The Yiddish Language скачать в хорошем качестве

The Yiddish Language

We came to the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research to hear Dr. Chava Lapin -- "Bubby" to her grandchildren -- and Rabbi Shimon Josef Meller speak some kosher Yiddish, and to save ourselves from klutzily shvitzing, kvetching and schmoozing in search of the language on the street. "One thing I want to get clear: Yiddish is a language among languages," YIVO Executive Director Jonathan Brent said. "It isn't a cute language. It's a language." So much for the shtick I had planned for telling this story. "It's been made into cuteness and therefore smallness," Brent said. Founded in 1925, YIVO's first directors sought, among other things, to establish Yiddish as a modern language. "Albert Einstein and Sigmund Freud were honorary members," Brent said of YIVO's original board of directors. The academy moved to New York City in 1941 when the Nazis seized its 18,000 linear feet of documents -- a collection of one-of-a-kinds and great works of art the U.S. Army recovered in its entirety after World War II. Originally, Yiddish fused Hebrew, Slavic, German and French into a language with many dialects spoken by 5 million people in Eastern Europe. "The Jews always lived between worlds," Brent said. "They lived between the Russians and the Poles, and the Poles and the Ukrainians, and the aristocrats and the peasants." Outside of YIVO, Brent admitted, most people speaking Yiddish in this country today live in Orthodox communities. "However, there is a growing number of young people, not Orthodox but secular, who speak Yiddish," he said. "Better a Jew without a beard than a beard without a Jew," Stanford PhD candidate Joshua Meyers said to us in Yiddish. Intellectuals like Joshua Meyers, Jennifer Young and Leyzer Burko represent Brent's hope for the future of the language. "It could be worse," Burko said in Yiddish. Orthodox parents teach Yiddish to their children. But according to Brent, who you might detect harbors a slight bias, interest in Yiddish outside of places like Williamsburg began to grow within the last five years. "I do not go to sleep at night thinking that Yiddish is a dying language," Brent said. "Please believe me." Not cute and not dying. At least not at YIVO. Where you hear the language and from whom may change, but Yiddish, apparently, lives on.