Thread by @PosenIzzy

There has been a bit of a discussion about Yiddish in the community recently, so it's time for a thread on the subject. Buckle up!

https://twitter.com/MeiselsMolly/status/1479999350063304707

THREAD: Yiddish - a historical overview and contemporary use.

Preamble: I'm a native speaker of chassidic Yiddish (more below) and a chassidic Yiddish researcher. I work on the first and only research group in the world dedicated to the study of chassidic Yiddish: @HasidicU. 1/

This is a Twitter thread, not an academic journal. I'm not going to reference every claim and there may be some minor mistakes/inaccuracies. I invite other informed people to contribute and correct me where appropriate. Also, please ask questions. Always. End of preamble. 2/

Brief historical overview: 1000 years ago Ashkenazi Jews were living in Germanic lands in more-or-less isolated communities and ghettos. Over the years their German diverged into its own unique dialect, with lots of Hebrew mixed in: the birth of Yiddish. 3/

When Jews migrated East to the Slavic countries, Yiddish gained a Slavic component. By the modern era the majority of Jews in the world were living in Eastern Europe and the vast majority of them spoke Yiddish as their primary language. 4/

Yiddish evolved into several dialects: Central Yiddish in Poland, North-Eastern in the Lithuanian area, South-Eastern in the Ukrainian area, and Western Yiddish in Western Europe (where Yiddish originates from). Western Yiddish had gone all but extinct by the 20th century. 5/

Differences between the dialects are mainly lexical (vocabulary) and phonology (how words are pronounced). I think that Western Yiddish was more grammatically divergent. But all Yiddish dialects can easily understand each other and converse (w/ possible exception of Western). 6/

Over its long evolution, Yiddish was primarily used as the colloquial, informal language of the home and public life. It was mostly spoken, not written or read. The intellectual sphere was dominated by men. Its written language: Hebrew-Aramaic (a thread for another time). 7/

The earliest forms of written Yiddish are prayers (techines) and Biblical stories for women, as they didn't understand Hebrew. A fascinating outlier is the diary of the 17th century businesswoman Glükel of Hameln, written in Yiddish. 8/

In the late 18th century the German Jewish enlightenment emerged, despising Yiddish as a primitive language ill-equipped for intellectual expression. The maskilim (Jewish enlightenment proponents) adopted High German and Hebrew as their languages of communication. 9/

Enlightenment and secularisation had a very different effect in Eastern Europe. Jews didn't abandon Yiddish in favour of Slavic languages. In the late 19th century three different kinds of Jew emerged (oversimplification): traditionalists, Zionists, and socialists. 10/

The traditionalists carried on using Yiddish in their daily life and Hebrew-Aramaic for men's Torah study. The Zionists gradually started replacing Yiddish with a revived Hebrew vernacular, seeing Yiddish as a diaspora language, not befitting for a nation returning home. 11/

The socialists (vague categorisation) were secular Jews owning their ethnic identity in the multicultural reality of Eastern Europe. They began to use Yiddish as the language of academic subjects, political struggles and cultural expression. 12/

It's worth focusing on this group. If not for the 20th century's European Jewish tragedy, this would have been a very successful and transformative evolution of the Yiddish language, rivalling and possibly outperforming the successes of Hebrew revernacularisation. 13/

In the early 20th century Yiddish finally got some serious attention as a literary language. The fathers of Yiddish literature, such as Mendele, Sholem Aleichem, Pererz, Ash, Bialik and so on, developed it as a literary and poetic medium. Their writings were insanely popular. 14/

At the same time linguists started to formalise and categorise Yiddish. They developed a "universal" Yiddish as a standard (akin to the Queen's English), that would create a uniform, standardised Yiddish, over and above the dialectical and regional variants. 15/

This "klal" Yiddish is what is taught to this day in universities to students of Yiddish. This is also known as "YIVO Yiddish", since it was developed and formalised by the @yivoinstitute.

This concludes the historical survey. Now on to contemporary matters. 16/

Chassidim vs Yiddishists: Yiddish culture was thriving in interwar Eastern Europe. Novels, poems, theatre, cinema, political manifestos - everything in Yiddish. Then tragedy struck: the holocaust. It's estimated, 85% of the 6m Jewish holocaust victims were Yiddish speakers. 17/

By mid century, Israeli Jewry was speaking Hebrew, Soviet Jewry - Russian, and American Jewry was rapidly assimilating, adopting English instead of Yiddish. Yiddish was in serious decline. From an interwar peak of ~12m speakers, by the late 20th it was in the 100s of 1000s. 18/

Two groups remained commited to Yiddish: the chassidim and the secular Yiddishists. I am more familiar with the chassidic side of things, so I invite Yiddishists to complete the picture. The chassidim trace back to Polish-Hungarian Yiddish. Here is their story in brief: 19/

The holocaust decimated Chassidic communities. After the holocaust they regrouped in two main centres: Israel and Brooklyn NY. The emphasis on insularity by these communities meant that effort was put into preserving Yiddish as a language for the community. 20/

The shake up and migration post-holocaust resulted in a mixture between dialects, the introduction of new linguistic features and the disappearance of others. 21/

Last year my colleagues at @HasidicU published this paper boldly arguing for a complete loss of case (der/di/dos) and gender in diaspora chassidic Yiddish: scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&…. 22/

Despite originating from Central Yiddish, it is clear that today's chassidic Yiddish is its own unique dialect, or rather dialects. Israeli chassidic Yiddish has lots of influence from Hebrew and American chassidic Yiddish is influenced by English. 23/

The Yiddishists heroically tried to resist the Yiddish decline in America but by the end of the 20th century non-chassidic Yiddish speakers were confined to a few academic families and linguists. It was not a living, breathing civilisation of speakers. 24/

On the other hand Yiddish speaking chassidic communities were rapidly growing. Yiddishists watched on in horror as the chassidim broke all their prescriptive rules and laws of the language, using it without any recourse to all the hard work the YIVO academics put in. Horror! 25/

Which brings us to the present day. It has to be fully recognised that the only living, breathing Yiddish civilisation today is chassidic Yiddish. Klal Yiddish was a great experiment and is important for linguistic/academic purposes, but a living language it is not. 26/

Chassidic Yiddish is a living language. It needs no revival. It is flourishing with an incredibly rich literary scene, of hundreds of periodicals, magazines, books, publishing houses, theatre. I recently did 2 long threads on chassidic Yiddish culture, with lots of examples: 27/

I'm embedding here both threads:
Chassidic cultural renaissance:

https://twitter.com/PosenIzzy/status/1465316074778513413

Chassidic culture online:

https://twitter.com/PosenIzzy/status/1464920227456688135

@DovidDovid (Dovid Katz) did a fantastic course on chassidic Yiddish literature recently: defendinghistory.com/readings-in-ha… 28/

Parallel to what's happening in the chassidic community, there is also a renewed interest in Yiddish in the wider Jewish world, evidenced by @duolingo recently adding Yiddish to its language catalogue. Its Yiddish is influenced by chassidic Yiddish, by the way. 29/

Personally, I really welcome anyone who wants to engage with Yiddish. Cultural gatekeeping just limits humanity's creativity. It is very exciting that people are taking an interest in my mother tongue! But there's one thing that's best avoided: 30/

Don't tell native speakers that they are not using the language correctly because they don't follow the rules you learnt in university. It is the living language that defines the rules and not the other way around. Native speakers use the language correctly by definition. 31/

Yiddish has always been a language in exile - a language used in the context of a dominant national one. Today too Yiddish is spoken in English and Hebrew speaking countries. Focusing on diaspora Yiddish for a moment, it is rapidly evolving and incorporating more English. 32/

Chassidic Yiddish doesn't yet have a secular/academic vocabulary. Yiddish is my native language and I speak it all the time,but when I want to talk physics, philosophy, politics etc I have to switch to English, or to a Yiddish grammatical structure full of English vocabulary. 33/

As chassidim modernise and open up it remains to be seen what happend to Yiddish. Will "enlightened" chassidim abandon Yiddish in favour of English (what am I going right now?), or will Yiddish evolve to accommodate more secular/academic needs? 34/

My colleague and friend Eli Benedikt has just submitted a paper about the use of Yiddish amongst ex-chassidim. His findings have important implications for these questions. You can read a synopsis of his findings here: forward.com/yiddish/470159… 35/

What about modern-chassidim though? How is their Yiddish upkeep? Well, thankfully for lovers of research and knowledge, these are questions yet to be explored. There's work to be done! 36/

In the meantime check out this chassidic vlogger and the English influence on his Yiddish: . This is what today's "open" American chassidim sound like. Their Yiddish now has a very strong English component. 37/

And many modern chassidim code-switch, like I do. Check out these interviews for a very interesting example: 38/

To conclude a rather long thread, here are key takeaway points:
1. Yiddish is not a dead or dying language. In fact its speakers are naturally growing with roughly 1m speakers around the world today.
2. Chassidic Yiddish is the only living dialect/dialects of Yiddish today. 39/

3. Chassidic Yiddish continues to evolve. American chassidic Yiddish will diverge from Israeli chassidic Yiddish and will incorporate lots of English influence. This is essentially no prediction, as it's already happening/happened. 40/

4. Yiddishists and those who care about the future of Yiddish as a living language must recognise this reality. It's irreversible. They must work with chassidim and ex-chasssidim because that's where the future of Yiddish lies. 41/

I'm blessed to be working with Yiddishists and chassidim and to serve as a bit of a bridge between the two worlds. I am currently working on several projects trying to bridge the divide and I'm always up for collaborations and suggestions. 42/

5. Yiddish doesn't belong to anyone. It is part of human history and is the historical language of the Jewish people. Everyone should feel welcome to learn Yiddish and engage with it. All Jews should be able to reclaim it as their own, as part of their people's history. 43/

Thanks for joining me on this journey. We've been through 1000 years of Jewish history and we have gained a better understanding of the context of contemporary debates. Please ask questions. None are stupid or offensive (as long as we're all talking in good faith). END/

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