RE: yiddish language decline?

[jordan newman <jznewma...>]

Hi list. As a Cote St Luc--Bialik grad, let me say 1)I
hated Yiddish class (and almost failed it a couple of
times), 2)My friends and I never used it outside of
that class and 3)I deeply regret having hated it since
-- because of klezmer and Jewish music--I have come to
love it but now can't remember most of what I was
taught.  

It's all fine and well to make us read College Yiddish
and take us to the Sayde Bronfman Centre to watch a
wonderful Yiddish production--two words of which we'll
understand--but why not teach kids the stuff that's
easy to latch onto and appreciate?  Howcome I never
learned about Dave Taras in Yiddish class (he was
alive then too!)?  Howcome we never listened to Mickey
Katz? 

Yiddish seemed to be a very distant thing to a lot of
us because we weren't made to understand that it could
mean something to us.  It's taught as something dead
ALREADY, or at least it was to me (sorry Bialik
staff!).  But happily, it looks like they've changed
the curriculum quite a bit since then. 

Jordan

<sieb (at) sympatico(dot)ca> wrote:
> Tell that to my neighbours in Cote St Luc, a suburb
> of Montreal, with the
> largest per-capita population of Jews in North
> America.
> 
> Montreal is a hive of Yiddish and Yiddishkeit, with
> a thriving Yiddish
> theatre and active Yiddish culture.  I learned
> Yiddish, not so much from my
> parents, but from my friends and neighbours.  My
> "gang" in high-school spoke
> Yiddish, and used Yiddish xpressions frequently. And
> this was a secular,
> public high-school!
> 
> In fact,  today, it's actively being taught at one
> Jewish high-school,  in
> Montreal:  "Yiddish at Bialik"
> http://www.bialik.netaxis.qc.ca/yiddish/yiddish.htm
> Gib a keek.
> 
> Ed Sieb
> 


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