May 9, 2014
You get raised on this image of yiddish as a very schlocky and schmaltzy language, very intertwined with nostalgia and corniness and that does not prepare you for the reality of yiddish literature. Nothing I've read, even Sholem Aleichem (I haven't read any I.L. Peretz yet) has been schmaltzy or corny at all. It's all pretty stark and real and gives you a real visceral appreciation of the lives of my ancestors in the alter heym, of all the things it's meant to be a jew that our elders dealt with. What are the forces besides generational differences that have lead to this disjunction? Why has this rich culture been typed and disregarded? Like Rokhl asks, why didn't we have Yiddish?