What’s Yiddish?

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Yiddish is a Germanic language spoken by Jews in many areas of the world, including Germany, Russia, Israel, the United States, Canada, Brazil and Argentina. Originally a dialect of Middle High German, it developed among Ashkenazi Jews living in Central and Eastern Europe around the 10th century AD. The earliest known written record of Yiddish appears in a Jewish prayer book from 10. Although this is a Germanic language related to German and English, it is written in the Hebrew alphabet rather than the Roman alphabet used in other Germanic languages.

This language contains influences from many languages ​​besides German. Because the original Ashkenazi region included parts of France and bordered the Sephardic Jewish region in the Iberian peninsula and southern France, there are some Romance-based terms in Yiddish. The language also contains many Hebrew loanwords, often for terms relating to Jewish culture without Middle High German equivalents, such as the word for “synagogue.” As Ashkenazi culture spread to Eastern Europe, Slavic terms were incorporated into Yiddish as well. What were once Eastern dialects are the basis of nearly all forms of Yiddish spoken today.

Yiddish literature flourished in the 14th and 15th centuries and included songs and poems on both Jewish and European themes. The 14th-century epic poem Dukus Horant is one of the best-known Yiddish works of this period. The development of printing has led to an increase in the production of works in this language along with works printed in other languages. Yiddish retellings of biblical stories and Western epics were popular during this period.

Many Ashkenazi women during the 16th century were literate in Yiddish, but not Hebrew. A significant amount of literary and religious work was produced by and for Jewish women. Glückel of Hameln was one of the most popular female writers in this language and memoirs of her remain in print to this day. The semi-cursive typeface most often used for these works became known as vaybertaytsh, or “feminine Yiddish”, for this reason. Rashi is a different semi-cursive font used in Yiddish rabbinic commentaries on religious texts, while the older square Hebrew letters are usually reserved for Aramaic and Hebrew language texts.

The late 19th and early 20th centuries, the same period that secular Hebrew began to gain ground as a Jewish nationalist language, is considered the Golden Age of Yiddish literature. Important plays, novels and short stories date from this period. Three authors are primarily credited with creating the modern Yiddish literary genre: Sholem Yankev Abramovitch, Sholem Yakov Rabinovitsh, and Isaac Leib Peretz.

The language suffered a major blow during the Holocaust of the 1930s and 1940s, when Europe’s Jewish population was decimated. While millions survived, most Yiddish speakers were absorbed by other cultures and adopted their language. About one-third of all speakers of the language today live in the United States. A handful of newspapers and magazines existed in the country, some still in print today. Isaac Bashevis Singer, a Polish-born Yiddish writer living in the United States, won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1978.
It also boasts a significant speaking population in Israel, although its use has been controversial since the country’s founding. Many Zionists discouraged the use of Yiddish in the country’s early days, and state authorities heavily censored plays in theaters that used the language. Immigrants to Israel from Arab countries where Yiddish did not exist have contributed to its decline in Israel. While Hebrew remains the country’s official language, Yiddish is also enjoying increasing popularity among the younger population. It is the official language of the Jewish Autonomous Oblast in Russia and holds the status of an official minority language in Sweden and Moldova.

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