RE: Yiddishkayt & Israelis

[Shirli Sieb <sieb...>]

From: Ed Sieb:

> -----Original Message-----
> From:  Inna Barmash
> Sent: Wednesday, November 21, 2001 3:19 PM
> To: World music from a Jewish slant

> I got into a lively discussion with an Israeli sitting next to me,
> who was telling me how much he hates anything associated
> with Yiddish, how he can't stand this music, and how this is
> exactly the reason he wanted to get away from Israel.  This
> was grandma and grandpa's music, and they were
> in the way of progress of the Israel. Israel was too "Jewish"
> because of them.  He thinks of Israel as a secular, progressive
> nation, not as a nation of Yiddish-speaking Holocaust survivors.


Yiddish: "too Jewish"!!!!!

I was born and raised in Montreal,  a center of Yiddish culture and Yiddish
life. I grew up in Cote St-Luc, a Montreal suburb, which has the highest
per-capita population of Jews of any city in North America;  close to 90% of
the population was Jewish. My parents spoke Yiddish at home, and I picked up
a working facility with it. All my friends either spoke it, or at least
understood it. I lived, and prospered in Yiddishkeit.

Some years ago,  I lived with a Sabra. Her father was the Principal of a
Jewish High School, and she taught Jewish history  at the local shul?s
?Sunday School?.  She explained to me the status of Yiddish in Isreal.
Israelis disdained it?s use, and held it in contempt, and the the official
Israeli  government line was that Yiddish was considered ?declasse?,
archaic, obsolete. The most important and significant view, was that Yiddish
was considered the language of losers, of a defeated people. It was shunned
because it was a symbol of  despair, humiliation, defeat and ultimately, the
Holocaust, and death.  The new language of Judaism was to be Hebrew, the
language of a new, strong, victorious people.

My own view, as a traditionalist, was the Yiddish was close to a holy
language, the language of my ancestors, the true language of __my__ culture,
and the language of all that taught and  nourished me.  A humble language,
yet rich in history and tradition and  Yiddish was the language of Jews
throughout Europe -  that ?lingua-Franca? that ultimately bound us all
together.


Ed Sieb


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