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Yiddish ( ייִדיש yidish or אידיש idish, literally "Jewish") is an Ashkenazi Jewish leid o hie German oreegin, spaken ootthrough the warld. It developpit as a fusion o German dialects wi Ebreu, Aramaic, Slavic leids an traces o Romance leids. [3] [4] It is written in the Ebreu alphabet .
Yiddish (ייִדיש , יידיש or אידיש , yidish or idish, pronounced [ˈ(j)ɪdɪʃ], lit. ' Jewish '; ייִדיש-טײַטש , historically also Yidish-Taytsh, lit. ' Judeo-German ') is a West Germanic language historically spoken by Ashkenazi Jews.
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- Old Yiddish Literature
- Hasidic and Haskalah Literature
- Modern Yiddish Literature
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- Further Reading
Yiddish literature began with translations of and commentary on religious texts. (See article on the Yiddish language for a full description of these texts.) The most important writer of old Yiddish literature was Elijah Levita (known as Elye Bokher) who translated and adapted the chivalric romance of Bevis of Hampton, via its Italian version, Buov...
Hasidic stories
The rise of Hasidic popular mysticism in the 18th century gave rise to a specific kind of literary work. Alongside its scholarly thought were hagiographic stories venerating its leadership. This gave storytelling a new centrality in Rabbinic Judaism as a form of worship, and spread the movement's appeal. These anecdotal or miraculous stories personified new Hasidic doctrines of the saintly intermediary, Divine Omnipresence, and the hidden value of the common folk. As one master related of his...
Hasidic parables
Within the works of Hasidic philosophy, another storytelling form was used - insightful parables to illustrate its new mystical interpretations. The Baal Shem Tov used short, soulful analogies, alluded teachings and encouraging anecdotes in first reaching out to revive the common folk, while parables of other masters were integrated within their classic works of Hasidic thought. The distinct parables of Nachman of Breslov comprise a complete literary form that stand alone with their own comme...
Haskalah
During the same years as the emergence of Hasidism, the most influential secular movement of Jews also appeared in the form of the Haskalah. This movement was influenced by the Enlightenment and opposed superstition in religious life and the antiquated education given to most Jews. They proposed better integration into European culture and society, and were strong opponents of Hasidism. Writers who used their craft to expound this view were Israel Aksenfeld, Solomon (or Shloyme) Ettinger and...
The classic Yiddish writers
Modern Yiddish literature is generally dated to the publication in 1864 of Sholem Yankev Abramovitsh's novel Dos kleyne mentshele ("The Little Person"). Abramovitsh had previously written in Hebrew, the language in which many proponents of the Haskalah communicated with each other, until this publication. With this novel, originally published serially in a Yiddish newspaper, Abramovitsh introduced his alter ego, the character of Mendele Moykher Sforim ("Mendel the Book Peddler"), the characte...
Literary movements and figures
Dramatic works in Yiddish grew up at first separately, and later intertwined with other Yiddish movements. Early drama, following Ettinger’s example, was written by Abraham Goldfaden, and Jacob Gordin. Much of what was presented on the Yiddish stage were translations from European repertoire, and as a result much of the earliest original writing in Yiddish owes as much to German theatre as to the classic Yiddish writers. While the three classic writers were still at their height, the first tr...
Female authors in Yiddish literature
An interesting feature of Yiddish literature in its most active years (1900–1940) is the presence of numerous women writers who were less involved in specific movements or tied to a particular artistic ideology. Writers such as Celia Dropkin, Anna Margolin, Kadia Molodowsky, Esther Kreitman, Katie Brown and Esther Shumiatcher Hirschbein created bodies of work that do not fit easily into a particular category and which are often experimental in form or subject matter. Margolin’s work pioneered...
Estraikh, Gennady. In Harness: Yiddish Writers’ Romance with Communism (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2005) ISBN 0-8156-3052-2Frieden, Ken. Classic Yiddish Fiction: Abramovitsh, Sholem Aleichem, and Peretz (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995). ISBN 0-7914-2602-5Glasser, Amelia (trans.) Proletpen: America’s Rebel Yiddish Poets (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2005) ISBN 0-299-20800-1“Ma’aseh books,” “Aksenfed, Israel,” “Ettinger (Oetinger),” “Dick, Isaac Mayer”. Jewish Encyclopedia(1904–11). 11 August 2006Yiddishism ( Yiddish: ײִדישיזם) is a cultural and linguistic movement which began among Jews in Eastern Europe during the latter part of the 19th century. [1] Some of the leading founders of this movement were Mendele Moykher-Sforim (1836–1917), [2] I. L. Peretz (1852–1915), and Sholem Aleichem (1859–1916). [3]
YIDDISH LANGUAGE, language used by Ashkenazi Jews for the past 1,000 years. Developed as an intricate fusion of several unpredictably modified stocks, the language was gradually molded to serve a wide range of communicative needs.
Yiddish nouns are classified into one of three grammatical genders: masculine (זכר zokher ), feminine (נקבֿה nekeyve) and neuter (נײטראַל neytral ). To a large extent, the gender of a noun is unpredictable, though there are some regular patterns: nouns denoting specifically male humans and animals are usually masculine, and nouns ...
Beginning in the nineteenth century, Yiddish became more than merely a language of utility, used in everyday speech and writing. Jews' creative energy, which had no outlet in the surrounding society, began to be expressed through literature, poetry, drama, music, and religious and cultural scholarship.
