Monday, December 28, 2009
Yiddish takes another blow
It survived Hitler, Stalin, the decision to make Hebrew the official language of the State of Israel and the adoption of English by immigrants to the United States.
Now Yiddish, for 1,000 years the everyday language of European Jews, is facing another threat: budget cuts.
At the University of Maryland, which has stood alongside Harvard and Columbia as one of the nation's few schools to consistently offer instruction in the Germanic tongue, the recent announcement that the Joseph and Rebecca Meyerhoff Center for Jewish Studies would be dropping it in the fall shocked area enthusiasts.
"U- Maryland has had the biggest commitment to Yiddish as a language anywhere in a hundred-mile radius," says Harvey Spiro, president of Yiddish of Greater Washington, which organized a letter-writing campaign. "We're not a particularly political organization, but this kicked us in the gut."
The center now has cobbled together the money to pay its longtime instructor through the next academic year. But after that, director Hayim Lapin says, it is unlikely to continue funding a full-time faculty member dedicated to the language.
"This is not about Yiddish," Lapin says. "What this is about is responding to the budget crisis and actually cutting back on just about all of our visiting faculty and programming, So we have less Bible than we had. We have less history than we had. We have less or no Yiddish."
Professor Miriam Isaacs, who has taught elementary and intermediate Yiddish at Maryland for 15 years, worries about a future without the language.
"It's not just at Maryland that I'm concerned," says Isaacs, born in postwar Germany, where Yiddish was her first language.
"We're at a critical point in that the generation of Holocaust survivors, my parents, they're not around anymore," she says. "Or if they're around, they can't do a lot of translating. So if nobody learns it, you know, the Holocaust Museum archive is full of Yiddish materials. The University of Maryland has been acquiring Yiddish books galore. Who is going to read them? Who is going to be able to have access to them?"
http://www.baltimoresun.com/features/faith/bal-md.fa.yiddish28dec28,0,7349465.story
Now Yiddish, for 1,000 years the everyday language of European Jews, is facing another threat: budget cuts.
At the University of Maryland, which has stood alongside Harvard and Columbia as one of the nation's few schools to consistently offer instruction in the Germanic tongue, the recent announcement that the Joseph and Rebecca Meyerhoff Center for Jewish Studies would be dropping it in the fall shocked area enthusiasts.
"U- Maryland has had the biggest commitment to Yiddish as a language anywhere in a hundred-mile radius," says Harvey Spiro, president of Yiddish of Greater Washington, which organized a letter-writing campaign. "We're not a particularly political organization, but this kicked us in the gut."
The center now has cobbled together the money to pay its longtime instructor through the next academic year. But after that, director Hayim Lapin says, it is unlikely to continue funding a full-time faculty member dedicated to the language.
"This is not about Yiddish," Lapin says. "What this is about is responding to the budget crisis and actually cutting back on just about all of our visiting faculty and programming, So we have less Bible than we had. We have less history than we had. We have less or no Yiddish."
Professor Miriam Isaacs, who has taught elementary and intermediate Yiddish at Maryland for 15 years, worries about a future without the language.
"It's not just at Maryland that I'm concerned," says Isaacs, born in postwar Germany, where Yiddish was her first language.
"We're at a critical point in that the generation of Holocaust survivors, my parents, they're not around anymore," she says. "Or if they're around, they can't do a lot of translating. So if nobody learns it, you know, the Holocaust Museum archive is full of Yiddish materials. The University of Maryland has been acquiring Yiddish books galore. Who is going to read them? Who is going to be able to have access to them?"
http://www.baltimoresun.com/features/faith/bal-md.fa.yiddish28dec28,0,7349465.story
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