Jeffrey Shandler - Yiddish: Biography of a Language

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Jeffrey Shandler 2020

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Shandler, Jeffrey, author.

Title: Yiddish : biography of a language / Jeffrey Shandler.

Description: New York : Oxford University Press, [2020] |

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2020007938 (print) | LCCN 2020007939 (ebook) |

ISBN 9780190651961 (hardback) | ISBN 9780190651985 (epub) |

ISBN 9780190651992

Subjects: LCSH: Yiddish languageHistory.

Classification: LCC PJ5113 .S532 2020 (print) |

LCC PJ5113 (ebook) | DDC 439/.1dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020007938

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020007939

For Stuart

once more and ever more

I thank the School of Arts and Sciences at Rutgers University for providing me with a sabbatical and a fellowship leave, which were essential to completing the research and writing of this book. During this period, I benefited greatly from my term as a Harry Starr Fellow at the Center for Jewish Studies of Harvard University and am especially grateful for the thoughtful intellectual engagement I enjoyed with David Stern, director of the Center for Jewish Studies, and the other members of the fellowship group. And I am most thankful to my friends Emily Lichtenstein and John Minahan for their generous hospitality during my stay in Boston.

For their kind assistance during the course of my work on this book, I thank Zachary Baker, Ayala Fader, Zev Feldman, Raphael Finkel, Paul Glasser, Stefanie Halpern, Paul Hanebrink, Jordan Kutzik, Rafi Lehmann, James Masschaele, Michael Miller, Holger Nath, Anita Norich, Samuel Norich, Chaya Nove, Rebekah Pejsova-Klein, Derek Penslar, Eddy Portnoy, Alyssa Quint, Rukhl Schaechter, Gitl Schaechter-Viswanath, Naomi Seidman, and Vital Zajka.

My most heartfelt thanks go to Stuart Schear, my partner in life and intrepid fellow adventurer in Yiddishland.

Standard Yiddish, as established by the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research beginning in the 1930s, provides the basis for the Yiddish grammar, lexicon, orthography, and phonology presented in this book. All Yiddish terms are romanized, in italics, using the YIVO system and reflect Standard Yiddish pronunciation, except when demonstrating dialect variants. In some cases, accepted scholarly spellings of certain terms (e.g., Haskalah) are used and are not italicized. Romanizations of Yiddish that appear in citations preserve their sources spellings.

Some Yiddish terms also appear in this book in the Jewish alphabet (i.e., the alef-beys) when this is relevant to the discussion. Except where noted, these terms are spelled according to YIVO Standard orthography, and they are also romanized. Hebrew and Russian terms are romanized using the Library of Congress system, minus diacritics. Yiddish, Hebrew, and Russian names of people and organizations are romanized according to their own preferred spellings, when known (e.g., Sholem Asch, Bais Yaakov). When a preferred spelling is not known, an authoritative version (per the Library of Congress catalog or YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe) is used; otherwise, names are romanized according to one of the aforementioned systems.

Endnotes indicate when translations of cited works are by the author; otherwise, they are per the sources cited.

It is remarkable how often people have spoken about Yiddish as if it were a kind of person. They variously characterize the language as a mother, an orphan, a maidservant, a seductress, a deviant, a muse, a laborer, an invalid, a foreigner, a magician, even a ghost. What are the implications of this wide range of portrayals? How do they inspireand complicaterelating the story of Yiddish as the narrative of a human being, as a biography?

A biography of Yiddishor, for that matter, of any languageis an intellectually provocative concept. It anthropomorphizes something that, while not human, depends on humankind for its existence. Language is not only entirely the creation of humans (though religious traditions may teach otherwise) but also an attribute widely regarded as distinguishing humans from other beings. Moreover, language use figures extensively in differentiating among national, regional, ethnic, religious, class, gender, sexual, generational, educational, ideological, and professional groups. Therefore, approaching a language as the subject of a biography, a genre conventionally reserved for the study of an individual person, draws attention to the relationships of a language with its speakers and with the cultural practices that people realize in or in relation to the language.

These issues are especially fitting for a book about Yiddish, the foundational vernacular of Ashkenazic Jewry (that is, the diaspora Jewish people generally understood as originating in northern Europe). The language is closely identified with particular Ashkenazic populations, their activities, mores, convictions, and sensibilities. Moreover, the scope of discussions of Yiddish regularly expands to address the nature of these Jews and their cultural practices. This interrelation among people, language, and culture is a central concern for the study of Yiddish, as are its speakers complex internal diversity and their long, varied history of contact with speakers of other languages.

In order to probe both the possibilities and the challenges posed by the notion of a biography of a language, this book is not organized according to chronology, geography, activity, or ideology but instead offers a series of short thematic chapters that follow the rubric of a biographical profile: date and place of birth, family background, residence, and so on. Each chapter integrates an examination of some aspect of the development, form, or characteristics of Yiddish with part of the range and dynamics of the languages role in Ashkenazic life, from the Middle Ages to the present, and in locations on every continent where Yiddish speakers have settled. These chapters also probe the symbolic meanings that Jews and others have attributed to Yiddish over time, which are key to understanding the varied perceptions and valuations of the language. For example, the chapter Name both enumerates the different terms used over the centuries to identify the vernacular of Ashkenazic Jewry and considers what each name that people have given to the language now generally referred to as Yiddish reveals about their understandings of its use and its significance.