Yiddish Renaissance

The Yiddish Renaissance, or Yiddishism (Yiddish: ײִדישיסם) was a cultural and linguistic movement which began among Jews in Eastern Europe during the latter part of the 19th Century. Some of the leading founders of this movement were Mendele Moykher-Sforim (1836–1917), I.L. Peretz (1852–1915), and Sholem Aleichem (1859–1916).

Origins

In 1861, Yehoshua Mordechai Lifshitz (1828–1878), who is considered the father of Yiddishism and Yiddish lexicography, circulated an essay entitled “The Four Classes” (Yiddish: di fir klasn די פיר קלאסן) in which he referred to Yiddish as a completely separate language from both German and Hebrew and the mother tongue of the Jewish people. He contended that the refinement and development of Yiddish were indispensable for the humanization and education of Jews. He also proposed Yiddish as a bridge linking Jewish and European cultures.

The first conscious, goal-oriented language reformer was Y.M. Lifshits (1828-1878). Although an adherent of the Enlightenment, he broke with its sterile anti-Yiddish philosophy, to become an early ideologue of Yiddishism and of Yiddish-language planning. He courageously stood up for the denigrated folk tongue, calling for its elevation and cultivation. He did this in the form of articles in the weekly Kol-mevaser (in the 1860's) and in his excellent Russian-Yiddish and Yiddish-Russian dictionaries [...].

The Czernowitz Conference

Hersch Dovid Nomberg, Chaim Zhitlovsky, Scholem Asch, Isaac Leib Peretz, Abraham Reisen during the Czernowitz-Conference, widely publicized post card.

From 30 August to 3 September 1908, "The Conference for the Yiddish Language", also known as "The Czernowitz-Conference" (Yiddish קאָנפֿערענץ פֿאָר דער יודישער שפּראַך, or טשערנאָוויצער קאָנפֿערענץ), took place in the Austro-Hungarian city of Czernowitz, Bukovina (today in southwestern Ukraine). The conference proclaimed Yiddish a modern language with a developing high culture. The organizers of this gathering (Benno Straucher, Nathan Birnbaum, Chaim Zhitlowsky, David Pinski, and Jacob Gordin) expressed a sense of urgency to the delegates that Yiddish as a language and as the binding glue of Jews throughout Eastern Europe needed help. They proclaimed that the status of Yiddish reflected the status of the Jewish people. Thus only by saving the language could the Jews as a people be saved from the onslaught of assimilation.

Further developments

The General Jewish Labour Bund in Lithuania, Poland and Russia (The Bund, a secular Jewish socialist party in the Russian Empire, active between 1897 and 1920), promoted the use of Yiddish as a Jewish national language, and to some extent opposed the Zionist project of reviving Hebrew.

In 1925 YIVO (Yidisher Visnshaftlekher Institut, English Yiddish Scientific Institute) was established in Wilno, Poland (now Vilnius, Lithuania). YIVO was initially proposed by Yiddish linguist and writer Nochum Shtif (1879–1933). He characterized his advocacy of Yiddish as "realistic" Jewish nationalism, contrasted to the "visionary" Hebraists and the "self-hating" assimilationists who adopted Russian or Polish.

Due in large part to the efforts of this movement, Yiddish, before the Nazi era, was becoming one of the great languages of the world, spoken by over 11,000,000 people. As many Eastern European Jews began to emigrate to the United States, the movement became very active there, especially in New York City. One aspect of this became known as Yiddish Theatre, and involved authors such as Ben Hecht and Clifford Odets. Another aspect was the huge Yiddish press, exemplified in the United States by Yiddish publications such as Forverts.

The Holocaust, however, led to a dramatic, sudden decline in the use of Yiddish, as the extensive european Jewish communities, both secular and religious, that used Yiddish in their day-to-day life were largely destroyed. Around 5 million, or 85%, of the victims of the Holocaust, were speakers of Yiddish. This, coupled with the Revival of the Hebrew language as the national language of Israel, essentially extinguished the dynamic momentum Yiddish had been gaining in the early decades of the 20th century.

See also

• Yiddish literature
• War of the Languages
• Jewish political movements

References

• Joshua A. Fishman: Attracting a Following to High-Culture Functions for a Language of Everyday Life: The Role of the Tshernovits Language Conference in the ‘Rise of Yiddish,’ International Journal of the Sociology of Language 24, 1980, S. 43–73.
• Joshua A. Fishman: Ideology, Society and Language. The Oddyssey of Nathan Birnbaum; Karoma Publ., Ann Arbor 1987, ISBN 0897200829.
• Joshua A. Fishman: The Tshernovits Conference Revisited: The ‘First World Conference for Yiddish’ 85 Years Later, in: The Earliest Stage of Language Planning, Berlin, 1993 S. 321–331.
• Emanuel S. Goldsmith: Modern Yiddish culture. The story of the Yiddish language movement. Fordham Univ Press, New York 1976, reprint 2000 ISBN 0-8232-1695-0.
• Herbert J. Lerner: The Tshernovits Language Conference. A Milestone in Jewish Nationalist Thought. New York NY 1957 (Masters Essay. Columbia University).

External links

• First Yiddish Language Conference, Czernowitz, August 30-September 3, 1908.