It's a Very Painful Story: My Family's Escape from the Pogroms of the Ukraine
Haim recalls his family's escape from the pogroms of the Ukraine.
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The Czernowitz Conference and the Relationship between Yiddish and Hebrew
Professor Samuel Kassow considers the relationship between Yiddish and Hebrew, and Yiddish and the corpus of traditional Jewish texts. This issue was highly relevant around the time of the Czernowitz Conference in 1908. I.L. Peretz's opinion is addressed, as is the concern for making traditional texts accessible to ordinary Jews.
Yiddish | Wikipedia audio article
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Yiddish
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The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.
- Socrates
SUMMARY
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Yiddish (ייִדיש, יידיש or אידיש, yidish/idish, lit. Jewish, pronounced [ˈjɪdɪʃ] [ˈɪdɪʃ]; in older sources ייִדיש-טײַטש Yidish-Taitsh, lit. Judaeo-German) is the historical language of the Ashkenazi Jews. It originated during the 9th century in Central Europe, providing the nascent Ashkenazi community with a High German-based vernacular fused with elements taken from Hebrew and Aramaic as well as from Slavic languages and traces of Romance languages. Yiddish is written with a fully vocalized version of the Hebrew alphabet.
The earliest surviving references date from the 12th century and call the language לשון־אַשכּנז (loshn-ashknaz, language of Ashkenaz) or טײַטש (taytsh), a variant of tiutsch, the contemporary name for Middle High German. Colloquially, the language is sometimes called מאַמע־לשון (mame-loshn, lit. mother tongue), distinguishing it from לשון־קדש (loshn koydesh, holy tongue), meaning Hebrew and Aramaic. The term Yiddish, short for Yidish Taitsh Jewish German, did not become the most frequently used designation in the literature until the 18th century. In the late 19th and into the 20th century the language was more commonly called Jewish, especially in non-Jewish contexts, but Yiddish is again the more common designation today.Modern Yiddish has two major forms. Eastern Yiddish is far more common today. It includes Southeastern (Ukrainian–Romanian), Mideastern (Polish–Galician–Eastern Hungarian), and Northeastern (Lithuanian–Belarusian) dialects. Eastern Yiddish differs from Western both by its far greater size and by the extensive inclusion of words of Slavic origin. Western Yiddish is divided into Southwestern (Swiss–Alsatian–Southern German), Midwestern (Central German), and Northwestern (Netherlandic–Northern German) dialects. Yiddish is used in a number of Haredi Jewish communities worldwide; it is the first language of the home, school, and in many social settings among many Haredi Jews, and is used in most Hasidic and many Lithuanian yeshivas.
The term Yiddish is also used in the adjectival sense, synonymously with Jewish, to designate attributes of Yiddishkeit (Ashkenazi culture; for example, Yiddish cooking and Yiddish music: klezmer).Prior to the Holocaust, there were 11–13 million speakers of Yiddish among 17 million Jews worldwide. 85% of the approximately 6 million Jews who died in the Holocaust were Yiddish speakers, leading to a massive decline in the use of the language. Assimilation following World War II and aliyah, immigration to Israel, further decreased the use of Yiddish both among survivors and among Yiddish-speakers from other countries (such as in the Americas). However, the number of speakers is increasing in Hasidic communities.