Dimensions
135 x 203 x 19mm
Yiddish is as unlikely a survivor of the ages as the Jews themselves--unlikelier' actually' considering how many Jews have also tried to kill the oft-considered "gutter" language. That Yiddish is a mirror of Jewish history' thought' and practice--for better and worse--underlies Neal Karlen's narrative' as he charts Yiddish from its beginnings as a minor dialect in the 11th century France and Italy' to the time before World War II when 13 million spoke the language; and on to unlikely resuscitation and electrifying 21st century Renaissance.
THE STORY OF YIDDISH will be told chronologically. Scholars usually date Yiddish from the 11th century' when modern linguists believed the language began as a German dialect spoken by newly arrived Jewish immigrants from France and Northern Italy living along the Rhine. Over time' it became an actual language incorporating elements of Hebrew' Aramaic' and the Slavic and Romance languages. As the story proceeds through the centuries' Karlen highlights the intertwining fates of Judaism and Yiddish. The language would reach literary heights in the 19th century and 20th centuries. Yet in the middle of the 20th century' while the language and culture was at its zenith' Yiddish faced two of its gravest enemies--the genocidal Nazis and the early' proud Zionists who founded Israel in the wake of the Holocaust and decided that with a new Jewish homeland' there would also have to new kind of Jew' speaking a different kind of language. It wasn't until roughly a decade ago that a new generation has begun to work zealously to recapture Yiddish before it disappears.
