Yiddish as a First Language in Ultra-Orthodox

¶ … Yiddish as a first language in Ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities, compared to the use of local vernacular (for example, Hebrew in Israeli-Based Jews, or English in London and New York-Based Jews): in Hasidic Jews, the use of Yiddish is widespread, whereas in other Jewish groups, the local vernacular is more common.

This paper discusses the reasons behind these differences, and looks at the functions that Yiddish serves in these Hasidic Jew communities. The paper also looks at the effects of outside pressures has on the use of Yiddish, and on issues of identity in general.

The paper also looks at the religious issues related to the use of Yiddish, and at heritage issues in general. The paper also looks in detail at the use of Yiddish as a cultural isolating mechanism, as a way to create barriers between Hasidic Jews and non-Hasidic Jews, and also Hasidic Jews and non-Jews (gentiles).

The paper also includes reflections upon the issue of the use of Yiddish by Hasidic Jews in more general sociological terms, in terms of language and ethnicity, the use of language to determine group identity, and the use of language to define religious identity.

In terms of the issue of language and ethnicity, and the use of language to define religious identity, Fishman (1997) in his introduction to In Praise of the Beloved Language says that for Hasidic Jews, Yiddish defines their ethnicity, such that Yiddish has sanctity: for the Hasidics, it is where their language and their religion meet. For Hasidic Jews, Yiddish is seen as a holy language, through which God's word is spread.

In addition, Yiddish is seen by the Hasidic Jews as having been hallowed by the Holocaust itself, just as it had previously been hallowed by the veritable saints of every generation, who in previous generations would mix Yiddish exclamations into their Hebrew-Aramaic prayers, and would formulate their innovative interpretations of God's words in Yiddish and Loshn-Koydesh (Fishman, 1997). The Hasidics believe that no other vernacular has absorbed so much of the sanctity of the Torah, and so much of the process of learning the Talmud, as has Yiddish (Fishman, 1997).

In In Praise of the Beloved, Fishman also argues that one's native language offers the people speaking that language instant kinship associations, and that as kinship is the core of ethnicity, that a shared language offers people feelings of being and belonging (to an ethnic group), feelings of being as belonging. He argues that the use of Yiddish by Hasidic Jews serves exactly this purpose, such that it's use - and its exclusive use in some sectors of some Hasidic communities - offers Hasidic Jews a way in which to identify themselves, and to identify themselves as themselves.

Fishman goes further, to argue that the Hasidic children 'absorb Yiddish and Yidishkeyt (the traditional Hasidic Jewish culture) together, the one being the carrier of the other'. As Yiddish is the language of religion, and as Hasidic Jews are so deeply, so practically, such a religious people, such that their culture is defined by their religion, for Hasidic Jews, Yiddish does indeed envelop it's speakers within the Hasidic culture, by its very nature.

This leads us on naturally to the sociology of language, in terms of the essentiality of language to identity, which is illustrated perfectly by the Hasidic Jews. Their culture, their religion, their identity, is encapsulated in the words that make up the Yiddish language, and as it is spoken by Hasidic Jews in their communities, the reinforcement of their religiosity, of their identity, of their culture, grows ever stronger.

In addition to Yiddish serving to reinforce the Hasidic Jews' identity, this quote from a Hasidic leader in Fishman's In Praise of the Beloved Language is interesting: 'Yiddish is out language, and will remain our language it is a bulwark against assimilation." The Hasidic Jews, then, are very much conscious of the importance of their use of Yiddish, indeed, of their need to use Yiddish, as a defence against an attack against their culture, as a defence against any passive slipping away of their culture.

Indeed, it can be seen that Yiddish grows ever stronger, with Yiddish literature and journalism, and theater growing ever more popular. There has been a mighty cultural endeavor to preserve, and also to give life to, the Yiddish language, and to Yiddish arts. Another quote from Fishman's In Praise of the Beloved also helps to illustrate the strength of the fervour towards preserving the Yiddish language amongst Hasidic Jews, "Yiddish does not need to be revived, nor replanted, nor strengthened. It is fully alive, deeply rooted and at full strength amongst the people. The time has come to say to ourselves, and the world, Yiddish is our language, and will remain our language" (Shtif, 1920). This quote is oft-repeated amongst Hasidic Jews, and used was for opening speech for the Yivo Institute, an Institute dedicated to the Yiddish language, and to the Hasidic culture.

In addition, it could, and has, been argued that the use of Yiddish is so widespread, because the Hasidic Jews feel that something is owed to the Yiddish language, the language that 'accompanied us from the first breath of life, accompanied the birth pains of our mothers' and in which the 'Martyrs wailed prior to their death in the gas chambers' (Shamir, 1992). Shamir continues, 'This in itself made Yiddish into the holy tongue. We, the remaining generation of Byalistokers must be proud of our rooted Yiddish and exert ourselves to maintain it for as long as we live. The tragedy that has befallen us and our language is inestimable; we must always remember it and remind others of it and hand it (our language) on to coming generations'.

There is therefore, very much a sense of Yiddish as a holy language, in the religious sense, but also as a language made holy by the trials it's speakers have gone through throughout the history of the Hasidic Jews. It is not difficult to imagine that Hasidic Jews feel the immense weight of the need to preserve Yiddish at all costs, for the people who died so that they could live.

Now we shall look in a little more detail at the history of the Yiddish language, and how this itself reinforces the use of Yiddish in Hasidic Jewish communities today. Yiddish is one of the major diaspora vernaculars, alongside Hebrew and Aramaic; in history, Yiddish was not used as the language of worship (this was Loshn-Koydesh, a combination of ancient and Medieval Hebrew and Judeo-Aramaic), but rather was used as the language of conversation, of Talmudic Law, of song, of literature. Yiddish has therefore been important to the daily lives of all Jews (not just Hasidic Jews) for centuries, and indeed Yiddish is central to the Jewish way of life.

Yiddish was used, but was not, however, liked, by the majority of Jews. Yiddish language books of ritual or religious significance were banned until the 18th century. By the 20th century, however, Yiddish was an article of faith for many Eastern European Jews, which was seen as a new threat to the non-Yiddish speaking Jews; the Orthodox defenders of Yiddish, however, continued to see Yiddish as a glorious and romanticized language, which left the Hissidic Orthodox Jews to reign uncontested in Eastern Europe. This fervour became tied in to the diaspora cultural-autonomist pro-Yiddish movement which developed in the Eastern European countries, in response to the increasing threats from Nazism and Communism.

In concert with these developments in the Yiddish movements, after World War I, when 'the jewishness question' began to be discussed, and when the Zionist movement became stronger, Yiddish began to be rejected by Hebrew-speaking Jews, who were seeking to return to the country that would become Israel. Zionists preferred Hebrew, and as an answer to the Jewishness question, they would return home, speaking in their Hebrew tongue.

This historical movement thus left Yiddish speaking Hasidic Jews aside from worlwide developments in the 'Jewishness question', and from this, it has been suggested that strength for the support of the Hasidic culture began to be developed, in terms of deciding to adopt Yiddish-only education, and to adopt the exclusive use of the Yiddish, not vernacular, language in Hasidic communities.

This is an extremely interesting idea, as it is said by many Hasidic Jewish leaders (particularly those of Williamsburg in New York) that their continued use of Yiddish is in order to defend their children against corruption, from non-Hasidic Jews, not from non-Jews. This quote illustrates this nicely. 'If a goy does not behave as a Jew, we tell our children not to worry about him because he is a goy, but if a Jew doesn't behave as a Jew should, what can we say? We can't tell our children it's because he's a goy. We have to tell them that he's a Jew, but a different kind of Jew, a Jew that doesn't observe the yidishkeyt. Once we have to make this distinction, that there are Jews and Jews, we have a real problem with their upbringing' (Spokesman for the Hasidic Jewish community of Williamsburg, New York).

It therefore seems that the use of Yiddish in Hasidic communities is for protection against assimilation, as often suggested, for Hasidic Jewish communities in particular, and for the non-usage of vernacular languages in many displaced people's in general, but in the case of Hasidic Jews, the use of Yiddish and the strict adherence to Hasidic social laws is not for protection from the local, native, people, but rather from people who themselves are immigrants, and of the same religion.

Many Hasidic leaders, and Yiddish-speaking academics, are very vitriolic about the need to protect themselves from non-Yiddish speaking, non-Hasidic, Jews. Some academics have argued that the Zionists took their rejection of Yiddish-speaking Hasidics too far, by saying that Yiddish speakers should not be offered decency, nor recognition as Jews. Others have been far more outspoken, and have condemned the use of Hasidic Jews by Zionists raising funds during the diaspora as 'a schizophrenia of exploitation' (Heller, 1974; Heller, 1977).

Thus, the feelings of tension between Hasidic and non-Hasidic Jews, and Hasidic and other Ultra-Orthodox Jews are many, and complex, stemming from many events in the past, surrounding the diaspora. This explains why a Yiddish-speaking chair was elected in Jerusalem as late as in 1951.

So, so far we have seen that Hasidic Jews use the Yiddish language as a means of maintaining their ethnic identity, and reinforcing their culture. We have also seen evidence that Hasidic Jews use the Yiddish language, and social constraints, as a mechanism against assimilation, and as a way of defending their Hasidic way of life against non-Hasidic Jews, and also, but seemingly less importantly, against gentiles.

We shall now turn to look at the use of Yiddish in a community of Hasidic Jews in London, and the functions of Yiddish in this community. This study, conducted by Joan Abraham in 1985, was in response to the Education Act, which was brought in to law in 1984 in the UK. The Act was formed to ensure that the children of immigrants to the UK, who were taught in their native language, not the vernacular, were taught to a sufficiently high standard in their native language.

The study was conducted through a series of questionnaires, mainly of women. It was found that in this community of Hasidic Jews, Yiddish was spoken mainly by males, and by these males, for about 95% of the time. Females spoke Yiddish less than the males, and spoke the vernacular in their households, amongst other women, although all of their schooling was in Yiddish. This gender difference arises because males are exposed to religious study in the home, forcing males to use Yiddish more often than females.

The use of Yiddish was justified by the leaders of this community for much the same reasons as we have already seen, for instance, that the use of Yiddish reinforces the Hasidic beliefs and culture, and that the use of Yiddish reinforces the religiosity of the community. Interestingly, the people interviewed did not directly mention the use of Yiddish as a barrier mechanism, against assimilation. One interviewee, however, did say that they thought girls were taught in Yiddish to prevent them being able to pursue any higher education (as presumably access to higher education would lead to contact with non-Hasidic Jews).

We can therefore see that the stated aims of Hasidic Jews, in terms of using Yiddish as their exclusive language in the home, and as the language of religious practice, are in concert with their spiritual and religious beliefs, which guide how they conduct their lives. Hasidic Jews believe that their goal in life is to perpetuate the Jewish laws (Shulhan Arukh), practices and observances. The use of Yiddish, for the Hasidic Jews, in whatever country, is therefore no more than a way of pursuing their goal in life, which is to conduct themselves according to religious dogma and practices.

Their very beliefs, and their adherence to these beliefs, rather than simply their language, therefore determines their membership of their community, determines their identity, and their ethnicity. The Hasidic Jews' definition of themselves, by their defined purpose in life, therefore determines their sense of identity, their sense of belonging. I would therefore go beyond Fishman's assertion that the Hasidics' shared language offers them feelings of being and belonging (to an ethnic group), feelings of being as belonging: I would say that it is not Yiddish that does this for the Hasidic Jews, but rather their beliefs. Their religion is so strongly embedded in their culture and their language, that their language has become their religion, or rather their way of interpreting, and practicing, of assimilating their religion.

As the Hasidic Jews hold such strong beliefs, which they live by, and which they have held, and fought for, and also strengthened through the development of a vibrant Yiddish arts movement, with it's supporting Institutes, the culture has been strengthened by all of these external influences: by the fight to use Yiddish in the first place, by the fight to fend off the threat of contamination from non-Hasidic Jews, by the fight to teach their children in Yiddish, by the continued fight against modernization, and non-Hasidic influences. As such, it is easy to understand the sentiment of Arye Shamir, who argued that Yiddish had to be used, as something is owed to the Yiddish language, for its survival against all the odds. In these terms, the use of Yiddish in Hasidic Jewish communities is also a reinforcement mechanism, for the language itself, not for the religiosity of the Hasidic Jews (which we have seen is fundamental to Hasidic Jews, and therefore indestructible). The use of the Yiddish language can therefore be seen as a way of securing the language for future generations, and as a way of saying thank you to their forebears, who died speaking the language, and as a consequence of this, no more, as a way of strengthening their culture.

In Hasidic Jews, their culture, their identity, their religion, their language, all are tied together inextricably, such that the use of one facet of this web automatically reinforces the other strands of the web. To a Hasidic Jew, to speak Yiddish is to automatically understand the Shulhan Arukh, the Torah, the Talmud, it is to automatically understand the purpose of life as laid down in those central texts, it is to automatically follow the religion, by following those texts in their daily lives. It seems to me, as an outsider looking in, that to Hasidic Jews, their life is their religion, in a spiritual sense, and that their use of Yiddish and their following of the sacred texts, is no more than them using their expressing their desires for their lives. They do not think of an outsider looking in when they speak Yiddish: to them, it is them, it is their life, it is their religion, it is their culture, and their culture is defined and developed where their language and their culture meet.

Why have Hasidic Jews - and Yiddish - been persecuted, and what effects has this outside pressure had on the use of Yiddish amongst Hasidic Jews? I should say that the use of 'persecution' in this context is meant in a general sense, to mean 'affected' or 'pressured'. Yiddish has been disliked by Hebrew-speaking Zionists, and also by other Ultra-Orthodox Jews, as we have seen, (although also used by them when it suited them, as we have also seen): one further example of this is the case of the Orthodox Universities, Yeshiva and Bar Ilan, which didn't recognize Yiddish as a language, or as meeting any of the 'Jewish Studies' requirements on any of their courses. In addition, Yiddish-speaking Hasidic Jews were so despised by certain sectors of the Ultra-Orthodox tradition, that a ban was placed on intermarriage.

Why such opposition against Yiddish (and consequently Hasidic Jews)? Many Jews don't like Yiddish, as they say it is 'yidish-daytsch' or Judaized German: even Yiddish speakers call Yiddish 'zhargon', meaning jargon. Yiddish is the language of the Eastern European Jews, as we have seen, and most of its speakers were exterminated during the Holocaust, which means that any study of the true origins of Yiddish is a highly emotional subject, so much so, that academics feared to tread the path until recently, when a project at Columbia University kick-started this research field.

The results of the research so far has shown that Yiddish has a largely Germanic grammar, and vocabulary, with many Hebrew and Aramaic words added, coupled with words from the Slovac and ancient Romantic languages. As such, the suggestion that Yiddish is Germanic is mostly false, and the cruel intentions of the people with this suggestion in their minds should be calmed.