Origins and development of language

Yiddish Alt (1250 - 1500)

Yiddish is born to the XII ^century in communities Jewish prosperous Lorraine (in Rhineland ) around Mainz (Magenza), Cologne , Speyer (Schapira), Worms (Wormaza) and Trier. This interpretation is supported by the great Yiddish linguist Max Weinreich. However, others felt that Yiddish was born on the side of the border between Germany and Poland. Linguists have sought its origin by using historical and linguistic criteria, such as finding the largest its proximity with the various German dialects. This language comes from multiple Germanic dialects, came to be grafted on bases of Hebrew, Aramaic and Old French. The first inscription in Yiddish date 1272: it is a fragment of a prayer written in the margin of Mahzor Worms (prayer book for Jewish holidays) which is currently in the national library of Israel. The first literary text written in Yiddish is the manuscript of Cambridge dating back to 1382.

Yiddish Mitla (1500 - 1700)

A page from Shemot Devarim , dictionary Yiddish-Hebrew-Latin-German and thesaurus published by Levita in 1542

From the ^fourteenth century , Jewish communities of Western Europe migrate massively into Central Europe (Bohemia and Moravia, Poland and Lithuania) and to the valley of the Danube. Yiddish is enjoying a new development by including phrases in Slavic languages : Czech, Ukrainian, Belarusian, Polish and Russian. The Yiddish turns into deep contact with these cultures.

While the printing is growing, many texts are published in Yiddish, mostly Bibles and religious works.

Yiddish literature of the sixteenth ^century also includes transpositions or adaptations of foreign texts profane: Shmuel Bukh, Melokhim Bukh (1544), Bovo Bukh (1541), etc.. This text is in Yiddish adaptation of the story of an Italian epic hero, himself adaptation of Anglo-Norman knight Hanstone Beuve , the knight Buovo. It is the origin of the Yiddish expression, Bove-mays ("tall tale"), later Bobe-Mayse ("story of grandmother") . The Bovo Bukh was reprinted almost constantly for several centuries. In the late eighteenth ^century, adaptations are even published as Bove-Mays. The last edition dates from the early ^twentieth century . Bovo disappeared when the imaginary Ashkenazi, the word was replaced by Bobe, a word of Slavic origin .

In the eighteenth ^century , the Jewish population of Germany abandoned the Yiddish to German in accordance with the tradition of the Haskalah . It is the same for many Jews of the Austrian Empire. At that time, numerous articles published in Yiddish are mainly for popular readers. The vast majority of the literature of the period was destroyed during the Second World War. The movement Hasidic ( XVIII ^century ), arguing the sanctity of the Hebrew language, give the start of a scholarly literature and fiction.

Yiddish Nai (1700 -)

Proponents of the Haskalah despise the Yiddish slang ghetto , stigma of the past and hated emblem of a culture as a whole rejected as hopelessly obscurantist. However, they write in this language to spread their ideas to as many of their co-religionists and attack the Hasidism , perceived as an obstacle to social modernization.

The nineteenth ^century

The disruptions caused by industrialization and urbanization of populations are the Yiddish language of the Jewish proletariat and greatly promote the secularization of traditional culture, even the critique of traditional society. The press and the book, sent en masse and at affordable prices, become accessible to the general Ashkenazi community. The theater is growing.

In the late ^nineteenth century , the struggle for the development of Yiddish will be undertaken with enthusiasm by the Jewish labor movement and, in particular, by the Bund. This language, spoken by communities Jews of Central and Eastern Europe, will spread to other parts of the world, mainly in the United States with the waves of immigration from the late ^nineteenth century and early ^twentieth century. Another cluster of Yiddish culture is not neglected.

From the ^nineteenth century was created a language standard, Klal shprakh with a standardized grammar and teaching university. It is based on the Lithuanian Yiddish. This language partially gum disparities between Yiddish dialects and gives greater consistency and respectability. At that time the Yiddish incorporates into his vocabulary many words derived from Greek or Latin in the lexical field of political, technological or scientific . This work is due to Samuel Joseph Finn (1820-1890) with other writers who laid the foundations of Lithuanian historiography of Jewish literature in Yiddish .

Lejzer Ludwik Zamenhof , born December 15, 1859 in Bialystok, physician, inventor of the international language Esperanto is also the author of an essay on Yiddish grammar, probably written between 1879 and 1882 when he was a student in Moscow, then Warsaw. The manuscript of this essay, written in Russian is kept at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. There are a translation into Esperanto , by J. Cohen-Cedek .

Yiddish literature, through language in its stabilized form, becomes a tool for creative writing intimately linked to religious tradition. Moykher seforim Mendele , Sholem Aleykhem , Isaac Leib Peretz , Yiddish literature give acclaim. Yiddish is upgraded, its literature is open to the world and follows the international big literary movements of the time.

The twentieth ^century

The Jewish Autonomous Oblast in red

The enormous work for the establishment of a language and literature, was used as the basis for Geshikhte fun der literatur jidisher ("History of Jewish Literature"), written in Yiddish by Israel Zinberg historian, published Vilnius between 1927 and 1937. In 1925, a Yiddish Scientific Institute ( YIVO ) is based in Berlin. Soon, he moved to Vilna / Vilnius, where he becomes the center of study of the history of Jews in Eastern Europe. In 1940 he moved to New York but can not carry its rich literature .

The Russian Revolution of 1917 and the creation of the USSR in 1921 , isolating some communities, while providing a major cultural development (there were about 150 newspapers in Yiddish, and more than 7,500 books and pamphlets). In the late 1920s, Stalin created in Birobidzhan (region adjoining the Chinese border in the extreme south-eastern Siberia ) Jewish Autonomous Region whose official language is Yiddish. The Birobidzhan still exists today: there still teaches Yiddish in some schools. But there is still about 4000 Jews, the project was a failure. The United States , Yiddish literature began to develop after the First World War. Isaac Bashevis Singer , who emigrated to U.S. in 1935 and Nobel Prize for Literature in 1978, is the most illustrious representative.

In the late 1930s, the number of people worldwide whose first language was Yiddish, was well over 11 million. It was in Europe that was most Yiddish speakers: 8 million (including 3.3 million in the Soviet Union, 800 000 Romania 250 000 180 000 Hungary and Lithuania). In Poland of the inter-war period, there were over 1 700 titles of books and newspapers. Research from 364 Yiddish books published in 1923 showed the following breakdown: 24.4% were belles-letters, 13.5% were for young readers, 11% were manual, 8.5% of poetry , 8.8% of plays, 25 titles were translated into other languages as to the place of publication, over 70% of these works were published in Poland, Germany 13%, 6% in the U.S. and 6% in the USSR . Yiddish was almost entirely wiped out in Europe , together with world Jewry during the Holocaust , the khurbn in Yiddish (Hebrew khurban, destruction) . In addition, the 600-year heritage of the Lithuanian Yiddish culture has been destroyed or dismantled. The destruction began in 1940. It was led initially by Pohl, scientific associate at the Oriental Museum in Frankfurt, which, while following the instructions of Reichsleiter Alfred Rosenberg , sent to Frankfurt eighty-four boxes of documents of inestimable value, including 20,000 rare books, four incunabula , and many ancient Jewish collections in precious character. At the same time, 80 000 books in this library and other Jewish libraries were sold to a paper mill as scrap paper ... A German sergeant threw the contents of six of eighty-four chests for transporting pigs and sold the leather bindings at a shoe factory. In May 1942, five truckloads of Jewish books in the library of Kaunas are sent in a paper mill, as well as private collections which have just been discussed .

Moreover, in the USSR , between the years 1940 to 1950, the authorities undertake a crackdown on intellectuals and speakers of Yiddish. In 1948, all Jewish cultural institutions were closed, including orphanages, kindergartens and primary school classes in Jewish Lithuania in Belarus and Ukraine : all collections of folklore and dialectology Jewish academic institutions Minsk and Kiev are destroyed, the Yiddish writers banned . The Ukrainian Yiddish-speaking writer Motl Grubian (1909-1972) was deported seven years in a camp Siberia. The Ukrainian Yiddish-speaking poet Peretz Markish is executed March 12, 1952 at Moscow and Leib and Itsik Fefer Kvitko. If the Jews in Russia and Ukraine are now treated, it can be attributed to Soviet history

In Israel , Yiddish, the language of the majority of emigrants from Central and Eastern Europe (Yiddishland), has often been considered an obstacle to the development of the Hebrew modern and struggling to maintain. The authorities have testified at best indifference and at worst hostility toward Yiddish culture, viewed as a legacy of exile. D. Galay even talk of a general stigma of the Yiddish language. An estimated two million people continue to practice, at least as a second language, mostly in the United States and Israel, but also in Eastern and Western Europe .

Yiddish remained as the main language in some communities Haredi the diaspora as Israeli and to Kiryas Joel , a city of 13,000 inhabitants of the State of New York to the United States , 90% of the population report use Yiddish as their first language . In France today, 60 000 to 80 000 people use it as a vernacular and 150 000 as their mother tongue .

Currently, young secular Jews from the Jewish diaspora keen interest in Yiddish as a written memory of Ashkenazim. It was in France found the most intense Yiddish life in Western Europe. Paris is the place of business of world famous sculptor Chaim Jacob Lipchitz was born in Druskininkai, Lithuania. Paris is the only European city where shows are broadcast in Yiddish. Yiddish classes for children are provided by various Jewish organizations. Jewish intellectuals emigrated from Poland during the period of Gomulka and the USSR created the Cultural Center of Yiddish Paris . Jewish literature known to turn a resurgence of interest vis--vis the classical culture which that language is the vehicle. Many characters works Jewish, American or French, are imbued with humor "typical" of folklore yiddish . Popeck is a good example.

An original language

A mixed language

The shtetl Lakhvi in Poland in 1926.

Yiddish is written in the Hebrew alphabet , although this is not a language consonant (one with paranoid vowels ) as the Hebrew. Its grammar is based on the basics of German grammar and vocabulary consists of elements Germanic (80%), Semitic (10% to 15%) and Slav (5%). An interesting aspect is the creation of the lexicon of words containing multiple components to borrowing of language, either German, Slavic languages and Hebrew. The expression oysgemutshet a oygemartert alone shows the richness of the language. Oys and age are prefix Germanic oys meaning, "all the time, completely" as the brand and age of the past participle. Mutshet is of Slavic origin, matert, of Germanic origin. The repetition of two words meaning close is not uncommon in Yiddish. It is the result of a biblical influence . Yiddish with accents and dialects, there may be significant differences between speakers as linguistic areas in which they originate. The Yiddish are also romanized ( transliterated ) for its speakers do not read the Hebrew alphabet. In an article written in May 1909 in a Yiddish-language newspaper in Vilna, a Lebna Visnchaft (Life Science); Ludwik Zamenhof Lejzer , initiator of Esperanto defended the use of the Latin alphabet for the Yiddish .

Yiddish is a language that has always puzzled linguists and philologists. They wonder how to define a language close to the family of Indo-European dialects, but including also a large percentage of Judaism. Given the fragmentation dialect, it would also be more accurate to speak of Yiddish s in the plural rather than a single language. There are indeed a multitude of dialects. Western Yiddish is spoken in Alsace , Switzerland , Germany and the Netherlands. Eastern Yiddish is used in the geographical area of Eastern Europe where there are three types of speakers: the polakn (Polish), the Litvak (Lithuanian) and galitsiyaner (Galician) . Critics have claimed that Yiddish was not a language per se but of different Germanic dialects. But linguists say that this is indeed a language as such.

Yiddish was in the 1920s (possibly 1926 to 1937) an official language of the Belarusian Soviet Socialist Republic. It was also the official language of the Jewish Autonomous Oblast in the USSR

A pictorial language

Even if the matches with German are many, the differences are significant. They are related to the particular character of Jewish thought. The Yiddish includes Hebrew words that do not exist in languages such as non-Jewish mikveh (ritual bath). It also boasts tasty expressions: hak mir nisht Kayn tshaynik which literally means "I do not hit a teapot" is a term that can mean stop yapping to say nothing, and employs the image of a kettle which the lid pops and crackles constantly . References to non-Jewish world are also very present. Someone who has been forgotten or ignored will say: "Ikh hob zikh geshmat?" which means: "Do I converted to Christianity?". It's the equivalent of French: "And I feel the pie? ? "in a kind Aynredn boykh literally make her pregnant by the power of speech actually means bamboozled, convince someone of something absurd as all Jews know: fun zogn men nisht mug, can not talk to pregnant , a thinly veiled allusion to the conception of Jesus by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Religious practices have also given rise to many colorful expressions. The shlogn Kapor (kapparot in Hebrew) is a traditional ceremony today obsolete in its original form except for the Hasidim. It is to run a chicken living above his head, on the eve of Yom Kippur with a prayer . The chicken is then responsible for the faults of one who prays. The choice of chicken can be explained as follows. In Hebrew, rooster said Gevers, which can also mean man. "An eye for an eye", "GEVER for GEVER. The pun induced ritual practice . The word Kapor, untranslatable into French has been recovered for many expressions. Zayn di far Kapor means being in love, love someone so ready to sacrifice themselves for him like a chicken when shlogn Kapor. Shlogn Kapor began means belittling, abusing a person af darfn Kapor, literally "to need for Kapor" means not having any use . Jews refer directly liking things horrible or sad willingly use antiphrasis. This trend paves the way for the irony and the Jewish humor is found in the Yiddish expressions. So for about a cemetery, a Yiddish-called "back gute ort," the right place or "Beys khayim" home life . Sometimes it is impossible to speak by antiphrasis. In this case, we add: aykht gedakht nisht far, that you either saved or Rakhmon litslan, God forbid! . Yiddish has a huge number of imaged curses all over each other.

The imaginary Yiddish

The Jewish Yiddish think it is constantly assailed by demons: the Mazik, a mixture of ghost and malicious elf, the LETS, a clever and mischievous poltergeist, the ruekh, a disembodied spirit who can settle in a human being , the dibbek , a spirit that has left a body and is willing to relocate to another to take its toll. With part of Anski Shalom , The Dybbuk 1920, dibbek is the most famous monsters Jews . The fear of demons has spawned a number of superstitions that the rabbis have struggled to explain how "rational". Among the superstitious customs include one that involves breaking a glass at the end of a marriage to expel a demon, Sitra-akhre, giving him his part in the ceremony. He can go somewhere else to ruin the marriage of another couple .
Among the Jewish superstitions, there is one which says that after the Jews attracts the evil eye . Thus when a Jewish Ashkenazi must count another he said: "nisht eins nisht tsvey, nisht dray," not one, not two, not three, which is supposed to ward off the evil eye. In some synagogues, there are feet or recite a sentence of 10 words by assigning a word to each person .

Yiddish literature is a source of first value to know the imaginary Yiddish. Peretz was able to describe the imaginary in the Hasidic folk tales. The hero of "Miracles on the high seas," "Hear O Israel or the bass" and "Treasure" are simple beings who endure the most difficult trials and achieve salvation through their silent love of God. Angels and demons play a role in burlesque "At the bedside of a dying man," or "For a pinch of snuff" .
Isaac Bashevis Singer in The Spinoza of Market Street published in 1957, shows the Jewish community, with its expectation of the Messiah and the Last Judgement , but also its joys and sorrows. It may also present the Yiddish world a more bitter. "Gimpel the Fool," the new collection's most famous tells the story of a simple, all of whom abused throughout his life of misery. From the first words of the news, it looks like this: "I am Gimpel the fool. Personally, I do not think an idiot, quite the contrary. But it is the nickname given to me while I was still a schoolboy. I had a total of seven nicknames: idiot, ass, airhead, idiot, moron, ninny and fool, and it was left to me. " Mocked by his countrymen, deceived by his wife, he died in destitution and loneliness .

From dialect to the language of a culture

Isaac Leib Peretz

"Yiddish was the language of the heart, the language of suffering, the incarnation of the story of a grieving millennium . "

A language for everyday life and religion

Yiddish is not only used in everyday life. He is also in the field of study and liturgy. Reading Biblical or Talmudic practice course in the text, that is to say in Hebrew, but oral comments, discussions, presentations scholars are in Yiddish. In fact, Hebrew is a language used exclusively written sometimes in contracts, private correspondence, so that Yiddish is a language both spoken and written . Women pray in Yiddish because girls do not learn Hebrew. There are virtually no schools for girls before the nineteenth century. Their horizons and their culture are limited to what is written in Yiddish. Only rich girls, or who have no brothers are exceptionally traditional instruction to maintain the cultural level of the family, they are more likely to learn the ngues or music. Lullabies in Yiddish, the gifts they promised the little girl to sleep are the linen, clothing, a good dowry. His future life it is described, with the work of the house and children. . The marriage takes place in such a life as the French make a fuss or a mountain, "he said in Yiddish: Makhni has Gantsi Khasene, do everything in a marriage

Even the German Jewish families or from the Austro-Hungarian who left the Yiddish expressions continue to keep this language in their daily lives. It continues to say "ah, it's a nebich" for someone who has no luck, or "Schnor 'for someone a little beggar, in small towns of the European Jewish East .

Yiddish folk musicians are older Klezmorim , playing the violin at the origin. Without being able to read or write sheet music, they compose melodies imbued with regional folklore. .

Arriving in France with activists of the Bund , Yiddish became secular organizations in public education as Socialistische Farband Kinder (SKIF - Socialist Union of Children) (1926) became in 1963 the Club's secular Jewish childhood.

Yiddish literature

There are manuscripts in Yiddish, mainly religious writings but also stories of inspiration biblical or secular, generally derived from non-Jewish folklore, in large libraries of Europe. In the meantime, the center of gravity of the creative writing in Yiddish was transported to Eastern Europe. However in the late nineteenth ^century, the emigration of Russian Jews in Western Europe gives an important role in the literature in Yiddish. These waves of emigration to the U.S. prosecutor and later in Israel, led to the internationalization of creative writing in Yiddish . Moreover, many classical and contemporary works were translated and broadcast in Yiddish.

The Yiddish plays a fundamental role as a language of literature exterminated in the Holocaust, survivors often choosing to write in Yiddish. Hundreds of Yizker-Bikha are written. Some are published, but most are deposited in the archives of the Jewish Historical Museum of Warsaw, those in the YIVO or Yad Vashem.

Yiddish literature of the Holocaust also includes novels. (...)

Yiddish theater

Of revelers dress up for the feast of Purim in Holland in 1657

The Yiddish theater was born in the Middle Ages. It is heavily influenced by art forms of the Christian world minstrels, jugglers, mysteries, moralities and later Commedia dell'arte.

In the second half of the ^nineteenth xicle, the authors write denunciations on how social comedy and satire. Avrom Goldfaden (1840-1908) is the leading playwright of this new trend. With the emigration of Jews from Central Europe, theater flourishes in new places: to London in Whitechapel , where Paris Goldfaden established a company and acting school for a short time and especially in New York in the Lower East Side where a true popular theater installs. The writer Mendele Moich Sforim starts also in the theater with original or adaptations of his stories and novels. It is imitated by Isaac Leib Peretz. They inspire followers. Yiddish theater of the inter-war period is full of quality parts. Besides the commercial theater avant-garde theater focusing on the staging and the overall cohesion develops. It is initiated by young amateurs from the labor movement. After them, the opera art professionals emerge in New York in 1918 .

After the Russian Revolution is set to Moscow , the GOSET, led by Alexander Granovsky .

During the Second World War drama activities continued in the ghettos and even in the camps. (...)

It should also add that Warsaw is a Jewish theater (Teatr w Warszawie Zydowska) where numerous pieces are presented in Yiddish.

Yiddish Film

The Yiddish theater has about a hundred films, often adaptations of plays or of Jewish folklore that is of vaudeville , operettas and melodramas , plays the classical repertoire. These films mark the "musical" U.S.. Granovsky, the host of the studio of Moscow, produces, after his departure from the USSR, Live, or the Song (1932), The Adventures of King Pausole (1936). Adapting the best known, the only truly passed into cinema history, The Dybbuk , directed by Michal Waszynski in 1938, which remains the masterpiece of Yiddish cinema.

References