User:H3lic0pter44/Yiddishist movement/Bibliography

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Bibliography

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• Fox, Sandra. “‘The Passionate Few’: Youth and Yiddishism in American Jewish Culture, 1964 to Present.” Jewish social studies 26, no. 3 (2021): 1–34.
  • This journal article discusses how young Jewish Americans revived Yiddish in Jewish daily life after its decline post-Holocaust. The Yugntruf organization created a community for young Jews in America to socialize, translate literature, and standardize the Yiddish language in the 1960s. Although, as Jewish and American life evolved with the turn of the century, the purpose of the Yiddishist movement was also changed. In the United States, the Yiddish movement became a place for many American Jews from queer to Orthodox Jews to express a unique form of Jewish expression. For the small group of young Jewish Americans, Fox explains how Yiddish continues to act as a core piece of their identity. While a small movement in the United States, this article addresses how Yiddish is still very present in the lives of some Jewish Americans.
• Gennady Estraikh. “A Quest for Yiddishland: The 1937 World Yiddish Cultural Congress.” Quest. Issues in Contemporary Jewish History, no. 17 (2020).
  • This journal article discusses the significance of the World Yiddish Conference in 1937 in Paris. This conference was held to create unity among Yiddish speaking Jews and address the concept of Yiddishland. Yiddishland was supposed to be symbolic for a spiritual form of nationalism to divide some jews from both political Zionism and assimilation. Estraikh also discusses the controversy about the absence of soviet delegations at the conference and its political implications. This article provided deeper insight on the Yiddishist movement in Europe and Soviet Russia during the late 1930s. It also provides some explanation behind the motivations of the Yiddishist movement.
• Gitelman, Zvi. “The Divergent Fates of Yiddish and Hebrew.” Harvard Ukrainian Studies 35, no. 1/4 (2017): 417–30. http://www.jstor.org/stable/44983551.
  • This article answers several knowledge gaps present in the Wikipedia article. It presents a history of the perception of Yiddish in relation to Hebrew, specifically the increased pressure in the Russian Empire to choose between Yiddish and Hebrew as the national Jewish language after the Bolsheviks recognized the Jews as an ethnic group with increased linguistic and cultural rights. It then discusses the creation of “Soviet Yiddish”—Yiddish that was explicitly rid of any “Hebraisms”. This Soviet Yiddish was championed by the (Yiddishist) Jewish Communists, as Gitelman claims that they thought of Hebrew as the language of the exploiting class and Zionists. Additionally, this article seems to point out an error in the Wikipedia page; Gitelman reframes the conclusion of the Czernowitz conference as Yiddish being declared a national language of the Jews (alongside Hebrew) rather than the national language of the Jews. Finally, the article also discusses the negative perception of Yiddish as a language for the poor and uneducated through the use of the derogatory term “zhargon”. This acts as useful background information.
• Panczyk, Jowita. 2023. “Is the War Over Yet?” Mimeo. December 18, 2023. https://mimeo.dubnow.de/is-the-war-over-yet/.
  • The article covers the relationship between Hebrew and Yiddish literature within Israeli politics. Even though the conflict between both languages was announced to be over, there were still notable instances of Yiddish being purposefully excluded in Israel and Jewish life. Through the literary journal, “De Goldene Keyt”, writers attempted to bring Yiddish and Hebrew together. Authors who wrote for the article provided insight on the presence of Yiddish during the mid 20th century in Israel. This article addresses the knowledge gap in the Wikipedia article regarding the life of the Yiddishist Movement after the Holocaust and after the establishment of Hebrew as the Jewish national language.
• Katz, Dovid. "Language: Yiddish." YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe 31 October 2011. 14 March 2024 <https://yivoencyclopedia.org/article.aspx/Language/Yiddish>.
  • The part of this article that I would use talks about Yiddishism in the twentieth century. It starts off talking about how the support for systematizing Yiddish was expanding very quickly. It then goes into the Czernowitz conference and developments that came from this meeting. While these things are included in the main wikipedia article, the information surrounding some of these developments is very vague or even left off. Coming from these developments, the article talks about how some members wanted to detach Yiddish and politics to make Yiddish a vehicle of expression for the Jewish society. Finally, the article touches on the Soviet Union’s acceptance and support of Yiddish at first, but then Stalin’s complete barring of Yiddish and the purging of Yiddish leaders. This article covers the research gaps that Yiddish would help educate Jews and connect with European culture, as well as the picture of what future Jewish communities would look like. Finally, this article is useful to touch up on vague information and to add some important developments that were originally left out.
• Mitchell, Bruce. “Yiddish and the Hebrew Revival: A New Look at the Changing Role of Yiddish.” Monatshefte 90, no. 2 (1998): 189–97. http://www.jstor.org/stable/30153700.
  • This article explores the role that Yiddish has played in the 20th century. During the growth of political Zionism, Hebrew was promoted as the Jewish national language and many Jews became very anti-Yiddish because the language symbolized Jews in diaspora. The language war between Yiddish and Hebrew highlighted part of the struggle Jews faced while creating a national identity before and after World War II. However, towards the end of the century, the previously negative view of Yiddish in Israel began to change and some schools began teaching Yiddish alongside modern Hebrew as an additional form of education about Jewish history. This article dives into the inseparable connection between language and culture and how despite Yiddish being a minority language it still serves a great purpose for the secular Jewish identity. This article wonderfully addresses how Yiddish has not become an entirely dead language and will fill in the knowledge gap regarding the life of Yiddish after the Holocaust.
• Pinsker, Shachar. “Choosing Yiddish in Israel: Yung Yisroel between Home and Exile, the Center and the Margins.” In Choosing Yiddish: New Frontiers of Language and Culture, 277-294. Wayne State UP, 2013.
  • This book chapter outlines the role of Yiddish in early Israel (1950s-1960s) through the lens of the literary Yiddishist group Yung Yisroel. To contextualize the article, it begins by discussing the blatant rejection of the Yiddish language by the pre-state Yishuv and early Israeli government. It continues on to describe the positive reception they gathered from other Yiddishists around the world in comparison to the very few mentions of the group in Israeli media.  Pinsker argues that this is the direct result of the “homelessness” of Yiddish in Israel. This article, thus, addresses the Wikipedia page’s knowledge gap of the role of secular Yiddishism in post-war Israel.
• Shanes, Joshua. “Yiddish and Jewish Diaspora Nationalism.” Monatshefte, vol. 90, no. 2, 1998, pp. 178–88. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/30153699. Accessed 15 Mar. 2024. https://www-jstor-org.ezproxy.middlebury.edu/stable/30153699?seq=8
  • This article provides a much clearer definition of the Yiddishist movement than the Wikipedia page provides. It states that Yiddishists sought to defend Yiddish as “a legitimate (or the only legitimate)” Jewish national language. Linked to this, it also thoroughly outlines the Bund’s position in Russia and their use of Yiddish to further their nationalist platform. This can act as a basis for a revision of the leading section, as currently it is somewhat vague. It describes how attitudes towards Yiddish distinguished different forms of diaspora nationalism; for example, it states that Dubnow was incredibly critical of those who saw Yiddish and the singular Jewish language, in contrast to Yiddishists like Chaim Zhitlowsky. It also talks about Ber Borechev, who is not mentioned in the Wikipedia article, and his important contributions to scholarship in Yiddish. Overall, the article very clearly describes how the rejection of Yiddish (and thereby also Yiddishists) was key to the Zionist ideology, as it represented a rejection of the diaspora. This could be a useful addition to the Wikipedia article in its discussion of the crucial supporters and “further developments” of the Yiddishist movement.
• Zohar, Emma. “Bread, Butter and Education: The Yiddishist Movements in Poland, 1914–1916.” The Jewish Experience of the First World War. London: Palgrave Macmillan UK, 2019. 67–84. Web.
  • This chapter goes over the experience of Polish Jews at the beginning and throughout the first world war. It talks about how language is widely believed to be a crucial part of defining nationality, then narrowing that statement down by talking about how the three main Jewish political parties in Poland decided to accept Yiddish as their “Jewish” language. In consequence of this, the parties wanted Poland to recognize Yiddish as a second language in Poland. This would help Jews interact with the bureaucracy in their own language as well as a statement that Poland is a home for two nations: the Polish and Jewish. Due to the change, schools, cultural activity, and informal movements would all be in Yiddish. This source would help fill the information gap questioning whether Yiddish was the language of modern Jews, what they pictured the future of the Jewish people to look like, and who the movement applied to.

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