I'm fully aware of the silly language politics of the early 20th century and all, so I understand why the Israeli state didn't give Yiddish official status from the start, although even then they went way too far as in banning public performances and daily newspapers in yiddish (which was one of the many ways they alienated large numbers of Jews, and demographically shot themselves in the foot) My question is, why is it that the snub has outlived the language debate? and it would seem the Israeli state would want the snub to actually outlive the Yiddish language.
If Israel is a Jewish state, why should it promote the demise of a Jewish language -The Jewish language par excellence imho- (and related culture)?
If my ancestors by and large spoke Yiddish and not Hebrew, for hundreds of years, how can a country that persecutes my people's language (and related culture) want to claim it's my country, that I should support it unconditionally and that I should go live there?
Is there a campaign to give official status to Yiddish in Israel, and if not, why not?

And... Israel should have also given Ladino official status, and by not doing so has promoted its forseable and very unfortunate demise in the near future...

They did the same things to Ladino and Judaeo-Arabic. The whole purpose, as you know, was to create the artificial Israeli identity; even if there are now people who are interested in Yiddish, Ladino, Judaeo-Arabic, etc., the higher-ups in charge of the state still have the same attitude concerning cultural artefacts and expressions them deem to be גלותי.

And while we are at it, why is Arabic an official language? (Or English for that matter?)

Realistically, language politics in the early 20th century were not silly, they were essential (even if the execution on all sides was silly). Israel had to forge cultural cohesiveness, which would have been impeded without mutual comprehension of the Jews living there. Shoving Yiddish down the throats of non-Yiddish speaking Jews would not have been any more just than shoving Hebrew down the throats of non-Hebrew speakers.

I don't think anyone was suggesting Yiddish should have been shoved down anyone's throat. Unless tolerating Yiddish performances and newspapers is the equivalent of forcing down others' throats...

In early Israel, not to mention pre-state Palestine, a very large percentage of the Jewish population were native Yiddish speakers, and many others had a working knowledge of the language. When my dad a"h went to EY the first time in the 1950s he got around using only Yiddish without any trouble, and that even the Teimanim, if asked "Ir Redt Idish?" would almost universally answer, "a bissale".
I'm not saying that Yiddish should have been the only official language of Israel, a Sephardi/Mizrachi language such as Ladino or Yahudic should have had co-official status. (and Ladino-Yiddish or Yahudic-Yiddish biligualism should have been strongly promoted)
Some official status for Hebrew as a national symbol could have been OK, but it should never have gone further than Gaelic in Ireland, ie if you want to have it on the currency and on signs on offical 
buildings+teach "a bissale" at school it's fine but don't make people switch languages!
If you want people to feel at home you don't make them study a new language and then persecute their native language.
I'm not necessarily against Arabic having official status in Israel, but for Arabic to have official status while Yiddish, Ladino and Yahudic are thrown out like yesterday's garbage is adding insult to injury, and alienating the very people they want to attract.

The thing is, you're ignoring pre-state history. Hebrew had been in steady ascent for 60 or 70 years in Palestine. It was, in fact, recognized as an official language by the British, true, partly for political reasons, but also because there was already a large-Hebrew speaking populace. So even if all that pre-state stuff was bad, surely by the time 1947 rolled around the comparison with Gaelic becomes absurd, or the idea that it should only be a symbol, when tens or hundreds of thousands were already speaking it. By then it was a living Jewish language, no different in that respect from Yiddish (but not so much Ladino, which most Mizrachim didn't speak).

I agree that it wasn't nice to persecute Yiddish, but as you well know, language was political in those days. Almost by definition Yiddish was a symbol of anti or non-Zionism, while Hebrew was the symbol of Zionism. En hachi nami, if we were talking about Israel not being Zionist instead of Zionist (which is meaningless, since then there wouldn't have been Israel) then this issue wouldn't have existed and Yiddish would have been allowed officially to flourish (except that it wouldn't, since there wouldn't be Israel). You're sort of arguing against history.

Because they were trying to build "the new Jew" who would be free from the ghetto, the past, and the Torah.
Sadly they appear to have succeeded.

It's mamash amazing how Hebrew frees Jews from the Torah.

This is very inflated by modern-day Israeli accounts...   [maybe] tens [or twenty] or hundreds of thousands were already speaking [some form of Hebrew as a second language]. 

Also remember that Israel was not a country only for the 600,000 Jews living there at the time, was it?

Since I said tens myself, you are not replying to an account which inflated anything.

You are right about the latter point, but this is a question of absorption as well as ideology.

Yeah. You should hear some secular Israelis talking sometime.

Yiddish kept the masses frum, I hear.

Well check out the demographics of the average 20-something Yiddish speaker today.

One has nothing to do with the other. Yiddish was not an inherently frum language. Just check out the Yiddish theater and movies sometime.

This is also an issue of language extinction, which unfortunately is still not a big concern among most people. Ladino was really on its way out even in the 20th century, sadly; for various reasons it was unable to compete with other languages such as French and Arabic which had been supplanting it already for decades. Even given official recognition anywhere wouldn't have been enough to save it.

You've got to be kidding me.

I haven't seen any new Yiddish releases in the last, oh, 75 years.
The Forverts was the premier Yiddish paper. Do they even publish it anymore? OTOH die Blatt is a new Yiddish newspaper, written by and for frum Jews. What does that say?

Ladino isn't a Mizrahi language, it's specifically a Balkan and Greco-Romaniote Sephardic one (there is a Maghrebi Sephardic variant of the language known as Jaquetia).

Yes.

http://yiddish.forward.com/

Perfect example of the non-religious character of Yiddish.

Ouch. Even I knew that. They sell it on newsstands too.

Yes, that's what I meant.

I realize this is a little off topic, but in a shteibel I occasionally daven in, they used to announce the molad for birchat hachodesh in Yiddish. The problem was that while every single person in the shul understands English, maybe half understand yiddish. A few months ago the Gabbai tried to address this by announcing it in both languages, but the Rabbi made him stop and now it's yiddish only again. I don't think most people cared before but switching to English and then back highlighted how silly it is to make announcements in a language the congregants don't understand just because it was always done that way, and a few people actually complained. The same shul features occasional drashas in Yiddish, given by the Rabbi who was born in NY and speaks a perfectly normal English. Again, I can't understand the justification for giving a shiur that will be lost on half of the congregants when he could teach Torah to 100% of the congregants by switching languages. Why does the use of yiddish trump teaching more people Torah? (I'd say this about any language; it is inappropriate to give a shiur in Hebrew to an English speaking congregation if the speaker is capable of doing it in English instead.) It's the same thing in the more yeshivish schools in my area - why do they teach kids Chumash by making them memorize a translation in yiddish when a good deal of the kids don't understand a word of yiddish anymore? Why does preservation of the language trump teaching kids Torah in the way most suited to their understanding? In general, I don't understand the modern argument for using Yiddish, except out of nostalgia. Historically, it served as an international Jewish language (for Europeans at least) but Hebrew shared some of that burden all along as the language of seforim and some periodicals, and today Hebrew is more likely to be a bridge language between Jews. Even English, which is essentially the international language of the whole world, is more likely to be a common language between two Jews than Yiddish is. Obviously I'm not advocating eradicating it, but what's so essential about it to preserve as a living language as opposed to a historical and literary language like Aramaic, which was also once the lingua franca of all Jews?

(Mishpacha magazine had an article on the Toldos Aharon Rebbe in which they quoted him as saying that one of the things he was most proud of in life was having always spoken yiddish and never spoken Hebrew. I have no idea why this is an accomplishment.)

There are many S-P places where they still auction kibbudim and such in Spanish/Portuguese, I have no problem with maintaining decorum. If you can't understand it, too bad, maybe become more educated?

Right, except you merely want all public use of it to be discontinued. It's the mother-tongue of quite a few people still, no reason to stop using it in institutions.

Who cares? Besides taking a swipe at the Toldos Aharon Rebbe did you have any other purpose for sticking this in here?

While this is interesting for many reasons, you do realize that this is really the same phenomenon as retaining Aramaic prayers, like Yequm Purqan. Can you think of a reason, other than that it was a wedge issue in the rise of Reform Judaism, to retain it?

If people understand Spanish and Portugese, kol hakavod. If no one in the shul understands it, then perhaps it's time to ask why they do it that way, and if there are any reprecussions for doing so. I davka did not mention auctions (also conducted in yiddish in this shteibel) since to follow an auction one needs to learn something like 3 words, and I've never met anyone who wasn't able to participate because an auction was in Yiddish. (I'm not against the language - I'm against using it where it excludes people and there is another choice of language that everyone understands.) Incidentally, I was in another shul where they did the auctions in English and an old man who was visiting his son loudly complained (in English!) that this was "not how it was done in Europe."

Are you seriously suggesting that congregants should become "more educated" and learn Yiddish so that they can follow the Rabbi's shiur (or understand the Molad, etc.)? That's very unrealistic, and in any case it begs the question of why - why should congregants need to become bilingual when the shul is perfectly capable of serving them in their native language? Would you agree that it would be inappropriate for a shul to switch to Hebrew for everything and then tell the congregants that they need to become more educated if they want to understand the Rabbi's shiur or the announcements?


No, I just don't think it's use trumps other considerations. In a congregation like a Chassidish shul where everyone speaks it, it's perfectly appropriate. In a shteibel with a congregation with about 30% chassidim, about 50% yeshivish, many of whom do not speak it, and about 20% MO who do not speak it, it serves to cut off half the congregation from understanding shiurim or the molad, etc. If there's a market for a Yiddish publication like the Forward or for Yiddish theater or Torah tapes or anything else, then why would I object to filling those needs?


Why was that a swipe? The Rebbe, and presumably the author of the article, considered this to be a great accomplishment (specifically he said it was something he would tell the Beit Din shel Maaleh when he passed away). I'd like to understand why that is a maaleh.

Once it's part of the official liturgy, the question would be: keep it, drop it, or translate it? I don't see why it should be dropped just because it's not the vernacular - we don't pray in our venacular. I also don't see why it should be translated - lots of prayers are in Aramaic. Keeping it makes sense to me. If there was Yiddish in the liturgy I'd feel the same way. For example, the "Elokei Avraham" prayer in some siddurim for motzei shabbat is a translation of the older Yiddish "Gott fun Avraham" prayer. I see the point of translating it for those who don't understand the Yiddish, particularly because it never became part of official liturgy, but I think the siddurim that translate it without also presenting the original are doing a disservice to their readers. R' Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev composed the Yiddish prayer, not the Hebrew prayer.

wrong

Why wrong? That's what it says in the siddurim that give an attribution for it. Wikipedia says:



Artscroll siddurim have the yiddish version and attribute it to RLYB as well.

If you have a better source please make it known; saying "wrong" doesn't help much.

Then why not keep saying the molad in Yiddish, especially since many do understand it?



How is "Gott fun Avrohom" or "Elokei Avraham" "part of the official liturgy"?

Basically, what I'm saying is, there are residues of former Jewish languages in our culture. If we're Sepharadi, the traces are more likely to have their roots in medieval Muslim languages rather than medieval Christian ones, but they're there. Why do you think we have Aramaic prayers? The same thing. If here or there it's the same thing with Yiddish, why would you say that Aramaic ones are official but Yiddish is unofficial? Surely announcing the molad is an official part of the litrugy. It may be said in English, but then Yequm Purqan may be said in Hebrew (or English, too).

Your examples don't match up, the place you are talking about possibly has a majority speaking the language of announcements, whereas in this hypothetical scenario, it would be if someone invited me to give a talk and I did it in Czech, which no one speaks there. However, I am all for whatever means are necessary to get monolingual anglophones to learn new languages; even the thought of this seems to activate some deep hostility in their reptilian brains.

It was a swipe because you left out information and presented it in a certain fashion. Anyway, MIH is pretty terrible as far as world languages go. There is a similar story about the Rav of Temesvar and the Hungarian language.

It's an urban legend, the prayer predates him by quite a bit. Neither Wikipedia nor Artscroll are correct here, sorry. The kind of Yiddish it's transcribed in in most siddurim should also be a giveaway that it was not written by the Berdichever either, there are some funny grammatical items in there.

If you want a source for older and variant versions, see Minhagei HaKehillos p. 267 #68.

I don't know why we don't daven in the vernacular, since the Gemara certainly contemplates the idea (at least about kriat shema) and it would seem to make more sense for people to understand the words better. Nevertheless, for prayers we apparently don't change the language. For announcements or shiurim, where the purpose is to convey some information, why wouldn't you choose the language that best conveys it to the listeners?It's not. I was saying, if it was, there would be reason to keep it. As it is, I understand why people translate it but I also think it's a mistake to do so "silently" without mentioning that it is a translation.I'm not sure that the molad is part of the liturgy since the point is to convey the time to the congregants and it is not a prayer. Nevertheless, accepting that for the moment, how does that help in non-liturgical contexts like drashot or teaching Chumash?Ok. But the original prayer was in Yiddish, and I think it's a mistake to silently translate it without noting that, because it's a prayer, not an announcement.

You really don't know?

Technically I wouldn't call it Yiddish, at that point it's more Judaeo-German, but this is just nitpicking.

I agree it is wrong to present the translation without the original. I think this applies to seforim, too; I do like those prints of R. Saadia Gaon's works with the Judaeo-Arabic on the side, but I've never seen the original text of Chovos HaLevavos. Weird.

The place I'm talking about has about 50% of peopel speaking the language, but the crucial fact is that there is another language which 100% of the congregants speak. I don't understand what maaleh there is to using the language that excludes half the people where there is an alternative that lets everyone understand.

In the yeshiva I mentioned with the Chumash teaching, it's hard to tell for sure but it appears that a majority of the boys do not speak yiddish and just memorize the words. One of my cousins, who is rather intelligent, told me that he learned yiddish from being taught that way, but other people who attended the school told me that they still remember a lot of the memorized "teitch" but they absolutely did not learn the language, and that it made it harder for them to learn Chumash since they had to learn both Hebrew and Yiddish.


Why should the mission of a shul be to promote bilingualism in Yiddish? A shul is supposed to be teaching Torah and providing a venue for Tefilla. If an additional mission, like insisting on Yiddish, actively detracts from the shul's ability to promulgate Torah, then I think it's incompatible with the basic purpose of a shul.


What information did I leave out? I quoted what it said in the article; if there is more information that explains it I'd like to know it myself (which is why I asked). In the article, it was presented as-is on a list of what he felt he had accomplished in life.

What is the Temesvar story?

I've heard the explanations for kriat shema, but they seem like rationalizations of what we do rather than primary reasons. I can hazard an intelligent guess as to why the liturgy is all in Hebrew, but I don't know 100%, except in modern times where the answer is because the Reform use the vernacular. The fact remains that, as bad as it is, a good deal of frum Jews don't understand the words they daven because they don't understand Hebrew. Obviously Jewish tradition has decided that for prayer it is still better to do it this way than to translate. (Once could argue that a major benefit of teaching Hebrew is that prayers are in a language that can be understood without much difficulty by a speaker of Modern Hebrew.)

If you know the exact reason, enlighten me.

I think it can be ok to give just the translation if it is clearly marked as such. What I object to is siddurim that give the Hebrew version and imply by omission that it is in fact the original.

Well it's obvious the place was started up by Yiddish speakers and just because now there is a significant language minority there, they aren't going to change. It would be a different situation if the ratio was more unfavourable, but nothing will change as long as the original language maintains its majority, or at least a split. This is true not just for this shtiebl but for other scenarios as well.

This is a totally different issue, though. We're talking about educational methods and not public usage of a language; it's all about conservative paedagogy, or at least maintaining the appearance of (in the Yeshivishe world), when in fact they have of course adopted many things which are a product of the Haskalah or were at one time mutinously opposed by reactionaries (e.g. Mussar seder, Brisker method of learning).

I mean in general, things that (on the side) promote bilingualism are good and I support them.

The Rav of Tomaszow was visiting and made a remark about how crude it was that the girls were speaking Hungarian instead of something nicer.

It was more a rhetorical question, although there is a teshuva from the Chasam Sofer that explains why for some of the reasons you gave, or look at what the poskim on OC 101:4 say.

That would make more sense, except that in this case the shul was started 11 years ago. I used to daven there full time back then, and at no point were Yiddish speakers in the majority - if anything there are more of them now than there used to be as the neighborhood has become partially chassidish where a decade ago it was only yeshivish. The shul opened when an Ashkenazic congregation moved a mile away, and its original congregants were mostly people from the precious shul who didn't feel like walking that far. But even in a community where this wasn't the case I would argue that if the ratio has shifted and people are being excluded from shiurim because of inertia to change the shul practice, that's a bad thing.

I know the real reason it's like this in this shteibel. I know the Rav reasonably well, and he's just exceedingly conservative and wishes to duplicate the shteibel he grew up in 30 years ago. He also really does believe that yiddish is inherently a holy tongue and worth preserving even at the cost of excluding people from his shiurim. I obviously disagree with him.


It's not the same issue, but it's related - it's about mandating the use of Yiddish in a context where English would be more conducive to learning Torah.


Sure. In a vacuum I'd agree, but isn't accessibility of Torah a more important concern?



Thanks.

Interesting. It depends on a lot of factors though, and I don't know the place so I can't say one way or the other.

Right, but in my opinion it's not about Yiddishism and more about being reactionary. Sort of.

Your argument boils down to "we didn't do it."



Hey, so in shul where they announce in Yiddish the argument against changing to English boils down to "we didn't do it."



Here I agree (last sentence). Withholding information, however well-meaning, I am against it.



Liturgy doesn't mean prayer per se, at least not in a Jewish context. It means "and then you/ they say this."


I wouldn't conflate the two. Reciting the molad in Yiddish is not mis-educating children or subtly implying that half your congregation isn't very frum.

Absolutely. I HATE translations that don't include the original. If the original text of Chovos Ha-levavos is still extant, I bet it was printed in an edition with the Judeo-Arabic.

Ok. So let's drop the molad part for the moment, as per artscroll, and the chumash part, as per err. What remains is the drashot - why give shiurim in Yiddish when it excludes people?

(What was most annoying was the year I asked him if the Shabbat Shuva drasha would be in English or Yiddish and he said English, and then gave it in Yiddish.)

The original text must be extant. How else would R. Kapach have been able to make his translation?

I already gave what I think the reason may be. And so did you, the word I bolded.

In this instance, the drashot are also about being reactionary (I say this from having spoken to the Rabbi about it briefly). I don't understand in either case though why that matters, although I admit that most reactionary actions confound me, such as the ban on placing a bima in front of a shul (who cares?). But that was my point - I think by now that in general Yiddishism is essentially reactionary, except in places where it really is still the vernacular. I'm assuming that there's a more palatable "official" explanation though.


Right, but no one would ever admit that (maybe not even to themselves) so what's another reason?

The issue of the bima/almemor is also brought down in Shu"t Chasam Sofer, he wrote there that it was an issue of imitating the Reform practise.

No, I know that. I just don't understand why that was an issue the frum world chose to take a stand on, since it seems innocuous.

Did you ever read the teshuva?

I think it's a NY thing, too. I've never known any cheder in LA/Miami/Atlanta that continued טייטשען.