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Yiddish – Two Hundred Years of Chutzpah and Counting

Two Hundred Years of Chutzpah and Counting

 

By Robert Frenkel

 

One hundred years ago one would have been hard pressed to stroll down Orchard Street on Manhattan’s Lower East Side without a smattering of the mameloshen, or “mother tongue” of Yiddish.

 

Yiddish is a fusion of Germanic and Slavic languages and is written in Hebrew.

 

Today however, the language, much like the people who spoke it, has been virtually exterminated. Banished to a few quips and pejorative phrases, the Yiddish that remains has become as New York as the bagel and schmear.

 

Though seemingly on the brink of extinction, Yiddish is beginning to mimic its practitioners and is seeing a large revival, both here and abroad.

 

One of the bastions breathing new life into an old language is the National Yiddish Theatre, or Folksbiene. Literally translated to “People’s Theatre”, this almost 200 year old Jewish institution is a driving force behind the resurrection of a virtually dead language.

 

Feliks Frenkel, the former president of the board and current chairman, describes how important maintaining the language is, “Yiddish is the blood of our ancestors. If we ever truly lose this  language, we will lose countless generations of a people. The Folksbiene is the only theatre of its kind in America, through the efforts of the staff there we are going to be able to save a language that saved its people.”

 

A few years ago, the Folksbiene Theatre offered a program for children and adults called “Kids and Yiddish”. The show was “90% English, 10% Yiddish, and 100%fun”.

 

Zalmen Mlotek, the director of the Folksbiene recalls, “What made the show successful was the bridging of the entire family. The songs were tailored to the younger generation by adding Yiddish words to new songs and the sarcasm and humor reached the adult demographic.”

 

In the Jewish world, Jews are mainly divided into three groups: Ashkenazim (European), Mizrahim (Middle Eastern/North African), and Sephardim (Jews who lived in the Iberian Peninsula prior to the Inquisition).

 

In Israel, the upswing in Yiddish learning can be largely attributed to Mizrahi students. As Menachem Gold, a 22 year old student pursuing his PhD in Jewish history in Israel describes, “A century ago, ninety percent of the Jewish world spoke Yiddish. If anyone wants to even attempt to understand the pains, thoughts, and emotions of generations of Jewry, they must know the language of these people, and that is Yiddish”.

 

In the era of the Holocaust, many Jews tried to hide their heritage, both from themselves and their children. Just like their Russian ancestors, who attempted to escape the pogroms of their inhospitable country, the Jews of Europe sought to forget their persecuted past. This meant full assimilation into their host countries, which meant forgetting the language of the oppressed: Yiddish.

 

Today, however, many of the grandchildren of these diaspora Jews are discovering their hidden past. Zalmen Mlotek, the director of the National Yiddish Theater: The Folksbiene, recounts his trip to Poland, “About fifteen years ago, I was invited to travel to Poland with a friend of mine who was archiving the Jewish struggle and attempting to bring Jews from America to meet with those in Poland. The trip was being sponsored by a local high school, so when we gathered the Jewish students into a dining hall, they were joined by their local counterparts. As we began singing Yiddish songs, I noticed something very unusual: the Polish kids were singing along with us! Like the scent of a freshly baked pie wafting through a room, one by one, the entire venue came to the same realization. Many of the young Poles didn’t understand how they knew both the lyrics and the melody to the songs, but the few who were touched by the epiphany that they are Jewish began to instantly break down in tears. It was on that day that I truly witnessed the power of Yiddish and Yiddishkeit – Language and Soul.”

 

Only time will tell whether the mameloshen will have enough chutzpah to survive the flames of time,  however the unprecedented upswing in youth seeking both identity and understanding seems to have ensured its future.

 

“Yiddish is the only language in the world that has a word like Yiddishkeit. In order to truly even describe the word, I would have to explain it to you in Yiddish, however it basically means the soulful feeling of the culture. No other language in the world is both a form of communication and a feeling,” exclaims Ariel Lana, a 16 year old high school student hoping to become a Yiddish performer.

 

Comments

  1. David Mandelbaum says

    May 18, 2012 at 11:40 pm

    New Yiddish Rep has been producing Yiddish theater in New York City since 2007. Articles about us have appeared in The New York Times, New York Post, Jewish Week, Jewish Standard, Jewish Press, English Forward, Yiddish Forward, and Algemeiner Journal.