ) were either originally written in Yiddish or were even written simultaneously (or nearly so) both in Yiddish and in Loshn-koydesh by the same author, or they were so quickly translated from one language to the other that it is now no longer possible to conclusively determine which was the "original language". What was more demonstrably original about this "muser" literature is that it was simultaneously sufficiently deep to interest the scholar, who would ordinarily have read such material in Loshnkoydesh, and sufficiently fundamental to capture the interest of the average reader as well. Taken all in all, no similarly diversified nor similarly free-standing (i.e. non-translational) literature exists in any other Jewish language. 5 Thanks to the highly diversified nature of the genres of religious literature in Yiddish, including genres in which there was a very high proportion of learned Loshn-koydeshisms, the Loshn-koydesh component in Yiddish became particularly strong. It has been influenced not only by the Loshn-koydesh of oral translation-study of Bible and Talmud (an influence which we have noted also characterizes all other Jewish diaspora languages), but it has been influenced by rabbinic writing in scholarly Loshn-koydesh per se. Those who compare Yiddish with Judezmo, Yahudic and Parsic can clearly note

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the greater influence of Loshn-koydesh in variousnon-translationalgenres of "religious Yiddish" (their high proportion in the translational genres being taken for granted). The greater Loshn-koydesh element in Yiddish stems both from the greater relative modernization of Orthodoxy in Eastern and Central Europe (where else were there Jewish religious political parties and such a diversified and ample religious literature) as well as from the greater proximity between scholarship and folk life which characterized several religious currents in Eastern and Central Europe. As a result of both of these developments Yiddish-in-print has attained more conscious symbolic value within sizable segments of Ashkenazic Orthodoxy than has any other diaspora Jewish language to date. Yiddish as the language of a modern Jewish secularism Within the family of Jewish disapora languages, it is only in Yiddish that a modern Jewish secularism that sought to maintain points of contact with the traditional past while focusing explicitly on acquiring a distinctly Jewish modernity developed. 6 Never before in Jewish history had such a goal been widely pursued and the only two Jewish languages in which it was seriously pursued, from the latter part of the 19th century, were Hebrew and Yiddish. When modernizing Jewish intellectuals ultimately appeared also within the worlds of Judezmo, Yahudic and Parsic they quickly adopted Spanish, French, Arabic or Persian as the vehicles for their creativity. That is why those Jewish environments maintain, to this very day, such a very definite crevasse between traditional Jewish life, on the one hand, and non-Jewish modernity, on the other. No broad-gauged effort to attain a Jewish modernity has come to pass there; those languages never modernized themselves and never assisted in the modernizing transformation of their speakers and societies. The truly spectacular role of Yiddish in the attainment of a secular Jewish identity has expressed itself chiefly along three lines: Secular Yiddish literature The secular literature that developed in Yiddish has no parallel in any other Jewish language with the exception of modern Hebrew itself. This literature extends considerably beyond fiction (poetry,

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novels, short stories and dramas) into such non-fictional spheres as the natural and social sciences, the health sciences, and, above all, political and philosophical thought. The German sociolinguist, Heinz Kloss (1978) has very tellingly diagnosed the status of languages in the modern age as depending more on their nonfictional than on their fictional literary productivity. Between the two World Wars, both Yiddish and modern Hebrew jumped ahead dramatically on the non-fiction front and, thereby, established significant claims in connection with a distinctively Jewish brand of modern secular identity. Secular literature in Yiddish not only achieved world-wide acclaim, but became a tremendous moderniz­ ing influence among Jews themselves, even among many of those who continued to conduct themselves primarily in a traditional fashion. No other Jewish diaspora language has come close to equalling the versatility of Yiddish in the fashioning of a modern multifaceted secular literature and of raising the modern writer of fiction or non-fiction to the status of Jewish communal leader, a status which, in secular Yiddish circles, equalled and surpassed that of the rabbi.

Yiddish as the carrier of ideological secularism Secularism was not only a by-product of modern Yiddish literature; it was also the avowed goal and purpose of a considerable portion of that literature. As a result of both of these secularizing prongs, Yiddish, like modern Hebrew, became a language of "the new Jewish experience", definitely including all of the tensions, contradictions, ambivalencies and conflicts that characterize the competing goals and purposes of modern urban life. Yiddish led Jews along many new, variegated, stimulating and often perilous ways, ways whose final destinations could not be foretold. As in the case of all modern secularisms, many of those who set out along these paths ended up in totalitarian and in non-Jewish movements and identities. Every modernity exacts its price, as does every tradition. Traditions require updating and refreshing efforts, so that they do not become fixed and limiting. Secular modernity requires constant re-ethnization, so that it does not lose its local cultural moorings and gravitate entirely in the direction of international uniformity of modern values and behaviours. Fortunately, there developed in Yiddish a "middle path" between the above two extremes, a "middle path" which struggled to

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fashion a "modernity with a Jewish face", to "see the m o d e r n world with Jewish eyes". Of all the diaspora Jewish languages only Yiddish u n d e r t o o k this very difficult symbiosis, a n d a m o n g all the Jewish languages, only Yiddish a n d M o d e r n H e b r e w were involved in the philosophical a n d political struggles of an entire g e n e r a t i o n to balance the d e m a n d s of m o d e r n i t y with those of Jewish tradition, and to do so by combining the two within a Jewish framework, rather than by treating them as two separate paths to be navigated alternately or competitively.

Yiddish as a value in its own right In 19th-century Eastern a n d Central E u r o p e the m o d e r n i z a t i o n of Yiddish (and of Hebrew) was s u r r o u n d e d by the secular moderniza­ tions of several other governmentally unrecognized languages of the Austro-Hungarian a n d the Czarist Empires. T h e nationalist movements that arose to pursue the liberation of countless minority peoples and languages inevitably stimulated the founding of parallel Jewish movements, each with its own favorite language(s) a n d postliberation goals a n d ideals. In this context - the context of Yiddish as a language of m o v e m e n t s for Jewish liberation, resettlement and/or cultural a u t o n o m y - Yiddish also b e c a m e a symbol a n d a value in its own right. An ideology or "ism" developed a r o u n d Yiddish ("Yiddishism"), a d e v e l o p m e n t almost totally u n k n o w n a m o n g the o t h e r d i a s p o r a Jewish languages. T h e many Jewish languages that arose a n d declined in earlier epochs d o m i n a t e d by the rabbinic establishment, did so primarily without the "benefit of clergy". They were normally not considered worthy of comment, let alone of special valuation. But as Yiddish in m o d e r n secular circles tore itself away from the tradition of rabbinic neglect, it came to be viewed by some of the writers a n d political ideologists who con­ sciously m a d e use of it (i.e. by its own intelligentsia) as the p r i m e reflection, expression a n d safeguard of Jewish soul, of Jewish folklife, Jewish wit, Jewish creativity and, in short, of Jewish identity per se. This too is clearly an unparallelled d e v e l o p m e n t in the world of Jewish diaspora languages. Of course, the fact that m o d e r n H e b r e w too went t h r o u g h the very same ideological transformation at the very same time and in the very same East-Central E u r o p e a n context, explains why the "language struggle" ( ) involved Modern H e b r e w a n d Yiddish alone, r a t h e r t h a n M o d e r n H e b r e w

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and Judezmo, Modern Hebrew and Yahudic or Modern Hebrew and Parsic. The struggle between Yiddish and Modern Hebrew was more than a struggle over which should be the linguistic vehicle of Jewish modernization. It was also, to a large extent, a struggle over the direction that this modernization should take and who its leaders should be. Both Yiddish and Modern Hebrew unified and indigenized ("Judaized") the tripartite complex of modernity, nationalism and socialism. Both of them provided solace and guidance in the face of crushing anti-semitism, grinding poverty and Ultra-Orthodox ignorance and rejection of the modern world. Only Modern Hebrew and Yiddish (and in the world ofJewish diaspora languages, Yiddish alone) came to represent "something new under the sun" within the Jewish fold. No wonder, then, that the symbols of so much that was considered crucial for a meaningful modern Jewish life should finally come to be viewed as supremely worthy in and of themselves. The message and the messenger became identical in the minds of many and the validity of the one came to be identified with the validity of the other in myriad inextricable ways.7

The strategy of Yiddish How has Yiddish managed to come out of the Holocaust after losing the bulk of its speakers, and still remain the major Jewish diaspora language, 8 the only one that will enter the 21st century with a goodly core of mother-tongue speakers among the young and among infants too? Why has it alone begun to be widely taught at universities and read in translation by laymen all over the world, whereas other Jewish diaspora languages generally still languish largely unrecognized and unmodernized? Why is Yiddish the only Jewish diaspora language with indissoluble links and claims both to religious and modern secular Jewish life? Yiddish alone, among all the Jewish diaspora languages, is characterizable in all of the above ways because it alone has never given up what it has acquired: Orthodoxy and modernization, religion and secularism. The original explosion in the number of Yiddish speakers in the late 18th and the 19th centuries was due to the general East-Central European Jewish population explosion: both were by-products of modernity's better hygiene, health care and diet.9 In our own days, the elevated birth-rate of Ultra-Orthodoxy is again a vital demographic factor in

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the revival of Yiddish, in Jerusalem, New York and Antwerp as well as in smaller Ultra-Orthodox settlements in various Israeli, North American and European locales. However, Yiddish can never again become exclusively an Orthodox preserve. It will always attract a dedicated band of secularists, from the large reservoir of Jewish secularism in general, who will recognize that the political move­ ments, ideas, books and goals with which Yiddish is so identified are too good just to be appreciated in translation. This is exactly how Yiddish differs from all of the other diaspora Jewish languages: it is not all of one cloth. It is constituted, in more ways than one, out of a Talmudic dialectic made up out of undeniable "on the one hands" and unforgettable "on the other hands". The preservation of this difference, both by historical, super-human processes and by dint of very human dedication: this is the strategy of Yiddish. Notes *

Yiddish words, regardless of etymology, are transliterated in accord with the Yivo/Library of Congress system. Stressed syllables are indicated, by accent marks, only on the first occurrence of any given word in the present text. In spelling Yiddish per se, the Yivo's "Unified Yiddish Spelling" conventions are followed.

1.

The expression "Jewish (diaspora) language" is used here as a self-evident term. Its precise definition, both with respect to the adjective "Jewish" and the noun "language" is beyond the scope of this paper. Languages do not become "Jewish" merely because Jews speak them. English does not become a Jewish language merely because most Jews speak English. Languages also do not even become Jewish because most of their speakers are Jews, as was the case with French in various speech-networks in Roumania between the two World Wars. Ethno-functional, linguistic and attitudinal criteria are involved in defining a Jewish language, and these criteria do not necessarily agree with each other, nor are they similarly evaluated by all those seeking to arrive at an evaluation of any given instance. For a more detailed discussion of the definitional issues involved see Fishman (1985b: 3-21).

2.

The Khasam Soyfer's pro-Yiddish efforts are reviewed in Max Weinreich (1980: 283-284). For the primary sources on which Weinreich bases his account, see the bibliography to the corresponding section (70.2) of the Yiddish original, Geshíkhte fun der yídisher shprakh, New York, Yivo, v. 3, pp. 306-310.

3.

This slogan is reproduced Fishman (1981a, 159). Dr. Nathan Birnbaum's article defending Yiddish is also reproduced, in part, on the same page of the same source, as are full-length articles by Sore Shenirer (pp. 173-176) and Dr.

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Shlomo Birnbaum (pp. 181-196), all of which stems from the 1931 "Yiddish Issue" of the Beys yankef journal. 4.

The two complete issues of B'darkey hatoyre (1985/86, nos. 3 and 4) devoted to defending the exclusive vernacular use of Yiddish (rather than English) are analyzed in my "A náye fartéydikung fun yídish in di kharéydishe kráyzn", Afn shivel, 1987b, 266, 5-8.

5.

I am indebted to Prof. David E. Fishman for his assistance in claryifying the often complex conventions with respect to the use of Yiddish and Loshnkoydesh in the muser literature cited here. Detailed additional examples of such use are cited in Weinreich (1980: 264-276), and are bibliographically supported in the Yiddish original, v. 3, pp. 275-290.

6.

For a more detailed analysis ofJewish secularism (as well as the much more minor efforts in the direction of "secular Jewishness") in conjunction with Yiddish, see Fishman (1982).

7.

For a more detailed treatment of the manifold links between language and nationalism, including the contribution of vernacular literature in general and poetry and songs in particular to nationalist sentiment and conviction, see Fishman (1972d: 50-51; 1989).

8.

For recent worldwide census estimates pertaining to Yiddish, see the next Chapter.

9.

For details concerning the precipitous rise in the number of Yiddish speakers with the onset of modernity in Central and Eastern Europe, see Weinreich (1980: 172-174), and the corresponding bibliography in the Yiddish original, V.3, pp. 152-153.

The lively life of a 'dead" language (or "everyone knows that Yiddish died long ago")* An unlikely scenario Let us imagine a highly unlikely scenario. A small people is forced to leave its homeland, partially as a result of repeated military debacles and partially as a result of severely and recurringly unfavorable economic conditions. It scatters initially, primarily throughout the Euro-Mediterranean world, and, subsequently, over a period of milennia, even further afield. Over the centuries, many of its sons and daughters are lost to it, due to persecution, forced conversion and quiet "passing"; nevertheless, a huge proportion remain identified with their ethnocultural heritage. Notwithstanding the adverse circumstances of its bearers, the heritage continues to evolve and to attain marvelous heights of religious, philosophical and literary creativity throughout the centuries and in various parts of the globe, indeed, wherever its bearers succeed in maintaining their own daily lifestyle, social institutions and social boundaries. The people whom we are imagining are therefore triply miraculous. Its conquer­ ors perish and pass into oblivion while it itself somehow "muddles through" one cataclysmic reversal after another. In its dispersion, its non-communicating branches become greatly dissimilar and, for periods, even unaware of each other, and yet they do not lose their sense of ultimate unity. Its culture changes drastically (and differently in its various branches) and yet it loses neither its creative élan nor its sense of ultimate continuity vis-à-vis its original mainsprings. The ethnolinguistic counterpart to the above highly improbable scenario is equally miraculous. The people loses its original vernacu­ lar and creates literally dozens of new ones while maintaining the original in sanctified and textual functions. Several of its new vernaculars become subtle vehicles of literary and philosophical expression and works of truly enduring value are created in them.

Reprinted with permission from Judaica Book News 13,1982.

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During the past milennium, one such vernacular in particular was associated with exceptional heights. It was not only used as the language of popular translation and of learned discourse with respect to hallowed texts in the sanctified original language (all of its many new vernaculars were used in this way and this use, therefore, drastically influenced all of their grammars and their lexicons; Fishman 1981a), but it became the vehicle of their controlled modernization as well. Through this vehicle (let us call it New Vernacular), this people began to modernize in its own way, according to its own lights, often with a sense of continuity with its own eternal values and unique history. Modernization was a terribly dislocating ordeal for this people (if it was such for peoples with governments, economies and armies of their own, how much more so was it for a people that lacked all of the foregoing?), splitting it apart into contentious splinters which finally undercut the vernacular's own vitality. Yet all of these warring splinters not only initially used this particular New Vernacular to reach and teach their constituencies but they were themselves ultimately united by it, elevated by it and softened by its links and intergenerational authenticity. Accordingly, this New Vernacular became the vehicle for more modern schools for a huge branch of this people, for a modern press of its own, for a theater of its own, for a modern belletristic literature of its own and for a modern art-and-song repertoire of its own. Its major writers became names recognized and prized the world over. But the winds of change were too strong for this New Vernacular. Massive exterminations, externally controlled modernization movements (benevolent ones and malevolent ones) and an internal movement to return to its ancient homeland and its ancient vernacular, all of them tore huge proportions of its speakers away from it. Yet, just as its people has miraculously recovered from its recent travail, so has the New Vernacular begun to get to its feet. Bloodied but unbowed it has begun to peek forth again from the ultra-traditional and the ultra-modern circles which alone gave it a haven during its worst tribulations. But in doing so, what does it find? It is greeted by many of its own kin, by the children and grandchildren of its erstwhile speakers, with a strange greeting. "We thought you were dead," they say to it. "Why do you return to disturb our peace? We owe you nothing. You have nothing to give us any longer. The languages we now use relate us either to our neighbors, to our jobs or to the world at large, on the one hand, and (referentially

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at least, because we have not relearned our ancient tongue) to our new-old land and it inhabitants. Be gone! Return to the dead where you belong!" The New Vernacular - now old and struggling weeps, but it continues to create. It is surrounded by a chorus proclaiming it to be dead, yet it lives. Its widespread rejection only serves to make it somehow more Jewish, more worthy of rediscovery. It waits to be reclaimed, remembered, rejuvenated. Language death: objective and subjective Setting metaphor aside, it is important to realize that the view that "Yiddish is dead" (or "should die") has quite a history behind it and is related to much more general intellectual and sociopolitical trends as well as to corresponding developments within the Jewish fold per se. Thus, from the very beginning of the 19th century, spokesmen for Western European capitalist political establishments trumpeted the death of Welsh and Irish, the passing of Breton and Occitan, and the demise of Flemish and of Frisian. When champions of all the above languages arose not only to deny their death but to foster their growth, these champions were attacked not only as debasers of civility and as plotters against public peace, but as necromancers as well! Communist spokesmen of the middle and latter nineteenth century were no better. They too had an incorporative, supra-ethnic goal in mind that, although it differed from that of Lord Acton or John Stuart Mill, was equally impatient of "special pleading" on behalf of small languages and small peoples (see, e.g., Engels 1866). "Remnants of peoples long gone by", "never had a history nor the energy required to have one", "absurdity", "intermingled ruins . .. which even now the ethnologist can scarcely disentangle", and "intermixed in interminable confusion" are among the choice epithets hurled by self-serving "internationalists" on the right and on the left at language communities seeking either political recognition or cultural democracy. "Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder", but so is ugliness and death. The death-wish toward obstreperous minorit­ ies was barely disguised in the pronouncements of nineteenth century spokesmen for self-aggrandizing capitalism and proletarianism. It is only slightly better diguised today, even among liberals and co-ethnics, "some of whose best friends" still speak minority languages and implement minority identities in one part or other of their total speech and identity repertoire. It is true, of course, that

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some languages do die away as a result of the dislocation of their speech communities (Dorian 1981), but many others have death wished upon them, projected unto them, diagnosed and predicted for them far in advance of, unrelated to and in objective disagreement with any objective change in variety of their functions or in the numbers of their users. Yiddish is certainly a case in point. When did Yiddish die? The death of Yiddish begins to be announced (predicted, desired) in Germany in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. The major proponents of this death-wish were advocates of "enlightenment" (Westernization, Europeanization) within the ranks of German Jewry proper (e.g., Mendelssohn 1783), i.e. Jewish intellectuals who were most familiar with fashionable non-Jewish thinking at the time. Indeed, non Jews, too, derided the language as uncouth, corrupt, ungrammatical and utterly laughable (Low 1979). Such a 'jargon" was "obviously" not long for this world, since, on the one hand, such "jibberish" "obviously" contributed to anti-Semitism, and, on the other hand, "Germans of Moses' persuasion" required "pure German" in order to discharge their prospective roles as fullfledged citizens. As Western "enlightenment" (haskole) spread from Germany into Slavic Eastern Europe in mid-nineteenth century, its views of Yiddish and of "pure German" followed. Once more, the demise of the language was both predicted and desired, by purveyors of elitist controlled modernization (e.g. Feder 1853 [1816]), by Hebraists (Ahad Ha'am 1910), by Zionists (see, e.g., Malakhi 1861 about N. Sokolov), by socialists (see Tobias 1972 about the early Bund) and by out-and-out assimilationists (see Heller 1977). Nevertheless, the language did not die as was hoped or predicted and all of its nineteenth century detractors finally needed to apolo­ getically make use of it in order to propagate their programmatic views among "the masses", who really knew no other tongue well. Finally, Yiddish also began to attract its overt champions and ideologists - both in traditional (іk 1833 [1815]) and secular (Lifshits 1863) circles - something no post-exilic vernacular since Aramic has succeeded in doing. While the holocaust and Israel have displaced Yiddish from the center of the Jewish stage, it continues as a sidestream that nourishes the tempest-tossed seas of Jewish eternity.

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Yiddish did ultimately fade away among most German Jews, but it was a slow process, indeed, and its initial replacement was more often "Ashkenazi German" than "pure German" (Wexler 1981, Freimark 1979, Lowenstein 1976). To the very end of the nineteenth century, many German Jews continued to speak Yiddish informally with each other and it was not until the rise of Hitlerism and the genocidai dislocations of the Second World War that the last pockets of German Yiddish were uprooted in Alsace, Germany proper and parts of Austria and Hungary. And if Yiddish did any dying in Eastern Europe prior to being burnt alive in Nazi crematoria, it was only because Soviet Communism began to suppress it ruthlessly in public life in the mid-thirties. Otherwise, it continued to be massively spoken, written, read and taught there with literally thousands of periodical publications (see e.g., Shayn 1963 and Fishman 1981a [pp. 29-31]), libraries (Meyer 1922), schools (Kazhdan 1947, Parker 1981) and theaters (Zilbertsvayg 1931-1967) functioning in it throughout Poland, the Baltic states and Rumania and with well over ten thousand writers and journalists all told! Nevertheless, the predictions of doom continued throughout the entire pre-Hitler period, both among those who envisaged holocausts from without as well as those who foretold sociocultural change from within. In America, the death theme repeated itself. The death of Yiddish was foretold by Leo Wiener (1972 [1899]), professor of Slavic and Germanic literatures at Harvard University, even prior to its major flowering on these shores (1910-1930). The theme was taken up by German Yahudem and by Jewish socialists fresh from the pale of settlement. Ultimately, it became a self-fulfilling prophecy. As was the case with 19th-century German Jewry, Yiddish was drastically weakened in America by Jewish involvement in rapid urbanindustrial-commercial-cultural mobility, on the one hand, and by "progressive'Vliberal" studied assimilation on the other. While the myth of its death in the USA is vastly exaggerated, its general ill health cannot be denied. However, as I.B. Singer has pointed out, death and ill health are not the same thing and the motives of analysts who actually refer the former to the latter must be suspect, indeed. How does Yiddish live today? At this moment, there are slightly more than three million mothertongue claimants of Yiddish throughout the world, the bulk of whom

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reside either in the USA (roughly a million and a half), the Soviet Union (roughly half a million) or Israel (roughly half a million). Among those whose mother tongue is Yiddish, that language contin­ ues to be the major spoken language for some 100,000 individuals and a frequent auxiliary or secondary language for roughly twice as many. Obviously, the number of active speakers of the language is much smaller than the number who claim it as their mother tongue, but the ranks of the speakers will probably begin to increase again in another decade or two (Oxford et al. 1982). This last prediction is based on the fact that the bulk of its most active speakers are now restricted to Ultra-Orthodox circles (non-Hasidic and Hasidic) and these - in contrast to those of the secular Yiddishists - are constantly growing in numbers, primarily due to natural increase (early marriage of the young and large families). Thus, barring further unpredictable world events (note the concentration of Yiddish speakers in high risk areas from the point of view of possible conventional and nuclear warfare), the number of Yiddish speakers may stabilize in the vicinity of a quarter million by the end of the 20th century and begin to expand again thereafter. This is the same order of magnitude that Yiddish possessed in early modern times, although, obviously enough, the historical context is far different now than it was then. To the ranks of speakers of Yiddish there should also be added those who are learning Yiddish (outside of Ultra-Orthodox and secular Yiddishist circles, whose ranks have already been counted above). Some 50-70 colleges and universities in the USA and a dozen or more in other countries (including Canada, France, Holland, Germany as well as all four of the major Israeli universities) now offer instruction in Yiddish. Yiddish is also part of the curriculum in some 1000 Jewish elementary and secondary schools, primarily in the USA (Pollack 1981), but also in Canada, Mexico, Argentina and Australia (indeed, the most intensive programs are in the latter four countries). In addition, instruction in Yiddish is also offered at over a dozen secular high schools in Israel. Although few students master Yiddish as a result of all of the above mentioned courses at various levels (not to mention the adult education Yiddish courses that are quite popular in the USA), their considerable numbers bespeak a lively interest, which increasingly spills out of the classroom per se into theaters, song recitals, open-air concerts and, lo and behold, even into book stores and lecture series. Yiddish theater and Yiddish literature are still very much alive

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today and indeed, may be the two most visible representatives of ethnic America in both of these cultural arenas. Although the theater is neither quantitatively nor qualitatively anywhere near its midtwenties to mid-thirties peak (Sandrow 1977), it has experienced some unanticipated growth in both respects in the past decade. This past season, three Yiddish plays were running for months in New York, two of which also toured the country. Yiddish theaters are also active in Montreal and Israel. State supported theatres are constantly playing in Warsaw and in Bucharest. Intermittent performances are reported from various Soviet cities, Paris, Brussels, Toronto, Buenos Aires and Mexico City. Usually overlooked on the theatrical front are the traditional efforts of the Ultra-Orthodox, e.g., Purim plays (often for extremely large audiences) and morality plays for women and children, which are repeatedly advertised in the Orthodox press in New York, Antwerp, Jerusalem, Bnai Brak and elsewhere. Yiddish literary efforts are still proceeding at a substantial pace. Well over a hundred books are published annually (see the annual listings in the Jewish Welfare Board's Jewish Book Annual) and firstrate talents of a calibre meriting world-wide attention (Issac Bashevis Singer, Avrohom Sutskever) are still creatively active, as are a host of smaller figures. Yiddish literature has always reached its public primarily via the Yiddish periodical press. This press today boasts five dailies, half a dozen weeklies and literally scores of monthlies and quarterlies, a total of 35 in the USA alone. In each of the foregoing areas, some "new blood" has recently been infused via the appearance on the scene of young, primarily secular, post-holocaust writers, teachers, actors, researchers and cultural activists. Their numbers are small (far too small to safeguard the continuity of all that currently exists, meager though even that may be relative to what was before the holocaust). Nevertheless, it is clear that there are heirs and that each of the above areas of cultural efforts will continue intergenerationally, albeit in more meagre fashion and with proportionately greater Ultra-Orthodox representation in the future than has been the case during the past century of superb secular creativity. The world of native speakers and writers is still there to be used as resources and informants for schools and theatres, for adults and youngsters who are willing to do more than "bemoan or even "admire" Yiddish from a distance. We can still make Yiddish our own again. It is here. We are here. An active connection in terms of daily life is all that is needed to secure its role. Such an active personal connection at the level of daily life

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is more important than all of the "institutions" that Yiddish still boasts, for even if there were no Yiddish schools today, no theaters and no periodicals at all, that would not necessarily be the end if the "connection" in daily life was implemented. Most languages of the world today exist without formal institutional supports and many of the languages that do have such institutions have fewer of them than Yiddish does. Whereas no one trumpets their demise, the demise of Yiddish has not only been predicted for nearly two centuries but in many quarters it has already been declared to have occurred. Its mysterious, miraculous élan vital, however, has been strangely ignored. It was this untold story that motivated me to put together my Never Say Die! Loy omes ki ekhye! (1981a). Jews continue to treat Yiddish (even after the holocaust and rebirth) the way the Christian and Moslem worlds have become accustomed to treat Jews: with denial, with death expectations, with death wishes. Death: an unsatisfactory and unsavory metaphor The recent difficulties encountered by physicians, lawyers and clerics with respect to defining life and death in biological terms (visà-vis abortion and/or "right to life" legislation and rulings) should prepare us to suspect the utility of such metaphors for sociocultural systems such as languages and speech communities (Gallaher and Padfield 1980). Even for animal and plant life, the exact limits of life and death are hard to find and this is all-the-more so for sociocultural systems. However, the difficulties encountered are not merely with respect to limits (i.e. "would Yiddish be dead if no one spoke, read, wrote or understood it, but if lots of people still loved it?") but with respect to the concepts of life and death themselves as applied to languages and sociocultural systems more generally. Animal and plant life are developmentally programmed to constantly approach an irrevocable and inevitable endpoint: death. Sociocultural systems have no such irrevocable and inevitable pre­ programmed linear endpoint. Presumably "dead" cultures/languages can become revived and rejuvenated. Presumably strong cultures/ languages nevertheless change, amalgamate or fuse with others. Cultures/languages move backward as well as forward, experiencing nativization and purification movements. Languages and cultures not only detach themselves and separate from one another but also

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inter-penetrate o n e a n o t h e r via pidginization a n d syncretism. All of these are alternatives that apply to the future of Yiddish as m u c h as they d o to the future of English or Swahili. Jewish culture has outlived Babylonian a n d R o m a n culture. Yiddish has outlived the international ascendancy of G e r m a n a n d French. It may yet outlive o t h e r major languages that are even m o r e exposed to the forefront of m o d e r n warfare a n d m o d e r n industry. Languages gain a n d lose functions/speakers/readers/understanders/admirers. At the same time they are changing differentially as to their lexical, semantic, grammatical a n d phonological char­ acteristics. I n d e e d , language change is m u c h m o r e c o m m o n t h a n language death: the f o r m e r b e i n g u b i q u i t o u s a n d the latter b e i n g merely indeterminately final. It is, indeed, a trite (and wicked) stereotype to speak of Yiddish in terms of death alone: (When did it die? W h e n will it die? Why did it die? Why will it die?), an ethnopaulism every bit as m u c h as " d u m b Pollacks", "lazy niggers", " p r o m i s c u o u s F r e n c h girls", "money-mad Jews" a n d "thieving gypsies". Little wonder, then, that Yiddish poets like A v r o h o m Zak have railed against the voodooistic conspiracy that proclaims the d e a t h of a language that is still alive a n d creative.  neyn! mir zenen nit di leíste, undzer yidish loshn vet ibergeyn nokh langfun dor tsu dor Bekhinem di baveyners un umzist der kadish vos s zingen oys kabronem in a khor. (Oh no! we are not the last ones, Our Yiddish language will yet long be handed on from generation to generation For naught the lamentations and prayers for the dead That gravediggers sing forth in recitation!) Obviously, the "death of Yiddish" (and of other weak languages) has b e e n vastly exaggerated, b u t why? Why is that death still proclaimed today, even by those who unconsciously enjoy its humor, its melody, its ethos, or at least by those who have n o systematic ideological bias (e.g., Zionist, Hebraist, C o m m u n i s t , "Progressive T h i n k e r " , Americanizer, social climber, "Orthodoxy-too-can-bem o d e r n " ) against it? W o u l d its death free some from a sense of guilt d u e to responsibilities u n m e t ? , loyalties betrayed?, identity undefended?, aggressors joined?, u n d e r d o g unbefriended?, kith a n d

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kin denied? There is more here than meets the eye. "Death" is not an idle phrase, an empty metaphor. As the rabbis have long taught: "Language creates and destroys worlds. Life and death depend on language." When Yiddish is killed, more than Yiddish is killed. When culture-systems shatter When culture-systems prosper, their members identify with each other. If the systems are numerically large ones, their members must, of necessity, interact more often at a purely referential level than in actuality, at a face to face level. Their members must have the sense of being together, the impression of acting in unison, more than is objectively the case. In any large community, the number of "others" that anyone actually interacts with overtly must be far less than the total number of possible "others". Nevertheless, members believe that they are in touch, in tune, in accord with one another, and a common language fosters this impression. A common language preserves the myth of interaction because it preserves the possibility of interaction via shared texts, metaphors, songs, jokes, slogans, proverbs and other forms of linguistic bonding. Without a common language, the various branches of the joint ethno-community are cut off from each other referentially as well as interactionally. Just as they were originally more alive to each other than their actual experience confirmed, so they are subsequently more dead to each other than is objectively true. Much of the claim that Yiddish is dead merely reflects how dead it is to the claimants and how dead they are to its continued speakers. As in the case of the "God is dead" movement, the "Yiddish is dead" chorus merely proclaims that it is dead for those who have cut themselves off from "the source", i.e. it is dead for those who are dead to it. The progression from Gemeinschaft to Gesellschaft, from intimate community to megalopolis, had deadened us all in part. It is not only no longer possible to feel each neighbor's pain, but we steel ourselves neither to feel the pain of those whose pain we could still feel nor, indeed, to feel our own pain overly much. Gesellschaft makes us more superficially aware of more others, but it also makes us fundamentally "more deeply dead" to more others and makes more of them "more deeply dead" to us. No wonder, when we do not see the agony and misery that shouts out to us from the poverty pockets that we pass every day, that Yiddish, too, is dead, since most of us

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encounter secular or Hasidic Yiddish so rarely if at all. We cannot understand it. We do not hear it. We do not interact with those who speak it ("They all know English now, you know", we console ourselves irrelevantly and inaccurately). We have lost or forgotten what we have in common with them. The very fact that Yiddish lives amongst "them" becomes a confirmatory sign of how dead it is for us; in our fantasy it is dead. However, the world of Yiddish, shrunken though it is, continues at its own rate and its own direction. It has schools (for children), it has periodical and book publications (even periodical publications for children, and several new adult periodical publications have been added in the past few years), it has movies (even several new movies made in the past few years), it has radio and television programs in large cities throughout the country (15 to be exact), it has courses at the college and university levels, it has several smallish but innovative foundations supporting and cultivating it. Nevertheless, the imagery of death surrounds it for "progressive thinkers", for socially mobile Jews (afraid of unleashing in themselves their parents' sarcasm and their grandparents' humor), for Gentiles who have been brainwashed by "some of their best friends" who seek nothing more than the anonymity of full assimilation, for Jews who have gone on to more stylish and more successful Jewish causes, for Jews who cannot speak (and for many who cannot pray in) Hebrew but who are convinced that if Jews do need a language of their own nowadays it should be Hebrew ("because of Israel, you know"). Yes, it is dead to them, but it is hard to know whose tragedy is greater: that of the language that has been robbed of its children or that of the children whose ties to their roots have been sundered. Yes, Ashkenazi Jews can live without Yiddish, but I fail to see what the benefits thereof might be. (May God preserve us from having to live without all the things we could live without.) At best, proclaiming Yiddish to be dead is a kind of "sour grapes" existence; at worst, it is a kind of self isolation from a rich area of potential feeling, identity and creativity. It is similar to the behavior of the rich recluse who never touches his money. It is a case of living death but not for Yiddish as much as for those who deny themselves of its riches. Indeed, Yiddish and those who still live with it can withstand adversity ever so much better than can mainstream American Jewry (Bertrand 1980). Yiddish itself is symbolic of both Jewish adversity and Jewish triumph over adversity. The struggle against adversity is its selfrenewing essence.

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What is "archaic" and why? Yiddish, like other presumably dead languages is often proclaimed to be linguistically archaic (vis-à-vis German or Hebrew). This judgement is passed with a smug, self-satisfied ignorance that always typifies the top-dog relative to the underdog. "My language is strong; therefore it is not archaic. That language is weakening; therefore it is archaic." The underlying syllogism runs as follows: Old organisms die. Weak organisms die. Therefore, weak organisms must be old (archaic). The argument is clinched by citing various examples of lexical items that are still present in Yiddish but are no longer present in modern German or Hebrew. However, the "archaic" argument is as fallacious as the "dead" argument and is as selfserving to boot. Languages change at approximately equal rates if exposed to approximately the same influences. The relative rate of change of two languages cannot be gauged by comparing the number of unchanged elements (archaisms) in one with the number of changed elements (modernisms) in the other. In order to compare Yiddish and Hebrew (or German) as to their archaism they might both be examined relative to their lexical base 400-500 years ago. What proportion of the "elements" in a modern Yiddish novel were present in the Shmuel-bukh or in the Bovo-bukh of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries? What proportion of the "elements of a modern English novel were present in Shakespeare's plays? What proportion of the "elements" of a modern Hebrew novel were present in the Shulkhan-aroch or another such popular work of the sixteenth century? I don't know what the results of such comparisons would be because no such empirical comparisons have ever been attempted. My impression is that Yiddish may have changed every bit as much as English in the intervening 400 years and that Hebrew, having been largely in bookish hibernation during most of this period will have changed least of all. If my impression is correct, then obviously the state of health of a language and its "relative archaism" would be totally unrelated to each other. Indeed, change in a language is related to change in functions and to increase in rate of interaction with other languages. However, both the foregoing processes can also serve to weaken a language. Impressions of "archaicky" (to coin a term and to add to the innovativeness of English) are often derived from locating "elements" in language/dialect A which were once also present in (indeed bor-

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rowed from) language/dialect  but which are no longer encountered in the latter. However, such impressions are misleading since they do not inquire as to how many of the once-shared elements in A and  are still shared; nor do they inquire as to how many of the once-shared elements are now present only in  and are no longer present in A. Obviously, attending to shared elements alone (once-shared vis-à-vis now-shared) is not a good overall measure of archaicity. T h e once-shared elements may b e l o n g disproportionately to a traditional (i.e. relatively unchanging) facet of life in one or another of the two languages and, accordingly they would change relatively little in that particular language. Nevertheless, the language as a whole, outside of that traditional facet might be changing at quite a different rate. Nevertheless, unsatisfactory though this approach might be as a reflection of overall change, it would be a better empirical check on "impressions of relative archaicity" than no empirical checks at all. Unfortunately, unsupported impressions, based on purposively selected examples of unknown representativeness, are all that are usually offered in pronouncements as to the purported archaicity of weaker or less prestigeful languages/dialects. As my mother used to say. Af an ayngefalenem ployt shpringen ale tsign ("All the goats j u m p upon a fence that has fallen down"). It is easy to pick on weak languages. They have few defenders. However, accusing them of archaicity (or of being dead) and proving it are two quite different things. Proof takes more time and effort and most accusers are of the hit-and-run variety. They are accustomed to immediate gratification rather than to the perils of study design, data collection, data analysis and data interpretation. In the absence of data, the archaic features of generally modernized and vibrant languages and the modernized features of generally traditional and weakening languages both remain conveniently unnoticed. The stereotypic charge of relative archaicity, therefore, remains unproven and, very much like the stereotype "dead" or "dieing", is often little more than a selfaggrandizing or self-protective view based more upon ignorance and bias than upon evidence and discipline.

Concluding sentiments The natural life sequence of an individual is completed when he or she dies. The natural life sequence of a culture, on the other hand, is

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completed when the culture proves itself intergenerationally continuous. It is as unnatural for a culture to die as for an individual never to die. Cultures and their accompanying languages never die naturally; they are killed (by uncontrolled sociocultural change). Indeed, no Jewish cultural features have ever "just died"; they have been dispersed, murdered, gassed, burnt and buried alive but they have never "just died". This applies as much to Yiddish as it does to all other aspects ofJewish life. A century ago it seemed that it was necessary for Jews to choose either modernity or tradition, either secularism or religion, either their Jewish vernacular or the co-territorial vernacular, either the diaspora or Zion, either social mobility or social justice. Each choice inevitably involved a corresponding rejection. Jews identified them­ selves as much by what they rejected as by what they selected. But after a century of terrible suffering, at our own hands only slightly less than at the hands of murderers, the time for ingathering and integration has surely come. We now know we can combine both modernism and tradition, secularism and religion, diasporapositiveness and Israel-positiveness, mobility aspirations and justice aspirations. Surely, then, the time has come to admit Yiddish back into the parlor where all other Jewish verities are gathered. If we cannot learn it ourselves, our children or grandchildren can do so. If we cannot understand it, we can at least cherish it. If we cannot laugh and cry and sing with it, we can at least long for it.1 Yiddish will contribute handsomely to all the other Jewish commitments that we espouse. I say this as an observant Orthodox Jew whose Jewishness encompasses ever so much more than Yiddish alone but, also, ever so much more than gemora-and-halakha as the be-all and end-all for the intellectual, ideological, aesthetic and daily life needs of modern Jewry. Was there ever an elementary truth more generally overlooked than the following: With Yiddish our Jewish experiences will be fuller, more throbbing, more colorful, more varied, more continuous, more authentic than they will be without Yiddish. Aza yor of mir, aza yor af aykh, aza yor af undz alemen!

Notes *

Preparation of this paper was made possible by NSF Grant BNS 79-06055 (Division of Linguistics) on behalf of "A Study of the Minority Language Resources of the United States".

THE LIVELY LIFE OF A "DEAD" LANGUAGE 1.

339

American Jewry's disinterest in Yiddish in in some ways a reflection of its American rather than its Jewish heritage. It is an expression of mainstream America's lack of language loyalty, language consciousness, language sentiment, even insofar as English is concerned. Language advocacy particularly non-English language advocacy - is plain silliness as far as most Americans (and by extension most American Jews) are concerned. But our shallow, lumpen-Americanism impoverishes us Jewishly in this respect as in many others.

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YIDDISH: TURNING TO LIFE

Table 1: Estimated Yiddish mother tongue incidence, 1980.

Country 1. Europe Austria Belgium Czechoslovakia Denmark Finland France Germany (East Germany, West Germany and both sections of Berlin) Great Britain Hungary Ireland Italy Netherlands Poland Rumania Sweden Switzerland U.S.S.R. Other Europe 2. Americas Canada Mexico United States Argentina Bolivia Brazil Chile Colombia Ecuador Peru Uruguay Venezuela Other America 3. Asia Israel Other Asia 4. Australia and New Zealand Australia New Zealand 5. Africa Republic of South Africa Other Africa

Worldwide Total:

Total Jewish Population (TJP)*

Yiddish Mother Tongue (YMT)

Approximate Ratio YMT/TJP

13,000 41,000 13,000 7,500 1,320 650,000 34,000

2,600 8,200 2,600 1,500 265 97,500 6,800

.20 .20 .20 .20 .20 .15 .20

410,000 80,000 4,000 39,000 30,000 6,000 60,000 16,000 21,000 2,678,000

61,500 24,000 800 7,800 6,000 1,800 18,000 3,200 4,200 535,600 2,000

.15 .30 .20 .20 .20 .30 .30 .20 .20 .20

91,500 11,250 1,500,000 90,000 600 50,000 10,500 3,600 300 1,550 15,000 4,500 2,000

.30 .30 .25 .30 .30 .30 .30 .30 .30 .30 .30 .30

450,000 500

.15

70,000 5,000

21,000 1,500

.30 .30

118,000

35,400 1,000

.30

305,000 37,500 5,781,000 300,000 2,000 150,000 35,000 12,000 1,000 5,200 50,000 15,000

3,076,000

-

14,286,620

3,072.065

* American Jewish Yearbook 1979, Estimated Jewish Population 1977.

-

-

.22

What could be the societal function of Yiddish in Israel? Vos ken zayn di funktsye fun yidish in Yisroel? The Jewish cultural value of Yiddish for general life in Israel is great enough to merit more serious consideration with respect to the future. In previous centuries, Yiddish was the spoken language and Hebrew the prayed, written or studied language. Now the tables have partially turned. Hebrew is spoken throughout Israel and, outside of Ultra-Orthodox circles, Yiddish is seriously studied and read only by exceptional individuals. O t h e r examples of successfully bilingual/diglossic national cultures are reviewed and contrasted with the unnecessarily monistic emphases of classical zionist­ nationalism. A more pluralistic approach would recognize that Yiddish deserves both symbolic and overt functions in Israel among all those who are and will remain primarily Hebrew speakers. Yiddish can receive widespread societal recognition in connection with Holocaust commemorations and Eastern European Jewry associations. Such functions would not interfere with the growing need for mastery of Arabic and English as well.

Reprinted from Yidisher kemfer April 1974. 40-46.

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SOCIETAL FUNCTIONS OF YIDDISH IN ISRAEL

345

346

YIDDISH: TURNING TO LIFE

SOCIETAL FUNCTIONS OF YIDDISH IN ISRAEL

347

348

YIDDISH: TURNING TO LIFE

SOCIETAL FUNCTIONS OF YIDDISH IN ISRAEL

349

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Sklare, M. 1958. Some socio-psychological aspects of the Jews in America. In Feldman, L.Α. (ed.), Changing Patterns in American Jewish Life. New York: JEC, 9-24. Sklare, M., and M. Vosk. 1957. The Riverton Study: How Jews Look At Themselves and Their Neighbors. New York: American Jewish Commit­ tee. Slobin, D.I. 1963. Some aspects of the use of pronouns of address in Yid­ dish. Word 19:193-202. Smolyar, B. 1977. Yidishe yugnt benkt nokh yidish [Jewish youth longs for Yiddish]. Forverts 30 Oct., p.4. Soltes, M. 1923. The Yiddish Press: An Americanizing Agency. New York: Teachers' College, Columbia University. . 1924. The Yiddish Press: An Americanizing Agency. New York: Teachers College. Starr, ., and B. Laster. 1971. Attitudes toward English and Hebrew among middle and lower class Jewish Iraeli elementary school pupils. In Seminar on Language and National Identity, term paper (Hebrew Uni­ versity). Stein, S. 1970. Liebliche Tefiloh — a Judeo-German prayer book printed in 1709. Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook, 1970 (15):41-72. Stern, Asher. 1989. Linguistic assimilation in Israel. Paper presented at the Third International Conference on Minority Languages. Leeuwarden/ Ljouwet (Netherlands) June 15-20. Stewart, W.A. 1968. A sociolinguistic typology for describing national multilingualism. In J.A. Fishman (ed.), Readings in the Sociology of Lan­ guage. The Hague: Mouton. 531-545. Tanner, N. 1967. Speech and society among the Indonesian elite: A case study of a multilingual community. Anthropological Linguistics 9(3):15410. Tartakover, A. 1946. Di yidishe kultur in poyln tsvishn tsvey velt-milkhomes [Jewish culture in Poland between two World Wars]. Gedank un lebn 4(1):1-35. Tauli, V. 1968. Introduction to a Theory of Language Planning. Uppsala: University of Uppsala Press. . 1974. The theory of language planning. In J.A. Fishman (ed.), Advances in Language Planning, 48-67. The Hague: Mouton. Tcherikover, E. 1961. The Early Jewish Labor Movement in the United States (translated and revised from the original Yiddish by A. Antonsosky). New York: YIVO Institute for Jewish Research.

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APPENDIX Statistical Tables: Yiddish in the USA, Israel, The Czarist Empire, the USSR, Poland and Other Countries (20th Century) Introduction Every effort has been made to bring as large a number of statistical tables pertaining to Yiddish in the USA, Israel and the USSR from as wide a variety of sources as possible, without duplicating any of those which are part of the studies included in this volume (see no. 1, no. 5, no. 7, and no. 24). A word of caution and a word of counsel are in order for the users of these tables. In every case, the original studies should be consulted, in order to determine how the data reported were collected (e.g., via census enumerators or via respondent selfmailers), how the respondents were located (e.g., complete enumeration of the population or a sample thereof, and, if the latter, how the sample was drawn), what was the actual wording of the questions to which the respondents replied, i.e. how "mother tongue", e.g., was defined in the question), whether replies designating languages by various "non-standard" names (e.g., "Jewish" instead of Yiddish or "Israeli" instead of Hebrew) were recorded and counted or simply discarded, etc., etc. Tables taken from various sources are rarely identical in all of the above respects, even if conducted by the same agency or investigator, and even less so if conducted by different agencies and different investigators. As a result, various table are to be compared with each other only hesitantly and tentatively. It is also well to remember that governments, agencies and even individual investigators are far from being unbiased insofar as the purposes and the outcomes of their statistical studies are concerned. The nature of these biases is determining insofar as which questions are asked, how, when and where they are asked, of how many in­ dividuals they are asked and whether the findings resulting from ask­ ing these questions are reported in full and unaltered. The fact that

378

YIDDISH: TURNING TO LIFE

the following tables are reproduced here does not imply approval of their methods of data-collection nor satisfaction with their reliability, much less with their validity. Wherever tables from different sources report on the same sociolinguistic phenomenon, occurring at the same time and in the same place (almost an unheard of occurrence in the field of sociolinguistics), I have reproduced the methodologically better of the two, but even this judgement on my part does nothing to assure that the data reported are methodologically sound. Finally, where tables are part of a series in which essentially the same question has been asked in census after census, every effort has been made to show that this is so. Wherever possible, comparative tables have been sought out to reveal trends across censuses, since such tables are frequently of the greatest value. Unfortunately, since there is still no central registry of statistical tables pertaining to Yiddish, one cannot be sure that all such tables for the USA, USSR and Israel have, indeed, been included here. Those aware of the absence in this section of additional worthwhile statistical tables dealing with any aspect of Yiddish in these three countries are requested to xerox these additions and send them either to the editor or the publisher for inclusion in a forthcoming revision of this volume or in some other comparable easily accessible source. Tables dealing with other countries of major Eastern European Jewish resettlement must also be collected. This Appendix is dedicated to Dina Abramowicz, long the Director of the YIVO Library, not only because she has been so helpful to me with respect to a large number of my publications throughout the years, but because she has continued to remind me of the need for just such an Appendix and to express her confidence that I would ultimately produce it. She is the perfect example of what the sages had in mind when they proclaimed "mitsve goyreres mitsve" ("one good deed begets another").

List of Tables Czarist Empire, USSR and Poland Table 1.

Yiddish, Hebrew and Russian-Jewish periodic publications, 1917-1918.

Table 2.

Yiddish books published in selected countries, 1921-1923.

Table 3.

Report for 1923, "Kultur Lige" Publishing House.

Table 4.

Jewish libraries in Poland (early 1920s).

Table 5.

Population distribution by religion in the Czarist Empire, 1897.

Table 6.

Population distribution by native language in the Czarist Empire, 1897.

Table 7.

Soviet census data for selected characteristics, by nationality, 1926.

Table 8.

USSR literacy by nationality, 1926.

Table 9.

Proportion naming their nationality's language as their own native language. 1926, 1959, 1970 and 1979, by sex, urban residence, and residence inside or outside of their nationality's republic or region.

Table 10. Soviet census for selected characteristics, by nationality, 1970. Table 11. Percentage of those claiming a non-Russian language as their native lan­ guage who have learned Russian as a second language, by nationality, 1970. Table 12. Jewish enrollment in educational institutions in Poland, 1934-1935. Table 13. The Jewish press in Poland, 1938-1939. Table 14. Average age of Yiddish writers, by country and literary genre, 1970.

Israel Table 1.

Jews in Palestine/Israel speaking Hebrew as only or first language, 19141983.

Table 2.

Languages other than Hebrew spoken by the Jewish population (aged 2 and over) in Palestine/Israel, 1916-1961.

380

YIDDISH: TURNING TO LIFE

Table 3.

Index of speaking for languages other than Hebrew spoken by the Jewish population, 1948, 1961 and 1983.

Table 4.

Jewish and non-Jewish population aged 14 and over, by daily spoken lan­ guage, 1972.

Table 5.

Jewish population aged 15 and over who speak languages other than Hebrew, by language, whether only, first or second language, and by sex and age, 1983.

Table 6.

Jewish population aged 15 and over who speak languages other than Hebrew, by language, whether only, first or second language, and by sex, place of birth and age, 1983.

Table 7.

Jewish and non-Jewish population aged 15 and over, by everyday language spoken, 1961, 1972 and 1983.

Table 8.

Yiddish in Israel, basic numerical status, 1961.

Table 9.

Nativity of Yiddish claimants, 1961.

Table 10. Nativity and age of Yiddish claimants, 1961. Table 11. Main language spoken at home, by age, 1970. Table 12. Main language spoken at home by nativity and region of origin, 1970. Table 13. The top six immigrant languages (as principal or additional languages), 1961. Table 14. Use of Yiddish and Hebrew, 1961. Table 15. Major other languages claimed (other than Hebrew), 1961, by type of settle­ ment. Table 16. Index of speaking other languages (other than Hebrew) among the Jewish population, 1948 and 1961. Table 17. The relative share of Yiddish, other mother-tongues and other languages among the foreign-born speaking a language other than Hebrew, by period of immigration. Table 18. Number of claimants of the top six immigrant languages as first or only lan­ guages, 1948, 1950, 1954, 1961. Table 19. Periodical publications in top six immigrant languages, 1940-1970. Table 20. Periodical publications in top six immigrant languages, by frequency of pub­ lication, 1955-1970. Table 21. Periodical publications in top six immigrant languages, by frequency of pub­ lication and circulation, 1965 and 1970. Table 22. Hebrew language proficiency of listeners to radio programs in Hebrew and in various immigrant languages, 1970.

LIST OF TABLES

381

Table 23. Radio listening in selected languages, 1965. Table 24. Language programs transmitted abroad and for immigrants, 1972-1973. Table 25. Radio listeners, by languages understood and extent of listening to particular languages, 1972-1973. Table 26. Budgets of Israeli Broadcasting Authority for broadcasting abroad and to new immigrants, 1971-1974. Table 27. Yiddish theater in Israel, 1945-1970. Table 28. Average age of Yiddish writers, by country and literary genre, 1970. Table 29. Book publishing for top six immigrant languages, 1940-1970. Table 30. New and reprinted books, by language of original and language of publica­ tion, 1969-1971. Table 31. Attitudes toward Yiddish among high school students of Ashkenazi paren­ tage, early 1970's. Table 32. Attitudes toward Yiddish among high school students of non-Ashkenazi parentage, early 1970's.

United States of America See Table 2 in Appendix: Czarist Empire, USSR and Poland: Yiddish books published in selected countries, 1921-1923, (p. 386). See Table 26 in Appendix: Israel: Average age of Yiddish writers, by country and liter­ ary genre, 1970? (p. 436). In Chapter "Yiddish in America": p.[97] Yiddish secular supplementary schools in the United States and their enroll­ ments, 1945-1960. p.[104-107] Yiddish periodical press in the USA, by frequency of publication and aver­ age circulation, 1930-1970. p.[110]

Age distribution of 209 living American Yiddish authors, 1960.

p.[111]

Number of books published by American Yiddish authors, 1945-1960.

p.[114]

Age distribution of professional Yiddish actors, 1945-1960.

p.[116]

Yiddish radio in America, 1951-1960.

p.[130]

Yiddish mother tongue in America, by nativity, 1920-1960.

p.[134]

Orthodox day schools utilizing Hebrew or Hebrew and Yiddish as media of instruction, USA, New York State and New York City, 1960-1961.

YIDDISH: TURNING TO LIFE

382 In this Appendix: Table 1.

Number of non-English mother tongue dailies, 1910-1960.

Table 2.

Circulation of non-English mother tongue dailies, 1910-1960.

Table 3.

Number of non-English mother tongue weeklies, 1910-1960.

Table 4.

Circulation of non-English mother tongue weeklies, 1910-1960.

Table 5.

Number of non-English mother tongue monthlies, 1910-1960.

Table 6.

Circulation of non-English mother tongue monthlies, 1910-1960.

Table 7.

Total number of non-English mother tongue periodical publications, 19101960.

Table 8.

Total circulation of non-English mother tongue periodical publications, 1910-1960.

Table 9.

Total number of mixed (English and mother tongue) periodical publications, 1910-1960.

Table 10. Total circulation of mixed (English and mother tongue) periodical publica­ tions, 1910-1960. Table 11. Proportion of three types of periodical publications (all mother tongue, mixed, all English), 1930 and 1960: number. Table 12. Proportion of three types of periodical publications (all mother tongue, mixed, all English), 1930 and 1960. Table 13. Hours per week and number of "stations" engaged in non-English radio broadcasting, 1956 and 1960, according to two data sources. Table 14. Proportion of total non-English radio broadcasting, by major languages or language groupings, 1956 and 1960. Table 15. Proportions of non-English radio broadcastings, within regions, 1960. Table 16. Proportions of non-English radio broadcasting, across regions, 1960. Table 17. Mother tongue of the population by nativity, parentage and age, 1970. Table 18. Mother tongue of the population, by nativity, parentage and age, 1970. Table 19. Mother tongue claiming, 1940-1960-1970. Table 20. Mother tongue of the foreign born, 1910-1970. Table 21. Mother tongue of the native of foreign or mixed parentage 1910-170. Table 22. Mother tongue of the native of native parentage, 1940-1970.

LIST OF TABLES

383

Table 23. Persons reporting English as current language, by mother tongue, 1969. Table 24. Estimated change in non-English mother tongue claiming, 1970-1979. Table 25. Mother tongue of persons 14 years old and over, by age, 1979. Table 26. Persons 5 years old and over, speaking non-English languages at home, by age, 1979. Table 27. State and regional mother tongue tables: Yiddish and five other languages, 1970. Table 28. Non-English periodical publications, by language and frequency of publica­ tion, 1983. Table 29. Circulation of non-English periodical publications, by language and frequency of publication (with contrastive data on Anglo-Jewish publications), 1983. Table 30. Radio and television "stations" broadcasting in non-English languages, hours/week of broadcasting, 1983. Table 31. Ethnic mother tongue schools by language and frequency of attendance. Table 32. "Does your school presently teach Yiddish?" Responses of principals by school type, 1981. Table 33. "Would your school teach Yiddish if proper materials and teachers were available?" Responses of principals by school type, 1983. Table 34. Projections of the Limited English Proficient population for school-age groups. Table 35. Projections of the non-English language background population for contigu­ ous age groups.

Other Countries/World-Wide See Table 2 in Appendix: Czarist Empire, USSR and Poland: Yiddish books published in selected countries, 1921-1923? (p. 386). See Table 26 in Appendix: Israel: Average age of Yiddish writers, by country/region and literary genre, 1970, (p. 436). See page 340: Estimated Yiddish mother tongue: worldwide, by country 1980. See page 492: The worldwide press in various languages, 1557-1920.

TABLES - CZARIST EMPIRE, USSR & POLAND Czarist Empire, USSR and Poland

Table 1. Yiddish, Hebrew and Russian-Jewish periodicals, 1917-1918. During the year of the revolution and the year immediately thereafter, 187 Jewish periodical publications appeared in the area of the former Czarist empire. Eighty-six of these were in Yiddish. Only General Zionists pub­ lished a considerable number of periodicals in Hebrew (n = 6) and more than twice as many periodicals in Russian (n = 36) as in Yiddish (n = 16).

Source: Mayzl 1923

385

386

YIDDISH: TURNING TO LIFE

Table 2. "The Yiddish book in 1923" (Mayzl 1923). Of 364 Yiddish books published in 1923, 24.4% were belles-lettres, 13.5% were for young readers, 11% were textbooks, 8.5% were poetry, 8.8% were dramas, etc. Twenty five of these books were translations from other languages. Over 70% were published in Poland, 13% in Germany, 6% in the USA, and 6% in the USSR.

TABLES - CZARIST EMPIRE, USSR & POLAND Table 3. Report for 1923, "Kultur Lige" Publishing House.

387

388

YIDDISH: TURNING TO LIFE

Table 4. "Jewish libraries in Poland" (Meyer 1922b). Jewish communities in large and small localities supported their own Jewish libraries. The table lists 138 localities with a total collection of 147,177 books. Of these 63% were in Yid­ dish, 15% were in Polish, 13% were in Russian, 6% were in Hebrew, and 3% were in other languages. In 1922 over 23,000 subscribing members borrowed books from these libraries.

TABLES - CZARIST EMPIRE, USSR & POLAND Table 4. Continued

389

390 Table 4. Continued

YIDDISH: TURNING TO LIFE

TABLES - CZARIST EMPIRE, USSR & POLAND

391

Table 5. Population distribution by religion in the Russian Empire in 1897. Thousands Orthodox and Edinoverie* Old Believers and other sects ! Armenian Gregorians Armenian Catholics Roman Catholics Lutherans Reformist Protestants Baptists Mennonites Other Christian creeds Karaites** Jewish Mohamedans Buddhists and Lamanists Other non Christian creeds Total

%

87123.6 2204.6 1179.2 38.8 11468.0 3572.7 85.4 38.1 66.6 8.1 12.9 5215.8 13907.0 433.9 285.3

69.4 1.8 0.9 0.0 9.1 2.8 0.1 0.0 0.1 0.0 0.0 4.2 11.1 0.3 0.2

125640.0

100.0

[*] Edinoverie — Old Believer sect which reached an organizational compromise with the official Orthodox Church. [**] Karaites — Jewish sect rejecting the Talmud Source: Pervaya Vseobshchaya perepis' naselenie Rossiickoi imperii, 1897. Obshchii svod po imperii, vol.1, p.xv.

392

YIDDISH: TURNING TO LIFE

Table 6. Population distribution in the Russian Empire by native language in 1897 (in thousands). Slavic Languages Russian Great Russian Little Russian Belorussian Polish Czech Serbian, Croatian, Slovene Bulgarian Latvian-Lithuanian Dialects Lithuanian Zhmud Latvian

83933.6 55667.5 22380.6 5885.5 7931.3 50.4 1.8 172,7

1210.5 448.0 1435.9

Roman Languages Moldavian and Romanian French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese

1121.7 21.3

Germanic Languages German Norwegian, Danish, Dutch, English Jewish Kartvelian Dialects Georgian Imeret Mingrel Svanet

1790.5 23.2 5063.2

824.0 273.2 239.6 15.7

Other Indo-European Languages Greek Albanian dialect Armenian Persian Tadzhik dialect Talysh

186.9 0.9 1173.1 31.7 350.4 35.3

Tat Karachai Kurd dialects Ossetian dialects Hindu dialects Gipsy dialects Afghan language Caucasian Dialects Cherkesy Kabardin Cherkes Abkhaz Chechen Checen Ingush Kistin Lezgian Avar-Andkhui Dargin Kyurin Udin Kuzi-Kumyk and others

95.1 27.2 99.9 171.7 0.3 44.6 0.5

98.6 46.3 72.1 226.3 47.4 0.4 212.7 130.2 159.2 7.1 91.3

Finnish Dialects Finnish Votyak Karelian Izhor Chud Estonian Lopar Zyryan Perm Mordovian Cheremiss Vogul Ostyak Hungarian

143.1 421.0 208.1 13.8 25.8 1002.7 1.8 104.7 104.7 1023.8 375.4 7.6 19.7 1.0

Turkic-Tatar Dialects Tatar Bashkir Mescheryak Teptyar Chuvash Manchurian

3737.6 1321.4 53.8 117.7 843.8 3.4

(a) This number is equal to 97.1% of all claimants of "Jewish religion" (see Table 5, above).

TABLES - CZARIST EMPIRE, USSR & POLAND

393

Table 6. Continued Kumyk Nogai Turk Karapapakh Turkmen Kirgiz-Kaisar Kara-Kirgiz Kipchak Karakalpak Sart Uzbek Taranchin Kashgar Turkic dialects Yakut

83.4 64.1 208.8 29.9 281.4 4084.1 201.7 7.6 104.3 968.7 726.5 56.5 14.9 440.4 227.4

Mongolian-B rat Dialects Kalmyk 190.6 Buryat 288.7 Mongolian 0.8 Dialects of Remaining Northern Tribes Samoyed Tungus Chukotsk Koryak Kamchadal

15.9 66.3 11.8 6.1 4.0

Yukagir Chuvan Eskimo Gilyak Ainu Aleut Yenisei-Ostyak

0.9 0.5 1.1 6.2 1.4 0.6 1.0

Languages of the Far East Peoples 57.4 26.0 2.6

Chinese Korean Japanese Other Languages and Dialects Arabic Aisor dialect Peoples with no native language Total

1.7 5.3 5.0 125640.1

Source: Perbaya Vseobshchava perepis' naseleniya Rossiiskoi imperii, 1897. Obshchii svod po impzherii (St Petersburg, 1906), Vol II, Table XIII Note: Data on the Russian Empire excludes Finland

394

YIDDISH: TURNING TO LIFE

Table 7. Soviet Census data for selected characteristics by nationality, 1926.

RUSSIANS UKRATNS. ESTONIANS Ecological characteristics Total pop. (millions) 79,668.7 35,800.3 % of total USSR pop. 47.2 21.0 \ living In urban cntrs.>15,000 15.7 6.8

JEWS

1,117.4 4,090.7 0.7

Cultural characteristics % speaking natl. lang. 99.7 87.1 % literate (any lang.) 44.5 41.5

2.5

ARMENIANS

UZBEKS

TOTAL USSR

1,565.6

3,987.5

167,665.8

0.9

2.4

7 4.7 17.9

21.1

50.9

23.8

13.8

88.4

71.9

92.4

99.1

--

--

27.0

3.7

a Socioeconomic characteristics Political characteristics Natl . compos ition of the Communist party: 1922 party census 72.0 5.9 1927 party census 65.0 11.7 Natl . compos і tion of Soviet b 66.7 0.0 polit. elite

2.5

5.2

1.2

4.3

0.0

20.0

1.0

0.5

1.7

1.2

0.0

0.0

[a] omitted here because of skimpiness of data, none of which is available for Jews. [b] National Composition of the top Soviet leaders who serve as members or candidate members of the Politburo plus the Secretariat of the Central Committee of the CPSU. Sources: Lewis, Rowland and Clem (1976: 279), Clem (1978), Clem (1975: 144, 262 and 1978), Kohn (1933: 156-157), Arutyunyan (1972: 3-20), Fainsod (1958: 219) and Brzezinski and Huntingdon (1963: 132-133).

TABLES - CZARIST EMPIRE, USSR & POLAND

395

Table 8. USSR literacy by ethnic group in 1926 (%) Ethnic group

Total

Urban male female

Russian Ukrainian Belorussian Moldavian Georgian Armenian Azerbaizhan Kazakh Uzbek Turkmen Tadzhik Kirgiz Karelian Komi (Zyryan) Mordovian Mari Udmurt Chuvash Tatar Bashkir Kalmyk Avar Kabardin Ossetian Chechen Buryat Yakut Abkhaz Karakalpak Jewish German Polish

45.0 41.3 37.3 27.6 39.5 34.0 8.1 7.1 3.8 2.3 2.2 4.6 41.4 38.1 22.9 26.6 25.6 32.2 33.6 24.3 10.9 6.8 6.8 21.2 2.9 23.2 5.8 11.2 1.2 72.3 60.2 53.8

74.4 71.3 75.6 61.9 72.7 60.1 35.8 37.0 20.0 35.3 13.4 39.7 75.9 82.6 71.9 88.3 79.4 82.5 55.1 55.9 54.6 45.4 71.9 62.2 44.0 69.2 46.2 59.6 20.2 76.9 74.9 78.4

60.2 50.6 54.4 26.6 63.9 46.7 10.2 9.2 4.1 5.0 1.7 9.1 47.7 57.9 32.3 60.4 48.1 50.1 38.2 31.1 34.8 14.3 42.0 36.4 12.0 54.6 21.2 31.2 1.2 71.0 72.9 70.0

Rural male female 53.0 53.8 49.0 42.0 40.1 34.3 9.1 11.9 3.2 3.6 2.2 7.9 54.6 51.8 37.7 44.7 40.7 47.6 38.6 34.0 11.7 12.5 10.3 28.0 4.9 36.4 8.3 15.6 1.9 70.7 58.9 51.2

26.9 25.0 19.8 11.6 27.1 12.0 0.8 0.9 0.3 0.2 0.1 0.2 28.6 24.1 8.1 9.8 11.3 16.7 24.2 14.5 1.1 0.8 1.9 9.0 0.2 9.1 1.8 3.4 0.1 60.7 56.7 37.2

Native language 997 51.9 40.2 38.7 98.3 80.9 96.2 96.5 98.0 91.1 69.9 93.2 56.2 28.9 69.4 75.5 89.6 92.5 40.0 24.7 85.6 23.7 38.5 29.8 857 42.9 66.3 55.5 91.7 52.3

!

Source: Natsional'naya politika BKP(b) ν tsifrakh, pp 271-273. Note: Data for Lithuanians, Latvians and Estonians for 1926 are unrepresentative and have not been included.

396

YIDDISH: TURNING TO LIFE

Table 9. Proportion (%) naming their ethnic group (Natsionaľnosť) as their native lan­ guage. 1926 Ethnic Group

m/f

Russian Ukrainian Belorussian Lithuanian Latvian Estonian Moldavian Georgian Armenian Azerbaidzhan Kazakh Uzbek Turkmen Tadzhik Kirgiz Karelian Komi/Komi-Permyak Mordovian Mari Udmurt Chuvash Tatar Bashkir ! Kalmyk Kabardin Ossetian Į Chechen Peoples of Dagestan Tuva Buryat Yakut Abkhaz Karakalpak Jewish German Polish

Total Pop. male

99.7 87.1 71.8 46.9 78.3 88.4 92.3 96.5 92.4 93.8 99.6 99.1 97.3 98.3 99.0 95.5 96.5 94.0 99.3 98.9 98.7 98.9 53.8 99.3 99.3 97.9 99.7 99.3

99.7 87.0 70.8 46.1 76.5 88.0 91.8 96.6 92.4 93.6 99.6 99.1 97.3 98.3 98.9 95.6 96.3 93.6 99.3 98.8 98.5 98.7 54.1 99.3 99.4 97.8 99.7 99.1

—

—

98.1 99.7 83.9 87.5 71.9 94.9 42.9

97.8 99.8 83.9 87.2 71.5 94.7 41.4

Urban Pop. m/f male 99/7 64.9 37.5 39.3 66.1 68.3 74.2 97.2 88.0 98.4 98.4 99.2 98.8 99.3 96.1 70.3 84,5 64.2 97.4 85.6 82.2 96.2 72.8 92.2 91.4 87.2 94.2 97.0

—

997 65.6 36.2 37.9 64.5 68.5 73.8 97.2 88.2 98.5 98.5 99.3 98.8 99.2 96.4 71.8 86.3 68.7 90.0 87.8 84.3 95.9 74.6 94.2 92.5 86.8 92.5 96.9

—

89.5 96.8 85.3 99.3 67.4 77.4 49.7

92.3 96.7 86.2 99.0 66.9 76.5 46.9

Living in own ethnic rep.

Living outside own ethnic rep.

1959 Ethnic Group

Total Pop. m/f male

Urban Pop. m/f male

Russian Ukrainian Belorussian Lithuanian Latvian

99.8 87.7 84.2 97.8 95.1

99.9 77.2 63.5 96.6 93.1

99.3 86.4 82.0 97.7 94.9

99.9 75.6 60.6 96.4 92.9

100

93.5 93.2 99.2 98.4

ļ

99.3 51.2 41.9 80.3 53.2

!

TABLES - CZARIST EMPIRE, USSR & POLAND

397

Table 9. Continued 1959(contd) Ethnic Group

Total Pop. m/f male

Urban Pop. m/f male

Living in own ethnic rep.

Living outside own ethnid

rep. Estonian ļ Moldavian ! Georgian Armenian Azerbaidzhan Kazakh Uzbek Turkmen Tadzhik Kirgiz Karelian Komi/KomiPermyak Mordovian Mari Udmurt Chuvash Tatar Bashkir Kalmyk Kabardin Ossetia n Chechen Peoples of Dagestan Tuva Buryat Yakut Abkhaz Karakalpak Jewish German Polish

95.2 95.2 98.6 89.9 97.6 98.4 98.4 98.9 98.1 98.7 71.3

96.2 94.5 98.6 89.7 97.5 98.1 98.4 98.8 98.0 98.5 69.0

93.1 78.4 96.8 84.4 96.4 96.7 96.7 97.3 96.4 97.4 51.7

93.4 77.4 96.7 84.3 96.3 96.2 96.6 97.3 96.2 97.2 48.7

98.2 99.5 99.2 98.1 99.2 98.6 99.5 99.3 99.7 80.9

99.3

56.3 77.7 73.4 78.1 95.1 95.6 97.4 92.0 94.6 92.3 61.3

88.7 78.1 95.1 89.1 90.8 92.0 61.9 91.0 97.9 89.1 98.8

87.5 75.8 93.4 86.8 88.6 91.0 62.1 89.2 97.5 87.8 98.5

74.3 52.2 75.8 69.7 71.2 87.5 73.3 83.8 90.8 82.0 97.0

72.4 49.5 73.2 66.8 68.6 86.1 73.1 80.4 90.7 80.8 96.2

93.8 97.3 97.8 93.2 97.5 98.9 57.6 98.2 99.2 98.0 99.7

60.9 70.9 91.6 75.9 83.2 89.3 75.1

96.2 99.1 94.9 97.5 95.0 95.0 21.5 75.0 45.2

95.5 99.0 94.0 97.4 94.7 95.1 20.8 72.2 46.2

90.3 95.3 81.5 90.7 88.8 96.8 21.0 66,3 38.6

89.6 95.5 80.8 90.6 88.9 96.1 20.3 63.5 39.3

98.6 99.2 97.3 98.2 96.7 99.1

87.9 96.4 84.9 82.8 70.1 56.4

— — —

— — —

Living in own ethnic rep.

Living outside own ethnid rep.

100 91.4 90.1 99.5 98.1 99.2 97.7 99.4 99.8

99.2 48.4 40.9 71.8 51.1 53.5 79.1 71.5 78.0

79.6 79.2 73.1 97.8

ļ

1970 Ethnic Group

Total Pop. m/f male

Urban Pop. m/f male

Russian Ukrainian Belorussian Lithuanian Latvian Estonian Moldavian Georgian Armenian

99.8 85.7 80.6 97.9 95.2 96.5 95.0 98.4 91.4

99.9 75.9 63.4 97.0 93.2 93.8 82.5 97.1 87.8

99.8 84.3 78.6 97.7 95.0 95.5 94.4 98.3 91.3

99.8 74.3 61.1 96.8 93.0 93.9 82.2 97.0 87.7

YIDDISH: TURNING TO LIFE

398 Table 9. Continued 1970{contd)

Living in own ethnic rep.

Living outside ļ own ethnic rep.

96.6 95.6 96.9 97.3 96.7 97.4 45.4

98.9 98.9 98.9 99.3 99.4 99.7 71.7

95.8 95.0 97.4 93.5 95.6 91.6 51.0

66.2 56.6 73.2 64.3 68.0 83.3 73.2 90.0 93.7 84.9 95.7

63.4 53.2 71.2 61.3 65.2 81.9 73.4 88.7 93.5 84.0 95.0

86.7 96.2 95.8 87.7 94.5 98.5 63.2 97.3 99.1 98.4 99.5

74.6 72.6 86.5 71.4 79.1 85.9 73.8 76.2 79.6 76.7 94.5

91.6 94.5 79.6 87.0 90.4 97.6 17.4 58.3 31.6

91.1 94.9 78.4 86.8 90.1 97.6 16.6 54.8

98.7 99.1 95.0 97.1 97.8 99.5

88.9 85.0 84.4 72.4 71.8 62.2

— — —

—

Ethnic Group

Total Pop. m/f male

Urban Pop. m/f male

Azerbaidzhan Kazakh Uzbek Turkmen Tadzhik Kirgiz Karelian Komi/KomiPermyak Mordovian Mari Udmurt Chuvash Tatar Bashkir Kalmyk Kabardin Ossetian Chechen Peoples of Dagestan Tuva Buryat Yakut Abkhaz Karakalpak Jewish German Polish

98.2 98.0 98.6 98.9 98.5 98.8 63.0

98.1 97.2 98.6 98.8 98.4 98.7 59.6

96.7 95.8 96.9 97.2 96.7 97.6 50.4

83.7 77.8 91.2 82.6 86.9 98.2 66.2 91.7 98.1 88.6 98.8

82.2 75.6 89.6 80.4 84.8 88.1 67.1 90.7 97.8 88.0 98.4

96.5 98.7 92.6 96.2 95.9 96.6 17.7 66.8 32.5

96.0 98.7 91.9 96.1 95.5 96.6 16.9 63.7 32.3

—

1979 Ethnic Group

Total Pop.

Russian Ukrainian Belorussian Lithuanian Latvian Estonian Moldavian Georgian Armenian Azerbaidzhan Kazakh Uzbek Turkmen

99.9 82.8 74.2 97.9 95.0 95.3 93.2 98.3 90.7 97.9 97.5 98.5 98.7

Urban Pop.

Living in own ethnic rep.

99.4

100

73.7 59.1 97.4 93.3 93.4 81.3 96.9 87.6 96.2 97.1 96.1 97.0

89.1 83.5 97.9 97.8 99.0 96.5 99.4 99.4 98.7 98.6 98.8 99.2

Living outside own ethnic rep.

99.9

43.8 36.8 63.9 55.3 33.3 74.3 67.3 73.9 92.7 92.8 96.9 90.4

!

TABLES - CZARIST EMPIRE, USSR & POLAND Table 9. Continued ļ

1979(contd) Ethnic Group

Total Pop.

Urban Pop.

Living in own ethnic rep.

Living outside own ethnic rep.

Tadzhik Kirgiz Karelian Komi/KomiPermyak Mordovian Mari Udmurt Chuvash Tatar Bashkir Kalmyk Kabardin Ossetian Chechen Peoples of Dagestan Tuva Buryat Yakut Abkhaz Karakalpak Jewish German Polish

97.8 97.9 55.6

95.9 97.3 43.4

99.3 99.6 61.7

92.8 84.8 46.9

76.5 72.6 86.7 76.5 81.7 85.9 67.0 91.3 97.9 88.2 98.6

60.2 55.1 72.3 60.6 64.7 81.0 72.8 90.1 95.3 84.2 96.3

79.9 94.3 83.7 82.3 89.8 97.7 64.4 97.1 99.1 92.3 99.7

71.5 63.9 79.9 64.4 73.4 81.8 72.6 62.3 85.7 75.8 94.0

95.9 98.8 90.2 95.3 94.3 95.9 14.2 57.0 29.1

96.0 78.8 86.1 89.7 97.3 12.3 48.5 27.8

—

98.6 99.1 93.1 96.4 97.0 98.7

86.8 85.7 86.0 72.3 65.5 59.1

— — —

— — —

399

400

YIDDISH: TURNING TO LIFE

Table 10. Soviet Census data for selected characteristics by nationality, 1970.

RUSSIANS

UKRAINS. ESTONIANS

Ecological characteristics Total pop. (millions) 129,015.1 40,753.2 1,007.3 % of. total USSR 53.4 16.9 0.4 living in urban cntrs . of >15,000 57.4 37.9 43.6 Cultural characteristics % speaking nati. lang. 99.8 85.7 % aged 10+ wi th sec . ed . or higher 50.8 47.6 Copies of bks. publ . in natl lang. per .100 spkrs 562.2 226.2

JEWS

2,150.7 (0.9

ARMENIANS

3,559.1

UZBEKS

9,195,093

TOTAT, USSR

241,720.1

1.5

.

76.9

82.7

53.9

20.7

46.6

95.5

17.7

91.4

90.6

93.9

46.2

77.3

51.8

41.2

48.3

889.7

1^8.

211.9

239.3

10.7

0.5

6.7

2.2

1.3

Political characteristics Natl . compos Ition of the Commun ist party, 1972 61.0 16.0 Natl . composi­ tion of Soviet political elite a (III/IV '71) 60.0 16.0

0.3

n.a.

1.5

1.9

0.0

0.0

0.0

Socioeconomic characteristics % scientific

workers

66.4

0.0

-

[a] National composition of members or candidate members of the Poltiburo plus the sec­ retariat of the Central Committee of the CPSU. Sources: USSR (1973: 9-13), Clem (1975: 262, 281), Katz, Rogers and Harned (1975: 444445, 449, 459), Rigby (1976: 326), Current Soviet Leaders (1976) and Portraits of Prominent USSR Personalities (1971).

TABLES - CZARIST EMPIRE, USSR & POLAND

401

Table 11. Percentage of those claiming a non-Russian language as their native tongue who have learned Russian as a second language, according to nationalities in 1970. Nationality

%

Nationality

%

Nationality

%

Russian Ukrainian Uzbek Bellorussian Tatar Kazakh Azerbaydzhan Armenian Georgian Moldavian Lithuanian Jew Tadzhik German Chuvash Turkmen Kirgiz Latvian Daghestanis comprising Avar Lezgin Dargin Ku myk Lak Tabasaran Nogai Rutul Tsakhur Agul Mordvin Bashkir

0.1 36.3 14.5 49.0 62.5 41.8 16.6 30.1 21.3 36.1 35.9 16.3 15.4 59.6 58.4 15.4 19.1 45.2 41.7

Pole Estonian Udmurt Chechen Mari Ossetian Komi * Permyak Korean Bulgarian Greek Buryat Yakut Kabardinian Karakalpak Gipsy Uygur Hungarian Ingush Gagauz Peoples of the North comprising Nenets Evenki Khanty Chukchi Even Nanai Mansi Koryak Dolgan Nivkh

37.0 29.0 63.3 66.7 62.4 58.6 63.1 68.5 50.3 58.8 35.4 66.7 41.7 71.4 10.4 53.0 35.6 25.8 71.3 63.3 52.5

Selkup Ulchi Saami Udegei Itelmen Keti Orochi Nganasan Yukagir Kareli Tuvin Kalmyk Rumanian Karachai Adygei Kurd Finn Abkhaz Turki Khakass Balkar Altai Cherkess Dungan Iranian Abazin Aisor Czech Tats Shortzi Slovak Others

40.8 56.8 52.9 46.0 32.5 59.1 44.4 40.0 29.1 59.1 38.9 81.1 28.5 67.6 67.9 19.9 47.0 59.2 22.4 66.5 71.5 54.9 70.0 48.0 33.9 69.5 46.2 35.6 57.7 59.8 39.3 38.4

37.8 31.6 43.0 57.4 56.0 31.9 68.5 30.7 12.2 39.8 65.7 53.3

55.1 54.9 48.1 58.7 48.4 58.0 38.6 64.3 61.4 43.8

Source: 1970 Census account in Izvestiya April 17, 1971.

402 Table 12.

YIDDISH: TURNING TO LIFE Enrollment of Jews in educational institutions in Poland, 1934-1935*

TYPE OF SCHOOL AND AFFILIATION

NUMBER OF SCHOOLS

ENROLLMENTS

Non-Jewish STATE, MUNICIPAL, a n d PRIVATE

elementary secondary vocational special (for the disabled) university

425,566 29,822 6,994 1,607 7,114

Total

481,203 Jewish

TARBUT ( Z i o n i s t )

kindergarten and elementary secondary and vocational evening

255 10 4

35,764 2,557 6,229

269

44,780

97 2 70

10,256 650 4,580

165

15,486

snuL-KULT (Labor Zionist and others) kindergarten and elementary evening

13 3

2,026 317

Total

16

2,343

Total CYSno (Bund, Labor Zionist, Folkist, and others) kindergarten and elementary secondary evening Total

8,300

JEWISH SECONDARY SCHOOL FEDERATION (officially

nonpartisan but Zionist-influenced) YAVNEH (Mizrachi) kindergarten and elementary secondary yeshivah rabbinical seminary

220 3 4 2

Total

229

15,923

557 197

61,328 18,758

754

80,086

HOREV (Agudas yisroel)

kheyder and Talmud Torah yeshivah Total

TABLES - CZARIST EMPIRE, USSR & POLAND

403

Table 12. Continued TYPE OF SCHOOL AND AFFILIATION

NUMBER OF SCHOOLS

ENROLLMENTS 20,000

BETH JACOB (Agudas y israel) PRIVATE

kheyder secondary (gymnasium and lyceum) Total

147

40,000 8,232** 48,232

VOCATIONAL

ORT ICA WUZET Total Total number oť enrollments in Jewish schools Total number of Jewish enrollments

*

4,427*** 2,942*** 1,933*** 9,302 244,452 725,655

This table is based on Zineman 1938, Chmielewski 1937, Kazdan 1947, and Mauersberg 1968. The number of enrollments is greater than the number of stu­ dents because one person might enroll at more than one institution; for example, one student might attend a public elementary school in the morning and a Jewish school in the afternoon. According to the census of 1931, the total number of Jews between the ages of three and nineteen in Poland was 1,056,556. ** 1937-1938.

103 1 16 13 9 18 10 14 6 9 15 1 11 6 9 2 3

246

Warsaw, city' of Warsaw / 1 Łódź / 5 Kielce / 6 Lublin / 6 Vilna / 1 Nowogródek / 3 Białystok / 4 Polesie / 3 Wołyń / 6 Lwów .·' 2 Tarnopol / 1 Stanisławów / 2 Cracow / 2 Pomerania / 3 Poznań / 1 Silesia i 1

Total / 48

Į HEBREW POLISH

YIDDISH

3 3 2

7

1 1

204 3 31

15 12 9 18 10 14 6 9 7 1 8 3 6 2 1

83 3 14

2 6

1 1

1

1

3 1

BILINGUAL

DAILIES

33

68

513,000 93

1 1

2

1 4

2

5

5 1

46

5 5 7 2 2

18,000

16,400 2,000 3,000 10,000

7 1 1 2

1

6 8 6 2 9 2 4 7 7

17,000 3,000 1,500 42,000

2 1 1 6

NUMBLR

400,000 21

WEEKLIES

11

OTHER PERIODICALS

Source: Lucian Dobroszycki and Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, 1977.

NUMBER OF NEWSPAPERS AND PERIODICALS

PROVINCES AND NUMBER OF CITIES IN EACH

GERMAN

143

1

2 1 4

52

ISSUED IRR.

45 1 6 12 8 7 10 11 3 6 10 1 7 3 8 2 3

GENERAL

25 1 3 3 2 5 1 3 1 2

4 1 1

25

2 1 1

6

5

SCIENTIFIC

15 11

1

1 1 2

8

SOCIO-POLITICAL

2 2 1 3

CULTURAL

7

TYPE

TRADE UNIONS AND PROFESSIONS

30

1

1

2

3

23

ZIONISTS

SrORT

YOUTII

4 1 2 2 1 1 1

І 1

1

1 1 2

1

1

1

7

BUND

17 5 37 10

1 1

1

3

1

11 4 18

AFFILIATION

5

1 1

3

7

1

1

1

1 1 1

1

FOLK1STS

FREQUENCY

AGUDAS YISROEL

LANGUAGES

2

2

COMMUNISTS

Table 13. The Jewish press in Poland, 1938-1939

CIRCULATION

COMMUNAL, EDUCA­ TIONAL. AND OTHER ORGANIZATIONS

185

8 4 6 1 2

72 1 14 10 6 17 8 12 5 8 11

404 YIDDISH: TURNING TO LIFE

78(1) 57(2) 69(6) 62(15) 67(31)

66 (45)

70(8) 66(13) 66(32)

61 ( D 62(1) 69(4) 65(3) 67(10)

72(1)

78(1) 85(4)

•

70 (2)

66(1) 67(1) 62(1) 61(3) 70(4) 62 (6) 70 (8) 70(19) 60(10)

72(3) 66(1) 62(3) 76(1) 62(1) 73(1)

5

4

3

2

Traditional texts and commentaries Language and literature: research and criticism Novels, short stories Poetry History and current events Journalism Children's literature and texts

71(6)

70(5)

75(1)

1

68 (85)

70(30) 68(28)

62(4) 70(2) 75(4) 73 (3) 67 (3) 73(11)

6

61(12)

75(3) 55(2)

68(2)

54(3) 63(1) 56(1)

7

[a] Derived from entries in Leksikon fun der nayer yidisher literatur (Lexicon of Modern Yiddish Litera­ ture), Volume 5 (New York, Congress for Jewish Literature, 1971). [b] Numbers in parentheses indicate the number of cases on which each average is based. [c] Compare with the last line of Table 3 in Fishman 1965c for the 1960 average.

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

Total

Argentina Latin America Soviet Union Poland France British Commonwealth West Europe United States Israel

Country/region

Genre

Table 14. Average age of Yiddish writers (as of 1970)a by country/region of residence and literary genre b

68(221)

64(13) 68(6 ) 69(11) 74(11) 69(10) 69 (20) 61(4 ) 70(75)c 63(71)

Total

TABLES - CZARIST EMPIRE, USSR & POLAND 405

[*] Aged 2 and over [**] Aged 15 and over Source: Stern 1989

Jewish population Hebrew speakers Percent

716,678 511,000 71.3

(Nov.1948)*

(1914)*

85,000 34,000 40

Census at end of Mandatory Period

Estimate for the end of Turkish Period

1,413,800 861,000 60.9

(June 1954)*

Estimate based on Labor Force Survey

Table 1. Jews speaking Hebrew as only or first language (1914-1983)

1,847,860 1,360,180 73.6

Estimate based on Census of Population and Housing (May 1961)* 1,962,800 1,526,700 77.7

Estimate based on Census of Population and Housing 1972** 2,345,200 1,960,600 83.6

Estimate based on Census of Population and Housing 1983**

406 YIDDISH: TURNING TO LIFE

Israel

TABLES - ISRAEL

407

Table 2. Foreign languages spoken by the Jewish population (aged 2 and over), 19161961

As only or first language 1948

1950

1954

1961

Language

1916-19a

Total

22,700 166,341 524,000 552,793 446,200 (100%) (100%) (100%) (100%) (100%)

Yiddish Spanish (incl. Dzudezmo) Bukharian Kurdish Arabic Persian Turkish Italian English Bulgarian German Dutch Hungarian Greek Serbian, Croatian and Slovenian Polish Czech & Slovakian French Rumanian Russian Other Languages

Israel-born Other than Hebrew 1961 2-14 15+

Į |

109,100 77,995 (100%) (100%)

Į

59.1

46.8

33.3

27.8

22.7

14.2

26.1

6.8

8.3 0.3 0.3

5.7 0.2 0.2

5.4 0.2 0.9

7.3 0.1 1.9

8.9 0.5 0.6

10.3

28.2 .

27.5

48.5

23.1

0.1

16.9

1.1 2.7 0.1 1.4 8.4 7.9

4.4 0.3 0.5 3.1 2.0 4.2

— — —

0.2 4.1 0.3

—

—

4.1 0.5

3.3 0.3

3.7 1.0 0.4 1.8 3.1 6.3 0.1 4.6 0.2

1.7 0.1 0.2

—

4.8 0.4 0.4 6.6 1.0 0.5 0.5 1.7 3.4

1.9 5.7 1.5 3.0 6.7 2.6 0.2

0.4 2.9 0.5 2.5 7.8 1.4 0.9

0.4 4.4

0.2 0.8 0.2 3.8 3.6 0.4 1.0

— — 30.2

— — — 0.2

— — — 0.9

— 0.7 0.2

— 3.0 0.6 2.6 3.9 1.7 0.6

3.5 1.6 0.7 0.7 4.6 7.0

[a] Changes as amended in II, p 46. Source: Population and Housing Census, 1961, I p. xxxv.

' 0.3

5.5 9.0 1.7 1.0

24.5

0.2 8.5

—

—

3.1 0.3

0.8

— — 0.3 0.1 3.2 0.3

0.5 0.4

í

Index

1961

1 Turkish 2 Persian 3 Hungarian 4 Kurdish 5 Bulgarian 6 Greek 7 Spanish (incl. L a d i n o )) 8 Rumanian 9 German 10 Yiddish 11 Arabic 12 Russian 13 Polish 14 French 15 Dutch 16 Bukharian 17 Italian 18 Czech & Slovakian 19 English *

Language

+ — — — + + + — + — — — 12

47.0 46.5 45.8 45.6 45.3 44.3 44.2 44.1 43.8 43.0 41.8 41.3 33.7

a

—

4 6 1 6 6 6 2 5 1 4 10

+ 2 + 12 + 2 + 9 — 4 + 4

Change in Rank

55.5 51.1 50.9 49.6 48.6 47.5

Index

Source: Stern 1989 Low Index because heavily weighted as "additional" language.

79.5 1 Bulgarian 2 Rumanian 71.9 70.5 3 Turkish 4 Yiddish 70.3 70.0 5 Hungarian 6 Czech & 66.8 Slovakian 66.0 7 Italian 63.0 8 German 62.9 9 French 62.3 10 Greek 11 Spanish (incl. L a d i n o ·) 61.2 12 Bukharian 57.5 55.7 13 Kurdish 14 Persian 51.8 50.6 15 Polish 16 Dutch 48.6 46.4 17 Arabic 18 Russian 45.5 43.4 19 English

1948 Language

Table 3. Index of speaking for minority languages among Jewish population

1 2 3 4 5 6 7. θ 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 1Ö 19 20 21 22 23

1983 Persian Georgian Bukharian Russian Indian Rumanian Hungarian Yiddish German Dutch Serbian Kurdish Bulgarian Greek Polish French Czech Arabic Italian Portuguese English Turkish Spanish-Ladino

Language 69.3 58.7 52.3 50.1 49.1 45.0 44.7 41.5 41.4 41.2 41.2 40.4 39.4 36.9 36.3 36.2 36.1 36.0 35.8 35.6 34.5 31.7 30.8

Index

-

+ -

2 20 16

8 θ 8 2 2 1 7 2

* 5

-

+ 2 - 4 + 2

—

+ 13 + a

+ 1

Change i n Rank

408 YIDDISH: TURNING TO LIFE

TABLES - ISRAEL

409

Table 4. Population aged 14 and over, by daily spoken languages (%)

[1] A person who spoke more than one language, is included in each language which he spoke and therefore the total does not sum up to 100%. [2] Principal — only or first in everyday language. Source: Central Bureau of Statistics, Statistical Abstract of Israel, No. 25, 1974.

410

YIDDISH: TURNING TO LIFE

Table 5. Jews aged 15 and over who speak languages other than Hebrew, by language and its use in speaking and by sex and age.

TABLES - ISRAEL Table 5. Continued

411

412 Table 5. Continued

YIDDISH: TURNING TO LIFE

TABLES - ISRAEL Table 5. Continued

413

414

YIDDISH: TURNING TO LIFE

Table 5. Continued

Source: 1983 Census, publication no. 10

TABLES - ISRAEL Table 5. Continued

415

416

YIDDISH: TURNING TO LIFE

Table 6. Jews aged 15 and over who speak languages other than Hebrew, by language and its use in speaking, and by sex, place of birth and period of immigration.

TABLES - ISRAEL Table 6. Continued

417

418 Table 6. Continued

YIDDISH: TURNING TO LIFE

TABLES - ISRAEL Table 6. Continued

419

420 Table 6. Continued

YIDDISH: TURNING TO LIFE

421

TABLES - ISRAEL Table 6. Continued SEX, LANGUAGE, USE IN SPEAKIING WOMEN (CONT.)

FRENCH І ONLY ΙΑΝΟ. PXPST SECOND

í,645 200 1,133 1,510

U,730 530 3,495 6,665

23,635 440 3,900 19,195

10,733 195 1.760 6,760

l,945 20 300 1,625

54,315 1,795 11,630 40,670

5,525 20 190 5,315

59,840 1,815 12,040 45,965

RUSSIAN TOTAL ONLY lANO. FIRST SeCONO

3.950 17,330 715 2,065 2.100 6.795 1,135 6,670

24,340 1,475 9,095 13,970

3.660 65 915 2,660

2,265 100 315 1,650

3,490 30 465 2,975

55.635 4,470 21,905 29,260

470 25 40 405

I 56,105 4,495 21,945 29,665

SPANISH,LADINO TOTAL ONLY tANO. PISST SECONO

2.230 353 1,170 705

9,905 560 3,265 6,040

9.355 610 2,410 4.335

10,630 640 2.563 7,605

3.670 200 790 2,660

40.005 2.720 11.965 25,320

9.600 120  9,100

49,605 2.640 12,345 34,420

GERMAN TOTAL ONLY LANO. FIRST SECONO

»,423 390 1,260 I 775

І

300

4,015 333 1,725 1,955

40 210 250

750 33 245 470

2,275 130 635 1,310

3.670 260 1.400 2.210

6.403 725 2.475 5,205

17,050 1,290 4,330 11,410

32.630 2,460 9,315 20.655

3.930 200 145 3,565

36.760 2.660 9,660 24,440

PERSIAN TOTAL ONLY LANG. FIRST SECOND

670 265 430 155

2.440 500 965 935

4,025 460 1,015 2,550

5,225 360 1.155 3.510

6,050 510 1,150 4,390

953 70 205 660

19,365 2.365 4,940 12,240

2,616 10 110 2.690

22.375 2,395 5,030 14,930

HUNGARIAN TOTAL ONLY LANQ. FIRST SECONO

240 35 60 125

69S 105 295 295

2.235 195 975 1,065

6.615 663 2.765 3.165

6,360 560 2.930 5,090

3,555 125 653 2,575

21,940 1.665 7,920 12,335

1,495 5 25 1,465

23,435 1.690 7,9451 13,600i

POLISH TOTAL ONLY LANO. PIBST SECOND

90 15 30 45

193 15 73 105

1,705 65 333 1.105

6,335 235 1,640 4,460

7,630 140 1,755 3,665

6,575 90 760 5,705

22,750 610 4.615 17,325

450 5 · 445

23,200 61S| 4,615 17.770

GEORGIAN TOTAL ONLY LANO. PIBST SECONO

400 140 200 60

1,125 295 565 265

6,160 1,723 3,450 3,005

225 20 50 155

160 10 40 110

135 25 35 75

10,225 2,215 4,340 3.670

260 35 35 190

10,4651 2,25o| 4,3751 3.6601

BULGARIAN TOTAL ONLY LANO. PIBST SECONO

40 10 15 15

23 20 5

133 15 25 95

310 25 50 235

7.730 350 2,260 5.100

970 5 190 775

9,210 405 2,360 6,225

495 20 5 470

9.705І 423J 2.5651 6,695

INDIAN TOTAL ONLY LANO. PIBST SECONO

110 25 60 25

435 130 190 135

3,635 650 1.425 1,760

1,563 260 445 660

490 75 165 450

60 15 20 45

6,775 1,155 2,305 3,315

690 5 30 655

7,445 1.160 2,335 3,970

YIDDISH: TURNING TO LIFE

422 Table 6. Continued SEX. LANGUAGE USE IN SPEAKING

WOMEN (CONT.) TURKISH TOTAL ONLY LAMO. FIRST SECOND

200 15 160 65

430  195 t05

1.685 73 415 1.195

730 tO 165 545

1,470 90 305 1.075

245 5 45 175

4.640 235 1,325 3,260

225 15 110

3.043 333 1.349 3,4*0

153 5 60 70

140 1O 65 65

625 23 tl3 565

415 25 65 305

1.160 45 175 1.020

160 15 40 265

3,175 145 460 2,350

663 5 tO 440

3.640 150 700І 2,990

KURDISH TOTAI ONLY LΑΝD. FIRST SECOND

45 10 45 10

145 10 100 55

ttO  120 70

tOS 10 55 140

1,7*5 145 305 1,325

340 35 70 235

2,790 260 695 1,635

6*5 35 40 600

3,665 315 735 2,435

BUCHARIAH TOTAI ONLY FIRST SECOND

40 · 15 45

710 170 335 tOS

**S t05 410 360

45 10 t5 

230 tO 60 130

345 35 65 tt3

2,405 440 *50 1.015

275  30 215

2.680 470 960 I 1.230

PORTUGUESE TOTAL 160 ONLY LΑΝD. tO FIRST 45 SECOND 95

330 15 105 2lO

640 tO tl5 405

4*5 35 440

t35 35 tOO

40 · 5 55

2,120 55 440 1,625

tOO · 15 165

2,3101 53 455 1.610І

290 23 120 145

315 30 75 tlO

tOO 10 55 135

440 20 135 265

195 · 45 250

1.665 100 465 1,100

195 5 190

1.880 105 665 1.290

30

30

105 5 40 40

90 10 25 55

405 25 105 175

475 5 95 375

1.110 45 t65 600

165 10 15 160

1,295 55 260 960

10

50 20 10 2O

165 20 35 130

tlO 15 90 105

610 40 205 565

125 15 110

1,390 95 355 940

330 15 15 tOO

1,420 110 370 1,140

 5 · -

15 5 10

220 10 75 135

100 tO 60

765 tO 120 625

260 5 55 220

1.365 40 ł73 1,070

70 70

1.455 40 275 1.140

ITALIAN TOTAI ONLY LAMO. FIRST SECOND

LΑΝD.

DUTCH TOTAL ONLY LAND. FIRST SeCOND

I

GREEK TOTAL ONLY LΑΝG. FIRST SECOND

ļ

SERBIAN TOTAL ONLY LAMG. FIRST SECOND CZECH TOTAL ONLY LANO. FIRST SECOND

I

145 15 55 75

5 5

10 -

-

TABLES - ISRAEL

423

Table 7. Persons aged 15 and over, by everyday language spoken (%)

JEWS-TOTAL

1961

'1972

1983

100.0

100.0

100.0

Thereof: 67.4

76.7

82.9

100.0

100.0

100.0

Arabic

21.6

22.1

15.9

Yiddish

24.0

19.5

15.1

3.5

12.1

Rumanian

9.3

13.5

11.0

English

1.6

5.0

8.5

Spanish

5.4

6.7

6.0

Speak Hebrew as main language Speak other main language —

total

Russian

French

5.3

7.5

58

German

6.7

6.3

4.7

Hungarian

4.8

4.9

3.9

100.0

100.0

100.0

95.8

94.7

NON-JEWS — T O T A L Thereof: Speak A r a b i c as main language

[1] Persons aged 14 and over Source: Central Bureau of Statistics, Statistical Abstract of Israel, No. 36, 1985.

Table 8. Yiddish in Israel and the United States: Basic numerical status. Israel 1961 a Mother-tongue Principal spoken language 101,110 (36.46%) Additional spoken language 176,375 (63.54%) Percent of total Jewish population for whom it is the principal spoken language 5.6% Percent of total Jewish population for whom it is the principal or additional spoken language 13.4%

U.S.A. 1969 b 1.620,000 126,000 — 2.1%

—

[a] Israeli data in this and subsequent tables are based upon a Jewish population aged two years or older of 2,072,630 in 1961 and are derived from various tables reported in Languages, Literacy and Educational Attainment, Part III (= Central Bureau of Statistics, Population and Housing Census 1961, Publication 29). [b] United States data in this and subsequent tables are based upon a total population of 198,214,000 in 1970 and are derived from various tables reported in Current Population Report, Series P-20, No.221. "Characteristics of the Population by Ethnic Origin: November 1969" (U.S. Bureau of the Census).

YIDDISH: TURNING TO LIFE

424

Table 9. Nativity of Yiddish Claimants. Israel 1961

U.S.A. 1969

Mother-tongue native-born foreign-born

-

1,142,000(70.52%) 478,000 (29.48%)

total

-

1,620,000

Principal spoken language native-born foreign-born total

3,325 ( 2.7 %) 97,140(97.3 %) 100,865 a

126,000

Principal or additional spoken language native-born 35,740 (12.88%) foreign-born 241,745 (87.12%) total

20,000 (15.88%) 106,000(84.12%)

-

277,485

[a] In other tables this total is reported as 101,110.

Table 10. Nativity and age of Yiddish claimants. 1. Mother-tongue (U.S.A.) under 14 14-24 25-44 45-64 65 + (median (total number

(1969) Native-born

Foreign-born

.4% 7.0% 29.4% 50.6% 12.7% 50.2 1,142,000

.2% 1.5% 4.6% 30.7% 63.1% 65+ ) 478,000)

2. Principal/additional spoken language (Israel) Foreign-born

Native-born age 2 - 1 4

age 15+

age 2 - 1 4

age 15+

Principal

1,955 1,880 (51.5%) →(48.5%)

2,145 94,995 (2.2%) → (97.8%)

Additional

13,400 18,465 (42.0%) → (58.0%)

10,885 133,720 (7.5%) → (92.5%)

(13.0%) ↓↓ (87.0%)

(9.2%)

(16.3%)

(41.5%)

(90.8%)

(83.7%)

(58.5%)

TABLES - ISRAEL

425

Table 11. 1. Main language spoken at home by age (for Jewish Israelis aged eighteen or older)a LANGUAGE Age

Hebrew

18-24 24-29 30-34 35-39 40-44 45-49 50-54 55-64 65 + total X%

18 12 13 12 11 10 7 13 4 100% 71

Yiddish

2 1 2 3 5 9 16 39 24 100% 7

Arabic or Turkish

Eastern European

Western or central European

Latin American or Balkan

%

26 10 5 2 8 8 10 12 14 100% 8

16 4 1 4 2 19 10 22 13 100% 5

7 7 9 4 20 9 4 29 11 100% 4

3 7 7 17 3 13 13 23 13 100% 2

16 10 10 10 11 10 8 16 8 100%

2. Main language spoken at home by ethnic origin (for Jewish Israelis aged eighteen or older).

Ethnic origin

Born in Asia or Africa Born in Europe or America Sabra: father born in Asia or Africa Sabra: father born in Europe or America Sabra: father born Sabra X%

Hebrew

Yiddish

LANGUAGE Arabic or Eastern Turkish European

Western or central European

Latin American or Balkan

%

41

1

94

3

50

44

42

37

97

0

95

44

44

42

7

0

5

0

4

4

5

12

1

0

3

2

7

8

4 70

1 7

1 8

0 5

0 4

0 2

3

[a] Tables generated by Liz Nadel from the data bank of Tarbut Yisrael 1970 (Katz et al 1972).

97,140(40.5) 27,675 (42.2) 39,580(59.1) 23,405 (38.0) 19,365(37.0) 20,163(50.2)

[a] Percentages are based upon the number of mother tongue claimants of each language.

Yiddish German Rumanian French Polish Hungarian 3,875(10.8) 532 ( 4.8) 400 ( 9.6) 1,150(17.3) 160(14.7) 327 ( 8.2)

1,581,000(81.2) 159,000(15.5) 493,000(40.5) 160,000(42.2) 163,000(40.7) 106,000(35.8)

3,104,000(63.6)a 256,000( 3.2) 165,000( 5.2) 254,000(14.1) 66,000( 3.3) 20,000( 1.8)

1,822,000 1,025,000 1,218,000 378,000 399,000 478,000

4,878,000 4,809,000 3,147,000 1,801,000 1,982,000 1,142,000

Spanish German Italian French Polish Yiddish

Israel ] 961

Foreign-born

Principal language Native-born

Foreign-born

Mother-tongue

Native-born

Language

Table 12. The top six immigrant based languages: USA 1969

31,865 10,650 3,775 5,495 995 3,645

144,605 37,845 27,400 38,240 33,015 20,000

Foreign-born

Additional language Native-born

426 YIDDISH: TURNING TO LIFE

427

TABLES - ISRAEL Table 13. Use of Yiddish and the national language: USA 1969.

Mother-tongue

Total claimants

Native-born; current language English

Spanish German Italian French Polish Yiddish

6,700,000 5,835,000 4,364,000 2,179,000 2,382,000 1,620,000

1,774,000 4,653,000 2,982,000 1,547,000 1,916,000 1,122,000

(36.4) (96.8) (94.8) (85.9) (96.7) (98.2)

Foreign-born; current language English

341,000 866,000 725,000 218,000 236,000 372,000

(18.7) (84.5) (59.5) (57.7) (59.2) (77.8)

Israel 1961 Major 'other' language (other than Hebrew)

Index of Hebrewspeakinga

Speaking no Hebrew

Speaking mothertongue only

Total claimants

Yiddish German Rumanian French Polish Hungarian

51.5 52.1 38.0 54.0 52.8 45.2

58,950 13,885 25,275 8,390 8,550 11,610

27,025 7,540 6,305 3,050 2,030 4,770

277,485 76,700 71,155 68,290 53,535 44,135

(21.2) (18.1) (35.5) (12.3) (16.0) (26.3)

( 9.3) ( 9.8) ( 8.9) ( 4.4) ( 3.8) (10.8)

[a] Index roughly indicates percent of time spent speaking Hebrew and is based upon all claimants of any particular "other" language rather than only upon those know­ ing some Hebrew. In 1948 the corresponding indices were 29.7, 37.0, 28.1, 37.1, 39.4, 30.0 (Hofman and Fisherman).

YIDDISH: TURNING TO LIFE

428

Table 14. Settlement patterns: USA 1960 (Fishman 1966)

Israel 1961 Major 'other' language claimed (other than Hebrew)

Total

Rural

%

New settlements

%

Yiddish German Rumanian French Polish Hungarian

277,155 76,700 71,110 68,315 3,970 7,625

23,600 9,050 6,125 11,295 3,970 7,625

9 12 9 16 6 17

44,335 7,485 23,390 33,385 10,485 12,270

16 10 33 49 19 28

Table 15. Index of speaking foreign languages among the Jewish populationa 1948 Language 1. Bulgarian 2. Rumanian 3. Turkish 4. Yiddish 5. Hungarian 6. Czech and Slovak 7. Italian 8. German 9. French 10. Greek 11. Spanish (including Dzudezmo) 12. Bukharian 13. Kurdish 14. Persian^ 15. Polish 16. Dutch 17. Arabic 18. Russian 19. English0

1961 Index 79.5 71.9 70.5 70.3 70.0 66.8 66.0 63.0 62.9 62.3 61.2 57.5 55.7 51.8 50.6 48.6 46.4 45.5 43.4

Language 1. Turkish 2. Persian 3. Hungarian 4. Kurdish 5. Bulgarian 6. Greek 7. Spanish (including Dzudezmo) 8. Rumanian 9. German 10. Yiddish 11. Arabic 12. Russian 13. Polish 14. French 15. Dutch 16. Bukharian 17. Italian 18. Czech and Slovak 19. English0

Index

Change in rank

55.5 51.1 50.9 49.6 48.6 47.5

+ 2 + 12 + 2 + 9 - 4 + 4

46.5 45.8 45.6 45.3 44.3 44.2 44.1 43.8 43.0 41.8

+ 4 - 6 - 1 - 6 + 6 + 6 + 2 - 5 + 1 - 4 -10

41.3 33.7

-12 -

[a] From Hofman and Fisherman 1971 [b] Many claimants of Persian are really speakers of Farsic/Parsic and many claimants of Greek are really speakers of Yevanic (my footnote: J.A.F.). [c] Low index because heavily weighted as additional language.

[a] [b] [c] [d]

64.2 16.0 19.8

71.7 15.8 12.5

39.0 31.0 30.0

16,695 100.0

37.9 31.6 30.5c

42.7 52.1 5.2

30,060 100.0

12,825 15,660 1,575 23.2 60.9 15.9

27,605 100.0

6,405 16,805 4,395

88,370 100.0

75,095 100.0

25,080 100.0

6,325 5,275 5,095

35,185 41,740 1,445

39.8 47.2 13.0

15,725 100.0

6,130 4,880 4,715

Rumania Rumanian N %

56,245 74.9 15,785b ' 21.0 4.1 3,065

80,835 100.0

57,990 12,765 10,080

Poland Polish N %

64.6 10.3 25.1

16,210 2,575 6,295

47,685 100.0

30,615 7,640 9,430

From Hofman and Fisherman 1971 Mainly German Mainly Polish Mainly Hungarian

Total

1955 on Yiddish Mother-tongue Other languages

Total

1948-1954 Yiddish Mother-tongue Other languages

Total

Up to 1947 Yiddish Mother-tongue Other languages

Mother-tongue

Soviet Union Russian N % 5.0 88.5 6.5

57.6 32.9 9.5

15.1 59.7 25.2 930 100.0

140 555 235

8,925 100.0

5,140 2,940 845

30,800 100.0

1,550 27,360 1,990

Germany/ Austria German N % 26.0 7.3 66.7

30.1 23.4 46.5

9.2 67.7 d 650 100.0

150 60 440

11,605 100.0

3,495 2,715 5,395

8,050 100.0

2,090 590 5,370

Czechoslovakia Czech and Slovak N % 16.7 71.4 11.9

17.5 78.3 4.2

7.6 89.2 3.2 6,745 100.0

6,015 220

11,165 100.0

1,950 8,745 470

6,445 100.0

1,075 4,605 765

Hungary Hungarian N %

Table 16. The relative share of Yiddish and mother tongue among foreign born speaking a language other than Hebrew, by period of immigration (1961)a

TABLES - ISRAEL 429

430

YIDDISH: TURNING TO LIFE

Table 17. Number of claimants of "Top Six" languages in Israel as first or only lan­ guages, 1948, 1950, 1954, 1961a

Language

1948

1950

1954

1961

% change 1954-1961

Yiddish German Rumanian French Polish Hungarian

78,141 28,271 6,486 4,324 4,989 6,818

174,492 41,396 35,108 15,720 29,868 21,484

153,678 38,696 43,118 13,820 16,031 18,242

101,110 28,107 39,980 24,555 19,525 20,490.

-34.2 -37.4 - 7.3 77.7 21.8 12.3

[a] Derived from Population and Housing Census, 1961, Vol I, p xxxv (as given by Hofman and Fisherman 1971), with changes as amended in Vol II ρ 46.

Table 18. Non-Hebrew publications in Israel: 1940-1970 (total number for top six lan­ guages)a 1940 Yiddish German Russian French Polish Hungarian Multilingual

1945

1953

1955

1960

1965

1970

18 11 10 17 4 6 1

25 9 6 21 7 4 4

22 8 8 22 6 4 5

18 11 7 18 4 3 5

66

76

75

66

2 5

2 6

1 1 1

4 8 1 1

19 11 9 15 7 12 1

10

21

72

[a] Compiled from various editions of The Jewish Press of the World, edited by Joseph Fraenkel (London, Cultural Department of the Jewish Congress, January 1972) and other standard references.

431

TABLES - ISRAEL

Table 19. Non-Hebrew publications in Israel, 1955-1970a (Number by frequency of publication for top six languagesb) 1955

Daily Weekly Monthly Quarterly or less Total

1960

Y

G

R

F P U

_ 6 6 6

2 3 5 I

1 10 1 3 12

4 -

1 4 1

10 17 4 6

18 11

1965

Y G R 1 8 9 7

2 2 4 1

1 1 1 3 1 5 1 3 1 0 16 -

1 3 -

25 9 5 21 7 4

1970 Y

G R

F

1 2 1 -

1 6 4 7

1 2 6 2

1 1 1 3 2 — - 1 2

22 8 7 22 6 4

18

F P H

Y G R 1 7 4 10

2 1 4 1

F P H

1 1 5 3 3 1 15

1 2 3 -

P H

1 6 0 0

- - o

11 7

18 4 3

[a] Derived from various editions of The Jewish Press of the World, edited by Joseph Fraenkel (London Cultural Department of the World Jewish Congress, January 1972) and other standard references. [b] Y = Yiddish; G = German; R = Russian; F = French; P = Polish; H = Hunga­ rian.

Table 20. Non-Hebrew publications in Israel; 1965 and 1970 (number, frequency of appearance, and circulation for top six languages)a Language

Year

Daily

Weekly

Monthly

Yiddish

1965 1970

1 (1) 16,000 1 (1) 23,000

7 (5) 28,600 6 (3) 11,400

4 (3) 4 (2)

German

1965 1970

2 (1) 18,000 1 (1) 18,000

1 (1) 2 —

Rumanian

1965 1970

I (1) 16,500 1 (1) 16,500

5 (1) 10,000 6

French

1965 1970 1965 1970

1 1 1 1

1965 1970

1 (1) 14,000 1 (1) 20,000

3 3 2 (1) 10,000 2 _ 2 _

Polish Hungarian

(1) (1)

5,000 7,000

(1) 17,000 (1) 10,000

5,000 -

Quarterly or less

Total

9,700 6,500

10 7

22 18

4 (1) 6 -

5,000 -

1 2

8 11

_

_

1

7 7

3 7 (1) 20,000 3 1 2

(6) 15,000 (2) 7,000

15 (10) 53,000 7

_ —

_ —

22 6 4 4 3

[a] From publication self-reports (i.e., the information on circulation figures were reported to us by the publications themselves). Figures in parenthesis show the number of responding publications.

432

YIDDISH: TURNING TO LIFE

Table 21. Hebrew language proficiency of Israeli radio listeners (Jews) a

Kol Yisrael programs

Speak only

Read only

Speak read

Speak, read write

None

Hebrew Arabic English French Yiddish Other languages Average in total population

15% 31 6 22 19 23 16

0% 0 0 0 0 0 0

6% 9 3 8 10 9 6

79% 59 91 69 69 66 77

0% 0 1 1 2 3 1

[a]

100% 100 100 100 100 100 100

Derived by Liz Nadel from Tarbut Yisrael, 1970 data bank (Katz et al. 1972). Other runs of the same data reveal that Hebrew is the "main language" at home of only 45% of listen­ ers to Yiddish radio programs. The comparable proportions for listeners to Arabic, Eng­ lish, and French programs are 62%, 64% and 56%. Still other runs reveal that the upper educational level of listeners to Yiddish programs is comparable to that of listeners to the French programs. Thus the Yiddish programs appeal to Yiddish speakers most of whom are also literate in important world languages but who nevertheless are retentive of Yiddish as their home language.

Table 22.

Israeli radio listening 1965: Selected immigrant-based languages a

(1)

(2)

(3)b

(4)

Language

1965: % listeners

1965: % listeners 4 to 7 days per week

1969: % of radio listeners that understand

1969:% of (3) that listen in listed language

Yiddish French Rumanian Hungarian Múgrabi Judesmo

24.3 9.1 8.3 2.5 5.2 4.4

12.7 3.6 5.4 1.4 3.1 2.6

42.0 20.6 12.2 5.3 9.5 7.6

48.1 40.4 64.0 42.7 56.5 41.5

(1) (2) (3) (4) [a]

Percentages of total population Percentages of total population Percentages of radio listeners Percentages of radio listeners who understand the particular language From Radio Listening Survey, June 1965, Kol Yisrael, and Radio Listening and Television Watching, January 1969 (Central Bureau of Statistics, 1969 — part I, 1970 — part II). [b] The Jewish population aged fifteen or older = 1,689,286. The number of listeners to Kol Yisrael = 1,574,356 during the week prior to the survey, or 92% of the total Jewish popula­ tion aged fifteen or older.

Viddish French Rumanian Hungarian Mugrabi Judesmo English Russian Arabic

12.4 7.3 4.2 2.9 2.9 2.5 17.6 4.3 8.2

18.9 e 11.2 5.9 (1.1) 4.4 3.6f 17.0 5.8 16.6

Donor listen to programs in this language Total 8.2 3.8 2.8 (0.4) 2.3 (1.1) 3.9 (1.5) 6.5

Usually or often 6.9 4.9 2.1 (0.6) (1.3) (1.3) 7.6 (2.4) 6.7. 3.8 2.5 (1.0) (0.1) (0.8) (1.2) 5.5 (1.9) 3.4

Sometimes Rarely .60 .62 .58 .28 .60 .59 .50 .57 .67

Total number of listeners/ total number of people who understandd .43 .34 .48 36 .52 .30 .23 .26 .40

Usually or often/ total lis­ tenersd 18.1 6.6 4.4 (0.8) 3.9 2.9 5.4 5.2 8.2

Shidurey Yisrael alone (0.2) (1.3) (0.2) (0.0) (0.1) (0.2) 5.7 (0.2) (0.9)

Foreign broadcasts alone (0.6) 33 (1.3) (0.3) (0.4) (0.5) 5.9 (0.4) 7.5

Both Shid­ urey Yisrael and foreign broadcasts

Extent of listening in particular languages to

Radio listeners constitute 88.2% of the (non-institutionalized) Jewish population aged fourteen or older (1972:n = 1,970,642). Figures in parenthesis have a relative sampling error greater than 25%. From "Radio Listening Survey" unpublished. (Central Statistical Agency, January-March 1973). Computed by Joshua A. Fishman and David E. Fishman Of those listening in Yiddish Of those listening in Judesmo 2.4% replied that these programs were their only source of radio news (0.2%) replied that these programs were their only source of radio news 3.8% replied that these programs were an additional source of radio news (0.9%) replied that these programs were an additional source of radio news 11.0% replied that they do so because they love the language and literature 02.1% replied that they do so because they love the language and literature 1.7% replied that they do so for other reasons 0.3% replied that they do so for other reasons

31.3 18.5 10.1 4.0 7.3 6.1 34.6 10.1 24.8

Language

[a] [b] [c] [d] [e]

Understand the language: total

Extent of listening in particular languages

Table 23. Radio listenersa according to languages understood and extent of listening to particular languagesb (January-March, 1973)c

TABLES - ISRAEL 433

434

YIDDISH: TURNING TO LIFE

Table 24. Recent budgets of the "Israel Broadcasting Authority" for "Programs for New Immigrants and Foreign Broadcasting"a

Yiddish Judeo-Español (Judesmo)b Easy Hebrew Mugrabi Rumanian English French Russian Arabic 'Songs of the Communities'

1971-72

1972-73

1973-74

I £33,298 24,273 28,381 2,269 31,595 69,522 91,881 314,248 — 30,340

I £ 40,000 12,000 40,000 4,000 33,000 50,000 75,000 250,000 — 40,000

I £ 41,000 20,000 40,000 4,000 38,000 80.000 130.000 460;000 c 2,707,000 d 58,000 e

The (semi-secret) budgets of the Israeli Broadcasting Corporation (Shidurey Yisrael) penalize Yiddish by (a) not being proportional to listenership, (b) not providing Yiddish broadcasting with the increases provided almost all other programs, and (c) requiring "Songs in Yiddish" to be budgeted out of the general budget for Yiddish rather than being budgeted separately as is the case for "Songs of the Communities" vis-a-vis JudeoEspanol and Mugrabi. [a] Figures pertain only to "honorariums" for special performers and technicians rather than to salaries for permanent personnel. 1971-72 figures are actual expenditures whereas 1972-73 and 1973-74 figures are allocations. The total radio budget for 1973-74 was I £ 38,574,000 and for television I £ 54,806,000. [b] The sharp drop in 1972-73 is attributable to additions to the budget for full-time personnel for programs in Judeo-Espanol. [c] Of the total amount for Russian broadcasting, a minor sum is actually allocated for Georgian. In 1973-74 the Georgian allocation was I ? 54,570. No separate figures for Russian and Georgian are available for previous years. [d] Of the total amount for Arabic broadcasting a minor sum is actually allocated for Persian. No separate figures are available for Arabic and for Persian in 1973-74 and no figures at all are available for the two previous years. [e] "Songs of the Communities" presents Sephardic/Oriental songs exclusively. The budget for "Songs in Yiddish" (twenty minutes every other week) is included in the general budget for Yiddish, see above.

TABLES - ISRAEL

435

Table 25. Yiddish Theater in Israel 1945-1970[a].

Year 1940 1945 1950 1955 1960 1965 1970 total

Number of different titles

0 1 10 20 19 29 22 101

Number of performances 1-5 6-10 11-20 21-30

31+

0 1 8 7 5 3 12

0 — 1 2 2 2

35

0 — 1 3 2 1 7

0 — 2 3 2 8 1

0 — — 6 6 15 0

14

16

27

Total οf titles by performances

0 1 43 277 274 597 226 1718

[a] Based upon a 25 percent count of Israeli Yiddish newspapers for the years indi­ cated.

71(6)

70(5)

75(1)

1

66 (45)

70(8) 66(13) 66(32)

67(10)

4

61(1) 62 (1) 69(4) 65(3)

72(1)

67(31)

78(1) 57 (2) 69(6) 62(15)

78(1) 85(4)

70(2)

5

[a] Derived from entries in Lexikon far der nayer yidisher literatur (Lexicon of Modern Yiddish Literature), Volume 5 (New York, Congress for Jewish Literature, 1971). [b] Numbers in parentheses indicate the number of cases on which each average is based. [c] Compare with the last line of Table 3 in Fishman 1965c for the 1960 average.

72(3) 66(1) 62(3) 76(1) 62(1) 73(1)

3 66(1) 67(1) 62(1) 61(3) 70(4) 62(6) 70 (8) 70(19) 60(10)

2

1. Traditional texts and commentaries 2. Language and literature: research and criticism 3. Novels, short stories 4. Poetry 5. History and current events 6. Journalism 7. Children's literature and texts

Total

Argentina Utin America Soviet Union Poland France British Commonwealth West Europe United States Israel

Country/region

Genre

75(3) 55(2) 61 (12)

68 (85)

68(2)

54(3) 63(1) 56(1)

7

70(30) 68(28)

62(4) 70(2) 75(4) 73(3) 67(3) 73(11)

6

Table 26. Average age of Yiddish writers (as of 1970)a by country/region of residence and literary genreb

68(221)

64(13) 68(6) 69(11) 74(11) 69(10) 69(20) 61 (4 ) 70(75) c 63(71)

Total

436 YIDDISH: TURNING TO LIFE

TABLES - ISRAEL

437

Table 27. Non-Hebrew book publication in Israel, 1940-1970 (top sixa languages, as registered in Kiryat Sefer) Years Language Yiddish

German

b

Type

1 2 3

-

_

_

_

T

4

4

7

10

1 2 3

_

_

1

3 2 2

1 2

-

_ -

-

1

4 1

_

_

_

4

4

i

_ -

_ -

1

— _

6 2 3 1 8

1 1

T 1 2 3

T 1

1 2 3 4 5 6 T

Multilingual (Hebrew plus one or more of the above languages)

1

1 3

2 4

2 3 4 5 6 T Hungarian

—

1 2 1

_.

4 5 6

4 5 6 Rumanian

-

1 3 4 2

4 5 6 French

1940 1945 1950 1955 1960 1965 1970

1 2 3 4 5 6 T

1 4 11

2 2

4 2i 8 4

1 17 12 3

1 38

3 36

2 36 14 3 1

2 1

_ -

1

_ — 6 4 2 12

_ 1

1

1

54 1 1 4

_ 6 1 2 1 4

3

1 4

_

_

_

4

5

3 17

2 6

_

4

-

-

-

_

_

_

_

-

-

-

-

1 1

9 1 2

1 1 1

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

3

-

-

-

-

1

2

1 1

1

1

1

_ 4 4

_

2 2

8

3 15

1

-

3

2

-

-

-

3

2

4 1

1

1

_

-

-

7

1 9

-

-

— -

1 4

3 11

3 13

2

3 1

ι

14 1

-

17

[a] Only one Polish book was located (1970). [b] Types: 1 religious; 2 belles-lettres; 3 history; 4 Israel; 5 children's literature; 6 other.

438

YIDDISH: TURNING TO LIFE

Table 28. New and reprinted books by language of original and language of pub­ licationa 1969-70 to 1970--71 Language of original Language of publication

Total

Hebrew

Yiddish

English

French

Russian

German ' other

1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

1889 1527 224 89 b 39 10

1246 1185 46 6 7 2

44 15 4 25

312 225 54 8 22 3

41 32 1 5 1 2

132 16 111 5

36 31 5

Hebrew English Other languages Multilingual Dictionaries

—

—

—

78 23 3 40 9 3

[a] From Supplement, Monthly Bulletin of Statistics 3, 16, (1973) 23. Table 7 (Israel Central Bureau of Statistics). [b] "Of these, 44 books were published in Arabic and 27 in Yiddish". These Yiddish books are classified topically as "largely belletristic".

Table 29. Attitudes toward Yiddish among high school students of Ashkenazi Paren­ tage (Herman 1972)

1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

Very positive Positive No particular feeling Negative Very negative . Total % n

All respondents

Religious

NonTraditionalist religious

7% 28 52 10 3 100 577

9% 47 39 4 1 100 115

9% 31 46 13 1 100 147

6% 18 60 10 6 100 315

TABLES - ISRAEL

439

Table 30. Attitudes toward Yiddish among high school students of Oriental/Sefardi parentage (Herman 1972)

1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

Very positive Positive No particular feeling Negative Very negative Total % n

All respondents

Religious

NonTraditionalist religious

1% 7 69 10 13 100 200

1% 1 84 7 7 100 46

-% 10 62 13 15 100 116

-% 8 74 5 13 100 38

440

YIDDISH: TURNING TO LIFE

USA Table 1. Number of mother tongue dailies, 1910-1960 Percent Increase or Decrease Languages French Spanish German Yiddish Hungarian Ukrainian Italian Polish Greek Czech Other Slavic Scandinavian Other Germanic Other Romance Near Eastern Far Eastern All Other Total

1910 1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1960 LRP 1910-1930 1930-1960 1950-1960 9 1 70 7 3

10 5 29

7 10 22

6 8 13

2 8 7

1 6 4

1 6 4

—22% +900 -68

11 3 1

11 3 2

10 3 2

6 3 2

5 2 2

5 2 2

12 9 2 7

11 15 2 9

10 16 5 8

10 10 2 7

5 9 2 5

5 7 2 2

1 2

16 2

15 2

12

9

1 5

1 4 9 12

3 6 10 12

1 2 10 10

129

140

142

106

Source: Fishman et al., 1966

-86% -40 -82

-50% -25 -43

+ 57 0

-54 -33 0

-17 -33 0

5 6 2 2

-17 +78 + 150 + 14

-50 -56 -60 -75

0 -22 0 -60

7

10

+ 1400 0

-53 -100

-22

1 4 12 11

1 1 9 7

1 1 10 7

+500 + 100

67 -83 -10 -42

0 -75 -25 -36

86

61

64

+ 10

-57

-29

43

b

(99) 1499

11 88 33 95

184 31

(11)

(3) (5) (7)

(10) (15) (3) (7) 03) (1) 33 17 46 158

(6; (3) (2) (5) (9) (2) (4)

424 98 46 217 261 26 145 200

(1)

10 5 73 128

(94) 2000

(8) (8)

(1)

149 238 34 135 101

238 52 27

8 70 69

10 23 74 168

(80) 1402

(11) (11)

(1) (4)

— —

(8)

(2) (7) (5)

1950 25 74 261

— —

(11)

(5)

(8) (10) (2)

34S 345 37 156 254 12

(9) (3) (2)

(6) (S) (12)

1940

558 98 31

32 56 354

(108) 1990 į (123) 2542

(1) (2) (8) (11)

(11) (13) (2) (9) (12) (2)

(10) (3) (2)

(6) (7) (20)

1930

[a] Number of dailies for which circulation figures are available [b] Last three digits have been dropped in all circulation figures. Source: Fishman et al., 1966

Total

— — — — (1) 3 — —

28

— —

Other Slavic Scandinavian Other Germanic Other Romance Near Eastern Fax Eastern All Other

(2)

(4) (6) (1) (6)

330 239 65 113

507 72

— —

(11) (2)

41 15 239

57 63 4 75

261 27

935

(8) (2) (14)

1920

— —

(5) (3)

(64)

— —

(7)

a

1910

Italian Polish Greek Czech

Yiddish Hungarian Ukrainian

French Spanish German

Languages

Table 2. Circulation of mother tongue dailies, 1910-1960

74

136 184 34 64

140 43 30

3 114 74

9 3 61 127

(58) 1103

(9) (7)

(0 (1)

— —

(6)

(4) (7) (2) (2)

(4) (2) (2)

(1) (6) (4)

1960

84

133 152 32 61

166 43 30

3 135 74

9 3 66 127

(61) 1125

(1) (1) (10) (7)

— —

(9)

(4) (6) (2) (2)

(4) (2) (2)

(1) (6) (4)

1960 LRP

-62

—

— —

—

511 448 825 108

+70

—

+ 1433

-57

+ + + +

+ 114 +263

—

-26%

-57

-73 -82 + 33 -20

—

-61 -47 -8 -59 -71

-75 -56 -3.

-91% + 104 -79

1930-1960

-16

-10 -87 -18 -24

—

-27

-9 -23 0 -53

-41 -17 + 11

+7

-62% + 63

1950-1960

Percent Increase or Decrease 1910-1930

TABLES - USA 441

442

YIDDISH: TURNING TO LIFE

Table 3. Number of mother tongue weeklies, 1910-1960 (including publications appear­ ing twice and three times per week) Percent Increase or Decrease Languages French Spanish German Yiddish Hungarian Ukrainian Italian Polish Greek Czech Other Slavic Scandinavian Other Germanic Other Romance Near Eastern Far Eastern All Other Total

1910 1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1960 LRP 1910-1930 1930-1960 1950-1960 18 30 433 8 7 1 48 37 5 34 11 94 16 8 5 4 17

17 39 172 16 16 5 66 54 8 29 31 73 13 12 6 5 32

18 39 106 7 28 3 73 64 6 27 28 51 11 12 2 8 28

14 18 68 3 25 2 29 43 7 28 22 32 8 10 1 3 24

13 18 35 8 26 3 28 35 6 12 26 26 3 6 6 5 29

1 4 8 3 26

8 12 30 3 19 3 12 22 3 9 17 15 1 5 9 3 27

776

594

511

337

285

188

198

Source: Fishman et al., 1966

8 10 29 2 19 2 12 18 3 9 20 14

0% +30 -76 -12 + 300 +200 + 52 +73 +20 -21 + 155 -46 -31 + 50 -60 + 100 + 65 -34

-55% -74 -73 -71 -32 -33 -84 -72 -50 -67 -29 -73 -91 -75 + 300 -62 -7 -63

-38% -44 -17 -75 -27 -33 -57 -49 -50 -25 -23 -46 -67 -33 + 33 -40 -10 -34

21 795 33 6 10 5 49

(4) (78) (12) (5) (2) (2) (10)

Other Slavic Scandinavian Other Germanic Other Romance Near Eastern F a r Eastern All Other

(606) 3769

(223) 2769

(316) 4014

414 267 23 43 2

146 627 23 233 164 185 9 25 4 18 121 75 114 4 7 17 5 104

84 146 8 122

21 109 2

(167) 1010

(16) (14) (1) (3) (6) (2) (23)

(17) (2) (9)

(D 00

(2) (19)

74 109 8 152 302 14 99

(7) (S) (26)

(216) 1512

(5) (22) (2) (22) (27) (4) (11) (22) (19) (3) (5) (3) (4) (22)

86 209 6

[a] Number of weeklies for which circulation are available [b] Last three digits have been dropped in all circulation figures Source: Fishman et al., 1966

Total

(19) (24) (7) (6) (1)

(2) (19) (1) (15) (22) (5) (20)

(9) (12) (25)

— — (16) 130

(22) (35) (5) (9) (1) (2) (16)

157 753 47 14 7 14 91

178 95 19 264 558 26 279

(8) (9) (49)

21 30 133

1960

33 52 137

1950

44 29 431

1940

455 532 22 97 21 300 116

(3D (37) (4) (21)

(5) (17) (2)

(13) (24) (72)

71 143 832

19: 0

253 666 12 263

236 92 27

(383) 3608

(17) (58) (13) (4) (2) (3) (18)

187 126 6 243

(3) (5)

(D

Yiddish Hungarian Ukrainian

(24) (20) (1) (25)

(25) (119)

03)

46 S6 831

1920

Italian Polish Greek Czech

b

(11) (9) (3) (29) (33) (3) (23)

(13)- 60 35 (13) (383) 2092

1910

60 23 11

French Spanish German

Languages

84 116 4 17 22 4 115

-84 -79 -82 -93 -19 -98 -10 -75

+ 2067 -33 -33 + 1517 + 110 + 5900 + 137

+6

-68 -74 . -69 -56

+ 41 + 342 + 333 + 15

108 203 8 124

-88 + 15 -89

+ 197 +313 +73

34 101 7

(131) 1198

(16) (15) (1) (4) (7) (2) (25)

(11) (21) (2) (9)

(3) (19) (2)

(7) (9) (28)

-70% -79 -84

1930-1960

+ 18% +309 -60

1910-1930

36 43 165

1960 L R P

-33

-54 -43 -55 -72 + 325 -72 -14

-45 -52 -43 + 23

-72 0 -75

-36% -42 -3

1950-1960

Percent Increase or Decrease

Table 4. Circulation of mother tongue weeklies, 1910-1960 (including publications appearing twice and three times per week)

TABLES - USA 443

YIDDISH: TURNING TO LIFE

444

Table 5. Number of mother tongue monthlies, 1910-1960 (including publications appearing twice a month and every other week) Percent Increase or Decrease Languages French Spanish German Yiddish Hungarian Ukrainian Italian Polish Greek Czech Other Slavic Scandinavian Other Germanic Other Romance Near Eastern Far Eastern All Other Total

1910 1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1960 LRP 1910-1930 1930-1960 1950-1960 1 3 49 2 1

2 12 31 1 5 2

1 4

1 14

2 2 3 11 5 20 1 4 1 1 6

132

109

7 17 27 4 1

Source: Fishman et al'., 1966

3 9 17 2 3 1 2 4 4 9 10 9 2

2 9 3 1 3 1

\ 5 4 5

4 5 8

4 11 8

1 18 15

8 6 2

6 11 6

3 8 2 8 8 5

3 10 4 7 16 4

7 17 12 6 11 4 10 26 7

1 1

1 1

+ 200% + 200 -65 0 + 200 + 100 0 + 29 -41 -67 -50

+ 33% + 22 -53

0% + 120 0

+200 + 267 + 500

-25 + 83 + 200

+ 50 + 150 0 -22 + 60 -56

0 +25 + 100 -12 + 100 -20

4

3

8

14

21

-71

+250

+ 75

79

37

75

106

157

-40

+ 34

+ 41

51 75 99 48

59

(4) (9) (16) (4)

(10)

(87)

Other Slavic Scandinavian Other Germanic Other Romance Near Eastern Far Eastern All Other

Total

·

(1)

(23)

643

(3) (1) (5)

(3)

95 10 77 20 36

(2) (1) (8) (7) (6)

(2) (D

21

37 38

(1) (3)

(6)

4

52 3 67

5 3

89

46

272

(2)

(1) (5) (5)

48 8S 168

1940

1930

(3) 22 756 í (45)

12 134

(1) (14)

(4) (58)

25 67

65 21 20

31 133 240

(1) (7)

(1) (2) (1)

(2) (5) (19)

1920

ι

Ο)

(44)

(6)

(3) (3)

534

14

18 8

45 96 12 91

48 58

(4) (6) (D (5) (2) (5)

51 8 79

(3) (2) (3)

1950

[a] Number of monthlies for which circulation figures are available [b] Last three digits have been dropped in all circulation figures [c] Less than 1000 Source: Fishman et al., 1966

747

22

(2)» 28 b (40) 361

1910

(2)

Yiddish Hungarian Ukrainian Italian Polish Greek Czech

French Spanish German

Languages

(80)

952

19

7 16

(D (D

OD

16 46 11 41 341 22 83 65 5

92 109 73

(3) (6) (5) (2) (10) (3) (6) (10) (2)

(4) (8) (8)

1960

80 39

(22) (6)

27 (137) 1023

(19)

3 16

50 349 26 88

(5) (11) (4) (9)

(1) (1)

25 66 18

141 8S

(6) (13) (11)

(14) (15)

1960 L R P

+8

-14

-64

+ 48

-10

+225 -86

+ 51 -73 -64

+ 259 + 120

+ 78

+ 36

+ 261 -38

-9 + 255 + 83 -9

-67 -21 + 1000

+ 80% + 1262 -8

+ 92% +24 -57 -57 + 21

1950-1960

1930-1960

+ 332

+ 214% -53

1910-1930

Percent Increase or Decrease

Table 6. Circulation of mother tongue monthlies, 1910-1960 (including publications appearing twice a month and every other week)

TABLES - USA 445

446

YIDDISH: TURNING TO LIFE

Table 7. Total number of mother tongue publications, 1910-1960 (including periodicals appearing less frequently than monthly) Percent Increase or Decrease Languages French Spanish German Yiddish Hungarian Ukrainian Italian Polish Greek Czech Other Slavic Scandinavian Other Germanic Other Romance Near Eastern Far Eastern All Other Total

1910 1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1960 LRP 1910-1930 1930-1960 1950-1960 28 29 28 35 58 61 554 234 146 17 28 20 11 24 35 1 8 6 6Í 79 85 50 71 84 7 13 15 48 49 44 31 52 53 123 96 62 20 14 13 9 17 15 6 11 8 10 15 18 32 50 44 1043 848 737

Source: Fishman et al., 1966

23 28 90 ]6 28 5 42 54 10 40

20 35 50 23 35 7 36 52 10 25

13 31 41 15 32 14 21 37 9 19

15 49 54 22 40 25 26 43 10 24

38 37 8 11 3 13 37

44 31 3 7 10 17 48

46 20 1 7 10 12 49

64 23 1 9 16 14 82

483 453 377

517

-35% -11 -18 -35 -9 + 100 -42 -29 -10 -24

+ 18 +218 + 500

-54% -49 -72 -20 -9 + 113

+ 39 + 68 + 114 -8

-75 -56 -40 -57

+ 71 -50 -35 + 67 + 33 +80 + 38

-13 -68 -92 -53 +25 -33 + 11

-29 -67 0 0 -29

-29

-49

-17

0% +74 -74

+5

+2

(795) 6029

(551) 6378

(488) 7216 (341) 5052 (344) 3506

(30)

(6) (9)

(12)

(5)

(42) (42)

(36)

(8)

(41) (54)

(3D 219 (5) 38 (28) 346 (41) 637 (8) 60 (20) 326 (33) 284 (22) 193 (2) 9 (6) 36 (7) 27 (15) 92 (39) 305

[a] Number of publications for which circulation figures are available [b] Last three digits have been dropped in all circulation figures Source: Fishman et al., 1966

Total

Other Slavic Scandinavian Other Germanic Other Romance Near Eastern Far Eastern All Other

Italian Polish Greek Czech

51 613 999 74 513 730 580 22 130 38 346 296

(4)

(4) 29 (40) 584 (46) 906 (6) 102 (39) 444 (30) 353 (75) 925 (13) 47 (6) 26 (4) 16 (Π) 47 (33) 210

(16) 401

(ID 510 (22) 308 (3) 52 (25) 369 (33) 892 (7) 49 (28) 431 (3D 618 (29) 334 (7) 23 (7) 54 (2) 7 (8) 73 (27) 262

(16) 775 (24) 238

(23) 808 (13) 186

(8) 321 (8) 50 (1) 11 (28) 245 (28) 212 (2) 10 (35) 371 (14) 99 (96) 922 (16) 82 (5) 6 (2) 10 (3) 8 (20) 108

Yiddish Hungarian Ukrainian

1950

1940 (14) 93 (24) 147 (33) 286

1930 (16) 116 (18) 114 (67) 832

1920

(20)» 104b (23) 119 (20) 151 (21) 74 (33) 256 (39) 298 (488) 3391 (152) 1311 (100) 1354

1910

French Spanish German

Languages

(9) 68 (23) 288 (57) 261 (22) 157 (1) 4 (8) 58 (14) 44 (13) 72 (77) 308

(23) 298 (42) 739

(18) 239 (36) 214 (23) 66

+ 20

+ 2117 + 280 +4225 + 174

-37 -73

+ 637

+ 150 + 371 + 640 + 38

+ 376 + 364

-60 + 141

-57 і

-79 -77 -17 -8 -56 -31 -12 -47 -70 -79 -82 -81 -3 -81 -15

-22% -10

+45%

(13) 87 (40) 507 (52) 343 + 303

1930-1960

1910-1930

1960 L R P

(320) 3118 (471) 3759

(9) 179 (27) 198 (12) 47 (18) 270 (36) 690 (7) 65 (18) 274 (33) 216 (17) 120 (1) 4 (6) 25 (8) 37 (11) 67 (42) 253

(12) 118 (25) 268 (38) 281

1960

-11

-27 -17

+ 37

+8 +8 -16 +24 -38 -56 -17

— 22

+ 24

-2 -55 -10

+ 82

+ 17%

1950-1960

Percent Increase or Decrease

Table 8. Circulation of mother tongue publications, 1910-1960 (including periodicals appearing less frequently than monthly)

TABLES - USA 447

448

YIDDISH: TURNING TO LIFE

Table 9. Number of mixed publications, 1910-1960 Percent Increase or Decrease Languages French Spanish German Yiddish Hungarian Ukrainian Italian Polish Greek Czech Other Slavic Scandinavian Other Germanic Other Romance Near Eastern Far Eastern A11 Others Total

1910 1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1960 LRP 1910-1930 1930-1960 1950-1960 3 10 29 — _ — 10 1 1 — 3 13 3 — 1 4 3 81

5 11 22

-50% -44 -59 -69 -75 + 200 -47 0 +25 + 300

-50% -24 -10 -33 -75 + 50 -46 -33 +25 + 100

19 5 2 1 1 8 7

-100% -10 -24 — — — + 280 + 100 + 300 — + 367 + 31 + 67 — — + 50 + 100

+ 36 -71 -60 0 — +33 + 17

+6 -44 -33 -50 -50 0 0

107

187

+ 84

-28

-24

18 3 2 — 8 17 4 — — 6 4

7 18 16 10 5 1 39 5 3 1

6 4 2 37 3 4 2

3 13 9 4 1 3 20 2 5 4

18 14 3 — 1 7 5

18 9 3 2 2 8 7

111

149

153

140

7 2 1

Source: Fishman et al., 1966

6 17 10

3 14 16 6 3 5 27 10 12 6 32 11 4 7 7 9 15

6 9 22 13 4 1 38 2 4 1 14 17 5 1 — 6 6

(4)

20 12

(Π) (3)

(3) (2)

(53)

Total

(62)

0)

422 (82)

(5) (1)

34 1 591

52 7

167 82 16

— 114 23 12

— (20) (2) (1) () (11) (3)

34 9

10 3 65

(8) (2)

(3) (4) (12)

98 58 9

—

59 19

14 7 6

5 . 7 101

1930

(106)

(5) (2)

(2)

OD

(6) (5) (1) (26) (5) (3) (1) (10)

(5) (14) ()

21 17 94

793

42 3

219 52 11

33 48 10 174 37 20 7

1940

(99)

(1) (5) (5)

0)

(12) (7) (3)

(2) (4) (2) (25) (3) (3) (2)

(3) (12) (9)

829

23 9

a

218 36 23 2

132 31 17 9

6 27 12

8 113 155

1950

[a] Number of publications for which circulation figures are available [b] Last three digits have been dropped in all circulation figures. Source: Fishman et al., 1966

352

(5) (Π) (2)

5 58 9

0)

—

Other Slavic Scandinavian Other Germanic Other Romance Near Eastern Far Eastern AJÍ Others

0)

15 9 8

(3) (1)

(2) (1) (1) (10) (2)

(3) (6) (14)

Italian Polish Greek Czech

— — —

b

1920

— — —

3 (3)· 4 (4) (21) 2Ü6

1910

Yiddish Hungarian Ukrainian

French Spanish German

Languages

Table 10. Circulation of mixed publications, 1910-1960

(91)

(16) (5) (2) (1) (1) (8) (5)

(2) (1) (3) (17) (2) (4) (4)

(2) (9) (9)

889

243 40 15 4 6 45 26

63 4 27 164 9 15 17

5 54 146

1960

4-68

— —

(177) 1226

(4) (7) (7) (9) (15)

OD

4-50

-13 +271

— 4-46 -51 -6

— +3240 4-24 4-78

— —

4-44 -61 4-25

—

.+ 85 -56

-50% +1700 +125

4-660 +155 4-50

— — —

+ 233% -25 -68

+160 -42

251 36 39 25

75 11 27

55 157

1930-1960

4-7

+ 11 4-11 -35 +100 4-600 4-96 + 189

-24 -71 -12 + 89

+ 950 -85 + 125

-38% -52 -6

1950-1960

Percent Increase or Decrease 1910-1930

272 69 36 31 23 54 51

(6) (3) (5) (27) (8) (9) (6) (32)

(2) (10) (16)

1960 L R P

TABLES - USA 449

450

YIDDISH: TURNING TO LIFE

Table 11. Proportions of types of publication, 1930 and 1960 — Number.

Ethnic Groups French Spanish German Jewish Hungarian Ukrainian Italian Polish Greek Czech Other Slavic Scandinavian Other Germanic Other Romance Near Eastern Far Fastern All Others Total

1930 Mother Tongue

1930 Mixed

n 28 61 146 20 35 6 85 84 15 44 53 62 13 15 8 18 44

n 6 9 22 13 4 1 38 2 4 1 14 17 5 1 0 6 6

% 80 81 59 21 90 86 68 95 71 98 79 63 56 94 89 67 86

737 69

1930 English

1930 Total

% 17 12 9 14 10 14 30 2 19 2 21 17 22 6 0 22 12

% 1 3 5 7 78 32 62 65 0 0 0 0 2 2 10 0 0 19 22 0 11 11 2

n 35 75 246 95 39 7 125 88 21 45 67 98 23 16 9 27 51

149 14

181 17

1067

Source: Fishman et al., 1966

n

2 2 2 0 0 19 5 0 1 3 1

| Į

|

1960 Mother Tongue

1960 Mixed

n 13 31 41 15 32 14 21 37 9 19 46 20 1 7 10 12 49

n 3 13 9 4 1 3 20 2 5 4 19 5 2 1 1 8 7

% 76 65 37 14 94 74 16 86 47 83 68 43 8 88 63 57 78

377 54

% 18 27 8 4 3 16 43 5 26 17 28 11 15 12 6 38 11

107 15

1960 English n

1960 Total n 17 48 110 104 34 19

1 4 60 85 1 2 5 4 5 0

% 6 8 55 82 3 10 11 9 26 0

3 21 10 0 5 1 7

4 46 77 0 31 5 11

46 43 19 23 68 46 13 8 16 21 63

214 31

698

TABLES - USA

451

Table 12. Proportions of types of publications, 1930 and 1960 — Circulation 1930 Mother Tongue

n

%

1930 Mixed

n 10 3 65 34 9

% 6 1 3 3 4

Ethnic Groups French Spanish German

151a 94 298 98 1354 67

Jewish Hungarian Ukrainian

775 72 238 96 51 100

Italian Polish Greek Czech

613 83 999 96 74 77 513 100

114 15 23 2 12 12

Other Slavic Scandinavian Other Germanic Other Romance Near Eastern Far Eastern A11 Others

730 580 22 130 38 346 296

74 85 58 100 100 87 98

167 17 82 12 16 42

7216

82

Total

1930 English

n

%

3 1 598 30 264 25 0 0 0 0 16 2 15 1 10 10 0 —

n

1960 Mother Tongue

n

%

1960 Mixed

n

%

1960 English

n

%

1960 'Votai

n

161 304 2017

118a 96 268 81 281 10

5 54 146

4 16 7 2 5 2274 84

123 329 2701

1073 247 51

Į 179 9 198 95 47 62

63 4 27

3 1826 88 2 6 3 36 2 2

743 1037 96 513

270 56 690 96 65 62 274 94

164 9 15 17

2068 208 76 481 717 104 291

216 120 4 25 37 67 253

45 26 2 86 69 57 85

243 51 40 9 15 6 4 4 6 11 45 38 26 9

3118

35

889

93 21

9 3

0

0

990 683 38 130 38 398 303

7 1023 12

8830

0 0 52 13 7 2 591

1930 Total

[a] Last three digits have been dropped in all circulation figures Source: Fishman et al., 1966

34 1 14 6

47 18 24 0 17 303 216 0 11 6 20

10 2 23 0 4 65 92 0 20 5 7

10 4784 54

476 463 235 29 54 118 299 8791

452

YIDDISH: TURNING TO LIFE

Table 13a. Hours and "Stations" of foreign language broadcasting per week (according to ACNS) for 1956 and 1960, by language. ACNS 1960

ACNS 1956 Languages and Language Groupings

Romance French Italian Spanish Portuguese Rumanian Slavic Polish Ukrainian Russian Other» Scandinavianb Greek Germanic German Otherc Near Fastd Far Eastd Yiddish Finnish, Hung., Turkish Hungarian Other Miscellaneousf Total

[a] [b] [c] [d] [e] [f]

"Stat ions"

"Stat ions" Total Hours

Total

with Average Total Info. Hours Hours 8.72 2.87 3.53 13.90 4.08 .50 2.71 3.49 1.53 1.65 1.47 1.13 1.45

84 78 6

485 56 148 246 31 4 248 151 27 5 65 31 44 64 60 4

13 11 46

10 6 28

.65 1.13 5.97

59.00 71 43.50 48 15.50 23 39.00 51 5442.08 1354

52 36 16 37 1005

1.13 1.21 .97 1.05 5.42

4231.51 160.75 522.84 3419.42 126.50 2.00 671.83 526.58 41.25 8.25 95.75 35.00 64.00 161.25 152.25 9.00

599 73 194 284 43 5 359 188 39 12 120 55 65

6.50 6.75 167.25

2.52 2.54 2.25

Total

with Average Info. Hours

% I or D in Aver. Hours

642 76 194 324 43 5 307 174 21 23 89 42 71

8.00

730 83 229 363 48 7 392 203 32 28 129 66 86 138 129 9 17

117 108 9 12

7.44 2.97 3.14 11.74 3.08 1.10 2.30 2.93 1.37 1.82 1.41 1.02 1.27 2.50 2.55 1.86 .67

33.75 142.75

17 42

15 29

2.25 4.92

+ 3.1% + 99.1% - 17.6%

60.50 72 43 38.25 22.25 29 64.00 62 6214.70 1622

57 37 20 48 1340

1.06 1.03 1.11 1.33 4.64

+. + -

4774.70 225.50 608.95 3802.50 132.25 5.50 705.00 509.00 28.75 41.75 125.50 43.00 90.50 292.50 275.75 16.75

- 14.7% + 3.5%

- 11.0% - 15.5% - 24.5% + 120.0% + -

15.1% 16.0% 10.5% 10.3% 4.2% 9.7% 12.4%

-

.8%

+

.4%

- 17.3%

6.2% 14.9% 14.4% 26.7% 14.4%

Includes Croatian, Serbian, Slovene, Czech and Slovak Includes Norwegian, Swedish, Danish and "combined" Scandinavian Includes Dutch, Swiss-German, Pennsylvania German (Pennsylvania Dutch). Includes Lebanese, Syrian and Egyptian Arabic. Includes Chinese, Japanese and Hindustani Includes Lithuanian, Estonian, Latvian, Armenian, Albanian, Maltese, Basque and Filipino languages. (These language groupings also apply to the following table). Source: Fishman et al., 1966

453

TABLES - USA

Table 13b. Hours and "Stations" of foreign language broadcasting per week (according to LRP data) for 1960 by language Languages and Language Groupings Romance French Italian Spanish Portuguese Rumanian Slavic Polish Ukrainian Russian Other

"Stations" Total

with Info.

Average Hours

5447.44 248.00 582.42 4498.82 111.70 6.50 629.41 437.66 33.00 24.00 134.75

659 77 196 338 42 6 331 177 28 21 105

607 73 181 308 39 6 299 163 22 20 94

8.97 3.40 3.22 14.61 2.86 1.08 2.11 2.69 1.50 1.20 1.43

Total Hours

% I or D . in Average Hours to ACNS 1956 + + + +

2.9% 18.5% 8.8% 5.1% 29.9% 116.0%

- 22.1% - 22.9% - 2.0% - 27.3% - 2.7%

48.60

62

43

1.13

Greek

120.25

73

66

1.82

0% + 25.5%

Germanic German Other

229.25 215.00 14.25

115 104 11

105 97 8

2.18 2.22 1.78

- 13.5% - 12.60% - 20.9%

Near East

12.75

22

17

.75

+ 15.4%

Far East

54.75

18

17

3.22

+ 185.0%

Yiddish

129.25

34

32

4.04

- 32.3%

56.50 40.25 16.25

64 41 23

49 34 15

1.15 1.18 1.08

Scandinavian

Finish, Hung., Turkish Hungarian Other Miscellaneous Total

76.50

61

56

1.37

+ 1.8% - 2.5% + 11.3% + 30.5%

6804.70

1439

1291

5.27

-

Source: Fishman et al., 1966

2.8%

454

YIDDISH: TURNING TO LIFE

Table 14. Proportion of Total FLB accounted for by major languages or language groupings in 1956 and in 1960 Language Romance French Italian Spanish Slavic Polish Scandinavian Greek Germanic German Near Eastern Far Eastern Yiddish Finn., Hung., Turk. Miscellaneous Total

ACNS 1956

ACNS 1960

LRP 1960

77.8% (3.0) (9.6) (62.8) 12.3 (9.7) .6 1.2 3.0 (2.8) .1 .1 3.1 1.1 .7 100%

76.8% (3.6) (9.8) (61.2) 11.3 (8.2) .7 1.4 4.7 (4.4) .1 .5 2.3 1.0 1.0 100%

80.0% (3.6) (8.6) (66.1) 9.2 (6.4) .7 1.8 3.4 (3.2) .2 .8 1.9 .8 1.1 100%

Source: Fishman et al., 1966

TABLES - USA

455

Table 15. Percent distribution of FLBa in 1960 within regions MA

NE

ENC

WNC

West

South

Romance French Italian Spanish Portuguese Rumanian Slavic Polish Ukranian Russian Other

61.7 .7 18.7 42.3

67.3 25.2 33.8 1.3 7.1

34.9 .2 11.4 22.9

19.0 .7 2.3 16.0

96.4 6.4 .9 89.1

—

—:

— —

17.9 13.7 1.7 1.8 .8

16.1 15.8

.5 35.8 24.5 1.7 .3 9.3

94.8 .2 5.0 86.0 3.4 .1 .4

Scandinavian

.8

.5 6.4

Language

— —

1.9

—

__

.8 .8 .8

.5 .9 .9

b

b

—

1.8

1.0

—

.9 .5 .4

4.0 3.0 1.0

7.0 1.3 5.7

.8

3.6

4.3 100.0% 836.92

.7

100.0% 1096.01

100.0% 419.92

[a] Based on 1960 LRP total hours [b] Less than 1% Source: Fishman et al., 1966

— —

.2

—

.7 .7

b

.3

.4

—

b

1.6 .2

14.7

9.4

Yiddish

1.4 1.4

b

24.0

2.0

Germanic German Other Near East Far East

5.3 5.2 .1 .1

Total N

—

_ —

— — — —

2.9

Miscellaneous

.2

4.1 13.7 12.3 1.4 .3

Greek

Finnish, Hung., Turkish Hungarian Other

—

30.3 15.7

— —

19.0 19.0

100.0% 75.00

__

1.4

b

2.1

—

.3

.3

.1 .1

.2 .1 .1 .1

— .6 100.0% 2380.51

100.0% 1996.34

456

YIDDISH: TURNING TO LIFE

Table 16. Percent distribution of FLBa in 1960 across regions MA

NE

ENC

Romance French Italian Spanish Portuguese Rumanian

12.5 3.1 35.2 10.3

5.2 42.6 24.3 .1 26.6

5.4 .6 16.4 4.3

.3 .2 .3 .3

—

—

— —

Slavic Polish Ukrainian Russian Other

31.2 34.2 56.1 81.3 6.5

10.7 15.2

—

61.5 47.7 46.8 42.4 10.4 58.3

Scandinavian

18.7

4.1

32.4

Greek

26.2

22.5

Germanic German Other

25.2 26.3 8.8

2.6 2.8

Near East

7.8

Far East

7.3

—

—

Language

— —

WNC

West

South

Total

N

35.3 51.5 3.2 39.5

21.1

100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100%

5447.44 248.00 582.42 4498.82 111.70 6.50

8.2

41.4 1.9 20.6 45.5 73.4 38.5 1.7 .2 1.5 4.2 5.9

37.0

7.7

_

100%

48.60

28.7

—

13.7

8.9

100%

120.25

6.2 6.6

—

49.8 47.8 80.7

8.3 8.4 7.0

7.9 8.1 3.5

100% 100% 100%

229.25 215.00 14.25

66.7

19.6

— 4.2

3.6 2.7

— —

__ — 5.1 .9

— —

129.41 437.66 33.00 24.00 134.75

Yiddish

79.5

5.8

6.2

— — — —

Finnish, Hung., Turkish Hungarian Other

14.6 20.5

59.3 62.7 50.8

9.3 2.5 26.2

—

Miscellaneous

11.8

6.6 5.0 10.8 19.6

47.4

.7

19.3

1.3

100%

56.50 40.25 16.25 76.50

Total

16.1

6.2

12.3

1.1

35.0

29.3

100%

6804.70

—

[a] Based on 1960 LRP data Source: Fishman et al., 1966

—

5.9

100%

12.75

92.7

—

100%

54.75

4.6

3.9

100%

129.25

3.5 5.0

6.6 4.3 12.3

100% 100% 100%

408,040 512,983 165,373 260,035

113,119

88,162

2,437,938 452,812

510,366

Slovak

Hungarian Serbo-Croatian

Albanian 1,571

3,038

9,802

17,382

Slovenian Dalmatian

15,811

73,281 6,764

395,341 215,360

52,156 24,095 9,040

239,45 5 82,321

423,416

4,748 8,283

54,103

132,296

234,088

233,165 340,855

1,347,691

303,868

2,403,125

1,767,603

15,439

727,698

29,024

107,155 132,201

3,604,660

25,470

86,950

148,944

670,335

2,488,394

7,252

1,460,130

447,497

Czech

6,093,054

Breton

German

32,722

French

Polish

61,889

2,598,408

Flemish

29,089 90,713 12,064

194,462

350,748

Dutch

626,102

Swedish

Danish

612,862

Norwegian

49,825 1,138,278

34,675

78,428

9,734 204,822

160,717,113

English

381,575

32,969

33,575,232 11,404,678

169,634,926 149,312,435

203,210,158

Total

Celtic

23,955,930 9,706,853

Total

parentage

Total Total

6,730

47,552 3,201

195,556 109,262

279,203

163,704

1,085,041

1,468,715

8,963

333,997

21,649

75,614 86,463

191,929 283,569

25,655

3,170,411

12,902,976

parentage

Foreign

1,553

1,547

6,551

23,034

38,532

61,652

69,461

262,650

934,410

7,375 393,701 6,476

31,541 45,738

98,006

7,314 121,746

11,052,954 6,536,442

parentage

Mixed

Native of foreign or mixed parentage

Foreign stock

United States

Native of native

Table 17. Mother tongue of the population by nativity and parentage: 1970

Foreign

7,528

2,016

83,064 19,178

161,253

70,703 82,561

419,912

1,201,535

10,031

410,580

127,834 20,801

58,218

94,365 131,408

45,459

1,697,825

9,619,302

born

TABLES - USA 457

Continued

native

1,852 13,758

8,108

100,495

123,744

Arabic (n.e.c.) 4,05 5

19,691

101,686

Hebrew

Other Persian dialects 590

965

20,553 3,370

Persian

Armenian

Basque

4,171,050 62,252

Spanish

Portuguese

56,839 605,625

458,699

4,44,34 7,823,583 365,300

170,174 1,252

179 5,166

22,662

30,665

Italian

56,590 1,593,993 1,588

757

334,615 249,351

Greek

Gypsy (Romani)

Yiddish

Rumanian

Ukrainian Georgian

Russian

19,748

292,820

Other Balto-Slavonic dialects

58,124 34,744 1,231

214,168

parentage

Lithuanian

Total

Native of

Finnish

United States

Table 17.

81,995 109,689

2,780

86,737 19,588

6,256

3,652,533 303,048

3,538,690

401,860

36

52,902

45,883

1,437

3,602

48,414

4,087

162,749

1,956,293

2,512,696

208,115

180

25,369 985,703

157

578

51,424 1,423,819

154,673 130,054

8,309

117,754 162,888

Total

303,950 226,689

18,517

258,076

156,044

Total

146,897

34,036 38,704

1,697 1,110

38,930

3,034

111,922

958,628

1,927,001

14,198

11,847

327

1,905

9,484

1,053

50,827

997,665

585,695

61,218

ΙΟΙ

140,219

845,484 79

3,560

37

120

21,809

14,072

22,880

19,591 1,663

56,787

36,112

1.343

38,323 15,986

2,169

140,299

1,025,594 1,696,240

193,745

156

26,055 438,116

421

96,635

149,277

10,208

95,188

38,290

born

parentage 26,024

Foreign

Mixed

131,793 115,982

143,297 6,646

91,730

parentage

Foreign

Native of foreign or mixed parentage

Foreign stock

458 YIDDISH: TURNING TO LIFE

Dravidian Korean Japanese Chinese (n.e.c.)

Turkish Other Uralic Altaic Hindi (Hindustani) Other Indo-A ryan

Libyan Niger-Congo (Chari-Nile) Eastern Sudanie

North African Arabic dialects Southern Semitic Hamitic Swahili

Egyptian Iraqi Near Eastern Arabic dialects

United States

Table 17. Continued

503

1,951

380 445

2,040

948

3,991

16

2,347

5,666 3,016 251

22,312 14,426

668

1,811 765 306

1,249 731

15,191

974

26,253

22,939

635 2,756 82,886 29.244

8,983

53.528

408,504

337,283

578

7,328 137,373 80,317

813

16,024 207,528 122,000

8,348 50,772 325,618 308,039

22,208

1,944 1,740 2,987 2,442

25,004

206

3,826

1,347

2,207

336

2,543

24,123

653 953

1,221

5,482

1,055

6,537

29

86

145

265

384

135

78

812

217

216

410

974

217

408

1,354

52

31,672

40,306

55,112

10,952

2,44 66,064 191

435

79 758

858

1,904

49

Foreign parentage

33

Total

509

Total

11,410

669

70,155 41,683

8,696

186,039

118,090

7.535 34,748

19,866

602 235

22,017 1,043

417

16,646 1,840

45

860

568 394

59 4,261

57

1,139

286 82

428

758

139

14,806

1,146

779

Foreign born

138

36

8,634

323

30

Mixed parentage

Native of foreign or mixed parentage

891

Total

Native of native parentage

Foreign stock

TABLES - USA 459

Continued

703 166

5,819

57,073 3,725

2,849 209,571 8,681

826

1,193 8,336 12,006

6,253 4,042

530,653 444,792

350,126 8,873,081

128,039

880,779 9,317,873

9,624

152

348,645

341,483

5,193

55

38

104,979 171,357

177,288

96,47

189,170

4,431

32 3,327

580 278

120

640

9,6 474

4,956 1,593

21,492

4,610 2,305 152,498

506

1,156 11,695

119

310

3,179

732

Foreign born

162

1,079

126

27

50

49 664

Mixed parentage

236,504

1,866

23

17

451

93

17,497

1,031

245 137,663

174

648

18,528

274

1,190

35,581 2,132

311 382

464

768

544

817

1,543

5!

23

106

1,73

175

Foreign parentage

1,830

18,079 91,092

19,909

91,860

20,687

217,907

5,427

1,178

177

14,416

1,333 13,238

183 248

50

34 1,937 ,56

Total

352

169

466

5,116

1,046

Total

Native of foreign or mixed parentage

1,581

632

651

1,697

Total

Native of native parentage

Foreign stock

Source: General Social and Economic Characteristics, United States Summary: PC(1)-C1. 1972. The designations for languages and language clusters are those utilized in the cited census report. n.e.c. = not elsewhere classified

All other Not reported

Algonquin Navajo Other Athapaskan Uto-Aztecan Other American Indian

Tibetan Burmese Thai (Siamese), Lao Malay (Indonesian) Other Malayan Tagalog Polynesian

Mandarin Cantonese Other Chinese dialects

United States

Table 17.

460 YIDDISH: TURNING TO LIFE

10.34 14.74

1491

20.31

28.34

13.22

4-25

2-01

.99

5.09

3.09

.58

•43

3 2-94

12.96

10.88

759

7.80

21-49

3977

19.15

36.77 52.57

17.09

32.59

5·23

19 55

32.62

23.10

22.17

17-95

18.78

32.15

12.85

10.62

13-72

16.31

5.57 35-87

21.05

34-47

6.47

23-08

10.53

3.48

20.77

5-72

1·93

2.71

12.86

24.97 7-55

11.36

22.62

28.56

23.06

34.20

22.81 1936 3 3 96 2 1 . 0 9 12.52 l6.27

14.72

37-78

16.16

19.47

3.67

27.24

9.25 9.81

2-95

3032 28.28

25.56 30.70

24.84

13.65

8.82

6.91

17.10

12.49

5-79

9-74 5.96

2.66

5.82

1.21

3-47 3-76 10.66

7.4

16.89

l6.21

28.03

25.46

63-51 39.36

23-l6

2.10

.84

30.78

4.84

14·8ο

7·07

27-77 15.50

25.03

7-71

7-39

42.18

20.16

24.62

2.41 3.11

4083

31.64

•70

5-50 1.72

15-53

14.66

29.02

17-95 8.38

5211

30.31

37.75

10.36

10.25

6.81

66.80 57.15

15-54 24.00

2-34

5.20

6.04

2.65

5.20

8-73

17.21

40.11

.78

2999 22.28 27.16

3.24 4.81

l.11

•42

21.29

33.71

24.76 20.43

15.38

26.5p 25.84

18.68

14-32

2.85

22.81

2.11

6-54 9-34

15.09

7.19

4-55 6.90

378 4.46 6.48

6.81

3.19

1.58

•32

1.74

-54

•4 3

.95

.38 .56

1.06

.42

.24

.64 -43

5.66

5.19

1.22

9.57

10.74

31.10

13.84

36.05

24.36

5.64

1.75

.71

.20

.82

.28

.47 .60 .38

.32

.85

.13

.28

.22

.30

1.84

•44

5.70

1.22

5.69 2.93

8.65 5.89 32.20

1.24

3.64 4.61

2.62

2.79

2.89

75 & over

7-27

4.78

4.85

65-74

39-87

40·15 36.78

17-58

17.72

45.26

41-98

55.37

42.22

53.25 45.89 54-39 46.79

53-26

41-33

48.89

32-47

31.51

36.07

39.38 45 66 41·50

23-54 23.06

45-64

29.40

39.82

14.58

27.41

39-34 32.79 25.18

42.66 •32

1.20

34-45

7.10 14.82

37-84 29.60 1.19

14.69

31.60 33.02

8-99 11.80

34.90

3°·79

25.56

14.84

2.44

.45 .85 1.68 .36

14.92

9-49 9.65

1.66 1.19

5.70

25.92

9.69

10.26

2.41

7.68

18.91 10.14

6.64 15.51

19.23

11.37

6.06

16.39

7.26

12.34

10.05

2.63

9.86

8.61

2-93 6.02

12.27

21.47 21.55

30-23 1.98

2955

15.06

15-57 13.99

5-87 6.84

25-44

Native Born of Native Parentage

&. over Under 14 14-24

20.78

59-32

3.94

20.42

59-42

21.1O 25.70

64.08

56.99 66.98

29.26

24-13

20-77

4.22

4.33 7.75

2.08

3.52

3·69

52-19

17-42

.96

2-37

6.42

32.43

26.69 26.89

3554

3 5-03

8.68 16.06

9-61 4-98 2.69 1.96

11.18

37-87

5.72 21-37 25.26

41.88

1 5-43

18.30

8.31

27.15 30·47

26.49 26.66

30-71

21.69

30-35

10.15

21.04

7-13

21.81

2.32

12.62

6.78

•77

1.97

1-37 5.10

1.82

5-94 6.84

28.14

10.38

5.72

2.18

28.68

11.98

31.37 30.31

13.58

6.14

26.79

23.05

46.04

13-81

15-39

1.69

28.04

16.70 4.23

2.65

23.00

1.42

27.76

23.65

9·°9

18.55

2.25

23.15

21.57

44.80

13-86

2.05

2.15

28.72

25.88

26.32

11.79

10.40

31-32

22-39

15.51

38.26

23-24

9·05 11.95

13.16

13.11

65-74

14-12

45-64

75 25-44

Native of Foreign or Mixed Parentage

Under 14 14-24

75 & over

14.23

4.16

3-37

1.48

17-92

17.85

65-74

30-48

27-03

45-64

24.12

25.85

1.05

8.19

2.59

9.51

5.64

6.18

25-44

Source: Derived from PC(2)-lA(Modal ages underlined).

Total English Norwegian Swedish Danish Dutch French German Polish Czech Slovak Hungarian Serbo-Croatian Slovenian Russian Ukrainian Lithuanian Yiddish Greek Italian Spanish Japanese Chinese All other Not reported

Under 14 14-24

Foreign Born

Table 18. Percentage Distribution of mother tongue, 1970, by nativity, parentage and age for 22 languages.

TABLES - USA 461

5,775

29,021

9,687 3.765 47,665 97,371

1,506,619 360,273 1,031,011

385,567 137,918

410,580 1,201,535 419,912

149, 277

85,291

45.565 1.548

210,239

8,989

1,578,311 2,229,874 85,610

1,696,240

2,483,676 96, 4 7

20,558

971,352

559 6,977

453.79 2

438,116

5,524 1,672

5.748 30,788

20,832

47,569

447,789

325,125

110,604

49.130 5.407 1,701 27,410

531.165

1.27 1.12

6.91

6.49 .86 4.65

91.82

89.04

89.78

93.05

94.67

99.01

92.39

2.56

11.63

9-3 5

5-74 8.47

1-75 1.61

1.21

.13 .68

80.54

86.51

85.25

93.4 2

93.43 98.74

83.98 90.68

84.22

1.40 10.85

1.23 87-75 85.81

10.04

8759 87.14

7.92

4.86 18.98

1.80 5.70

17.60

10.45

.88

.15

1.84

7-54

2.44

12.21 1.83

19.70 11.19

3.90 10.86

22.38

2/1

1.43

90.65 88.74

87-75 76.70 76.16

98.02 91.79

75-75 69.44 86.38 85.96

5-41

5-59

23.38

71.04

8,884,065

1,025,994

44,5 59 139.736

170,374

8,720,327

1,697,825

761,406

1,750,272

659.995 997,075

21,125 228,723

22,620

22

9,619,302

7,023,665

4,345,39 2

5,376,746

2,862,188

49.311 1,133,051

1,745.121

489,5 5 5 963,763

42,515,379 37,176,480

5.22

4/1

21.96

21.30

72.63

5/1

75,49

10,601,254

43,276,785

2/1

10,463,685

Farm

4

3 Rural Non-Farm

1970

15.92

11.49

11.75

3.53

1.99

2.99

.90

.30

.96 5.69

1.89 1.28

5.29

7.43

1.99 3.49

1.31 13-79 12.53

2.26 10.35

4/1

11.55

3/1

1960

Sources: US Census of Population, 1970. Report PC(2)-1A: National Origin and Language, 1973. (Referred to in the following Tables as PC(2)-1A). 1940 and 1960 data are from Language Loyalty in the U.S., J.A. Fishman et al. 1966, where original sources are cited and estimation procedures described. The 23 languages included in this table are the only ones for which 1940-1960-1970 data are available.

Total foreign born English French German Polish Russian Yiddish Italian Spanish All other Not reported

9,221,726

6,127,345 5,665,590

1,155,877 3,118,321

185,358

2,018,026

1,612,982

3.396,593

2,187,828

112,958,743

193,590.856 159,019,288 4,891,519

140,611,792

149,332,119

203,210,1)8

Total native English French German Polish Russian Yiddish Italian Spanish All other Not reported

Urban

2

Total US Population

Total

1

1970

Table 19. Mother tongue claiming: 1940-1960-1970. Totals for 23 languages

462 YIDDISH: TURNING TO LIFE

2,759,°32

556,111 105,895

83,780

110,197

87,109

140,299

743,286

766,961

1,696,240

428,360

174,658 1,624,998

189,066 1,808,289

165,220

173,031 1,226,141

193,745 1,025,994 1,561,100

1,091,820

56,964 1,222,658

924,440

38,019

133,567 62,336

182,227

503,605

43,120

165,053 124,994

26,055

97,080

122,660

99,043 53,168

438,116

38,290

95,188

58,685

34,721 

57,926

35,540

106,974

392,049

356,940

276,834

i49»277 96,635

-56,382

77,671

123,631

75,560

32,108

19,178

-79,967 12,464

125,844 102,744

72,649

258,131

118,379 1,365,110

42,277 1,051,767

120,086

140,963

d

105,669

229,094

268,112

70,600

250,393 109,923

88,094

83,064

241,220

213,114

161,253

-88,937

56,519

1,267,880

-535,106

28,525

-486,324

-17,065

-27,474 -58,790

61,095

— 207,663

— 89,019

166,474

234,564 274,948

201,138 240,196

--387,505 — 381,768

171,580

91,711 125,000

70,703 82,561

943,781 228,738

45,93 5 51,060

— 63,962

-138,455 -291,792

— 808,590

— 1,490,318

67.46

295.98

(-34-28)

17.26

(-52.61)

(-39-58)

(-60.56)

(-22.40)

171.91

(-58.18)

(-74-62)

(-33-) 17.65

(-51.88)

(-55.71)

(-24.39) (-47.62)

44.73 14.20

(-52.35)

(-59-47) (-68.95)

(-13-41) (-32.26)

(Decrease)

Change

159,640

2,267,128 1,077,392

965,899

801,680

419,912

581,936

1,278,772

1,201,535

528,842

466,956

523,297 2,188,006

359,520 1,589,040

330,220

410,580

186,345 126,045

189,531 136,540

178,944 133,142

122,180 102,700

123,613

58,218

148,635

683,218

362,199 643,203

345,522 615,465

232,820 423,200

40,774

3,363,792 402,587

211,597 79,619

94,365 131,408

4,345,545

1910

13,712,754 3,007,932

4,983,405

11,109,620

1920

3,097,021

1,697,825

1930

1940

2,506,420

9,738,143 1,852,992

9,619,302

English Norwegian Swedish Danish Dutchb French German Polish Czech Slovak Hungarian Serbo-Croatian Slovenian Russian Ukrainian Lithuanian* Finnishf Rumanian Yiddish Greek Italian Spanish Portuguese

i960

Total

1970

% Increase

1940-1970

1940-1970

53,190

929,279

— 200,147

20,714

-65,489

— 11,964

-3,855 — 14,878

-10,339

-127,557

-12,930

-5,030

-42,439 -51,861

— 21,008

-77,237 — 162,024

80,360

25,022

— 21,401

— 80,189

-155,167 — 46,409

— 118,841

Change

1960-1970

61.06

121.16

(-16.32)

11.97

(-31.47) (-13.00)

(-27.98)

(-3.89)

(-9.66)

(-46.08)

(-5.71) (-40.27)

(-24.33)

(-33-95)

(-22.91)

(-27.84)

(-6.04)

2434

20.24

(-26.88)

(-32.97) (-37.90)

(-8.37)

(-1-22)

(Decrease)

% Increase

1960-1970

Mother tongue of the foreign born for 26 languages, 1910-1970, with percent increase (decrease) 1940-1970 and 1960-1970a

Mother T o n g u e

Table 20.

TABLES - USA 463

118,090 190,260

Japanese Chinese Arabic Total NonEnglish Total NonEnglish, less Spanish

95,°*7 89,609 49,908

i960

1940 g g j 0,940 g g 67,830

1950

1920

57,557

g g

1910 g g 32,868

— — 279.89 (-15.14)

(-32.24)

142,580 -1,244,149

— 2,512,029

1940-1970 % Increase (Decrease)

— —

1940—1970 Change

-508,145

421,44

23,749

23,063 100,651

1960-1970 Change

(-8-34)

6.14

47-59

112.32

19-53

1960-1970 % Increase (Decrease)

[a] 1910-1960 data derived from US Census of Population 1960; General Social and Enconomic Characteristics, United States Summary. Final Report PC(1)-1C, Table 70 (Washington, D.C., US Government Printing Office, 1962). 1970 data derived from PC(2)-1A (1973). Population figures for 1910 to 1940 apply to whites only. Figures for 1960 are from Language Loyalty in the United States, J.A.Fishman et al., 1966. [b] Includes Flemish in 1960 and Frisian in 1910 and 1920. [c] 1920 figure not reported in 1960. Reported as 55,672 (including Ruthenian) in 1920. [d] 1910 figure not reported in 1960. Reported as 25,131 (including Ruthenian) in 1910. [e] Includes Lettish (1910-1920). [f] Includes Lappish (1910-1930) and Estonian (1910-1920). [g] Not available

іі

1970

Mother Tongue

Table 20. Continued

464 YIDDISH: TURNING TO LIFE

340,855

234,088

132,296

Slovak

Hungarian

Serbo-Croatian f

102,884

117,754

Armenian

Lithuanian

Finnish

162,749

1,956,293

Spanish

Portuguese

2,512,696

985,703 208,115

Italian

Greek

Yiddish

25,369

48,414

Ukrainian

Rumanian

154,673 130,054

Russian

54,103

233,165

Czech

Slovenian

1,347,691

French

2,403,125

727,698

Dutch·

Polish

107,155 161,225

Danish

German

34,675

381,575

Swedish

23,955,93° 9,706,853

1970

Norwegian

English

Total

Mother Tongue

(-1-54) (-5-68)

193,938 -32,575 — 81,129

828,327 6,058,239

97,300

102,140

87,000

1,278,000 120,500

714,060

2,080,680

107,000

2,300,000

773,680

20,340

118,460

140,620

26,440

45,280

422,000

18,000

53,000

99,000

136,000

214,160

32,000

198,600

283,520

279,040

1,428,820

2,435,700

533,760

37,211

74,577 105,808 339,900

294,737 109,833

1,740,866

951,793 47,110

29,347

15,193 154,373 d 131,905 e

69.07

42,249

68,619

173-97 35.06

75,749

9.25 53.07

6-78,293 1,242,233

190,067

94.50 212,696

103-75 20.76

27.40

87.07

133.58

40.94 7,369 563,703 101,115

24.72

122.17

64.53

(-4.37)

5,029

63,884

- 5,946

212,023

15.83

83.11

(-6.82)

22,103 -11,327

(-44.40) (-27.78) 187.22

48.65

4 3 , 29 6 71.19

64,754

105,975 432,016 786,312

20.22

33.76

15 3.44 172.68

141,165 215,855 59,o88

(-16.44)

17.87

87.89 (-11.10)

1,124,125

30.02 120.51 397,698

— 168,309

36.33

45,155 37,225

72.83

104.05

1 22.46

(-1.47)

(-.60)

21,974 22,264 — 706

84,744

-59,487

-43,197

55,016

57,335 3 5,488

-45,875

12,000

8,847 624,995

8o,6o2e

70,272

6,083

10,228 e

91,799 23,585 59,800

205,426

39,786 c

117,970

763,859 310,654

344,918

1,359,503 388,232

5,896,983

823,154

33.16

12.25

40,45

257,524 217,911

276,153

172,675 194,575

2.01

-356,333

(-8.89)

274,150

95,460 121,080

7,535 11,695

762,651

607,267

841,859

77,280

166,000

3.45 (-20.31)

374,040

6,673,628

344,240

798,350 — 2,474,187 -30,565

18,897,837

22,686,204b

(Decrease)

Change

(Decrease)

1910

1920

Change

1960-1970 % Increase

1960-1970

% Increase

1940-1970 1940-1970

6,721,433 658,589

12,181,040

23,157,580

1940

89,000

175,000

125,000

92,000

1,516,000

1,279,000

330,000

124,000

62,000

187,000

141,000

24,312,263

(est.)

1960

Table 21. Mother tongue of the native of foreign or mixed parentage for 25 languages, 1910-1970, with percent increase (de­ crease), 1940-1970 and 1960-1970

TABLES - USA 465

9,963,900

52,760 10,677,960

1940

1920 46,582

1910 13,859

78.25 21.70 10.79

1,075,207

1940-1970 % Increase (Decrease)

41,285

1940-1970 Change

3,400,6938

44,045 4,078,9868

1960-1970 Change

44.80

88.09 46.00

1960-1970 % Increase (Decrease)

Includes Flemish. Separate figures for Flemish are 1910: 19,026; 1920: 42,194; 1940: 17,840; 1970: 29,024. Includes 791,058 persons classified in 1920 as of "Mixed mother tongue" for whom a more detailed classification is not available. Includes Ruthenian. Includes Lettish. Includes Estonian and Lappish Before 1960 separate figures were reported for Serbian and Croatian as follows: 1910, Serbian: 3,424, Croatian: 20,161; 1920, Serbian: 16,074, Croatian: 58,503; 1940, Serbian: 18,300, Croatian: 58,980. [g] Includes Armenian because although 1970 data is available, no census data was reported for Armenia in 1960. Sources: 1910-1960 data from Language Loyalty in the United States, J.A. Fishman et al., 1966. 1970 data from PC(2)-1A, 1973.

7,590,000

11,039,107

[a] [b] [c] [d] [e] [f]

50,000 8,868,000

94,045 12,995,400

Arabic Total Non-English Total Non-English Other than Spanish

1960 (est.)

1970

Continued

Mother Tongue

Tabel 21.

466 YIDDISH: TURNING TO LIFE

169,634,926 49,312,43 5 204,822 113,119

145 ,275,265

— 40,000 17,000

8 4 , 124,840

7 8 ,352,180

Total

English

1970

1960

102,777

34,744 58,124 5,166 170,174

8,000 4,000 2,000 39,000

1,880

9,400

14,880

2,060

52,980

Lithuanian Finnish

Rumanian Yiddish

13,785

22,662

10,000

2,780

Ukrainian

Armenian

—

30,665

3,000 18,000

5,780 13,980

Russian

Slovenian

117,194

43,244 3,106

25,344

11,905

19,882

221.20

150.78

290.62

269.62

633.24

715.18

119.35

3,260 16,685

295.72

197.16

82.18

260.74

181.45 169.00

131,174

3,166

26,744 54,124

—

12,662

12,665

17,095 6,040

76,950 36,156

583,335 114,944

1,900, 394

28,777 1,077,130

23,089

219.66 56.20

96,119

42.37 236.06

164,822

—

24,359,661

101.65 90.57

(Decrease)

Change 1960-1970

1940-1970 % Increase

363.37 56.40

18,895

52,156

7,000

5,200 24,095 9,040

16,000

13,180

Magyar (Hungarian)

Serbo-Croatian

Slovak

1,563,354

57,690 38,976

29,260

Czech

2,488,394

86,950

34,000

81,760

Polish 10,000

87,000

185,820

German

36,977 941,350 484,5M 67,184

588,000

925,040

French

79,459 19,989

123,662

85,510,086 70,960,255

Change 1940-1970

670,335 148,944

74,000 383,000

65,80c

518,780

Dutch 1,460,130

29,089

6,000

Swedish

Danish

81,160

3 3,660 9,100

Norwegian

Mother Tongue

1940

(Estim)

336.34

158.30

334.30 1353.10

—

201.33 70.36 126.62

244.21

225.98

769.50

338.07

323.70 670.50

281.23

38.89

565.41 384.82

412.06

—

16.77

(Decrease)

% Increase

1960-1970

Table 22. Mother tongue of the native of native parentage for 25 languages (1940-1970), with percent increase (decrease) 19401970 and 1960-1970

TABLES - USA 467

Continued

25,765 10,646,702

4,000

2,198,800

1,516,000 6,475,652

1940—1970

592.61

4,276,852

194.51

264.89

22,045 7,728,922

447.03

384-35 480.13

822.71

% Increase (Decrease)

50,872

5,452,070

480,585

50,679

Change 1940-1970

4,945,867

7,826,017

21,765

55,252

2,880,050

44,839 458,625

1960-1970

Change

1960-1970

328.41

544.13 278.80

789.31

233.09

311.99

373.66

% Increase (Decrease)

Sources: 1940 and 1960 data from Language Loyalty in the United States, J.A.Fishman et al., 1966. 1970 data from PC(2)-1A, 1973

minus Spanish

Total Non-English

2,807,000

3,720

Arabic

Total Non-English

2,917,780

62,252

7,000

4,171,050

1,291,000

11,380

Portuguese

Spanish

718,980

56,839 605,625

12,000 147,000

6,160

1970

125,040

1960

Italian

1940

(Estim)

Greek

Mother Tongue

Tabel 22.

468 YIDDISH: TURNING TO LIFE

TABLES - USA

469

Table 23. Persons reporting English as current language. (Numbers in thousands) Foreign born

Native

Mother Tongue

Total English French German Italian Polish Spanish Yiddish Other Not reported Total Non-English Total Non-English minus Spanish

Total persons Total 198,214

161,787 2,179 5,835 4,3 6 4 2,382 6,700

Current language English

Current language English

Number Percent Total

Number Percent

187,333 158,954

179,192 158,386

95.7 99.6

1,801

1,547 4,65 3 2,982 1,916

85.9 96.8 94.8 96.7 36.4 98.2 91.5

4,809 3,47 1,982 4,878

1,774

1,620

1,142

1,122

9,767 3,581 36,428

7,111

3,5o6 28,376

6,506 304 20,804

29,728

23,498

19,030

10,882

7,335

67.4

2,833 378

2,813

99-3 57-7 84.5 59-5 59.2 18.7

218

1,025

866

1,218

725 236

399 1,822

341 72

73-3

478 2,655 74 8,042

1,727 37 4,522

81.0

6,22o

4,I8I

8.7

77.8 65.1 50.0

56.2 67.2

Source: Current Population Reports: Population Characteristics, Series p.20, no.221, April 30 1971. Characteristics of The Population by Ethnic Origin, November 1969.

470

YIDDISH: TURNING TO LIFE

Table 24. Estimated change in non-English mother tongue claiming 1970-1979 Language

1970

Est. 1979

English Celtic Norwegian Swedish Danish Dutch French Breton German Polish Czech Slovak Hungarian Serbo-Croatian Slovenian Dalmatian Albanian Finnish Lithuanian Russian Ukrainian Georgian Rumanian Yiddish Gypsy (Romani) Greek Italian Spanish Portuguese Basque Armenian Persian Hebrew Arabic African Turkish Altaic Hindi

160,717,115 88,162 612,862 626,102 194,462

170,636,000

412,637 2,598,408 52,722 6,093,054 2,457,938 452,812 510,366 447,497 239,45 5 82,321 9,8o2 17,582 214,168 312,568

334,615 249.551 757

56,590 1,595,995 1,588

458,699 4,144,315 7,823,583 365,300 8,108 100,495

79.46 601,892 556,104 175,016

587,879 2,780,550 55,04 5,486,186 2,562,273 522,771 597,128 523,571 280,162 87,260 10,390 22,597 192,751 551,522 391,500 264,312

886 59,985

Est. % change 6* — 10 -2*

-11*

-10 -6 7* 7 -10* 5* 15* 17 17 17

6 6

5° —10

6 17

6 17

6

1,214,942 2,064 574,612

-24*

4,551,550 11,400,525

5* 46*

474,890 9,486

30*

5° 25*

17

25.925 101,686 195,520

117,579 27.99° 610,116 226,418

15,785

18,465

17

59.54 974

45,997

17

1,140

17

26,253

45,945

75

17 17 500 17

471

TABLES - USA Table 24. Continued Language Other Indo-Aryan Dravidian Korean Japanese Chinese Tibetan Burmese Thai Malay Tagalog Polynesian Amerindian All Other Not Reported Total EMT Total (EMT, English, Not Reported) % EMT % EMT without Spanish

1970

Est. 1979

Est. % change

26,839 10,510

17 75 30*

345,431

93,674 531,055 645,963

352

412

17

1,581 14,416 10,295

1,850 25,228

17

22,939 8,983 53,528 408,504

9,317,873 33,175,172

4,384 381,337 36,202 348,667 1,056,935 8,386,086 38,242,647

203,210,158 16.3 12.5

217,264,733 17.6 12.4

217,907 20,687 268,205 880,779

17

87*

75

30 75 75 30 20*

—10* 15 7 1.4

— .1

[*] Exact percent increase/decrease for ages 14 and over derived from Table 4, Special Studies Series p. 23, No. 116, 1982 and utilized in calculating 1979 figure (total for all ages).

2.9

4.5 2.2

4.8 2.4

4.7

— 7.5

100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0

511

2,4 17

5,138 475 4,100

442

2,452

0.9

100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0

550

1,180

5,569

6,084

3.7 9.3

0.4

7.1 10.9

100.0

409

7,652

1.5

13.8

0.8

100.0

514

449 590

16.9

6.4

100.0

15.2

10.3

03.6

2.0

20.6

4.7

5.1

9.7

9.3 7.3

6.0

9.7

4.1

17.9

9-4 10.5

100.0 16.4

18 t o 2 4

13 1 , 8 6 4

14 t o 17

170,398

Total

30.9

31.6

26.1

19.6

(-)33.5

27.8

( - ) 29-6

<-)32.9

18.9

29.8

( + )40.6 ( + )43.0

(+ )41-2

23.5

(-)41.5

(+ )37.2

35.8 ( + )38-4

(-)37.1

(+ )32.7

( + )40.5

24.1

25-5 23.9

45 to 64

29.1

(+ )45.2

23.7

31.8

30.0

(+ )41-7

25.

36.0

21.9

34.9 ( + )35-5 (+)42:4

25 t o 4 4

Percent by age (years)

7.0

10.6

12.9

25.3 25.8

4-1

4.4

6.3

8.0

19.3 14.7

2.6

4.4

6.3

6.8 16.7

4.5 13.1

8.2 18.8

3.6 7.2

5· 1 14.8

6.2 13.2

10.9

3-1 14.5

4-3

5.0

75 and over

16.3

18.0

79 7.4

8.8

65 to 74

— Represents zero or rounds to zero (Median ages underlined and overall "winner" (+) or "loser" ( - ) status relative to 1970 indicated) Source: Ancestry and Language in the United States: November 1979. (Current Population Reports, Special Studies, Series p-23. no. 116). Bureau of the Census, 1982. Modal ages underlined.

Total English only Chinese Czechoslovakian French German Greek Italian Japanese Norwegian Philippine Languages Polish Portuguese Spanish Swedish Yiddish Other Not reported

Total, 14 years and over

Mother tongue of persons 14 years old and over, by age: November 1979 (Numbers in thousands. Civilian non-institutional population)

Mother tongue

Table 25.

472 YIDDISH: TURNING TO LIFE

27.4 21.9 31.5 36.6

34.8 29.9 24.3 38.1 19.3 27.2

15.8 10.8 10.4 8.1

7.5 7.9 16.2 10.7 2.7

100.0

100.0

100.0

100.0

100.0

365

1,354 265

191

419

731 245 8,768

Greek

11.1

10.0

8.5

20.2

4.9 8.4 13.5

10.8

3.0

15.4

8.8 0.4

3.7 12.2

1.4

7.9 17.8 8.6

8.6

5.3

5.8

49 6.8

4.9

7.1

25.1

26.9

20.9

15.8

23-3

45.7 22.0

19.9 20.3

33-9 34.6 15.8 30.3

13.8

40.8

35.6

30.4

21.2

9-5

10.1

29.1

3·1

3.7

21.6

7.2

9.4 3.7

15.1

9.9 12.8 4.4

7.5 6.8

5.6

I0.6

21.8

2.2

3.3

10.9

96.0

42.8

96-4 18.1

58.3

*** 79.4 26.6

6.9

54.4

30.6

23.2 64.

37.5

82.5



SC**

1.0

13.7 3-8

3.6

12.2

3·1 6.0

6.0

4.0

4.2

8,519

and o v e r

75 years

Not applicable Speaking Claiming 1979 for ages 14 and above Mother-Tongue Claiming 1979 for ages 14 and above Ratio cannot be determined because no 1979 mother tongue data is reported in Table 24, above, for Korean.

100.0

6,508

N o t reported

() [**]SC MTC [***]

100.0

100.0

234

2,651

100.0

100.0

Yiddish Other

Spanish

Portuguese 15.9

5.4 16.7

100.0

1,261

German

100.0

8.1

10.2

5.8

12.5

100.0

5.5

12.6

21.5 21.8

6.9

100.0

29.5 30.8

14.1

8.0

7.4

15.053 7.5

21.7

43,498

15.4 14.4

100.0

Italian Japanese Korean Philippine languages Polish

59,385 29.6

13.9

27,988

years

years

100.0

54 987

176,319 17.9 8 5

4,955

years

years

65 to 74

45 t o 64

7.9

Chinese French

Speaking o t h e r L a n g .

Speaking English only

(x)

Total

years

25 to 44

18 to 24

15.1

30,414

«

200,812

at h o m e

14 to 17

100.0

years

percent

and over

spoken

Percent

5 t o 13

Total

Persons 5

years old

Language

Table 26. Persons 5 years old and over speaking various languages at home by age. November 1979

TABLES - USA 473

5 2,069*

36,895

77 230

119 80

55 1,285

168

75

22

1,357

105

1,138

1,788 4,049

2,674

9,209 16,251 589

612

952

155

4,657

18,756

51,115*

7,554

24,714

25,542

26,906

96,573*

1,680

767 496

191

58,880*

2,539

4,884

8,591

35,541

8,578*

1,273 1,212

6,254

1,880

92

17,624

18,217

4,066

9.293

42,998*

5 5,7o6*

19,773

4,999 84,262

2,795

8,890*

8,474

120,962

5,001

2,927

39.872*

12,939 4,506

118,590

1,940

697,728*

10,695*

2,883

839 8,083

1,846

18,652

49>398*

33,117*

12,124

2,528

6,781 32,153

278 1,069

501 46,655*

760 7 9 , 5 51

25 1,011

733 2,996

1,327 5,781

1,070

Greek

1,746

Yiddish

48

16

Rumanian

11,301

6

14,392*

1,959 605

1,1640

Finnish

50,449* 20,077

1,297 19,974

1,355

9, 5 5

30,373*

213

1,716

1,026

Lithuanian

4,343

359 128

117

Ukrainian

State and regional tables: Yiddish and five other languages (1970)

NORTHEAST (9) New England Maine New Hampshire Vermont Massachusetts Rhode Island Connecticut Middle Atlantic New York New Jersey Pennsylvania NORTH CENTRAL ( 12) East North Central Ohio Indiana Illinois Michigan Víl scons in West North Central Minnesota Iowa Missouri North Dakota South Dakota

Table 27.

474

YIDDISH: TURNING TO LIFE

Continued

Nebraska Kansas SOUTH (17) South Atlantic Delaware Maryland District of Columbia Virginia West Virginia North Carolina South Carolina Georgia Florida East South Central Kentucky Tennessee Alabama Mississippi West South Central Arkansas Louisiana Oklahoma Texas

Table 27.

524 151

158

56 232 544 1,280

168

1,056

155

97

305 390

285

133

55 79 57 525

100 237 302 1,160

78 64 6

82

170 151 144

192

270 502

158

2,020

154

5,928

430

112 32

240

651 5,926

164

3,311

245

121

43 5

423 401

371 152

150 274

225 1,020

1,465

1,021

42 719

159 1,540

647 5,895 457

120

241

1,319

208

516

Rumanian

3,559 198

228

1,852

Finnish

204

Lithuanian

421

Ukrainian

1,149 10,805

2,578

206

5,527 1,770 504

1,977

75,105

5,430

2,041 1,365

565

8,500

4,814

46,252

2,229

2,152

2,035

Yiddish

6,208

1,550 810

458

458

2,506

1,581

588

12,574

5,160

2,448

4,322

2,122

6,660

1,979

4,755

1,521

993

856

Greek

TABLES - USA 475

Continued

28

97 5,915* 26 33

220

Source: PC(1) — CI, 1972. * A state that must be counted in order to account most parsimoniously for 50% of claimants of indicated language.

1,595,995 2

56,590 4

214,168 4

292,820 4

249,351

5

Totals

*/Language

61,061 7,570

49*599

23,794

17,54

62,280 164,465

458,699 4

117,441 168,593

4,467

12,380

19.535

13,084

201,794

18,081 26,470

217,917

310

181

42,208*

2,182

3,610

1,195

5,954

620

5,198 1,830

747

636

390

Greek

39,436

1,059,141

197

161

2,095 145,008*

3,209

5,490 611 411 811

92 6,178

83

119

Yiddish

112,753

248

191

16,451

394

7,379 20,911* 856

955

2

12,290

2,582

15

56

343

264

54

520

320

1,584

1,208

51

94

Rumanian

328

345 94 284

144,997 104,494

150,541

120

1,905 891 11,050

186

191

183

1,267

57 1,017

94

1,122

1,030

1 ,016 623

2,544

107

Finnish

196

Lithuanian

563 108

Ukrainian

68,213

NORTHEAST NORTH CENTRAL SOUTH WEST

Totals

WEST (13) Mountain Montana Idaho Wyoming Colorado Arizona New Mexico Utah Nevada Pacific Washington Oregon California Alaska Hawaii

Table 27.

476 YIDDISH: TURNING TO LIFE

TABLES - USA Table 28.

477

Ethnic mother tongue publications by language and frequency of publica­ tion.

Language Albanian Amerindian Arabic Aramaic Armenian Bulgarian Byelorussian Cambodian Cape Verdean Carpatho-Rusyn Chamorro Chinese Croatian Czech Danish Dutch Estonian Finnish French Frisian German Greek Haitian Creole Hawaiian Hebrew Hmong Hungarian Irish Italian Japanese Judezmo Korean Laotian Latvian Lithuanian Macedonian Norwegian

Daily

Weekly

Monthly

Other*

No Data

Total

%

   

I

3

5

1

1O

0·9

ι

2

2

1O

15

4 

5

8

17

1·5 1.6

1

 

4

7

7

     

   

I

9 

5 34

0.5

5

I

O.l

I

3

4

0.4

3 

2

I 1

I

0.1

9 

5

0.5

2

0.2

l6

42

4.1

2

12

1.2

4

27 6

2.6

2

I





15

8

I

2



2

I

4

4 10

4 8  

I

4

2

I

2

2

6

 ι

I

4 

5 

5  4

8  

M 8  

I

3

2



2

  

23

1.6

I

2

2

16

3.3



2

     

6  

I 2

0.6 0.5 0.7

5

5 7 13

7

21

2.0

2

2

0.2

8

52

5.0

22

2.1

3

1·3

I

I

2

0. 2



2

2

0.2

I

3

1



I

2

7 3

0.7



1

15

5

14

42

4-1

 ι

2

7 

1

17

1.6

15 4 

13

14

4

12

45

4.4

I

1

9

22



1

1

1

I

   

10

22

2.1

7 

10

0.9

1

Ο.Ι

8

38

3.7

1

Ο.Ι

12

1.2

7  10  

 I

2

5

 

I I

3  12

 6

I I





3

2

0-3

2.1 0.l

YIDDISH: TURNING TO LIFE

478 Table 28.

Continued

Language Pa. German Persian Pilipino Polish Portuguese Rumanian Russian Samoan Serbian + Sicilian Slovak Slovenian Spanish Swedish Tai Dam Thai Turkish Ukrainian Vietnamese Welsh Yiddish Total Percent

Daily    4  

Weekly  



1

4

I I

9 

2

2





  I



Monthly 4

14

3 3 6 

N o Data

Total

%

ι  

4

9

0·9

2

2

0. 2

4

13 

25

9 65

6.5

12

24

3 4 

2

8

5

19

1.8

2

2

0.2

0·9 2.3 0.8

2

1

2

0

5

0.5

 6



1

0

t

0.1

4 

4

27

2.6

0

9 174 13

Ο.9

12

6

   

3 36 4   

2

5

10

 

I

8

10

Other*

 8

4° 5   2

16    

72

4

16.9 1.3 0.1

I

I

2

2

0.2

0

2

0.2

7 3

8

32

33

45

3.1 4.4

I

I

0

2

0.2

10

17

0

56

3.5

66

212

247

151

6.4

20.6

24.0

14-7

*Other Quarterly, semi-annually, annually, irregularly + Includes Serbo-Croatian Source: Fishman et al., 1985

355 34.4

1,031 100.0

2,871

275,853

19.703

1

10,000

10,000

Laotian

Lithuanian

18,125

3

Korean

56,250

9.333

6

Japanese

2

9.83

59,000

28,000

1

Latvian

10,045

68,000

10,045

68,000

1

22,558

Italian

22,558

Hungarian

Hebrew

1

Greek

5

1

1

4

11

13

1

19 5

3

French

German

2

Estonian

3 1

2,000 2

2,000

Danish

1

2

Dutch

Czech

Croatian

4 12

3.850 29,267 10,946

7,700 87,800

5,877 8,325 1,412 3,000 11,900 5,700

76,400

3,000 11,900 28,500

91,576 5,648

8,715 5,000

43,575 5,000

207,968

2

5,600

3,900 11,200

3

13

I

14

6

5

1

4

2,370 3,900

7,110

3,900 9,726

7,450

36,290

2,483

2,792

5,881 24,545 30,000

3 5,286

8,294 25,260

5,375

1,030

4,750 3,200

343, 6 25 30,000

99,530 126,300

21,500

1,030

6,400

77,807 19,000

6

1

5

3 6

1

3

4

1

5

1

11,700

1

3

12

1

4

3 8

2

3

22,750

7,000

1,833 5,000

5,500 5,000

739 1,200

8,669

7,584 30,000

739 1,200

34,675

30,337 30,000

2,600 4,500

5,200

X

4,500

Circulation

7,225

7,000 43.350 45.5O0

1

6

Chinese

14

Chamorro

1

3 10,750

2

Carpatho-Rusyn

21,500

Cambodian

4 1

5,438

1

4

Byelorussian

21,750

3,767

11,300

1

2

1

4

6,000

995 6,000

X

Bulgarian

Armenian

14,354

3

Arabic

5

1

Aramaic

1

Amerindian

Circulation

1,167

3,500

3,500

7,000

6,983 10,500

52,500

15,600

46,800 41,900

7,083 4,000

10,250

41,000 21,249 4,000

1,200

5,200

26,000

1,200

1,000 4,700

1,οοο

1,240

1,000

1,371

18,8οο

1,240

3,000

16,452

1,010

1,010

550

967

2,900

1,100

Circulation X

3

26

12

31

25

1 2

35

1 1

17

21

25

n

n

Total

X

n

Circulation

n

n

Albanian

Language

Total

1,459 2,680

7,450

108,040

11,900

3 1,000

5 5 5,701 98,148

163,631

196,435 51,800

338,747

9.930 150,300

17,600

2,483

4,155

11,900

8.179 7,750

17,926

6,294

12,950

16,369

4,664 9,678

2,483

4,400

4,580

22,900

112,917

8,444 6,642

15,247

6,935 7,000

1,853

759 1,050

5,489

5,331 30,000

χ

76,000

320,185

27,740 7,000

5,500

739 4,200

87,231

42,647 30,000

7,295 13,400

Circulation

TOTAI

OTHER**

MONTHLY Total

WEEKLY Total

DAILY

Total

Table 29. Circulation of ethnic mother tongue publications and Anglo-Jewish publications by frequency of publication*

TABLES - USA 479

1

2

54

54

1,34.57*

1,313,572

24,325

24,325

25,363

8

235

63

172

15,381 254

55

24,101

1,518,306

3,614,534

7 199

15,931 12,187

127,450 2,096,174

16,510

25,315

1,392,320 4,193,604

10,211 14,077

71,480 2,801,284

166

45

121

12

6

M

4

[*] Ns reported include only publications for which circulation figures are available. [**] Quarterly, semi-annually, annually, irregularly and no data on frequency. [***] Serbian includes Serbo-Croatian Source: Fishman et al., 1985

Jewish

Total + Anglo-

Anglo-Jewish

Total E M T

Yiddish

25,563

2,500

1

1

2,742 2,500

16,450

6

Ukrainian

Welsh

5,564

775

6,429

Vietnamese

27,821

32,144 2,456

5

5

41,823

1,380,172

19,650

20,500

5 33

5,409 5,846

1

2

3

2,162

11

3

I

n

2,550

43,275 29,230

7,650 10,811

11,323 4,100

950 7,150

25,467

8

41,000

21,435

7,45

24,710

41,700 709,711

8

5

3

12,too

147,203

21,450

950

76,400

1,550

2

3

32

X

2

Turkish

Swedish

Spanish

17,542 13,900

105,250

4,650 16,160

9,300 16,160

85,000 3

13

7,609 10,625

60,875

8 8

3

61,567

22,500

4,125

Slovenian

615,667

45,000

6 0 , 500

3

1

3

Circulation I

2,300

70,930

18,201

5 3,000

2,385,000 3,021,463

5,458 5,260

2,560

636,463

65,500

15,361

9,719

8 45,791

28

709

.63

546

289,793

12,143,173

6,847,493 5,295,680

17,127

32,489

12,541

10,350

2,742 2,500 2,500

16,450 6 1

4,944

775

6,697

32,582

103,832

53,579 1,550

2,932,341

21

2

90 8

9,446 8,866

1,000 170,025

18 5,375

21,500

9,287

69,121 1,000 1

1,000

1,000

8,845

9,418

27,860 3

12

1,337 5,850

4,010

950 16,863

2,44 5,760

11,700

2,300 10,372

X

9,650

4

339,078 97,300

93,350 950 67,450

2,000

4

1

9

Circulation

2,000

1,150

Total n

36 11

X

TOTAL

6,409

70,)00

3,450

Circulation

Total

Total n

OTHER**

MONTHLY

46,000

46,000

2,300 4,500

2,300

X

13,500

1

6

10

2

4

I

3

Circulation

n

X

n

Circulation

Total

Slovak

Sicilian

Serbian***

Russian

Rumanian

Portuguese

Polish

Pilipino

Pa. German

Norwegian

Macedonian

Language

WEEKLY Total

DAILY

Table 29. Continued

480 YIDDISH: TURNING TO LIFE

5 7

IOO.O

75.0

8.0

10.0

5.6

IOO.O

3.5

4.1

3

2

2

1

2

4

7

60

45

1 28 42

39.5 35.5

2

27.2

3

71.4

5

10

3

II.I

5

35.0

20.0

IOO.O

IOO.O

2

I

I

100.0

3

1

4

50.0

9

IOO.O

1

I

4

39.0 20.0

4.3

1

8

2

I-3 n

21.4

hour %

9

8.6

I

1

50.0 15

n

3

/2

1

6

/2 hour n %

1

24.9

24.5

7.1

l8.1

27.8

15.0

20,0

22.0

20.0

17.3

11.4

35.3

hour %

5

5

I

12

15

8.9

18.4

27.8

20.0

IOO.O

17.1

3-19 hours °o

21

n

A. Radio

1

2

5

.6

1.8

7.1

2

2

8.0

2.9

16.7

44

14

3

26.0

12.3

21.4

54.6

IOO.O

2

6

27.8

40.0

24.0

25.0

27.7

60.0

39.0

31.4

5

8

6

1

5

3

9

22

1

20-83 hours 84-168 hours No Data n % n % n °o

Radio and television "Stations" broadcasting in non-English languages (hours per week of broadcasting)

Albanian Amerindian Arabic Aramaic Armenian Basque Bengali Bulgarian Byelorussian Cambodian Carpatho-Rusyn Chamorro Chinese Croatian Czech Danish Dutch Estonian Finnish French German

Language

Table 30.

169

114

14

2

II

2

l8

20

25

I

I

4

I

I

I

3

18

5

23

70

6

Total

TABLES - USA 481

Continued

Greek Haitian Creole Hawaiian Hebrew Hindi* Hmong Hungarian Ilocano Indonesian Irish Italian Japanese Korean Laotian Latin Latvian Lithuanian Macedonian Maori Mien Norwegian Pennsylvania German Persian Pilipino Polish

Language

Table 30.

2

6.2

2

3

100.0

50.0

50.0

14.3

6.7 4.7

I

2

2

I

I

II

2

100.0

49

2

20.0

38.5

90

20.9

14-3

3

1

40.0

14.3

100.0

13.3

42.9

50.0

50.0

2

1

4

14.3

4

21.4

40.0

2

1

23-5

4

40.0

50.0

2

23-5

18.8

22.4

22.5

8.1

35 6

2

4

11.8

2

25.0

11

3

6

59 8

3.9

12.5

36.7 37.8

18

4

29.7

II

5 47

2

2

7

23

20.0

33.3

7-1

11.8

21.9

14.7

10.2

100.0

2

5

5.4

2

1

1

5

3.2

.4

3.1

1

6.7

2.0

1

6

18

8.1

5.0

3 36

2

1

12

3

2

5

4

28

2

5

I

3

1

20.0

1

30.0

6

13.3

40.0 1

30.0

25

6

2

2

40.0

50.0

26.7

4

2

25.0

1

1

33-7 20.0

30

5

3.4

n

4.3

3

%

2

10.1

n

13.3

2

%

2

9

21.3 40.0

η

15.4

20.0

28.6

5

20.0

7 15 234

4

4

1

28

42.9

5

1

4

60.0

17 50.0

32

156

49

1

2

29.4

12.5

17.9

28.6

100.0

2

37

20

48.6

15

5

5

89

Total

33.3 10.0 50.0

20.0

28.0

oo

20-85 hours 84-168 hours No Data

20.0

9

%

3-19 hours n

1

ł

%

I-3 hour n

3.4

/2—1 hour n %

1

3

/2 hour n %

1

482 YIDDISH: TURNING TO LIFE

Continued

[*]

20.6

40.0

174 6

27.3

3.4

3 2 9

50.0

100.0

16.7

I

I

6

3

158

7.5 18.8

100.0

I

6

4.3

2

600

12.5

2

313

16.7 12.5

504

85

7-2

33.3

75

67

1

7.9

1.6

13

3

7

162

9 4

2

1

2

5

16

5

50.0

15 60.0

I

46.7

845 19.2

I 1

19

13

3

17

1O

2

64

100.0

36.4

47.4

15·4

33.3

11.8

50.0

25.0

382

I

3

6.3

8.3

529

31.3 31.3

33-3

36.1

2,333

16

3 16

36

2

I

I

2

6

61

I

6.3

2

1OO.

40.0

22.5

9.1

17.7

4

20-83 hours 84-168 hours No Data η % η oo n % Total

50.0 I

2

190

1

3

50.0

15.6

3-19 hours %

10

η

100.0

18.8

66.7

3 5

2

50.0 22.2

8

I

I

19.2

162

9.1

5.3 18.2

1 2

36.9

1

100.0

30.8

11.8

7

4

2

10.5

38.5

17.7

39.

1-3 hours %

2

2

5

3

25

η

33.3 15.4

41.2

3 7

20.0

9.4

hour %

I

2

30.0

6

/2 I η

3.1 50.0

1

2

—1/2 hour n %

Includes Serbo-Croatian

Portuguese Punjabi Rumanian Russian Samoan Serbian* Sinhalese Slovak Slovenian Spanish Swahili Swedish Tagalog Tai-Dam Tamil Thai Tibetan Tongan Turkish Ukrainian Urdu Vietnamese Yiddish Totals - Radio

Language

Table 30.

TABLES - USA 483

Continued

Albanian Amerindian Arabic Aramaic Armenian Basque Bengali Bulgarian Byelorussian Cambodian Carpa tho-Rusyn Chamorro Chinese Croatian Czech Danish Dutch Estonian Finnish French German Greek Haitian Creole

Language

Table 30.

—yhour n %

9·°

IOO.O 12.5 12.J

1

I 1 I

-1 hour n %

2

ι

^·ζ

1-3 hours n %

3

2

2

7·3

IOO.O

3-19 hours 20-83 hours 84-168 n % n % n

. T.V. hours °'0

IOO.O

2

7 5

»7-5 loco

45-5

IOO.O

2

5

100.0 4

No Data n %

8 5 

I

I

    

11

2













2



4

2



Total

484 YIDDISH: TURNING TO LIFE

Continued

Hawaiian Hebrew 1 Hindi* Hmong Hungarian Indonesian Irish Italian Japanese Korean Laotian Latin Latvian Lithuanian Macedonian Maori Mien Norwegian Pennsylvania German Persian Pilipino Polish Portuguese Punjabi Rumanian

Language

Table 30.

4

36.4

25.0

25.0

27.2 11.1 20.0

3 3-3 33.3 18.1

1

3 1 1

1 1 2

—1/2 hour 1/2 —Ihour n % n % I—3 n

2 1

1

18.1 11.1

5°·°

hours %

1 5 3

1

9.1

9.1 5 5.5 60.0

1

3-19 hours 20—83 hours 84-168 n % n % n

50.0

66.7 66.7 36.4 100.0

2

2

45.5 22 2 · 20.0

100.0

50.0

2 4

1

2

5

1

2

 4 2  1   u 9 5           3 3 n  2

hours No Data % n % Total

TABLES - USA 485

3 158

37-5 18.8

16.7

6

6

IOO.0

100.0

j

I

13-3

2

50.0

9-7

M

1

100.0

/2

1

1

-1/2 hour n %

[*] Includes Hindustani [**] Includes Serbo-Croatian Source: Fishman et al., 1985

Russian Samoan Serbian Sinhalese Slovak Slovenian Spanish Swahili Swedish Tagalog Tai-Dam Tamil Thai Tibetan Tongan Turkish Ukrainian Urdu Vietnamese Yiddish Totals - Radio

Language

Table 30. Continued

600

18.8 3 Ï-3

5

2

3

22.2

66.7

8

50.0

40.0

6

j

8.4

hour %



I n

85

3-9

75

13

8.4

13

3

7

76

46.7 60.0

49.4

100.0

5

15



154







2

1

I

Total

12.5 12.5

16.7

382

I

3

6.3

8.3

529

3 1.3 31-3

2,333

16

16

36 3

36.1 33.3

2

50.0

I

1

1

2

504

6

2

Data °o

2

100.0

40.0

7-1

100.0

20-83 hours 84-168 hours No n % n °o n

50.0 1

2

I I

I

3-19 hours n %

100.0

13.0

2

6

1

1

20

1-3 hour n %

486 YIDDISH: TURNING TO LIFE

TABLES - USA Table 31.

487

Ethnic mother tongue schools by language and frequency of attendance

Language Albanian Amerindian Arabic Aramaic Armenian Bulgarian Byelorussian Cambodian Carpatho-Rusyn Chamorro Chinese Croatian Czech Danish Dutch Estonian Finnish French German Greek Haitian Creole Hebrew

Daily n

Weekday Afternoons* n /<>

0/

/()

N o Data n 1

37

I 2

107

25.7

13.8

6

46.2

5

2.9

I

100.0

3

3.5

15

8.7

I

6.7

I

7.7

2

33.3 100.0

3

75.0

ι

25.0

I

100.0

1

1

50.0

I

50.0

2

7

53.8

13

18

10.5

134 8

77.9

172

6

53.3 46.1

3

100.0

M 13 3

1

100.0

1

9 3 95

56.2

16

6 40.0 6 46.1

43.8

3

80.5

118

369

73.7 83.5

442

23

.8

1.7

39

21.3

135

7.0

22

5.0

I

501

19.4

1,659

64.1

406

15.7 80.0

20.0

I

100.0

1

83

I

1.2



16.9

66

79.5

4 8

5.3

7 9.3 29 17.2 5 4.1

62

82.7

122

72.2

116

95.9 100.0

61

4.7

2

4.0

I

2.0

13

26.0

I

I.I

2

2.4

18

21.2

99.8

2,589 5

1

I

584

183 1

4

5.9

2

I00.0

3

IO

7 1

31

2.7

4

29

3.3

100.0

87

49.4

4.5 100.0

2

74.3 71.4

43

20

6l

1

144

5

19.5

2.4

100.0

28.6

23 6

2

Total

2

7

Hindi Hawaiian Hungarian Hutterite Italian Japanese Korean Laotian Latvian Lithuanian Norwegian Pennsylvania German Persian Pilipino

Saturday/ Sunday** n 0/ /0

75 169 121 1

34 64 5

68.0

50

75.3 100.0

85

1

.2

585

5

1

100.0

1

5

100.0

5

488 Table 31.

Language Polish Portuguese Punjabi Romani Rumanian Russian Sanskrit Serbian Slovak Slovenian Spanish Swedish Thai Tibetan Ukrainian Vietnamese Yiddish Totals

YIDDISH: TURNING TO LIFE Continued

Daily n 9 I

2

54

6

Weekday Afternoons* n%

/o 7.1

2·3

10.0

7.4

3 7

I

2

Saturday/ Sunday** No Data η

2.4

14

15.9

I

0/ /0

n

I I.I 2.3

100

35

/0

79.4 79.5

Total 126

44

1

100.0

1

2

100.0

2

2

100.0

2

I

14.0

6

86.0

7

I

100.0

1

I

25.0

3

4

5.0

I

5.0

16

50.0

6

•3

6 3

.4

672

2

17.0

10

75.0 80.0 50.0 91.9 83.0

5

100.0

5

2

100.0

2

42

47.7 89.0

88

6.8

40 I

45.5 11.0

108

25.6

284

67.3

30

7.1

1,45 3

22.2

2,027

30.9

743

11.3

8

20 12

731 12

9 422

2,330

35.7

6,553

[*] This column includes all classes meeting two or more times per week including a Saturday or Sunday. [**] This column includes all classes meeting once per week or less. Source: Fishman et al., 1985

TABLES - USA

489

Table 32. Response to the question: Does your school presently teach Yiddish?

Statistic

# Respondents Yes No NR % Yes

Sunday

Weekday Afternoon

Day

30 4 7.5% 26

229 38 71.7% 191

-

-

13.3

16.6

67 11 20.8% 53 3 16.4

Orthodox Conser­ Reform Other Total vative 35 6 11.3% 27 2 17.1

142 18 34.0% 142

12.7

91 58 326 21 53 8 15.1% 39.6% 16.3% 83 36 270 1 3 36.2 16.3 8.8

Source: AAJE 1980.

Table 33. Response to the question: Would your school teach Yiddish if proper mate­ rials and teachers were available?

Statistic

# Respondents Yes No NR % Yes

Sunday

Weekday Afternoon

Day

30 13 9.5% 14 3 43.3

229 96 70.1% 85 48 41.9

67 28 20.4% 29 10 41.8

Source: AAJE 1980.

Orthodox Conser­ Reform Other Total vative 35 12 8.8% 15 8 34.3

142 60 43.7% 62 20 42.3

91 58 326 46 19 137 33.6% 13.9% 42.0% 34 17 128 22 61 11 42.0 50.5 32.8

490

YIDDISH: TURNING TO LIFE

Table 34. Projections of the limited English proficient ("LEP") population for school age groups (x 1000) LANGUAGE/ /AGES

1976

1980

PROJECTION YEARS 1985 1990

1995

2000

NAVAJO 5-11 6-13 5-14

16.8 21.4 26.6

15.1 19.7 24.3

15.0 19.0 23.5

17.1 20.8 25.6

19.2 23.0 28.1

18.7 22.9 28.1

POLISH 5-11 6-13 4-14

17.7 21.1 26.3

16.0 19.4 24.0

15.8 18.7 23,2

18.1 20.5 25.3

20.2 22.6 27.7

19.7 22.6 27.7

PORTUGUESE 5- 9 5-11 6-13 4-14

14.2 18.3 20.3 26.1

12.7 16.5 18.6 23.8

12.8 16.3 18.0 23.1

15.1 18.7 19.7 25.1

17.1 20.9 21.7 27.5

16.4 20.4 21.7 27.5

886.1 354.3 549.0 1240.5 1390.0 1789.5

839.8 344.9 540.7 1185.4 1350.1 1727.6

904.1 352.2 539.4 1255.9 1397.9 1794.3

1140.5 402.0 562.2 1539.2 1642.3 2092.7

1379.6 469.4 625.8 1843.9 1938.6 2455.8

1422.6 509.6 711.7 1928.6 2073.0 2630.0

VIETNAMESE 5-11 6-13 5-14

19.4 18.4 27.3

17.5 16.9 24.9

17.3 16.3 24.1

19.8 17.9 26.2

22.2 19.8 28.8

21.6 19.7 28.7

YIDDISH 5-11 6-13 5-14

18.2 17.8 24.6

16.4 16.3 22.5

16.2 15.8 21.8

18.6 17.3 23.7

20.8 19.1 26.0

20.3 19.0 26.0

TOTAL LEP 5- 9 10-11 12-14 5-11 6-13 5-14

1246.8 494.0 779.5 1740.8 1963.0 2520.4

1162.6 373.3 755.2 1637.0 1875.8 2394.2

1228.4 474.5 738.8 1702.2 1905.5 2439.9

1522.9 532.3 756.0 2050.4 2199.3 2795.9

1811.9 611.5 827.2 2416.0 2552.8 3226.6

1838.2 653.6 925.5 2486.7 2685.6 3400.0

SPANISH 5- 9 10-11 12-14 5-11 6-13 5-14

Source: Oxford 1981

TABLES - USA

491

Table 35. Projections of the non-English language background ("NELB) population for contiguous age groups (x 1000) LANGUAGE/ /AGES

1974

1980

PROJECTION YEARS 1985 1990

PORTUGUESE 0- 4 5-14 15-24 25-34 35-54 55 + TOTAL

24.0 49.6 77.6 67.6 118.0 151.7 488.5

24.9 45.2 80.7 77.5 123.3 168.5 511.9

29.2 43.8 74.8 85.4 137.1 179.2 536.7

RUSSIAN 35-54 55 + TOTAL

59.1 131.9 227.7

61.7 146.5 238.6

SCANDINAVIAN 15-24 25-35 35-54 55 + TOTAL

36.8 29.2 134.2 440.9 661.1

SPANISH 0- 4 5-14 15-24 25-34 35-54 55 + TOTAL VIETNAMESE 5-14 15-24 25-34 35-54 TOTAL YIDDISH 5-14 15-24 25-34 35-54

55+ TOTAL

Source: Oxford 1981

30.2 47.7 67.4 88.1 157.7

1995

2000

18 4 .9 561.3

29.2 5 2.3 65.2 81.8 180.9 190.6 582.6

27.7 52.2 71.1 73.8 196.8 201.2 600.2

68.6 155.8 250.2

78.9 160.7 261.6

90.5 165.1 271.5

98.5 174.9 279.8

38.2 32.3 140.3 489.7 692.7

35.4 35.6 156.0 520.7 726.2

31.9 36.7 179.4 537.2 759.5

30.9 34.1 205.8 552.0 788.3

33.7 30.8 223.9 584.8 812.2

1113.4 2396.4 2054.4 1766.7 2251.5 1026.5 10608.9

1220.3 2313.5 2255.9 2136.2 2486.4 1203.5 11745.5

1531.9 2402.9 2244.1 2521.0 2959.5 1370.6 13191.3

1696.9 2802.5 2170.5 2784.9 3641.8 1515.2 14778.9

1757.8 3288.7 2254.5 2774.3 4469.2 1668.4 16436.6

1793.0 3522.0 2629.4 2687.9 5205.8 1893.2 18145.2

36.5 38.3 27.8 25.2 150.0

33.3 39.8 31.9 26.3 157.1

32.2 36.9 35.2 29.3 164.7

35.1 33.3 36.2 33.7 172.3

38.5 32.2 33.6 38.6 178.8

38.4 35.1 30.4 42.0 184.2

40.8 68.4 50.5 155.5 517.0 852.1

37.2 71.1 57.8 162.6 574.2 892.9

36.1 65.9 63.7 180.8 610.5 936.1

39.3 59.4 65.7 207.9 629.9 978.9

43.1 57.5 61.0 238.5 647.3 1016.2

43.0 62.7 55.1 259.4 685.7 1046.9

492

YIDDISH: TURNING TO LIFE

Other countries/worldwide

Table 1. "The worldwide Jewish press in various languages for the years 1557-1920" (Probst 1922). Of the 3827 publications listed, 1443 are in Yiddish, 635 in Hebrew, 538 in German, 495 in English, 200 in Russian, 105 in French, 103 in Judesmo, etc. Of the 177 dailies identified, 150 are in Yiddish.

Source: Mayzl 1923.

INDEX G=German; H=Hebrew; J=Jews, Jewish, Jewry; Lk=Loshsn-koydesh; Y=Yiddish A ABSTAND (language[s]), constrasted to Ausbau: 282 ACCENT, American; Y as proported despoiler of: 126 ACCULTURATION (also see modernization, assimilation), Y remains vernacular only among those resisting: 143 ACROLECT, not necessarily best school variety: 189, Y literary standard as: 212 ADULT EDUCATION COURSES, teaching Y; in USA: 79, 330 AFRIKAANS, attainment of autonomy: 30 AGNON, Shmuel Y.; describes N. Birnbaum's election defeat: 240 AGUDAS ISRAEL/AGUDES YISROYEL (also AGUDE), Y journal of in USA: 136, sponsors N. Birnbaum's second visit to USA: 136, reorganized 1922: 253, Birnbaum becomes first Executive Secretary of after its reorganization: 253, advo­ cates J political representation in Eastern European parliaments: 275, more moder­ nized sector experiences difficulty maintaining Y-Lk translation method in studying sacred texts: 298, published political literature in Y: 317 A(K)HAD HA'AM/AKHED HO'OM, lack of first-hand familiarity with American Jewry: 162, negative reaction to Tshernovits Conference: 280; recommends that Hebraists entirely ignore Tshernovits Conference: 284 ALEXANDER I, CZAR; acclaimed by Tuvye Feder: 47 ALIYAH, requires prior ties with J culture for its success: 169 ALSACE, remains pocket of Western Y: 83 AMERICA, Y in: 6, 75-179, N. Birnbaum's second visit to (1921): 170; N. Birnbaum's first visit to (1908): 246, future of Y in: 280-297. AMERICANISM, requires encouragement of immigrant languages and cultures: 167, false Americanism results in stifling uniformism: 169 AMERICANIZATION, use of Y as a vehicle of: 92 AMERINDIANS, hispanization of: 55 ANSHEY SHLOMEYNU, only Y spoken between: 316 ANTI-SEMITISM, fostered (rather than calmed by) J assimilationism: 161 ARAMIC/JUDEO-ARAMAIC, spread of: 4, transition to from H: 27, not always viewed as on a par with H: 62, last major PEJL prior to Y: 313 ANGLO-JEWISH PRESS, circulation of in USA in early 60's: 107-108 ARCHAISMS, in H, G, E and Y: 336, not particularly common in Y: 337 ARGENTINA, Js in lack common language with American Js: 146 ARN b'r SHMUEL OF HERGERSHAUSEN, Y prayerbook possibly banned by rab­ bis: 61

494

YIDDISH: TURNING TO LIFE

ASH, SHOLEM; participation in Tshernovits Conference: 164, 263, arrested for disor­ derly conduct during Tshernovits Conference: 290 ASHKENAZ I, writing conventions of continue to be followed in Ashkenaz II: 208 ASHKENAZ II, more distant from linguistic correlate: 24, long continues to observe writing conventions of Ashkenaz I: 208, coincides with period of Y in a Slavic co-ter­ ritorial context: 208 ASHKENAZIM/ASHKENAZI(C), demographic and modernization leadership of: 16, N. Birnbaum's view as to anomolous language situation of: 30, diversification of ver­ nacular literacy among: 34, efforts to revernacularize H: 54, Y intricately intertwined with for 1000 years: 83, traditional position of Y and Lk/H in: 255; Y more accepta­ ble to youngsters in Israel than among Sefardi: 306 ASHKENAZI GERMAN, rather than Standard German; as replacement of Y in Cen­ tral Europe: 329 ASSIMILATIONISM, in democratic countries, weakens Y: 53, via "copy cat" Germanization, Polonization or Russification: 240 ATTITUDES, NEGATIVE TOWARD Y; among assimilationists: 7, among Com­ munists: 7, among neo-(Modern) Orthodox: 7, among Socialists: 7, among Zionists: 7, among Sefardi youngsters in Israel: 306, among non-religious youngsters in Israel: 306, similarity to those re all PEJLs: 314, among most rabbinic spokesmen: 315 (also see: rabbinic culture) ATATURK, KEMAL PASHA, "Great Sun Theory" of corpus planning: 225 AUSBAU, of Y re G: 22, 65, of most PEJLs; greater in spoken than in written varieties: 23, Lefin Satinover's goal: 46, compared with Abstand: 65, maskilic infusion of New High Germanisms complicates struggle for re Y: 210, degree of is an issue re literary standard Y: 212, extra burden among weak Ausbau languages: 227, defined and con­ trasted with Abstand: 282 AUSTRALIA, Y secular efforts in: 79, Ashkenazi community in: 83 AUSTRIA, Ashkenazi community in: 83 AUSTRO-HUNGARIAN MONARCHY, haskole in: 40, N. Birnbaum recognizes J situation as different than in USA: 166, opportunity for J cultural autonomy: 240, advocacy of Y as language of J cultural autonomy: 241, other (non-J) struggles for cultural autonomy: 241, N. Birnbaum's failure in the election of 1907: 242, question of "eight or nine minority peoples": 250, minority rights and minority languages: 251, N. Birnbaum's patriotism toward: 253, cultural politics penalizing Y and Ukrainian/Ruthenian: 260-261; perceived as model of cultural pluralism: 267; closest to Western-style democracy for Eastern European Js: 280 AUTHENTICITY/AUTHENTIC, interpretive nature: 57, defined post-hoc in accord with the winning alternative: 58 AUTONOMY, of PEJLs: 22 (also see: PEJLs, dialect status of), assumed to be lacking in PEJLs: 30, standardization of Y contributes to achieving: 183, of Y orthography relative to G or H conventions: 186 AVEK FUN DAYTSH!, slogan of modern Y linguistics: 22 (also see: Ausbau) AYZENSHTAT, SHMUEL; attends Tshernovits Conference while still a student: 263, 265

INDEX

495

 BABYLONIAN EXILE, impact on H as a widespread vernacular and mother tongue: 149 BADER, GERSHOM; reacts positively (in H) to the Tshernovits Conference: 286-287. BAL-SHEM-TOV, YISROYEL; founder of hasidism: 282 BALEY-TSHUVE, English speaking enclaves within American Ultra-Orthodoxy: 77, N. Birnbaum as first eminent Western re-discoverer of Orthodoxy: 162 BALFOUR DECLARATION, refers to a rather than the J national home in Palestine: 281 BALTIC STATES, initially observe and subsequently disregard their World War I tre­ aty obligations towards their minorities: 94 BARON, SALO W.; criticized by S. Dubnov for not foreseeing J cultural autonomy in the USA: 169 BAVARIA, Ashkenazi community in: 83 B'DARKEY HATOYRE, Ultra-Orthodox Y journal: 20, advocates exclusive vernacu­ lar use of Y: 323 BELGIUM, Y secular efforts in: 79 BEN YEHUDA, ELIEZER; concern for "purity" of revernacularized H: 23 BERDITSHEV, local Y variant: 83, berditshever daytsh, humorous reference to Ger­ manized Y: 210 BESSARABIA. Y in; example of dialect/standard switching: 304-305 BIBLE (Old Testament), Lefin Satinover's Y translations: 42-48 ІK, Yankev Shmuel; early 19th century positive view of Y: 41, defense of Lefin Satinover and of Y: 49-53, letter to Tuvye Feder: 51-52, contributions to haskole: 50, tolerance toward Hasidim: 50, unwilling to replace J Gemeinschaft with maskilic Gesellschaft: 50, posthumous publication of letter to Feder: 65 BILINGUALISM, in Y schools: 3, and language shift: 139, and domain overlap during successive stages of immigrant acculturation: 140, domain overlap and separation in speakers of Y and E: 306, domain overlap and separation in speakers of Spanish and E:306 BIRNBAUM, Shloyme Α., helped prepare minutes (subsequently lost) of Tshernovits Conference: 267, defends Y among the Ultra-Orthodox: 316 BIRNBAUM, NATHAN; reinterprets Y to Germanized Js: 30, defense of Y: 65, foresees positive future for American J: 75-75, view of American J: 161-171, differ­ ences with Theodore Herzl: 163-165, introduced to Theodore Roosevelt: 165, criticizes Zangwilľs Melting Pot: 166, anticipates Horace Kallen's advocacy of cul­ tural pluralism as true Americanism: 167, rejects melting pot goal in USA: 168, chas­ tizes Dutch J for not recognizing oncoming Holocaust: 168, becomes refugee from Nazi Germany in Netherlands: 168, anticipates Marcus Hanson's three generational theory: 169, major architect of Tshernovits Conference: 234, 257-261, post-Confer­ ence Secretary General for follow-up and implementation: 237, champion of cultural autonomy: 239-247, rejection of Zionism after Second Zionist World Congress: 240, failure as candidate in Austro-Hungarian election of 1907: 242, leads huge protest march against Austro-Hungarian census of 1911: 244, 251-252, always positive toward H while championing Y: 244-246, proposes use of Latin letters for writing Y:

496

YIDDISH: TURNING TO LIFE

245, organizes first university-affiliated student organization for Y: 245, organizes "evenings" for Y writers throughout Germanized Galicia: 245, defends Y from attacks of Eastern European Zionists: 245, rejects "real"/"not real" and "living"/ "not living" characterizations of H and Y: 245, supports (and, perhaps, originates) the Tshernovits Conference's minimalist resolution: 246, relates Y to the "absolute Jewish idea" as he becomes Orthodox: 246-247, Ukrainian/Ruthenian support for: 246-247, diaspora manifesto (1905): 251, plan for a "Diaspora Parliament": 252-253, contrasts Westjuden, Ostjuden and Afro asian Js: 252-253, views Tshernovits Confer­ ence as a contribution to J cultural autonomy: 253, view of diglossia relationship between Y and Lk: 253, becomes first Secretary General of reorganized Agudes Yisroyel: 253, rejection of Yiddishism in his Ultra-Orthodox stage: 253, defense of Austro-Hungarian Monarchy:253, impoverished financial circumstances: 258, ideological changes throughout his lifespan: 273, genuine return to tradition rather than mere utilization thereof for modern purposes: 278, claims authorship of the a vs. the compromise at the Tshernovits Conference: 285, defends Y among the UltraOrthodox: 316 BIROBIDJAN, Soviet-J "autonomous" region in Siberia: 183, Zhitlovski becomes sup­ porter of in his old age: 273 BLACKS, replace Js as members of labor unions: 122 BLACK DEATH (1348), markedly increases separation between Js and non-Js: 155 BLACK ENGLISH, as language of classroom interaction: 190 BOOKS, in Y, see: Publications BOOKSTORES, Y; on or near Second Avenue (Lower East Side): 103 BOREKH/BARUCH, Yitskhok-Leyb; author of a Hebraist critique of Tshernovits Conference: 288-289 BOROUGH PARK, Orthodox neighborhood in Brooklyn: 75 BOVE-BUKH, masterpeice of Old Y literature: 84 BRANTSHPIGL, a major moralistic work in Y: 317 BRATSLEVER, Rabbi Nakhmen; Y tales published verbatim: 207 BUKOVINA, the region of Austro-Hungarian Monarchy in which Tshernovits Confer­ ence transpired: 156, overrepresented at the Conference: 241; Austro-Hungarian cultural politics re Js in: 260, traditional/ Zionistic orientation of most Js in at time of Tshernovits Conference: 262, "Germanness" of many of the Js living in: 262 BUND/BUNDIST(S) (=Jewish Workers Bund of Russia, Poland And Lithuania), proY resolution of 1905: 65, 235, 269, 278, 280, J cultural autonomy goal in Eastern Europe: 87, reverberations of pro-Y resolution in comparison to pro-Η resolution of Labor Zionists in Palestine: 235, participation in and response to Tshernovits Con­ ference: 237, opposition toward the Tshernovits Conference's resolution declaring Y "a national J language": 265, realizes that spread of Y requires econopolitical power: 275, many former members of in USSR become Communists: 275, advocates J polit­ ical representation in Eastern European parliaments: 275, organizes "zhargonishe komitetn" to educate workers via Y: 278, founded same year as First World Zionist Congress (1897): 280, early clashes with Bolsheviks: 280, becomes mainstay of Ysecular cultural efforts: 280

INDEX

497

BYELORUSSIA/BYELORUSSIAN, negative attitudes toward: 14, support for Y cul­ ture under Soviets to help offset impact of Russification influences: 157, Ausbau efforts vis-a-vis Polish and Russian contemporary with Y efforts re New High Ger­ manisms: 211  "CAFE ZIONISTS", among Germanized Js; according to N. Birnbaum: 239 CAHAN, AB(RAHAM); Forverts editor: 158, champion of "potato Y": 158, literary accomplishments in E: 165 CALQUE/CALQUE VARIETY, of PEJL; used in study of Pentateuch via translation: 23, functions of reflected in naming of PEJLs: 34, in study of Talmud: 314 CANADA, Y secular circles in: 79 "CATHOLIC VERNACULARS", hypothetical; would be viewed as totally unneces­ sary in modern Western Europe: 40 CELTS, de-celticized: 55 CENSUS, Czarist 1897: 86, Soviet 1959: 94, mother tongue USA, 1920-1940; by gener­ ation: 130, USA 1970, 1940-1960 and 1960-1970: 174-175, Austro-Hungarian 1911; N. Birnbaum leads protest march against: 244, resistance to Austro-Hungarian 1911 already under discussion at Tshernovits Conference: 261 CHANGE (LINGUISTIC), in Y; recently greater than in H or in major European lan­ guages: 203-204, re type-face employed: 204-206, vis-a-vis proximity of written to spoken Eastern Y: 204, counteracting the flood of unnecessary New High Ger­ manisms: 204-205, development of a linguistic standard: 205, more slowly in written than in spoken varieties: 213 CHAMBERLAIN, STUART HUSTON, pseudo-science of racism: 240 CHICAGO, Y theatre groups: 115, Y cultural organizations: 121 CHILDREN'S CAMPS, Y; mid-60's: 119, 121- 124 CHINA, vernacular L not only indigenous variety: 56 CHMIELNITSKI POGROMS, Ukraine (mid-17th century); mark end of middle-Y period: 155 CHORUSES, Y; in USA: 76 CHRISTOLOGICAL CONNOTATIONS, lexically avoided in earliest Y: 82 CINEMA, Y; in USA: 77 CLOSED NETWORKS, dialect/standard and informal/formal switching among mem­ bers of: 304-305 COLLEGE ATTENDANCE, IN USA; mid-60's: 128-129 COLLEGE COURSES, teaching Y in USA: 77, in Soviet Union: 93, blossoming of in USA since late 40's: 100-101, teaching H (modern or biblical): 152-154, worldwide post-Holocaust growth of re Y: 214-215, in Israel, USA and elsewhere: 330 COLLEGE ENTRANCE EXAMINATION BOARD, H examination: 153 COLLEGE LEVEL TEXTBOOKS, E-Y: 186, H-Y: 186 COMMUNISM/COMMUNISTS (also see: Yevsektsiye): destruction of Y-speaking society: 53, espouses use of Russianisms: 216, many of them ex-Bundists: 275, realize that spread of Y depends on its econotechnical and political functions: 275, surpression of Y after mid-30's: 329

498

YIDDISH: TURNING TO LIFE

COMPONENTIALITY, of J vernaculars: 191 CONFERENCE OF NATIONALITIES (Vienna, 1905), N. Birnbaum "represents" the Jewish nationality in the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy: 241, 252 CONGRESS FOR J CULTURE, WORLD (Alveltlekher yidisher kultur kongres); in USA: 116-117, branches in Paris and Buenos Aires: 158, adherance to literary stan­ dard: 187, views itself as heir of Tshernovits Conference: 271 CONSERVATIVE J, USA; resolution affirming cultural role of Y: 127, Y in adult edu­ cation courses: 127, award honorary doctorate to Y writer: 128, leadership often pro­ ficient in H but synagogue services do not require proficiency: 151 CORPUS PLANNING, in Y: 183,229, primarily propelled by secular-nationalist needs: 183, compulsory compliance with in Soviet Union: 184, uncentralized and voluntary outside of USSR: 184, Soviet centers closed with consent of Yevsektsiye: 184, primarily ongoing in USA since end of World War II: 184, greatly weakened in USA due to Holocaust: 185, ongoing modernization constantly requires: 187, traditional sources contain huge resources that can be utilized: 188, modeling rationales: 217229, purported impossibility/undesirability of: 218, purported simplicity: 218, re stylistic varieties, number systems, pronoun systems, verbal systems and phonologi­ cal patterns (rather than only nomenclatures): 219, acceptance of by speech com­ munity as the acid test of success: 220, modernization/traditionalism tension: 220221, in developing countries: 221, avoidance of Germanisms and other foreignisms: 221, traditionalism alone not sufficient for: 221-222, rationales and rationalizations: 222-224, compromises in: 222-224, overdoing and notorious failures: 226-228, avoi­ dance of E influences: 226, Latin root not sufficient for designating a word as an acceptable internationalism: 226, difficulty of: 229, rationalism as the sole principle: 223, Ataturk's "Great Sun Theory": 225, requires social science training in order to gauge popular acceptance of innovations: 229, emphasized in agenda originally plan­ ned for Tshernovits Conference: 259, tensions with status planning: 274, defined and illustrated: 280 CORRELATE/COTERRITORIAL CORRELATE LANGUAGE, vehicle for literacy among pidgin/creole speakers: 28, presence of both for most PEJLs and pidgins: 31 CULTURAL AUTONOMY, goal of Bundists, Sejmists, Folkists in Eastern Europe: 87, espoused for Is in Austro-Hungarian Monarchy: 250, 267, N. Birnbaum views Tshernovits Conference as a contribution toward: 253, on unofficial agenda of Tshernovits Conference: 260 CULTURAL BOUNDARIES, for protection of ethnocultural minorities; weakened by social mobility: 172, increasingly dependent on political boundaries: 172, not secured by secondary cultural efforts: 177, unfashionable but necessary concern among ethnocultural minorities: 178-179 CULTURAL ORGANIZATIONS, USA: mid-60's: 115-121 CZARIST EMPIRE, see: Russia CZECHOSLOVAKIA, Ashkenazi community: 83 D DAS VOLK, N. Birbaum's short-lived German monthly in Tshernovits: 258 "DAUGHTER OF HEAVEN", as designation for Lk: 256

INDEX

499

DAYTSH/TAYTSH, as designation for Y and/or G: 216 DAYTSHMERISH, preferred by maskilim: 210, avoided in literary standard: 212, suggested origin of word: 215 DEATH, LANGUAGE; of Y frequently predicted: 8, Y assumed to be dead: 325-339, other minority languages purported to be dead: 327, early 19th century maskilic views re Y: 328, 20th century Hebraist, Zionist and Socialist views re Y: 328, pre­ dicted by Leo Wiener even prior to flowering of Y literature: 329, predicted by Yahudem and secular Socialists alike: 329, an unsavoury metaphor: 332, being dead to Y does not imply that Y is dead: 334, as a self-renewing stereotype: 337, inapprop­ riate metaphor for cultural phenomena: 338 DECAY, of the national language; feared in the USA, Israel, French Canada: 217. DE-ETHNIZATION, Y reinforcement efforts reflect: 144 DEMOGRAPY, concentration of speech community; Y in USA (1970): 174, Chinese in USA (1970), Spanish in the USA (1970): 174, 18th and 19th century explosion of Y speech community: 321, stabilizing at about a quarter million speakers at end of 20th century and then expanding: 330 DESCRIPTIVISM, bias favoring; in Western linguistics: 217 DETERMINANT LANGUAGE, recognizable for both pidgins and PEJLs: 31, Ger­ manic determinant of Y undergoes independent development: 313-314, implies an initial period of close contact with coterritorial population: 194 DETROIT, Y cultural organization, mid-60's: 121 DIALECTS (for "J DIALECT" see J vernaculars), three major groupings within East­ ern Y: 184 DIASPORA, Zionist Hebraizing goal may be unattainable: 154, Parliament for; N. Birnbaum's plan to convene: 252-253, functions of Y in: 346 DICTIONARIES, Y; monolingual Y: 185, bilingual Ε-Y, French-Y, Spanish-Y, Russian-Y:185, trilingual Y-E-H: 185 DIGLOSSIA; Haitian Creole/French: 14, Swiss German/High German: 14, uniqueness of the H/Y case: 14, Vernacular Arabic/Koranic or Classicized Arabic: 14, Demotic Greek/ Katharevusa: 38, Vernacular Chinese/Classical Mandarin: 38, dissolution of by modernization: 54, Hi varieties of as channels of modernization: 56 (also see Hi variety, L variety), Hi/L status reversible: 190, increased functions for L disruptive of: 199-200, tradition Y/Lk case: 255-257, disruption of from above (via spread of Hi) or from below (via spread of L): 257, language spread movements not always related to prior intragroup diglossia: 274, . A. Ferguson's original conceptual defin­ ition: 277, J.H. Gumperz's and J. A. Fishman's expansion of concept: 277, pre-Fergusonian use by M. Weinreich: 306 DOKTER BIRNBOYMS VOKHNBLATT, short-lived weekly in Tshernovits: 258 DRAMA, Y; newly found fondness for in Israel: 17 DREYFUS AFFAIR, shocked many assimilationist J intellectuals: 161 DUBNOV, Shimen; criticism of Salo W. Baron for not recognizing "the inevitability of cultural autonomy" of American J: 169, invites Y. L. Perets to St. Petersburg to speak about Y: 267 DUTCH Js, N. Birnbaum chastizes for not recognizing the oncoming Holocaust: 168

500

YIDDISH: TURNING TO LIFE

E EARLIEST Y (-1250), period in the history of Y: 4, written records re: 83 EASTERN EUROPEAN Js, meager familiarity with G: 43, Js in Lithuania, White Rus­ sia, Ukraine and Rumania: 83, Y remains dominant J language: 88, immigration of to USA: 88, Y as link with American Js: 147, political, literary, religious and folkloristic understanding of possible only via Y: 148, massive use and cultivation of Y between both World Wars: 329 EASTERN Y, proximity of written to spoken variety: 63, changes in Y in print due to growing use of: 207-209, N. Birnbaum considers as incomparably superior to vesti­ gial Western Y: 244 EDUCATION, Y as vehicle of popular religious: 84, Y as vehicle for modern adult: 91, impossible without use of Ls for classroom interaction: 191 ELABORATION, lack of in L hampers spread to H functions: 274 ELITES, appropriateness of the study of: 60, Y data useful for studying differentiation from masses: 308 ENDOCENTRIC FACTORS, in language change; of primary importance re Y: 203216, origins of change in type-face: 206, increasing approximation of written Y to spoken varieties: 209, in development of Y literary standard: 212. ENGLAND, Y secular circles in: 79 ENGLISH, in Israel; major growth of: 69-70, translations to from Y and H: 76, in USA; influenced by Y: 78, in USA; influence upon Y: 78, translations accompanying theatre performances in Y: 79, Y still a more functional lingua franca for Js than: 147, status in USA different than that of official state-languages in Europe: 167, compared to Y by N. Birnbaum: 170, influences on Y particularly in newspaper ads: 186, creoles and pidgins of; as languages of classroom interaction: 190, viewed as undesirable influence in Y corpus planning: 226, N. Birnbaum compares Y to on basis of their common fusion nature: 244, used more in private than in public in Israel: 303 ESTER, see : Frumkin, Ester "ESTHETIC POINT OF VIEW", Y purportedly found lacking from: 280-281 ETHNIC REVIVAL, impact of on Y: 172-179, of mid-60's worldwide: 176 EUROPEANIZATION, Y used for purposes of: 85 EXOCENTRIC FACTORS, in language change; not more important re Y than the endocentric factors: 203-204, 213-214 EXPANSION AND NATIVIZATION, relevant to Creole but not to J language genesis: 26 F FAMILIARITY ETHOS, among Js, narrows repertoire distinctions between occasions and interlocutors: 304, impact of as a promising research area: 304 FARBAND (Yidish natsionaler arbeter farband), Labor-Zionist fraternal order, 121 FARSIC/PARSIC, relatively minor incorporation of Lk elements: 15, still a relatively major PEJL today: 313, modernizing intellectuals speaking in transfer to Persian: 318

INDEX

501

FEDER, TUVYE; view of Y: 41, opponent of Lefin Satanover:46, 50, follower of Moses Mendelssohn's preference for florid Lk or High German: 48, rejection of rab­ binic scholarship and khasidic mysticism: 49 FEMALES, ostensible consumers of traditional PEJL publications: 28, traditionally not formally educated: 63, use of Y in their education and popular religious literature: 84, taytsh-khumesh for: 193, texts ostensibly for women foster Eastern Y in print: 207, references to in justifying patterned evasion of Lk use: 215 "FIRST WORLD CONGRESS OF THE HEBREW LANGUAGE" (1909), response to Tshernovits Conference: 237 "FIRST WORLD CONFERENCE FOR THE YIDDISH LANGUAGE" (Ershte velt konferents far der yidisher shprakh), see: Tshernovits Conference (1908) "FIRST ZIONIST WORLD CONGRESS" (1897), N. Birnbaunťs address at: 170, con­ vened in same year as founding of Bund: 280 FOLK PATTERNS, dislocation of leads to language shift: 90 FOLKISTS, cultural autonomy goal: 87, advocate J representation in Eastern European parliaments: 275 FORVERTS (FORWARD), decline and moderation of a once feisty daily: 103. negativism toward Tshernovits Conference: 268 FORMAL/INFORMAL USAGE, among bilinguals one of whose languages does not make this distinction: 305-306, native and non-native speakers of Y compared: 305307 FRAKTUR, displacement of in G: 206 FRANCE, Y secular circles in: 79 FRANCIZATION, Quebec example of a notorious corpus planning faux pas: 228 FRANKLIN, BENJAMIN; Poor Richard's Almanac translated into Lk by Lefin Satanover: 42 FRENCH, consciousness of among Frenchmen: 37, Y a better J lingua franca than: 147, Y outlives international ascendency of: 333 FRIESLAND/FRISIAN, hypothetical role in the integration of Netherlands: 54 FRUMKIN, ESTER; Bundist leader, participates in Tshernovits Conference: 263; men­ tioned in Hebraist satire re Tshernovits Conference: 287 FUNCTIONAL SPECIFICITY, in multilingual settings (also see: diglossia, L variety, Hi variety): 308, former pattern between H and Y now reversed in Israel: 342-344, proposed for modern Y in Israel: 346 FUSION ("MIXED") LANGUAGE (also see purity), non-J: 21, harmony between components in PEJLs: 21, in earliest Y: 81, decreasingly attributed to Y: 100, simi­ larities between Y and other: 144, E compared to Y: 170, characterization still encountered: 191, used non-pejoratively by Sholem Aleichem: 191, falsely assumed to change primarily due to exocentric factors: 203-204, N. Birnbaum compares Y and E because both are: 244, Y referred to as a zhargon because of being: 266, three basic linguistic components of all PEJLs: 314 G GAELIC/NEO-GAELIC TYPE-FACE, displacement of in 20th century Irish: 206 GALICIA, haskole in: 40, diverse views re Y in: 41, Feder and Lefin Satinover both born in: 47, relatively early modernization of Js in comparison with Eastern Europe:

502

YIDDISH: TURNING TO LIFE

62, Js from overrepresented at Tshernovits Conference: 241, Zionists in willing to participate in "Gegenwartsarbeit": 242, N. Birnbaum organizes "evenings" by Y writers throughout Germanized area: 245, Austro-Hungarian cultural politics re Js in: 260, Tshernovits Conference interpreted as being political in: 268 GALKHES ("tontured script"), unknown to the majority of Js: 43 GEGENWARTSARBEIT, Galician Zionists willing to undertake and participate in: 242 GEMEINSCHAFT, transition to Gesellschaft in J Eastern Europe: 334 GENERATIONAL PATTERNS, in USA; first generation: 122-123, second genera­ tion: 123-124, third generation: 124-125, greater respect for Y among third than among second: 143, "new second generation" less rebellious than earlier second gen­ eration: 143, among J. organizational leadership in USA: 159, among G, Ukrainian and Polish organizational leaders in USA: 159, Marcus Hanson's theory of: 169, remain independently important even after other related factors have been con­ trolled: 175 GERER REBE, lacked first hand understanding of American J: 162 GERMAN IMMIGRANTS to USA, mid-19th century; mass immigration compared to that subsequently by Eastern European Js: 142 GERMAN-JEWISH INTELLECTUALS, response to Tshernovits Conference: 237 GERMAN LANGUAGE, advocacy of instead of Y: 16, writing in delayed by con­ tinued use of Latin: 38, Eastern maskilem widely read in: 43, displacement by Y among Eastern European Js during interwar period: 94, no uniform standard for until 16th century: 206, displacement of Fraktur type-face in print: 206, N. Birnbaum's speech at Tshernovits Conference peppered with Yiddishisms: 259, and Bukovina J: 262, differences between Y and G a source of pride for Khsam soyfer and of shame for haskole: 316, Y outlives international ascendancy of: 333 GERMANIC, component of Y: viewed as indicating corruption of Y: 14, romanization of populations in Gaul: 55, interactions with populations in the genesis of Y: 309 GERMANY, Ashkenazi community in 83 Geshikhte fun der yidisher shprakh, Y and E versions: 323 GLATSHTEYN, YANKEV, major Y poet, novelist and journalist in USA: 129, 131 GOLDFADEN, AVROHM, "father of the modern Y theatre": 112 GORDEN, YANKEV: playwright and co-signer of the original call to the Tshernovits Conference: 259 GREAT TRADITION, see: High Culture GREECE, modern efforts to vernacularize the H variety: 54, vernacular L not the only indigenous variety: 56 H H(IGH) VARIETY (also see: Diglossia, L variety), the myth of exclusive appropriate­ ness for school: 190, competition with L variety for Hi functions: 255, disbelief that Y could serve as: 263, multiplicity of competitors with Y for Hi functions: 274, exam­ ples of triumph of: 344 HABIMA, special performances in Y during recent years: 295 HABSBURGS, believers in J assimilation and assimilability: 87

INDEX

503

HALACHA (HALOKHE)/HALACHIC (also see: rabbinic culture), Y in print accept­ able to for purposes of popular education: 257, definition of: 277 "HANDMAIDEN", see: "Servant girl" HANSON, MARCUS; theory of third generation return to first generation's language and culture: 169 HAPGOOD, HUTCHINS; author of book about J Lower East Side: 166 HASIDIM/HASIDIC, Lefin Satinover's struggle against: 42, reaction to rabbinic for­ malism: 62, growing number of Y speaking youngsters in Israel today: 71, voting bloc in the USA: 75-80, Y as vehicle of a maximally separate life style in USA: 133137, in USA; mostly come from Hungary, Carpatho-Ukraine or Poland: 133, 136, last natural reserve of Y-speaking children in USA: 136, future of Y in USA may depend upon: 137, children for whom Y is chief language: 176, raised the prestige of Y via their songs and tales: 156, emphases on home-neighborhood-community fac­ tors for intergenerational mother tongue transmission: 179, tales of hasisidic rabbis foster use of spoken Y in print: 207, defined and related to Y: 282, tales published first, simultaneously or quickly in Y: 282, schools qualify for bilingual education funds: 311 HASKALA, see: Haskole HASKOLE (also see: enlightenment, modernization): 21, in Austro-Hungarian Monar­ chy: 40, in Eastern Europe: 40, in Galicia: 40, in Czarist Empire: 40, in Germany: 40, view of Y: 46, Lefin Satinover's contributions to: 50, references to gentiles as models: 52, general reluctance to use Y: 64, 145, introduces New High Germanisms: 186, views Y as handmaiden/servant girl to H: 193, reintroduces many Germanisms/ archaisms displaced by simple ("pure") Y movement: 209, detractors and advocates of Y both realize their need for it: 235, Y acceptable for modernization purposes: 257, definition of: 277 HEBRAIST(S), opposition to Y: 53, Y viewed as deterrent to hebraizing the diaspora: 145, negative reactions to Tshernovits Conference: 269-270, 287-290, positive reac­ tions to Tshernovits Conference: 286-287 HEBREW, spoken; demise of: 4, conflict and struggle with Y: 13-72, in Israel today; unthreatened by Y: 69-71, in Israel today; struggle against Anglicisms: 69-70, weakening of in USA not interpreted as H dying: 76, elements in earliest Y: 81, unsubstitutable in hallowed texts: 82-83, in America: 148-155, not vernacular of any pre-Israel wave of J immigrants to USA: 149, instruction in J schools of various types; USA mid-60's: 152, no more than rudimentary reading or speaking ability among most American Js: 155, meager press in USA and no theatres or neighbor­ hoods: 155, attitudes towards PEJLs: 192-194, the "real" but "non-living" J lan­ guage: 245, claimed as mother tongue in protest by Galician and Bukovinian Js: 261, as J lingua franca: 295, valued because associated with Refusniks and Israel in preperestroika USSR: 297 HEBREW-ARAMIC, see: Loshn-koydesh HEBREW LANGUAGE ACADEMY, accused in recent times of fostering a laughably hypercorrect variety: 217 HERDER, JOHANN G.; German philosopher and advocate of ethnocultural authen­ ticity: 169

504

YIDDISH: TURNING TO LIFE

HERZL, THEODORE; belatedly awakened to J sensibility: 161-162, lacked first hand familiarity with American J: 162, differences with N. Birnbaum: 163-165, N. Birnbaum's former followers flock to: 239, lack of J knowledge or life-style: 239-240, founds Y weekly in order to reach Eastern European Js: 278, not initially convinced that J homeland need necessarily be in Palestine: 279, expected roles for Y and other PEJLs in future J homeland: 282 "HIGH" (or "GREAT") CULTURE/TRADITION: language of: 89, lack of associa­ tion with Y among most J immigrants to USA: 141, attracting a following to for a language of everyday life: 255-283 HIGH GERMAN COMPONENT, in earliest Y: 81 HIGH SCHOOLS, PUBLIC; teaching H in USA: 153, in Israel: teaching Y: 330 HILLEL FOUNDATION, student organization on American college campuses; Y courses at: 121 HISTORICITY, assumed lacking in PEJLs: 29 HISTORY OF THE YIDDISH LANGUAGE, (1980 [1974]); landmark in the sociology of Jewish languages: 4 HOLOCAUST, impact on ILY struggle: 16, impact on Y per se: 16, 76, 95, impact on Orthodoxy: 16, impact on Y in Eastern Europe: 92, Y "colonies" come to the fore after: 95, weakens Y language planning: 185, impact on Y courses at tertiary level: 214, sociology of Y subsequent to: 301-302, Y only PEJL to survive into the 21st cen­ tury: 324, uproots last pockets of Western Y: 324 HOME LANGUAGE, Y as; among children: 175 (also see: intergenerational mother tongue transmission) HUNGARIAN, advocacy of instead of Y: 16 HUNGARY, Ashkenazi community in: 83, pockets of Western Y: 83

IDEOLOGY/IDEOLOGICAL, left wing J influenced by Yiddishism: 66, factors re use of Y: 90-91, 306, role of in the selection of a type face for Y: 206 IMMIGRATION, assimilatory consequences of: 90, Y no longer associated with: 144 INDUSTRIALIZATION, weakens cultural and political boundaries: 172 INTELLECTUALS, creativity of in Y liquidated during later Soviet period: 93, those creating in Y compared to those using other languages in USA: 142 INTERGENERATIONAL MOTHER TONGUE CONTINUITY, of interest groups not transmissible: 79, depends chiefly on family-related influences: 79, 174, 234, of Y as home language of children: 175, of Spanish, Navajo, Amish-, Mennonite-, Hutterite German in USA: 175, of French in Ontario: 175, primary and secondary factors contributory to: 177-178, unlikely for Y in USSR today notwithstanding organiza­ tional revival: 297 INTERGROUP COMMUNICATION, in pidgin and PEJL genesis: 25, in the genesis of Y: 309 INTERTRANSLATABILITY, of Y; with E in all ordinary walks of modern life: 187, with New York Times: 187 INVEYNIKSTE TSVEYSHPRAKHIKEYT, M. Weinreich's notion of traditional J diglossia (pre-dates Ferguson): 306

INDEX

505

IRAQI Js; vernacular J language (also see: Yahudic): 16 ISLAMIC COUNTRIES, various efforts to vernacularize Classical Arabic H: 54, ver­ nacular L is not the only indigenous variety: 56 ISRAEL, STATE OF: impact of founding on Y: 6, language issues in: 68-71, impact on H: 16, situation of Y today: 70-71, universities and organizations concerned with Y: 71, Y secular circles in: 79, Ashkenazi community in: 83, H as official language weakens Y in J education in diaspora: 128, many J inhabitants lack common lan­ guage with American Js: 146, supports and motivates study of H in the diaspora: 154, future of Y in: 296-296, Y culture clubs and theatre in: 295, Y revival in: 295, both Y and E used more in private than in public: 303, Y more acceptable to Ashkenazi than to Sefardi youngsters: 306, possible recognized functions for Y in: 342-349, desirability of cultural pluralism within the J fold: 347, languages other than H that are necessary in: 347-348, can cultural/linguistic pluralism be afforded?: 348 ITALKIC, Judeo-Italian: 30, influences earliest Y: 33, self-designated as "Jewish" ("Judio"): 35, writing in Latin letters dates only from 19th century: 201 ITALIAN/ITALIANS, written functions delayed by Latin: 38, traditional vernacular functions of: 39, efforts to vernacularize H: 54, replace J members of labor organiza­ tions in USA: 122 IVRE-TAYTSH, Bible (or prayerbook) translation variety of Y: 32 IVRIT, excessive influences stemming from rejected by Y Ausbau tradition: 20, shel shabat; still preferred by some members of the Hebrew Language Academy: 217 J JARGON/ZHARGON, see: fusion ("mixed") language Jewish Book Annual, records annual Y book production throughout the world: 331 JEWISH ENGLISH, influence upon other PEJLs: 32, in contact with Y: 78 JEWISH DIASPORA LANGUAGES, see: Post-Exilic Jewish Languages JEWISH LABOR ORGANIZATIONS (also see: labor organizations): Y activities in; mid-60's: 121-122 JEWISH "MODERNS", N. Birnbaum's term for Westernized Js that retain J interests: 161, 250 JEWISH NATIONAL WORKERS ALLIANCE (Farband, Yidish natsionaler arbeter farband), founds first Η-Y Zionist oriented J schools in the USA: 96 JEWISH PEOPLES ORDER: Communist oriented J fraternal organization; schools of: 157 JEWISH POPULATION CENTERS, post World War II: 173 JEWISH UNIONISM, see Jewish labor organizations JEWISH WORKERS BUND (OF RUSSIA, POLAND AND LITHUANIA), see Bund JEWS, N. Birnbaum's comparison between Western European, Eastern European and Afroasian: 253-254 JUDEO-ARABIC, see Mugrabi, Yahudic JUDEO-ARAMAIC, see Loshn-koydesh JUDEO-FRENCH, see Zarfatic JUDEO-ITALIAN, see Italkik

506

YIDDISH: TURNING TO LIFE

JUDEO-PERSIAN, see Farsic/farsic JUDEO-SPANISH, see Judezmo JUDEZMO (also JUDESMO, DZHUDEZMO; also see LADINO), relatively minor incorporation of Lk elements: 15, geographic dispersion contributes to Ausbau: 24, long association with literacy: 29, influence on Y in Old Yishuv: 32, mutual influence re Mugrabi/Yahudic: 32, vernacular functions of today: 68, 71, writing in Latin characters dates only from 19th century: 201, Herzl foresees role for in future J homeland; 281, still a major PEJL today: 313, modernizing intellectuals speaking transfer increasing to publishing in French or Spanish: 318  KABBALISTIC WRITINGS, in Y: 155 KADIMAH, first university linked Zionist student organization: 162 KALLEN, HORACE; his cultural pluralism as true Americanism idea anticipated by N. Birnbaum: 167 KHASIDIC/KH(A)SIDIM/KH(A)SIDEM, see: Hasidic/Hasidim KHSAM SOYFER, rabbi; defends fusion nature of PEJLs: 20, defends Y in particular: 65, opposes shifting to G: 316 KIEV, Philological Section of the Institute for Jewish Culture of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences: 180 Kine af gzeyres-ukrayine, earliest source using the designation Y: 201 KLOSS, HEINZ; proposes that status of modern languages depends on their non-fic­ tional literatures: 319 "KONGRES DAYTSH", humorous label applied to unnecessarily Germanized Y (par­ ticularly that of early Zionist Congresses): 210 KREMER, ARKADI; Bundist founding figure, advocate of Y for mass educational purposes: 278 KULTUR KONGRES, see Congress for Jewish Culture L L VARIETY (also see: diglossia, vernacular functions), often elevated to Hi status: 190, 344, struggle for Hi functions: 255, 264, 274, spread of hampered by lack of codifica­ tion and elaboration: 274, econopolitical and econotechnical factors pertaining to possible elevation to Hi functions: 276 LAAZ(IC)/LOEZ(IC), influences on earliest Y: 33, spoken immediately before the genesis of Y: 194, elements of in contemporary Y: 314 LABOR ORGANIZATIONS, use of Y in pre-World War I America: 91, laborite over­ tones in Y secular nationalist schools: 97, socialist labor orientation related to use of anglicisms in Y: 216 LADINO (also see Judezmo), translation of Bible into: 32 LANGUAGE ACADEMY/ACADEMIES, several devoted to Y between the two World Wars: 183, in Minsk and Kiev: 183, as agencies of corpus planning: 280 LANGUAGE AND ETHNOCULTURAL IDENTITY, Y vs. H: 37-66 LANGUAGE CHANGE (also see: Change in Y), exocentric and endocentric factors in: 203-216

INDEX

507

LANGUAGE CONSCIOUSNESS, loyalty and/or opposition; greater re Y than re other PEJLs: 315-323 LANGUAGE DEATH, see Death LANGUAGE GENESIS, of PEJLs differs from pidgin/creoles: 24, Y data useful for the study of: 308 Language Loyalty in the United States (1966): 3 LANGUAGE MAINTENANCE AND LANGUAGE SHIFT, in USA; theoretical recapitulation: 137-139, 1940-1960 comparison in secularist circles: 138, maintenance strongest among those Js maintaining own cultural boundaries relative to mainstream society: 141, detraditionalization of immigrants conducive to shift: 141, increasing atypicality of maintenance-oriented networks: 144-145, Y data useful for the study of: 309-311, variety of societal indices available for the study of re Y: 310 LANGUAGE MOVEMENTS, only Y and H have been associated with: 300 LANGUAGE PLANNING: CORPUS PLANNING; rejected by some adherants of Y: 212, rejected by various schools of linguistics: 217, need and opportunities for re Y: 312 LANGUAGE PLANNING: STATUS PLANNING: 7, 52, negative re Y among assimilationists: 7, negative re Y among Neo- (Modern-) Orthodox: 7, negative re Y among Zionists; 7, negative re Y among Communists, negative and positive re Y: 311-313 LANGUAGE POLICY, see: Language Planning: Status Planning LANGUAGE SHIFT, see: Language Maintenance and Language Shift LANGUAGE SPREAD, new users and new uses: 253, Y data useful for the study of: 308 LANGUAGE STRUGGLE (also see: riv haleshoynes for struggle between advocates of Y and advocates of H, Polish or Russian), within Y secular circles: 87, LANGUAGE SURVIVAL, not merely measured by external/objective criteria: 148 LATE-MODERNIZING LANGUAGES, in Eastern Europe: 183, Y among others: 183 LATIN LETTERS, proposed for writing Y: 245 LATIN ROOTS, considered insufficient for designating a new Y word as an inter­ nationalism: 226 LEAGUE FOR YIDDISH; continues former Yivo tradition of authoritative lexical elaboration: 187 LEFIN, MENDL; see Satinover, Mendl Lefin Lev-toy v, famous moralistic work in Y: 317 LEXICAL PLANNING, engaged in by Y "language academies" in Vilne, Minsk and Kiev: 183, recommendation of neologisms: 186, the struggle against New High Ger­ manisms, the struggle against Russianisms, Frenchisms, Spanishisms, Englishisms and Ivritisms: 186, constantly required for modernization: 187, examples of notori­ ous failures in Y, H and French in Quebec: 228 LEXICONS, viewed by linguists as being of secondary importance: 29 Liblekhe tfile, unique Η-Y prayerbook; opposition to: 61, set in oysiyes mereboes: 64 LIBRARIES, major collections in Y; throughout non-Soviet interwar Eastern Europe: 94

508

YIDDISH: TURNING TO LIFE

LIFSHITS, Y. M., reprints Y. S. Bik's defense of Lefin Satinover in the former's reply to Tuvye Feder: 65, as transitional pro-Y ideologist: 257, compiler of excellent YRussian and Russian-Y dictionaries: 281 LIKHTENSHTEYN, RABBI HILLEL: pupil and follower of Khsam Soyfer: 20 LITERACY, pidgins/creoles and PEJLs compared re intra-group role: 26-29, facilita­ tion of by means of adopting a single type-face: 206, Y meets requirement of post World War I U.S. immigration laws: 235 LITERARY Circles, Y; blossoming of in America: 91; literary cafes on Second Avenue: 113, written language of much admired but seldom mastered: 187 LITERATURE, Y; newly found fondness for in Israel: 177, entertainment nature of earliest Y: 84, in pre-World War I America: 91, greatly emphasized in secular nationalist schools: 98, fondness for on the part of parents of pupils in secular nationalist schools: 99, American-Y since 1914: 109-12, religious (at both educated and folk levels), pedagogic and entertainment genres develop early and extensively: 317-318, political literature for religious parties: 317, secular; fiction and non-fiction: 318 LITTLE (or LOW) CULTURE/TRADITION: 89, seriously weakened among J immig­ rants to USA: 141 LOCAL RELIGIOUS UNITS; USA, utilizing Y in early 80's: 178 LOSHN-ASHKENAZ, designation for either H or Y: 216 LOSHN-KOYDESH, co-presence with Y: 13, 255-257, only J language generally associated with literacy in Orthodox, Zionist, Hebraist circles: 28, literacy in as a barrier to language shift: 34, advocated for modern oral and written purposes: 39, 257, for elevated discourse and advanced publications: 85, N. Birnbaum's view of diglossic partnership with Y: 253, as sole independent language of sanctity: 255, in constant association with Y: 255-257, characterized as "dead" at Tshernovits Confer­ ence: 265, revolutionary nature of Tshernovits Conference vis-a-vis: 273, undergoing its own revernacularization and modernization at the very time of the Tshernovits Conference: 276, titles for Y books: 282, elements in PEJLs undergoes grammatical indiginization and lexical expansion: 314, larger component in Y than in other PEJLs: 317-318 LOTER (LORRAINE), area of J settlement just prior to development of Y: 190 LOWER EAST SIDE, former Y area in Manhattan; now primarily Black, Hispanic and Oriental: 113 LUBAVITSHER KH(A)SIDIM/KH(A)SIDEM (also see: Schneerson, Rabbi M. M.), influence of in New York and Israeli politics: 75, rebe uses traditional scholarly Y: 187 M MAYSE BUKH, masterpiece of Old Y literature: 84 MADISON SQUARE GARDEN, can be filled for J purposes only via Y media public­ ity: 147 MAGREBIC Js, vernacular J language of (Mugrabi): 16 MAIMONIDES' Guide to the Perplexed, Lefin Satinover's translation of: 65

INDEX

509

MALES, semi-literate; ostensible target-population of PEJL publications: 28, use of Y in religious literature for: 84, references to in patterned evasion of Loshn-koydesh: 215 MARKUZE, MOYSHE; translator into Y of Lk book on popular medicine: 63, uses plain ("pure") Y to reach a larger public: 207-208 MASKILIM/MASKILEM/MASKILIC, advocating or pertaining to haskole; see: haskole MELITSE, florid Lk style rejected by Lefin Satinover: 48 "MELTING POT", undesirability of according to N. Birnbaum: 168 MENCKEN, HENRY L.; Y influences discussed in his American Language: 17 MENDELE MOYKHER SFOREM, usage appealed to in legitimizing current lexical recommendations: 224, non-attendance at Tshernovits Conference: 283 MENDELSSOHN, MOSES; teacher of Mendl Lefin Satinover: 41, G translation of and commentary on Bible: 43, views Y as corruption of G: 43, views Y as unesthetic: 48, father of Western European haskole: 277-278 METHODOLOGY, issues in the study of cultural identity and language alternatives: 58-60, disciplinary parochialism and ethnocentrism re: 58-60, use of historical case material: 58-59, influence of similarity between observers and observed: 59 "MIDDLE RANGE" SECTOR, among American Js (i.e., neither secular nationalist nor Orthodox); Y in mid-60's: 125-131, Conservative, Reformed, unaffiliated and nominally-Orthodox: 125, generational differentiation re Y: 126-127, ideals of American democracy do not clash with ethno-religious patterns of: 141 MIDDLE Y (1500-1750), plentifully documented: 83 MINHOG/MINHEG, PEJLs as part of (rather than of din): 83 MINORITY LANGUAGES, status planning required for fostering: 174, and minority rights in Austro-Hungarian Monarchy: 251 Mirkeves hamishne, early translation of Bible into Y: 51 MISNAGDEM, early opponents of Hasidism: 282 MIZES, MATESYOHU (MATES)/MIESES, MATTHIAS, participates as linguist in Tshernovitser Conference: 263, charactizes Lk as being dead: 265, purportedly pre­ sents "first scientific paper on Y and in Y": 281 MODELING RATIONALES, in corpus planning (also see: Language Planning: Cor­ pus Planning): 217-229 in Hebrew, Hindi, Nynorsk, Filipino, Greek: 221 MODERNIZATION, goal of the haskole: 39-41, requires only minor adjustments in Tuvye Feder's view: 49, diversity of language views among adherants of: 53-54, not a constant or unalterable goal: 222 MODERN Y (1750 - ), also documented in H and in non-J sources: 83 MODERNIZATION, Jewish; Ashkenazim as leaders in: 16, vernacular debate among Js and non-Js: 39, and traditionalism viewed as incommensurate: 57, impact of indus­ trialization and urbanization: 85, provides fashionable rationale for acculturation and language shift: 142, impact on Y: 172-179, "with a J face" associated with Y: 319, associated with movements on behalf of Y and H, controlled from within the speech-community: 326, as a factor undercutting traditional J multilingualism: 345 MONISM (LINGUISTIC), fostered by modernization and nationalism: 345 Morgn-frayhayt, Communist oriented Y daily: 103

510

YIDDISH: TURNING TO LIFE

MOROCCO, Js in; lack common language with American Js: 146 MOSAIC CONFESSION, Germans, Slavs, Hungarians of; assimilationist euphemism: 161 MOTHER TONGUE, factors reflecting vs factor fostering: 77, estimated number of claimants re Y (1980): 340 MUGRABI (also see: Yahudic), relatively minor incorporation of Lk elements: 15, mutual influences re Judezmo: 32, in Israel today: 71, vehicle of serious religious poetry and prose: 149 MULTICOMPONENTIALITY OF PEJLs, see: Fusion ("mixed") Languages MULTILINGUALISM, the constant state of Y-speaking communities: 308, makes "either-or" choices unnecessary among Js: 338, undercut by nationalism and moder­ nization: 345 MUSAR WRITINGS, in Y: 155, monumental works in Y were either originally pub­ lished in that language or simultaneously with H version: 317 N NACHT, DR. YANKEV; author of Hebraist critique of Tshernovits Conference: 289290 NATIONAL DEFENSE EDUCATION ACT, support for college level H instruction: 153 NATIONAL LANGUAGE, of Js; Perets' view: 30, Y as a or the: 87, 246, 265, 285-286, compromise about at the Tshernovits Conference: 266, Zionist view of in connection with Tshernovits Conference: 281 NATIONALISM, Y used for fostering J: 85, American; primarily non- or supra-ethnic: 14, only Y and H associated with J ideologies related to: 321, as a factor undercutting traditional J multilingualism: 345 NATIVE SPEAKERS, bilingual; compared with non-native re formality/informality distinctions: 305-306 NATURALIZED SPELLING, Soviet system for spelling Hebraisms in Y: 196 NAZISM, ethnocidal impact of on Y : 53 NEOLOGISMS, high proportion of in Y literary standard: 212, apologetic justification for: 224 NEO-(MODERN-) ORTHODOX(Y), and future of Y: 8 NETHERLANDS, pocket of Western Y in: 83 Never Say Diel (1981), book that attempts to overcome the death myth re Y: 332 NEW HIGH GERMANISMS, favored and re-introduced by maskilim: 209-210, sub­ sequently opposed and criticized: 210-211, taboo in current Y corpus planning, even if widely accepted: 225 NEW YORK CITY, functions as hub of Y in America: 78, 101-102 NEW YORKISMS, Y influences on: 78 NEWSPAPERS, in Y; see: publications NOMBERG, HERSH D.; Y essayist and journalist, participant at Tshernovits Confer­ ence: 164, 263, formulates compromise resolution at Tshernovits Conference: 266, disputed claim to authorship of compromise resolution at Tshernovits Conference: 285, mentioned in Hebraist satire re Tshernovits Conference: 287

INDEX

511

 OFFICE DE LA LANGUE FRANCAISE, role in francization and corpus planning in Quebec: 217-218 OFFICIAL LANGUAGE, Y recognized as by Kerensky regime after the fall of the Czar: 93, H in Israel: 128 OLD YISHUV, Judezmo influences on Y during: 32 OPEN NETWORKS, dialect/standard and informal/formal switching among members of: 304-305 ORTHODOX(Y), in Israel: 6, spokesmen favoring Y: 65, voting bloc in USA: 75-80, growing consciousness of Y in interwar Eastern Europe: 94, day schools in USA; number offering instruction in/via Y (between 1952-1961):134-135, synagogue ser­ vice primarily in H: 150, Y press, USA; mid-60's: 136, 158, speaking H during Sab­ baths and holidays: 201, serious co-sanctity uses of Y are of long standing and con­ tinue today: 215, over-represented among "guests" at Tshernovits Conference: 253, resistance to being studied by sociolinguists: 307, includes 20th century defenders of Y: 316, relatively greater modernization in Europe then elsewhere has had an impact on type of Lk impact on Y: 318, ORTHOGRAPHY, G influences on Y: 102, reform in; arguments against: 144, stan­ dard for modern Y developed between the two World Wars: 183, decisions by Y "Language Academies" in Minsk and Kiev: 183, decisions by Yivo in Vilne: 184, major similarities between Yivo and Soviet systems: 184, 186, Orthodox system remains most discrepant: 184, Unified Yiddish Spelling (of Yivo): 186, the multiplic­ ity of Orthodox norms: 186, autonomy from G or H conventions in modern Y: 186, "toward H" and "away from H" influences in Y: 195-198, "naturalized spelling" of Hebraisms in Soviet Y: 196-197, "toward G" and "away from G" influences in Y: 196-197, phonological vs. etymological principles: 197, four different systems illus­ trated: 201 OSTJUDEN, purportedly the only direct beneficiaries of Zionism (in the view of Ger­ manized Js): 239, N. Birnbaum's contrasts of with Westjuden and Afroasian Js: 252 OYLIM, N. Birnbaum's organization to de-routinize Orthodoxy: 171 OYSIYES MEREBOES, square H letters not originally used for Y in print: 44, sub­ sequent use for Y: 44, 205, represent the shared textual heritage of all J languages: 205, switch to in Y uncommented upon by contemporary rabbis: 208, serious/cosanctity use of Y predates switch to: 215 Ρ PALE OF SETTLEMENT, reverberations of Tshernovits Conference throughout: 235, Russificatory pressures within: 272 PARSIC, see: FARSIC PEJLs, see: Post-exilic Jewish languages PENTATEUCH (=khumesh), traditional study of via translating into PEJL calque variety: 23 PERETS, YITSKHOK LEYBUSH, view of Η and Y at Tshernovits Conference: 161, 237, 263, fails in St. Peterburg to raise funds for Y projects: 267, criticized by Heb­ raists for his vacillations at the Tshernovits Conference: 284, 287-288

512

YIDDISH: TURNING TO LIFE

PERETS, Y. L. SHRAYBER FAREYN, association of American Y writers: 109 PERIODICALS, in Y; see: publications PERL, YOYSEF; student of Lefin Satinover: 43 PHILOLOGICAL SECTION, INSTITUTE FOR JEWISH CULTURE AT THE UKRAINIAN ACADEMY OF SCIENCES (Kiev): 183 PHILOLOGICAL SECTION, Yivo (Vilne period); orthographic rules: 184, nominally re-established in New York after World War II: 184 PHONOGRAPH RECORDS, Y songs and recitations on: 124 PIDGINS/CREOLES, development of compared to PEJLs: 20-35, Y as phenomenological pidgin: 191; pidginization/depidginization: 189-201, Y data useful for studying difference between and PEJLs: 308 PIETISM, Y used for fostering among Js: 85 PINSKI, DOVED; Zionist and Y novelist: 163, co-sponsors call to Tshernovits Confer­ ence: 163-165, extensive contacts with N. Birnbaum prior to Tshernovits Confer­ ence: 258, hopes to depolitize the Tshernovits Conference: 259, did not attend the Tshernovits Conference: 263, champion of J cultural renaissance and unwavering Zionist: 273 PODOLYE, area east of Galicia; region whose Y Lefin Satinover preferred: 46, impact of G on Y less than in Galicia: 65, examples of dialect/standard switching among speakers of local dialect: 304 POETRY, Y; becomes increasingly sophisticated in America: 91 POLAND/POLES, initially honors and then disregards its World War I treaty obliga­ tions to Js and other minorities: 94, part of J intelligentsia used state language during interwar period: 94, post World War II support for Y "showcase" institutions: 95, Austro-Hungarian cultural politics re (in Galicia): 260 POLISH, advocacy of instead of Y: 16, displacement of among Js by Y during interwar period: 94, part of J intelligentsia adopt during interwar period: 94, Js spuriously registered as speaking in Galicia: 260 POLITICAL BOUNDARIES, major modern support for cultural boundaries: 173 POLITICAL PARTIES, use of Y in pre-World War I USA: 92 POLONISMS in Y, fewer than Anglicisms: 78 PORTUGUESE, and monogenesis theory of pidgins: 28 POST-EXILIC JEWISH LANGUAGES (PEJLs), negative attitudes toward: 14, liber­ ation from Lk/H hegemony over: 15, fusion ("mixed", "unpure") or multicomponential nature of: 20, 191, hyphenated vs. independent names for: 20, semantic change in relative to co-territorial correlates: 20, development of compared to pidgins/ creoles: 20-35, purported "dialect" nature of: 22-24, as media of instruction in tradi­ tional J schools: 27, structural and functional distancing from co-territorial corre­ lates: 33, attitudes towards influenced by cultural position of H: 192-194, viewed as "handmaidens" or "servant girls" of H: 193, make changes relative to their linguistic determinants in novel and specifically J directions: 314, develop their Lk elements in accord with their own grammatical structurers: 314, incorporate and further develop features from prior and concurrent PEJLs; 314, functional and attitudinal similarities across all PEJLs: 314, difficulty in defining intuitively: 322 "POTATO Y", characterization of highly interfered Y style of certain writers, speakers or publications: 102

INDEX

513

POYALEY AGUDES YISROYEL, political literature in Y prepared by: 317 PRAGUE, see: Prog PRILUTSKI, NOYEKH; linguist-folklorist, participates in Tshernovits Conference: 263 PROG, local Y variant: 83 PROFICIENCY, of spoken Y; decreasing in USA during mid-60's: 137-139 PROLETARIANISM, in Eastern Europe; Y related to among first generation in USA: 125 "PROTESTANT VERNACULAR", hypothetical; would be considered superfluous in modern Western Europe: 40 PROVENCE/OCCITANIA, hypothetical role in the integration of France: 54 PROVENSE (three syllables), as a J language and culture area: 60 PUBLIC SCHOOLS, assimilatory effect of; in German, Russian, Polish, Hungarian or English: 171 PUBLICATIONS, in Y (books or periodocals); in the USA: 76, in pre-modern period: 85, in pre-World War I USA: 91, in USA since World War I: 101-112, daily Y press in USA never champions Y: 103, circulation of USA periodical press during mid60's: 104-107, book market in USA and elsewhere: 109, number of books published 1945-1960 by American Y authors (by literary field): 111, number and circulation drops: 143, earliest date back to before the use of print for H: 216, on agenda of the Tshernovits Conference: 260-261, custom of giving G titles to Y periodicals: 281, custom of giving H titles to Y books: 281, over 100 books still published annually: 331, periodical press as major carrier of Y literature to a mass reading public: 331 PUERTO RICANS, replace J members of labor organizations in New York area: 122 PURIM PLAYS/PUREM SHPILN , as first Y (and still ongoing Ultra-Orthodox Y) theater: 331 "PURITY" (also see: Fusion ["mixed"] Language, assumed lacking in PEJLs: 30, of lit­ tle concern re Y in most yeshivas in USA, mid-60's: 133 R RABBINIC culture/authorities, Lk literacy highly valued: 15, generally low regard for PEJLs: 27, 29, views concerning halachic uses of PEJLs: 33, differing views concern­ ing Aramic: 39, Tuvye Feder's rejection of rabbinic scholarship: 49, opposition to Liblekhe tfile prayerbook: 61, Kabbalistic, musar and responsa literature in Y: 155, use of Y in trials: 215, opposition to scholarly texts in Y: 215-216, use of Y in ser­ mons: 256, use of Y in print acceptable for popular educational purposes: 257, view of Y and other PEJLs as "maid servants": 316-317 RADIO/T.V. PROGRAMS, Israeli broadcasting in Mugrabi: 71, Israeli broadcasting in Y: 71, Israeli broadcasting in Farsic: 71, Israeli broadcasting in Yahudic: 71, Israeli broadcasting in Judezmo: 71, Israeli broadcasting in Judeo-Kurdish: 71, Y broad­ casting in USA: 77, 115-116, number of stations broadcasting in Y in the USA (19561960): 116, number of stations broadcasting in Y in USA (early 80's): 177-178 RASHI-KSAV, traditional type-face for rabbinic texts and commentaries: 205 RAWIDOWICZ, SIMON; J philosopher, characterizes Js as the eternally living, everdying people: 294

514

YIDDISH: TURNING TO LIFE

REBE (plural: rebeyem), hasidic rabbis; relationship to Y: 252 REFORM Js, in the USA; mid-60's: 125, award honorary doctorate to Y writer: 128, leadership may be proficient in H but synagogue services do not require H profi­ ciency: 151 REGIONAL LANGUAGE, Y as in contrast to H: 315 REGIONALISM(S), preference for in order to distance PEJLs from non-J correlates: 22, continued value for the J national ethos: 348 RELIGIOUS IDEOLOGIES (also see: Ideology/Ideological): Yiddish not consciously valued by in J Eastern Europe (although much employed) : 88 RESEARCH INSTITUTES, in Y; in early Soviet period: 93, in non-Soviet interwar Eastern Europe: 94 RESPONSA LITERATURE (also see Rabbinic culture/authorities) in Y: 155 REYZN, AVROHM, Y poet; participant in Tshernovits Conference: 164, 263 Rise and Fall of the Ethnic Revival (1985): 5 RIV HALESHOYNES (also see: language struggle), between H and Y (rather than between H and any other PEJL): 321 ROMANCE ELEMENTS, IN EARLIEST Y: 81, among pre-Germanic components in Y: 81-82, "traditionalized" words in earliest Y: 82 ROZNFELD, MORIS; Y poet, reports sarcastically on Tshernovits Conference: 268269 RUMANIA, initially observes and then disregards its World War I treaty obligations re Y: 94, segment of J intelligentsia utilizes state language during interwar period: 94, state support for symbolic Y institutions after World War II: 95, Austro-Hungarian cultural politics with respect to Js in Bukovina: 261 RURALITY, contribution to language maintenance: 175 RUSSIA (includes Czarist and Soviet periods), haskole in: 40, efforts to vernacularize H: 54, Revolution fosters Y: 92-93, J situation different than in USA: 166, longstanding prohibition agains Y dailies: 235, positive and negative status planning re Y in the post World War II era: 235-236, lack of democratic and ethnocultural rights for Js in: 280, "revival" of Y with glasnost and perestroika: 296-297, Y "con­ taminated" by association with Communist regime: 297, association of H with resis­ tance to Communist regime and with Israel: 297 RUSSIAN (language), advocacy of instead of Y: 16, writing in delayed by Old Church Slavonic: 38, displacement of by Y among Js outside of USSR during interwar period: 94, authorities resist granting permits for Y periodicals: 209 RUSSIANISMS in Y, fewer than Anglicisms: 78 RUTHENIAN/RUTHENIANS, see: Ukrainian/Ukrainians S SAM-HAKHAYEM, famous moralistic work in Y: 317 SATINOVER, MENDL LEFIN (also see: Tuvye Feder, Yankev Shmuel іk); Ausbau views of: 22, view of Y: 41-50, translation of books of the Bible: 42-48, translation of books on popular medicine, 63, comparison of his Y Bible translations with those of others: 64 SCHNEERSON, RABBI MENAKHEM M. (also see Lubavitsher khasidem); influ­ ence in New York and Israeli politics: 75, uses scholarly Y: 187

INDEX

515

SCHOOLS, RELIGIOUS; weekday afternoon or Sunday; do not teach Y in mid-60's: 128, willingness to teach Y in early 80's: 177 SCHOOLS, Y SECULAR NATIONALIST; in the USA: 76, in early Soviet period: 93, in non-Soviet interwar Eastern Europe: 94, in USA after 1914: 96-101, number of schools and their enrollment (1945-1960): 97, traditionalization of after Holocaust: 98, 199, curriculum of 98-99, graduates of have not become readers of Y press or lit­ erature; 103, weakened numerically: 143, schools teaching Y, early 80's: 178, secular nationalist schools teach adapted traditional texts entirely in Y: 199, role of in inter­ war Poland in establishing (with Yivo) the literary standard: 211 SECOND AVENUE, "the Y Broadway": 112-113 SECOND COMMONWEALTH, H ceases to be mass vernacular in Palestine during: 149 SECULAR-NATIONALIST Js, future of Y among: 8, self-definition similar to that of other Eastern European nationalities: 86, territorial component in self-definition: 86-87, growing positiveness toward traditional observances and studies: 99, main source of support for a variety of pro-Y causes: 100, maintenance/shift (1940-1960): 138, overlooking home-neighborhood-community nexus of Y mother tongue trans­ mission: 179 SECULAR-NATIONALIST (orientation/ideology), among supporters of Y in Israel: 6, admired in USA but viewed as a thing of the past:77, brought to USA by pre- and post-World War I immigrants: 87, lacked coercive power gained by other Eastern European nationalisms: 89, Hebraist/Zionist branch of: 90, language consciousness in: 90, blossoming of in early Soviet period: 93, evaluation of from the school perspective: 98, as both strength and weakness of Y in mid-60's: 129, Y related to more than any other PEJL: 318, Y related to as much as modern H: 318 SEFARAD II, more distant than Sefarad I from linguistic correlate: 24 SEFARDIM/SEFARDI(C), vernacular J language (s) of: 16, "revolt of" in Israel con­ tributes to interest in non-Ashkenazi vernaculars: 71, Y less acceptable to among youngsters in Israel than among their Ashkenazi counterparts: 306 SEJMISTS, cultural autonomy goal: 87, advocate J political representation in Eastern European parliaments: 275 Selbst-Emancipation!, N. Birnbaum's Viennese weekly: 162 "SERVANT GIRL(S)", traditional designation for PEJLs relative to Lk: 29, haskole view of Y relative to Lk/H: 193, G unable to compete with Y: 195, Tshernovits Con­ ference upsets prior relationship of Y to H: 246, efforts to liberate Y from status as: 256, usual rabbinic view of Y and other PEJLs as: 316 Seyfer refues, book of popular medicine in "plain'7"pure" Y: 63, 207-208 SHAYLES UTSHUVES, role of in recording spoken Y: 207 SHENIRER, SORE; founder of Beys-yankev schools for girls, defends Y among UltraOrthodox: 316 Sheyris yisroyel, 18th century historical treatise in Y: 317 Sheyvet yehude, justifies its use of Y on grounds of its intended readership among simple folk and women: 207 Shmuel bukh, a masterpiece of old Y literature: 84 SHOLEM ALEICHEM/SHOLEM ALEYKHEM, non-attendance at Tshernovits Con­ ference: 263

516

YIDDISH: TURNING TO LIFE

SHOLEM ALEICHEM FOLK INSTITUTE, non-partisan Y secular nationalist schools maintained by in New York: 96-97, other activities, mid-60's: 121, schools outside of New York (Detroit and Chicago): 157 SHTETL, exodus from in modern period: 86, disappearance of (literally and figura­ tively): 128 "SIMPLE Y" (="plain Y"), role of in fostering Eastern Y in print: 207 SINGER, I. B.; 1978 winner of Nobel Prize for literature: 277, distinguishes between death and ill health of Y: 329, still creatively active: 331 SLANG, in Israel; losing Yiddishisms: 311 SLAVS/SLAVIC, Eastern and Southern; variations on ethnocultural consciousness among: 37, Y among co-territorial Slavic populations defines Ashkenaz II: 208 SLOBODKER DAYTSH, humorous reference to unnecessarily Germanized Y: 210 SLOVAKIA, pocket of Western Y: 83 SOCIAL CLASS, role of in the evaluation and maintenance of Y: 306 SOCIAL MOBILITY. of Js; weakens cultural boundaries between Js and non-Js: 172, weakens Y in America: 329 SOCIALISM/SOCIALIST(S), espousal of Germanisms and Anglicisms in Y: 216, use of Y for indoctrination purposes: 257, do not aspire to Hi functions for Y in USA: 269, only Y and H associated with J movements on behalf of: 321 SOCIOLINGUISTIC THEORY, sociological dimensions of: 302 SOCIOLOGY OF LANGUAGE, non-English languages in the USA: 3, perspective on Y:302 SOCIOLOGY OF Y, course in: 5, perspective of: 302-312 SOKOLOV, NOKHEM; Zionist leader views Y as necessary vehicle of mass agitation and indoctrination: 278 SOLOVEITCHIK, RABBI JOSEPH; defense of Y: 65 SOMALIA, vernacular L not only indigenous variety in: 56 SONGS, Y; recent fondness for in Israel: 17, popular song recitals in USA: 77 SOTEK, I.; attends Tshernovits Conference while still a student: 263, 265 SOUTH AMERICA, Ashkenazi communities in: 83 SOUTHERN Y, examples of dialect/standard switching among educated speakers of: 304-305 SOVIET UNION (also see: Russia); support for Y to offset Ukrainian and Byelorussian cultural goals: 157 SPANISH, domain overlap and separation among Puerto Rican speakers of: 306 STANDARD VARIETY, special functions of: 89, Y literary standard admired but not mastered by most immigrants to the USA: 90, developed for literary functions: 211213, of special importance to Y secular nationalist schools in inter-war Poland: 211, generally favors Northern, but is not identical to any regional variety: 211, role of Yivo in establishment of: 211, functional rather than regional implications of spoken standard: 211, avoidance of New High Germanisms and other foreignisms in: 212, high proportion of neologisms and Loshn-koydeshisms: 212, Ausbau nature of: 212, as acrolect of Y secular nationalist sector: 212, as variety for modern econotechnical and sociocultural interaction: 212 STANDARDIZATION, assumed lacking in PEJLs: 30, standard literary variety of Y: 183

INDEX

517

STATISTICAL APPENDIX, Y in USA, Israel, Czarist Empire, USSR, Poland and other countries, throughout 20th century, 377-492, index to above: 379-383 STATUS PLANNING (also see: Language Planning; Status Planning), re Y: 233-290, rarely engaged in for most disadvantaged languages: 234, most attempts do not yield benefits for weakened languages: 234, generally ineffective for Basque, Frisian and Irish: 235, other than Tshernovits Conference re Y: 235-236, negative status plan­ ning re Y in rabbinic, Zionist, non-Bundist Socialist and Communist circles: 236, Tshernovits Conference agenda pays considerable attention to: 259-260, tensions between corpus planning and status planning: 274, defined and illustrated: 280 STEROTYPES, of Y; due to absence of and disregard for sociolinguistic data: 327 STEWARTIAN ATTRIBUTES (sociolinguistic dimensions originally suggested by William Stewart), 29-31, applicability to Ultra-Orthodox children: 302, in differen­ tiating between points of view at Tshernovits Conference: 302, need of testing and refining: 302 SUMMER CAMPS, in Y; in USA: 76 SUTSKEVER, AVROHM; major Y poet still creatively active: 331 SWITZERLAND, pocket of Western Y in: 83 SYMBIOSIS OF MODERNITY AND TRADITION, only Y and H are appreciably associated with: 300 Τ TAGEBLAT, Orthodox Y daily in New York; negative toward Tshernovits Confer­ ence: 268 TALMUD, influence upon PEJLs: 23, traditional function of PEJLs in translation/ study: 39, consists of H Mishne plus Aramic Gemore: 61, instruction frequently con­ tinues to be in Y: 103, 131-133 TARGUMIC, see: Aramic TAT/JUDEO-TAT, J vernacular in Caucuses: 149 ΤAULI, VALTER; advocate of completely rational corpus planning: 223 TAYTSH, "translation (into Y)": 193, taytsh-khumesh, Y version of Pentateuch, osten­ sibly for women and uneducated men: 193 TERRITORIALISM/TERRITORIALISTS, non-Zionist movement for planned J resettlement in countries other than Palestine: 87, split away from Zionist movement in 1905: 279 THEATER, in Y; in Israel: 17, in USA: 76, 77, 91, 112-115, Y repertory in pre-modern period: 85, in early Soviet period: 93, in interwar Poland: 94, age of American Y actors (as of 1945-1960): 114, N. Birnbaum's constant interest in: 165, N. Birnbaum's critique of G-J theater: 244, on agenda of Tshernovits Conference: 261, currently once more attracts young actors both on and off Broadway: 299, still active in vari­ ous parts of the world: 331 Tog, Morgn Zhurnal, Y daily; combines Zionism and Orthodoxy: 103 TRADITIONALISM, insufficiency of as exclusive model for corpus planning: 221-222, not a totally constant goal even for those that pursue it: 222 TRANSLATABILITY, of Y literature; as a problem for those Yiddishists who also believe in the Whorfian hypothesis: 308

518

YIDDISH: TURNING TO LIFE

TRANSLATION(S), Lk into Y when studying sacred texts: 298 (also see: UltraOrthodoxy, Khumesh, Talmud); of Y books become best sellers: 299, of Y into H in Israel (reversal of prior diaspora pattern): 346 TRANSLITERATION, Y into E; Library of Congress system: 322 TSARFATIC, see Zarfatic/Zarphatic Tsene-(u)rene, popular Y Pentateuch for women: 5, constantly reprinted since 17th cen­ tury: 84 TSHERNOVITS (City); Js in dominated by Zionist and German language/culture senti­ ments: 241, location within general and J geography: 279 TSHERNOVITS CONFERENCE, 1908; Perets' ambivalence at: 30, Y as a or as the J national language: 87, dignification of Y via an international conference: 156, first call to co-sponsored by Y literary figures in USA: 163, prime example of status plan­ ning re Y: 233, 290, did not reject co-role of H: 233, primary and secondary sources for research on: 237, G-J response to: 237, Hebraist response to: 237, Bundist and Communist response to: 237, upsets "servant girl" relationship of Y to H: 246, pre­ cursor conference of 1905: 251, post-Conference protest march: 251-252, conceived of as a contribution to J cultural autonomy:: 252, over-representation of Orthodox Js among guests attending: 253, additional research on N. Birnbaum needed in order to fully understand: 254, locus of last encounter between four views re Y: 258, partici­ pants at (by name and region): 263-264, reaction to in American Y press at the time: 267-269, least understood and appreciated in USA: 268, "spirit of Tshernovits lives on" in Y cultural efforts everywhere: 272, viewed as confluence of various ideologies: 273, weak Bundist presence at: 276 TSISHO (Central Yiddish School Organization [in interwar Poland]), considers Tsher­ novits Conference irrelevant: 271 TURKISH, corpus planning; expulsion of Arabisms and Persianisms, but importation of Frenchisms and internationalisms: 225 U UGANDA, proposed as autonomous J region, instead of Palestine: 279 UKRAINE/UKRAINIAN(S), negative attitudes toward: 13, support for Y culture under Soviets to offset impact of Russification efforts: 157, Ausbau struggle vis-a-vis Russian (contemporary with Y struggle against New High Germanisms): 210, strug­ gle for cultural autonomy in Austro-Hungarian Monarchy: 241, nationalist support for N. Birnbaum's candidacy in elections of 1907, "Young Ukrainians" support N. Birnbaum after Tshernovits Conference: 246-247, "Old Ruthenians" favor Russian as their literary language: 247, support for N. Birnbaum and other nationalistic J candidates in election of 1907: 247, Austro-Hungarian cultural politics re (in Galicia): 260 ULTRA-ORTHODOX(Y), and future of Y: 8, general lack of vernacular conscious­ ness among: 33, growing number of speakers in USA and in Israel: 17-18, 68-71, English influences on Y of in USA: 78, use of Y in USA; during mid-60's: 131-137, Y valued for gaining access to advanced Talmudic study: 131-133, Y valued as the vehicle of a life-style that is maximally separated from non-Ultra-Orthodox: 133-137, future of Y in USA may well depend upon: 136-137, display mastery of talmudic/

INDEX

519

medieval H and Lk: 150, increasing numbers of pre-school and school-aged speakers of Y: 172, uninterested in lexical elaboration: 187, traditional utilitarian view of Y: 257, focus on matters "above and beyond" language: 266, Y in Israel currently popu­ larly associated with: 296, absence of in Russia weakens intergenerational mother tongue continuity prospects of Y there: 297, young monolingual Y speakers now increasing: 199, 330, populations that most need to be studied are in USA and Israel; 307, Purim plays as culturally appropriate theater: 331 UNAFFILIATED Js, negative attitudes toward Y (in USA): 92, in mid-60's: 125 UNIFIED YIDDISH SPELLING ( of Yivo and Tsisho), major modern [and only for­ mally codified] norm: 186, followed in this volume: 322 UNIQUENESS OF Y, functional and psychological: 315-323 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, see: America URBANIZATION, impact on Y and on J life: 86, 172 V VARSHE, local Y variant of: 83 VAYBERTAYTSH/VAYBERKSAV, type-face originally used for Y: 44, similarity to script makes it simpler to read for the marginally literate: 205 VERNACULAR FUNCTIONS, for PEJLs: 39, among non-Js: 51-52 VERSAILLES/TRIANON TREATIES, guarantees re Y: 93, 94 VIENNA, Germanized J students at University of: 161 VILNE/VILNA/VILNIUS, local Y variant of: 83, headquarters of Yivo during the interwar years: 184 VITALITY, assumed to be lacking for PEJLs: 30 W WALES/WELSH, hypothetical role in the integration of Britain: 54 WARSAW, see: Varshe WEINREICH, MAX; influence on author: 2, major link between pre-World War II and post-World War II Yivo: 184, intellectual gifts to future generations of scholars: 301-302, gives examples of bilingual Y repertoires: 303, anticipates diglossia notion ("inveynikste tsveyshprakhikeyt"): 306 WESTJUDEN, N. Birnbaum's contrast with Ostjuden and Afroasian Js: 252 WESTERN Y, long remains model of Y in print for Eastern European readers: 63, 208, N. Birnbaum's views toward as being much poorer than Eastern Y: 244 WESTERNIZATION, see: Haskole WHITE RUSSIA/ WHITE RUSSIAN, see: Byelorussia/Byelorussian WHORFIAN HYPOTHESIS: i, z, 307-308, translatability of Y in the light of: 308 WIENER, LEO; predicts "death of Y" at beginning of the 20th century: 329 WILSON, WOODROW; promise of his "fourteen points" for Y: 94 WORKMEN'S CIRCLE (Arbeter-ring), schools; largest Y secular nationalist network in USA: 96, Y cultural activities more generally, mid-60's: 119-120 WORLDVIEW, see: Whorfian Hypothesis WRITERS, status of in Y secular nationalist circles equals that of rabbis elsewhere in J life: 319

520

YIDDISH: TURNING TO LIFE

WRITTEN FUNCTION/VARIETY, late development of for PEJLs: 24, reserved for H: 194, proximity of written language to spoken varieties: 207-209, Y develops ear­ lier and more fully: 316-318 WRITING SYSTEMS, orthographic conventions: 32 WRITERS, American Y; age by primary literary field (during the mid-60's): 110 Y YAHUDEM, Germanized Js; N. Birnbaum identifies with Eastern European Js in criticizing: 243, among the earliest to predict "death of Y": 329 YAHUDIC, long association with literacy; 29, still a noteworthy PEJL today: 313, mod­ ernizing intellectuals transfer to Arabic: 318 YEHOYESH, major modern translator of Bible into Y: 45 YEMENITE, vernacular J language of (Yahudic): 16 YERUSHELAYMER VELT-KONFERENTS FAR YIDISH UN YIDISHER KUL­ TUR, views itself as heir of the Tshernovits Conference: 271 YESHIVA UNIVERSITY, transitioning out of Y in talmudic studies (in mid-60's): 133 YESHIVAS/YESHIVES (and MESIVTAS/METIVTES), continued use of Y in many hasidic and non-hasidic schools in the USA (mid-60's): 131-137, number offering instruction via Y (1956-1961): 134-135 YEVSEKTSIYE, consents to closing of Y corpus planning centers in Soviet Union: 184 YEVALENKO, ALEKS; publisher and co-signer of original call to the Tshernovits Conference: 259 Yid, hasidic weekly: 136 YIDDISH, relationship with H: 6, history of: 6, in America: 6, 75-179, associated only with Ashkenazim: 17, linguistic adequacy relative to other vernaculars: 52, in need of both status planning and corpus planning: 52, "colonies" come to the fore after Holocaust: 95, international link for Js in Eastern Europe since World War I: 147, as intergenerational linK: 147, as avenue of selective identification with Eastern Europe: 147, satisfies literacy requirements of USA immigration laws: 235, viewed as "lively tongue" but not as "real language": 245, and the "absolute J idea": 246247, N. Birnbaum's view of diglossic partnership with Lk: 253, not independently related to sanctity in non-hasidic society: 256, traditional utilitarian view of among Ultra-Orthodox: 257, long-term use in print among Orthodox for moralistic and popular halachic education: 257, viewed as a major symbol and vehicle in its own right: 257, spread into Hi functions threatens rabbinic and Zionist hegemony: 275, variety of rivals for Hi functions: 275, purportedly found lacking from the "esthetic" point of view: 280-281, future of: 293-299, eternally living but ever dying J language: 294, as a factor in the functioning of Ultra-Orthodox Jerusalem: 296, considered "contaminated" due to association with Communist regime in USSR: 297, purported approaching death of: 298-299, young monolingual speakers now increasing among Ultra-Orthodox: 299, in small-group interaction: 303-305, reacted to as funny: 307, attitudes improve but use decreases in middle range J society: 311, how differs from other PEJLs: 315-323 "Y MOVEMENT", topicalization in American E: 78 YIDDISHISM/YIDDISHIST(S), influence on left wing J ideologies: 66, major growth over by World War II: 76, transplanted from Europe to Americas: 91, encouraged

INDEX

521

by more respectful climate toward Y after Holocaust: 128, linguistic separateness as a sine qua non for cultural separateness: 147, earliest mass support for from strongly hasidic regions: 156, traditional H sources taught only in Y: 199, religious adherants of oppose secularisms in Y: 216, purported overuse of neologisms and tendency toward hypercorrection: 218, rejected by N. Birnbaum: 253, Tshernovits Conference as a reminder and symbol of: 272 YIDDISH CULTURE CLUB (Los Angeles), mid-60's: 121 YIDDISH CULTURE ORGANIZATION (Philadelphia), mid-60's: 121 Y-DAYTSH, designation for Y: 216 YIDDISH (JEWISH) HISTORICAL-ETHNOGRAPHIC SOCIETY (St. Petersburg, 1909): 278 Yiddish in America (1965): 3 YIDDISH LITERARY SOCIETY (St. Petersburg, 1908): 278 Yidish far ale, pre-World War II Yivo journal: 223 YIDISHE KULTUR, first university-affiliated student organization for Y: 245 Yidishe shprakh, Yivo journal with prescriptive goals; purported excessive use of neologisms and stilted hyper-corrections: 218, examples of Y corpus planning recom­ mendations: 223 Yidishe vort, Ultra-Orthodox (Agudes yisroyel) monthly: 136 YIDISHER KULTUR FARBAND, see: Yikuf YIDISHER KULTUR KONGRES, ALVELTLEKHER; see: Congress for Jewish Cul­ ture YIKUF (Yidisher kultur farband), left-wing afiliated; views itself as heir to goals of the Tshernovits Conference: 271 YINGLISH, entertainment and humor in the USA, 127 YISROYEL BAL-SHEM-TOV, see: Bal-shem-tov, Yisroyel YIVO (Yidisher visnshaftlekher institut, YIVO Institute for Jewish Research), in the USA mid 60's: 117-119, in Vilne and in New York: 184, American Branch (Amopteyl) becomes headquarters after World War II: 184, role of in establishment of modern literary standard: 211, as unofficial Y university and ministry of culture of secular nationalist sector: 212, founded at 1925 Tsisho convention: 271, volume in honor of 20th anniversary of Tshernovits Conference approximates lost minuts of: 283 YUGNTRUF, Yiddishist student organization and journal; use of neologisms and hypercorrections: 218 Z ZAK, AVROHM; Y poet protests against the death myth/wish: 333 ZANGWILL, ISRAEL; drama, Melting Pot, criticized by N. Birnbaum: 166 ZARPHATIC/ZARFATIC, Judeo-French; influences on earliest Y: 33, traditional ver­ nacular functions: 39 ZHARGON/JARGON, see: fusion ("mixed") language ZHARGONISHE KOMITETN: early Bundist effort to spread literacy and Socialism via Y: 278 ZHITLOVSKI, KHAYEM; lacked detailed, first-hand familiarity with American Jewry (in 1907): 162, Yiddishist, socialist and diaspora autonomist: 163, 258, co-sponsored

522

YIDDISH: TURNING TO LIFE

call to Tshernovits Conference: 163-165, at the Conference proper: 237, 263-264, hopes to de-politicize Tshernovits Conference: 259, role in founding Y secular nationalist schools in USA and Canada: 267, ideological changes throughout his lifespan: 273 ZIONISM/ZIONIST(S), discrimination against Y: 17, low regard for Y: 29, opposition to Y: 53, Y viewed as deterrent to "ingathering of the exiles": 145, secularists display mastery of H: 150-151, pursues goal of Hebraizing the diaspora: 151, word coined by N. Birnbaum: 162, as a cultural movement: 163, 250, espousal of Ivritisms in Y: 216, among culturally Germanized Js: 239, against Y in Eastern Europe: 245, use of Y for indoctrination purposes: 257, negative reactions to Tshernovits Conference: 269-270, Labor-Zs advocate J representation in Eastern European parliaments: 275, Seventh Congress (1905) rejects Uganda offer by British: 279, somewhat positive recent attitudes toward Y and other PEJLs: 281