Yiddishist movement

Yiddishism (Yiddish: ײִדישיזם) is a cultural and linguistic movement which began among Jews in Eastern Europe during the latter part of the 19th century.^[1] Some of the leading founders of this movement were Mendele Moykher-Sforim (1836–1917),^[2] I. L. Peretz (1852–1915), and Sholem Aleichem (1859–1916).^[3] The Yiddishist movement gained popularity alongside the growth of the Jewish Labor Bund and other Jewish political movements, particularly in the Russian Empire and United States.^[4] The movement also fluctuated throughout the 20th and 21st century because of the revival of the Hebrew language and the negative associations with the Yiddish language.

The Haskalah, or Jewish Enlightenment, movement that arose in the late 18th century played a large role in rejecting Yiddish as a Jewish language. However, many maskilim, particularly in the Russian Empire, expanded the Yiddish press to use it as a tool to spread their enlightenment ideas, thereby building a platform for future Yiddishists. Aleksander Zederbaum, a prominent member of the Haskalah, founded the influential Yiddish periodical Kol Mevasser, which would become a mainstay of the Yiddish press, including not only news but also stories and several novels in serialization.^[5]

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 קלאַסן) in which he referred to Yiddish as a completely separate language from both German and Hebrew and, in the European context of his audience, the "mother tongue" of the Jewish people.^[6] In this essay, which was eventually published in 1863 in an early issue of the influential Yiddish periodical Kol Mevasser, he contended that the refinement and development of Yiddish were indispensable for the humanization and education of Jews.^[6] In a subsequent essay published in the same periodical, he also proposed Yiddish as a bridge linking Jewish and European cultures.^[6] Scholar Mordkhe Schaechter characterizes Lifshitz as "[t]he first conscious, goal-oriented language reformer" in the field of Yiddish, and highlights his pivotal role in countering the negative attitudes toward the language propagated within the Haskalah, or Jewish Enlightenment movement:

Although an adherent of the Enlightenment, [Lifshitz] 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 1860s) and in his excellent Russian-Yiddish and Yiddish-Russian dictionaries [...].^[7]

Several prominent Yiddish authors also emerged in this time, transforming the perception of Yiddish from a "jargon" of no literary value into an accepted artistic language. Mendele Mocher Sforim, Sholem Aleichem, and I.L. Peretz are now seen as the basis for classic Yiddish fiction and are thereby highly influential in the Yiddishist movement.^[8][9]

From 30th of August to 4th of September 1908, "The Conference for the Yiddish Language" (קאָנפֿערענץ פֿאָר דער ייִדישער שפּראַך, Konferents for der Yidisher Shprakh) also known as "The Czernowitz Conference" (טשערנאָוויצער קאָנפֿערענץ, Tshernovitser Konferents) 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. Before the conference, the plan created by the organizers had several topics that avoided political issues like the status of Yiddish. It included topics addressing the need for more Yiddish educators and educational systems, support for Yiddish press, theater, and literature, and changing the norm of young Jews choosing Hebrew or another non-Jewish language over Yiddish. Regardless of the extensive plan, the status of Yiddish almost immediately came up and took the majority of the conference’s time. Attendees questioned if Yiddish was only “a” national language of the Jewish people or if it was “the” national language. Eventually, the conference, for the first time in history declared Yiddish to be "a national language of the Jewish people."^[10][11] Zionist activists were, however, not opposed to this decision; Yiddish was seen as the realistic choice of a language to organize the Jews of Eastern Europe for Jewish nationalism.^[12]

In 1925 YIVO (Yiddish Scientific Institute; ייִוואָ: ייִדישער װיסנשאַפֿטלעכער אינסטיטוט Yidisher Visnshaftlekher Institut) was established in Wilno, Poland (Vilnius, now part of 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. YIVO’s work was largely secular in nature, reflecting its original members. The Division of Philology, which included Max Weinreich, standardized Yiddish orthography under YIVO. Simultaneously, the Division of History, originally headed by Elias Tcherikower, translated major works from Russian to Yiddish and conducted further research on historical topics. ^[13]

The Bund (The General Jewish Labour Bund in Lithuania, Poland and Russia; Yiddish: אַלגעמײנער ייִדישער אַרבעטער בונד אין ליטע פּוילין און רוסלאַנד, Algemeyner Yidisher Arbeter Bund in Lite, Poyln un Rusland), a secular Jewish socialist party in the Russian Empire, founded in Vilnius, Poland in 1897 and active through 1920, promoted the use of Yiddish as a Jewish national language, and to some extent opposed the Zionist project of reviving Hebrew.^[14] Moreover, beyond the Labour Bund group in Poland, the International Jewish Labor Bund regarded Yiddish as the Jewish national language.

In the Soviet Union during the 1920s, Yiddish was promoted as the language of the Jewish proletariat.^[15] It became one of the official languages in the Ukrainian People's Republic and in some of the Soviet republics, such as the Belarusian Soviet Socialist Republic and the Galician Soviet Socialist Republic. A few of the republics included Yiddish public institutions like post offices and courts. A public educational system entirely based on the Yiddish language was established and comprised kindergartens, schools, and higher educational institutions. Advanced research institutions and Yiddish publishing houses began to open throughout the Soviet Union. At the same time, Hebrew was considered a bourgeois language and its use was generally discouraged. By the mid-1930s, Soviet rule forced scholars to work under intense restrictions. Soviet legislation dictated the content, vocabulary, and spelling of Yiddish scholarship. A few years later, in 1937, leading Yiddish writers and scholars were arrested and executed. Stalinist orders then gradually closed down the remaining publishing houses, research academies, and schools. Growing persecution of surviving Yiddish authors ultimately came to an end on August 12, 1952. Stalin ordered the execution of twenty-four prominent Yiddish scholars and artists in the Soviet Union all in a single night.^[5][16]

In 1928, the Soviet Union created the Jewish Autonomous Oblast (Yiddish: ייִדישע אווטאָנאָמע געגנט, yidishe avtonome gegnt^[17]). Located in the Russian Far East and bordering China, its administrative center was the town of Birobidzhan. There, the Soviets envisaged setting up a new "Soviet Zion", where a proletarian Jewish culture could be developed. Yiddish, rather than Hebrew, would be the national language. Although, concurrently, the Soviets made immigration to Birobidzhan very difficult. Ultimately, the vast majority of the Yiddish-language cultural institutions in the Soviet Union were closed in the late 1930s.

As many Eastern European Jews began to emigrate to the United States, the movement became very active there, especially in New York City.^[18] One aspect of this became known as Yiddish Theatre,^[19] and involved authors such as Ben Hecht and Clifford Odets.^[20]

Yiddish also became the language of Jewish labor and political movements in the US. The majority of the Yiddish-speaking political parties from the Pale of Settlement had equivalents in the United States. Notably, even the Zionist parties, like the North-American branch of Poalei-Zion, published much of their material in Yiddish rather than Hebrew.^[21] Further, at the beginning of the 20th century, American Jewish radicals also printed many political newspapers and other materials. These included the newspaper Forverts, which began as a socialist endeavor, and the Freie Arbeiter Stimme founded by anarchists.^[22]

The Yiddish-speaking Eastern European Jews that came to the US in the late 19th and early 20th centuries were also often underpaid and overworked in unsafe conditions, resulting in the creation of many Jewish unions. Notably, the United Hebrew Trades was a collective of labor unions founded in 1888, eventually representing over 250,000 members. Forverts, and other leftist Yiddishist newspapers, were instrumental in organizing and recruiting for these organizations.^[23]

Owing in a large part to the efforts of the Yiddishist movement, Yiddish, before World War II, was becoming a major language, spoken by over 11,000,000 people.^[24]

The Holocaust, however, led to a large 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 Jewish victims of the Holocaust, were speakers of Yiddish.^[25]

Additionally, the revival of the Hebrew language as the national language of Israel, created a significant decline in the use of Yiddish in the daily Jewish life.^[26] To some, Yiddish was seen as the language of the Jewish people in diaspora and believed its use should be extinguished in the early establishment of Israel.^[27] Di Goldene Keyt was a literary journal started by Avrom Sutzkever in 1949 in an attempt to bridge the gap between Yiddish and Hebrew literature.^[28] In this journal, Yiddish and Hebrew poems and pieces of literature were published but much of Sutzkever’s work went unrecognized until the 1980s because of the fierce rivalry between Hebraists and Yiddishists.

However, Yiddish did not become a completely “dead” language after the Holocaust. In the mid 20th century there was the establishment of the Yungntruf, a movement for young Yiddish speakers which still continues today. The Yungntruf movement also created the Yiddish Farm in 2012, a farm in New York which offers an immersive education for students to learn and speak in Yiddish. The use of Yiddish is also now offered as a language on Duolingo, used throughout the social media platforms of Jews, and is offered as a language in schools, on an international scale.^[29] Particularly in the United States, the use of Yiddish has become a part of the identity of young Jewish Americans ranging from queer to orthodox individuals.

Additionally, the decline of secular Yiddish education after the Holocaust encouraged the creation of summer programs and university courses at more than 50 institutions catered to Yiddish learning.[1] Scholars including Uriel Weinreich, Mordkhe Schaechter, and Marvin Herzog were especially influential in establishing American academic Yiddish programs.

• Anti-Yiddish sentiment
• Yiddish literature
• Yiddish symbols
• War of the Languages
• Jewish political movements
• California Institute for Yiddish Culture and Language
• L. L. Zamenhof § Work on Yiddish language and Jewish issues — the first Yiddish grammar, published only partially. It proposed a romanized version based on the Białystok (Northeastern) dialect, as a unifying language for the Jews of the Russian Empire.

• Gennady Estraikh. “A Quest for Yiddishland: The 1937 World Yiddish Cultural Congress.” Quest. Issues in Contemporary Jewish History, no. 17 (2020).
• 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 Odyssey of Nathan Birnbaum; Karoma Publ., Ann Arbor 1987, ISBN 0-89720-082-9.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• Fox, Sandra. “‘The Passionate Few’: Youth and Yiddishism in American Jewish Culture, 1964 to Present.” Jewish social studies 26, no. 3 (2021): 1–34.
• Herbert J. Lerner: The Tshernovits Language Conference. A Milestone in Jewish Nationalist Thought. New York NY 1957 (Masters Essay. Columbia University).
• Katz, Dovid. "Language: Yiddish." YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe 31 October 2011. 14 March 2024 <https://yivoencyclopedia.org/article.aspx/Language/Yiddish>.
• 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.
• Panczyk, Jowita. 2023. “Is the War Over Yet?” Mimeo. December 18, 2023. https://mimeo.dubnow.de/is-the-war-over-yet/.
• 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.
• 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
• 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.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Czernowitz Conference.

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