Dear Mr. Hoberman, Rachel and fellow Safranists,
In the note
that Mr. Hoberman write and Rachel posted to our list Mr. Hoberman
posits that he may be venting and I certainly hope that his overall
thoughts are more moderate. I would like to parse the statements of
Joseph Berger, the author of the NYT's article, a little differently.
The question is: how can these two statements be reconciled:
1) The survival of Yiddish in America is an on-the-one-hand,
on-the-other-hand story. Yiddish, once the language of the Jews of
Eastern Europe, is undoubtedly moribund, with its last full-throated
speakers, Holocaust survivors, now well into their 80s and 90s.
and 2) On the other hand, the language is booming among Hasidim, for
whom it is a lingua franca, mushrooming so prolifically that by some
estimates the ultra-Orthodox will form a majority of American Jews by
century's end.
Yiddish, the language of the Jews of Eastern Europe is
moribund. There are few if any living authors who could write or
speak in Yiddish that is specific to the geographic particularities
as specified in a linguistic atlas of European Yiddish. The only
exceptions to this are those Soviet or Soviet immigrant speakers of
Yiddish still in the former Soviet Union or in the post-Soviet
dispersion who are speaking Yiddish (at my synagogue I experience the
dissonance of accent between former Muscovites and former Odessans).
These are the author's full-throated speakers. The production of
literature from this population is minimal and undistinguished. Its
communicative capabilities are contracting. This is a moribund
language. Kal ve-homer to American Yiddish productivity that derived
from that tradition.
The ultra-Orthodox community is the locus of increased
Yiddish demographic representation. The printed production in the
ultra community is comprised of translations of Hebrew seforim into
Yiddish, internal sectarian documents, kosher fiction, textbooks
and weekly and monthly periodicals. While it is a source of new
Yiddish speakers (I was taken aback the first time I saw a five year
old speaking fluent Yiddish) the Haredi Yiddish is a different
Yiddish. It may grow up to be something important in time. It is
part of circumscribed tri-lingualism of Yiddish, English and
(Yeshivish) Hebrew. As a spoken language it is not moribund and as a
written language it is not entirely moribund. But ultimately it point
the direction away from Yiddish towards something more like
Judeo-English (not at all to be confused with Yinglish), a distinct
separatist linguistic phenomenon resident in the English speaking and
anglophone Jewish world.
Berger of the Times, makes a prediction about the haredi
community that places them as the future majority among American Jews
and includes Hasidim in the short list of groups that patronize CYCO.
I am sceptical about Berger's demographics. A lot can happen in
ninety years. However, my frustration with the Haredi community and
Yiddish is that they ignore, abhor, or are ignorant of what is in
already available in Yiddish. The Yiddish literature Hasid is
generally unaware of the important and diverting (and Kosher) works
on Hasidism in Yiddish by Menashe Ungar, Samuel Hirsh Setzer and B.
Justman. As time passes the haredi version of Yiddish, as it evolves
new grammar and vocabulary, will make the works of the older
Yiddish authors seem less and less accessible. Berger is not wrong in
fearing that this community will not support the type of books CYCO
has. The disappearance of a community oriented around these books
will be a sad thing. It may be impossible to resist in the long run,
but the effort is worthwhile. I don't perceive any negative bias in
Berger's article toward Hasidim and find it unfair to chastise him
for such. If the challenges that CYCO faces were only the challenges
that face Yiddish CYCO would have much better prospects. That is a
subject I could discuss with anyone who is interested and would be
glad at some other time and in some other place.
I for one am grateful to Mr. Berger for the time and
effort that he has put in to bringing the current situation at CYCO
to a larger audience. There is such a thing as bad publicity for
Yiddish, but Mr. Berger's article is anything but.
All the best,
Henry Hollander
---
Messages and opinions expressed on Hasafran are those of the individual author
and are not necessarily endorsed by the Association of Jewish Libraries (AJL)
===
Submissions for Ha-Safran, send to: hasaf...@osu.edu
SUBscribing, SIGNOFF commands send to: Listproc @ lists.acs.ohio-state.edu
Questions, problems, complaints, compliments;-) send to: galron.1 @ osu.edu
Ha-Safran Archives:
Current:
http://www.mail-archive.com/hasafran%40lists.acs.ohio-state.edu/maillist.html
