Where's the Yiddish in the Yiddish?

I was in a Jewish library which is frequented by many Yiddish speaking people.  Not for the first time, I heard a mother tell her child to "choosen" a book.  Choosen? You mean kleiben? If you're supposedly speaking Yiddish, why not speak Yiddish!?

Soon after, a child told her mother "ich ken nisht reachen," - she couldn't reach, again, using an English word. 

This is a common phenomenon, most well-known in the child's request, "Ken mich crossen de street?" when they want assistance in crossing the street.

I once said to a parent, you know the proper Yiddish word but since you don't use it, your child does not know it.  Why don't you speak Yiddish if you're speaking Yiddish ... ?

(for related posts, see other listings under the label Yiddish)

Yiddish - for those living Yiddishkeit

In continuation of the previous post -
I'm towards the end of an interesting book about a secular Jewish guy who takes such an interest in Yiddish that he and his friends decide to rescue all the Yiddish books they can get their hands on.  They do this through the 80's into the 90's, mostly by elderly Jews donating their libraries of Yiddish books to them.

Yiddish books and newspapers flourished in the early part of the 1900's, but with the massacre of millions of Yiddish-speaking Jews and the integration of the survivors and immigrants into the culture of their host countries, the generations that followed were not interested in Yiddish.  The older generation lamented this lack of interest in Yiddish on the part of their descendents and were thrilled with the idea of giving their books to those who would appreciate them.  He ends up collecting a million and a half books!

The book is a good read with all sorts of wonderful Jewish characters.  It is quite interesting that young people, including non-Jews, have taken such an interest in Yiddish that they are flocking to classes in universities in many cities.

At one point, he describes picking up thousands of volumes that were thrown down into the cellar of a building that was taken over by a yeshiva.  Since many heretical books were written in Yiddish, pious Jews rejected Yiddish literature that sought to wean Jews away from Yiddishkeit.  This is why the hanhala of the yeshiva discarded the books. 

The author speaks negatively of religious people, whom he considers narrow-minded, while I thought - does he not realize that the cry of "Where are our [Yiddish-speaking] youth" is being answered in Yiddish-speaking enclaves in Boro Park, Williamsburg, New Square, Tosh, and Monroe? The very people he looks down on are the very ones who are perpetuating Yiddish as a living language.  While Chassidic children are chattering in Yiddish on the playground, he and others are studying and preserving Yiddish as a relic of yesteryear.  To him, Yiddish books are a source of information about Jewish culture in our past, not something alive in the present.

Es Felt Eppes

I attended a shul today that I never attended before.  I just walked in and sat down.  As I listened to the Kerias Ha'Torah which was read in a Chassidic pronunciation that was more "extreme" than some milder ones I'm familiar with, it got me thinking. 

Although unlike many of my peers who grew up in a decidedly European atmosphere, I grew up in quite an American home.  Nevertheless, I absorbed so much of the European-Yiddish flavor in my surroundings.  There was Yiddish spoken all around me and we translated Chumash and Navi into Yiddish in school.  There were many Europeans, mostly Holocaust survivors, everywhere.  Meshulachim who frequently came to our home spoke Yiddish.

As I sat in shul and was able to follow the unfamiliarly pronounced keria,  I thought - today's kids who are growing up much more sheltered than I grew up, are not exposed to that rich, Yiddish atmosphere I was exposed to.  I daresay that my fine, frum nieces and nephews would not be able to find where this baal korei was up to, nor would they be able to understand what he was saying.  They either don't learn Yiddish in school or learn it minimally.  They don't encounter the Yiddish speaking or accented grocer, landlord, or grandparents. 

Life does go on and I feel somewhat saddened that the younger generation felt eppes (are missing something) or more than eppes.  It's not just the language.  It's a culture that they're missing.  A gefil.  Merely speaking Yiddish/Yinglish at home isn't enough, though it's something.  It's the exposure to an Old World culture that is lacking and that you can only get by growing up in and around it.  Years ago, our communities and schools were mixed, with children of American, Polish, and Hungarian parents playing together.  Today, we are far more segregated.  A shod.

Language and Us

 He was a typical macho Israeli who did not even want to sit down next to a religious man, he so despised what he stood for.  Nevertheless, when he eventually sat down and began speaking in Yiddish, to the astonishment of the rabbi, his persona was transformed.  When asked how he knew Yiddish, the Israeli said, "Ich shtam fun Vizhnitz" (I originate in Vizhnitz) - a Chassidic town in the Ukraine. 

I found the idea fascinating, that the language we speak has an effect on our demeanor.  Does the melodic tone or harshness of our primary language shape our outlook? Or perhaps it is because Yiddish speaking people have been closely associated with religious observance that by reverting to Yiddish, the man was also slipping into a more traditional mindset ...

As for Yiddish in our schools where the children don't speak Yiddish at home, I am familiar with the arguments against it and they are reasonable and yet, I think it's such a pity that so many of today's children are deprived of it.  Children are adept at learning new languages, the younger they are the easier it is.  If they had Yiddish immersion at a young age, the arguments about the burden of another language the children don't otherwise use would fall away for it wouldn't be a burden. 

I am seeing the products of the no-Yiddish approach and it seems to me that they are lacking in a way that maybe I cannot express in words.  A language goes along with a culture and mentality and otherwise fine and frum children are missing out because their Yiddish expressions are limited to "nebach" and "gezuntheit" and they cannot follow a Yom Tov Ehrlich song.  These songs and the Yiddish language are saturated with gefil that does not carry over in translation.

The solution: Go beyond Yinglish (yeshivish-English like geshmak and gevaldig sprinkled in English language sentences) and learn Yiddish!