what are your thoughts on hebrew vs yiddish? should jewish children learn yiddish the way they do hebrew?
I'm going to guess that Anon is not Jewish based on one word in the question. If Anon was Jewish, the question would more likely have been:
"What are your thoughts on Hebrew and Yiddish? Should Jewish children learn Yiddish the way they do Hebrew?"
The vs. is glaring and turns this into a loaded question suggesting there's some sort of competition between Yiddish and Hebrew.
Before we get into the history, understand that Yiddish is important in my family. Zvee Scooler (actor in Yiddish theatre, famous in the Yiddish-speaking world as Der Grammeister for composing and reading Yiddish poetry on the radio for decades, and appearing in Fiddler on the Roof as the Rabbi) was a cousin. My grandmother sang me Yiddish lullabies. Nobody can question my affection for Yiddish or Yiddishkeit.
An Excruciatingly Brief and Incomplete History of Jewish Languages
Hebrew began as the spoken language of the ancient Israelites. It was the language of the Tanakh (the Hebrew Bible), Jewish law, and prayer. After the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE, it gradually stopped being a spoken vernacular. For more than 1,500 years, Hebrew functioned as a sacred and literary language while Jews spoke other languages in daily life. (We'll come back to those languages in a minute.)
In the late 1800s, secular Zionists revived Hebrew as a modern spoken language. They created new vocabulary required by the modern world, published newspapers, and raised children in Hebrew-speaking homes. By 1948, Hebrew had been reestablished as the daily language of a growing Jewish society. It now connects Israeli Jews from diverse backgrounds and is spoken by more Jews than any other language in history.
Yiddish began around the 9th century in Central Europe, developing from medieval German mixed with Hebrew, Aramaic, and Slavic languages, and became the daily vernacular of Ashkenaz Jews for centuries. It became a language of lullabies, labor unions, jokes, novels, and daily life. By the early 20th century, more than 10 million people spoke Yiddish.
The Holocaust (which the BBC, please note, carefully avoids mentioning above) wiped out about 5.5 million Yiddish speakers, but that wasn't the only problem.
Stalinist repression finished off more in Soviet-controlled areas.
In Israel, early Zionist leaders discouraged Yiddish as tied to exile and powerlessness. It was also Germanic, and survivors of the Nazis, understandably, didn't feel enthuastic about a mostly-German national language.
In America, Yiddish faded quietly and gradually, displaced by English and assimilation.
But Yiddish never died. It remained alive in Hasidic communities and in secular cultural circles.
Today, it's taught, spoken, and studied worldwide.
Here's the thing, though:
YIDDISH ISN'T THE ONLY DIASPORA JEWISH LANGUAGE
It requires willful ignorance and Ashkenaz chauvinism to pretend Yiddish is the Jewish language.
Yiddish is Judeo-German, but Jews created similar languages everywhere they lived.
Judeo-Spanish (Ladino) was spoken by Sephardic Jews after the 1492 expulsion from Spain
Judeo-Arabic was the daily language of Jews in Iraq, Egypt, Morocco, and Yemen. Much of medieval Jewish philosophy, including Maimonides' works, was written in it
Judeo-Persian, Judeo-Tat, Judeo-Italian and others were spoken across Central Asia, the Caucasus, and southern Europe
These languages were not mutually intelligible. A Yiddish speaker from Warsaw could not converse with a Ladino speaker from Salonika...except in Hebrew.
Hebrew was used in prayer, scholarship, legal documents, and religious correspondence. It was the only shared language of the diaspora. A rabbi in Baghdad could read a responsum written by a rabbi in Krakow in Hebrew. Hebrew provided the common framework that kept Jews connected when they shared no other language.
Hebrew united the diaspora.
So (asks the Jew who knows the basic history of these languages), why does this non-Jewish Anon mistakenly believe that Hebrew and Yiddish are in opposition?
I blame the Bundists.
The Bundists and Their Heirs
The General Jewish Labour Bund championed Yiddish, socialism, and diaspora autonomy. Its core idea was doikayt ("hereness"), the belief that Jews should not seek national self-determination, that Jews should remain stateless and fight for equality wherever they live.
Bundism is dead. Most of the Bundists were murdered in Europe.
Bundism's spirit survives only in some contemporary Western circles that reject Zionism and embrace diaspora-centered identity. Among some anti-Zionist Jews, Yiddish revival has become performative protest, not really about recovering a grandmother's language, but about making a political, antizionist statement.
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But if we do as these neo-pseudo-bundists suggest and elevate Yiddish as the Jewish language, what does that do to the Sephardim, the Mizrahim, the Jews from India, China, Persia, and everywhere else Jews built civilizations without ever encountering Yiddish?
Those Jews are no less Jewish than Ashkenazim. The bundists who stayed in Europe mostly died in the Holocaust, and faulting other Jews for running when their "hereness" was plotting their murder is tone-deaf, history-blind, and offensively stupid - this includes Hannah Einbinder.
Elevating Yiddish above Hebrew and other diaspora Jewish lanuages erases millions of Jews' lived experiences. It's ignorant, false, and shameful.
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The claim that Yiddish and Hebrew are in an adversarial relationship is a modern politicization and weaponization of language.
They don't compete
Hebrew and Yiddish serve different purposes, express different parts of Jewish experience, and reflect different historical layers. They coexist naturally.
Some Jews grow up speaking Yiddish at home and Hebrew at school. Some pray in Hebrew, read poetry in Yiddish, and text friends in English.
Jewish culture has always contained multiple languages. No single one defines us, but Hebrew uniquely unites us - and I say this as someone whose Hebrew suuuuuuuuuuucks.
Nobody is erasing Yiddish. It's taught in universities, supported by Israeli institutions, and used as a first language in Hasidic schools.
Musicians record klezmer albums in Yiddish. Writers publish new books in Yiddish. The Forward still publishes a Yiddish edition. Yiddish is thriving more than anyone had hoped possible after 5.5 million of it's speakers were murdered.
There is room for Yiddish. There is room for Hebrew. There is room for Ladino, Judeo-Arabic, Judeo-Persian, and all the languages we spoke in exile and continue to speak in sovereignty.
Anon asked: Should Jewish children learn Yiddish?
Jewish children should learn what connects them to their people and their history.
These languages don't compete. They accumulate, compliment, collaborate, and preserve memory while carrying us forward.
That complex relationship with languages?
That's very, very Jewish.
